Every time I go home, I forget. But not this time. This time every article of clothing I have that is designed to keep me warm is coming home with me. I grow spoiled by this luxurious "functional" city heating system. I must now go home and face the truth. And the truth is layers. Lots and lots of layers. Onward!
Wow. Looks like I missed like a whole month. Oops. Well, it's the holidays now, I still don't have a co-op job lined up, and it's finals week. I have to go study and try to get interviews.
IF MY EYES DO NOT DECEIVE ME THE RED SOX JUST WON THE WORLD SERIES.
Now I will sit by while Boston burns to the ground. the apocalypse is upon us.
Ortiz throws out Suppan at third! Defensive play of the game? I think so.
And while pedro didn't get a hit, he did walk, maybe that prediction was half right? Never mind.
Sox in 4? c'mon guys, just one more...
I don't know how many people have thought of this yet, but when the Red Sox go to take on the National League champions, let's not forget that there is one very significant rule we should all be worried about. The DH. They don't have them in the national league, which means that for games 3,4, and 5 (in an NL park, you play by NL rules) David Ortiz would play only as a pinch hitter. I don't know how the Red Sox will handle it, but I would like to see the pitchers taking batting practice ASAP.
I LOVE BOSTON AND I LOVE THE RED SOX! JOHNNY DAMON HAS RISEN!
Theory: Francona put Pedro in one last time so he could hear the "who's your daddy" chant one more time before finishing up pounding them into the ground.
WHO'S YOUR DADDY, NEW YORK?
buddy icon to commemorate cheaters everywhere:
This is what playoff baseball is all about. David Ortiz has achieved "god" status, our bullpen is completely exhausted, the only starting pitcher rested well enough to start today's game has to wear an ankle brace and a special shoe, and we've watched more than 15 hours of baseball in three days.
And at the very least, we won't have to watch the Yankees celebrate here in Boston. I, personally, am holding out for more.
Back to the Bronx!
Of course, there couldn't be a worse week for midterms to be going on. *sigh* Well, back to work with me, I'd hate to have to do it after the game.
Bend.com - Press Release "Teachers' T-shirts bring Bush speech ouster": News and information from Bend, Oregon
It's exactly this sort of thing that worries me about where we're headed. Apparently Bush is against civil liberties. Who knew? Of course, Kerry isn't much better, but at least he could fool people into thinking he would protect civil liberties.
I hate having to watch two moderates run against each other for president when what we really need is an extremist. If we would either leave the rest of the world alone, mind our own business and let them mind theirs, things would work out much better overall. Or if we feel like staying involved in the world, we could do things like "cooperate with the UN" and "not bomb innocent people."
OK, I promise no more politics in this space until after election day.
WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THE RED SOX THAT BEAT ANAHEIM?
Why can't anybody stop the Yankees? Why can't the offense ever come through when the pitching is good? Why can't the pitching ever come through when the offense is good? Why can't anybody come through when it really matters??? It's 9-6 New York. No, sorry, 11-6, New York, Sierra just tripled in two more runs. Ugh.
It is an elusive creature. This "time off equal to the length of a normal work week" is not something that can be wrestled down very often, but Ethan and myself have managed it, due to having no classes Fridays and Tuesdays, and Monday being a holiday. Incidentally, it's also going to create a 2-day week. :-p
So what have I done with all this freedom, you ask? Listen, my children, and you shall hear. On Friday, I had to wake up at the ungodly hour of 10:15 to do another Psych experiment, which this time (thankfully)didn't go the whole hour. Afterward, I forget exactly what I did, but I imagine it involves eating lunch. Yes, I'm fairly certain lunch was involved. I then just hung out in the room doing nothing till Lauren got out of work at 6 and I got to see her. And it was good.
On Saturday, Dave came up to visit and enjoy the recreational paradise of Boston in the midafternoon. He, Josh, and myself hit up "Lucky Strike Lanes" at Jillian's and quickly found that a monopoly on the local bowling scene is a very bad thing. While the alley itself was quite nice They had a bar and couches and even screens at the end of the alleys. This place charged 4.50 a game and 3.50 for shoes. We played one game and ended up paying eight bucks for it. Screw that. We left after one game and decided pool would be much cheaper back at Northeastern for $3 per hour, opposed to Jillian's $10 per hour. So we went back to good old NU and played pool.
Lately I've been getting back into good old Final Fantasy 3 on the Super Nintendo. Good stuff. I've found that I'm much better at Blitzes than I used to be. I can execute Fire Dance now nearly 100% of the time. I think I can attribute this mostly to the fact that the first few times I played it, I had never seriously played a fighting game before. Button combos are a little more familiar to me now.
I'd love to keep talking, but... no, I lied. I really don't feel like talking anymore. Lauren and I have started a bit of a competition to see who can get a six pack first and I have to do my hundred crunches now. Let the games begin!
It's really pitiful, I think. Sometimes I wonder if my brain absorbed so much information through high school that it just decided that if I was going to continue down the academic path, it just wouldn't have room to remember the other details. It would have been nice if my brain had warned me of this, I would have prepared for it a little sooner. Maybe I'm just too used to having nothing important to think about and remember besides school. Bah. Enough with the sentiments. Life is about the here and the now.
And let's face it: the red sox are NOW in the ALDS, which is HERE in Boston on Friday (and maybe Saturday) and it's going to be awesome! We're going to believe again, we're going to lay out the palm leaves on the road when the Red Sox march triumphantly into Boston after two games in Anaheim, regardless of their outcome. It won't matter if they lose the first two, salvation will be at hand anyway. What we all fail to realize is that this is the part where the Sox get nailed to a tree and die, only to be reborn in the spring. Perhaps the phoenix would have been a better metaphor. Meh.
Right, I've covered past and future now in my attempt to find something current to slake your thirst for Nathan. Third time's the charm. Today, (alright, a good start already) my classes were more boring than usual. We're talking about something that's boring enough to sedate an angry rhinocerous on an average day. Anyway, it was all I could do for the first three to keep my head from a sploding. Sadly, Ethan can tell you this was too lofty a goal to expect through Computer Organization. Honestly, who can say that ending a day of four classes with 100 minutes of assembly language is any better than physical torture?
Anyway, after I managed to reassemble my head, I had to go to a Psychology experiment. Part of the Psych 101 curriculum requires that all Psych 101 students have to do 4 "hours" of service as test subjects to "experience what research is like first hand." This is quite possibly the most obvious load of bull fed to a group of people since somebody said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. But I digress. At 5 o'clock, I sat in the ever-sacred psychology department black chairs and waited for my experimenter to guide me to my post. Now most of the experiments do not take a full hour. In fact, most don't go longer than 20 minutes because the experimenters are being forced to perform the experiments just as we are being forced to take part in them. However, my luck would put me in an experiment that would take the whole hour. I won't bore you with the details. Suffice to say that our randomly assembled group of guinea pigs suffered a terrible injustice this day.
After the experiment, I found to my delight that we'd be able to have a reunion of sorts of our dinner club from last year, as, in an amazing alignment of schedules and availability, Lauren, Melissa, Nora, Tellef, Ethan, and myself all had dinner together at Stetson East. *insert awe* Ah, memories.
Afterward, I took Lauren out for ice cream, but that's not for a public journal to know any details about. No siree.
Mount St. Helens VolcanoCam - Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument
That's right folks, the Mount St. Helens VolcanoCam is back on line! I assume this means it's going to blow soon.
Hello again, fair reader(s). The last few days have been pretty busy, so naturally you got no blog post. I'm sure you're all distraught about that.
On Friday, Bailey arrived to visit Ethan. That night, Tellef, Lauren, Pat, Nora, Ken, and I went to see Shaun of the Dead. I liked it, I recommend it to anybody who can stand a little gore, not just fans of zombie movies. And the Red Sox lost. I was not happy about that.
And now, the good part: the fish saga. It all started a week or two ago, when Lauren and Melissa decided they wanted some fish for their room. They already had a tank and an aerator, so they went out and bought some fish and threw them in there. The fish, of course, died, since they didn't know they were supposed to float the bag in the water to get the fish used to the temperature, they didn't know you had to have a filter for the water or that the water was supposed to be filtered before you put the fish in it.
So, yesterday, Lauren and I headed back to the fish store to get more fish and, this time, the necessary supplies. We got a filter and Lauren picked out two Barbs. We brought them all the way back to Northeastern, set up the filter, and floated the bag while we went out to eat and then saw Napoleon Dynamite (also a highly recommended movie) with Ethan, Bailey, and Tellef. When we got back, it was time for the moment of truth: dumping the fish into the tank. We dumped them in, and they did fine. Now the only problem is getting them to eat.... well, hopefully if they get hungry enough, they'll figure out that the flakes are food. Stupid fish. And the Red Sox won.
Today, they Red Sox play again in about half an hour, the rubber game of the series against the Yankees. I should go study now so when they play I can give the game my full attention. Peace.
I'm bored out of my mind today, so naturally I turn to the internet. I would be searching for co-op jobs, but the system hasn't "released" me yet, so it refuses to let me even look at the job listings. No, instead we've a second journal entry for the day.
Yesterday was like one giant schedule conflict for the entire world, so I'm going to just start throwing everything down that happened.
The first big event yesterday was a wedding. My cousin Michael got married, so I went down to Rhode Island and watched. My dad did the ceremony, and almost nobody cried. It was wonderful, except that I didn't get to have any of the food because I had to get back into Boston for...
The next thing that was going on yesterday, They Might be Giants hitting Boston. Avalon, particularly. Except instead of hitting it, they were in it, playing songs. I met Lauren, Sharon, Dave, Reid, and Ethan there, and we, in true TMBG fashion, stood in the crowd and listened. Sometimes we sorta bobbed our heads or clapped or something. Fortunately, they're a very entertaining band, and the urge to dance or move around can't overpower the need to see everything that goes on onstage for fear that you might miss something hilarious. So nobody really danced at this concert, but it was still awesome. As promised, they played a song specifically for the venue (titled *surprise!*"Avalon") and they also played a bunch of other really awesome songs and you had to be there to appreciate it. Shame on all you who weren't there. Their opening accordianist, Corn Mo, was pretty entertaining, too. He came back out and played Particle Man with John Linnell. I must admit that I had never seen two accordianists on one stage at the same time until last night.
Let's not forget that yesterday was also Lauren's birthday! I gave her two DVDs (Love Actually and Edward Scissorhands), two Celine CDs (thanks goes out to Sharon for finding them), and one CD I burned myself. She got a Palm Tungsten from her Dad, (which I haven't seen yet (the palm tungsten, not her dad)), a ring from her mom, and some other stuff that I'm sure she'd love to tell you all about. It's great to see her have a good time and forget all her worries, even if it's only for one day.
Let's also not forget that all this went on as the remnants of Hurricane Ivan passed over us and as the Red Sox were busy getting pummelled by the Yankees. Incidentally, the Red Sox got pummelled by the Yankees again today.
Oh, and Tellef, sent by Nora into a room full of rather full-figured females, was saved by Pat from the most frightening situation he has experienced in his time on this Earth.
And now, back to lamenting the Red Sox...
The first day of classes is over, and I am not pleased. I have all four of my classes on the same days (Monday, Wednesday, Thursday), except for one that runs only Mondays and Wednesdays. While this does give me a couple of nice days off, it also forces me to go to lunch during the activity period (when everybody goes to lunch). So naturally I had to wait in line forever and then fight for a place to sit. It's definitely an incentive to keep food in the dorm room. Stupid freshmen.
Well, off to do tons of homework.
I'm finally settled in back at school with Ethan and Tellef, and things are going pretty smoothly thus far. We're living in a triple with one big bedroom, a bathroom, and a kitchen. Ethan has pictures on his camera, so maybe someday they'll be available here. The most notable thing about the room right now is the massive amount of blank wallspace. Not only do we have a lot of walls, we also have very high walls. Effect: The posters we brought aren't even close to enough to get the job done. So I have a mission for you, dear reader(s). Send me links to some good/big posters and other such wall-covering objects. I've been thinking about rasterbating something, but it's been tough to think of something really good. So give me ideas!
So I'm back, moving into school soon enough. I have a lot of packing yet to do, but I really don't feel like doing it right now. Ethan, Reid, and I went out to Wal-Mart and Hanover yesterday shopping for dorm stuff. We managed to get almost everything we needed for the room at Wal-mart for about $75. We forgot a few things, but overall, we did pretty well. I picked up a Palm Zire 21 from OfficeMax and named it Natalya, and both Ethan and I bought new chairs at Staples. I'm done with work now and really have no plans until Friday evening, so I guess I'll have plenty of time to pack and remember all the stuff I'm sure I forgot. As for right now, I think I'm going to force some initiative on myself and clean my room.
So I've had my fair share of blogs on various sites. Most of the time its because Reid showed me a better blog site than the one I was on and I moved. This is no exception. I'll be deciding whether this or xanga is better over the course of the next few weeks. For now, be grateful for an update anywhere.
