My weekend

Yet another autobiographical post. I guess that's what a lot of blogs are, but I feel like I should be doing more. Anyway, on to my weekend.

I traveled to Colorado to play handball this weekend with my parents in tow. My dad drove the entire way to Fort Collins and the entire way back, which was pretty amazing of him. It's not like I didn't offer to drive or anything, but the truck isn't my favorite vehicle, and some of the weather did get rather interesting. We left Thursday afternoon, stayed in Kearney, Nebraska where they were expecting 11-15 inches of snow the next day, and hoped for the best for the remainder of the trip. We woke up to no snow on the ground and nothing really evident, and made it almost the rest of the way without incident. A couple of hours from Fort Collins things got slippery and white, but we obviously prevailed. Along the way we stopped at a couple of outdoor gear places, where I had the pleasure of sitting and trying to scold my parents over their selections in clothing. The price was right on a bunch of stuff, though, and I think their receipt said they saved over $400 or something. Plus that weekend there was an additional 20% off purchases of $100 or more, compounding the good deals.

We made it to Fort Collins and drove straight to La Luz, a Mexican restaurant we were recommended for our first trip four years ago and have stopped at every time since (sometimes multiple times per visit). I got a fish and potato burrito, and my parents got fish tacos, all of which were delicious. We shopped around downtown until my mom was kicked out of a couple of different establishments (her enthusiasm borders on the maniacal occasionally), but we found some cool stuff during the process. There was a cooking store that had a variety of kitchen gadgets and whatnot where we bought cups and narrowly avoided acquiring the most colorful plates ever. Our criteria for cups is strict, and stems from the fact that we don't use a dishwasher, making it necessary for our hands to fit inside without too much pain. This is actually a more challenging criteria to meet than you might think. I don't know if our hands are unusually awkward or if cups just aren't designed conveniently any more, but it was good to find them either way. At one point my mother was so excited about the possibilities she bordered on giddiness, and when she drew a random lady's attention, I loudly said this is why we couldn't take her out in public, which drew a smile from the onlooker, but really, it was just fun to see her enjoying the cool stuff.

We wandered around for a while at a garden-y store, which was unexpectedly a more subdued experience. We found a book, but didn't buy anything. On our way back the car I remembered a cool jewelery store and we stopped in. The guy who came over to help us was pretty awesome. It was obvious he was incredibly enthusiastic about his profession, and it seemed he could talk forever. Some of the rings he had crafted were really interesting. They were multi-layered with folded metals which results in this:






















Needless to say, my mom was fascinated. Woodgrain sorts of things interest her, as, apparently, do opals, which he showed her next. I think she was almost to the point of buying something before she remembered she doesn't wear jewelery. If we ever go back, though, the guy said they took scrap metal as raw material and would accept some in trade for the labor, so there's the possibility of something working out eventually. Of course, with the one-year communication delay, it's possible things might get bogged down a bit.

From there we went to the club where the tournament was being held even though it was a bit early. That was a good thing, though, since I was able to enter another division and play a half hour after our arrival. So I was in the A division and the open division. I won A's, but lost in the first round of open, confirming my suspicion I am somewhere between the two. So I guess I just need to get a bit better. I was actually surprised with how many shots the open players hit that I felt weren't of amazing quality, but I guess the fact is that they are always on the run, and if they are ever allowed to set their feet and take the shot they want, the result is a point for them. So maybe the trick isn't developing the hard shots, but getting your opponent to hit you easy ones by keeping them off balance. It's a lot less fun, but probably more practical.

I won my A matches pretty easily. Highlights included my opponent calling a hinder when I passed him on the complete opposite side of the court when he hadn't yet returned a passing shot when he was on the correct side. This wasn't terrible on its own, but it was immediately followed by another very questionable call. The combination of the two made the score 8-6 in my favor. I went on to win 21-6. Interestingly, I lost my first game of A's, but got my head in the right place, got warmed up and in the rhythm of things, and wound up winning the next two 21-2, 11-0. The finals could have been closer, but my opponent started off a bit slow and never really got into things. There were some actual highlights in this one, including a between the legs shot I hit left-handed that just barely made it to the front wall and almost rolled out. It was fun to win, but now that I can't enter the A's any more, I'm in an awkward position if I travel to tournaments, since it's unlikely I'll get many matches in the open divisions.

My dad played in his first singles tournament, which was pretty good, but one of his two opponents didn't show up, so while that meant he was in the finals, it also meant he had paid his entry fee and driven quite a way for not a lot of playing. Luckily we found him another match for fun, and he made a fair account of himself in the finals, hitting some pretty good shots once he got going. All in all, the trip was a success. We spent some good quality time with friends during meals and between matches, enjoyed our shopping, and the travel went as smoothly as we could hope after hearing the forecast. The only real (or imagined) downside is that I still don't know who won the super bowl. I guess I'll go watch a highlight reel now.

Thanks for reading.

My last couple of days

So it turns out that if you aren't already familiar with my life's story, I'm a pretty impressive guy. I went on campus yesterday to talk to a professor about law school and writing me a letter of recommendation, and during our chat she mentioned she had read some of my writing in Sketch, remembered that I had missed class to go play in a big handball tournament (where I got a national title), and also remembered I came from an athletic family. We talked about what kind of law I was interested in, and I said either patent law or appellate law, since either of those seemed to involve a lot of writing, and while I don't think I'd be a bad orator, I'm certainly much more comfortable with paper. Then I mentioned I should also have a patent soon, and she was pretty surprised.

I gave her my transcript so she'd have a reference as to my coursework, and my 3.87 GPA came to light. I told her it was actually my LSAT score that was holding me back from being assured admission to a really good school, and that I wasn't used to only being in the 96th percentile. We talked about student debt and my unwillingness to accrue it if I wasn't guaranteed a well-paid job by the end, which also gave me an opening to brag about how I didn't have any debt from my undergrad degree due to being a national merit scholar. Let's just say by the end of our talk I'm pretty sure I had given her enough to write a good letter of recommendation.

I'm almost done with my application essay, too, which is what I worked on Monday instead of posting here. It will probably need a bit of revision, though. Monday also happened to be my birthday, which was a bit torturous, since I spent almost the entire day inside looking out at the 60-degree weather. But I also got my diploma and my transcript ordered for law school applications, so I suppose it was a worthy sacrifice.

Yesterday wound up being almost as as warm, so I my parents and I got out for a bike ride. It was pretty windy, but that just meant we got to ride back at 27 mph (topping out at just over 30). It was pretty quick, and gave me some time to laze around before handball. We've been practicing on glass walls recently to prepare for the tournament in Colorado this weekend, which I'm excited for as usual.

Also, I'm feeling almost entirely recovered from whatever illness I had. I'm sure I speak for everyone who's been around me recently when I say it's nice to not be inconveniently interrupted by bouts of coughing. It did set me back on my biking, though, which certainly wasn't great. So now I have to decide whether I want to try and make up the ground I've lost or focus on other things, leaving biking as just a fun activity I do when I don't have other things on my plate. Not an easy decision, actually.

What I actually have to decide now is what to eat. I'm hungry, and don't have anything on my plate currently. (it's a joke!) (a bad one)

Brief Update (And Happy Birthday to my Sister!)

I didn't work today or yesterday, but yesterday I actually did write something. I'll post my finished law school application essay at some point soon. And today I took the GRE's and don't find myself in the mindset to write more. I feel like I did really well on the essays, but the math was abysmal. Typical me, I guess. I guess I'm about average when it comes to numbers. But my verbal scores are good, and I never plan on going to grad school for numberology anyway. Hopefully that's all a prospective college will see. In the meantime, it's my sister's birthday today! So happy birthday to her if she happens to read this in the few hours before she gets here for dinner, and if not, I'm sure I'll tell her then (or sing it at her really obnoxiously).

And a quick observation:
I enjoyed the writing prompts. Something about being challenged to quickly respond to something with insight is appealing to me. I wonder if there is something to that? It feels like thinking on my feet, but being able to type it helps a lot. I noticed I was way better at these writing sections than the LSAT, and I'm pretty sure the only difference was that I had a backspace key and a way to write fast enough so that my fingers could keep up with my brain. Anyway, that's all for now. I had to get up pretty early, and almost five hours of testing is enough thinking for the next while. But I'm not done writing. I'll see what else I can think of in the meantime.

Mostly Magic

I'm getting a late start to writing today because people are apparently tired of me being ill. So I slept until I really couldn't sleep any more and realized it was already past 10:00. And today was a day I actually had some things to write about. Of course, if you've been around me recently, you already know I am excited about magic the gathering stuff right now. I've been playing pretty regularly again, and I usually do well at the local stuff on Mondays and Fridays, so when I came back from my friday tournament early in defeat, I felt I had to justify my poor showing. I had my excuse at the ready, though. I had spent all my time recently testing a new format for the tournament saturday and had thrown something together last minute for Friday.

So Saturday rolled around and I headed to the shop early to get the last couple cards I needed before the tournament started. I was playing a deck I like, and was looking forward to seeing how it performed against a variety of opponents. The thing I like most about my deck is that it has a combination of cards that allows me to gain infinite life, but it doesn't need to get that combo in play to win. This is a significant advantage, because most decks that do powerful things like that are focused only on pulling off that plan, while mine can switch roles and try and disrupt the opponent's plan while attacking them directly if they are trying for a combo of their own. Exactly 16 people showed up, which meant brackets would be filled out perfectly for a four round tournament with a cut to top four.

Round one I played against a guy who was all-in on a combo that would deal infinite damage. He played a lot of ways to search for the combo, but didn't have a lot to do if he didn't get to it. So in the first game (rounds are best two out of three games) I got my combo off before seeing anything about what he was trying to do, since he never found the pieces to his combo. Between games you have the option of changing up your deck a bit using a fifteen card "sideboard," and because I didn't know what he was trying to do I took out a card that was actually amazing against him. I lost the next game in fine fashion, dealt infinite damage by his combo, and retooled my deck to be at its optimum arrangement. I took the third game easily once I knew what to look out for.

The second round I played against a deck I had loaned out to a guy who wanted some tournament experience. Unfortunately, I loaned him a good deck, and I lost the first game rapidly. The second game I made a mistake by playing aggressively for my combo instead of disrupting him, and I paid for it when he cast a spell that says whenever I would gain life I lose that much life instead. Not wanting to lose infinite life, I had to rethink things pretty drastically. I just barely squeaked out the game by racing him dealing damage with my creatures. The third game I won handily, assembling my combo without any problems.

Third round was my worst matchup as far as decks are concerned. Luckily, it wasn't my worst matchup as far as opponents were concerned. This guy was sporting a deck worth $1,800, and he made so many mistakes it was almost laughable. the first game went as I was expecting all of them to go. I played some creatures, he killed them, then he played some creatures, I didn't kill them, and then he killed me. The second game I was sitting there with two creatures that when they die, they come back into play and I gain two life. This is only supposed to happen once, but the combo I play is a card that shuts off the mechanic that makes it only happen once. That card, combined with a way to kill my creatures, is how I gain infinite life. I had the card that shuts off the mechanic, but no way of killing my own creatures, so I was just bouncing them off his creatures as a way of gaining life. It was nowhere near infinite, and when he played a card that destroys any one of mine, I knew I was probably done for. Then he destroyed something irrelevant instead and I went on to win the game. Game three I disrupted him by making him discard a card of my choice. His hand was almost terrible, and I took the best card, leaving him with almost nothing. It was easy to win from there.

Round four I didn't have to play, since the tournament format is such that a record of three wins and a draw is guaranteed to make the cut to top four. Even better, the person I drew with is a friend, meaning we were both going to have a shot at victory. Also, since I didn't have to play for that hour time block, I got to eat, which is a surprisingly significant advantage as the rounds go on. I got back in time to see the guy I played round three make it intonthe top four with another victory.

Round five I played against another combo deck, but this time I knew exactly what I was up against, since I helped the guy test the deck in preparation for this tournament. Game one I got the cards I needed to prevent him from accomplishing his goal and he realized he had no chance, so it was on to the second game really quickly. Game two I had infinite life against his infinite damage, so we briefly played the game of who can choose a higher number before he realized I could always choose a higher number. Then I won the next turn.

The finals were, of course, against the guy from round three with the deck I am still pretty sure isn't a good matchup for me. Game one I got my combo quickly and he conceded. Game two I played a bunch of things to slow down the game and things got a bit stalled. I wound up going all-in on a big creature and just hoping to win that way, and he had a couple of chances to draw what he needed, but his deck didn't cooperate and I wound up winning.

So I turned a ten dollar entry fee into $60, and the best part is I got three byes for a tournament next month, which is sort of a big deal. It's a grand prix stop for magic players, which means it will attract people from all over the world. The first day will be nine rounds, so having three wins already going into it is significant, as it means I only have to manage to get four wins to be set up well for the second day of play. This is the situation all the professional players are in, because they automatically get byes based on pro points they have accumulated. Anyway, I'm excited to try my hand at it. It will be the first large scale tournament I've attended since I was in high school. 

So I'll be busy preparing for that, I suppose, and I'm taking the GRE's on Thursday, and I have a handball tournament this weekend and another in Colorado the weekend after that. I suppose I'm also supposed to be applying to grad schools. We'll see.

No title for some reason

It's official. I'm sick. My throat was a bit raw after my last bike ride (60 miles at 19 mph!), and yesterday it got worse throughout the day. I noticed it yesterday while lifting weights, but that was only a headache. By the time I was heading to bed my congestion had progressed, and it was to the point where I couldn't even get to sleep. I decided the only thing I could do was get as much vitamin c into my body as possible. To put this in perspective, this happened to be the time in the night I would normally be eating some sort of junk food. So I ate three clementines, and I even finished off with a slice chocolate orange. Talk about commitment.

So I went to bed, stayed awake because I was incredibly uncomfortable, and eventually I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I remember is dreaming about paddling a car through deep water and trying to park it between other cars on an embankment. I'm not sure why floating cars were the standard of transportation, but I also distinctly remember being very warm, sweating, and flushed from frustration. So naturally, when I woke up I was expecting to be sweaty, but I was a pretty average temperature. There's nothing quite like assuming you know why a dream was going the way it was and then realizing your explanation isn't applicable. I was sure the fact I was hot was related to the fact I had more covers on my bed than normal (it finally got cold in Iowa, and I shivered for a while before falling asleep), and I'm always looking to explain my dreams, so it was almost disappointing to wake up and not be having an intense fever. I'm still really congested and sore and stuff though. I'm really glad I'm not working today. I woke up before 6:00am got up because I was too uncomfortable to sleep, and then went back to bed once I felt a bit better. So I'm not really on my strict writing schedule, but I'm getting it done gradually between sleepy states.

I've decided the best course of action for writing my personal essay for law school is just to write it here and directed at my normal readers. I figure if I make it genuinely personal, it actually has the best chance of success. So stay tuned for that hopefully next time, but I might wait until I feel better.

Blue bunny ice cream

Chocolate seduction has never had to seduce anyone
it's never had to put on makeup, don a slinky outfit
Or use a sexy voice. Let's be honest:
The seduction is over after I read the word chocolate.

They could call their flavors "chocolate 1" through "chocolate 5"
And I'd still be eagerly reaching for the nearest silverware
Ready to do battle with the chocolate chunks
And stiffened ribbons, freezer fresh and anchored
With spoon-bending rigidity so my knuckles come out
Coated in crystallized, many-times-melted goo.

The distinction eludes me; what makes one chocolate a "Champion"
And the other "seductive?" does the former demand my money outright
While the latter wiles it from my wallet, tenderly taking the bills
Between two fingers, curled eyelashes framing doe's eyes bobbing
In their hypnotic lock until the dainty fingers find a pocket.

Me:
I wrote this post a while ago, but unfortunately it still applies perfectly. I've been coughing fairly constantly for a couple of days. It's really diminishing my willpower. I have plenty of things that need doing, but I keep thinking maybe I'll feel better tomorrow. So far, not so good.