Rollercoaster Residency Ride

Ever since that fateful night last summer, when I was laying in my bed, trying to get to sleep. It was a futile effort, because of the partying going on in the house that Thursday night. I laid in bed, lights out, thinking about what I wanted to do. I didn't want to live in Tahoe for the rest of my life--I knew that before I moved to the beautiful lake. But what did I want to do? Where would I be the next summer?

I was 25, living with friendly, cool, but strangers. I always had thought that between 30 and 35 would be a good time to settle down, get married and start a family. I've still got ten years and plenty of time, so I'm not too worried about that aspect of my life. But what about career? I've never really gotten started on a career. I lived in Sacramento for a year, Portland for a year, and back down to Tahoe for most of a year. No regrets, but I also don't want to be in the first year of a new job when I start a family.

That night in Tahoe, I came to the conclusion that I wanted to give teaching a try. The more I thought about it over the next few days and weeks, the more I wanted to pursue it. I observed middle school classes in Tahoe, and the hesitant initial ice was broken by the first kid through the door asking, "Do we have a sub today?!!" Every moment in that first class observation made me want to be a teacher.

As the months passed by, I did a number of things to get myself in position to start the teaching program that begins tomorrow. I moved from Tahoe to Seattle, and I observed middle school classrooms for 60 hours in the Fall while taking classes at NSCC. I passed the West-B test, and made my way through the interviews at UW-Bothell. I got accepted into the program a month ago, and I was ecstatic!

I go to register for classes and find that I'm not able to register because my measles immunity form hasn't been sent in... shit. Two weeks until classes and I haven't registered. I get the form sent in, and a week later I'm able to register online. I register for the two classes in the teaching program, then throw in an additional 3-credit class to get the middle school endorsement. Once I'm done registering, I check out the tuition statement... $7,000. Wait a minute. $7,000 is the non-resident price, mine should be closer to $2,000. Shit.

Since my initial talks in June with the lady at UW about the teaching program, I've been told that in-state residency shouldn't be a problem. I've maintained a WA driver's license, kept my voter's registration in WA, and I've never lived anywhere else long enough to establish residency outside of WA state.

Just over a week ago, I emailed a lady in the UW admissions office and she suggested that I fill out a residency questionnaire and send it in, describing the situation I'm in. I did just that, didn't hear back, so I sent her an email last Wednesday wondering if she had gotten a chance to review my questionnaire. She had, and was sorry to say that I wouldn't be receiving residency status for a few reasons. One of the reasons was that I had submitted my current WA license and an old WA license that expired, but I didn't submit the one from 2002 to 2007. Now, I didn't need to provide the old license, but because I did, they expected the one in between (which I no longer have).

With a week to go between the start of classes, I started going into short-stack desperation mode. I had been looking forward to the teaching program for the past eight months, jumped through all the hoops, but I hit a brick wall. I can't afford the program on out-of-state tuition, it just simply isn't feasible for me. I emailed the lady back, asking what I could do to appeal again. She gave me the email address of her boss, who I exchanged a few lengthy emails with.

After reading my story, he felt like I had a strong case for residency, and wanted me to give him a time line of where I have lived for the past three years. I got that to him on Friday.

Today, I checked my tuition statement online and it went from $7,000 for Spring Quarter to $1,700. WAAAAAAAHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

BPP Week 15: Flowers

Dad and I went over to University of Washington at noon, to catch the amazing two-week window of cherry blossoms blooming.

Breakfast: MHG Style

I may be jealous of his Canadian citizenship, with his free health care, laid back attitude and reefer madness (maybe that is just B.C.?)--but I am NOT jealous of Astin's cooking ability. Macaroni and Cheese?! Come on!! This is a cooking competition! Don't disgrace the sanctity of the 1st annual World Poker Bloggers Cooking Competition (WPBCC).

My meal for you today is, quite simply, a masterpiece.

Ingredients:



We've got some Bacon, Eggs, Cranberry Juice and Toast--the four essential ingredients in any good breakfast. I start out cooking up some bacon for breakfast, and toss in a couple extra bacon strips for later...



After about a minute, I realize cooking bacon is BORING. It cooks slow. I did what any sane poker blogger would do, and fired up a 45-man SNG:



An important step of cooking bacon is to remember to rubber band the leftover bacon, and stick it back in the fridge:



After the bacon got nice and crispy, I drained the grease out of the pan and cracked open some eggs. Scrambled those bad boys up, and BOOOOOM!





To be continued...

The Mookie

116 runners, and I was feeling good!

The tourney gets started, and who pops up on my blogroll, but the villainous Astin. That gaul darn Canadian already has his meal photo'd up for our Chef Challenge!!! Go check his meal out, so you vote who's meal is best. His meal (with drink!) is going to be fucking hard to beat, but I've got a trick or two up my sleeves, like that rat Marcel from Top Chef. Bet you didn't know I watched Top Chef, did you Astin? You are entering a world of pain, my friend. A world of pain.

The poker started off with a bang... A lowercase bang. Hoy popped the first hand 3BB from middle position and I called on the button with KQo, the BB joined us and we saw a flop of QQK... oooh baby! Check, check, bet, fold, fold.... ... gah!

Every table I was at seemed like I got shafted. Start out with GCox, Hoy and Surf to name a few. Get moved to a table with two of the four chip leaders. Get moved to a table with Miami Don, LJ, NewinNov and Riggstad...

Then I realized all the tables were this tough. No more fresh meat in these blogger tournaments (well, minus this donkey). It has been some time since I ponied up the online funny money to play in a blogger tourney other than Kat's donkament. I figure this is my one week off to play in the Mookie, so it is worth 1/10th of my bankroll to take a shot.

I started off slow and meticulous, taking a page out of Hoy's new book. I slowly chipped up, working my way to right around an average stack at the first break. The biggest hand before the first break was stacking someone when I flopped a straight with J9 from the BB. I check-called the flop and turn, then pushed on the river although the turn had paired the board. I think that push is one of two "iffy" moves I made all night. My opponent ended up calling, probably thinking I was just trying to buy the pot after not showing strength until that point.

1st break, at 4400 chips, and I grab one of two remaining, hidden, Guinness brewskis from the fridge.

Come back from the break and I get Riggs all-in preflop with AhKh to his Kd9d, and a nine lands on the flop. The beat takes half of my chips, but I wouldn't have played it any different. No tilt, but I was heating up, then I looked down and realized I was wearing a fleece and sweatpants, had a cat and a laptop on me, and a heater was blasting me from starboard. Sweat Jesus!

NewinNov pulled a nice little preflop slowroll (is there such a thing?) on Miami Don, which got the Don active in the chat box. About an orbit later, Don pushes from UTG with a short stack, and I call all-in with Jacks to double up against Don's A-To. Very next hand Don is in the BB, and I min-raise with my Kings UTG and it folds around to Don, who pretty much has to go all-in with his very short stack. He does, and flips over A-To again and doesn't hit an Ace, again.

2nd break, just above average chip stack, feeling good, but hotter than hell--I'm glad this isn't a live game. The last live game I was at, the 1st Seattle Poker Blogger Night (tm), I was beet red the whole night. I take the break to wash my face with cold water for a minute.

Back from break and after a few hands I pop it 4bb from UTG and eventually lay down AsQs to a push from Riggs. My stack is dwindling away to the aggressive big stacks all around us, until IG pushes her short stack into my BB, and I call with a shorter stack than her. My AQ runs smack dab into her AK, but I flop AQx... ouch. She goes out on the next hand to quad jacks. Down to 26 of 116.

Table change to Jecii, Al, TuscaloosaJohn and TripJax table. A few orbits in I knock out a baby-stacked AlCantHang with AsQs vs. his QJo. NewinNov looked like he thought about squeezing me, and it probably would have worked.

A few hands later, Jecii raises to 2400 with a stack of about 7.5k to my 18k. I'm in the BB with AJo, take my time and eventually push. He calls with Qd9d and turns a nine. Back down to 10k.

Bubble time, as CK hits the rail in 20th. I'm just below average stack with around 14k and one of the chip leaders is one to my right. Folds to him and he limps his button. I call with KJo and the BB checks his option. Flop comes all unders, and I decide to lead out for 3k, just under the pot. BB folds and big stack calls... crap. I'm done with the hand unless I improve. I don't, but it only costs me 1k on the turn, and I end up losing 4.5k that I didn't need to. I don't like my bluff into the chipleader in that spot, although it might have worked if the chip leader hadn't flopped top pair. 2nd mistake of the night after 2.5hours, not too shabby for not playing much in the last eight months.

I'm back down to 9k at the bubble, find AK and go with it, losing to Jecii's pocket tens. I was shooting for the top, and could have limped into the money--and probably would have a few years ago--but I had my eyes on the prize last night. I thought I had a little karma built up for the ace or king to spike, but no luck, and I go home the bubble boy. At least I went home with my bubble girl CK... bow chicca bow wow.

Simplicity

I have yet to find someone who I can describe as a "simple person." Everyone has their own unique quirks and characteristics that makes them who they are. To make things more complex, we've got a world of unique individuals who are all forced to interact with each other to survive, to find love, and to succeed.

A few things over the past few months have my head spinning in the relationship aspect of said conundrum. The first was the movie "Juno" and how simple the director made Bleaker. He runs, a lot. That's pretty much the whole character. If you want to get technical, Bleaker also plays the guitar and has an overbearing mother.

With all the crazy things happening in Juno's life, Bleaker's simplicity is a huge attraction. By being with him, and sharing in his simple, happy life--everything will be alright.

The problem, of course, is that nobody is simple. Some people lead more complicated lives than others, but that doesn't mean as individuals they are any more or less complex than other individuals. For instance, my life is pretty straight-forward and simple right now: work from 8:30am-5pm, class a couple nights a week. No other obligations, no girlfriend, and I am striving for something (becoming a teacher), so my life has purpose. Waking up in the morning isn't tough, and going to sleep at night is easy.

Compare my life now, to my life a year and a half ago, when I was staying up until sunrise because I didn't have anything better to do. I had no reason to wake up early, I had no job, and my immediate goal was to move down to Tahoe. As nice as it was to not be working, the months between moving out of Portland and moving to Tahoe were very dull, bordering on depressing. I lived at home, in my parents' basement, 24 years old. The simplest life imaginable, but with that simplicity came depression, because I felt like a loser for moving back in with my parents, and I felt like a loser for not contributing to the betterment of myself, much less society. Simplest time of my life, yet my mind was drifting all over the place with all the free time I had, and as an individual I was more complex than a six-star sudoku.

Now compare both of those lives to someone like The Wife. She bounces full-time accountant duties with being a mother of two kids and a wife to a newly-returned Iraq soldier/doctor. There can't possibly be enough time in the day for her impossible schedule. It seems natural to me that she would be intrigued about Betty, who lives a completely different life. I can only assume Betty is interested in aspects of The Wife's life as well. I'm interested in both of their lives, as well as Waffles' life, Brian's life, Jessica's life, my parents, my friends, and pretty much every person I know.

There are aspects of everyone's lives that I wish I had. I can't tell if it is a balance issue, a "grass is greener" thing, or just a thirst for knowledge. I always wonder what it would be like to travel for a living. Having a steady relationship with someone would be awfully difficult, being on the road all the time. Casual relationships would be both fun and memorable, but also hollow and less meaningful than a long-term relationship.

Both Betty and The Wife have perked my interest over the last few months, because they are such complex people. I'm still interested in their complexity, but through reading their blogs I've come to realize that almost everyone is just as complex, they just might not be as good at expressing themselves. A lot of the male bloggers out there (including myself) are poor writers, but through their stories and rambles you get a feel for who they really are and start to pick up on the little quirks that make a guy like Columbo or Hoy so unique.

I'm looking forward to continuing to read everyone's blogs, and hopefully using my ever-growing knowledge of people to start writing stories with characters that have feeling and are unique. I've got a few story ideas brewing, and hope to follow in The Wife's footsteps and get some fiction posted by the end of the week.

Cat vs. Bunny

Four posts in one day? No more posting this week! I was just thinking a little more about various mediums of story-telling. Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words, and other times film can in no way encapsulate the written word. New life goal #523 is to master all forms of story-telling and be able to use them all interchangeably for any given situation.

Photographer's Block / Easter

Well shoot, after joining Betty's blogger photo project and uploading a handful of pictures, I haven't added anything since. Week 13 was "Luck" and Week 14 was "Easter," and I honestly couldn't think of anything I wanted to take a picture of for either of those prompts. I could take a picture of playing cards--the ace of spades--or maybe some dice, but it just didn't seem worth the effort. I didn't do anything special for Easter this year, unlike Jessica, who dyed some eggs (and for some reason hasn't uploaded those photos to the blogger photo project!).

I don't have an egg to take a photo of, nor do I have a chocolate Easter bunny laying around (and if I did, it would be ear-less or have a big chunk taken out of its rear end). For me, the purpose of the blogger photo project isn't about the subject of the photos, rather it is about getting me out and more familiar with my camera. Which is why any excuse I try and make is lame.

I've only taken one picture over the last two weeks, and it had nothing to do with photography, other than I thought a picture would do a better job of telling the story than me trying to describe the situation:



Yes, that is a bowl of Trader Joe's clam chowder with a school of goldfish swimming to and fro. Eat your heart out, Astin. I'm coming for your "best cook" title in the blogosphere.

Instead of trying to dig into my psyche and figure out why I don't want to take photos, I'm going to write about Easter instead of photographing it.

Growing up, my family would dye eggs every Easter. Multi-colored eggs with invisible wax crayon drawings and messages. I would play mad scientist and try to see how many different color layers I could put on one egg. It usually didn't turn out too hot. Dyeing Easter eggs was fun and all, but there was another tradition that takes the Easter cake.

The Egg Hunt.

What kid doesn't love searching through the house for plastic Easter eggs?? The fact that my Dad enjoyed hiding the eggs more than my greedy sister and I liked finding them, made the annual egg hunt last until my sister headed off for college. Sara and I will never be too old to search for plastic Easter eggs, especially when those plastic eggs have a little jingle to them.

Dad would hide the eggs all over the living room and kitchen. In the toes of shoes, in potted plants, behind the fireplace, behind books, in magazines, in the card drawer, under chairs, under cushions of the couch, etc. Those were the normal spots my sister and I would hit first. Dad would get tricky and place eggs in lampshades and under the cover of the piano keyboard--where we would have never looked if not for his nods, glances and hints. Of course, every year he would forget where he placed a few eggs, and they would show up days or weeks later. My parents would also make sure that my sister and I were even on eggs, and my bigger bully of a sister (and admittedly quicker than me at finding Easter eggs) would have to either give up some of her eggs, or wait for me to catch up.

If I were in her position, I would have thrown the biggest temper tantrum imaginable. Take my eggs?! Oh HELL no! You're welcome for making you such a patient and loving individual, sis :)

(hah)

BBT3!

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Portland Redux

I wouldn't call it a bender, but a beer an hour for ten hours is something I haven't done since college. As soon as we began the drive down from Seattle, I started to crave some sweet, sweet Indian cart lunch special. There are a dozen things I remember about Portland, that are unique to Portland and are things I crave every now and then. The Indian cart special tops the list. Before we settled in for the long haul of drinking tall boys of Olympia and watching basketball, we hit the Indian cart for a "seven course" $5 meal that blows most other specials out of the water.

Funny thing about the "Taste of India" cart, is that four carts away is a "Real Taste of India" cart. Nobody knows which came first, but the specials are different, so I can only assume the two carts are rivals. It could be an ingenious marketing ploy to drum up business and interest, but I sort of doubt it.

Portland was all I imagined, and although I had planned on dropping by and visiting Stacey, everything else about the weekend was amazing. I was jonesing for some cheap beer, lots of basketball, running around outside on the PSU Astroturf field, Voodoo doughnuts, Ground Kontrol, Liar's dice, 4-player Pacman on the gamecube, hot tubbing...the weekend had it all! Andrew's complex has a racquetball court, and for some reason five of us thought bringing two soccer balls and kicking them around as hard as we could we be a good idea. My glasses got knocked off about two minutes into the mayhem and I went back to watching basketball--staying away from the ricochet death balls of fury.

Josh and I needed to be back in Seattle by noon on Sunday, and we weren't too confident in our ability to wake up early on Sunday morning, so we headed out late on Saturday. Nat didn't seem to be too pleased about only having one night of drinking in Portland, so I offered to drive Nat's car home so he could drink.

And then came THE BOOT.

I hadn't heard about "the boot" until about 8pm on Saturday night. I would have taken a picture of it if I had my camera, but try and imagine a clear plastic boot, capable of holding six pints of beer. Nat and Andrew finished off the first boot in about ten minutes.

By boot #5, the place was rocking. I would have loved to participate, but I was having a blast with the 4-player Pac-man. If you haven't played 4-player Pac-man on the game cube, you haven't lived. One person is Pac-man, using a game-boy advance to see the entire map, and the other three players are ghosts who can only see a portion of the map. When a few people have drank a boot each, the game turns from trying to win, to trying to juke the hell out of the ghosts, or sucker them into chasing you into a power-pellet, then going for the tri-fecta of eating all three ghosts. Good times, good times.

March MADness!!!

**Ichi strolled in this morning, he must have been locked away in a garage or basement somewhere--glad he's OK and thanks for the well-wishes**

The madness is in full effect. I'm starting to come down with a *cough* cold. And I'm pretty sure I won't make it to work tomorrow *cough* damn.

Work days like today aren't actually half-bad. Boss-lady wasn't in, because of cold, so I kept my yahoo bracket refreshed every minute or so during the games.

I picked way too many upsets. I reasoned that since I had a fairly conservative elite eight and final four, I should go nuts on the first two rounds with upsets--because I don't have either team going very far. There is always a 12 seed that upsets a 5 seed, but I didn't need to pick three of the 12 seeds to advance. Maybe that was a bit much.

I picked the #11 KSU over #6 USC upset, which is the only game D-Tran missed in the first 16 games. It was a no-brainer for me, I mean Beasley > Mayo, and the teams are fairly similar. Also, the game was played in Nebraska, which isn't exactly a neutral court. USC reminds me a lot of last year's Golden State Warriors: at home, they are scary and can shoot the lights out--and no one can stop them if they are clicking--but on the road, when they don't shoot well, they can get beaten by anyone. Match that up against a very hungry Beasley and KSU squad, and you've got yourself an upset.

My only sweet 16 team gone is George Mason--and I only picked them because I'll be down in Portland with a bunch of Washington State grads--so I had to pick George Mason for the major upset to root against all of them on Saturday. I'll be rooting for Notre Dame now!

I'm the only one in our bracket to pick Tennessee to win it--go Vols!

Fair-Weather Blogger

Hectic times in the Great Northwest for yours truly. I've spent all of my time this week either working, sleeping, or studying for my math final that was tonight. The final went well, I'm not worried about the grade, but now I've got more shit to deal with. Like tossing my iPod in the washing machine and losing my cat. Ichi has only been gone for two days, but that is pretty long for him, considering he's pretty much my shadow when I'm around.

I've got the first UW-Bothell teaching program meeting tomorrow night, and I spent an hour tonight working on getting my residency and financial aid crap straightened out. I'm looking forward to this weekend down in Portland, watching basketball, drinking beers, and...

CHILLING... THE FUCK... OUT!

PLU BBQ: The Nalgene Ninjas

The PLU BBQ is an annual college frisbee tournament, put on by Pacific Lutheran University, in Tacoma, WA. I went to the University of Puget Sound, also in Tacoma, and fierce rivals with the PLU Lutes. Up until my senior year, I didn't really like PLU--I'm not sure why, other than everyone else around me at UPS seemed not to like PLU. Then my senior year at UPS, I started playing in a pickup frisbee game at PLU, and met some really cool men and women.

Both PLU and UPS were not any good at frisbee when I attended UPS, and the guys I got to know from PLU my senior year started up the tourney in 2003 to add a fun tournament for teams who weren't in the top tier of ultimate frisbee colleges on the west coast. In 2003, there couldn't have been more than 6-8 teams. This year, we were the 24th seed... out of 24 teams.

The Tacoma pickup team, under the guise of UPS Alumni, grabbed the last spot in the tournament, and we were placed in the final spot of the C pool. Captain Josh thought this might have been an under-seed, and when we went 5-0 on Saturday, I finally had to agree with him. The second point of our tournament was another Callahan. Two in two weeks! I didn't score the Callahan this time, but it was off of my pull, and Anders intercepted the first pass for the defensive score. In our third game of the day, I jumped out of the end zone and Greatest'd a disc to Sean for a score. Two weeks in a row with a Greatest... that's a little silly, especially because Sean threw the greatest to me last week.

We made quite the run from seeded dead last to eventually succumbing to the University of Washington team in the semi-finals, tying for 3rd in the entire tournament. The Tacoma team had ten old guys playing, and we had won three games earlier in the day, making our weekend record 8-1. UW had 3 byes and had about 15 young guns that quite simply ran us into the ground.

Sean was coaching the UPS team, and they had a bye in the 4th round, so he played with us and made the most amazing lay-out D, without actually getting the D. The guy he was guarding scored, but Sean flew through the air and landed face-first into a 2'x5' perfectly placed puddle. It was the funniest thing any of us saw all day. He got up and was completely soaked. I gave him a big hug and I'm pretty sure Will got the lay out on video.

Jerry was up to his old shenanigans. We had a nice D, and I was trying to slow us down a bit (commonly, when your team gets a D in ultimate frisbee, the instinctual thing to do is pick up the disc right away and throw it--which leads to rushed throws and usually turnovers). I hollered for Tom pick up the disc, since he was the furthest from it, giving us time to set up. Tom starts walking to the disc, and the rest of us set up in a stack.

All of a sudden, Will starts cutting to the back corner of the end zone. I don't know why he is cutting, because Tom is a good 20ft from the disc still. Then I see Jerry running up to the disc and he steals it before Tom can get to it--and promptly hits a leaping Will for the score. It was hilarious because I don't think anybody besides Will saw Jerry sneaking in to steal the disc from Tom, and it worked perfectly, because the other team was just as confused as we were. Tom sulked off the field, silently cursing out Jerry--which made the moment that much better.

Somehow I lost not one, but two of Josh's nalgene water-bottles this weekend. He offered me one Saturday morning, and I gladly accepted it, only to leave it at the fields Saturday night. Sunday morning rolls around and Josh has a third Nalgene for me to use, and once we lost our game to UW, I couldn't find my Nalgene for the life of me. I searched up and down the sideline for the water bottle, with no luck. Must have been ninja'd. Sorry Josh, I'll get you two Nalgenes next weekend.

The weekend was a blast, and I had a bunch of fun playing on a team that I still believe was out-matched physically in almost every game we played. Our strategy and experience played a HUGE role in our success, and it was fun to be a part of the "old men" team... even if I'm only 25...

301, Temple of the Dog

That last post about ultimate turned out to be my 300th on this here blog. Good ol' ultimate.

As usual, lots of thoughts have been bouncing through my head. I really want to spend a day and just write, write, write--but that isn't going to happen anytime soon. I was thinking this evening about what different mediums I can express my creative side. Writing is fun, and I enjoy it, but I'm not very good at it. I tend to just ramble and confuse myself and whoever is reading.

I've dabbled in creating videos to music, which I've had fun with, but I'm not good at either. I was never a very artsy kid, and I wasn't musically inclined--always favoring sports and video games over a book or crayons. I'm starting to wonder if there is another outlet out there for me, besides writing. There are plenty of story ideas hopping around in my head, but the time it takes to write and edit a story are things I just won't have in the near future, unless I can cut up the job into bits and pieces--which I think would be very difficult.

On an inspiring note, I heard this song on Funky Monkey 104.9 yesterday, and I haven't been able to get it out of my head:



What a find!

Ultimate Frisbee 101

Seven on seven, can't move when you have the disc, and the field is setup like a football field with two end zones. A simple and fun game, that can get extremely complex when skill, weather and strategy are factored in.

In baseball, the rarest two things are the triple-play and a perfect game. In Ultimate Frisbee, the rarest plays are the "Callahan" and the "Greatest."

(YouTube examples of the Callahan and Greatest plays are below. The second video starts out as a slide-show, but eventually gets to an amazing--AMAZING--greatest)

A Callahan occurs when, as a defender, you intercept a pass in the opponent's end zone. It counts as an automatic score, and is so rare because you have to push the opponent all the way back to their end zone, and then intercept a pass in that end zone. If you think in football terms, the only way it would be possible is if one of the defensive linemen bats a ball up in the air, or a defensive back intercepts a screen pass in the end zone (which I've never seen). Unlike football, you can't intercept the ball at the 20-yd line and run it in, because in Ultimate Frisbee you can't run with the disc.

The "Greatest" is aptly named. It occurs when the frisbee is sailing out of bounds, and someone on the offensive team jumps from in-bounds, catches the disc, and while still in the air throws the disc back in-bounds, where a teammate catches the disc. You can probably imagine the rarity of this play. The disc has to be sailing out of bounds, but close enough that someone on your team can reach it by jumping, which is rare. That person then has to be able to jump and throw the disc in the air--which not everyone can do. Then on top of all that, the throw has to be decent enough to catch, and there has to be a teammate around to catch it! I've witnessed countless almost-greatests, where someone jumps, catches and throws the disc in the air, but there is a defender there to smack the disc down.

Yesterday, I caught a Greatest and scored a Callahan.

I had an absolute blast at Slog in the Bog this year. It is a one-day ultimate frisbee tournament--the first tournament of the new season. The Tacoma team I played with got placed in the "A" pool, so we had our work cut out for us. The #1 team in our pool was comprised primarily of Shazam members, and Shazam has won the National Championships two out of the last three years. We took Shazam to "Universe Point," which is a sudden death, winner-take-all point to end the game.

Now, Shazam wasn't taking this tournament too seriously, just out to have fun and start getting in shape--but they've still got very athletic and skillful players, so our team was very happy to give them a run for their money. Yesterday our team went 1-4, but we played three teams that have consistently been better than our team, and we lost those three games by a combined four points (two games we lost on universe point, and we lost another game by two points).

After the tourney, we all headed down to Federal Way and partied it up with some Guitar Hero, quarters and Mario Party. It was good times, and I can't wait until next weekend and the PLU BBQ!

George Carlin on Cats

A "young" George Carlin, and you gotta watch the video for at least 30 seconds. LOL!

Oh man. I had good intentions for tonight, I really did. Possibly have a few friends over, if not, get some math homework out of the way. Instead... I donked off 20 buy-ins in Kat's donkament, then drank beers and YouTubed old George Carlin videos. That guy is pretty fucking funny.

Frisbee tournament tomorrow, then another next weekend, followed by a weekend of beer and March Madness down in Portland. Good times, good times.

Two can play this game...

Guinness. Mmm Mmm Guinness.

Jessica's been whooping me at scrabble ever since she realized triple letter and word scores exist. I think our next game might have to be a little poker.

Tonight's math class was pretty funny. I've made a friend in the class who also has a dry sense of humor, and we sit in the third row and keep a running commentary going during class. He's auditing the class, so he doesn't care too much about his grade, but the wise-cracking actually helps me study, because it keeps me awake and attentive in class.

I've already mentioned how the professor is a Russian ex-Bond girl. She's got the body of a sexy, strong Bond girl-villain as well. There is a kid named Nicoli in the class, who is American, born and raised, but for some reason she always calls on him to answer the questions. I'm not sure why, maybe because he answers her. We poke fun at Nicoli for this, and he laughs along with us, because he has no idea why she always calls on him either. He's a happy-go-lucky kid, but for some reason my friend pushed the envelope and started whispering about Nicoli earning his A the easy way. We agreed that she would snap him in half. I couldn't stop laughing, because the more I thought of the prof and Nicoli in bed, the worse it got. The last image I shook out of my head was Nicoli scratching and clawing at the floor, trying to keep himself away from the bed, with no luck. The prof drags him back by the legs for more punishment.

But we learned about interest and COMPOUND INTEREST today in class, my Dad's favorite interest. He's talked to me 200x about compound interest, and I'm a freaking Business major, so I should know what interest is. We spent pretty much the entire period on interest, and big surprise: there isn't a single question about interest on the next take home "assignment." I hate hate hate the way this lady teaches.

Let Me In!

Stolen from Tessa.

Math Tilt

Over the past six months, I've been retaking the math classes I took in high school to get the college credit I need in order to specialize in middle school math for my teaching program. I was envisioning a nice refresher of algebra and trigonometry to get me in the right frame of mind once the teaching program starts up.

But this quarter is hell.

The math professor I have has a very thick Russian accent, and she and I are never on the same wave-length. I don't know how much of it is her having English as a second language, or how much it is our completely different psyches. Whenever I ask a question, she ends up answering something completely different than what I asked, and no matter how I try and describe it differently, she never understands what I'm getting at until somebody else says THE EXACT SAME THING I just said, and for some reason she understands them and answers the question.

I found out last Monday that she used to work in Russia with nuclear submarines. She knows her shit, but she also is a terrible teacher. She berates students that come in late and students who ask "stupid" questions. It is fairly obvious that she means well, but her temper is so short, and the fact that I haven't heard her issue a single word of encouragement rubs me the wrong way. Students are afraid to ask questions, and I wouldn't be surprised if half the class is failing. She comes to class the next day and berates the class for having such poor test scores. I want to bring a mirror to class tomorrow night.

We have homework assigned, which we are supposed to keep up with--but the homework isn't graded. We have "assignments," and we get a new "assignment" every Wednesday, which is due the following Wednesday. These are five to ten different *difficult* math questions, that are supposed to challenge us and take us hours to complete. The weekly dynamic of the class has boiled down to everyone meeting in the math learning center an hour before class on Wednesday to copy off the smart kids. I try to get the assignments done, but we don't go over half of the material on the damn things, and the problems are 10x more complex than anything in the text book.

On top of the weekly graded assignments, we have a test coming up tomorrow. The assignment we have is on the next chapter after the test, so it doesn't make any sense to work on that now, nor does working on the homework for the next chapter--but if I don't start working on them now, instead of studying the material for the test--I'll have five hours of "assignment" to do Tuesday night.

I'm tilting because I picked it up today and tried to tackle a few of the problems. I recognized a few questions that I had an idea of how to complete, but I ended up spending an hour and a half on one of the problems, which had to do with the Law of Sines and Cosines, and bearings.

There is a fire N35E of Ranger Station A, and N49W of Ranger Station B. If Ranger Station A is 1.3 miles due West of Ranger Station B, how far is each Ranger Station from the fire?

Then the follow up question adds in a helicopter, capable of dumping water on the fire. The helicopter is located at Ranger Station C, which is 1.5 miles S42E of Ranger Station A. The follow up questions ask how far Ranger Station C is from the fire, and at what bearing is the fire from Ranger Station C.

I find these types of questions pretty fun, because there are many ways to solve them. So I work through this problem for about 30 minutes and get all the way to the final part of the second question, and I get stuck trying to figure out how to find the bearing from C to the fire. An hour later, I finally figure it out.

As I'm checking over my answers to make sure I haven't made any stupid mistakes, I find in the book that N35E is 35 degrees East from North, not 35 degrees North from East. I worked the entire problem with the latter. Now I have to go back and redo the entire problem with the correct angles.

Ugh. Back to the grindstone.

Blogger Photo Project

Just got a new member!

I've been a fan of Betty and her photos for the last few months. Her latest photo post sent out an open invitation for bloggers to join. Why not?

Week 11: Household Item

2008 election results

From Gadzooks. Reminds me of 2004, eh Stacu??


Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

1982 Back Rubs

I set out to splurge on Friday night, and I accomplished my goal. The acceptance into the UW-Bothell program is both a beginning and an end. I'm in, and the tests I've taken, and the classes I've attended since last September have all paid off. From my initial epiphany in Tahoe one night last summer, to a few days ago when I got my acceptance letter, I always thought there might be some big, unforeseen road block in my way to becoming a teacher. That still might be the case, but from this point forward, the train is on the tracks, and I just need to give the train some momentum and it will start chugging along.

These next 16 months are going to be rough, and I will need to be cheaper than Uncle Scrooge in order to survive. Going out and spending a lot of money doesn't make the most sense, but I had good company last night, and decided one last hurrah! was in order...

Princess Leia and I went out to Anthony's on Shilshole for a late dinner, and ended up running up a $115 dinner bill. Not even close to the most expensive meal ever eaten at Anthony's, but end bill was more than double the most expensive meal I've ever paid for. We had an amazing (and relatively cheap, for the location) $30 bottle of white wine to go with our borderline orgasmic crab cakes. Those two were the highlights of the meal. The entrees weren't nearly as memorable as the crab cakes and wine. I had my heart set on the Ahi, but Anthony's was all sold out.

We came back to the house, looking forward to the hot tub. I had talked with my parents earlier in the day, and I hinted at the possibility of opening a bottle of my birth-year wine. I asked Mom if Dad would kill me if I opened a bottle of 1982 wine. She responded by quoting my father as saying, "I expect 1982 back rubs in return!"

I agreed, but on the condition that those back rubs don't accrue interest.

I picked out a bottle of Bordeaux, from 1982, and I was extremely excited to pop open the cork and taste the best wine I've ever tasted. Unfortunately, the wine was terrible. Princess was almost certain the wine had gone bad, most likely by getting oxygenated. The cork split in two, hot dog style, after pulling it out from the neck of the bottle, and it didn't look in great shape. The wine was potent, but in an old paint-can way, not in the "pitcher of amazing beer" potency. We let the bottle of wine breathe unintentionally, by getting distracted by the call of the hot tub.

I am in such a weird spot lady-wise. Last night was exactly what I wanted, and the friendship with Princess Leia seems like a typical friends with benefits relationship--one that I've never experienced before, and never really had a desire to be a part of. I'm not really sure I want to continue the benefits side of the friendship, because I have a feeling it will lead to oddness in the future. I've told her I'm not looking for a relationship, and I'm fairly certain she isn't looking for a relationship (at least not with me), which makes the friendship odd. I think we'd be perfectly fine just being friends, but since neither of us is seeing anyone--and we are physically attracted to each other--it only makes sense to enjoy ourselves.