Transitioning
As you may or may not recall, I spent the evening of the previous entry over at Evan and Alex's. Well, the next night, Jordan and I visited their abode again. We mostly sat around and discussed the various merits of Boiling Points. I think it's good that it encourages patience, but there were a couple of shady situations that you didn't want the kids to have patience. Someone also noted that they're not likely to be more patient just because they might be on the show. I'm glad it's not something I generally struggle with. In fact, perhaps I'm overly patient sometimes.

When I arrived home, I noticed that people were still awake, so I spent some time talking with my brother, my sister, and Laura Ruth. That reminds me that I spent another late night with my brother and sister watching "Home Fries". It was sometime in the past couple of weeks, but I don't remember when. I remember not wanting to see the movie very much, but it ended up being a decent dramedy. I'm not particularly sure I'd watch it again, but it's worth watching once...if only to gawk at Jake Busey's strangeness.

Game Nights
Anyway, I spent the next afternoon at the mall, and found some new pants for $15 each. Happy with my purchase, I packed the rest of my clothes and headed back to Auburn that evening. I made pretty good time considering there wasn't much traffic. Upon arriving in Auburn, I dropped by Wal-Mart to find broadband adapters for the GameCubes, but they were out. I did manage to find a couple at the mall the next day though. Since then, we've been regularly revelling in 8-player Mario Kart glory. The girls seem wary of playing sometimes as they have a tendency to lose (though Natalie and D manage to occasionally pull a win). However, when there are more people competing, it levels the playing field a bit.

Saturday night marked both the return of Mafia night and Leigh (from England). We played quite a few games. Well, I should say, I played quite a few rounds and got stuck with being mafia (since there weren't that many of us). I'm starting to get a little sick of it...particularly since I apparently suck at lying. D knows how to read me...I do some sort of 'wrinkly brow' thing...which is why I always want to kill her early, but when Kevin's narrating, he basically vetoes the kill. Occasionally when I'm narrating I won't allow a particular kill in the first night, but I'm usually pretty flexible. I started trying to wear a hat to hide my brow, but it didn't seem to work very well. Oh...after the third or fourth time I got mafia, I finally got to be a townsperson. Well, I decided to throw the game a bit by trying to appear as guilty as possible to D. It worked, and the mafia won. =)

Tonight, we finally pulled out a new game I got for Christmas called Loaded Questions. I'd been wanting to play for a while, but never had the right number of willing people (almost exactly 6). The game involves questions like, "If you were invisible, where would you go?" One person reads the question, everyone else writes answers, and the reader has to pick which written answer matches with each player. It's reminiscent of Balderdash and Wise & Otherwise but not quite as complicated. I think everyone enjoyed it...even if it did run a little long.

The Daily Grind
With all this socializing, it's going to be hard to jump back into school, but classes began yesterday. Power Systems is rumored to be quite difficult, but I've got hope in that the teacher seems nice enough. Concepts of Science ought to be easy peasy. It's one of those gigantic classes where I hope to meet at least a few new people.

Oh, I should mention that one of my New Year's resolutions is to meet a new person every day. So far, I think I'm on track. I'm also trying to be more confident during my daily grind.

Back to classes...Topics In Hispanic Literature & Culture turns out to be Female Short Story Writers in Post-Franco (post-1975) Spain. How's that for specialization? The professor seems really funny and upbeat and there seem to be a lot of people in there that I've met previously.

My other two classes, Beginning Acting and Analog Electronics, began today. Beginning Acting looks to be the most fun class I've taken in a long time. I'm also appreciating that it'll likely be the only class that Ray and I both take together. In class, we played a lot of warm-up games, and I'm looking forward to the various projects that we'll have to do. Analog Electronics...well, I'm worried that it's going to suck. The professor seems pretty boring and I've heard he's hard as hell. He's one of those teacher's that assumes that if you do everything, you get a C - that A's and B's are reserved for going beyond the assigned work. I really hate teachers like that.

Closing Thoughts
Erring to brevity, I'll wrap this entry up with one of the videos that I've made. I installed the Firewire card the other night and tacked some titles and background music...as well as tightening up the cuts. I'm sure a lot of you have already seen it, but without further ado, I leave you with "Conversation with Oneself".

Man...I wish I had time to sleep and do everything I need and want to do...