It’s not exactly a historical day in the time line of the band Boston, but I’ve listened to them enough lately that I think I should pay tribute to one of the greatest singers I’ve ever heard, Brad Delp. He killed himself a little more than a year ago in Atkinson, NH, and took with him an amazing voice. To quote the rest of Boston, “We just lost one of the nicest guys in Rock and Roll.”

Speaking of music, I thought my collection was big, until I came upon the library of one William Lande, shared over the FT wired connection. 24,000 songs. I kid you not. And then, as luck would have it, I found out that a guy I know in my German class has almost the same amount; looks like I’ll be getting a lot more music pretty soon.

Maybe I should just be a movie critic, I talk about enough movies in these updates. I had to head over to campus on Thursday night to watch a movie for German. It was called “Beyond Silence,” and it was a very interesting and heart-warming movie. In short, a girl named Lara is the daughter of two deaf parents. She herself is not deaf, and her aunt gives her a clarinet for Christmas one year, which Lara invests lots of time into. Her father doesn’t understand the appeal of music, never having heard it himself, so he gets angry that Lara is spending all her time playing the clarinet and not studying. Years pass, and her father still hasn’t come to terms with the direction her life is taking, and the movie turns into a struggle between Lara’s devotion to her father and mother (since they’re both deaf, she is extremely useful to them in translating between spoken word and sign language and so on; she has a younger sister who can eventually take on these tasks, but not right away), and the pursuit of her musical career. I won’t spoil the ending, but it’s heart-warming.

Academically, the next couple weeks are kind of like the eye of the storm, the first part (midterms) having passed, although there’s a Chemistry midterm Monday, and the second part of the storm (finals) approaching steadily. I’m taking this opportunity to recoup and assess which classes I’m going to have to study the most for and which classes I’m pretty much set in. So far Chemistry wins as being the most difficult class, yet again, but at least this quarter I haven’t gotten any awful midterms and I’m doing roughly the same in all of my classes.

That’s about it for today. I missed the lunar eclipse, unfortunately; oh well, I’ll catch it again in 2010. More tomorrow.

I’m out.

Later.

I’m not talking about actors. I’m talking about those dots up in the sky - you know the ones - and how lying on your back looking at them, however cliché it may be, is really a profound experience in the right setting. It’s enough to make me wonder why I didn’t choose astronomy instead of physics (lack of as many job opportunities notwithstanding).

That was the bulk of my night, a random trip to the beach and a bit of late-night stargazing while a couple friends of mine frolicked blindly (although Jordan maintains that his eyesight is just shy of superhuman because of all the carrots he eats) in the chilly Pacific waters. A satisfying end to my last stressful day for…a little while anyway.

Yeah, midterms are over. Imagine me pausing momentarily to do a bit of a jig. Physics was certainly my most stressful midterm. It’s one of those subjects where, no matter how much you think you know, invariably there’s some aspect of it you are just a little shaky on. The saving grace is that physics is mainly the science of relating one thing to another, and so said shaky aspect can usually be figured out by a little handiwork with a pencil and a formula sheet. I think the real skill in physics lies in one’s ability to make those connections and truly understand what you’re doing while you’re doing it. My professor this quarter’s done a wonderful job of explaining this. He’ll do a long proof that takes the entire lecture, or some of it, and end with something as simple as “(torque) = I*(alpha),” and then go, “Look, it’s just like F = m*a.” And then everyone utters a big, collective (if tentative) “…ooooh” and things start to make a little more sense.

In any case, that was that. German was today, which I felt pretty good about, but that class never seems to be too much of a challenge anyway. Languages, or at least German, are so incredibly logical at their core. I mean, so is pretty much everything (excluding quantum physics), but if you can see the likenesses between your standard high school-taught languages (German, French, Spanish, even Latin) and English, you’ll be fine.

Math and Chemistry went fine, I won’t waste space by writing about them here. Everything is pretty good in my little 70-degree bubble land of beach life. Now I finally have some time to devote to drawing. I’m possessed by some incredible urge to draw at all hours of the day, something I won’t ruin by actually following through with it.

This seems to be enough for now.

I’m out.

Later.

Bad habits like staying up too late, napping during the day and further perpetuating the cycle - that’s what I’m on about. It can happen to you.

I’ve got a Physics midterm tomorrow. I’m not particularly worried - in studying, I’ve more or less gone from unsure to positive that physics, on a purely mathematical scale, is nothing more than drawing connections between things. Oh, “a” is a change in “v”? Well by gum, “alpha” is a change in “omega” by that same token! So on and so forth. Naturally I’m not sitting here talking aloud to myself while I’m doing physics homework, drawing happy conclusions and verbalizing them so that others might partake in the same revelry, but I’m not just jotting down a lot of circles and letters and lines and dots on paper, either.

This comic’s getting underway. I even have the first one drawn up, believe that if you will - it just needs to be re-drawn. It didn’t come out bad, but I’ve been trying out different ways of inking, and I think the next step are those super fine pens, which I thought I had some of but apparently don’t. I’ll look again. In any case, the comic’s pretty darn funny (credit for the script goes to my friend Jared), but might be lost on some of the older, non-video-game-savvy crowd, unfortunately. I’ll get it up sometime this week.

Time for sleep now, I think.

I’m out.

Later.

I was in some kind of shock after the Super Bowl, otherwise I would’ve written something then. I’m not going to write about what I thought of the Super Bowl, but I will accept the defeat with grace, and give Eli Manning and the Giants a big congratulations. Very happy that Eli got a ring.

Ok, that’s enough of that. It’s almost time to pick classes for next semester - always seem to forget how quickly that time of the year comes up. Thinking of a tentative schedule now…I’m guessing German 3, Math 3C, Physics 22, and maybe another class I’m actually interested in instead of Chemistry. Thank goodness I no longer have to take Chem. I’m not sure how much more I could handle.

A big happy birthday to my dad and uncle Andy, both of whom turned one year older on February 2nd. Coming soon - Max’s birthday!

There was a bit of a fiasco yesterday in trying to get our first month’s rent in the mail on time, which ultimately didn’t happen. Luckily, we were allowed to express ship it tonight, but I’ve come to the conclusion that getting a house is not as simple as it sounds. We’ve had a couple close calls already. As it stands right now, however, 6643A Trigo, Isla Vista, CA is still ours for the moment, and hopefully that will last through the summer.

Half of my laundry’s been in the laundry for almost an hour and a half…come on, dry already.

More soon, not much else to talk about right now.

I’m out.

Later.

-Sam