Today Ann Arbor got hit by the first big rainstorm since I've been here. Being a freshman, I naively pulled on my rainjacket and took off on my bike this morning. My bookbag kept the water out nicely, and the only problem with the raincoat is that it obscured my peripheral vision, a big handicap when crossing streets. The big bummer is that my jeans and shoes got soaked. Therefore, I resolve to buy an umbrella, and the next rainy day I will walk to school.

Other than that, I spent the entire day at school. I had a big paper to turn in at my 5:30 class, which I had only sketched an outline for yesterday -- the prof put a single copy of the book on reserve, which could only be checked out for 4 hours at a time. Ugh, very mafan. It was a seven page paper; I've never been so thankful for double spacing and big default margins.

For completeness, I'll finish off the day. After class ended at 7 PM, I set down in my favorite desk in the grad library stacks. In between two floors there is an old stairway right in the middle of two rows of bookcases. It start out of the middle of the floor and ascends diagonally to the next floor. For some unknown reason, a desk was placed below the sloped ceiling created by the stairway, with a comfy chair. I sat down and tried to read James Lee's One Quarter of Humanity: Malthusian Mythology and Chinese Realities but I kept nodding off, so I completed my somewhat more exciting Chinese homework and rode back home. Leftover Chinese take-out for dinner, pretzels and Grey Poupon -- my new favorite snack -- for dessert.

I think I'll watch another episode of Liuxing Huayuan (Meteor Garden) before I hit the hay.