Tuesday, october 10, 1996 Once again, there was no hot water...this is getting to be less than amusing...maybe tomorrow. Breakfast today was tea, as I really didn't feel like meat and potatos and didn't want to bother the cafeteria ladies about making eggs. Our first prof was about 15 minutes late. She explained that she's coming in from the country in the mornings right now and that we didn't have to come to class until 9:45 (instead of 9:35) This would mean that our lunch break after this class would only be 15 minutes. This was a less than thrilling idea...but i wasn't about to say anything, you see, I hadn't quite done my homework. Luckily, Leslie spoke up and got the teacher to agree to let us start late but to still let us out on time. After classes, we had a group meeting. Nothing special...we did, however get our monthly stipends today. I'm no longer ruble-broke. George and I were hanging out in my room after the meeting when a middle-aged man knocked and came in. "Do you need lightbulbs?" he asked. I explained that our hall light didn't work and that two of my five light fixtures were broken. He spent about 20 minutes pulling apart the light fixture in the hall occasionally checking to see whether various connections were live by touching them. It was just a bit scary. But, in the end he got it working. As he was cleaning up, he dropped one lightbulb...commenting afterward, "It was bad, anyway." Then I asked him about the lights in my room. He was able to get one of the two working by scavenging parts from the other. As I may have mentioned yesterday, I visited my professor Suzanne and her friends last night. It was suggested that I bring a bottle of vodka. Circumstances led to me buying both a big expensive bottle and a smaller cheap bottle. I didn't end up giving the smaller bottle away yesterday. As you may also know, I'm not a big drinker. So, I had a $2.50 bottle of vodka sitting in my cupboard. "What a perfect opportunity!" i thought. After explaining the circumstances that led to me having an extra bottle of vodka, I was able to convince the handyman to take it. He cleared out and I basked in the glory of a fourth lightbulb. About five minutes later, I saw the handyman coming back down the hall. "I just happened to find an extra lightbulb and this other part you need to get it working," he said to me. I thanked him and ran back to my room to see if it was really true that I might have *every* light in my room working. And Jesse flipped the switch and there was light. And the light in the room did illuminate certain fragments of glass on the floor and jesse did track down a broom and mop and cause the floor to attain a state of cleanliness. And jesse did realize that he must be getting rather tired because he saw that he had absolutely no business attempting to write in a pseudo-biblical style. Ok...i'm better now, really. So, after that amusing incident, I took a walk down the block to get myself some bread and soda. $.50 can buy you a very nice loaf of bread in this town. Then, I sat by the phone for about 45 minutes waiting for my friend nadia to call me....we were supposed to go out this evening....but alas, she didn't call. I tried her at work and was told that she left early. I'll call her tomorrow to see what happened. Tonight they aired the pilot episode of Babylon-5 on TV-6. (Sorry, dave, I got the name wrong before.) The translation wasn't so bad....and it sounds like there will be at least one epsiode on every day this week. I think that's really about it for today.