valentine's day has come and gone, eliciting few thoughts from me along the way. it's kind of surprising; while i don't put any stock in these holidays as such, the hoopla usually draws me into a thoughtful mood. i guess it's the rampant anti-commercialism here in berkeley.

today i had a pretty encapsulated "day" similar to what i imagine being an adult is like. i woke up around four (pm), poked around the usual places, worked on algebraic geometry a bit, went in to the math department, revised (and finally submitted for the last time! -- i hope, anyway) that paper, focused my energy, engaged in a little bit of creative indulgence (the balance that adults seem to value, i suppose), went running, went to bed.

the catch? well, there are several catches. first, this so-called day lasted only nine hours, and it still seemed like too long. i went through it at a leisurely pace, rushing nothing, accomplishing tasks and thoughts and emotions, and i still had plenty of time. second, of course, is the fact that insomnia is a pretty determined foe, apparently more so than algebraic geometry, which didn't use its powers to prevent me from taking initiative to stop it. so i'm awake. and who knows how long that will last. it's a dicey situation, since i'm driving 70 miles to davis tomorrow morning at 9:30, which it seems like i ought to be awake and alert for.

i need to keep some turkey on hand, for the soporific effect. i wonder if that would work.

so there's this girl i want to meet. she posted something on yahoo! personals, but they've structured their scheme very cleverly -- it's free to post the ads, it's free to read the ads, but it costs an insane amount of money ($20/month or $90/yr) to reply to the ads. i'm surprised either that more people aren't being subversive or that they're vigilant about preventing this -- they specifically state in the license agreement that nobody reads that you can't put in contact info or anything like that. i'm tempted to subvert this -- i think i could, by giving information which isn't specific enough to be covered by them but is leading enough that a sufficiently intelligent person could contact me through it -- but it would require an intelligent accomplice. more to the point, i doubt she reads other personals.

it's amazing how many ridiculously expensive things there are out there, which seemingly only extremely rich or extremely emotional people would spring for. like this.

anyway, my point is, i can't know your name, but if you're reading this and you're the one who posted that personal which mentioned that you're an undeclared engineering major and that you're in the Cal band and that you're a "builder/creator/inventor/fixer," please do drop me a line. though the odds are very long.

heck, even if you're not that person, if you're in the area, drop me a line. i could sure spring for a random experience or two. and i'll be putting up that subversive y! personal at some point, too. because if i can randomly find myself there, so can someone with the obsessive drive and intelligence to figure out who i am.

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