I worked on my actual homepage yesterday, instead of writing a journal entry. I cleaned up some of the paragraphs, rewrote a few outdated pieces, and added a link to the journal. I have no idea if it'll make a difference in how much traffic I get. At this point I feel absolutely no connection between writing this and it being read -- not that I don't want people reading it, but the drive I had this summer to get readers has faded. Now I just want to have something to say every day. Practise makes perfect.

Not a very productive week. I spent almost all of Tuesday night on the phone with my mother. It was pleasant, admittedly, but by the time I got off the phone and had dinner it was after ten. Then Marith came by, and then Trip and Chrisber came by, so with one thing and another I got no homework done. It was midnight by the time I got to bed, and 2am before I got to sleep.

How do you balance friends and other things? There's this Category Error problem, see. I say 'I need to do my homework.' and friend X replies 'But I haven't seen you all week.' Those things aren't related, really. I'm sorry if they seem like they ought to be, but doing homework is not part of a stack which includes 'spending time with friends'. Doing homework is its own separate & very important stack.

Most of my friends are good about separating these things out. I just don't know what to do about the ones that aren't.

Wednesday was class again. It went much faster than I was expecting. The instructor has a very engaging style of lecturing, and I took more notes than I've taken all year. I was unfortunately late, due to hideous traffic on El Monte, but managed to slip in without missing too much discussion of conditional probability.

After class Trip and I went to dinner at Sono, which worked reasonably well. Then we went down the street to Bookbuyers, where I steadfastly resisted temptation, and then to Printer's Inc, where I didn't even pick up the new F&SF. I feel virtuous. We considered dessert, but I wanted to finish Memory (the last of Bujold's Vorkosigan series), so we went home dessert-less.

I did finish Memory, too, and was ready to sleep by about 11pm -- but then Earl called. Not that I minded. We had a lovely conversation about all the usual things -- Real Analysis, the books we'd just finished, and plans for seeing each other again -- and then somehow it was midnight, so we sent ourselves to bed.

Memory was quite good, although the plot was simplisitic -- I figured out the puzzle quite early on. I didn't mind that our main character (Miles) hadn't, because the book wasn't really about the mystery. It was about Miles being kicked in the head and finally making some decisions he'd been putting off for a long time. Lots of angst. A great fishing scene. It was a fine book.

Also of note yesterday -- I had lunch with Jill. She's emerged from the hell that was her C class and is looking for fun. I need to think of some amusing activites that she'd enjoy.

This writing is horribly forced. Too much is going on. Sorry.