Alarm clocks: During my first year at UC Berkeley, I lived in a dorm. And, I suspect, in every dorm lives a person who sleeps through his alarm, every morning, no matter how loud it is. Chris was that guy on our floor. He lived right next to the communal bathroom, so we heard his alarm going off for half an hour or more as we performed our morning ablutions. The rest of us had no idea how his roommate stood it.

One day, on the whiteboard on Chris's door, we saw a note: "Hey guys, could you bang on my door to wake me up on Wednesday at 7:30?" Evidently he really had to get up on time that day. Oh, how gleefully Dan and I took that responsibility upon ourselves!

Recreational singing: Yesterday I sang Guster, "Center of Attention," and Leonard's "Standing in a Line," and "Doob-Doob," and one other by him. "Center of Attention" got me a smile from a passer-by.

Books: Zack, on rereading Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed:

I like it just as much as I did as a twelve-year-old, but for completely different reasons. The twelve-year-old me liked it mostly because Shevek (protagonist) gets to invent new physics theories.

[I read The Dispossessed after my last finals of the fall semester of 2001, curled up on a beanbag chair at Leonard's workplace, with a great view of the bay. Susanna can testify as to how comfy that is.]

People forget how good Twain is. The Innocents Abroad is by turns hilarious and wistful and biting and wince-inducing and heartbreaking. The heartbreaks aren't Twain's fault, but history's. When Twain talks about the lovely city of Beirut, or travels through "Palestine" with no greater fears than inept guides and thirst, then I wish that I could have seen the Middle East that way, as it was then, and not as it is today.

I wince when I see Twain crankily dismissing whole races and religions and labeling them as, say, lazy and greedy. Yes, it was 1867, but jeez! I suppose that even I would fall under some category that he considered stupid or dirty or subhuman. An unpleasantness.

More TV: Last night Nandini and I watched Seventh Heaven together, and agreed that the only attractive member of the Seventh Heaven cast is Stephen Collins, who plays the father/minister Eric Camden. Curiously enough, Catherine Hicks (who plays his wife) was a star in Star Trek IV -- and Stephen Collins was in Star Trek I! (Thanks, IMDB.)

Aiee! According to the IMDB page for Seventh Heaven, if I like this show, I'll probably like Beverly Hills, 90210. Oh, no!