What I do know is that I spent a decent amount of time listening to spoken word poetry on YouTube, and here are some of the highlights of that:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EILQTDBqhPA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sXOxIq65zg
Also, I went to a formal-ish dinner on Friday. Because I am constantly paranoid about how to dress for things, I was glad I didn't wind up looking foolish. Also, I was especially proud I remembered how to tie a tie. Well, not so much remembered as thought it through and logic-ed my way to victory. Which is also kind of cool.
I don't know if this makes me vain or not, but I took pictures of myself. Here's one from before the party:
I decided to go with a tie, and luckily another guy in the group of four I was showing up with also wore one, so I didn't feel like an idiot. I think we might have been the only people there with them, but hey, better a bit too nice than feeling under-dressed. Though I'm certainly more used to feeling under-dressed. The soiree was catered by what must have been a fairly upscale place. The first thing I put on my plate was a rib with the meat basically falling off the bone and cooked in a fancy-looking sauce. They were served in individual portions, so I didn't know how much to take. Next, I put on two different kinds of salad, one with spinach, mandarin oranges, walnuts and strawberries, the other with different kinds of vegetables, beets, and some other stuff I couldn't taste by the time I got to it. The reason I couldn't taste it? I ran out of room on my plate and resorted to piling food on top of other food. So my salad became buried under rice and pasta. There was also a cheesy potato dish, sauteed vegetables, two kinds of bread, and sea bass. The sea bass was particularly good. It practically melted in my mouth, and it had this sweet/tangy sauce that turned out to be highly addictive. I went back for seconds and just grabbed another rib and two more portions of sea bass. And some cheese tortellini. I never got any of the salmon because it was still cooking when I went through the first time and had migrated to the dining room table by the time I went back up. (I was eating in the living room.) Obviously I ate way too much. Next came the challenge of socializing, made especially hard for everyone because of the enormous amount of food just ingested. It was common to see a person flushed from the heat of the crowd (forty people in a house, even one as big as this, raises the temperature significantly, especially when there's lots of hot food being served) and stuffed to the gills almost nodding off in the middle of whatever conversation was occurring. Groups of three to five people seemed to be the most common size, so whoever wasn't fully participating in a given conversation tended to stare into the distance with a glazed-over expression of contentment.
Some guy took a bunch of pictures and posted them on Facebook. Here I am, cropped out of a larger picture of me and the person I was half-heartedly talking to at the time. Also, for some reason this was the only picture this guy posted where he used flash on his camera, so I had the most ridiculous red-eye glare going on. So I did what any person would do: copied it into Paint and attempted to clumsily color-fill pixel by pixel. Just in case you noticed that my eyes look weird, trust me, it's not as bad as it was.
Dessert was served not long after, and oh boy was that an adventure. I haven't eaten that much since, well, I guess last weekend. Hmmmm. And Thanksgiving is this week? Quite a trend I'm establishing here... Dessert was chocolate-covered strawberries, key lime miniature torte/pie things, chocolate truffles, shortcake, and chocolate raspberry cheesecake. All amazing of course. We socialized for another chunk of time, during which I spent each new conversation trying to figure out what the person I was talking to already knew about me. I don't talk to anyone at school, see, and it seems like everyone has a slightly different impression of me as a result. So to some people I'm the guy who plays handball, to others I'm the guy who rides bikes. Others know about Magic, most know about frisbee, and everyone knows me as the guy who wears shorts. So my goal became to dispel whatever stereotype they had of me. The people who thought I was a jock for being sporty I talked to about scholarly topics, the people who knew about Magic I talked to about exercise, the people who only knew I wear shorts all the time... well, at least I was dressed decently enough to prove I'm not hopeless. We left, and I made a brief stop into the law school to use the bathroom. And who am I kidding, I also wanted to get an idea of what I actually looked like; all I have in my room is a small mirror. I took some more pictures, but the lighting in the bathroom wasn't great. I wound up wearing my leather jacket instead of a sport coat both for warmth (it was single digits with a nasty wind) and because I didn't want to look like I was trying too hard. I think it looks pretty decent actually. (Obviously, or I wouldn't be putting the pictures up, right?)
I weighed myself when I got home, and I had put on three pounds in one night! Ugh. At least I had a lot of exercise to look forward to in the morning.
Sure enough, I between body pump, handball, basketball, and my walk home, I felt pretty exhausted by the end of the six hours I spent outside my apartment this weekend. Basketball doesn't really count, though, since I was just playing with Joseph. His friend didn't show up to play with him, so I stepped in. He had a few house rules (no double dribble, make it take it but only for him, and I had to shoot my first shot from the three point line), and it was overall an adorable time. He pulled out the victory after a hard-fought 10-9 battle which involved me jumping as high as I could at the slightest pump fake (because otherwise there wasn't a way for him to get around me to get a shot off). I can't imagine how awesome it must be to be actually tall. How do tall people ever lose at any sports ever? I'm lucky handball has no height requirement.
David showed up around 12:00, and I was already pretty worn out. I won our first game pretty easily, lost the second 21-20 after going down 17-6, and lost the third in similar fashion. I just couldn't motivate my legs to move until I was about to lose! He asked to play a real match where I tried the whole time, so I said I would be free Thursday. It turns out that my classes got cancelled for Wednesday, however, so now my parents are coming up for Thanksgiving Day. I'm sure it won't be a problem to reschedule with David, and I can't wait to stuff my face again! We have reservations at a place that looks pretty nice, so I'm excited. Also, I get to spend Thanksgiving with my family after all!
I'm playing Matt Hiber over lunch tomorrow, then my league team faces off against the university's team in the battle of the only undefeateds on Tuesday. Then no school while I work on my paper about federal jurisdiction on Native American Reservations. And a bunch of other stuff I'm no doubt supposed to be working on. I'm sure there's more I'm forgetting, but it's sort of late and I don't really need an excuse to stop typing anyway. So there.
Thanks for reading!
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