Fortknight: Two weeks of fun

Sunday, February 12: Apolo Anton Ohno, my favorite Olympian, lost today. I know I shouldn't let it affect me like this, but oh how I wept! My neighbors must have worried about me during that long night, but I doubt an explanation the next morning would have improved my situation.

Saturday, February 18: Apolo just won the bronze medal, which made me happy, but not overjoyed. The Wrens played a show at Terrace Club which made me overjoyed, but not happy. The crowd that turned up for the show was much smaller than crowds that I have seen at Princeton for Sublime cover bands which made me neither happy nor overjoyed.

Tuesday, February 21: Today I played in my first broomball game in nearly a year. I live for this sport and would give my life for team Adaku/Tonya Harding/Free Delwin, the most venerable institution of broomball. For those of you unfamiliar with broomball, it's basically a combination of curling, hockey, household chores, brooming, mopping, hitting girls at full speed and fun. In its season opener, Team ATHFD was carried by 1/3 of its namesake, Delwin Olivan, of whom I once wrote in a scouting report: "Del Wong Something (Year 1, Offense): Del Wong is highly talented with a broom and quick on the ice. He has all the fans asking, 'Is there anything Del WON'T Do?' ."

As Delwin scored the go-ahead goal late in the second half, the answer became clear: the only thing Del won't do is lose.

Wednesday, February 22: After six years of faithful service, my backpack died. I will say a few words in her memory. She was a good backpack; she was blue with honeycomb-padded shoulder straps, as some of you might know. When I was bored in class, I would sometimes squeeze the padded shoulder straps until one day, I broke one of the honeycombs and felt bad. In high school when I first bought her, she came with a hip strap that could be used to take some of the weight of books off my shoulders. I wore the hip strap faithfully, in order to purse my lifelong goal of good posture. Unfortunately, some "friends" of mine did not approve, and one day, I picked up my backpack to find the hip strap buckles gone. This event was followed by a slight increase in popularity and a much more substantial decrease in quality of posture. Still, I feel safe in deeming this an overall Pareto improvement. Amen.

Thursday, February 23: Famished, I brought home some sesame seed chicken from the U2 store. In the Bloomberg kitchen, I set the microwave for 1:30 planning to return 10 minutes later, by which time my meal would have cooled and would be delicious and ready to eat. I returned to a flaming pile of plastic and what once was chicken on fire in the microwave and quickly realized that, with the slip of a finger, 1:30 had become 13:00.

In the small, unventilated kitchen, stood a student preparing grilled cheese. The room smelled strongly of smoke and burning and, not two feet to his right, burned a pile of what now looked like tar. In the face of all this, the student had decided his best option was to continue to make grilled cheese. I gave him a long hard glare and, after tasting a small bite of melted-chicken plastic, threw the dish away.

Saturday, 25 February: Apolo won the gold and bronze medals today! I celebrated with egg salad from Wawa — no microwaving required. Life is good. Tom Knight is an economics major from San Juan Capistrano, California. He can be reached at ttknight@princeton.edu.