Today is Melissa's 23rd birthday! She is my sister and she is saucy and funny and great all-around, and I love her this much: --||-- ! I have funny pictures of her which I would post but I have to get to school. It will go on my list of Things To Do Tonight!

I'm done two of my five courses already, and it's a good good thing. The test I had yesterday morning went surprisingly well considering that I never did finish all the reading. Last night I got into work-mode and got a third of my take-home exam for Syntax finished. Woo!

It's strange, but sometimes I get my best work done on the kitchen table when people are over for coffee (or tea or rum or pudding or muffins or ALL OF THE ABOVE). I don't know why that is, sometimes it just works better for me. I've been thinking about this whole Being An Introvert thing, and it really doesn't mean that I don't like having people around. I can't imagine living by myself; I think I would get pretty depressed pretty fast. I think I got that way in the year that I lived with my first roommate (there have been 16!), because she was never home, and when she was, she was often in her room with the door closed. I don't function that way very well. I like one-on-one time, I get really quiet when there's more than 4 people in the conversation, I do my best relaxing in my room by myself, but I really like it that people live in my house and I can sit at the kitchen table and play cards with them if I want to. I need that social interaction. I need people to talk to when I am stressed out and can't handle any more schoolwork that night. I need people to vent to when I'm upset. Things have been good lately in this regard because I have two roommates who are funny and sarcastic and kind and who bake when they're stressed out (woo, unemployment means muffins!) and who really understand things like Birthday Week. We have a house that is welcoming, a kitchen table that often has guests, boys who complain that we make them drink too much but who keep coming back because they love us, girls who come here to play or when they need to borrow random things. We have a landlord who buys us donuts once in a while, and who tells us random Jewish stories. We have a cat who is very very strange but pretty cute. We have a Secret Other Roommate too, but that's a story for another time. We have friends who drop by because they were in the neighbourhood. I live in a neighbourhood! I don't think I can go back to apartment living — this is so much nicer! And spring is here and the sun is coming out more often and I'm wearing my spring jacket now and the markets are so busy and quirky and WOW I LIKE TORONTO.

AND HAPPY BIRTHDAY MELISSA!