«  Sat.09.02.2000  » 9:21 pm EDT        76°F (24°C) in Ann Arbor This has been a crazy last few days. I finally completed my late-withdrawal petition Thursday, and took that into Hosford's office. Essentially, I hammered the points I'd made in my letter to Prof. Howard (and attached a copy of that same letter), and asked him to be a bit more supportive of my academic career here. He's one of those types I talked about in last Monday's update; that is, he seems to really enjoy riding the asses of any fuck-ups. Hopefully he'll get a clue. After that, I spent about the next five hours meeting my social mentees, first at Stucchi's, then at Elbel Field. I really don't know why they felt the need to have us run around doing all sorts of physical activity on such a hot day, but other than the need for an icy shower upon my return to Baits, it was a lot of fun. Yesterday was the really crazy day. I got up later than I wanted to, and ended up having to really move it through the shower and lunch before embarking on 11 hours of work. The first five hours on Northwood weren't bad; it was the latter part of the night full-time run that really got me. I drove 710's ass off, doing at least 30 most everywhere, and probably 40 or so on Fuller. (I don't normally exceed speed limits at all when driving a bus, but I got more and more tired as the night went on.) Once I got a ride back up to Baits from Nym, it was right to my five hours of sleep, so I could be up at 7:30 this morning to work some more. I started today with a charter, taking the football team from its hotel to Michigan Stadium, and followed that up with what we call "Go Blue" charters -- essentially football game day Bursley-Baits trips. After my second pre-game "Go Blue" trip, it was down to the game; I got to my seat just as the Michigan Marching Band had left the field after its pregame show. I worked on my sunburn during a 42-7 Michigan victory over Bowling Green, although I had to leave early in the fourth quarter when it was 28-0 to do some post-game "Go Blue" trips. Four of those later, Nym picked me up again -- I owe you a few, Nym -- and it was off to Meijer to pick up a few things that Jess, Nym's girlfriend, needed. Three hours later, after dinner, a long nap (sleepiness brought on by sunburn and dinner), and a nice cold shower to cool off, I sit here making this update. Tomorrow, I have to get up reasonably early; my Social Mentorship group is attending a program at Palmer Field at noon. After that, I think I'm going to crawl into a hole until late Monday night.