Victory = Mine!

The mad dash known simply as registration happened this morning at precisely 8:00 AM, and I was right there with codes and fingers at the ready. The air was electric, and you could almost hear the pounding hearts and heavy breathing of new students all over campus waiting for that hour to turn so that they could start punching the keys and hitting that submit button to try and get in faster than anyone else.

I won.

I got all five of the classroom-based classes that I was going after, and only one class that I was after - the Yoga LPAP - was already full up. Luckily for me, I had three alternative LPAP courses written down because I knew that they filled up quickly. It was a good thing that I did, because I ended up only being able to get in to the very last one I had written down - Group Fitness. Now I will be both a student and an instructor of this exercise format this semester - how's that for cool? The best part of the whole thing was the background music. I had Richard Cheese's album "Lounge Against the Machine" blasting from my speakers as I punched the keys with glorious fervor. First one LPAP class was full, then the second one, then the third one, leaving me with only one left. Amazingly, just at that moment, Cheese's cover of the song 'Last Resort' started playing - when I was about to attempt my last resort. Funny stuff!

Some other stuff has happened since I last made an entry. We had dinner on Wednesday at one of the Martel Associates' houses outside of campus. There were a couple of members of the Rice community there to eat with us, and it was a really fun, down-home style experience and helped once again to make Martel and Rice feel like a family and not just a super amazing school. That night, after we returned, we had the Roommate Challenge - a series of ten challenges that suite-mates attempted together. We played crab soccer, tried to assemble a puzzle with our eyes closed, dropped things off the fifth floor balcony, and all other sorts of crazy stuff. More good times!

Yesterday was definitely more laid-back than any other day we've had here so far. In the morning, we had an early breakfast of Einstein Bros. Bagels (which are amazing, for those of you who haven't experienced their wonderfulness), and then went out to the parking lot for a mock Beer-Bike. We had shopping carts instead of bikes, and we had a women's and men's race. After feeling the energy from just the mock Beer-Bike, and the wetness of the massive water balloon fight that took place just afterwards, I can't wait for the real thing.

The rest of that day was pretty lazy. Students met with their academic advisers, but I had already done that the previous day. There were a couple of short presentations in the afternoon, but the evening was when things kicked off. We had Houston Night Out, and we joined more than half of the freshman class in getting on the lightrail and heading down to Minute Maid Park and the Astros vs. DC Nationals game. Like most baseball games, our time there was just as much about socializing and being together as it was watching the actual game. Most of our team did get bored around the seventh inning, so we decided to head back to campus early, which was just fine. I wanted to have an early night so that I'd be bright and ready for registration this morning and, as you can see at the top of this entry, that paid off immensely.