Big talk talk day. I have to decide on a thesis lab; I have to convince the two professors that I want to work with that my crazy ideas are workable. Fortunately most of the professors around here are crazy.

I was going to have coffee with Pam today. Instead we meet at beer hour, drink some beer, and go eat sushi. We have dissimilar tastes in sushi; I don’t like places with boats and sneeze guards, which makes me a snob. We have dissimilar tastes in a number of things, including politics. There’s an argument about affirmative action. Me against: I don’t like the idea of trying to solve racism with racist policy. I try to bring up Kant and Rousseau and am accused of being too idealistic. Which I am.

Afterwards she bought cigarettes at a little cigarette store & then we drank coffee at Wall Berlin. Hoped to play chess, but WB does not supply chess boards. I would have accepted this at face value and drunk my coffee, but Pam converts this into a serious investigation into the café, its customers, the locked bathroom, asking the barista (who always has an exasperated look on his face) all sorts of questions.

I call Cynthia and we walk back to campus & ride bikes to her house. We have the intention of playing poker but I’m unable to reach anyone else on my phone and three is too few for a good game. Fortunately as we’re mixing drinks (Vodka Stinger, not reccomended) Cynthia’s housemate Erik arrives with about eight people who want to play cards. I try to blame this on secret powers that I have.

Played until 4:30 in the morning. I lost 4 (US) dollars, and could have lost a lot more in the last game of Machine Shop.