left sidewalk?

was it the house burglar alarm, announcing a breach from the "left sidewalk" over an intercom we don't know about, or a local college kid (those eastern nazarenes!) with a bull horn on the street, or some emergency vehicle? Well, it woke me up from my nap. I guess we'll never know...

But while I'm up, allow me to proceed with this update. Ironically, I began these posts as a way to keep in touch, but now they're actually a way for my family and friends to TOTALLY AVOID CONTACTING ME and still find out what I'm doing. Gee, thanks guys. You can CALL. :P

(No, no, it's ok! sniff!)

Hm, I think I'm a little cranky from being disturbed from my nap. :) Aaaanyway... In answer to everyone's bated breath YES, I finally did get a Harvard ID (one more to add to the collection!) and now I have supreme access to their materials. (mwahahaha... except that I just had to ILL a book from Berkeley. How ironic.) It took 3 hours of concerted door-knocking (student ID office, then registrar, then student billing, then student ID office, then registrar again, then student ID office one last time). Wow did they HATE me by the time I was done! But props to harvard for having really high quality ID camera setup - backlighting, screens, etc.

I sat in on a couple Harvard classes - wow was that a lesson ... called "Reasons I *heart* Berkeley!" I'm pretty sure some of the students here have cultivated affected vaguely british accents. They must practice at home. Really, though, there's nothing to make you appreciate Berk-town like leaving it for a while. I miss: cheap lunch near campus, being given the benefit of the doubt (no, it's not a stupid question, it's a really damn good question which you guys just haven't thought of yet!), and spacious library stacks with tables in them which are well-lit and, perhaps most importantly, all catalogued according to a single system in alpha-numeric order. Ironic that the organizing principle of the Widener library syatem, arguably the best library in the world, is, to use a favorite phrase of Matt's, totally retarded. You really have to be here to appreciate it.

Actually, I'm having a great time though. Because I get to smile and say, "actually, I'm from UC Berkeley" and hear responses like "Oh, I went to berkeley undergrad. Sometimes I wish I were still there." And "Oh. Berkeley rejected me." And you DO feel uber-collegiate walking through Harvard yard in the fall with a huge stack of books. And Matt and I are just now meeting some very, very cool people. So it's working out.

And we're going to see SPAMALOT next week!!!!!!! Spam spam spam spam...