I went to pak chiu cheng yesterday.

Out in the boondocks of campus, the (Sports) Rehabilitation Building features a little used corridor which was converted to a makeshift air rifle range. It only has two lanes, but that was okay since I was the only other person there. The other guy who was in charge of the air rifle clinic that evening turned out to be an awfully nice chap; he grew up on a farm in Southern Illinois and often went hunting for pests (he said raccoons and possums were particuarly troublesome). I finally got to shoot an air rifle; it may be somewhat of a letdown after BMT and all that, but I was pretty happy to get the opportunity to just lash out at something, even if it were just a few innocent patterns of ink on printer paper. A semester’s frustration, taken out with .59 lead pellets with surprising accuracy: my best grouping spread at 25m was about 1″ or so. The workshop guy was impressed, and wished he could do as well. But considering how he’s legally blind without his spectacles, I am quite impressed with his shooting too. He said that shooting was a good way for people like him to train their vision; after a moment I was able to appreciate his point of view.

Two hundred pellets; two hundred popping sighs; two hundred causes for annoyance shot clean through as cleanly as round lead pellets could.

The firearms club on campus also has a very amusing thing that looked like a metal box with dangling utensils but was really a five-piece target. Imagine two soup spoons on the outside, two teaspoons toward the center, and a butter knife right in the middle. Now add the scars of thousands of pepper shots. That’s what I was aiming to bring down. Again. And again. And again. Those damned Platonian cave shadows.

The unfortunately acronymized DCGSAC organized a happy hour today. Despite the dreary weather today there were about thirty chemistry graduate students at the White Horse Inn tonight. It’s quite a feat really, but then again considering how they practically bribed everyone to go with free food, it’s perhaps not too surprising. The hot wings and nachos were absolutely spectacular. The piping hot hot wings were liberally doused in hot sauce whose name was deserved only by the sheer temperature at which it was served; it was more sweet and salty than anything else. But they were incredibly addictive. So were the nachos; the ground beef and beans were so fresh, every bite was a minor epiphany of calorie-laden bliss. I also tried potato skins which were pretty good, and breaded mushrooms which were pretty ordinary, but I loved them all the same.

Mmm, junk food and beer. That's how to get a graduate student to forget dreary days of fighting for attention in class with the Daily Illini, trying to trace a memory leak that disappears when the program is recompiled with debugging flags, listen to Pet Monkey whine yet again (this time about not applying for a partial scholarship for an upcoming conference in the summer, and not having been able to convince more people to show up for the DCGSAC Happy Hour.)

For once, I’m actually not too upset to listen to Pet Monkey go on and on again, especially in the context of my recent ordeal. I’m tired; I don’t want to fight anymore. I’m really sapped, and not to mention terribly distracted from my real purpose in coming here. Forcing myself away from cyberspace jacks (i.e. computer labs) has worked somewhat, but very bleah-ifying.

Gotta go now, a prospective roommate for the summer is planning to visit my place tomorrow. Time for some scrubwork.