things trickle in in the post. a very characteristic piece of minyin mail peered back at me when i opened my mailbox today. she is one person who never looks for an envelope, but simply wraps up her letter or card in a piece of paper, tapes it and drops it in the mailbox. thus it is that i have, in my four years as minyin-mail recipient, encountered formula sheets filled with physics and maths equations, complicated graphs which i, because i am what mr reeves calls a graphophobe, get rid of in a hurry, and then, since she went to med school, articles on molecular virology and anatomy, and today, a discussion from some plant biology book on thalloid liverworts and why they can be considered the "amphibians" of the plant world. the end of the article is cut off, so i don't know why.

things hurtle down from above. i made my way from the mailroom to the dining hall and was reading her letter as i passed under some trees and all of a sudden a large clump of snow exploded all over me. and the woman who swipes cards in the dining hall exclaimed disapprovingly: where have you been! you're all wet! in my four years here at virigina, i have encountered a limited variety of snow, so that i'm still very excited at the different kinds of snow there are. like that stiff wall of snow outside into which i inserted my hand this morning, and carefully withdrew it. nary a flake on me and a firm mould of my hand.