Okay, the gospel exercise is more or less done. Whew! That's out of the way.

My mother strongly feels that I shouldn't go to the party later, since my finals are next week after all. I thought about it carefully and while I think I _will_ be able to manage the workload, it's wise to have some breathing room, and it's unwise to tick parents off. I feel bad about not being able to keep my promise to go, and I realize I erred in committing in the first place. I was looking forward to dressing up, although I must admit that I felt uneasy about dedicating a whole night to, well, Japanese pop music and anime - things I'm not really into. A quiet dinner at home would have been more effective for objective #2, which was meeting Jerome, but then again work should come first - and I'd have felt guilty about not working, too...

I think it's about time I resumed hermit mode.

I've come to appreciate the value of light yellow highlighters, but I still refuse to use them on anything but temporary copies - photocopies, documents, that sort of thing. Books? No way!

I still have to go through a ream of Arendt later... Ah well.

The strawberries are nothing spectacular - a bit on the old side, with strange dark spots - but hey, they're strawberries. =) Having relieved them of their leafs and assorted mushy parts, I proceeded to fashion a shaker out of an old egg cup. Looks like it works - I get nice, evenly coated sugared strawberries. Still, to be in a country where strawberries are fresh and firm and sweet...

Armed with my makeshift strawberry sugar-er and my trusty highlighter, I return to work.

Only one ream of paper to go. My highlighter looks like it's running a bit low on ink. I want to stock up on these. These and foldback clips. More of the foldback clips. The smallest kind - those are a bit more useful. What am I doing? I'm dreaming about organizational tools.

So my dad has this really sweet Vaio U1. I walked into the room and saw him using it... to play Space Cadet. [laugh]