As of this writing, I’m reclining on a hotel bed at IUPUI blogging in Word in the hope that I might encounter a wi-fi hotspot at some point tomorrow.

Today I visited BSU to get my schedule straightened out. I’ve been paranoid about missing deadlines, but apparently I’m okay in that regard. It’s kind of nice that I can get into any class in my course of study with no problem. I also paid a brief visit to Gerry, who was in the middle of something of immense importance when I wandered in. Things are looking good for this Fall, very good indeed.

I had dinner at Maggiano’s Italian restaurant. The interior design is really nice, I dare say nicer than the eating establishments featured in the Godfather movies and on the Sopranos. The cheese ravioli was amazing, as was the tiramisu.

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Back home now. I meant to write more last night, but I was pretty tired. As a matter of fact, I'm still tired, so if my prose has the rhythm of a squirrel eating a coconut, there's a reason. I got maybe four hours of sleep due to the three glasses of tea I had with dinner. It turns out that when a restaurant bothers to actually brew tea from scratch (instead of mixing tea-flavored koolaid with tap water) it retains a hefty measure of caffeine. I never learn. All of this was supposed to be blogged and posted from somewhere with Internet access, but that wasn't an option.

I managed to pick up a few useful items for the coming fall. The reason I mention this is that I feel like making a bulleted list.

• iTrip: The iTrip is an FM transmitter for the iPod. It sits atop the iPod and a little red light glows to assure you that it is properly draining the battery power of the iPod like a little plastic lamprey. Once I got it working, though, it actually did broadcast to the radio. The added value of this is that Orrin Hatch hates this sort of gadget with a venom he usually reserves for mixed-race marriages.

• Bathrobe and two pairs of pajama pants: It ought to be glaringly obvious what this is. The bathrobe is a thick black material similar to Emperor Palpatine's robes. Perfect for contemplating stuff, or watching movies. The pajama pants are a lighter material with plaid checks. I doubt the proud clans of old Scotland meant for their fabric heritage to adorn my Ent-like legs.

• 32MB USB drive key chain: My computer won't be on the university network next year, so I need some way of moving data to other machines. For big things, like large .tif sequences, I have my 10GB iPod. For anything smaller, like papers and medium-res images, 32MB is plenty. And it has a little clip on it, the international symbol of usefulness.