A vacation dissected

My vacation is coming to a close and once again I have to ask myself, where did it go? Well, here’s at least a partial explanation:

Tuesday: errands in Columbus
Wednesday: driving to NY
Thursday: Abducted by Aliens?
Friday: Researched video cameras obsessively.
Saturday: Bought video camera and did other last minute Christmas shopping.
Sunday: Drove to and from Syracuse. Did Christmas Eve stuff.
Monday: Christmas. Can’t expect to be too productive today.
Tuesday: Boxing Day. This isn’t really a good explanation for the day, but I’m using it anyway. I did attend a Mission Shower.
Wednesday: Returned/exchanged things, ate some white hots, caught up with Amy.
Thursday: Alias Season 5. The whole thing.
Friday: Dentist, camera supply shopping. Caught up with Vivek and Brett.
Saturday: Got ready to leave.
Sunday: singing in church, driving to OH

The real answer is watched way too much television. I watched about 18 hours of Alias, 6 hours of Record of Lodoss War, The World Championship of Pop Culture, Marie Antoinette, The Prestige, Dracula, The Descent, Superman Returns and Lady in the Water.

This is my life.

Brain Stew

A week ago I was too busy to write. This week I’m too lazy. Those are the two great pitfalls of blogging. But I thought I’d write to inform you, the internet, that my internal chronometer has been permanently broken.

This all started last Sunday. I was doing my normal last minute cramming for our Monday exam. In the end I went to sleep at 5 and got up at 7. I took the test, ran some errands and eventually decided to take a nap before going to Home Evening. But nothing. After an hour I got up and piddled about until the event. Then people came over to watch Monday Night Football until about midnight. So I’d gotten about 7 hour of sleep in the last three days, but still wasn’t tired. So I started playing video games, figuring I’d just stop when I got tired. I hadn’t gotten tired by 7 in the morning, but I started shivering. I figured that this shivering was my metabolism slowing down, so went and got in bed. I woke up at 11, not exactly refreshed but awake.

I had intended to leave that afternoon, but it was about 8 that night by the time I was done with all my errands. I decided not to make the 6 hour drive then because I had no idea of where my clock was. Again I stared shivering, so went to sleep around 11, waking up at 5. I don’t believe I have ever woken up at 5 without an alarm clock before, and kind of hope it never happens again.

So now I just sleep when I start shivering. Perhaps someday I’ll once again get tired when I need to sleep like a normal person.

Balmy

I wore a t-shirt and shorts today. Global warming is the greatest thing since Tivo. From now on all innovations should be measured against Tivo instead of sliced bread. Tivo is far more beneficial, rendering the bread comparison obsolete.

Back to gluconeogenesis.

Never a Sweeter Sweater

I’m preparing to end my social hibernation in preparation for the coming test, which usually includes a distinct lack of blogging. However I thought I’d quickly answer some questions raised by my recent spat of pictures.

First concerning where I got my sweater; this is an interesting story. I knew that the sweaters that I currently owned were not quite ugly enough, and that DI would be the perfect location to find an ugly sweater. Unfortunately I lacked the time to drive to Utah to pick one up. So I sought a local thrift store. Luckily OSU has its own thrift store just north of campus. I started there, but found that they had the convenient hours of 10 to 3, Wednesdays during academic terms. Seeing as it was a Thursday night the day after finals, I was out of luck. I next tried a vintage clothing store, where they only had ugly sweaters of the $50 variety. As important as winning stupid contests is to me, I couldn’t justify paying that much for a moderately ugly sweater. This stop was really only noteworthy because I had to walk up and down High Street to get to the place. High is a very interesting street because on one side of it is the nice sunny OSU campus, and on the other side is the dark underbelly of the ghetto. So while I walked up and down the street I met some interesting folk. Two people told me to put on a coat. I was walking down the street coatless, as I’m wont to do. After all, 40 degrees is really long-sleeve weather, 30 degrees is jacket weather and 10 degrees is coat weather. But evidently these individuals disagreed and thought I should know about it. Another guy with an impressive grey afro tried to sell my cigarettes, which just didn’t make any sense. It seems like he’d make more money peddling a more serious drug than tobacco. And the oddest was a gentlemen who wanted to know where X church of the X was (that’s not what he said, as that would have been VERY weird. I just don’t remember the particulars.) I didn’t know, so he proceeded to walk along with me. He let out of constant stream of “Gotta go praise Jesus. Praising the Lord, gotta get to the church to praise the Lord. Gotta praise Him, sing His praise, praising the Lord” and so on. Eventually he stopped to ask someone else where the mystery church was located.

I eventually headed home, and remembered that there was a second hand furniture shop near my apartment. I stopped by and found that they did in fact have a clothing section. I perused the men’s sweaters and they didn’t have anything nearly ugly enough. They certainly had a great many sweaters that I wouldn’t wear, but nothing truly hideous. I explained to the salesgirl that I needed a gaudy Christmas masterpiece of a sweater and she lead me into the women’s section where they had the Holy Grail: the ugly sweater section. It makes no sense to me why women, who stereotypically are more attuned to aesthetics and fashion should have such a variety of ugly sweaters. But evidently they had had several requests of the previous weeks for Christmas sweaters and had clumped them all together. And dismissing some truly awful numbers that were more expensive than I wished to pay for an evening’s shock value, I found an 8 dollar sweater complete with fake ribbon, sequins and a generally grodey aura.

The rules of the party were simple: wear a sweater. The uglier the sweater the better. The focus was sweaters of the Christmas variety, but that wasn’t strictly required. One guy had a John Deere sweater, and my roommate borrowed my BYU sweatshirt (he went the U, thus considers BYU apparel the heighth of ugly.) We had a number of school-teacher sweaters, which have their own variety of ugly. My addition of an ugly moustache, hat and belt buckle was merely an example of my thinking outside the box. There was no official 1st, 2nd and 3rd place, but my prize for International Award was announced 2nd. Lolly (his name is Lawrence, but he made the mistake of telling me that his family calls him Lolly) seemed to have won first place for his skin-tight ensemble. He can be seen in the Family Photo, where he is wearing the white holly-decked turtle neck and appears to be pouting. This is not my HE group, just a group of church folk, posing in a traditional family fashion.

And now that I’ve added another twenty minutes of delay, I must get to work on memorizing glycolysis for the 8th time in my life.

Winner of the International Ugliness Award

 

I won second place for my ugly ensamble. To accomplish this task I included 4 distinct flavors of ugly. The gaudy sweater was obviously required to qualify. To this I added the horrendously large belt buckle, the clashing Soviet hat, and the porn-star moustache. Personally I felt I was robbed of 1st place, but his sweater was equally gaudy, sleeveless and skin-tight. Luckily the prize was the same: a jar of organic peanut butter. 

Family Photo

 

Behold the glory of the Ugly Sweater Party. Behold! I don't know if this just came in vogue this year, but I had never heard of one, and was recently invited to 3. Evidently this is the future of yuletide theme parties. 

Hello weirdness

 

Only in China have I seen signs stranger than this. 

Like Pong, only not really

 

Here Bryce and I try our hands at Beer Pong. Sober hands I might add. However the intoxicated ones we played narrowly defeated us. I guess experience trumps coordination. But they did thank us for a good game and invited us to play any time since we "took the game seriously." 

Cornholio

 

This is the great game of Cornhole, found at all Ohio drinking parties, tailgates and Nascar meets. It's moderately entertaining at best. 

5 of Ben Folds' Variety

 

Here's the Post Gross Toast. English was too cool to come to the party and Godzilla left early to go back to the missus, but here's the remainder of Table 10, the best anatomy group to ever grace the dissection room. 

Standup Kind of Guy

 

This was me doing my standup schtick at the ward variety show. I used up all my funny in the act so have none left for this caption. 

Shoe In

 

This is the one, the only, The Shoe. It took me over a month to realize that they call it this because it's shaped like a horseshoe. I just assumed that they were working by the same logic that dictates that a nut makes a good mascot. 

The Buckeye Masses

 

I tried to take a picture that would indicate how many people were at the Michigan game, but am too short. Perhaps this gives some indication. 

Why would sick ever mean great?

I’ve got a bad case of roommate-itis. No, Bryce hasn’t been bothering me, he just gave me some nasty flu. Whenever your roommate gets sick, you know there’s a chance. He’s coughing and sneezing and dripping on everything in the apartment, and it’s really only a matter of time. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that we also go to school, church and social activities together. I hoped that my super-WBCs would get me through it, but sadly they have failed me.

I was doing fine until Monday evening. In fact I engaged in a rousing Uno game and may very well have infected numerous others. Then around midnight I started to crash. The next morning I decided that I wasn’t going to get anything from class, so enjoyed a couple extra hours in bed. I actually enjoyed an entire day in bed, but I did get some good studying done later on.

I’m glad that I’m sick this week instead of next, when I’ll be cramming more for the exam. It’s unfortunate however, because I’m supposed to sing a solo on Sunday, and my voice is currently out of whack. Interesting story: I was at choir practice this last week and they asked who wanted to try the solo. They had done this two weeks ago, and several people volunteered and did an acceptable job. But really, who asks for volunteers for solos? The choir director should have some idea who the most talented singers are and should ask them to add their talents to the piece. But no, we had amateur hour at choir practice. Anyway, this last week she again asked for volunteers and no one spoke up. Eventually I said I’d try it, and was immediately assigned the part for the program this coming week. Perhaps the congestion will add some gravitas to my voice.

Another interesting story: Bryce, feeling guilty for infecting me, gave me some of his medication last night before bed. His father is a doctor and he probably has more drugs than he really needs. And regardless of his need for the drug, I shouldn’t take someone else’s drugs. But I did and didn’t feel anything for the couple hours that I was awake studying and watching House. I wasn’t terribly surprised since my body seems very unresponsive to stimulants. Bryce said the drug kept him awake, almost like speed. I fell asleep with no problems, but became wide awake around 4. I was still tired and sore from the flu, so went back to sleep. I would fall asleep, have crazy dreams and come wide awake again. I ran through this cycle a half dozen times before I had to get up in the morning. I guess that pharmacokinetic stuff they’re teaching us must be true.