I have a midlly irritating physiological tendency to always cry when I laugh, particularly at my own jokes.

I went 'hiking' with my brothers today, meaning we drove halfway up Sugarloaf, huffed and puffed the 400 feet to the summit, called it a day and patted ourselves on the back. It was a real Robson family accomplishment. For Christmas my dad got us all matching t-shirts that say "impeach bush" that surprisingly enough have not yet made their public debut.

We just watched a Bollywood movie, and I started to realize that as my memories of slowly fade, I believe the movies more and more. When I saw "Munna Bhai" in Jaipur it seemed so saccharine and absurd; but from the other side of the world it seems as though that the sets could conceivably be somewhere in the vicinity of reality. Still, it makes me glad to remember that places like India exist; that the human race can stretch itself into such radically different manifestations; and that there are places in the world that will never be tamed. It was such a humbling experience to realize that humanity really is a force of its own and there is almost nothing we can do to keep its tidal wave from crashing down on the earth.

The fact that the roads here are so impossibly un-bikeable is eating me up inside. The thing that really bothers me is that I existed like this for my entire life barely giving climate change a sheepish nod...our house with its giant, uninsulated windows, our three cars, our complete lack of recognition for the existence of public transportation. One of my friends who's been living here for the past five years has never been to the Inner Harbor. I have never been on the Baltimore subway. It runs east-west instead of north/south; probably cited in some textbook as a reason why Baltimore is the most segregated city in America. All of a sudden the darkest parts of history seem so close to me that I feel anxious living within and contributing to a structure that has barely changed at all. Poor anxious me, needing to write about my guilt in my web journal, look how passionate I am.

Apparently, the only insurance company in Maryland that will insure a 1974 Citicar will do it for the ultra-low price of $900/year. The batteries, altogether, would cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $800, and lord knows where I would find the brake parts (some obsolete model of airplane brakes). $2000 is completely out of my solar system. Stupid $65K cousins and their big fat solar systems.

Why do I stay up so late doing nothing on the internet

I am flummoxed! Today, as I was triumphantly handing in my thesis, color-printed and professionally bound, I was informed that I failed to show up to a final exam this morning. No matter how much I try to evolve, I will forever remain a bewildered seven-year old with a backpack full of crumpled papers and string cheese wrappers.

Seven billion dollars for the Palestinians ought to do it, right?

If Rose's departure is only slightly less than unbearable, graduation is going to leave me battered and broken.

Yesterday Nate picked up the guitar, Ben fiddled, and I sang out random pages of Emerson. This may be the penultimate cheesy siren song that calls out from my memory in days to come. It's pretty difficult to take a step back and look at things without laughing; the silence is awkward and I always want to pacify it with a smile.

"I wish I had the guts to be nobody"

You know it was a good weekend when you have an eight-foot magic-marker rendition of a plague of locusts on your wall. The Apocalypse on Friday was Apocalyptic; and Emily and I butchered about as many social interactions as we facilitated. The next day I ended up helping Sibley move, once again, transferring the chaos of derailleurs and old three-speeds and awful giant bins of random parts to the new shop. It was pretty fun; for once I felt useful and warranted; it was zero degrees and we were busyclosing big heavy doors and banging around big heavy stuff. There is so much to be done there and all I can think about is painting the walls orange.

Last year my friends tried to get the school to run a few of their vans off of biodiesel, and ended up getting a converter, a giant machine/filter thing that can change vegetable oil into diesel fuel. However, their neighbors saw it sitting in the garage and thought it was a meth lab, and thus put them under investigation. The joke's on them, though, the REAL meth lab is in the basement.

This has caused me to recall the Cheese Car, my father's 1974 Citicar (electric!) sitting sadly in our garage waiting for me to show up in shinging armour and rescue it. If I move back home next year, that is going to be project Numero Uno. For sure. I wonder if I'm smart enough.

It takes awhile to realize in the cold weather sometimes, but I am very happy here.