Life about to improve

Seriously. My apartment sucks, and that IS taking it with a dose of sugar. I thought I would be busy enough with work and adjusting to a new city (yes, stupid, I know) but that apparently is not the case. So I need a new place. Fortunately, I am only obliged to stay where I am until the end of December, which is amazingly not that far away anymore, so I have begun the search and have already turned up some promising opportunities. The best one so far has the most unbelievable location in DC and costs less than my current place...and it comes with people I can hang out with. They are pretty selective about who they will "let in", however (and so they should be), so there are mutliple rounds of making myself seem like a tolerable roomate that I will have to go through. Can he do it? Check here for future episodes of "Trapped in Hell".

That's looking forward to the future, but now I want to reminisce over good times in the past, and last weekend definitely deserves it. I left Friday night with some ex-frat bros who live in DC, and we went back to Philly for homecoming. That would have been a blast in any case, but Whan also came down from Syracuse and Reid, incredibly, flew back from Hawaii. I guess Island Fever was finally starting to get to him. Anyway, those of you who know me do not need me to fill in the blanks...the debauchery continued from the moment I got out of the car to hazy Sunday morning and my hitched ride back to Philly. Penn lost to Princeton, but no one I was with really cared. Nils' apartment is definitely in worse shape than it was when we arrived (sorry, dude) and I probably owe him and Bobys some 40s of the silver bullet. Especially if I am going to convince them to delete and burn all of the compromising photographs. Ah, it was fun. In brief moments of sobriety, however, I was also reminded of who wasn't there: Angelica most of all, Mehal, and other friends too numerous to name. I miss all of you a great deal, and look forward to seeing you down the road.

Intellectually, I have embarked on a voyage I have been waiting a long time to begin. My knowledge of philosophy has always been cursory at best, and I have been incessantly aware of the importance of expanding my understanding of the field, and in doing so taking one step closer to an ultimate understanding of life. I thought a good place to start with this would be reading Bertrand Russell's 'History of Western Philosophy', while at the same time reading a history of political philosophy in French that I used back in the day at Sciences-Po. Reading passages in English from similar periods before attempting the French could not hurt. However, I had not, until yesterday, worked up the will to take it off my bookshelf and start reading page 1. Then, I met Peiro from Zendik Arts. He was standing on the side of the street in Georgetown as I was walking home, desperately trying to attract the interest of passers-by and succeeding in scaring most of the Washington elite away. I, however (and of course) stopped. We discussed man's place in the world, the disturbing affect of modernity and post-modernity on human will (if there is such a thing) and existence of God. If you hit up that Zendik link you'll find out exactly where he was coming from. I found it enlightening and refreshing. He was trying to sell various art products for whatever price the buyer thought they were worth, and he reacted to me as though I was the first person to stop all night. He sold me a book written in what looks like a Joycean prose by the founder of the Zendik movement for half its price (or so I was led to believe) because he appreciated our conversation, and when I got home, I resolved to read it, after Russell's History.

Should be an adventure.