Day 1

My clipboard, which is the schedule of everything I do while I'm in here, calls today Day -2, because we don't dose until the day after tomorrow, which will be Day 1, but for my purposes, today is Day 1.

Things went completely unlike I said they would. Basically, we have no procedures at all. Check-in involved the paperwork and the entrance search, but that's it! I was in by 1130. Dinner is at 18:29 and snack is at 22:29. Yes, everything runs on a military clock here, and I'm not going to bother translating.

So it looks like I don't actually know how long I'll be here. There are 36 people in the study now, but 8 of those are backups; they're looking for 28. I am not a backup, but I still have to pass all the check-in procedures tomorrow to actually be in. Even then, I'm only guaranteed 12 days. After 12 days, they're sending something like half of the original 28 home and only keeping 14 for the remaining 30 days. I'm still not sure how they're determining who stays and who goes.

So I'm sitting on my bed, half-wishing the people watching TV now had better taste and half-wondering whether I can finish my first book of the trip today. (I have 87 pages left.)

I left my cell phone and my iPod at home. Of all the things to forget. If you would like to drop anything off for me here, (*cough* Mom *cough* ;-) I'm in the violet shirts in the Mountain block. Subject SOH.

And now I think I will read until I fall asleep. It's a hard life.