Birthday

On Wednesday I turned 19. It was exciting. To celebrate, my parents came down and took me out to dinner at Ruby Tuesday, where I ate an incredibly enormous and deliciously juicy serloin burger.

However, the significance of the night was greater than a good burger. This is due to my drastic change in appearance that occured that night. After a haircut, a shave, and a change of clothes (I ended my pajama streak!), I was a new man who was hardly recognizable. Pictures:

This is what I looked like for many months.

The beard

How I look now

The lack of a beard

After 3 months of not shaving, and 4 and a half months of wearing clothes that made me look like I just woke up, people were shocked to see me! I got many great reactions, but one of the most interesting and quick to explain reactions was a guy who refused to call me "Dave" for several days. He called me "Not Dave" instead. Whatever :-)

That night I had a little party in my room. It was actually not that little, and it probably violated campus regulations for dorm room capacity, but it was a lot of fun. We watched Ferris Buheller, but I don't think anybody really paid attention to the movie.

Packed room

Ramya, Beth, and myself

Good ole' Ferris and his girlfriend..?

Tim!

Annie/Elisa, with me sneaking into the background

It was a fun time.

--David

Pajamas #2

I decided to follow up on my post from 11-13-06, titled "Pajamas". (Original post is here)

Basically, since October, I decided that I was too lazy/cool to wear anything besides my pajamas. So, every day since October 7th, I've been wearing the same pants. The only exceptions were 2 occasions when I had to dress up, and I consequently wore khakis over my pjs.

They are quite comfy, and I'm in college so nobody really cares what I wear. Plus, over Christmas, my mom installed pockets in them! Thus, not only are they extremely comfortable and obviously fashionable, but they're practical too.

Pictures:




One of the first pictures ever of me wearing my pajamas -- this was my first week at Hiram, before my streak began.

This is the first picture (that I know of) of me wearing my pajamas after beginning my streak. (And yes, there's a reason I'm wearing two different shoes. I had injured my foot.)

After a month -- same picture I posted in November.

After roughly 2 months.

Christmas break -- two and a half months.

Today -- over 4 months.

By the way, yes -- I *have* washed them. Not that I do it frequently or anything (though the longest I've ever gone without washing them was, I believe, 5 weeks)... It's freezing outside, so I'm not sweating or anything. Plus, I take frequent showers etc. :)

Good times.

--David

Midterms/Room Cleanup

First I'd like to correct myself -- the previous post was about the InterCultural Forum which I incorrectly referred to as the International Forum. I'm too lazy to go back and fix it.

Anyhow it's midterm time. Pretty weird that the 12-week is already half over -- it still feels somewhat like the beginning of the semester.

Classes are going pretty well so far. I didn't really notice it at the time when I was registering for classes, but I pretty much have the schedule of a philosophy major now that I look at it. I'm taking Ancient Philosophy, 19th Century Philosophy, and my Freshman Seminar is the Quest for Justice (which is a political philosophy class). It's good stuff.

I can definetely say, though, that my 19th Century Philosophy class is some of the hardest (if not the hardest) material I've ever learned in my life. Maybe part of the issue is that I'm just not accustomed to reading Philosophy. Reading Philosophy is not like reading other things; there have been times when I've spent 5-10 minutes comprehending a single sentence (it doesn't help that single sentences are often 5 lines long).

At any rate, it's a lot different than anything I've really studied before, and a lot more difficult than most things I've ever had to do.

My professor is a cool dude, though.

On Monday I took my midterm in that class. . . I reviewed my notes etc. fairly extensively and, to my surprise, felt that I had a decent hold on all of the questions on the test. By friday (hopefully) I'll see if I'm right :-/

I have another midterm coming up on Friday. . .

--

On another note, my room finally got trashed enough that my roommate and I decided it was time to clean it. Jim had the idea to actually CLEAN the room this time (as opposed to organizing everything, picking up trash, etc). I agreed. So, we actually went to the store, bought cleaning supplies, and CLEANED the room.

We went all out; we moved the couch, took out the carpet, etc., and sweeped and mopped all of the floors. We vacuumed the carpet, through away 4 bags of garbage, and organized everything.

Photographic confirmation:

Jim doing something

Middle of the process...

All of our stuff out in the hallway

I didn't take pictures of it "after", but let's just say that 4 hours later, the room was sparkling clean, organized, and smelled like lemon.

--David

International Forum

The IF was excellent. Essentially it is an annual event which helps Hiram's diversity shine. We have a lot of international students (which is what the event focuses on), and a ton of talented people.

There were two main events.. the dinner and the talent show. For the dinner, students from around the world volunteered to make dishes from their native countries (they were given assistance from others -- but the international students were in charge).

The dinner was a large, formal event, and lots of guests (ie, not students or faculty/staff...) attended. It's very reasonably priced, at $6 a person (though if you are as clever as me you can get in for free, haha.)

The formal dinning room, the ballroom, and various other rooms were packed with people.

My plate

One of Robin's 2 plates

Anyhow, the pictures aren't that great -- they kind of look like piles of dull-colored mush -- but I assure you the food was actually quite good. There were so many options, though, that I only got to try a fraction of it.

After that, we went to the talent show... there were a lot of acts by international students (different native dances, music, etc), but also acts by us "normal" students :)

Ok, the last one isn't of the talent show, but it was pretty talented of me I thought. Maybe I'll post more pictures later, after I brighten them (a lot of them are annoyingly dark).

--David