Got a few things this week, since I've been gone.

1. Sent in my application to Colgate a couple days ago; now it's just a waiting game until December. Super excited to see how this turns out! Although apparently they still don't have a financial aid thing that I sent in back in mid-October, so I'm gonna have to call the admissions dept. when I get a chance. I hate phones.

2. I went to my first proper teenage party on Hallowe'en. I didn't actually expect to; I was invited to this party by a friend who usually has pretty mellow gatherings. But this time she invited some of her other friends (i.e. not in our shared friend group thing) and they were more into the partying thing, so we basically danced to loud pop/hip-hop for 3ish hours. It was especially awesome because I was the only guy there out of maybe 20 people, so I was flirting it up all night. Of course I didn't actually get any numbers because I couldn't bring myself to because I still dig my ex and she was even at the damn party, but, y'know. Still fun. Anyway, it got me thinking I could see myself doing this in college and now I'm super excited to go all over again.

3. Speaking of my ex: God, our relationship is weird. Let me know if any of you want the full story, but suffice it to say we hang out basically every day and flirt relentlessly, but I don't think either of us is sure whether either of us wants to get back together.

4. Speaking of college (from back in point 2): I can't wait to go to college because I want to play baseball again. I played six seasons (so like 3.5 yrs?) back in elementary school, in the local youth league, but dropped it in middle school because my fear of getting hit was crippling my batting and basically making the whole thing not fun anymore. But I recently read a book (which I think I've mentioned elsewhere here - maybe in a 3-word story?) called The Art of Fielding that revitalized my interest in the sport, and I read a couple essays on it, and of course then came the World Series, and now I really really want to play again. It strikes me as a singularly beautiful game, and of course when I got out my glove the other day to field a couple grounders and check out how my chops were, it felt profoundly right. So that's exciting.

5. Today my best friend got back from a college trip and there was no food in his fridge, so for lunch we walked to Subway in the rain. (Despite the totalitarian ambitions of our principals and parent council, the head of high school where I go to school (which is K-12) is fantastically lax and basically lets us do what we want. It's awesome.) It was really nice and gave us a chance to catch up, so that was cool. I would advise everyone reading to take at least one walk in the rain, sans umbrella, with a good friend at least once in their life.

All right, that's all I got. If you got this far, thanks for sticking with me. I'm off to write an essay on Conrad's Lord Jim.