One benefit of living on your own: the food. For brunch today I made a 2-egg omelet with mixed greens (mostly spinach) and some leftover chunks of habanero cheese fondue, healthy (...okay, look, eggs have protein) and satisfying on both a "this is delicious" and "oh boy, I made it!" level. I am so glad that we invested in good cookware and ingredients.

I overuse my weaknesses as shields against mattering, which is a phobia that I ought not to have. If I don't want people to think the things I do are unobtainable magic (read: non-intimidation clause) - which I do - I need a better solution than crippling myself back through many subtle means so that the things I do are easy. I should do hard things and then do the harder work of making hard things easy, or helping people struggle past the hardness for themselves.

Made a decision today. Will see how it works out. I may live to regret it. (Well, I'll live. I may regret it.)

My cousin Mark, who goes to Babson, lives in the Map Hill dorm (we moved him in the other day). He now lives closer to Olin's classrooms than actual Olin students do, and has a lovely view of the area between East Hall and West Hall. In other news,I have been on or near the Olin campus almost every day for the past 5 days, and have seen a lot of Olin people (Sunset with DJ, Kelcy, David, and Sam tonight) over the past week, too. This will likely drop off dramatically with my return to Boston sans motor vehicle (can't yet afford a motorcycle...) and the start of full-time work, so I'm appreciating it while it lasts. It's nice to have the luxury of this gradual weaning, and it's also harder in some ways than going cold turkey as I've had to in the past.

We have a bookshelf, and my doorway is too narrow for a chin-up bar. Blenders are way freaking expensive. Seth Woodworth was on our couch tonight and will soon teach me how to use a sword. Adam Holt is back from the OLPC Book Sprint. I went with Chandra and DJ to see Gallimore out by the cape - he has a tiny yellow house with bookshelf walls and a sliding ladder to get up to aforementioned bookshelves and a sleeping loft. We ate; I didn't believe my ice cream was chocolate at first, it was so velvety and rich.

Then we went out to the beach and ran down at low tide; the sand had packed in ripples with splashes of dark iodine seaweed splayed out in it, and shells, and leather-colored boulders warming in the sun. Chandra found a crab, and tiny fish swam in between our feet, and we went out deep and floated in saltwater past the sandbar and talked about electron orbitals and GTK and sci-fi authors and USB input devices and how Eric got a couch. A sunset was involved. I've missed these people - I only miss people when I'm with them, either right before they leave or when I see them after they have gone - but I missed them there, and it was good to be with them again.

Also, Galli's place has stars.

My little brother Jason gets in late tonight. I'm taking him on a food tour of Boston in exchange for labor (building furniture, possibly painting my room, assembling closet, help cleaning up the place, etc. etc. So by Saturday when J and I drive Moby Dick (the white van) back to IL, Chris and I should have a fully functional apartment and be really and truly moved in.

Only 3 meetings today - light schedule, yay! Perhaps I'll have time to build a bookshelf this afternoon so I can get the pile off my desk.