Now Playing: Howard Shore, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring soundtrack, "Amon Hen."

As on most Tuesday mornings, this morning I biked over to the coffeeshop by campus to meet Mary and Beth at nine o'clock. We always meet to discuss the weekend's readings for the medieval lit class. Unlike most mornings, though, this morning I got to use my sweet North Face jacket! A thin layer of frost actually lay on the windscreens of cars and the roofs of houses as I worked my way over to campus.

Mary, Beth, and I had an intense discussion about The Sultan of Babylon today--a Middle English Charlemagne romance with lots of feasts in it, so we talked about the feasts for about two hours while we drank coffee, until it was time for class.

I'm enjoying medieval romances much more than I thought I would. Not really sure why. They're like popcorn, or a box of chocolates: you never know what's going to happen next, and weird things keep bouncing to the surface. Magical girdles, fourteen-foot giants' babies, fried snakes, trees with white flowers, and of course plenty of bloody mortal combats.

After class I biked home and spent the afternoon alone in the house. I ate lunch, read our next romance, The Siege of Milan, drank tea, and practiced my flute for an hour. Then--wonder of wonders, wonder worthy of a romance all its own!--I rang Anna, and she actually answered the phone! We've been playing phone tag for over a month now.

So I went for a long walk for an hour-and-a-half while I talked to her. Maples blazed against the late afternoon sky. I walked through a neighborhood full of young maples, many of them crimson, and then I walked down into some woods behind one of the apartment complexes, where I sat under a sweetgum tree in a clearing--in a clearing on a crunchy carpet of yellow leaves, with a yellow ceiling. Walked down to a dry creek on deep drifts of yellow leaves, and then back up through a hillside full of Johnson grass and asters.

After I said good-bye to Anna, Lisa, Laura, and I went over to campus to pick Lindsay up from class, and then the four of us went for our housemates' night out: to the mall.

The food court was our first stop, Chick-Fil-A, to be precise. While we ate Lindsay told us about a "robot study" she participated in today. We devoured our lemonade and waffle fries and then shopped for awhile: American Eagle, Payless, Target. Lisa and I both bought jeans, and we left Target richer by a welcome mat and a bag of animal crackers.

At home the girls settled down to watch two episodes of Friends. I slogged through writing a poem while listening to FOTR. My candle burns on my desk. Lisa and Lindsay are both working now, too, and I can hear Laura talking on the phone downstairs.