For the past week, I've been back in Rapid City, researching, brooding and making plans for the future. It's spring break in Iowa, but being broke, I had to settle for a "working holiday." To give you a feel for how it's gone, this is my agenda for Saturday:

• 8 am: Wake up, shower, begin laundry, begin baking butterscotch cookie-loaf prepared last night.
• 10 am: Drive to post office, mail Filthy American Care Package to physicist friend in France. Resume baking, attempt to construct a cake.
• 11 am: Begin follow-up calls to people I haven't talked to in years, inviting them to 21st birthday bash. Suffer repeated rejections, go into quiet funk punctuated by rum and old ska music.
• Noon: Lunch with family at Red Lobster between kid sister's soccer practice and Girl Scout meeting. Awkward silence.
• 2 pm: More laundry and baking. Sneak away to Country General Store to buy large axe for "future use."
• 3 pm: Review assembled research for manufacturing class project: "The Bicycle Fork: From Namibian Stip Mines To Your Crotch." Pack.
• 5 pm: Attend kid sister's orchestra concert, sitting on phone books so as to see the stage over the fat women and their enormous video cameras.
• 6:55 pm: Somehow be back at parents' house and ready to receive birthday guests. Quicky irradiate kitchen with microwave & tin foil to ensure everyone gets out alive.
• 7:30 pm: Guests begin arriving. Cats have eaten the cake; kid sister's bird has somehow escaped his cage, is bathing in ice cream. Arrange hasty retreat.
• 8:00 pm: Arrive at restaurant for steak and Guinness, night of half-remembered inebriation.

I am nervous about tonight, because I need to be in Des Moines by 8 pm tomorrow. This is a soft target however; as long as I don't end up in Argentina with neither pants nor wallet, I will view the evening a success. And spring break, too; I have 50 pages of new research with me, another 50 pages waiting for me in Iowa and one kicking concert to attend tomorrow night. Everything is all right.

On Monday I will be back in my usual routine of sleeping through classes and devouring the New York Times, so in a few days I should more interesting words. If nothing else, I should have words about the collected writings of Hunter S. Thompson, which I am engaging in a frontal assault at the moment. For now, however, I remain... emo!