It was Friday, and it was time to feel good. Last week, outfitted with cushions and clementines, the Penn Women's Center kicked off Feel Good Fridays, a weekly program featuring free public workshops, with a seminar on nutrition led by local health counselor Jillian Bird.

More than anything, this weekend's opening Ivy League games were a chance for the Quakers to rebound from a rough first half of the season. And rebound they did. In the two games this weekend, Penn beat Harvard and Dartmouth on the glass by a combined 88-63.

Amira Fawcett is an Engineering junior from Houston, TX. Her e-mail address is fawcett@dailypennsylvanian.com.

Cars and Philadelphia streets are a match made in hell. The circulation situation is a heart attack waiting to happen. Rush hour traffic glides through city streets as easily as cheesesteaks and scrapple slide down clogged arteries. With SEPTA buses and taxi cabs jostling for room, motorists navigate circuitous routes down potholed streets.

As the number of general thefts in the Penn patrol zone continues to rise, the number of violent crimes has decreased in comparison to this time last year. Crime totals in the area this January remained steady compared to the same month last year, with 60 crimes reported in both 2007 and 2008.

Can a picture of a trash be considered art? Depends on who you ask. Last Friday Fox Leadership hosted "Sustainable by Design," an environmental art gallery that focused on raising awareness of recycling, global warming and ecological architecture. The event coincides with RecycleMania, a 10-week campus-wide initiative to reduce waste.

It ended up as a typical weekend of Ivy League basketball, with everything that entails. Sparse crowds, bad defense, bad offense, terrible officiating and Penn and Princeton winning. How refreshing. With all the forces rippling through the conference - the rise of peers like the Patriot League; coaching transitions at Harvard, Princeton, Brown and Penn; fear of a league stratified by financial aid - it was not unreasonable to think that this season might mark a turning point in a new era, or at least a new balance of power.

What do you mean, you haven't settled on your final project yet? We're already three weeks into the semester! This year, as always, Penn students will launch advertising campaigns, write unique research papers and think of business proposals. More and more classes ask students to apply the knowledge that the classes purport to teach.

Standing lonely on the corner of 36th and Chestnut streets, the 'Big Belly' looks like any other trash can - barring the solar panels on its top. The quirky design serves a purpose. Big Belly is the first solar-powered compacting trash can in Philadelphia.

Last Friday, I walked into class wearing jeans for the first time. My students, accustomed to seeing me in slacks, button down and tie predictably freaked out. "Mr. Brosbe's wearing jeans! Finally!" None of the other male teachers at P.S 33, an elementary school built for 750 students but currently serving 1,050, wear a tie.

The Graduate and Professional Student Assembly has a new agenda and set of priorities for the semester, said Alina Badus, vice chair for communications for GAPSA. One of the biggest policy priorities for the semester is the issue of increasing graduate student stipends at Penn The stipend has been the central issue within the GAPSA Research Council for the last six months, SASgov GAPSA representative Lucas Champollion wrote in an e-mail.

If Friday's Ivy League tipoff against Harvard was any indication, this season is going to be a fight. The Crimson scratched and clawed - and even wrestled - for 40 minutes, but it wasn't enough to give Penn its first home Ivy loss in four years. The Red and Blue used a 20-point effort from Tyler Bernardini and a 15-point, nine-rebound, four-assist performance from Brian Grandieri to hold off Harvard, 73-69.

Though recent changes in the nation's largest student-loan company's lending policy will halt private loans for some students nationwide, most experts say the changes are unlikely to affect Penn students. Sallie Mae, which has about 10 million customers enrolled in a variety of publicly and privately funded loan programs, announced on Jan.

Two rounds into its match against No. 21 Maryland on Saturday at the Palestra, the wrestling team found itself down 9-0. It looked like the rout was on. But the Quakers battled back, tying the game at 16 going into the final match. And in that match, it was all Quakers, as sophomore 125-pounder Rollie Peterkin dominated his opponent 6-0, leading the Quakers to a 19-16 upset win.

One week after suffering a two-point loss to Navy, the women's swim team had extra motivation in its final dual-meet before Ivy Championships. "The goal of the meet was to take the frustration of losing to Navy to fuel our race against West Chester," said co-captain Megan Carlin.

The renovation and development of Penn's campus was the overarching topic at yesterday's Undergraduate Assembly meeting, the time of which was moved up to 1:30 p.m. from the usual 9 p.m. due to the Super Bowl. Attendance was not mandatory for UA members due to the changed time, leading to a significantly shorter meeting than usual.

From Au Bon Pain to Pottruck Fitness Center, a growing number of Penn students are traveling with their e-mail accounts in tow. Few can deny it: The BlackBerry mobile device has earned its place in undergraduate culture at Penn. Au Bon Pain shift supervisor Tamika Deshazor said a majority of customers in the Huntsman Hall cafe approach the cashier with a BlackBerry in hand, and many are rudely preoccupied during their turn to pay.