gainesville....rock city....i wouldn't have it any other way.... ya.
my veeery own flag.
less than jake never fails at peping me up.

I've come to realize...come to admit, that snowboarding does beat skiis on powder, simply as an extrapolation from my experiences in wakeboarding...the cruising...which happens on powder...you just don't get that on skiis. Skiis definately rock on packed pow, groomed, i.e. normal conditions. Yes, they're good in powder too, but not as good as a snowboard. I love wakeboarding...the carving is amazing. That kind of gliding is what you get on a snowboard in pow', and well, wow. Skiis carve the best in packed pow'...all right, they carve good in powder...blah, I've made my point.

Time to start wrapping christmas presents and all that stuff....still have to apply to princeton...i'm really not motivated to complete that application. ha. If I haven't posted the quite-funny story which explains my application to princeton, well, oh well. Some other time. It's funny though. Poor Ms. Rooney.

peace in the middle east,
/the fifth beatle.

I got a haircut, I got a haircut, na-na-na-na-na-na....

amd Martins home too, oh my.

Due to some screw-up, I can't access my own website, though everyone else still can. This should be temporary, but because of it I can't see any of the responses on the talkback. Hope everyone enjoyed (or is enjoying, or will enjoy) the logic problem...I will check in again when I have me some access.

Here's a logic problem I yoinked from killoggs:

There are 5 houses, each is a different color. In each house lives a person of a different nationality. These 5 owners all drink a certain beverage, smoke a certain brand of cigar and keep a certain pet. No owner has the same pet, smokes the same brand of cigar or drinks the same drink as another owner.

1: The Briton lives in a red house.
2: The Swede keeps dogs as pets
3: The Dane drinks tea
4: The green house is on the left of the white house (they are also next door to each other)
5: The green house owner drinks coffee
6: The person who smokes Pall Mall rears birds
7: The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhill
8: The man living in the house right in the center drinks milk
9: The Norwegian lives in the first house
10: The man who smokes Blend lives next to the one who keeps cats
11: The man who keeps horses lives next to the man who smokes Dunhill
12: The owner who smokes Blue Master drinks beer
13: The German smokes Prince
14: The Norwegian lives next to the blue house
15: The man who smokes Blend has a neighbor who drinks water.

Who gets the fish?

--
there is a logic-provable answer, and then there's the "well, duh, but that's trivial" answer. See if you can get both. =D

Respond in the talkback.

Oh, and if you're going to search the internet for the answer, why bother? You're only cheating yourself out of a fun problem -- go go go!

So Etay called me from Deep Springs at two o'clock in the morning yesterday.

He said to my mother that it was "sort of important", so my mother chose not to wake me. (grr...) I called him back at 7:30, which is 5:30 out there, hoping to get him back, but he was out milking cows on dairy duty. (ha!) I then called him from school at around 9:30, and he was the one who picked up the boarding house phone, and was all dramatic as he unloaded the news: "I called to inite yooou to complete part twooo of the Deep Springs application." I thanked him and told him he was the man, to which he promptly replied "no, you the man, you the man." I love that kid.

Now I have to visit them sometime between now and march, for a four day interview...saweet. He told me to get pumped, because when I come I'll be milking cows with him. niiice. It shall be an experience like none other.

Etay said they had 140 applicants. I made cut for the 40 that got invited for part two. The next cut is down to 13. 13/140 isn't as bad as I've heard the cut to be, only about 9%. I've seen figures closer to 7%. None the less, it's still a smaller acceptance rate than Harvard, and they do have a higher average SAT score than Princeton: 1500. I would be bringing that down with my 1450, but the way I figure it, for every person with a 1600, there's two of me. =)

And I don't think that board scores are a big part of the application; the high average is most likely rather coincidental, because they base their main selection on the essays.

Oh, the essays. Well, on monday or tuesday I will be recieving a package from DS with the next four essays, amoung other things. From what I remember Etay going through, these essays are supposed to be ca-raaaazy. I was talking to Shirin about them, and he had to write an essay about ten examples of symbolism in a painting they had included a copy of. Also, he had to cut up a peice of paper, and then write an essay about the experience. Absolutely crazy -- unlike anything else in the world. The essays are supposed to be different every year, so we'll see what curve balls they throw at me.

Devin got in to Princeton. Evan and Sal got in to Cornell. Jeremy got in to Harvard (Chang and Allen, deffered). Shin got in to Wharton@UPenn. Erik hasn't heard from UPenn yet. MIT has yet to arrive. The remaining schools to send EDs are Tufts, U-Chicago, MIT, Yale, Georgetown, Columbia College (Chris Sweetgall and Ken Yen both got into Columbia Engineering), Stanford...we'll there's still a lot of shit yet to hit the fan.

Peace in the middle east.

Shit, I haven't posted in a week.

Well, I applied to college. Mostly. Just Princeton left -- should get that done this weekend. I got into an interesting discussion over Early Applications today.. here's my take:

There is no point to the month-early acceptance. It merely hinders people who did not plan ahead to not voice their desire to attend the school. However, I do respect the signifigance of having a school know that they are your first choice. That is why I propose this: Each student should be alloted one letter, signed by their guidance concellor, that they can place into any one college application, tell that school that it is his or her first choice.

This places all applications on the January 1st deadline, and evens the field. It also prevents people from just telling every school they are thier first choice. It also gets rid of the bullshit of Early Action applications.

I think it's a good plan.

In other news, Deep Springs mails their round two invitations tomorrow. eek.

Steal This Book by Abbie Hoffman. The complete text. Free. Enjoy.

I should be doing some work, I should be doing college apps, but all I can think of is snow and skiing.

---
I'm thinking about last winter break, in sweden, when Martin and I were in the sauna when it was snowing outside. It was so dark, and so quiet. If ever the wording "nothing was stirring" was ever appropriate, this was it. All you heard was the sound of snowflakes hitting the ground. Oh, the heavenly peace. I love that sound. I love the feeling of running outside naked and having snowflakes a quarter-inch in diameter collecting in your hair, on your eyebrows, in your pubic hair even. The snow is so pure. Nakedness is so pure. It's so cold, but I will say now that I've never felt purer than when i rolled around in the snow and then jumped in the water. I was living, so sensually. You can feel the energy of your heat, given to you by the sauna, and the cold contrasts so wonderfully. Your so clean, the snow is sooo clean. So pure. I can't get away from it. I want to wake up to a snowfall. Well, I want it to be snowing when I wake up. Snow is just so...pure. It's the whiteness, it's the...I'm not going to try and explain it, it just is.

Dirty snow is gross. Bad thought. Back to the snowfields. You can hear the sound of snowfall in Vermont too. It has happened that I'll be doing a run in the powder and all of the sudden just stop and fall into a tumble, just because it's so amazing. And lay there. Just listening.

Yes, I think it's my favorite ambient noise in the world. It's so soft though, it requires such peace. Even in Vermont any sort of proximety to another skiier or slope or lift can ruin the experience. Sweden has been soo good to me.

As I close my eyes, I'm standing outside out sauna with Martin, on a towel laid down in the snow. We're both naked, and we're both silently staring out over the water. Wow.

Pray for snow.

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Actually, this would make an good poem, but I'm tired. Poor logic, I know.