They should have progress bars available as titles

Still on track as of yesterday. The real test will be Saturday and Sunday when I have class most of the day and am forced to do pushups at my student's houses to avoid killing myself in the evening. It's hard to fit pushup sets into my schedule as my mom has inculcated all these health-nut rules into my head: don't exercise for an hour after you eat, don't watch TV while you sleep, pull down your pants before you sit down on the toilet, etc. And I'm not so sure what constitutes a meal. Does a bag full of candy count? Or is that not digested, just sweated out...that must how the Blue Man Group preps for their shows.

I have noticed a few benefits already of this new lifestyle. I can wear far less clothes in the room because the pushups keep me warm for long after each set. If I space them out just right, I can probably heat the room more effectively than the fake Chinese heater with its fake heat.

Yesterday's knot, the bowline:


image borrowed from animatedknots.com

Not too difficult for magic hands.

Today's, the slip knot:


image borrowed from animatedknots.com

Even easier than yesterday's. But I browsed pictures of the more advanced knots and I'm feeling in equal parts confident and screwed. Does beginner's luck restart for each new knot?

French is going smoothly. It's also producing lots of feelings I haven't had in a while. During today's hour, I looked over about a million vocabulary words and realized that I know none of them, which made me feel very Bill-and-Ted-esque. Then I felt excited, as in: "I'm going to know all these words...some day!" Then I felt motivated to study. Then I felt nerdy for feeling motivated to study. Then I felt excited about feeling nerdy as there's very little opportunity to be nerdy in China; people here prefer eating, and when they're not doing that--drinking. Then I felt nostalgic for MIT, where nerdism is both church and state. Then I felt guilty for living in the past. Then I ate some candy and felt the mini-heartattacks coursing through my teeth. Then I had to go to class.

Oh yea, drawing. Went OK yesterday, time passed a bit faster than the day before, but the results are still very disappointing. It's hard for me to draw what I see instead of what I know. I see a bowl, I know it's made of circles and I have to struggle to draw the squished ellipses instead. Hmm, maybe I should just draw all round objects from head on. "Excuse me sir, can you sit with the top of your head facing me?"