Temporary Exile

Today was an exciting day. First, I gave my 22 page lab on Logo this afternoon and it went over very well. I am still feeling very proud of myself and hope that my students got as much out of it as I did.

Then, I went out for teriyaki and BN browsing with the girls. Nestled in the three-shelf Judaica section, I found a copy of Abraham Joshua Heschel‘s awesome work, The Sabbath peeking out at me from the very edge. Now, I had been meaning to read this for some time now. It just so happens that Shabbos here at school has been feeling less and less like Shabbos. I bought it and have every intention of reading it. I was so pumped on the way home that I burst into my dorm room and sat down on my bed without even turning on the light.

This was rather unfortunate since I hurt my left bum-segment on the amazon.com box containing 3/4 of my big books for the quarter. In this box, I found my two O’Reilly books (XML in a Nutshell and Programming Jabber) and one other, slightly more significant book: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. The wizard book is just one of those books that makes a real CS student a real CS student. The funny thing is that I’m reading it as much for the language it’s taught in (Scheme) as for the real CS content of the book. It just so happens that I’m learning Lisp which means that I’ll also be reading Touretzky’s book for the Common Lisp. That one should be in the mail as we speak.