The question of the day is whether you eat a beautiful batch of fresh strawberries plain, or desecrate them by submitting 'em to a recipe, which compromises all of their natural flavor. By the supremely impartial way in which I phrased that, I'm sure you know my take on the matter. Roger, however, believes quite the opposite. That's hereby all the tribute I give to fair, impartial exposition of opposing thoughts. It's sort of as with any food: extensive outside flavoring or interference is only necessary for food that's inherently of subpar quality; anything else should be savored in its barest, purest form. Oh, did I mention that this philosophy of food preparation caters well to laziness?

My period key is making funny noises, and it has a really lame click compared to those of the other ones. I'm sure this is a hundred percent my fault. I'd been really excited about a can of root beer I'd swiped from the Branner barbecue Friday afternoon. I almost never drink soda here, even though it's readily available—I'm just not a big fan of it. Plus, I prefer my drinks to be at or above ambient temperature, which means that I usually mix cold water from the lemonade dispenser's special lever with hot water from the coffee machine. I do, though, get root beer or Dr. Pepper cravings once in a while, and Friday was one of them. Plus, I'd gotten there so late that everything was warming up. Yay!

So I happily traipsed back to my room to stash the can away, and went to the real Magic Flute cast party. It was fun seeing everyone in a destressed environment. There was lots of choir geek action, much of it beyond me—or perhaps I just didn't know a lot of the music. Anyway, we sang lesser-known bits of Handel's Messiah, and Tapan did a soprano solo from Falstaff. Hee. I miss when a bunch of people crowd around a piano and sing familiar, well-loved stuff. Bel Canto, anyone? We also watched videos of the show while making fun of people all around and laughing at the men's plot subversions as we sang along, after which Tamino, the prince/protagonist was hitting on Sarastro, a king. Did I mention that about 75% of the male principals are homosexual?

I came back before midnight because of Regionals the next day, but did take some time to savor that root beer before going to bed. I even swished it around my mouth as I as drinking it. I even got a little overexcited and swished some of it. Smart, I know. The right shift, /, ", ;, and L keys immediately started causing a ruckus, and I started to freak out because I'd had to replace the entire keyboard when I'd spilled plain water across the whole thing earlier this year. But because this was only a little spray from my mouth, I thought I'd be able to clean it up myself... and, in the process of doing so, tried to work my paper towel into a space between the keys a little too eagerly and popped it right out. I thought I'd broken it permanently, but in some subconscious panic attack I somehow clicked it back into place, and that's when the epiphany came that I could just take off all of the nearby keys, clean off all of the soda, and replace the keys.

This worked, for the most part. It looks really cool, too, so if you get a chance, find out if you can take apart your very own keyboard! All of my keys were responsing as per usual by Sunday morning except for the period. I'd had some trouble getting it on in the first place, and then it was giving me a wimpy click. I was pretty scared that I'd popped off a fragile but important part, but decided to screw with it some more 5 minutes ago. It turns out that it was just poorly aligned. Now it responds normally, and all's right with the world.

Well, kind of.