Random Update (1.31.13)

Sunday was full of activities. Pat and I had our first intramural basketball game. We played the defensive line of the Boston College football team and lost. I am not brave enough to mention the score publicly. Soccer was later in the evening, and much nicer. We won 1-0, although I took a direct hit to a sensitive area so I crawled off the pitch a few minutes early. All better now though. 

I had jury duty on Monday, the 28th, so I had to get up really early (for college) and go downtown. Basically, I waited in a big room with other people in the 'jury pool' until my number got called (227? I forget what it was) and then the group of 40 of us went in the elevator up to the court room, where a nice old judge explained what's important about being on a jury, why it's important, what sort of mindset one needs, etc. I was the first possible jury called up for the 1v1 interview with the judge, after the group questions were asked to everyone at once. He offered to excuse me because I was a student, which was nice. So I said yes, and barely made it back in time for Modern Physics lab at 5:00 PM. Overall a good experience, I got a good bit of reading done while I waited (it was a long wait!) mostly Kant's Metaphysics of Morals. It was kind of funny because he talks about 'duty' all the time, and I was on jury duty... maybe funny is the wrong word. 

Modern physics is cool. Relativity is really interesting and intuitive. And in lab, we get to measure most of the fundamental constants, like c, h, k, and maybe permeability and permitivity, I forget. Definitely the first three though. My lab partner is Olivier, he's an exchange student from Amsterdam, and he's a really good fellow. We went to a local bar with some other friends after lab on Wednesday to watch the Real Madrid - Barcelona game (Arsenal - Liverpool and Man U - Southampton were also showing).

The last few weeks I've been going to dance practice at night because my roommates (J.M. and Veb) convinced me to do the sophomore dance... so for example this evening (Thursday) we all went to a classroom in Gasson, moved chairs around, and practiced. Zach (another roommate) and Jonathan (soccer mate) are dancing too. There are 8 guys and 16 girls, it's actually more fun than I thought... I guess if anything I appreciate anyone who can make dancing look cool a lot more than I used to... it's hard. I imagine having nimble soccer legs helps, but still. I'm tall and white... not the best dancer gene combo there.

Tomorrow I have an early Spanish class, and then I'm done! Also hard to believe January is over. However, it's also amazing how it's only been half a month since we've been back too... speaking of relativity... college is definitely empirical evidence of its existence.