I am very pleased. My sister and her fiance are flying in tonight. My sister is one of my favorites and she is pregnant with twins. I found this very thoughtful of her since she knows I don't want children of my own but that I am enamored with the idea of being the uncle who teaches them how to get in and out of trouble and to give them books by Roald Dahl.

I can hardly wait.

I was going to write about the party my roommates and I had this weekend. Well, I guess I will write about it. Juxtaposition and all that. For this party, we created an ad hoc currency that could be exchanged for alcoholic drinks. A makeshift bar was set up in the kitchen and when guests arrived they would receive a slip of paper with a condition written on it. For instance, "Find someone who was born in another country," "Find someone who knows the difference between a meteorite and a meteoroid," or "Find someone who is wearing matching underwear." When they fulfilled the condition, they could bring the slip of paper to me and I would make them a drink and give them a new slip of paper. They had to provide proof to get their drink and they couldn't ask any of the roommates or people they came with.

It worked out pretty well. There were questions that appealed to everyone, from the science-minded ("Find someone who knows the second law of thermodynamics,") to the groping-minded ("Hug someone from behind that you don't know.")

So another weekend passed with partying into the wee hours of the morning, sleeping a few hours, and then getting up for work.

Meanwhile, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, communities, local agencies, and international volunteers are striving to stop human rights violations and to help a country raise itself up by its non-existent bootstraps. I think I'm sounding pessimistic, but the challenge is monstrous.

And yet we have a force of nature at work there that goes by the name of Jarod Sibbitt that is working unflaggingly on the side of good.

Today I will pick up my paycheck from my part-time job at a pet store and use $20 of those dollars to help Jarod free someone who has been wrongfully imprisoned. I don't consider myself a contracted player for the side of good (probably more like a free agent) I believe that someday as I lay dying I will be glad that I helped someone get home to their mother. And I'll be glad that Jarod gave me that chance.

I know it's sort of a trickled-down theory of morality, but I'll take what I can get.

I've been dreaming too much again. This is probably happening because I'm oversleeping. I missed a couple of classes this week. I am almost never sorry when I dream too much because such interesting things happen.

I was lost in a forest and I had been separated from my friends. There were monsters in this forest so I was pretty tense. I came across this raised metal tower on steel legs which is unusual to see in a monster-filled forest. It has no doors or windows, but there is a hatch open in the bottom that I reach by climbing up one of the legs and clamber inside.

The hatch shuts behind me and I am left in an empty metal room. Another hatch swings open above me so I climb that and find myself in another room just like the first. And like the first the hatch I just came through seals itself shut and another opens in the ceiling. I do this quite a few times. Finally, a ceiling hatch opens and I can smell fresh air and see sunlight. I climb eagerly out and see that I am higher now than the tops of the trees. The hatch slams shut again and I am left shivering in the wind on a platform that is not much bigger than myself. I huddle down and wait.

As the sun begins to set, the hatch bangs open. I am so startled I nearly fall off the side. The smiling faces of my friends peek out through the hatch. They explain that instead of wandering around looking for me (because I am apparently very difficult to track down in dreams as well) they had just built a series of Guillermo traps and went around checking them until they found me.

My pride was a bit hurt at having been caught so easily but I was immensely happy to see them. Still, I didn't see why they couldn't have just left a note or something.

Slashdot.org led me to one of my new favorite sites. It's pretty much the culmination of my favorite things: Science fiction+Real life science+gadgets that would help me be a superhero.

Shake hands with the Impact Suit.

At the moment only skiiers can get them which I think isn't very fair because there isn't much crime to fight on a slalom run. At least, not in the reputable slalom circles I travel in.

Well, that worked rather too well.

I didn't make it to my rant at all. The sun was a golden smear in my eyes as I drove Brian to class this morning and I had to remind myself several times of what I was doing.

A smarter man would have likely brought along a wallet and a shirt, but I couldn't be bothered for those things at the moment. I felt secure in the knowledge that any officer of the law would see me and think "Now there goes at least 3 hours worth of paperwork."

Bureaucracy, I was a fool to loathe you.

I've just realized that it's still Valentine's Day and I'm not drunk. I am working to remedy that.

More as the situation develops. Or undevelops.

Unravels?

I've become just another common freak. Saturday night/Sunday morning I discovered that I seem to able to walk across broken glass. At least for a couple steps.

After a night of rousing festivities, I had taken out my contact lenses and made the short walk from my bathroom to my bedroom. A beer bottle had shattered on the tile outside of my door and I crunched obliviously onto the pieces. Well, oblivious at first.

I was unharmed, but my feet were cold and wet from the spilled beer.

My impromptu carnival act fit well with the theme of the evening. We had a slack line set up between two trees in our backyard and people had tried to walk across it with varying degrees of success. There was also the Amazing Regurgiating Jodie and a Turning-21 Girl who had the amazing ability to fall down no matter what position she was in.

I'm going to start charging admission. Or at least demand that I get to drink the beer from the bottles before they are broken across my floor.