10/8/16: Breaking and Entering

1. 10/8/16
1. Today is a homework day. Although I spend little of it on homework, it respects the spirit of homework days. I work on the SPS newsletter, adding “add to your calendar” functionality. I get my textbooks on my phone for easy access. I work on getting the transportation for Physcon down.
2. I get up late enough that breakfast is good enough for lunch, and I don’t have dinner until after I play a good two hours of badminton with Xin (lots of good doubles play, we’re improving). Dinner is eggs and grilled sandwiches with Xin and Brandon, which is great. I rehash my CSE 351 knowledge of processes and threads (and then the memory hierarchy, page tables and caching) to Brandon, managing to prove to myself I did learn something in that class :)
3. After dinner, go out with Brandon to Eric Erkela’s birthday party. Eric’s in quantum and E&M with us. Brianna, Brandon, Spencer Pease, myself, and about 10 people I don’t know cram into Eric’s place. I meet a bunch of people, hang out for a while. Spend a bunch of time with Brianna and Spencer Pease, who, along with Eric, are fairly intoxicated. Eat Brianna’s delicious Nutella chocolate chip cookies. At one point a dude starts singing Bohemian Rhapsody and others join in. Lots of fun. Most people are tone-deaf but enthusiastic. People keep trying to get this one speaker to charge and goofing around about it. Random stuff like that.
4. Then, one guy passes out in the bathroom. Somehow the group decides that we need to get in there, but we can’t unlock it from the outside. So me, and the fairly sober Bohemian Rhapsody dude get a chair. Because of my height and sobriety, I’m volunteered to get up on the edge of the chair. Chaos. Someone hands me a butter knife and I remove the screen. Chaos. I remove the stick holding the window half open and fling the pane wide, as the chair teeters but holds firm beneath me. Chaos. I wriggle into the window, hands from below supporting my feet. But there is nowhere for me to find purchase on the other side. I spend a few wild moments windmilling, exhorting those outside not to shove me through the window down onto the bathtub. Then with great deliberation, I ooze my center of mass down the wall and slide gently into the bathtub.
5. The dude lies in front of me, prone, no head injury or choking vomit to speak of. I fling open the bar binding the door and people rush in. Suddenly, I am a celebrity, receiving congratulations from all sides.
6. More singing, and goofing off. Somehow Eric starts a cogent conversation on politics. Eric and I have a cute dialogue where Eric applauds my generalism and I affirm his considerably-above-average intelligence, each fighting against the doubt of the other in the other’s own abilities.
7. People start drifting away, and though I would leave to sleep, Brandon decides to stay. So I stick around, and end up getting into a deep philosophical conversation with Eric and Brandon about attitudes towards the future. We take it outside, as to not wake up the roommates, and somehow wander all the way back to 2104 House, Eric carrying on a vivid description of Bismarck’s takeover of Germany (didn’t realize he was such a history buff).
8. In 2104, we talk through the night, eating apple pastries and drinking tea. The conversation wanders over to all the big questions, meaningness, biological determinism, etc. At about 6am Eric decides to call it a morning and treks back to his house, which leaves Brandon and I in the predawn darkness, alone with Brandon’s burning questions as to meaningness, weirdness, and human nature. I feel as though I have slightly more experience with these questions than Brandon, who has more success in shrugging them away with a cinnamon roll and a nap than me. So it is that I advise Brandon on meaningness, and describe a picture of human nature in more consonance with observation than any he has before viewed. One of those 7am conversations! It’s really cool since I’ve spent so long recently thinking through the questions which Brandon now is just facing.
9. We hit the hay about 7am.