Things we studied in my junior-year high school english class.

• Self-important, hyper-feminist literature selected by the teacher to compensate for the feelings of hopelessness and conformity caused her solitary, oppressed life.

• "The Awakening," by Kate Chopin.

Three similar acronyms I have heard, two of which are vulgar and one of which is pleasant.

• BFD

• BFE

• BFF
  

I must have missed the first ten.

Saw Ocean's 13 yesterday.

It's good. If you liked Ocean's 11, you'll like this one almost as much, because it's a rewrite of the same movie. Casino heist for revenge. It's a good premise. Then load down the movie with Hollywood superstars, and it's hard to go wrong. This one's a bit more convoluted than 11, and less exciting, but it's not bad.

I need to provide some background before I say anything more about 13, so let's leave that for a moment and talk a bit about 11.

Ocean's 11 was the epitome of cool. The music was cool, the visual stylings were cool, and it starred a bunch of cool guys wearing cool clothes. And they said cool things. It was cool, through and through. And I think it's sort of a tribute to the more golden years of Hollywood.

And I know it's a remake of a Rat Pack movie, but I'm not talking about that at all.

What I'm talking about more is how Ocean's 11 is like an old Fred Astaire movie. Fred Astaire did three things well: sing, dance, and wear a tuxedo. And he did them very well. Thus, in every movie he's in he ends up singing and dancing at some point. And, inexplicably, the plot of the movie always makes it necessary for his character to be wearing a tuxedo the whole time. In several movies he played a performer whose job it was to sing, dance, and wear a tuxedo. It was a recipe for success because he was the best at it, so they wrote his movies around him.

Ocean's 11, I think, is a lot like that... only more so because you bring in a bunch of superstars. George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Don Cheadle, Bernie Mac, etc... any of these guys can (and do) star alone in their own movies. And the first three listed can be pretty cool. Ocean's 11 gives these guys the chance to hang around in sharp-looking clothes and say cool things, just because they're good at it. It's written for them. One would expect that they're hardly even playing characters, as much as they're playing themselves.

Which brings us back to Ocean's 13. The plot doesn't have anything new and worth writing home about. But it's always good to see these guys doing what they do best.

Two things I learned from girls, that contradicted what I might have supposed before.

1. Water is not the appropriate antidote for dry skin. It may seem that if your hands are dry, then water (being wet) would counteract that; apparently, this is not the case. You need lotion instead. Washing your hands repeatedly, or even taking long showers, isn't going to make you moister. At least not for long.

2. Not all girls' clothes have belt loops. If you're a guy, every pair of pants you own has either belt loops or an elastic waistband, so it doesn't totally matter if things fit. You can make any of a number of sizes fit, if you have a belt. But not so with girls' clothes. Apparently, for some things, you have to buy it in just the right size—then if you get any bigger or smaller, it doesn't fit anymore.

You learn something new every day.

The Centennial State.

I write tonight while sitting on my Ikea bed. It's the only piece of furniture in my bedroom, unless you count the cardboard box that I'm using as a nightstand. It's pretty cool.

I'm in Boulder, and it's pretty cool. If you've heard that it's a bit liberal, you're right; if you heard that it's full of hippies, that's true too. It's not a bad thing. Even the lame grocery store near my apartment (King Sooper's) has a huge natural foods section. I tend to prefer the normal processed foods, but I like the social awareness.

I've been at my internship for a week and a day. Some of the stuff I'd heard about it is true, some isn't. There are no cots laid out for people to collapse on when they've worked themselves to exhaustion. It's pretty normal inside. People have desks and offices and soccer teams on the weekends. I expected there to be a chocolate river. But there isn't one.

That said, I came home at 8 pm today and felt like it was getting home early. There's a big difference between this and other jobs, though. At other jobs I've always been counting down the minutes to 5 o'clock. Here, 5 comes and goes and you don't even notice. 6, 7, 8. By the time you look up the sun is going down, and you realize you'll have to pick up where you left off in the morning. I love what I do. What a great job.

This is one of those times where the reward for years of hard work is that you get to start all over again. I gave it everything I had through college to get here, and now I'm at the very bottom of the ladder (an intern... very bottom), looking up. That's cool, though. I've never turned down the challenge before.

Things are good.