Idiopathic Thrombocytopenic Purpura

We re-arranged my room a little a couple days back:

It’s been a great weekend (although I’m seven different flavors of sore right now). Yesterday was especially enjoyable.

I took off with Mr. Ben (my R.A.) and Josh (one of my suite-mates) on a crazy hike up to Baldy peak. It would have been challenging enough if we had simply taken the trail and hiked there and back. But not for Mr. Ben. Rather than using a trail, we drove as far as we could up some deserted canyon, straped snowshoes on, and began our ascent up what Ben hoped was the right ridge. Turns out that we almost were on the right ridge, and we came up about a half mile to the east of the peak. Due to turning weather we opted against hiking accross the ridge to Baldy, and instead began hiking accross the ridge in the opposite dirction (toward the M) because there was simply no way that we would have been able to make it down the same way we came up in a safe and timely manner. Coming back from a 7 hour, 8 mile hike (with 3,500 feet of vertical going up and again coming down) we cleaned up and hit up MacKenzie River for dinner, which was wonderful, and then we made our way back to the Quad.

Ug. I’m too lazy for this right now, and it needs pictures. More later.

All I Ask of You

Ah– what a wonderful day. I slept through my 10:00 class, not waking up until ~1:00. Once up I went and ate some food, and then eventually joined in a game of ultimate and played for a couple hours on a wet, muddy field. After that I ate more food and eventually went to Assualt on Precinct 13 with Ken, which was a great action movie. After that we came back and played some games (including a game of AOM where I got my ass owned) and now I’m going to bed.

I’m going on a hike tomorrow w/ Mr. Ben & Co, so I need to be well rested.

What a great Friday. =)

Parallel Parking Skillz That Killz and Stuff

Parking is a bitch. Fortunately, I’ve mastered parallel parking. Don’t believe me? Check these pictures (these depict places where I’ve parked, not where I’ve been boxed in):

A close up:

Boo-ya. What ch’ya got on that? That’s what I thought. Nothing. Nothing at all. Whoo! (Sagar can vouch for the pictures with the snow)

In other news, I finally bought a headphone amp. It’s a Headroom Coda, and opperates either with its AC adapter or off of two 9v batteries. I’m super stoked, and Frank has never sounded so good.

On other other news, I saw Steve Martin’s WASP performed tonight. It was certainly enjoyable, although there was something of a dark theme beneath the otherwise jovial group of plays. But I don’t feel like going in to it, so you’ll just need to see it for yourself some time. =)

As I was stupidly killing time in the computer lab this afternoon, I happened to come accross this blog: http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

It’s written by an English speaking girl in occupied Iraq, and provides a small portion of “the other side of the story” that America is so sorely lacking. Reading her thoughts and experiences raises some uncomfortable questions. “Did I do this? Did my government do this? Did I support my government in doing this? Did I even stop to think about the Iraqi invasion while it took place, about the hundreds and thousands of lives? Did I do anything to oppose the war? …”

Riverbend writes:

While we were aware the whole WMD farce was just a badly produced black comedy, it’s still upsetting to hear Bush’s declaration that he was wrong. It’s upsetting because it just confirms the worst: right-wing Americans don’t care about justifying this war. They don’t care about right or wrong or innocents dead and more to die. They were somewhat ahead of the game. When they saw their idiotic president wasn’t going to find weapons anywhere in Iraq, they decided it would be about mass graves. It wasn’t long before the very people who came to ‘liberate’ a sovereign country soon began burying more Iraqis in mass graves. The smart weapons began to stupidly kill ‘possibly innocent’ civilians (they are only ‘definitely innocent’ if they are working with the current Iraqi security forces or American troops). It went once more from protecting poor Iraqis from themselves to protecting Americans from ‘terrorists’.

Samuel P. Huntington writes

The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do.