Dumpster diving

Monday was the day that everyone who had stayed for Commencement, or had extended stay, had to move out of the dorms. At a school where it costs nearly 50K to take classes in departments like "Decision Management," the people who end up going here tend to be... well, loaded. So, when they leave the dorms, sometimes the decision is made to throw out a 35" TV rather than expend the effort to take it home. Needless to say, someone who works in my department scavenged that very 35" TV from the trash room last year.

With the promise of 35" TVs fresh in my mind, and with my car here in the city for the summer, Monday night was blocked off for Scavenging Methods 104 with Prof. M Gigabyte Silverman. We went to Ivory Tower and New Hall, but finding little more than paltry lamps and vases just asking to be chucked down trash chutes, the group dispersed, leaving only those determined to capitalize on free shit. Thurston was cleaned out, which was odd considering how many things freshmen think they need, but then don't. Not only that but cleaning out a dorm that houses 1500 people is no small task. Either way, the place was spic-and-span, so in desperation we took one last stab at 1959 E Street, a junior/senior dorm.

Jackpot. Every floor had a trash room filled to the ceiling with trash and goodies, not to mention piles of stuff spilling out into the hallways and elevator lobbies. Gigabyte came out of the endeavor with a new set of dishware (clean and unused - still in the box) in addition to several unopened food items. At one point in the night I literally dove into a pile of trash, and I wish I had a camera because seeing my legs sticking up out of a pile of trash would amuse a lot of people I'm sure. What I looted was not amazing, consisting of dishwasher detergent, a can of maple syrup for pancakes, and 6th place trophies thrown out by members of GW's parliamentary debate team. Suckers. I have a five-pound bag of pancake mix, too. It's opened, but I'm sure I can find something creative to do with it, like drop it on a gang of gypsy children or something.

What I want to know is where all the fucking 35" TVs went. I pawed through all sort of dirty unmentionables, inhaled an entire semester's worth of dust when I dove into that pile of air filters, and came out smelling like the Quizbum... WHERE THE FUCK IS MY TV??

I have also secured a job. I imagine that it will be somewhat less than entertaining. I am working on a docketing database for a law firm here in D.C. It's $12 an hour and they want me to work as close to full-time as possible. They also don't care about my summer classes, or the fact that I'm going home for my sister's graduation. Score. Anyway, for now it's off to College Nationals to get rid of this jersey tan, heckle Pitt and Delaware, and find my buddies from IU who will also be spectating.

Done! ... for four days...

Summer is here! Well, sort of. I mean, the spring semester has ended. Now on to summer classes and hopefully a summer job. I applied to work at the Cold War International History Project, a part of the Woodrow Wilson center down in the Reagan Trade Complex. It's a pretty well-known entity; they go through old Soviet archives, document them, organize them, and publish them and such. Really cool stuff if you are nostalgic for the Cold War, as I am (mmmm... mutually assured destruction...)

The problem is that they're taking their sweet time getting back to me! I interviewed two weeks ago. I emailed them last week asking 'yo, what's up, when will I know?' and I didn't get an email back. At all. Then a friend of mine who interns there asked the guy I interviewed with - he said notifications would go out on Tuesday. Then I emailed them yesterday. Still nothing! Not even a 'just keep waiting.' What the fuck? I was originally going to wait, then determine when to go home after I had secured some kind of employment. But now, fuck it, I'm going home and I'm bringing my car back with me, which is going to be dimebag. I figure it makes more sense because I'm going to be going back home for Kate's graduation in June anyhow... not only that but...

I can drive out to Nationals - woo! Now I just need a place to put my car, and a place to stay somehow. I hope it is fun, honestly, I love ultimate, but just watching games for three days solid in Columbus, OH can't be that fun. Crew would help, I'm sure. As it is now, it should be me and Linc, so that we can improve our relationship.

In other news, I am now at intermediate-high proficiency for Russian! I'm really pretty ecstatic about that because I was only supposed to be intermediate-mid. I could have made advanced-low if I had a different interviewer, I swear. The problem was that I had the chair of the department, who's a huge pain in the ass when it comes to proficiency interviews. I made the mistake of mentioning that I work in the Housing Department. He decided to make my role-playing situation as such: I am the liason between a group of American students studying abroad in Russia and the Housing Department. There is a problem with the arrangements. Fix it. Game set and match: that guy.

I also got a C+ in International Trade Economics -- the lowest grade I've ever gotten in any level of school in any class ever. Fuck you, John Maynard Keynes, I don't much care for you, or your models for fiscal and monetary stimuli. Now I'll have to think about how the people I assassinate in the future will affect aggregate demand and GNP. And at that moment, I'll get confused and lose my concentration and get captured by some Uzbek army bozo. Whatever. Now I'm done with Econ forever.

Anyhow, I have some good material for later on, once I get my shit together in my apartment for the summer. This way, I can actually write about funny stuff rather than stupid autobiographical nonsense.

PS - if you know anyone in Columbus, OH that I can stay with, please email me.

CLLCalamity

What a morning. I say to myself hey, this day's not going to be half-bad. I got one legal opinion outta four left to write, I got a shift 9-2 with good people at work. Let's do this thing.

Granted, the night before I thought I had three of my legal opinions written, but it turns out in one of them I made up more legal precedent than a California district court so it was back to the drawing board on the dissent. Not only that, but I ended up using the term "super-prostitute," not only for the first time ever, but in an academic paper for an Honors law class. Strangely, though, I'm not sure if it makes more sense or less sense that of all things, I used such a term in final project for an Honors class. One of my friends can one-up me though. He cited himself as a source in an English essay (Here you go, Jeff, your fifteen minutes of blog-fame... cherish it. Che-rish...! [shaking fist menacingly]). What a subject... you can't misplace a modifier, but Jeff Whitehead can cite himself as a source.

Anyhow, questionable academic work aside, I was stoked when I arrived at work and not one of the dozens of people who are higher than me on the food chain was there. Ordinarily, such a lack of supervision would result in... well, nothing insidious (officially), but nonetheless it was good because I now I had two opinions to yarf out before 5:00PM today and I don't need anyone looking over my shoulder when I'm writing about sodomy cases. The reason no one is there is because once again, the office I'm working in is moving. Only this time, unlike the Town Hall, I don't have to haul shit out of a dusty attic and break windows trying to kill bees. All the shit-hauling is done by contractors. Odd that my hometown had the fucking fiscal sense to hire poor athletes like me to move things around and the university decided to bring in "professionals." Astounding.

Where was I going with all this? Right, I was upstairs because one of the downstairs workstations was dead. Not surprising considering the amount of Spyware and Spermamax advert emails that flow through those computers every day. Have you ever run Spybot on a computer and had more than 2000 hits? I have. Imagine. How much Czech lesbian porn do you have do "accidentally look at" to get 2000 pieces of spyware on your computer? How many attachments from Dr. King Abdullah Farqawi Muhammad al-Shitfuck do you need to download before you realize that he will not be wiring you the immense sums gleaned from his guano business! 2000. Simply astounding.

So I was upstairs, and I found myself staring blankly at my half-finished legal opinion, wondering why I was squinting and why my eyes were tearing up looking at a simple computer screen. Also, I felt that the smell of the spicy-fruity scented disinfectant my boss uses was particularly strong that day. Little did I know that our graduate assistant, we'll call her "Lily," had put a veritable scented oil mass dispersion unit in the power strip under the desk. So I reach down to unplug that shit and keep myself from smelling like peaches and cinnamon all day. It's leaking! Because Lily has plugged a wall unit into a power strip laying on the floor! Now I might as well be excreting the damn spicy peach smell out of my palms because I've got a month's worth of Glade oil smeared all up in my business. Fuck! Now not only am I writing about prostitutes but I smell like one... one who foolishly tried to mess with a Glade plug-in.

After announcing this travesty to my coworkers, I was quickly shut up by Alicia, who had brought me back a bagel and chocolate milk from Dunkin Donuts (I have been known to drink chocolate milk "like a fuckin' prairie dog," according to my old roommate -- interpret that one for yourselves, folks...). I figure I may smell like a trailer park block party but I'll be damned if that prevents me from enjoying my chocolate milk. So I take a biiiig gulp...

SOUR! MOST DEFINITELY SOUR! This milk is as spoiled as the gallon of bacteria stewing in the fridge awaiting some creating inspiration on my part. Wait, no, that's a biohazard, this milk was just foul. Anyhow, what the fuck. So after running around earlier declaring my new bodily scent to be such a huge injustice, God gave me a big smack in the face and said "shut uppa you face" in the form of some chocolate milk more suited to hurling out the window onto some Gypsies than to human consumption.

Then later on I go to log into my Gmail (which is the shit by the way -- if you want to know more IM me or something). I don't bother to look at the already-read messages in the inbox or anything, I just click on the two new messages I have because I'm compulsive like that. It's an email from Julia B talking about some sort of trip to a store I will ostensibly be taking with her tonight at 6:45. Weird. I check the "to" like to make sure I haven't received this in error, and it says "me," as Gmail does, so I'm like eh, weird. I write "Umm... what?" and then realize that I have inadvertantly sent a message from my co-worker's Gmail account, who is also on the ultimate team so her emails didn't look at all weird to me. My response: "SHIT. Sorry, this is House, I thought this was my Gmail, and I was thoroughly confused -- it's cool though, we're coworkers." I left work confused and irritable, but having eaten some Lindy's to make it all better.

Needless to say, with a cup of Lawrence v. Texas, a teaspoon of Romer v. Evans, a cup of Planned Parenthood v. Casey and a whole lot of rational basis later, I was running to the Honors office at 4:55 to submit my essay by five. I spiked my paper on the Honors secretary and signified "goal" with both hands.

GW campus life? You're on notice.

Played some capture the flag tonight down here in FoBo. It made me realize how much I miss growing up in a town with one cop. First of all, I nearly got hit by a car crossing the neutral zone (incidentally, G Street was the neutral zone). Immediately after that, I got heckled by drunken frat boys. They managed to assemble enough neurons to command their slack-jawed mouthes to enunciate and tell me that they "would have laughed if [I'd] have gotten hit by that car." Yeah. And I'll laugh when you all get venereal disease from spending too much time wrapped up in groupie beef curtains. Fucking frats.

Back to the whole thing with the cops, the problem in D.C. is that the po-po are all up in our collective grills all day and all night. The problem with D.C. is that since it's a terrorist target, it's not like other big cities in that the police are so preoccupied with the bad parts of town that they rarely venture into the good parts. MPD is everywhere. The UPD presence is also going to be heavier next year, and since I'll be working for the Dean of Students' office, I can't even afford to get written up by UPD -- I'll lose my free housing and stipend, and I'm too poor to give those things up.

Honestly, between the huge University Police department and the constant Metro police presence, I'm lucky I didn't get arrested for peeing in Kogan while I was flag-capturing. What I miss most is pointless, harmless vandalism (and being able to pee at will... to a lesser extent). One of the most fun nights I've had in the past few years was in high school and we got bored at Dooley's house. Well, getting bored wasn't the good part, obviously. Burying Kyle's car in snow while he was at his girlfriend's house was the fun part. That, and writing "BOOBS" in 40-foot letters on the hill in front of the school. That and then covering Ide's windshield with Hostess cupcakes. The point is, you can't get away with fucking with people's shit in the city.

Furthermore, "off-campus housing" consists mostly of people's apartments, and occasionally a townhouse in a row of other townhouses. You can't fill a person's mailbox with deli meat if they live in an apartment building. You can't build obscene snow sculptures in front of people's houses if they don't have a yard. You can't smear mayonnaise on someone's windows if they don't have a car. I guess I just need to find another outlet for m mischeviousness.

Along those same lines, I find myself hanging out with the younger guys more and more. All the older friends of mine seem to much more interested in sitting around watching TV and drinking beer than doing something like this capture the flag game we recently had. I guess I'm not ready to be an adult yet. Or something.

This is the end... for now

We came in third at Regionals -- we needed to get top two to advance to Nationals, so we won't be making the trip this year. Based on the traffic the past couple of days, a lot of the viewers of this site are going to be looking for something to make themselves feel better for having beaten us. That's fine. I would probably be doing the same if I were in that position. I'm going to keep my commentary about our competition relatively short, because in the realm of ultimate, there are other things that I feel more compelled to write about.

To begin, our opponent in the "game-to-go" was Pitt. Based on previous posts, and circumstances, you should know how pumped I was to play these guys. I will say that aside from isolated incidents of douchebaggery, they were respectful and, of course, very talented. Again, incidents of shitty sportsmanship did occur, though I find it pointless to bring them up. I will say that I have a lot of respect for their captain for approaching me after the game. I had been grumbling about his celebrations on the field and one of their team advisors heard what I said and told him. Sean wanted to make sure that I wasn't too upset, and I respect that. Honestly, I could be accused of being a dick on the field sometimes, too, so most of my grumbling is just that. I still will not concede that they are a better team than us when we are at full strength; however, we were never at full strength at any point this year, and thus, my hat is off to them.

In order to remedy that situation, I definitely want to go to fewer tournaments next year. There may be varying opinions on this, so over the summer I hope people will approach not only me, but other guys too, and talk about it. Before Sectionals, someone told me that g-dub had played the third-most games of all teams registered with the UPA. I think that that had a big impact on the amount of injuries we were faced with at the end of the season. Honestly, I would be happy with three tournaments prior to Sectionals, a max of four. Not only that, but I think we need to have a larger A-team. This past weekend at Regionals, we were playing essentially 13 players, with two of them playing with substantial injuries. 11 healthy players, with 4 rookies, makes for a long weekend for most of the veterans.

Now that the training season has begun (there is no offseason... you're right), I have some personal goals too. I'm going to start doing some old football drills again to work on agility, because lately that just hasn't been there, and it shames me to be run around by some of these handlers. Secondly, I just have to take better care of myself. I need to stop eating like a fatty. I am a sucker for any of the following things: Hostess mini-dounts, ice cream (all sorts), chocolate (any), cheese curls, cheese in general, mayonnaise, red meat... the list goes on. You'd think the lactose intolerance would be a deterrant... I also need to play this summer, but so far no invites onto any club teams. Not sure I'd want to play with them anyways, as I would have to desert the g-dub guys for Sectionals and all that.

High points of the weekend include winning a calf-off against a guy from Pitt. They tried to make some argument about definition or something, but honestly... an anorexic chick has more "definition" than most of the women athletes that I know -- of course, the athletes obviously have enough muscle mass to shatter an anorexic girl into several calorie-starved pieces, so the argument is moot. My calves reign supreme! Additionally, it was nice to see my family this weekend. My sister Kate got a scholarship to RPI for softball, and she'll be playing for them as a catcher next year. She also told me about the shift they employ against her, which consists of moving the outfielders to the fence. She claims it's not fair and that they're cheating. Either way, her slugging percentage is off the charts and she'll be playing for a nationally-ranked program next year. My dad was there and almost wore his Cornell alum shirt when we were playing Cornell... yeah. That's my dad. He thought it would be "that much more effective since [he'd] be cheering for GW."

Also, something funny was the signs that were all along the highway, saying that "slower speeds save gas." It's funny because prior to this year, they all said "slower speeds save lives." Between then and now, I bet it was someone's job to make sure that "lives" got changed to "gas" on every lightboard on the I-95 corridor. Somehow I feel like saving gas would actually work better in getting people to slow down. As in, maybe one person would slow down instead of no one at all, and a handful of people speeding up just to spite everyone.