I think I've slept in my bed twice in the past eight nights, which could account for the recent dearth of updates. So take a deep breath, cause here goes...

Most of those nights are attributable to either the CS program (Boggle) due Wednesday or the ME101 project (create something that pops as many balloons in an 8' x 8' corral with a helium one taped six feet up in the center once a single trigger is released out of a limited supply of materials). Yes, yes—they are indeed the root of all of last week's evil. Because of the ME project, I didn't think I could go to the Santa Barbara tournament for ultimate last weekend, which would have rendered it impossible to meet with the group and been completely unfair to them. But, Friday morning, I found out that one of the girls on the team was going to drive back Saturday night after our first four games, so I ended up going. Which shot the original plan for Friday and Sunday as Boggle days to hell-n-back. Still, the tourney was great. We don't get much 7-on-7 playing at practice, so this was pretty cool. It was also the first time that more than half of us on the B team had played in an organized game... so scoring 2 points on number-two Santa Cruz was a pretty huge ego booster. Tired and hungry, I got back Saturday night (night 1 in own bed).

Sunday was an ME marathon, the details of which I can't even remember. All I know is that I came back here, had dinner, read some (if by "some" I mean "three quarters of") Odyssey, and worked on Boggle. Without even realizing it, it turned into 8:30 am Monday morning and it was time for me to shower and go withBen and Hiten, the only others in this hall without 10am classes (well, Ben did; he's just a geekier fan than most), to get everybody tickets for Jack Johnson's concert on campus a week and a day from today. Hiten, however, wasn't awake, so we left and assumed that maybe he'd know what was up when he awoke. We got there not more than five minutes after nine (sales were to begin at ten) and prospects seemed good. Still, Ben had to go to physics lecture, so he gave his ID to a girl from his high school further up the line and left; Hiten had come along at some point during this wait and replaced him in line. We were snaking our way into Tressider, inching ever closer to the table, when with one person left between us and success they announced that all of the tickets were sold out. Boo and hiss! Ben's ID card, however, had garnered two at that point.

Monday... blah blah blah. Went through the motions of IHUM lecture, IHUM section, CS lecture, and more ME. When I finally got back, 'twas slated to be Boggle night, except I fell asleep in the Branner lounge around 1, woke up at 6, and programmed away til my 10am class. Went through the motions of Tuesday, too, and didn't sleep that night because Boggle was due. Wednesday happened, I turned in the program, and then jetted to Carmen's room for one last ME all-nighter. We worked for a few hours in her house, Murray, then walked our contraption over to the classroom in Terman where they'd set up a mock corral for us to test. When we got there, the atmosphere in the room was already zipping: think 35 kids with foam, knives, glue guns, balloons, and streaming classic rock in a frenzy all night long. Sharing glue sticks, applauding for loud and consecutive pops, trading last-minute advice—although we would be competing against each other in less than twelve hours, the air of communalism present in that room was really awesome.

Our group finally dispersed around 6; rather than doing the long bike back to Branner in the dark early morning, I stayed in her room, did some drawings for homework, took a nap, and headed back at 8:30 to shower and get ready for my 10 am class. Fudged through a 2-hour seminar, had lunch, and went to ME for the grand project unveilings, which were a lot of fun. Crashed at 9pm, woke up Friday, read some CS, and went to lecture. The end of the week hath arrived. I think it's been too long since then for me to properly remember details, so I'm going to stop.

I hereby resolve to make better use of my time as a general thing. Good thing I'm resolving this after I've taken the "Drink me!" test, which just told me that I'm an ice cube: "Brrrr... really what do you expect out of an ice cube!". And after I've taken the "What animal best portrays your sexual appetite?"quiz, which rates me a cold dead fish: In the unlikely event that I do have sex, I pretty much make sure that neither of us will enjoy it very much. And I have no idea what to do or how to do it." Quite amusing, really, considering that I have flat-out refused to partake in Branner's Screw Your Roommate. It's not quite the meat market aspect—in that regard, it doesn't nearly rival our good old JP Stevens Date Auctions—as the fact that I'd have to be charming and witty and civil and unobnoxious for six or seven consecutive hours to someone whom I've artificially been paired with. When phrased that way, it's quite an arduous task, no?

I think this whole relationship garbage is only on my mind because I was in a car which included two seniors on the way back from the Desolation Wilderness tonight whose second-half conversation circled around girlfriends and girlfriends meeting parents and meeting girlfriend's parents and parents meeting parents. Wow. Scary. I can't fathom at all; would much prefer to retreat into my turtle shell of friends and fun and academia. Okay. So enough of that.

But I guess that brings me to this weekend. On Friday night we headed out to the Desolution Wilderness in the Sierra Nevada, which is fairly close to Lake Tahoe, for the second OEP trip. Beginning Saturday morning, we skiied about a mile and a half of slight uphill to the Lower and Upper Echo Lakes, skiied a few miles across the frozen lakes, then up some really steep and really rolling terrain to our campsite. We immediately began the Epic Construction Job, warming up with a 5-foot multipurpose kitchen table and moving on the main structure. It began with a dome that some of us shoveled snow onto while others tamped down the top by jumping, which grew to over ten feet tall. Just after sunset, this dome was ready for excavation. This stage had less snow volume moving, but all of it was done at a really awkward angle through and away from our four-foot-long entrance tunnel.

I had finished one of my last shifts and crawled back out to the kitchen when I sniffed, in addition to our regular and expected pesto pasta, roasting food. It turned out that Rob, one of the instructors had packed in a grill and charcoal and veggie and beef kebabs. Astounding. I do believe that that, with its warmth and aroma and crisply charred corners, was the best cow that I have ever tasted in my life.

The snow cave was finished pretty soon after that; we all sat in there, illuminated by five little candles' lights reflecting off of the glittering snow, and swapped stories til eleven, when we went to bed. I was one of the five who elected to sleep in the snow cave, and I hereby announce that, in my own opinion, snow caves kick a tent's ass any single snowy day of the year. Will put up developed and scaned pictures sometime soon.

Suddenly very tired. Will upload and go to bed.