Greg has to feed his kids

Do you remember in highschool, when you were a ridiculous nerd with nothing to do because you lived in the middle of nowhere and weren't on the dance team and thought windows 98 was like Nintendo times 40? Back when you you sat around playing tetris, drinking coke and listening to your crappy CD-rom murder all of the sound quality on your CDs, just thinking about how much more awesome you are than all of your friends? Okay, not that. Thinking about song lyrics, and what people on TV wear, and whether or not your crush was looking at you at lunch, and if your clothes were seriously not adjusted to your freakishly long legs/awesome new boobs? Do you remember in highschool when you got to the point when you really liked who you were? Maybe that was just me... Regardless,

That was my Sunday evening.

Without Tim (he has no phone for the weekend), and without the internet there was nothing to do but play Snood and listen to the Beatles on repeat. In the past few years, my ability to be interesting in my own head has been nearly destroyed by that expensive social game called college. But here the classes are worthless and everything interesting is closed after five (unless you're a drunk), so there it was like a holy grail: the ever-ellusive and splendid absolute mental blackhole.

The funny thing is, the only thing I learned about myself is that I miss Mat Brooksher. And I still love the Beatles more than I love anyone else.

Though St. Valentine's Day may be the worst holiday for the loveless souls in this world who enjoy pink-bow torture (and those of us who live 4000+ miles from our boyfriends and could be doing something less depressing than drinking, alone), I will be spending it with the Pope.

On one hand I'm a moron for not surprising Tim in Washington for Valentine's day, his birthday, and our anniversary. On the other hand: Rome.

We plan to stay there for seven nights, and I'm quite sure that it will take at least that long for it to sink in that I'm spending how much? money to see the Pope's funny hat collection. But if me crying while I stood on the tomb of Henry the VIII is any indicator, there will be many tears shed in the Sistine Chapel.

This entirely justifies the fact that I live in an abandonned hospital, take 100-level civics classes and try to avoid people who eat horse meat on a daily basis.

More good news: God/People with money take pity on me frequently. My Grandma's lovely PEO chapter has givin me a scholarship of sorts, and some lovely Shreveportians have givin me a nice travel grant. Now I can eat and buy things like dishsoap and books for my classes from the biggest bookstore in France, Le Furet du Nord, which I love because it was there that I found my cheese bible.

And is it on that glorious note that I will end this conversation.

Phrase du jour: J'ai un grand encyclopédie des fromages. (I have a cheese bible.)