Two Stanford definitions for you: to shower someone is to bodily pick them up, run into the shower, and turn on the water full blast for a soakin' wet time by all. A rollout is when people come bang vigorously on your door at an ungodly hour to get you out of bed. Yes, both seemingly painful rituals are in the name of fun, and I've just had both done to me in the past 48 hours.

On Tuesday night, a bunch of people had finished their midterms and were talking about celebrating with some free-flowing liquids—yes, Tuesday, but also yes, midterms done and yes, freshmen. Then I, who had a midterm the following day, walked into Tory's room and was immediately accosted by Hiten, who said, "Hey, do you want a cigarette?" Which was probably one of the more random questions in the world, so I just stood around and looked at him funnily until I realized that it was a signal sentence. At that point, he, Ben, Cho, and a couple of other people picked me up and dragged me into the boys' shower down the hall. Must say, it was quite an excellent execution.

After that, I changed into dry clothes and got all psyched about studying for CS. I took my stuff to the Branner quasi-library, which is basically two rooms with one wall of bookshelves midterm (I didn't kick its ass but it didn't completely kick mine either; we'll see how the final score pans out), came back, tried to settle on a final project topic for the ling seminar, and finally went to sleep around 1, completely delirious from lack of sleep in the previous two nights.

Sometime too early this morning for the sun to be up, there came a horrendous banging that penetrated through three closed doors—so muffled, in fact, that it just seemed like someone hammering something far away, so I didn't really wake up for a while. Then, it seemed that they must be piecing together some burly furniture for the banging to persist that long... or that it wasn't hammering, but people pounding on our door.

So, grumbling, I get out of bed—which, if you're well-versed in my life by dint of being a regular reader (oh, the shameless self-promotion. Actually, I think the shameless part is its inverse, in which I beg and plead and grouse about y'all not updating often enough. Like right.... now! =P), is quite a feat—and stumble out to our door. When I open it, there stand Robbie, Forrest, and Kevin—and I, facing them, really confused.

Then they hand me a rose, wish a happy Valentine's Day, and tell me to get my roommates out of bed, cause there's breakfast downstairs (which there usually isn't). Apparently, it's an annual Branner tradition, by which fact I'm really impressed. To get 80 college freshman guys to wake up at 6 am and dress up in nice clothes (a rare, rare sight on campus) is a near-Herculean task, and it was really unexpected and cool of them all to participate—although you could spot Branner around campus all day as the ones who were dozing off in lectures up the wazoo. Hee.

I really, really like this dorm, even if I'm not very much involved in Branner-wide events. Between lack of time and just plain being a dork, I don't venture out of this hall as much as might be interesting to—a fact which I sort of regret, but have become resigned to. It's just a time trade-off, really, and right now I'm sort of caught up in ME, CS, and OEP. Oh well. In summary, life's still good. And it's supplemented by the recent influx of packages! You know who you are, so thanks bunches!