Now Playing: Harry Gregson-Williams, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, "Raid on the Castle".

Slept soundly from exhaustion last night and woke before Rachel this morning. I took a shower--I think, I don't remember for sure--and made oatmeal for myself. It was one of those weighted mornings, a heavy morning, facing the burden of the day. I sat down at my desk, wrote e-mails, and worked on writing a prospectus for senior project. At nine o'clock, Bob rang, and I ran down to the car park to meet him. He'd volunteered to help fix the Tank, which has been out of commission with a bad alternator. We wrenched the hood open, and he started to poke around inside. He pulled out the old alternator, we took it to the hardware shop down the street to have it tested, and then bought a new alternator, which he installed, with some trouble. Then we pushed the car out of the space, he pulled his car up, and we jumped it. After he left, I drove the Tank down Yale. The morning traffic was fairly light. Trashy strip malls, dodgy mechanics, and pawn shops gave way to malls, business parks, green spaces, and the towers of a hospital. I stopped at Wal-Mart to buy groceries, then drove the car back to campus. Seems to work alright.

I spent the rest of my morning working on senior project and praying for John, who went into surgery for his broken ankle today. (Right now there's a smell lingering in here that smells just like the Wilsons' house, and it's bewildering my subconscious....) At half twelve, Rachel came back from her exam. We ate leftovers together for lunch. At one o'clock, she went to class, and I went to Tyrrell to practice my flute. The practice rooms are all under construction right now, the ceilings being torn out, the ducts being covered with new tiles. Most of the rooms were off-limits, so I went into a coffin-sized room, most of the free space of which was occupied by a derelict piano, and practiced for forty-five minutes. Then I went to PHIL 2113 at two o'clock. Professor B was crazy as always--emphatic, rocking up and down on his feet like Humpty Dumpty so that the brown fringe bounces at the front of his balding head.

At four o'clock there was a session on building study abroad experience into your resume at the CGE office, so I went to that. Ms. B, the secretary, patted me on the shoulder and called me "Sweetie" when she called me come in, and Ms. S greeted me in her Portuguese-inflected soft voice. Alex, Don, and I were the only ones who came. Ms. M, the head of the office, the sort of woman who's so courteous that she scares me, laughed that she felt incredibly uncomfortable presenting to an audience of peer advisors. It was helpful, though, to hear about opportunities with businesses and volunteer overseas. The excitement builds, thinking about all the possibilities: places in Japan and Australia, where there are RP churches....

On my way back to the apartment, I picked up tea from the caf. I randomly decided to sit on the balcony outside our apartment to eat, and as I was taking the first bites of baked chicken, Rachel Jr. texted me to ask if I wanted to come to her apartment. So I dumped my backpack in our apartment, grabbed my basket of scrapbooking materials, and walked across the car park. Nicole and Rachel were both in the apartment, Nicole studying. Rachel heated up pasta, and she and I sat on the slouchy green sofa and chatted away.

After we finished eating, we began the real business of the evening: baking chocolate chip cookies for the Knorrs and for the RUF potluck tomorrow night. Rachel had two different recipes, one the basic recipe, and one with oatmeal. I worked on the basic recipe, for the Knorrs, while she made the oatmeal cookies, for the potluck tomorrow. After I'd put my first batch in the oven, I sat down at the coffee table to make a card for the Knorrs. Rachel made a wee mountain of her cookies in a pan as they came out of the oven. There were three dozen of my cookies, quite an impressive batch. We put them in plastic bags, and she and I drove over to the Knorrs' house.

As we were opening the back gate to go into their back yard, the dogs came wagging up to the fence to greet us. Both of us had our hands full with bags of cookies, so of course Shaq, the big, fluffy, black, dumb dog, wriggled between us, slithered out of the gate, and bounded gaily down the street. "Run!" shouted Rachel, so I dropped my cookies on the trampoline and took off after him. Charis and Di, paddling in the swimming pool in the back of Di's house behind the Knorrs' house, watched me go. Shaq loped ahead of me, tongue lolling, slaver roping out of his mouth, stopping to sniff the neighbors' bushes. A leather-skinned man stepped out of a house and shouted at him. I was suddenly afraid because it's a bad neighborhood and any one of the neighbors might decide to pull out a gun, but I kept running and eventually caught up with the stupid dog. I'd had my leg workout chasing him, and I got my upper body workout hauling him back to the Knorrs' house since he probably weighs about as much as I do.

Rachel and I met back at the Knorrs' house, went up to the back door, and stepped inside. Everyone was sitting in the front room, watching "The Office" on TV. John was in the recliner, as usual, but now with his leg in a new cast--a whopping thick thing. We gave them the cookies and the card. Rachel sat down on the loveseat between Rachel and Kali, and I sat down on the sofa between Josh and Ben. Things were fairly quiet for awhile. Long silences would begin to congeal in the room, until Josh would start to laugh. "Someone has got to break this silence, and now it's broken into pieces, like Hershey's chocolate," he said. "With nuts?" John asked groggily. "With nuts," Josh said, "and cherry flavoring." "Oh, gross!" Kali objected. "Well, it has to taste gross because it was a bad silence," Josh replied, and we all laughed. Things got more lively, though: Di and Charis came back from swimming. Ange and Alisha joined us. Denise appeared--she'd been out shopping for painkillers and Chinese take-out for John.

Rachel Jr. and I left at half eight or so. I stopped by her apartment back on campus to pick up my things and to borrow her vacuum cleaner. While we were at the Knorrs' house, Pastor Parnell had rung me, so when I got back to my apartment, I perched in one of the windowsills and rang him back. We talked and prayed together.

During our conversation, Rachel Sr. had come back. After I got off the phone, I talked with her briefly. I started to vacuum our apartment, but while I was in the process of doing so, Logan rang, so I chatted with him for a little while. I was just finishing vacuuming our bedroom when Nicole showed up, at ten o'clock, for prayer. She had a bar of organic choolate with chai and crystallized ginger mixed in--deliciously sweet and spicy. Katie and Alyson came, too. It was a good group. We spent the first half-hour or so just talking, joking around, laughing about school and going to the opera. Then we shared prayer requests, and then we prayed, and then spent more time talking and laughing. Alyson left to study stats, but Katie and Nicole stayed for a full hour more--discussing food, mainly--vegetarianism, wines, and the like. I enjoy their oddball sense of humor, especially Katie's, and their different perspective on the world. Katie told us about her crazy Irish grandmother from whom she learned curse words and kitchen gossip in Irish when she was a wee girl, and that made Rachel laugh very hard. I sat cross-legged on the floor, typing up this entry.

They left at midnight. I finished vacuuming and returned the vacuum cleaner to Nicole. Rachel is in our room now, studying. The evening is unusually cool. I hope the days become cooler after this. I'd far rather have the windows open than run the air conditioner, and I'm ready to begin wearing hoodies and sweaters, especially since our classrooms and the practice rooms are cold enough for that kind of clothing, and then when I step outside I have to strip off layers because it's so warm.

I've gone around all day with "Is. 26.3" written on the back of my hand.