This is a good time for fiction. I have read several books in the last week or so; all are by Patricia C. Wrede except for Bruce Coville’s The Ghost Wore Gray, which Sarah picked up recently. I am enjoying them quite a lot more than my schoolwork, my thoughts on the future, or my self-imposed other responsibilities. If you can’t bring yourself to enjoy “children’s books”, I recommend at least trying Wrede’s Mairelon the Magician.

Early this afternoon I participated in my first “focus group”. OSDL is a non-profit consortium of companies with an interest in Open Source Software, including IBM, HP, and Intel. Apparently hoping to establish a membership program like Oregon Public Broadcasting, OSDL’s entire marketing department (three people) came to those of us PSU students that bothered to show up (two people) to ask what would entice us to join.

It seems obvious to me that students are not the people you should go to when you’re looking for money. That’s getting the relationship exactly backwards, as far as I’m concerned. I told them so — politely, I hope.

Walking back from class this evening, I took twenty minutes for more pictures of the end of the Adeline. Sarah is, shall we say, not happy about the destruction of the building she lived in for 60% of her college career to date. I can’t fault her: it was a pretty decent example of 1920s-era Portland apartment buildings, and it could have been a spectacular place to live with just a little bit more maintenance. She might well have the opposite reaction if the Ondine — her home for her first year here — were the building being demolished, but unfortunately its perpetual problems of plumbing and poor design are considered less hazardous than the Adeline’s potential for falling over in the (unlikely?) event of an earthquake.

Tomorrow morning I ought to visit Cindy’s office for advising on “my future”. Bart has lots of advice for me, and I think I understand it reasonably well, but nothing that anyone has told me has clicked. I know what I’m doing for the next four months or so, and then I graduate, and nothing is obvious after that.

Oh. I’m twenty minutes late to my last class of the day. This journal-posting thing is an oddly absorbing activity.