I'm on break

I had a terrible week full of tons of work, and then it was over and I got to come back home. I took with me two first-years, R. and S. It's not particularly important that I keep their names secret, since I'm not saying anything incriminating about them at all, but I figured it's probably good practice anyhow. It was a pretty okay car ride. I dropped S. off in Crawfordsville and then dropped R. off in Indianapolis - though she got us all turned around and lost us an hour there. But she says she's going to bake some cookies for the return trip to make up for it. Her parents picked her up at a McDonald's, just like S.'s did. Even if the food sucks, I guess they make good meeting points. So now I'm just rambling.
-It's nice being home for a while. Using our bathroom, I've come to realize what a raw deal I get at East Campus: it's environmentally friendly, and the buildings have a LEED certification (but I don't remember what color), but they achieve that through low-flow faucets (so filling up a water bottle takes like a full minute) and low water temperatures (so showers are nowhere near as enjoyable as they could be, especially when it's cold). Here, the water is nice and hot and it doesn't take forever to fill up a pot to make ramen noodles. And I get my own bedroom, so I can turn out the lights whenever I want - but that's one of those "inherent in the system" things at college. Ah, the comforts of home.
-We've got two new kittens. They're both extremely cute and maybe the most friendly cats we've ever had. Coming here, I'm seeing the wisdom of keeping a snake for a pet, though. I don't feel compelled to let him wander around outside his cage, since he mainly stays in one spot and doesn't seem too anxious to run [slither] around anyhow. But all these mammals need their space. Dad let his weasel outside for a little while, and hasn't seen her for a couple days. He thinks she probably met a dog. Before I left for college, I was walking Micah's dog in the woods when he sniffed out Mom's cat at the time, lying there. We never did figure out what happened to her - I didn't see any treadmarks, so she may have gotten sick or fallen out of a tree. A couple weeks before that, our other cat at the time got hit by a car and Dad found him. Mom has decided to keep a closer rein on these kittens so they don't meet the same fate. "Darn hrududil," she says: it's the rabbits' word* for those giant noisy metal things, in Watership Down.
-I'm getting a magazine article written about me! This should probably have been at the beginning of this entry, but it seemed kinda pretentious to do that. It's tentatively called "A Field Guide to Young Font Designers", and it's going to be in STEP Inside Design magazine. I've been in touch already with the guy who's writing it; I told him about myself and about how I came to be a font designer. It's going to be out in January/February 2009. So, keep your eyes out - this is pretty darn awesome, if I say so myself.
-I've been playing Scrabble some more with Mom, and working with Dad on restoring his old Mercedes, the one from 1963 that he bought in the late '70s when he was in Spain with the Navy. Mainly we're working on getting all the paint off it, because it's all got to be replaced. Micah is of course playing his part in this too. If he ever gets a driver's license (he may have to wait a while, because given all his legal woes, Dad doesn't seem too incredibly disposed to dedicate a lot of insurance money to him or let him behind the wheel of a really nice old car), it may become his car. If Dad becomes persuaded to give it to him.
-And I'm getting ever closer to the end of Brennu-Njáls Saga. It's longer than I realized. But there's also some semblance of a climax I'm coming to - a real big lawsuit against some people who burnt down a house with some people in it: and the distinction between "lawsuit" and "battle" can get tricky in old Iceland.
-So, I guess that's about it, until next time. Uh, bye!.

*Plural, and the singular is hrududu.