The last few days have been a whirlwind, but I'll start a little earlier. The weekend before last week was very low key and a lot of fun. I spent the daytime hours in my room, working on projects and relaxing, and in the evenings went to small parties, mostly full of people I knew. It was very nice.

On Monday night, I went to a concert of the Christian McBride Band, which was phenomenal. After leaving the concert, I stopped by the communication design studio, thinking I would just stay to drop off some materials, but ended up staying until 2 am and finished my midterm portfolio (which I didn't have to hand in until Thursday, but am happy, especially in retrospect, that I finished early).

On Tuesday evening, my body started acting a little weird. After working at the dining hall and doing a little work, I got extremely tired at 9 pm and went to bed. I woke up a few times during the night, once with an intense pain in the subsurface of the skin on my upper 'tomach, another time with ridiculous chills and sweats. In the morning, I went to class, but had a horrendous headache and left early to go to health services, where I was told I had a fever of 103°F. I crawled up to my room and collapsed in bed, sweating profusely, convinced that I wouldn't be able to take my lab practicum at 1:30, attend my class at 4, write my midterm paper before leaving on spring break, or even go on spring break. I wrote some frantic, panicked emails to my professors, and slept until about 1:15, when, miraculously, I felt completely capable of going to class. I took the practicum (easy), slept until my next class, went to that class, and then started my paper afterward and did some laundry. By the time I went to bed, I finished one of the two essays I had to write and had hung up all the damp laundry that the machine did a crappy job drying.

In the morning, I naturally awoke at 6 am, folded my clothes, finished my second essay, packed for spring break, went to the day's classes, got a ride to Albany-Rensselaer station, and boarded an evening train to Cleveland. The man sitting next to me was from Yemen and told me his life story. I didn't sleep much. Mia picked me up at the train station at around 5 am. The next day, we hung out in Mia's apartment, cooked awesome meatballs and made glorious pasta sauce, and got picked up by Mia's jiu-jitsu buddies in the evening. We went to Columbus for Arnold, "the sports-fitness experience of your life," where her instructor and a few of his students competed. There were a wide variety of disciplines and ages competing at the convention, including, but not limited to, taekwondo, boxing, bodybuilding, weightlifting, fencing, table tennis, ballroom dancing, and gymnastics. There was a huge showroom where protein and steroid vendors reined supreme. We stayed in a motel on Friday night and drove home on Saturday evening. Overall, it was a freak show and a fascinating experience. The similarities and differences between Arnold and Comic-Con were hilarious.

Since I slept on a train and couch on Thursday night and on a motel floor on Friday, I was thrilled to find that Aaron had brought an extra mattress from his house for me to sleep on. I slept like a baby (who occasionally snores) into the daylight savings afternoon. Mia and I went on a Asian grocery shopping spree today. That's it for now.

Pictures!