Winter Broken

Friday came and went and with it the Walnut Hill 2006 school year: we are officially on winter break. Or something that resembles winter on the calendar; seriously, outside it's really only the barren trees that are giving any indication that it's not June. Which, for the record, I am completely fine with. I hate winter for all the traditional "I'm from the S'th and therefore hate cold weather" reasons as well as the insane pain in my repaired knees that the cold and wet atmosphere brings. Argh, hate it! Or, as Timmy might say, Screw You, Winter!

So Friday was a great school day; Stat Project presentations from 8-9:30, some of which were pretty good, and then something I dubbed Extreme General Awesomeness Day (EGAD!) in Algebra II. The Stat topics varied a lot; in no particular order, it was Harry Potter v. LOTR, Allergies, Smoking, Smoking v. Fast Food, Creationism v. Evolution, Liberals v. Democrats, Immigration Reform, Superstitions, and Summer Jobs. Good stuff, and a good way to wind down into the winter. Here's a picture of my buddies from Stat land...

Back (L to R): Soojee, Danielle, Sarah, Vicky, Ellie, Paula

Front (L to R): Jenny, Christine, Noel

We started Alg II with a factoring tournament, won by I-Chun, and then had a Cowboy-Grizzly-Ninja tournament won by Teddy. I-Chun again won the "Guess Nyet's Age in Days" competition, and it not surprisingly turns out that everyone thinks that I am younger than I am. Then we had a trivia contest that Tory won, and we ended things off with a math dance off that Grace won with her fantastic interpretive dance of "The Quadratic Formula." Solid Job by Grace! A grand time was had by all...

Back (L to R): Jimmy, David, Teddy
Middle (L to R): Elody, Jill, Rachel, Miki, Gemma, Joy
Front (L to R): I Chun, Grace, Tory

So those were the good times, followed by getting home Friday afternoon and going running in the not-so-cold. Beck got home hella late on Friday evening for no good reason at all, but we quickly jumped in the car and headed back (for me) to Natick, where we attended a sweet party at Dave and Emmy's. It was to some degree the usual Ve(n)t and Bitch session, but Dave (Emmy's) and Jason (Cindy's) were there, two excellent individuals, so a good couch-bound time was had by us, talking music and lit and listening to tunes (though not, oddly enough, reading books). We also watched UMass lose to Appalachian State in the Div I-AA Championship Game, a terrible mixed blessing as it meant there was a non Ve(n)ting entertainment option, but might I submit that watching football with a couple of the partiers, let's call them "The Professor and The Sphere," is unbearable. Their feeling aside for right now, because I have my own venting to do: watching the game with The Sphere is like watching a game with Tim McCarver and John Madden at the same time, only both of them have undergone EST so that they can't remember anything about the sport. In other words, not only do you have a moron in the room trying to explain everything to the LCD (e.g., "what the guy wants to do there is tackle the guy with the ball") but he doesn't actually know anything about the sport, so he 1, really has no authority to explain it to anybody, and 2, he kept saying wrong things, like "I didn't think you could review the spot of a ball." So we had someone stating the obvious, only he wasn't getting it right. Argh. And then "The Professor" was waxing about how he really watches it for the "epic nature of the battle," he doesn't really care about the score only "the ballet." And it's not like I have something against academic accounts of sport; check out this DFW article on tennis and tell me it's not awesome (including the quote "and the truth is that TV tennis is to live tennis pretty much as video porn is to the felt reality of human love."). But it was like a robo-academ, no actual information given, just someone going on and on about the clash, and again, making obvious observations that weren't entirely correct. Maybe it's just that I watched the Pats game two weeks ago with the E-men and now I've been wrecked because I know what real, knowledgeable sports people are like - they STFU and watch the game, trying to make insightful comments and not "hey, that's a forward pass, which if not legally completed constitutes an "incomplete pass" and is not a live ball; the offensive team gains no yards but retains possession provided that it is not fourth down" or "O Yon Spiralling ball / its path through the air / a gift toward mine eyes." Gotdammitanyway.

Ah, I feel better now. Saturday was a'ight; I tutored and went running, watched some basketball and goofed and caught up on my OC. The OC, it should be noted, has taken a massive turn for the better after what can only be called two years of quite dismal crap.And Taylor Townsend is holding her own in Marissa's absence. You know, were I someone who cared about such things. We followed up the cheesecake with some beefcake, specifically some vampire-with-a-soul style beefcake, and watched a couple of episodes of Angel Season 4. Good times in the casa last night.

And so now it's Sunday morning. The dia del futbol americano awaits, but for now I am going to take some time posting and filling int he gaps of the last three months on postlessness. A trip to Houston, a weekend with the E-po, and other craziness has transpired. I'm glad to have the writing bug back for a bit. So let's take advantage, strike while iron is hot, etc.

More to come...