Bought my books. 4 classes, 5 books, $297. These are some big books. Also picked up the syllabi and supplemental reading packets. In one of my classes, we're each assigned to give a presentation. The professor writes in the syllabus that the order will be determined by the last 3 digits of our student ID numbers. So now I'm left to wonder until next week whether "032" (that's not really the last 3 numbers of my ID#, but it's close enough that it does the trick for these purposes -- I wouldn't be silly enough to post my ID number on the web) is crazy-low, or everyone has a "0" there and it's really pretty middle-of-the-pack. Honestly, it would probably be good to get the presentation over with the second week of class (the first week of presentations), but deep down nothing really excites me about having to do it right away. Oh well, I have no control over it so no use worrying about it.

That was not a particularly funny paragraph.

Let's try this -- other things I could have done with $297 besides buy my books:

1. 5940 pieces of Bazooka gum
2. Almost 10 cavity fillings (amalgam) under the Harvard supplemental dental insurance plan
3. Almost 5 cavity fillings (white) under the insurance plan
4. Pay the fine for keeping a library book about three and a half years overdue
5. Some amount of crack that I would have a better idea of if I was someone else who knows about that kind of stuff but I'm not
6. 24 online credit reports, with some change left over to mail back a bunch of credit card statements
7. 74 Blockbuster DVD rentals
8. Lots of ice cream
9. Pay bill for using cell phone a whole bunch of extra daytime minutes
10. Paying someone to do the calculations that I'm too lazy to do to figure out how much ice cream or how many minutes (or how much crack, I guess)