Haben sie ein zimmer frei?

...This is one of the main phrases i remember (frequently) from when Nat and i attempted to learn German before our trip to Nürnberg in 2004. That feels like another lifetime, but anyway! It means "Do you have a room free?". Useful for securing lodging.
Um, where am i going with this? Yes. The library. Today i am off to (hopefully) find some learn-at-home German texts, and even better if they come with some audio tapes... Nat has to fulfill a language requirement, and since a lot of important philosophy is in German anyway, we figured we'd build on our previously-acquired rudimentary knowledge thereof. We both have a fairly strong aptitude for language in general, so i hope it goes well (as before). But i will miss our old German tutorial, with its frightening train sound (at the end of some section or another) that sounded an awful lot like someone screaming. We rewound it like fifty times, just to be sure we weren't hearing something fucked up.

(but all i ever learned from love/was how to shoot somebody who outdrew ya) Sorry, random lyric.

Unrelated:
This is how insecure i am (was? still am? feck.): When i was 19 or so, i went to Amoeba with a friend to buy a Magnetic Fields CD. He had dragged me there with specific purpose, and basically found the album himself and shoved it into my hankering hands. We bee-lined to the checkout counter (like i said: we had a purpose!), where some cooler-than-thou Insolent Guy (don't worry, Insolent Guy, i love you anyway) rang me up without a word and handed me my new tunes as i headed for the front door. i looked at the receipt for some weird reason, whereupon i read:

MAGNETIC FIELDS - GET LOST $11.95 (or however much CDs were back in their glorious heyday)

But here's the funny part: i actually thought that this malcontent had been so annoyed by my youth, poseuriffic eye makeup and elaborate nail polish that he had taken the time to actually type into his computer (so that it would show up on the receipt) "GET LOST".

Um, wow.

My cheeks turned dark, flaming russet-hued, and i slunk out to the sidewalk, burning with shame. What's wrong? M____ asked me, and i just shook my head frantically. A few minutes later i actually looked at the jewel case that was indenting lines into my palm due to Dissociative Grip. The name of the album? Get Lost.

Yep, that's right. It was right there in front of me the whole time. Talk about your basket-cases. Ally Sheedy's got nothin' on me!