The Devil You Don't.

Homeladies and homegentlemen, homeboys and homegirls. Tomorrow dawns a new age. A new lease on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, which for me is broken down again into categories of school, work, church, and leisure. I have dreams to achieve in six months, five years, and six years from now. Best dreams ever, this guy's got himself.

My chosen schooling is really doing a number on my Oxford comma-favoring instincts. I used to try to show that I could leave it out without losing my roots, and my leisure or otherwise unsupervised writing would be able to stick with classical tradition. The problem I'm seeing here now is that when I go to use an Oxford comma by default, I can't help but see the interruption it affords the flow of my communication. I'm very disappointed in myself, falling to the dark side of AP style.

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.

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.