Another week below freezing. That makes three now. I'd like to say that this is some kind of personal record, but when I was 12 or 13, it was like this for the entire month of February. There was a week or so during which the temperature never even got above the zero mark. This was when I had a paper route and still walked to and from school, guaranteeing at least an hour spent in the frigid cold each and every day. It is hard to complain too much about this "Iowa cold." (Though I have had to buy a crowbar to get my car doors open on those mornings it is completely encased in ice.)

Right now I am writing from the computer lab on campus because one of my roommates has a very strange dating protocol, wherein we--the other roommate and myself--are barred from the house. I only mention this as a lead-in to the pictures I have recently obtained of our very kick-ass pad, which is a total dive but very spacious and cozy. (I hope to have these pictures available very soon.) Everyone in the Ames-area is invited to come over at any time, by the way--except right now, for obvious reasons. And also tomorrow and Saturday nights. I'm guessing Sunday isn't so good either. In fact, if someone else has a house I could hang out at for a while, I would appreciate a call or email--at the dot-org rapidfish, I am robert.

Other news: one Mr. Omar Tesdell--the co-founder of the student activism group Time for Peace, journalist, and all-around cool guy--won an award that puts him on par with one of the founders of Books for Children, an MIT group that sends books to kids in developing countries and that has spawned a number of similar organizations all over the country. This is pretty cool, mostly because it's a nice reminder that even podunk Iowa can spawn some pretty amazing people.

I needed that reminder after the police showed up at a house in our neighborhood last week and impounded a whole bunch of chemicals used in the production of ultra-high grade methamphetamines. I walked by the house in question Saturday night, and it looked like just another run-down house. At least I think it was the house in question, because there was no mailbox and no identifying numbers anywhere on the house; just peeling paint and bare wood. Many houses in Ames look like that or worse--most memorably, the one on the corner of 5th and Grand with the large holes in the walls and "ENTER HERE ---->" spraypainted on the side in black. It's to be expected, of course, even in a college town like this; it's just a nice reminder that most everything in the University's brochures is a falsehood of some sort.

Anyway, enough of my aimless rambling. I'm supposed to be here studying Spanish, so I might as well get to it. Adios!