Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder

24 Oct 2001, 13:34 p.m.

Handball really tired me out. More sleep would have…

Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2001 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.

Handball really tired me out. More sleep would have been better. By the end of the 35 minutes, I could hardly even serve worth a darn, much less hit serves that came off two walls before I could reach them.

In Russian, I made a puppet out of a brown paper bag, and learned that the word "vrag" means both "marriage" and "deficiency."

Lunch with Steve at Mario's La Fiesta. The cashier noticed that my hair has grown much longer, and complimented me on it. Sometimes I forget how attentive service personnel can be when they see me day after day after day.

On our way to lunch, we passed through this Berkeley USA patriotism fest. Flags, Garth-Brooks-sounding music, flags, signs (a few dissenters, thank goodness), flags, flags, flags. People passed out flags and flag representations.

Obnoxious guy: "Everyone needs a flag!"
Me: "You're wrong."
I felt physically nauseous. Patriotism of this sort, emotion unalloyed by any logic aside from "My country, right or wrong, my country," can find itself used for good and for evil equally easily. Don't they know that? Have none of these people ever taken a history class?