Posting from a computer cluster in a Harvard Law school building whose name begins with an "H." I can't remember the name, just the first letter. Got here this morning, moved into my dorm room. Passed by a supermaket with a sign "Pick and Pay Supermarket." Isn't that what you do at every supermarket? Pick your food, then pay for it? Anyway, my dorm room is nice. Carpeted, clean, big window, lots and lots of closet space, drawers, outlets, necessary things like that. Needed to buy a lamp though. Not that much light. This is insanely boring to read, isn't it? I bought my books. They're really heavy. And expensive. $513.05. But the Harvard Co-Op Bookstore has this thing where at the end of the year you get back 5% of what you spend. Why not just charge 5% less? I guess they think I'll have a good feeling when at the end of the year I get a $50 check -- better than if it's just pennies less each time I buy something. Or they think I'll forget and then they won't send me the check. Yeah, that's it, it's all a ploy.

I seem to be the only person moving into my dorm who hasn't learned from experience how to effectively pack and move -- other people had wagons and wheelbarrows and baskets and crates and boxes and dollies and hand carts and lever-and-pulley systems and rickshaws and wenches and indentured servants. I had my socks in one garbage bag, my underwear in another, my computer wires laying loose on the back seat of my parents' car -- so I had to make 14 trips in and out of the building -- protected by two doors that each required me to take out my key each time (signs: 'Do Not Prop Open -- Under Penalty of Death... no, I'm making up the last part) -- and into "the world's slowest elevator (tm)," while everyone else backs their U-Haul up to the entrance, pulls out their electronic robot moving device, and is fully unpacked in seventeen seconds flat. Led to exciting elevator conversations like, "You really know how to pack," "Wow -- so quick and easy doing it your way," and "Can I please borrow your pack mule and sherpa when you're finished with them?"

But now I'm all unpacked, my books are bought (which unfortunately means I have to read them -- but, hey, the sign said I can return them before September 13th, so if I just read them all really quickly... there's $513.05 I can save right there!), and I'm just killing time until a dorm barbecue at 5:00. Good thing they don't let us have any cooking devices in our rooms or the barbecue could start a fire. Wait, that logic doesn't make any sense -- a barbecue could burn down the dorm anyway, with or without microwaves in the rooms. Guess it's a good thing the barbecue's outside, not inside.