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Date: February 24th, 2020.

Time of Writing: 9:03 PM.

Weather: Absurdly, disconcertingly warm for February.

Mood: Decent.

Day Overview: I woke up at my usual time today and remembered that there's a world outside my dorm building. I stayed in my room and caught up with lectures I'd missed for my online class while I waited for the cleaning staff to finish cleaning the bathroom. Later, when it was time to go to class, I put on my fleece sweater and backpack and went outside. What really struck me about the weather today wasn't that it was just warm, it was that it was warm in a way that seemed unnatural. A warm day in February should at most be mid-forties. It got above sixty degrees today! Anyways, I went to the dining hall and got some lunch to go. Later, after my History of Religion class, I'd eat it outside, near the Integrative Learning Center, while texting an online friend.

On most days, this is when I'd head back to my dorm, but today was different. Given my packed Tuesday schedule, I wouldn't have time to watch the rest of my missed lectures before the exam on Wednesday. Thus, I decided to attend class in person this time. The class is being taught as a mixed online/in-person class. There's no attendance taken, but if you don't show up you're expected to watch the lectures on your own time, as I have been doing since I added this class. I can't go to the Wednesday lectures anyway, given that they run into the discussion period for my religion class. So I arrived about an hour early for the class, futzed around on my laptop until it was time to go into the lecture hall.

The first thing I noticed was that my professor is a lot taller than he looks on video. Not basketball tall, but substantially taller than I am. The second thing I noticed was that the microphone does not pick up anywhere near the amount of reactionary noise the audience/students I guess generate during the course of the class. It involves watching a lot of advertisements as examples, and some of what we saw today was truly outrageous. The third thing I noticed is that my professor edits on the technical gaffs that happen during the presentation of the slideshow in the videos, which, okay, totally understandable.

After class ended I decided to make the most of the day and go for a bit of a walk around the northwest quadrant of campus, past the Marching Band Building and into an area I was largely unfamiliar with. Most of these buildings I guess fall under the Agricultural Sciences label. There was the Food Sciences building, the greenhouses and specimen labs, and the general agriculture building, but I also found some engineering laboratories and a computer science building. I'll have to explore these buildings at a later date. I also found a tunnel connecting two buildings underground, which was exciting.

On My Mind: Lately, I feel like I know what's going to happen in each day of my life before it occurs. I went to bed last night thinking about the schedule of my day today, and I mostly adhered to that schedule. There wasn't much room for doing things spontaneously, pursuing things I randomly found interesting, or doing other things until late in the evening. And then I had the terrifying thought to myself - if I'm starting to feel that way now, what about when I'm out of school. Uh oh.

• D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L by Panchiko: This one was a little weird. Apparently it was originally discovered a couple years ago by some 4Chan user or something who found a damaged CD at a story, and it got a bit of a cult following until eventually they contacted the people in the band (which was only active in like 2000) and they eventually provided a non-damaged copy with more songs. To me the music on here sounds way too modern for that story to be true. It reads like an elaborate marketing campaign or something. However, that doesn't mean that the stuff on here isn't pretty damn good! A little derivative, particularly the second and third tracks, but still solid. I wonder whether this band would have gotten big if they suck together, and if actually are telling the truth and just disbanded in 2001 or whatever. 8/10.
• Anima latina by Lucio Battisti: Really great progressive pop music from Italy in the 70's, another reminder that there is so much great art hidden behind language barriers. The great tracks on here are transcendent, maybe a little too happy-go-lucky and sweet but still ear-candy. Sadly there are these two weird reprises in the middle of the album that absolutely destroy its sense of pacing, and it ends somewhat abruptly after a less impressive back-half. It's front-loaded and would make a 10/10 if it was an EP, but as it stands this too is an 8/10.

• I'm decently sure that everything I started today, I also finished.

Works Produced: Over a thousand words of creative fiction, I'm pretty sure.

Other Thoughts: Thanks for reading!