I've been meaning to write down a few li'l things here for a long, long time. Sorry for being out of touch.

First, to finally document here that I am, in fact, and somewhat sadly, back from Spain; I have been for over a month now. Just never got around to saying so. Maybe I was in denial. The trip changed my life, and I do now have the goal of moving there, though I am not encouraged by the stories I hear about how difficult it is for foreigners to get jobs in Europe.

Second, I have broken my coffee addiction, at long last. It was getting crazy. Five cups a day. No sleep. Anxiety, and so forth. Of course, I've replaced it with a new tea addiction, but it's not the same level of stimulation, and I'm only having about 3 cups of tea per day. I am, I must say, quite proud of myself.

There is another thing I want to document here. I am enrolled this semester in a class, LGBT200, at The University of Maryland, College Park. The bulk of my grade will come from journal entries reflecting on assigned reading, and I have received permission to do my journaling electronically, what with paper being SO last-millennium. So when I got to thinking about my need to journal, and about the fact that it will be interesting stuff that I will have to say, and the fact that we have day logs here, I think I am going to do my homework on E2. Not just noding my homework, but actually producing and presenting my assignment via the E2 infrastructure.

Now, I have no aim to diverge from the mission of "Journalism, not journal writing". My entries will be daylogs, but I swear to God they will be interesting and worth reading, because they will be specific responses to things I've read, at least in part. In fact, if they are specific enough to a certain work, or if my comments are bounded enough to merit a node to themselves, I'll make it. But I am writing this entry just to document for anyone who cares that I am not aiming to become a daily day-logger filling the database with crap. (I'm not saying anyone else is such a person either, by the way).

I think it's a neat idea to actually produce one's homework assignment here on E2 and present it to his teacher via E2 also. When it's time to turn in the journal at the end of the term, I'll probably present the teacher with a printout of some E2-FAQ node, and I'll let him know that he can find all of my entries online.

Now, this will require some assurance that the server will be up, and that my writeups won't be eaten, of course. And I can't necessarily count on either, because neither is 100% certain. So, of course, I'll back up my writeups, in case there's a problem.

So in closing, I'm back in the USA, I'm petrified that George W. Bush will be re-elected, I'm energized to finish school so I can move to Spain, I'm feeling pretty good about life, and I quit coffee.

And I have mastered the subjunctive mood of both English and Spanish.