The other night around a poolside with friends smoking marijuana and drinking beer into the night I realized that I should spend some time this summer rushing into the fall. Participating in the school I'll be attending, instead of treating this season as a sort of discrete period of total removal or solely-urban immersion. I've chosen this learning experience for years to come, why wait?

Part of the incentive to get started at USC in June (classes start in August) is to explore and understand the immense facilities - high tech language laboratories, libraries packed with expensive publications, olympic swimming pools. For all of these things, I needed a student ID card. And thanks to friendly Jen, after a few hours of bureaucratic persistence today, I was able to secure a card. The USC Card dispenser was from Chicago; after some chatting she let me pose for a wacky ID photo. Scott took a picture. Somehow frightening visage.

Before the paper chase and the search for personal identification, I practiced "PlaceStorming," a Jane McGonigal project. Run around with digital cameras, mobile phones and GPS units, improvising. Acting strange in public, basically, according to instructions distributed and documented through technology. I enjoyed the exercise more than Will, it sounds like - I got off on the serendipitous street interactions with objects and people.

This Place Storming experiment was part of the Vectors initiative - "facilitating new modes of research, artistic creation and cultural investigation which analyze and redirect the role of the technology in an information-driven society." Ihere's an enormous amount of talent and resources pouring through this place, surrounding technology, media and the arts. I'm excited, even eager to see this. But I wonder how to make any of it matter beyond this mindhive? I have a chance to explore electronic play somewhere much more organized than Sierra Leone, for example.

I talked to Seamus last night, he mentioned that he had taken 9 classes in one semester at university, to graduate in two years. I doubt I'm capable of that kind of feat, but he did inspire me to consider loading on more classes. Hah! Stupid ambition.

Meanwhile, I dropped my Treo into a bowl of water. Ho humph. Changes in communication - my mobile phone is acting like an insane thing.

One good change in communications - I was able to get a USC post box. An address I can share with the web, for the first time since Swarthmore. The P.O. box is disguised as a "suite" - a suite spot accepting deliveries of UPS, FedEx, letters, magazines, mix tapes, mix CDs, paintings, games, tiny fish fashioned out of mother of pearl, bundles of clothes from India or paintings. I've put the address on my contact page; send me something!