403: forbidden

Last week I assembled some trellising to hide the neighbor's ugly garage wall, and give the pitiful-looking grapevine someplace to grow. It looks good, but the cheap wood of the trellis is starting to bend under its own weight already.

Monday, my housemates and I hauled a massive desk bequeathed to us by the previous owners upstairs for my use. Because it's large, red (cherry stain, if not actual cherry wood), and evil to move in any way at all, we've named it "The Balrog". In retrospect, we probably should've waited for the professional movers, but the three of us got ambitious. We also succeeded with only a minor ding to the stairwell, which speaks for itself.

My own clumsiness and some misfortune in getting the Balrog into position has left a wide, shallow scrape on the wood floor (appears to be finish damage only). While I'm fixing it, I figure I may as well fill in and finish over the 1/8" deep, 1/8" wide cross-grain gouges left by the previous owners. (I can't figure out what they did to make that shape. Fit their kids for iceskates indoors, maybe?) It will be impossible to hide that it's a patch job, but that's preferable to having the unsanded wood-splinters hanging out near my bare feet.

Yesterday, I did battle with the community college bureaucracy in order to establish my student status. A rematch to determine my tuition residency is in the works, but it's waiting on a utility bill so that I can prove I'm planning to stay (in the mean time, they're charging me the out-of-state rate, and the understaffed FinAid office will eventually get around to reimbursing me). It's worth noting that I ache more after standing in lines for 5h than I did after moving extremely heavy furniture the day before.

In this morning's bout of insomnia, I've been reading about the origins of number representation. The results are pretty cool, and I'm not going to spoil the suspense for you. Read it yourself - I'm going to try to sleep some more.