Remember, Remember, It's Really November

No snow? What's the deal? Now that I have gone and said that there's no snow, there will probably be great buckets of it within the next, oh, ten minutes. But the fact remains: November 9 and no white stuff this morning.

Monday night we hosted a surprise birthday party for Nathanael, after some very close calls. I mean, Monday morning I opened the apartment door wide enough that he could see the decorations. And that afternoon, Katherine and Emily had to do some fancy flinging to get pop and chips around the corner where he wouldn't see them (you weren't supposed to be home, Nate!). We were certain he would know, and I think Emily thought he was toying with her just before the surprise. He actually arrived home from work and said how disappointed he was that she hadn't planned anything for his birthday! She had to keep a straight face long enough to get him down the hall into our apartment where various music student friends of his (and Notl and her boyfriend James) were waiting. We lurked in the entryway for a good five minutes before she pried Nathanael away from their place. And then we all yelled "SURPRISE!", like you do, and did cake and presents and watched a campy Batman movie ("What weighs six ounces, sits in a tree, and is very dangerous?" "A sparrow with a machine gun!"). It was all very nice. And our presents went down well. Katherine, Emily and I got him a "Real Men Vote Convservative" t-shirt and a Batman lunchbox. Emily got him an 8X10 of Sean Connery and... something else, don't remember! I will say that it was very awkward going into this extremely groovy t-shirt place and asking for that on a shirt. This girl with piercings and interestingly layered hair looked a bit perturbed at our choice of lettering.

Monday night I also had my political science research methods midterm. The only disappointing part was that they misspelled "causal" as "casual". I was muy perturbed by the copy-editing failure. School continues as usual. I've taught myself some Excel stuff again. It seems so much easier than it did in junior high! At Heights they made us input data into the chart wizard without explaining why a given set should go in a given place, so if you forgot the order in which to do things you really couldn't reason through it. But it turns out that if you just experiment and use the "help" function, it's really not so difficult.

Coffee's ready! I must away. Choir practice in an hour and a half, and a geography assignment to finish before that! La la, how the life goes on.