My little brother is hilarious:

My little brother is hilarious: he complains any time I beat him in a game. Like the whole chess deal where it was 13 games (me) to 3 (him) and he wouldn't play any more after that. And now Halo. Anyway, yeah, just got done playing with him, it was just funny to see him whining like a girl.

So the University of Illinois is a very nice school. Great education, good facilities, an excellent social life, but unfortunately I just don't think it is for me. I just got back today from Champaign-Urbana and I had a lot of fun doing their program and staying in a dorm with these guys, but while I enjoyed myself and thought the school was fine, I don't see myself there. Interestingly, it's the best engineering school I applied to, they're fifth in the nation for Computer Engineering too. But it's just all, to use a term my brother Joe used last night, too intense. The campus is gigantic, you take a bus to get everywhere pretty much, or ride a bike. Walking is alright if you live close enough (like the Illinois street residence hall, for example, which is very close to the engineering quad (which in itself is a very impressive quad)). But 28,000 students and close to ninety percent of them being from Illinois, is just a bit intimidating for me. I'd prefer one of the middle sized schools I applied to like WashU, UVA, or Northwestern.

I did the driving all by myself this time, and without parents. I average 75 mph the entire way, and made it there in three hours and fifty minutes or so, with two stops, and the way home I did in three and a half with no stops. After three four hour driving trips (St. Louis one-way and Illinois both ways) I'm getting used to road trip driving. It's fun, I want to go somewhere this summer (I'm thinking Chicago pretty much) and I think after these trips it'll be more likely because I'll have more trust from the parental units. Yeah, so, I took the tour of the campus, and the engineering tour, then they gave some stupid lecture, then the Xtensions chords came on (an acapella group) and sang, and they rawked! Then we ate dorm food (it wasn't bad that night or the next morning, but I could see how it might get old after a while, kinda like cafeteria food this year). Then we met our hosts and we played a hella lot of RBI Baseball (hell yeah!) and Time Splitters 2 on Gamecube (not bad, I expected it to be better after all the hype Phil gave it). We did other stuff too, but that was the high lights.

So yeah, tomorrow is my spring break in Louisville, I think I'll take pictures if anyone is game, and then Wednesday morning we leave for east coast, I think hit Baltimore that night and eat dinner with Joe, DC the next day with Emily (for some reason I want to say we're actually going to sight see the city, which blows, because it's not like all of us haven't been to DC more than three times and seen all the same repetitive attractions. Then Friday we'll hit up UVA for Days on the Lawn, or Lawn Days, and then I hope come home the next day. Or I guess even that night. I hope I don't do ALL the driving, as fun as it is, because one I can't listen to my cd's the whole way, and two I wanted to at least finish A Heart Breaking Work of Staggering Genius over spring break, and maybe start You Shall Know our Velocity, but I'll be lucky to finish the first one. But if I didn't have to drive, I could get a lot of reading done.

Alright, so, the fam rented One Hour Photo, and I was going to watch it, but then when I came back from taking my brother to his friend's house I found that the rents had already started watching Bourne Identity (great movie, but I wanted to watch One Hour Photo cause I haven't seen it). So I'll hit that up later if I don't fall asleep.

SPo