I Dreamed a Dream in Days Gone By.

Last night I dreamt that everyone's favorite pop-country crossover sensation was eating lunch with me in high school when all of a sudden out I blurted, "EFPCCS, will you write a song about me?" and she obliged. Turns out all I had to do was ask. She is actually pretty cool, and we are good friends. I think I'm going to ask her to homecoming.

So I had a group presentation today after about a month of group research, writing, and revising, and we totally mauled it. I was going to say "nailed it," but autocorrect provided that very evocative alternative. Now, I say "nailed it" in the sense that we "finished it." After a project that intense, they can seem awfully similar. But I think we did do pretty well.

My new computer got here in the mail a few days ago—that's specifically the one whose motherboard wasn't fried by a cute little cat maliciously pouring water on the keyboard while I was out of the house all day—and I've been downloading all kinds of things I need over the last few nights and days. I guess I've been using fiendish amounts of bandwidth, because it has slowed down my roommates' service considerably. Sorry, guys. One day more.

Calcium, Campaigns, and a Single Oxford Comma.

Delicious skim milk from the local milkery. Best way to start off the day, dontcha know. I've never expected to become much of a milk connoisseur, but I can tell you the exact descending order, by quality, of the brands of skim milk around this town. This is number one. It might even be the best in the world. I'm lucky to live here at the moment, so I guess I'd better—wait for it—exploit this opportunity for all it's worth.

Were you expecting a pun? You did not receive a pun. Count your blessings. It's a great day to be alive.

I have some kind of personal rule, I guess, where I can't blog without extreme duress unless it's bright and early in the morning. I guess I feel like my future corporate overseers will look back and judge me on how I used every hour of the day except six to eight in the morning, since technically universal health care requires a man to shower and eat at least one meal a day; not even a highly-driven corporate tycoon and burgeoning captain of industry like myself can be counted exempt therefrom. (Speaking as though these accolades have already come to pass.)

I mean, if we're judging by my presence and we are so thoroughly underwhelmed by my hyper-benign social networking presence, what are we going to fail to hire me for? That's correct. Insufficient hygiene and late- to mid-morning blogging. That is my genuine fear. A man must have standards; these are mine.

Apart from calcium intake and blogging schedules, other standards of mine include: loving my job. Seriously and truly. I've had to shift around far too many of my hours over the last few weeks for a rather time-consuming midterm group project (which turned out very well, I'm happy to tell you). I hope the rest of my group projects will be able to meet at times convenient to myself alone. Because the hours between six and eight in the morning are not to be trifled with, and the legitimacy of my presidential and gubernatorial campaigns depend on timely blogging, skim milk consumption, and incredible student job. No pressure.

Sleepy Sleeping McSleeperson.

Whatever. I don't have anything to say today. I love my job, I love a specific playlist of songs I have developed to work alongside, and I love having savings in my bank account. Tremendously good combination of things. Now I just need to rinse and repeat upon graduation. I'm hoping for under a year.

I'm planning on visiting a certain foreign nation of eastern Balkan geography next summer. My initial plan was to travel for a whole month, and was much more ambitious: I included every country bordering the Adriatic Sea, plus a few others that I added due to tangential interest. Each country got about two or three days in the schedule, I had a train pass to get through almost all of the countries whenever I wanted for a month's time, and I had scheduled a series of cities and hostels to contact.

Luckily my wise father, veteran traveler that he is, spoke some sense into me; I think I just really enjoyed the hypothetical aspect, since I love making extravagant plans, but my hyper-ambition wore off quickly when he reminded me how exhausting it is to travel. I want to make the most out of the trip and out of every country I visit there, so I'm whittling things down to two or three countries only.

Also. I had a great date on Saturday night that went beyond my obscenely reasonable bedtime. I loved it and it was a lot of fun, but Jiminy Cricket if I wasn't just exhausted all yesterday. I slept in and successfully dodged no fewer than five iterations of my alarm. I am not to be woken if I do not wish. The downside to so much compensatory rest yesterday is that I woke up more than an hour earlier than I would have liked this morning. Hopefully I can pull a baby bear tomorrow and fix myself some of my famous porridge of somnolence just right.

Yo, I'mma Let You Finish.

Boom! It's early morning again and I've unwittingly picked that same sticky keyboard that I used here at the library a couple posts ago. I can tell because of the distinctly stubborn attitude borne me by the letter "o." If I'm wrong and it was another letter, or this never happened at all, I cannot recall my words. But I think my habit of pounding the "o" will translate pretty soon to increased vocal intensity on that letter as well. It's not a speech impediment; it's a speech enhancement.

I made a budget last night to let me save up for my first yacht. All I have to do is obtain a yacht, and I'm done. I also made a daily living budget, which I am heroically choosing to eschew for the moment because I really want a brownie from the vending machine. I'll be getting that a little later today. Lap of luxury, my friends. All it takes is reckless disregard for financial planning.

I'm just kidding. There's no way I'm touching that brownie. No matter its predilection for instilling a pre-diabetic lifestyle. In fact, dare I say because of that predilection? Indeed I daren't. I know the brownie in question reads this blog. You can't be too careful. Although I guess talking about this defeats that purpose.

There's a reasonably famous young lady, renowned as a pop-country crossover sensation who treats men the same way I treat the aforementioned brownies. She sends me texts and messages and voicemails all day long, and it's really awkward. I mean, we had our chance. Please, just move on. Hush; it'll be better for everyone if we just went our separate ways: you to your public misery, and me to my relative obscurity, maintained despite my sensational rise to fame a week ago after I saved that metropolitan area from that Doomsday device. Secret identities. Crucial.

Happy Best Day of the Week.

Bam. Week over, Saturday commenced. And just like that, the land of hyper-fructose be-corn-syrup-ed breakfast cereals and cartoon marathons is my domain. I formally renounce my claim to these noble traditions of ancient date, however, in lieu of my need to do laundry and a little homework.

But Saturday is Saturday. That can never be taken away from us.

That's... actually all I have to contribute at the moment. Be grateful you even got a single word out of me. It's Saturday, friends.

Let's Get This Started.

All right Internet, let's do this.

I walked up to campus today, apparently, with the largest section of my backpack zipped wide open like the Great Pit of Carkoon. Not a big deal, since all of my textbooks and notebooks were in that pocket. If they'd fallen out I would have been revealed for the naive fool I am. The only thing that would have kept me from looking like a common freshman (note to futurity, and in particular my numerous descendents: I have real derision for neither the term nor the embodiment of "the freshman," and you kids are going to do great at college)—that side note, I dare say, was long enough to warrant starting over from the beginning. The only thing that would have kept me from looking like a common freshman (remember our talk?) would be my complacency as I walked away from the piles of books and study materials on the ground. A book's a book's a book, and I could check out a baker's dozen of a baker's dozen at the school library.

Fun fact, though, there's a collection agency out against me from the local public library. Because of some hefty fines I incurred over the summer from checking out two bakers' dozens (note the apostrophe; these are two individual bakers we're talking about here) of books and keeping them a couple baker's dozens (this post is a syntactic nightmare; same baker here) of days late. That is not a joke, but you'll think it is, so I'm fine disclosing that so openly at the moment.

In case this is used in a court of law: Your Honor, it was the stenographer.

My Ore, My Wood, Migraine.

Yesterday was one of those unique days where I come home at the end of the day with a spot of migraine, so I take some medicine and put in some silly-looking earplugs and conk out until the early morning hours. The later morning hours would have been preferable, but I was so wide awake (and thankfully devoid of migraine) that I went to go get groceries before my roommates were even awake.

Skee-wompus: the state of my internal clock as a result.

There is the most obnoxious ad on the radio for McDonald's. I feel it's the only ad they ever play, all day long. It's like I'm being held hostage for my custom; if I get some chicken nuggets, maybe they'll take it off the air. Paying for ad-free radio or appreciating the monetarily-free radio are not valid options.

Kind of a Live-Blogging Experience.

So that was conference. I've decided to spend the rest of the sessions alone, because it's usually a pretty private experience. Once I went up and watched it somewhere it was broadcast without any other people there (that I knew), and I just loved it. It was the "parable of the pickle" one. Very memorable; I'm going to try to do that for the rest of this conference, and probably some of most conferences in the future alone too. You know, except for kids and a wife. But I'm going to go ahead and cross that bridge if I get to it.

Fine, you caught me. When.

I feel like the commercials right after the broadcast are all using cultural celebrities and slightly quoting adapted scripture. Is this our culture's Super Bowl? I wonder how much it would cost to advertise on this channel at this state at this time of year.

Was that Simon Cowell? No, it wasn't. But one day. One day.

It's Like I'm Not Even There.

It's been another one of those days, folks. You know, the kind where every station on the radio is either playing commercials or Bruno Mars. But this too shall pass.

Life is actually literally fabulous. And I don't have anything to say. I'm going to have many, many slices of pizza tonight for dinner. I'm gainfully employed at a secret job I love, and I'm on track to graduate in my field of choice within a year. Also lots of stuff is neat, and such.

Onto the two most enraging points of news of my life at the moment. Who knew so much joy could be unraveled by one rogue fly? I've killed ten in the last week or so, thanks to roommates that don't appreciate the consequences of having the door open all day just because it's "beautiful outside." (Yes, the italics were to indicate a thinly-veiled threat. I guess the italics themselves were revealing the already thin veil, rendering it even thinner. Thinner, if at all existent. So the italics may have altogether eliminated the veil. So if there's no veil, and it's obvious, why do I have italics there to highlight the veil? Is that a Catch-22? Did I just crash existence?)

I promised you two annoying things. Here's the other one: the "o" key on this keyboard is sticking. I think the gentleman computing adjacent to me must think I keep emphatically concluding arguments on extreme political forums. Which may not be a bad idea: I just need to find some politically relevant words ending in "o" that I can enlist as calls to action. Politico! Go! Edgar Allen Po [sic]!