I wasn't actually thinking about Indigo Girls songs, but when I sat down to write the title just popped into my head. It is, I think, accurate if perhaps a little understated. I am definitely closer to being something. 'Fine' may be a misnomer; 'fine' to me means functional, and I don't think I've stopped being functional anywhere on this roller coaster. Not for long enough that anyone could tell, anyway. But I am closer to knowing where I'm going again, which is nice, as I'd rather gotten used to it during the long period (well, several months) where everything was staying niely in its place.

So, some definition has been reached, some tenative future plans have been made, and my movedate draws ever closer.

I'm writing this from LA, sitting at Earl's very nice PC with its very strange ergonomic keyboard. Earl is studying Real Analysis, as he has his screening exam on Monday. Occasionally he wanders over and hugs me, and I smile at him, and then he wanders back off to draw circles around infinity and think about sets. Mathematics is so weird.

Hanging out with Earl is a little weird, too. Not bad, but usually when we're together we're _doing_ something. Since we haven't lived together yet we haven't spent much time around each other when we're not really interacting much. It's making me a little nervous, honestly; I'm sort of here as his guest, so I feel that when he wants my attention I should give it to him, but at the same time I'm doing my own things (catching up on news and email, doing my own homework) and I don't want to just drop them when he's ready for a study break. So I'm nervous.

Earl found me a copy of Simon Schana's _Landyscape and Memory_ in the USC library -- this is a large scholarly book about how human interpretations of landscape effect our myths and also our industry and such. Patrick Nielsen Hayden reccomended it during OryCon, and I am so far quite pleased by it.

What else? A very quiet weekend, really. I played Heroes of M&M all yesterday afternoon and mostly did very badly. Earl studied. I made goulash for dinner, after which I read news and Earl studied some more. Do you detect the underlying thread here?

We did find a cool present for Rachel, completely by accident while buying groceries yesterday pre-dinner. I will describe it once she's received it, since she's reading semi-regularly.

I need to go do Statistics; I have a ton of homework that I've been slacking on due to having been at emotional extremes for the last two weeks. If I'm ecstatically happy I tend to forget I'm taking a class in the first place, whereas if I'm terribly depressed the act of putting pencil to paper seems physically impossible. Can I please have more median days? Thank you.