Both of my housemates just left. I get to be all by my lonesome for a week. I'm not terribly pleased with this notion, though I expect I will get some serious reading done.

I also just got an iPod, which should keep me warm at night.

I've been dreaming about women again. Not sex dreams, mind you, a much more romantic sort of thing. I dreamt last night that I was running around downtown wining and dining some awesome chick. She was probably named Clair or Heather, because the women I dream about usually are.

I need to get better at distracting myself from the opposite sex. Or else they'll distract me from everything else.

I realize, now, that the reason I so much enjoy Stephenson's Baroque Cycle is that its heroes (or antiheroes, if you will) alll relfect facets of myself, things that I am or that I want to be. And the heroine, Eliza, is just the sort of creature I'm looking for in a woman. Willful, confusing, independent, brilliant. The woman in my dreams, I think, is often like her.

Damn you Neal Stephenson! Your excellence as an author has cost me too much money!