02/10/02: Hi there again. It's only been a couple days but I actually have the time to spend here now.

This weekend most of my team got a jump start on our ISPs. We have to do 80 hours of Independent Service Projects. On Saturday we helped out at a local food bank (labeling bags of pretzels with stickers that said "0.5g of fat per serving"), and also spent a few hours at one of the nearby Boys & Girls' Clubs, playing basketball, jump rope, and coloring with kids. Today, Sunday, six of us drove to Baltimore to volunteer with another food bank place. It was a really cool place, run for 20 years by a woman named Bea Gaddy. Last Thanksgiving she and her team of volunteers fed 45,000 people! With 2500 turkeys! Sadly, she passed away last fall, but her daughter has taken the operation over. It was great to know we were helping. I think we were supposed to help hand out food and the like, but we ended up cleaning the house next door that they use for storage and stuff. It was filthy, so we moved things around, straightened and consolidated boxes, swept and mopped. They gave us a nice chocolate cake for our efforts. We hope to volunteer with them again; every Sunday they hand out food and blankets to people living under the bridges and on grates.

So there's sickness going around already...a guy across the street has bronchitis. One of my roommates is on his team and her throat has been hurting. And my throat has been scratchy today. Beware communal living.

Last night we had an exciting night, three vans drove a bunch of us to Bel Air. There's a Target, a cheap cinema, a Barnes & Noble, and some restaurants. We were there for five long hours (none of the movies playing sounded good, so we bummed around the whole time). I bought two books at B&N (both on sale, of course), and some stuff at Target, including a full-length mirror (at last! the whole picture!) and wall-hanging devices.

This afternoon when we were done at the food place, we drove to the Inner Harbor to have some lunch. It was a really neat place. Several complexes of stores, and museums, an aquarium, and some ships in the water. We ate at a pizza restaurant and then spent an hour in that Barnes & Noble, where I bought three more books (still on sale, of course). So once again I can't buy stuff, but I should be okay for awhile.