september is latin for "all my weekends are booked"

1) Fled west with the interdisciplinary program and ducked the worst of Hurricane Hanna. The skies cleared, the sun shone, we sliced open all manners of topics, and I was a little bit in love with everyone there.

2) Made my first trip to the coast to hang out with the biology department. On the first night, a midnight walk on a tiny island yielded ghost crabs, blue crabs, horseshoe crabs, tulip snails, mud snails, oyster beds and wispy fish darting past our lights and buckets. And as we stood frozen on a mudflat, stunned by the carpet of fiddler crabs scuttling away, an unmistakable whinny echoed in the dark. There they were, the wild ponies of Beaufort. Well, more like: There they were, the vague humps and creepy eye-shine of Beaufort.

3) This weekend, Campout for men's basketball tickets with fellow biograds. A 36-hour endurance test, in tents and RVs, with 2000 other grad students, in which we hope to emerge clutching season passes in our sweaty, disheveled fists. I have no idea why I'm doing it again.

Also, I took all the money I saved from biking to school and donated it to the Obama campaign. I am officially a walking caricature. Feel my obnoxious liberal righteousness, America!