My writer's forum is finished. It wasn't worth the worrying and the minor nervous breakdown I allowed it to eke out of me, of course. I enjoyed it. A moment about two paragraphs into my story I became incredibly cognizant of my own voice in the otherwise silent room and a short desperation grew up at having to weather this uncomfortable situation for another 20 minutes. But it passed and my reading passed and people responded in a satisfying way. I was slightly put off that my roommate failed to show up. Should I be? It's her birthday, but I went to hers for moral support, and she did say she was going to come. Afterward she was in the room doing homework and acted like she knew about it all along, didn't apologize for not coming. Really, I just like the idea of equal respect exchanged between two people. Some people that never told me they'd attend came up to me in the library and apologized for not being able to make it for various things they had going on. I thought that was pretty excellent of them.

But having that over with, despite having to read an entire book by Wednesday, another 40 pages of articles for tomorrow, and memorize a few Chinese characters, I'm so light.

On my way out of the library tonight, I passed the car of one of the friends I saw in the library who apologized for not coming. His car hasn't been running well lately, so I ripped out a page of my notebook and wrote his car an anonymous get-well note, stuck it under the snow-covered windshield. Things like that make me feel so much better.