more joy today, brought upon by a combination of sunlight and scholastic serendipities. i got my stat midterm back (passed! which, as i'm pass/fail, is all i needed to do; plus i was relieved to find myself squarely in the middle 50% of the class) and took my polisci exam w/o any serious problem. got back the paper from that class too, the third and last to be returned of the hell-papers i wrote in the week prior to break. out of the blue, i got the best grade of the three on that one, which i composed while half-hysterical. i don't recall even having a brain by the time i got to that one: i was lost among scattered papers and overturned books; my eyes glowed faintly from three straight days of staring down a monitor.

apparently that's a recipe for success. go figure.
anyway, i was doubly-giddy, feeding off of philo's energy (clean almost 2 weeks: the change is remarkable) and the b.'s smiles over lunch. i trailed b. to his room where we argued about religion and the fate of judaism and the holocaust and by the time he mentioned israel i'd had enough. these are all subjects i can't discuss objectively, much as i perhaps would like to. periodically we interrupted our debate to be nice to each other, to laugh, or in his case to cough violently -- he's still ill -- but i still left feeling slightly defensive. enough of my happiness was left to carry me home to eat dinner and read history. ha! american politics likes me even if american history doesn't. maybe i can salvage that american studies major yet.