Wow, a date in binary. I'm getting geekier by the minute. It's okay. I'm still a whole person. At the very least, I don't leak tidbits of secrets and then refuse to tell them fully like some people I know. The point at which you even mention a secret is the point of no return; you can't stop halfway or even two nanometers of the way. Obviously, some people need to be enlightened as to these rules.

At eight minutes past midnight I had already shut down my computer, put on sleeping clothes (as mine are usually running clothes pulling double duty, they don't quite earn the exalted title of pj's), and set the alarm when voices beckoned me to the door. "Fountain hopping?" Of course!

Ok, time out. There are at least 7 fountains on campus. It's warm almost all of the time. Consequently, it's become a tradition here to go fountain hopping, or jumping into a fountain, splashing around, and running to the next to repeat the same process. Except that by the time we got to the Claw (one of the more spectacular) a previous mob had already been evicted by the police and made them set up a dragnet—a car at every fountain, probably. So we detoured to the fountain in front of MemAud, saw the police car, walked calmly by it, and got in. No comment from within; we're guessing that four people seemed a lot less rowdy than 15. Anyway, we were about to head back when we met another guy just on his way over, so we all went back in a second time. Then we met another girl, so it happened a third. Nary a run-in with a burly, uniformed guy and lots of fun.

Fun here seems to necessitate water. Last night, we were tossing a frisbee down the length of a hall and doing pretty well—only the occassional wall-skimming and a few rare instances of pinball-like action. But after a few of the latter in a row, we decided that the patch of turf in front of Branner would be a safer place. No sooner had we passed it twice or thrice around the square than black poles began to rise out of the ground all around us and spout water! Apparently they water the sidewalks and paths (lawns are secondary) every night around 11.

I think that was the first time since I moved in that I'd experienced the hilarious, lingering laughter that feels so good. People here are always really nice, of course, but we're still in that state of cautiously experimenting strangerhood where politeness and propriety seem to be expected. There are some people, mostly in this hall because we're a bit too lazy to venture out, with whom I've been hanging out more than usual. Some of us even biked up to the foothills yesterday, walked the 4.4-mile loop around the [satellite] dish, and explored downtown Palo Alto yesterday. From the tops of the higher rises, you could see satiny fog creeping across the entire San Francisco bay while our 85-degree dry heat cajoled us into a nap halfway through. With luck, once classes truly get underway, we'll have more to base conversation on than "heywhat'syournameyour majorandyourhometownwannabeer?"

More soon, but for now, I ought to go to sleep!