Well, here I am back up at sunny, palm-treed Stanford. Actually, that makes Stanford sound like the Valley, which isn't true at all. Stanford is green with a green or blue background, while the Valley is green with a brown or blue background. That's a big difference. Seriously. Evidently when God was designing California, he decided that this part of California should have rain instead of rocks, and I miss my rocks. I never go climbing on them or anything, but it's nice to know that they're there. You're not allowed to laugh at the fact that I miss my rocks (or the hills that go with them) unless you've been to my home, because I think my home is beautiful. So there.

In other news, I'm all moved in to my new single at Crothers. I don't know if I'm down with this single thing. It's a nice room; even if it is kind of old it's also pretty big and I have it laid out nicely. I just miss Archimedes. Of course even if he was a grad student we couldn't room together, because he's going away to Oxford. On the plus side, Phoebe is coming back from ... well, DC, but I think of her as coming back from Oxford. I'm excited about that.

I'm all set to begin my new era, and am sort of just killing time until the new era actually begins tomorrow. As proof of the new era, I have wall decorations. Lots of wall decorations. The trouble with wall decorations is that I never had anything to decorate with that actually belonged on my walls. I mean, I didn't want to put up just any old thing. It had to be something that said something. Now I have lots of stuff that means something.

I'll start with the non-wall decorations since most of them are new, too. Of course there's my venerable Goochy (Cthulhu). The great pastel Unknowable Evil has been ousted from his lightning ball (which, sadly, is dead after many faithful years of service), and now looks down upon me with cutesy malevolence from my desk lamp. Goochy stands for art, stories, my friends back home, and the "good old days," whatever those are.

Then there's my very own bronze horse (Etruscan, but Greek-inspired). The khalkos hippos hagios stands for the Hetairoi: for my undergraduate career and the discovery of the collegiate experience, and for my honored teachers: Jody Maxmin, Meg Butler, Eirene Visvardi, and Jack Mitchell.

The last non-wall decoration is my new Honor Harrington coffee tumbler (tumbler courtesy of Starbucks, Honor Harrington pictures courtesy of me). I don't know how much I'll use that as a cup, but I think it looks really cool. And it's pretty appropriate, if you think about it.

Overlooking my computer station I have three pictures of Hawaii and/or my family in Hawaii. Those stand for the family, the togetherness of the cove, and Hawaii and all it stands for (which, if you're curious, is pretty much the same thing Disney World stands for).

As you enter my room, if you look to the right you'll see three prints of the Archimedes Palimpsest, oriented according to the Archimedes text and not the euchologion (prayer book) text. That stands for the ancient world in general: the joy of studying it, and the importance of a long view of things.

Over my bed are four prints of Honor Harrington. They remind me to be like Honor: to never do less than your best, to do your duty or die trying, to always care, to be loving rather than safe, to be the kind of person who changes the world not as a result of what you do but as a result of who and what you are.

And finally, there is the poster of the Moulin Rouge which Blue Rose bought for me in Paris. That stands for the romantic dream, the importance of being hard-nosed and uncompromising in the pursuit of romance, and the fact that Blue Rose loves me and I love her. Or at least I think she does. I guess it's kind of presumptuous for me to say that, but I think so, at any rate. I feel kind of bad that it took me so long to get that poster up and properly displayed (it was up last year, but just with thumbtacks. Now it looks a lot nicer) because it does mean a lot to me. There were just, you know, complications.

And those are my decorations. Everybody should come by Crothers 141 and see them and be overpowered by the tidal wave of symbolism. Also to see me.