...And You'll Have Things You Want to Blog About

So yeah, I recently got back from Madison, WI where I was visiting the University of Wisconsin. It was great--so great, in fact, that I found myself scribbling down things to blog about on the plane ride back (I didn't want to forget them/I'm a nerd). Here's the skinny:

Neurotic Girl

There was this girl there (really cute, actually) who is from a small school in upstate New York. We met at dinner the second night, and then proceeded to sit next to each other at the UW hockey game they took us to (UW lost 1-5...while I kept getting updates such as "big fight!" from Pat). A few things I learned about her: she doesn't like most foods. Pasta is ok, as long as there is no sauce. Most candy is a go. This girl is on the track/XC teams and is skinny as a rail. She's also nuts. After her water bottle was confiscated at the door, she pleaded like a 5th grader who just lost his bouncy ball to the teacher to arrange for a way to pick it up. The old cheesehead working the door was like "yeah honey, I'll meet you right here after the game." While we walked to our seats, she talkeamileaminuteabouthowitwasherfavoritewaterbottle--itcostme$25--anditsaysIheartrunningonit!...who pays $25 for a water bottle?! Matt decides to find new recruits to hang out with.

Kanuk

I don't know if that's really how you spell the slang word for "Canadian," but I'm gonna go with it. One guy was from somewhere in Canada. He was Eastern-European-Canadian, so whatever. He kept talking up the US/Canada hockey game (hahahahahaha) and such. He said "eh" a few times too. He also thought he had game. He did not. We went out dancing one night (it was free--why not?) and he gets this look on his face--clearly on the prowl. So we watch as he goes up and dances with a couple girls, who all turn and walk away. We stifle laughter. Then he starts dancing with the group again, before he starts dancing with the two girl recruits who were there. Matt dances awkwardly alone for a second, then "goes to the bathroom" (to cry). Upon returning...

Our Favorite

...the two girl recruits who were dancing with Kanuk and another guy are talking to each other, doing the whispery-nod-laugh-giggle-thing. Then they stop dancing with Kanuk and friend, then dance with me (both of them!) and say "we've decided you're our favorite!" This is all fine and dandy, as they were really fun girls, but they also wanted me to be their roommate next year at UW. I haven't made a call on where to go yet (and none of us are actually accepted yet...), so we'll...think...about that? Probably not.

Conference-Goers

In our hotel, there were a plethora of college-aged (but fairly young...I'd go freshman/sophomore) people milling about in the lobby carrying matching tote bags. Definitely conference swag. So while we were wondering what they could be here for, I caught a not-so-subtle hint: two rather large girls (boys?...whatever, they "matched") were sucking each other's faces off in the lobby. The GLBTQ conference was in town! I bet we got more free alcohol.

Blinders

Our mini-van got hit by a blind person. That's really all there is to it. Our motor-pool-van driver had stopped in the crosswalk, and a blind person walked right into the driver's side door. The kicker: they had a sighted friend who did nothing.

Those are the more memorable and story-worthy things that went on there. I have more on my list of stuff to blog about, but as I think more about it, they're not really that interesting unless you were there. And this post is long enough as it is.

Currently Listening to: "Animal," by Ke$ha. It's actually kind of musical. Huh.

Not Enough RAM

I enjoy driving. So much so, that I often dream about it. Usually I am saving some pretty girl and whisking her away or running from some creepy evil person/thing, but occasionally I am just driving. Those are often the most frustrating. I don't dream about driving my Saturn, I dream about supercars. The two most recent ones were a Porsche 911 turbo and a Ferrari 458 Italia. The Porsche was pretty cool, except my mind apparently can't handle the acceleration cause it took off like a snail. The top speed was not affected by this though! I outran police in my dream! This lack of oompf became quite frustrating in short order and I am pretty sure it is the reason I woke up.

I thought that was the end of it. Then last night I had another dream. This time I was even driving my dream car. The Ferrari 458. Everything was going great. I was flying off the line, I was feeling good, the car is amazing. Then I tried to go fast and it didn't work. It was like the car only had the first two gears. I woke up immediately, frustrated. Sleep did not come easily the rest of the night.

Matt says he has some stories from his trip to Wisconsin. I hope he puts them up here soon, cause if not, you are stuck with me. I hope they are about cheese.

I Have A Dream

That title was relevant to an idea I had for a post as I was walking home from church this evening. In the intervening time, I have forgotten everything about what I was going to write except the title.

I am currently watching a video that is a little girl crying because she loves Justine Bieber. It is adorable, but a little confusing. Her logic is not the most sound. I am sad to say that I just went to the website Twitter for the first time to see what he may have said about the video. However, when the page loaded I realized that Twitter is as obtuse and confusing as I thought it was and promptly left even more sorry for the regular users of such a pitiful waste of resources. Yeah, the video gets a little old, but you have to watch to the end. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTCm8tdHkfI

I downloaded Chex Quest today. My first interaction with this game was when we got it in a cereal box many years ago. The action was a little intense for us, so Adam, Katelyn and me would all sit around the computer. She hit space to open doors, he used the arrows to move around and I used shift and control to run and shoot. Yes, it took all three of us. I died on the second level today trying to do it myself. The version I downloaded is a little odd. It seems to be mixed with the game Doom. Just little bits and pieces. This is a game about zapping green slimy dudes and eating cereal, so the bits of a real dungeony game seem a little out of place. It still scares the crap out of me when I round a corner and there is a shooting slime at me though.

Back to studying, big day tomorrow, bigger day Thursday I hope!

Notent Notables

Eric did a pretty good job chronicling what I'll call my rescue from recycled air and jet engines, for which I am "chicken paprikash and shots" grateful. Seriously. Despite his outward edginess, Eric has some pretty good moments.

Speaking of good moments, this weekend had a few as well. I made a mental list, which I now expunge here:

Rated M for Mature

Walking down the street to the drug store (I needed to shave, and had no such devices for it), this scrawny little kid in skinny jeans and Weezer glasses with "vintage" tee approaches me and says "Hey man, can you help me? I wanna buy some video games but they're rated mature and they won't sell them to me." I cut him off with a rather offish "I'm on a tight schedule." That was a complete lie, but when you hook a kid up with a mature video game, he's gonna want porn and cigarettes. It's like moose and muffins. So following my tight schedule, I turn into the drug store (right next to the video game place), buy what I need, then for added effect (and because it was on sale) grab a candy bar and stroll out of the store smiling and eating a Snickers. Win.

Karma FTW

After my victory over the emo video-game-player wannabe, karma bites me in the ass when probably the only homeless person in Chapel Hill comes up and asks me for part of my candy bar. I ended up getting out of the situation when someone who looked richer than I walked past.

PUT UP YOUR TRAY TABLE!!!!!

Bruce Willis was the lead flight attendant when I flew from Raleigh to Detroit. He told me that my bag would have to be checked plane-side, with sweat glistening on his head. I'm also sure that had there been any terrorists on my flight, he would've taken care of it using only the little drink napkins.

Maxim-um Exposure

The guy sitting next to me on my flight into Dayton asks me "you don't mind if I read this, do you," pointing to his Maxim magazine, still wrapped in the young-eyes-proof plastic. I am holding a book called "I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell," a comedic book chronicling the sex-driven life of one Tucker Max. (It's hilarious) So I say "look at what I'm holding--go right ahead." So the two of us sat in the back of the plane reading our questionable material. I nearly burst into laughter when I read a story with a lot of poop references. Yes, I'm that immature.

Me Want Luggage!!!

While I sit near the baggage claim waiting for my bag to show up on the carousel, a little boy asks his mom "where do all the bags go?" To which she answers, "back into the tunnel, where the BAGGAGE MONSTER EATS THEM!!!" The kid screams and bolts himself in place. I laugh.

That's all I got.

Currently Listening to: Everyone in my apartment/figure skating music. The second American guy just screwed up. Twice. The Debbie-downer announcers just groaned for 2 minutes straight.

Waste of Time

This afternoon I went to Spring ICE. I really did not want to. Not only does this abomination have ice in the name, I am sick of ice, but it is a career expo that always proves to be pointless for engineers. Today was no exception. The first person I saw when I got there was my friend Meagan. First words out of her mouth: "leave now!" I didn't listen sadly. I was there for a while. I lost track of time in the abyss of Millet Hall. I didn't even talk to anyone. All the employers I was going to talk to were either not hiring, or did not show up. I dropped my impeccable resume into 3 boxes that were placed for the absentees. I also dropped 1 resume into a box for a company that I have no idea what they do. All I know about this place is that they were supposed to at Spring ICE, they were not at Spring ICE, and they had Toledo in their name. Good enough.

Despite My Best Efforts, Matt is Home

Matt has been gone for a while. I don't know when he left, all I know is that he missed my(his) volleyball game last Thursday. He did not come home on time because Atlanta got an inch of snow. This shuts down the city. The only things that were still operational were the limo drivers and blogger (though I hear some chick named Jodi wanted to be operational wink wink).

Anyway, Matt has no thoughts for the well-being of his friends and insisted that we not leave him at the airport over night. He flew into Dayton around 9. Courtney, tired of his whining, decided we needed to pick him up. I would have liked to not. I made my Facebook status "Going for a drive." my one response? "Bad idea." And it was, but no one died. Crap, I just ruined the ending.

Long story short, things went great for about 100 miles, then things started going sideways. The no longer going straight happened at a relatively high rate of speed, as the road we were on was pretty clear. What I could not tell from inside the car was that everything was starting to melt and basically become slick as a slushy road. But yeah, I was driving if I didn't make that clear, I corrected the off-kilter-ness like three times. I am not talking about like oh, we are a little off center, this was the car insisting on spinning and me reminding it who was actually in charge. I would guess that it was about 30 degrees off center. Well it turned out that the car had an ally in its suicidal mission and we ended up doing a 3/4 spin and going tail first into a large bank of snow...on the other side of the road.

The underside of Courtney's car is completely made of plastic. Thus, there are no places to attach a means of pulling. This fact thwarted the first valiant attempt at our rescue. Luckily, this part of Ohio is almost exclusively populated by crazy rednecks who love joy-riding in terrible weather conditions. While we were trying to phone a tow company, a big white lifted truck came flying by, slammed on the brakes, did a burnout turn, came flying back, and skidded to a stop in front of the car. At this point I knew we were saved...either that or we were about to be killed by maniacs. Two guys in carharts jumped out of the truck and in response to my saying there was not much to tie on to said "there's always SOMETHIN to hook onto!" After some digging under the car, they got a rope attached to "somethin" and pulled us out like nothing.

That's the end of my story. It was really exciting, no?

Marshmallow World

It's hard to beleive (well, not actually) that it's blizzarding in Ohio, while it's balmy and drizzly here in Chapel Hill. I seriously think that UNC is receiving an unfair advantage in my grad school search, but I'm not complaining as long as the food stays free. I'm leaving for the airport in about 30 minutes, so until then, I'll write a tad. That guy from the other day is still here, and it's amazing how much you can learn about a person from a few hours (?) in realtive silence with you, some guy, and two computers. And again, if you're reading over my shoulder dude, please stop, and "hi!"

Things I know about this guy: he's a hunt-'n-peck'er, and by the sounds of it, he's writing something rather lengthy. It'll take him another 2 days at least. Also, he might be near-deaf, since everytime he gets a text message, his phone YELLS "message received!" One time I jumped. He's also a limo driver, since he was calling around to all kinds of places the other day saying that he was available to take people to and from various hotels to the UNC basketball game. I'm pretty sure he said his name was Roger...but I'm probably wrong.

Anyway, the Olympics are awesome. I watched the end of the nordic combined yesterday and at the end my heart was pounding...I can only imagine what those guys were going through. I like to ski downhill, not cross-country. (ps: another pet-peeve is when one of the keyboard supports is broken so the keyboard is horizontal, not at a slight angle) Moguls are fun to watch too, and I was kinda happy that Canadian guy could pull out a win. In other news, the only thing I got out of ice dancing was that the theme from Love Actually is really good. Too bad you can't download it on iTunes. Seriously.

Well, I'm going to go sit in the lobby and try to look like I belong there until my ride to the airport shows up. Keep your fingers crossed that I can get home!

Currently Listening to: Mr. Hunt-'n-Peck sliding the mouse around on the table. I wouldn't hold my breath for a grammy.

Human Target

Christopher Chance just may be my new favorite person. He has mad skills, a dashing personality, kicks ass, has a boyish fascination with aspects of his job that I would also love, and occasionally reminds me of me. It helps that the show he is the headline of is pretty sweet. I am currently watching my third straight episode. I plan on sitting here until I finish them all.

In other news, I am craving Crazy Bread like no ones business...except it is my business...whatever.

Carolina in My Mind

So I'm in North Carolina visitng UNC for grad school. It's been great, and now I get to stay an extra two days!!!

My flight through Atlanta was cancelled due to weather, and the next flight isn't until Monday afternoon. It's cool though--I get to keep on staying at the super awesome hotel with 16 pillows to myself, and we're going out to night to watch the UNC basketball game at a bar downtown which I've heard is a ton of fun. Tomorrow I'll probably lounge about and watch the Olympics (yeah curling!!) then I'm headed out to dinner with another group of visiting students. I feel like UNC is going to receive an unfair advantage in this whole decision-making process.

Aside from the unfortunate business of being stuck somewhere warm for nearly a week, I've had a great visit. Had a great talk with a few people during interviews, definitely made some good impressions, had dinner at a guy's house who used to own a tiger (!) and says "well, they don't make for good pets." Really?

In other news, I'm sitting here blogging in the business center of this hotel, there's one other computer and they guy using it can probably read this. Hey dude! Anyway, I only wish I'd brought some running shorts because it's really nice outside and Pat and I need to start our half marathon training.

There are more stories, I'm sure, but I'll think about them on the way home in a couple days!

Currently Listening to: White noise from the vent behind me.

I get all my music from car commercials

A few weeks ago I saw The Heavy perform How You Like Me Now on Letterman. I liked the song but it didn't scream go out and download me. A few days ago I saw a Kia commercial that featured the song and I downloaded it a few hours later.

I like to watch car commercials. They keep me informed about the market. They showcase the latest gadgets and styling. They also often are joined by excellent bands playing some killer music. I want to find out what song is in the Cadillac commercial that has been playing a lot lately.

Ford has some of the best music accompanying their commercials. The Flex had a commercial that had a song called The Funeral by Band of Horses that was perfect for the vibe of the ad and also a pretty fantastic piece of music. Most recently I got the song Major Tom from a Lincoln MKZ commercial. Its a cover-ish rendition of a David Bowie song done by Shiny Toy Guns. Excellent.

I need to go watch more TV so I know what music to listen to.

Music right now: Natalie's Rap just finished and Colorblind by Counting Crows started.

Unititled

When we were little and our home computer was running Windows 95, paint was one of the coolest things on it. Adam(older brother) would make things (I don't know what to call them, they are not really paintings or drawings, so I guess they are just artistic files) and the default file name would be untitled. He seemed to think it was creative to leave the untitled and put a number after it. I think he got into double digits.

Other fun and exciting programs that old Packard Bell ran included Spiderman Cartoon Maker. None of us had ever watched the cartoons or read the comics, so we knew who spider-man was and that was it. The ability to put in voice over commentary was sadly underutilized and often included such phrases as "I've got you now man without a shirt!" Presumably said man had a sinister name and a whole persona, but we did not care. A favorite activity was to see who could make the longest cartoon. This involved making a scene, making things happen, then adding a new scene and repeating. I can not express in words how depressing it was to spend hours on something and then have it run through much faster than you expected, taking mere seconds, maybe a minute.

Jumping ahead 14 years, I now have Windows 7 and write myself pointless sticky notes cause I think they are neat.

I would like to commend Matt and Matt. I have had an uneventful week (I only post when I should be doing homework [I have some that is due in 11 hours, at least 8 of which are previously dedicated to sleep]) so I have not posted in days and they have really stepped up. I think it has been months since there have been 3 posts between two of mine. Bravo.

In domestic news, Courtney has started a quotes section on her Facebook page devoted to things I say to the TV. The brightest part of this is that she had to delete some of the crap quotes she had in there to make room. My latest entry: "Oh Alton, peppers don't have teeth."

What show? Good guess! I'm out!

Places I'm Bruised

Went sledding today during our snow day! It was great: Ben, Pat, Emma, Nicole, and Mike were there. Matt ditched out because of his capstone, but looking at what he did today, he totally could've come. Friend fail. Anyway, the sledding was great. I went down the hill on a sled, garbage bags, a lunch tray in a garbage bag...I'd have to say that the sled worked really well. I'm a fan of riding it luge-style. Unfortunately, I did not escape unscathed:

Lower back is sore/red

Right thigh is sore/bruising(?)

Legs are sore

Bump behind my left ear.

The bump on my head is actually from Pat nailing me with an icy snowball from about 2 feet away. It hurt like a mother but we're even since I accidentally hit him in the nuts about 3 or 4 weeks ago.

I hope Oxford is coated in ice tomorrow.

Currently Listening to: Pat and Scotty banter about "Rat Race" in the living room. The box says it's "possibly the funniest movie ever." It certainly isn't.

SNOW DAY!!!

Matt Smola had very little masculinity to begin with - so his post below bears no relevance in that respect.

Today was a snow day and a great one at that. In fact it was the first "snow day" that worked in my favor in the last four years. Usually I am always stuck with "all classes before 10AM and after 4PM are canceled." Luckily I always had my classes during those times. I was awoken by a text by my friend Carrie who was pissed that our prof had canceled ITS 365 due to being snowed in because she had stayed up all night down the homework. I laughed rolled over and went back to sleep on and off until like 1:00PM (wasted day? or great success) I got up to find that all classes 2:15 or after were canceled and the university would close at 4PM. WIN! No Italian. I got up, moved around for a bit. Tried to do work. Fell back asleep from 3-5:30PM. Opps! Went to B-Dubs for dinner with Nathan and Audree and then helped a very drunk Adam get home. I finally worked up the energy to do some work for Capstone (which is kind of cramping my snow day) but the drunken antics of Adam are entertaing me. He tried to use his fingers wrapped around the bottom of my door to force it open for a good 10 min and finght the finger eating monster (a book I placed on top of his fingers) in order to save me. He then broke in to my room, hid under the desk and pretended I couldn't see or hear him while I was sitting at my desk - oh life.
Just found out class is on for tomorrow. Back to work I guess since I've got to turn this stuff in (woomp woomp)

Who Ever Thought to Put Butter in Milk?

I think by the end of this post I will have neither gained nor lost any sense of masculinity. It all evens out. I think.

So today I woke up and decided it would be scone day. For the non-sentimentalists, skip the rest of this paragraph. Anyway, I had often made scones with my great-grandmother (bless her pointed heart, she's 99 years old!) when I'd go visit. I was formally trained in the 5th grade when I had to bring in "ethnic" food for a cultural project or something. The scones, which are small biscuit-like treats, are supposed to go with tea; the tea was hardly touched, the scones went fast. My great-grandmother's recipe (which I choose to believe was handed down through generations of Scots and later, Scottish-Americans) calls for buttermilk (wtf is buttermilk anyway?) and I just happened to have some sitting around (seriously). So I took to kitchen and griddled up some scones. It smelled like my youth, which was apparently buttermilk-y. Last thing: my family pronounces "scone" like "skahn," as if it rhymes with con or John. According to Wikipedia, 99% of legit Scots say it this way. That's good enough for me.

Right, so I made biscuits. I then turned my eyes to Ben's bunch of browning bananas. Knowing that like my great-grandmother, Ben wouldn't eat his bananas with much brown on them (sorry to call you out Ben, do you even read this?), I asked if I could use them to make banana bread. Delighting in the opportunity to see his bananas go from rags-to-riches, he donated them to the cause. So I made banana nut bread. It is tasty. If you want some, send check or money order.

As if biscuits and bread weren't enough, I made beef stroganoff for dinner. I felt a little more manly after that, mainly because I had raw beef juice on my hands, as if I had just wrangled a cow into a small pot. Leaving the meat to cook, I turned to Pat and asked him the name of our intramural hockey team. You read correctly: I'm playing on an intramural hockey team (The Fighting Findorffs), and will likely be soundly beaten (and possibly outscored) at each game. But it's hockey! So that should be fun.

Other things of interest: the laundry at Heritage Commons is free right now (as in doesn't cost money, score!), we're supposed to wake up in the morning and find ourselves encased in ice, GBD shirt sales are steadily coming in, and I found a crinkled-up $5 bill in my pocket from when I was in Michigan. That's all I've got for now.

Currently Listening to: Mars, the Bringer of War, by The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. It's like Gladiator meets the Death Star blowing up all over Pirates of the Caribbean.

I FAIL!

So I promise I'm here. I even check the blog a lot and think about posting and then get distracted by a shiny object and well the rest is history...woomp woomp

What Time Is It?

So I just made a post. And Matt just made a post. And mine says 4:00 and his said 5:15. It is 12:16 right now. Does Google just make up its own time?

Yes Officer, You're Hilarious

A couple things: first, welcome to new blog reader Kim Smola. Second,....I forget. Not important.

Went to Eric's last night for "Eric's Supercalifragalistic Birth-tastic Bonanza of Wonders." He did not come up with the title. It was fun, had some beer, Andy made a cake (which was tasty)...oh and it SNOWED. A LOT. But very wet snow so when we got there we were soaked. Had fun, yadda yadda...but the party sort of broke up when we ran out of beer. Or at least that's when I left. But not before getting into a snowball fight with and around Eric's house. I say "with" because I tried on many occasions to throw the snowball into the front door. I was successful a number of times and apparently sent one sailing into the kitchen (at the back of the house) where it nearly hit Ben.

So Sam and I decide that sledding would be an appropriate activity. Turns out we weren't the only ones. Met two guys named Sam and Ian at Peffer Park around...2am? Went down a few times, I flipped and rolled like I usually end up doing, but it was fun.

Then we were hungry. Options: McDonald's, and Oxford Diner. We picked the farthest one, so Sam drove us, in a blizzard. We made it nearly all the way there without getting stuck, only to get hung up on the curb going into the Diner. Fortunately, the host/waiter/shift manager/owner/cook came out help push us into the parking lot. Talk about bringing in business. So we sat down and then a cop walks in and says "Man, if this snow keeps up, it won't come down!" Think about it.

So to give a brief review of Oxford Diner: EXCELLENT. I got three (huge!) sausage links, scrambled eggs, hashbrowns, and two chocolate chip pancakes for FIVE DOLLARS! And bottomless hot chocolate too! I will be returning there soon.

Campus was beautiful this morning, but Hueston Woods was even prettier. Went out with Sam, Andy, and Erin to take pictures/hike around. It was a great way to start the day.

Currently Listening to: Black Balloon by The Goo Goo Dolls

Music

I am liking some strange music lately. Owl City is still up there on the list, but a few other names have come into view. Shiny Toy Guns is a new favorite. They have an almost club beat in some of their songs, but they are not a one trick show. Variety keeps them interesting. Another band I have recently become aware of is the Crystal Method. They are pretty crazy. I don't really know how to describe it, very clubby and electronic but still enjoyable.

The way I discover my music is really more interesting than the music itself I think. Sure the music is decent, but there are thousands of bands out there, a few of them are bound to make something tolerable to spew out your speakers. Anyway, I found Shiny Toy Guns by watching a Lincoln commercial that featured their song Major Tom. Crystal Method wrote the theme for one of my favorite shows, Bones.

This is a boring post. My new computer rocks. I got me a hundred gigabytes of RAM, I never feed trolls and I don't read spam. I'm down with Bill Gates, call 'im money for short, I phone him up at home and I make him do my tech support. Its all about the Pentiums what! What!

'rents coming on the morrow. Should be a good time.

I gotta ax 'em

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dear Eric's Mother (who I'm sure is kind, sweet, and pure of heart),

I apologize for using the s-word in my last post, which was a tad angsty.

Sort-of Sincerely,

Matt

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Good to hear about the 'pooter, Eric. Windows 7 is fun!

Speaking of fun, you should look 'em up on iTunes, or whatever channels you use to obtain music. Not as good as Owl City, but hey, you know. Speaking of speaking of fun, you know what's not fun? Well, many things. In particular, I'm thinking of SPN202. I have an exam tomorrow and have studied about 20 minutes for it. "Heck yeah" for senior year! Golly!

This semester is ridiculous. I'm currently only registered for 10 credit hours. What's that you say? Housing will swoop in and throw you out on the streets without full time status? Well, we'll see. Until I get back into CHM760 (about as much fun as it sounds...oh look, that word again--wowzers!), I'll be part-timin' it I guess. I went to class tonight, which was odd since I haven't been to class since last Wednesday. Gone for two days + no class Mondays = this semester is ridiculous. I've also spent a large portion of my free time playing Zelda (I'm not as awful the second time around, Eric) or monkeying with stuff on the computer.

I got in to Michigan! Eric's birthday is this weekend! There's an avocado on my desk!

Currently Listening to: Lip Gloss by Lil' Mama

WINDOWS 7 HELL YEAH!!!

Matt, get the stick out of your ass, this blog is amazing and so are you. I'm not done with you yet though...

So over the weekend my computer bit the dust. Its a little sad. I did grow rather fond of the three and a half year old Gateway. But, as I was told by the help at Best Buy, it was a Gateway and could not be expected to last much longer. Long story short, I got a new one for about half what the old one would have cost to fix. And it is hella sweet...Back to the long version...

I went to Wal-Mart this afternoon and looked at what they had. I found one that looked pretty decent and fit my two search criteria. These were cheap and Windows 7. I took a picture of the description tag and convinced Courtney to drive me to Hamilton to go to Best Buy. It was a good decision. After wandering around comparing for a little while, I happened upon a system that had no tag. The guy looked up the specs on it and said he thought it would be around $550. He ran the price and found that it was actually two hundred less than that. After searching in vain for some reason that it should be so cheap he settled on it having less than stellar graphics capabilities and no camera. I was already sold. As it turned out, the one I got looked exactly like the one I saw at Wal-Mart, only it was better and cheaper. The only down side for me is that I was hoping to find a small one. This is a giant. 15.6" widescreen, but it is an energystar product.

Now Matt, watch the language. Apparently my mother does still come on here from time to time. That's all, keep up the good work.

Currently listening to: Nothing, I don't have any music yet.

Monday

So I've been wanting to blog for a few days now, but have been torn on what to write. The only people who give me feedback usually say "hey your blog posts are boring," or "yours are kinda stupid." Thus the hem-hawing on what to scribble on this thing. Then I realize that the whole venture is kind of stupid and I trust there are some people out there who don't give a shit anyway.

Right. So I got back from beautiful Ann Arbor, MI on Saturday night. Turns out it's a nice town, if you can ignore the 5-degree weather. I tend to consider myself rather tolerant of cold (or even sub-zero) temperatures, but that was annoying nonetheless. I was there for a grad school interview, saw their awesome science facilities that made everyone around me drool...myself included. Saw a lady bite it as I was coming out of my first interview...my student host helped her up and then made fun of her rather loudly as she followed right behind us.

In other news, big plans for dinner this week: salsa chicken, beef stroganoff, garlic chicken, chicken tenders...poultry is the highlight, as you can see. Best part: 3/4 are crock-potable. If you want a recipe, google it, that's probably what I did.

In other other news, ran into a professor at Michigan who gave me some insight on my recent (and unblogged) protein structure problems, was dropped from a class because the registrar screwed up, and am working on a couple commercials for the RedHawk Hunt (voiced by none other than Pat Murray). That's all I got.

Currently listening to: Grace Kelly by Mika