About time, I think, for my first foray into the daylog arena, since I have a humorous anecdote to relate.

So. Hence. Therefore. As such, let me start by mentioning that the Konhauser Problemfest, one of the three major annual purely math contests that a lot of Mac students do, was yesterday. To participate we had to be at Olin-Rice by 7:30 this morning so that we could be at St. Olaf College by the start of the contest.

Some of you already know this story. You can shut the hell up. Yeah, you too, you with the derisive laughing.

Anyway, I had set my watch to go off at 6:30 in the morning so I would have time for a long shower, a cursory breakfast and the 15 or 20 minute walk to campus. All three of these things were completed satisfactorily and without incident, the latter in spite of the ass-freezing weather outside at that time in the morning.

I arrived at Olin-Rice at about 7:33 a.m. by my watch. There was no one there and the doors were locked. I began to get uneasy and continued to get cold. I went around to the back of Olin-Rice, where the parking lot is, expecting to find a group of people crowded around or into cars. I found neither people nor cars. The back doors were locked too. I continued to get uneasy and to continue to get cold. Wondering if maybe I had misread the email about the trip, I walked hastily down Macalester Street, scanning the various parking lots for running cars and/or people, and persisting in seeing neither. I started to panic more than a little bit, and to store up curses and furor to heap upon either myself, if I had missed the contest because I didn't know where I was supposed to meet; or the people in charge, if they had left just two minutes after 7:30. This is college! Everyone is late in college! Even the professors! Right?

I walked briskly, still seething at the world in general, across campus and was, at about 7:39 a.m. by my watch, just in front of Old Main when a thought struck me.

My watch has, for several months, been an hour fast.

For some reason this had eluded me when I set my alarm last night. I had been up since 5:30 a.m. No wonder it had been so God damned dark. I rolled my eyes and hissed, "Jeeeesus," and felt every muscle in my body relax. Then I got some hot cocoa at Dunn Bros. It cost exactly $2.

The rest of the story is not terribly impressive, but suffice to say that my team, or perhaps I should say the team of which I was a member, came in third in the Konhauser, behind two of those cursed Carleton teams. I even recouped the money spent on the hot cocoa; we got $15 apiece and a book of problems by the late Mr. Konhauser and a current Macalester professor. And I am damn tired now. Thank you for your time.