After Spring break, it remained cold for some time; Zach and I decided that the trend was permanent and indoor sports would be the future of this country, and the source of our future income. We decided to be NBA stars. With the help of Leila Baghdadi, the basketball goddess, we were well on our way. Before long, we even developed awesome basketball poses:




Eventually we realized that Zach's awkwardness would prevent either of us from being drafted anytime soon. As a result, I turned to the General Clinical Research Center as a source of funds. Professional lab rats make surprising amounts of money, and get to have multiple objects shoved into their arteries at once! Here's a picture of the happiness and joy I experience at the GCRC:



Sadly, I failed to document much of the latter half of my spring semester. I rarely went out because I decided to start landscaping in Charlottesville, which required early mornings on all four of my weekend days. I also spent a lot of time at the hospital for my studies. In terms of the femmes, I really didn't make much progress, except for this possum that I met sometime in April.

For Spring break, I decided to go to Baltimore to visit my friend Nabil at John's Hopkins and my friend John Sireci at Goucher College. I took a train that Gavin coincidentally also was taking to get to Philadelphia. We brought water bottles full of vodka onto the train with us and chugged them until we were trashed. When I was let off in downtown Baltimore, it was about 11pm at night, and I had several miles to walk to get to the University. I still remember walking out of the train station. I thought that I had to go right, but, seeing a *Bridge Out* sign, I inferred that left was the way to go. So, I started walking. About an hour later, I recognized that the street numbers were going up, and not down, and this was the wrong way. It was snowing, and I was starting to get cold, but I had no choice but to turn around and keep going. I had two heavy bags with me, and the area was not quite the safest part of Baltimore, so I was just praying not to get mugged. It was about 1am when I reached the busted bridge again. The bridge was under construction such that it was only a criss-cross of small steel bars covered in snow. It took me about a 1/2 hour to cross it because every step had to be so carefully placed. Once I got to the other side, I walked another two hours before arriving at the University. As you can imagine, I had sobered up well before this time. I really enjoyed my time in Baltimore, but I didn't take too many pictures. Here's one of Nabil and his roommate Sameer:



Some of the best experiences of Spring Break were learning how to smoke cigarettes effectively and also going to a foam party at Goucher.

The end of my semester was much less eventful. Overall, my classes went well, with Numerical Analysis being the hardest but also the most fulfilling. Another reason I sucked all semester was that I decided to start programming Revenge of the Sharpie Daemons, which has most of its groundwork complete and basically only lacks the fringe elements, ie plot, dialogue, landscapes, etc. Just for the sake of having another picture, here's a sample of the code:



Its written using Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 with the basic WinAPI libraries, DirectDraw/Direct3D, and FMOD for audio. You should find a zipped almost updated copy of the game (the only zip file) on my root directory: www.people.virginia.edu/~cjp4f/ Here's a couple screenshots of the game as well:





That's if you care. The end of the semester was strikingly similar to the end of the previous semester. You know, the old touch a girl on the shoulder and get smacked with potential UJC sanctioning deal always comes back to haunt you. The real similarity came in my getting a second tattoo. This one's design originated on a website; I took the design and added my own effects then Tim Forbus at ACME tattoo did the rest. End result:



This picture also provides a fantastic view of my infamous tiny nipple action. Finals went pretty poorly as they were all scrunched together in like two days, making studying nearly impossible. Interestingly, my grades were negatively correlated with difficulty of the classes. I suppose that looks better on a transcript though. Anyway, Summer was delayed since I stayed an extra week to complete a study at the hospital, which was relaxing and exactly what I needed.