Just some things

I lost to Matt Hiber again today, to the surprise of nobody. What was surprising is that I lost 11-10 in the tiebreaker. So that's encouraging. I actually play him again tomorrow for league, so hopefully the trend of drastic improvement continues and I can steal a win for my team. Games with him are dictated by really long runs of points. Neither of us is particularly good at getting the server out, so once one of us is serving it usually results in at least a few points. Also, we played with an Ektelon ball because he prefers it, and I actually liked it too. It has a bit more weight to it, so it carries a bit further past your opponent. He claims it hurts his hands less for some reason that I don't quite understand, but luckily my hands didn't seem to be adversely affected, so I guess it's all good. I wonder what we'll play with tomorrow...

I didn't have class until 1:25 today because we finished our contracts syllabus early. However, there is an optional class tomorrow I'm going to go to. And then a rescheduled Civil Procedure class that we don't usually have on Tuesday so that we can all skip Wednesday entirely. So one last busy day and then my semester is basically over. Or maybe that's when the semester actually starts, since the only things that determine my grade are yet to come, and the studying (or lack of it) I do between now and finals is really the only thing that will wind up determining my grade anyway. After class I grabbed a free muffin and bagel and headed back to the rec to work out a bit. It turns out I've lost seven pound since I weighed myself on Friday night after the smorgasbord. So that's apparently a thing that can happen. Last week was odd in that I had a bunch of free food I gorged myself on at lunch all week, and that was bracketed by free huge dinners at both weekends. But I also worked out a lot more than I had been so now that I'm back to not eating much, my metabolism is still amped up from the workouts, and I'm losing weight again.

Speaking of working out, I had a hard time trying today. I was a bit tired from the match earlier, and I couldn't stop thinking about the fact that I was going to be playing him again tomorrow. So every time my muscles started hurting I immediately thought "Well, I might not want to try too hard, since I want to be able to give it my best tomorrow." Which is silly, of course, since I know that I'll feel fine tomorrow anyway. So I did a bunch of really small efforts instead of a long one. My brain just wouldn't tolerate suffering for any length of time, so I compromised by cranking out a couple baseline times for some shorter rowing distances. I rowed a 500 in 1:40 and a 1,000 in 3:32, both times I know I can improve upon, but also pretty decent for my second week rowing. For instance, those times are much closer to the 75th percentile than the 50th percentile among people reporting times to the records website. If I'm near the top 25% of lightweight rowers in my age division, I think I'm pretty pleased. The 1,000 was pretty funny in that I started way too fast. I felt really good because it was my second effort of the day, so the beginning felt easy. I was at a 1:38 pace to start, and I knew I couldn't maintain it, but I figured I would just grind it out the best I could as the going got tough. Well, the going got really tough for the last 250 meters, and I think I finished at a 1:50-something pace. So I suppose there's already something definite to look at for improving! I rowed at a pretty easy pace for a while after that as a cooldown/excuse to say I did more than I actually did, then left.

Between handball games today Matt asked me a few questions. First he clarified that I went to Iowa State, which I confirmed, noting that it was a good choice because they give scholarships to National Merit Scholars and made my choice of major a little more forgivable. He was quite interested in the fact I took time between college and law school, so I mentioned I had a girlfriend finishing her degree and I wasn't all that sure of what I wanted to do anyway. When he learned we weren't together anymore he had a pretty odd reaction. He said, "After the first one, the rest are easy." I must have looked at least partially as confused as I felt, since he followed that up with "Not that that was your first girlfriend, but you get what I'm saying." I can wholeheartedly say that I do not. Not only was this breakup way harder than my first one, I don't ever want a breakup to be "easy." I couldn't quite tell if he meant it would be easy to find relationships after the first one or easier to let them go, but I can assure you that neither of those things is remotely true in my case. I have no desire in acquiring relationships just because I can. I'm sure it's not that difficult if your only goal is to have girlfriends, but I have never been the sort of person interested in dating someone before I already know them pretty well and can see definite potential. Maybe if that's what I was interested in, subsequent breakups would be easier, since it's not like you'd be severing a significant part of yourself. It would just be a "Well, you turned out to not be at all what I wanted in a girlfriend, so see ya!" sort of deal. Which means I screwed up in entering that relationship in the first place as far as I'm concerned. It's probably true to a certain degree that future breakups will be easier, though, since I don't think it's very likely I'll have a relationship that lasts five years again. That, and I don't know how easy it will be to commit to someone as fully as I have in the past. But I told myself after my first relationship not to let that happen again, and look how that turned out. So maybe I'm just a sucker for love. I suppose there are worse things to be. What I do know is that it will probably be incredibly confusing for whoever I do wind up dating, since I'll be guarding against the possibility of it ending by trying to play it cool, being aloof, and doing my general "I'm not affected by things" impersonation (which I seem to be pretty good at) while at the same time wondering if she is a girl I can commit to and see myself loving. At least I'm acknowledging up front that I'll probably be a walking contradiction. Does that make it any better?

I don't know. What I do know is that Facebook yielded a couple of good articles in the past few days that I figured I'd share. This one is mostly amusing, awesome, and requires no elaboration:

http://www.upworthy.com/read-the-witty-suggestion-an-advice-columnist-gives-to-a-homophobic-parent?c=bl3

While this one is a bit more comment-worthy:

http://www.upworthy.com/ever-hear-about-the-lady-that-spilled-coffee-on-herself-at-mcdonalds-then-sued-for-millions?g=2

Now that I'm studying cases like this on a daily basis, I find myself both more and less interested in articles like this. On the one hand, I completely understand why she won, so I don't really care about the "point" of what the article is trying to get at. On the other hand, I pick out language like "industry-standard" and immediately start thinking of reasons that's an excuse and not an excuse given the circumstances. McDonald's claimed that the coffee temperature wasn't any hotter than other establishments and that it was ideal for the roasting process. But according to a case I read recently involving tugboats (and Judge Learned Hand, who happens to be awesome), the fact that a practice is standard does not of itself make that practice excusable. It's a similar argument to the "if everyone jumped off a cliff" situation, but with a bit of a twist in that for a tort claim there also has to be a better option available. So then the question takes on a different meaning and scale. Of course that's only one component. There's also the question of adequate warning, faulty manufacture process, negligence in serving, assumption of risk, strict liability, and probably some other things that aren't coming to my head right away.

Well, I'm going to go to bed before my stomach convinces me I am hungry enough to eat something.

Oh! One last thing, though. A person on facebook was making applesauce and posted some pictures labeled "crab applesauce." I legitimately thought "That is DISGUSTING! Who would eat seafood-flavored applesauce?!" before slapping myself up alongside the head and realizing that crab-apples are a thing. But that's the state of our food right now. It's gotten to the point that there are so many novelty foods and combinations that I honestly can't rule anything out. People eat rattlesnakes, crickets, chocolate-covered all sorts of stuff, and blend weird things into smoothies all the time, so who am I to second-guess a persons desire for crustacean-infused applesauce?

Thanks for reading!

My weekend

And yet again, I begin typing without a clear idea of what I'm going to say.

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!