Friday Five
1) What was the first song you remember hearing and enjoying on the radio? I have no idea. I like listening to the radio a lot, though. I don't like file-sharing, so the only way I can readily hear music I don't own is through the radio.
2) If you could only listen to five CDs for a year, which five would they be? (Boxed sets can count as one CD. Sigh.)
(1) The Walk to Remember soundtrack,
(2) Michelle Branch's Hotel Paper,
(3) the mix CD I made myself, called Splash,
(4) Now Volume 5, and
(5) *NSync's No Strings Attached.
3) What was your favorite year, music-wise? I'm going with 2000. I'm still holding out for an *NSync reunion.
4) If you could witness one historical music event through all time, what would you pick, and why? Well, I watched almost all of Live 8 on tv, but it would have been amazing to have been there. Does that count? There was just so much great music in Philadelphia and in Hyde Park.
5) Do you have a song that never fails to cheer you up? What is it and why does it do that for you? I don't have a cheer-up song. Maybe "Hedwig's Theme", but only because that reminds of Harry Potter, and HP never fails to make me happy.

Ah, Harry Potter. Ms. Rowling, you have produced the literary equivalent of crack, only they readily sell it to minors. We get a fix, and then we have to suffer through withdrawal for years before we can finally get more. I'm almost theorized to death. Even HPfGU has slowed down from the post-HBP onslaught. When I first subscribed, I would get three or four twenty-five-message emails a day, but now I get one every other day or so, with less than ten messages each. Much more manageable. Of course, I haven't even begun to read post-HBP fic. It's just shy of less than two months, and with school starting, people will be more apt to take their time and do good work, instead of churning something out the moment they have an idea. But alas, as this article puts it, fics and theories will have to be the "hair of the three-headed dog."

Randomness: As Maura gleefully informed me just now, Hello Kitty has a boyfriend, Dear Daniel. He's kind of cute. You know, for a cartoon cat.

I spent most of the weekend reading Hermann Hesse's Glass Bead Game for ARHU. It's about 550 pages, and we were supposed to start discussion this week, so I plowed through it as best I could. I was so wrapped up in it, I almost forgot to do my other homework. But I remembered by Labor Day Monday. It's kind of sad, though, since that's the last day we'll have off until Thanksgiving.

My parents came up on Sunday to bring me some things I forgot. They didn't remember my toothpaste, though. I miss it; the Commons Shop (CoSho?) didn't have the kind I like. The dorms seem to be the only good thing about South Campus. South Campus Dining Hall isn't that great -- they don't have weekend Testudo waffles! And the Commons Shop is nicer-designed than the Incon, but just as inconvenient.

It's still better than Easton.

The annual Catholic Student Center Barbecue was Wednesday night. Maura and I went for the free food and company of other Catholic Terps; we ran into Eric and Crazy there. The new t-shirt is much nicer than the old one: it's red and white, and the back says "Hail Mary Land." UMD, football, and the Church all in one cute little slogan. We talked to Fr. Bill in line. Well, Maura did most of the talking. When I talked, it wound up like this:

Fr. Bill: You'll have to read that book after Maura's finished with it.
Maura: Oh, yeah, she's into books like that.
Me: Yeah, I'm half an English major.
Fr. Bill: Oh, so you only read the beginnings of books.

I miss having a routine. I'm working on it, though. Language classes don't meet on Thursdays, so I have this big gap between ENGL301 and ARHU, from 10:45am to 4pm. I came back from class yesterday, then went to Mass at noon and lunch afterward, where I ran into Sara and Hana. I hauled my laundry over to QA, but managed to forget my sheets and towels (I can't bring myself to call them "linens"; that sounds so much fancier than stuff I bought at Target). My load finished in plenty of time for ARHU, so that might be how I spend my mid-Thursday days.

Today, walking back from the Book Exchange, I was talking to myself as usual, when a bug flew into my mouth. I panicked and kind of spit it out. It got caught on my lip because I was talking, so it wasn't actually inside, but still. So many kinds of gross.

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