It's a busy time of year... Finals are rolling around in less than a month, Frisbee sectionals are this weekend, everyone's going crazy figuring out what classes to sign up for... I get to school at 9:00 am and don't leave until 8:00 pm most days, and I'm busy for most of that time (except right now, because my 11:00 - 12:30 class was cancelled). So, I'm looking around at the hustle and bustle, thinking how sometimes the things that matter the most to us get left behind as we rush along. Sometimes we pick them up again later, because we haven't moved very far from where we left them. And sometimes they get left behind for good, even if we sometimes try to pick them up again.

I'm in that transitional period, I think, where I'm trying to establish myself here at Sam, while trying to hang onto my friends at UH (though I'm not trying very well, since I haven't spoken to anyone from UH since skipping out on Blake's party, which in retrospect I'm very embarrassed to have done, even if it wasn't intentional). It's weird being here... My first year at UH was different... I was fresh out of high school, and scared witless, so the fact that I didn't hang out with much of anyone who didn't live on my hallway in the dorms (and not too many who did) didn't really bother me. I mean, I made some friends, but it was a lot like high school, in that I chatted with them before and after class, and we occasionally had lunch together, but at the end of the day (or, more often, the end of the class period), we went our separate ways and that was it. The next three years at UH changed that dramatically. I still didn't have many friends my sophomore year, but we did things together constantly, at all hours of the day and night. The same was true my junior year, except that I had a lot of friends, and last year brought a slight decline in the number of people that I spent time with, but increased (I'd like to think) the quality of the time we spent together. So now I'm here at Sam, and it's back to my freshman year at UH, except that now I know the difference -- I know what I'm missing. But I'm the same person I was then... I made my friends at UH accidentally, because Carol invited me to a frisbee game on a Thursday night. Before I met people, I wasn't any more social than I am now. If anything, I was less. But there're no serendipitous frisbee games going on around Sam, and I don't have any friends who are involved in anything like that to invite me into those circles... And it's getting a bit lonely, going to school, going to work, and going home day after day. I need something less mundane, something to break the monotony. And I don't know what. But, like every year, I'll be thrilled when summer's here again and I have a lot more free time. And, like every year, after I've re-read a couple dozen books and spent more hours sleeping than awake, I'll be thrilled when school starts again and I can stop being bored with all the free time. But in the here and now, I'm already bored. I haven't done enough out of the ordinary lately, I think. Maybe I'll be able to change that over the summer. Did I mention Andy's opening a paintball field? Party at my house! Ooh, party... That'd be fun. Or maybe just bar-hopping in Houston. Something.

I'm gonna stop rambling now. I'm only doing this because my class was cancelled, and I'm bored. Laters.