rochester halloween

There was a huge crowd at school this afternoon. In fact, I think I experienced traffic in Rochester for the first time. Why all the commotion? "This couldn't be a University of Rochester event," I thought to myself. "There aren't even this many students enrolled here." I merged into the human flood pouring into campus, struck up a conversation with a man walking in. Turns out it's a football game -- two high schools schools from Webster, something like the "Webster Titans" and the "Webster Warriors". They had flyers. Both schools 8-0 undefeated, set to go head to head this Halloween. Now, I don't like Football and I don't care about Webster, but that sort of rivalry even made me want to go to the game.

I felt like I was fulfilling some Greek prophesy, walking out in the October air against this tide of varsity jackets and proud parents, back to my little Volkswagen with my arms full of 200 some-odd physics labs I have to grade, topped off with a copy of the American Mathematical Society magazine and a small black hardback copy of J. J. Sakurai's Modern Quantum Mechanics.

An excellent weekend, I must say. Wonderfully successful Critical Mass on Friday and a delicious dinner at Atomic Eggplant with new friends. Now-traditional saturday brunch at Mount Hope Diner (slept in and missed the tag-sales though), coffee and blueberry pancakes and sausage patties. barks came down from Guelph for a visit and our whole extended household went up to Irondequoit Bay to take in the amazing weather (80 degrees, I think!) and frozen custard on the waterfront, and a hike in Durand Park. One the way home we passed some kind of self-service garage sale, at which I picked up a blender for $4. I lost my whole stake ($3!) to my roommates in poker. This morning we hosted a pretty keen potluck at which I was pleased to meet a few more cool people. Oh yes, I appreciated that extra hour very much.

Evening festivities were provided by the EcoHouse's "Occupational Funk" party. Excuse me, Second Annual Occupational Funk. The idea is that you choose an occupation (a job), and then you have a costume and a dance to go with that occupation. I ended up going as "The Occupation," dressed in U.S. military camouflage fatigues, combat boots, a shirt that has a picture of the world with the text "OWNED" (from Beyond Hope actually), and a sign on the back saying "The Occupation." It gets better, though. We still needed a costume for four, and we readily came up with one: dressed in a shirt labelled "Iraqi Self Government," I lead him around on a leash.

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Just to be bold, optimistic, and to go against the grain, I'm predicting that Kerry will win in a landslide (although only with your help, of course), and I'm hoping for the same. Four more years of Bush is pretty unimaginable.

The week ahead: two exams, one election, two lab sections involving liquid nitrogen and superconductors, and a roadtrip to Ann Arbor. Currently: little kids trick-or-treating. Qin demands a kiss from each of them, it's pretty hilarious.