On Monday I returned from a week in South Carolina — I drove to Clemson on Friday, hung out there until Wednesday, then drove with Jeff to his parents' house in Aiken for Thanksgiving. Andrés and Amy also flew down from Boston for the holiday. It was really cool getting to see so many of my favorite people, although most of my friends in Clemson were busy with schoolwork and so I actually didn't get to spend very much time with anyone. Still, it was a satisfying trip.

On Sunday, Meg and I decided that we needed s'mores. We procured the ingredients and invited a bunch of people over to share in the wonderment. It turned out that nobody came, but that didn't stop us from gorging on marshmallow anyway.

We had some trouble getting the fire started. James Roe had provided a few dry logs, one of which was roughly the size of King Kong's pinky finger (that's about 10 inches in diameter, of course). Even with half a phone book under it as kindling, we couldn't get it to do anything more than smoulder, so we took it outside and poured a glass of water on it and focused our energies on the two smaller logs. Hours passed, our bellies grew full, and our eyes grew heavy. Meg went to bed, and as I was curling up on the couch to sleep, I noticed a flicker of orange from the direction of the porch. I glanced outside and found the giant log burning quite vigorously. I quickly doused it with several glasses of water from the kitchen, then rolled it aside to find that the log had not been the only thing burning. What the hell. We tried for an hour to get it to light and it stubbornly refused to. But when we set it aside and ignore it, then it suddenly decides to burst into flames. Very clever, log.

On Thanksgiving day in Aiken, after the feast, we went for a walk in the woods (it was nice, very very nice). I thought it was so cool that they have that kind of thing just down the street from their house. Wherever I finally end up settling down, I definitely want it to be somewhere with wilderness nearby.

When I first arrived in Clemson, I realized I had left my camera battery charger in Covington. When my battery was new it could survive a week or more without needing to be charged, but it is old and feeble now and can barely make it a day before running out of charge. This would be a problem.

I babied it through my four days in Clemson, taking almost no pictures. On Wednesday, just before we headed to Aiken, Jeff took me to the Wolf Camera store near his house in Greenville. They did have the charger I needed, but it cost $80. As I talked to the salesman I tried to drop hints that it'd be nice if he just let me charge my battery without buying the charger: "Man, that sucks, I really don't need a second charger, I just left mine at home. I've got the battery right here, I just don't have a charger. And I'm going home in a few days so it really doesn't make sense to buy a second charger..."

The salesman just nodded and said, "Yup. It's an expensive charger." Thanks, jerk-ass.

So I bought the charger and used it happily all weekend, and then returned it on Sunday when we returned to Greenville.