I Got Da Skillz and I Use Them To Pay Da Billz… for Thrillz

This was another beautiful afternoon that I couldn’t bear to stand inside, so I headed for the IM fields to practice my tennis serve. Man, I don’t know why I stopped playing as an undergrad, tennis is so much fun. Well actually I do, but that’s not important.

Also, in case you didn’t already know, my grocery store skillz are awesome. (This may come as no surprise to those who are familiar with my airport skillz, see December 14). When I’m in line, I try to figure out how much the bill will run. I guessed $60 today, and the grand total came to… $63.25. Close, but still not that impressive… until you subtract the mouthwash, since that doesn’t really count as groceries. Knock off those three dollars and fourteen cents from the total, and you get $60.11. That’s right, I was correct within 0.2%. Don’t mess with my grocery cost estimation skills. And let’s not even get into the cool shopping cart moves I pulled today.

Fry Hard with a Vengeance

Yesterday was “Fry Hard with a Vengeance,” the sequel to the successful fry party back in December. Basically we get together and deep fry random food. Last time we stuck with cheese, tortillas, and a Whopper (which just absorbed the oil and got really gross). Here’s what was on the menu this time around:

• Muenster cheese
  
• Chocolate chip cookie dough
  
• Candy bars
  
• 3 Wendy’s Junior Bacon Cheeseburgers (*)
  
• Frozen burritos
  
• Hot dogs
  
• TV dinner salisbury steak
  

(*) The three JBC’s were each fried in a unique style. One was done classic style; for the second we took it apart, fried each component (bun, burger, bacon, lettuce) separately and reassembled it; and for the third we used a wet batter.

Common consensus was that the food was simultaneously good, nasty, and very filling. The grossest thing was the cheeseburger where each component was fried. Fried lettuce and fried bacon look disgusting, and unfortunately there was a huge glob of mayonnaise in my bite which didn’t help matters. Also I got to meet Mike’s brother Andy/Drew, fresh back from Iraq, along with another one of their Kalamazoo buddies.

Afterwards we headed to Valdemar’s co-op for a theme party with about 15 themes… each room had a particular theme and an associated drink (e.g. a pirate themed room with rum). Some of the rooms were pretty good (one girl served martinis while playing Frank Sinatra), and others were kind of lame (in one room the drink tasted like watered-down vodka), and others were crazy (watching three Danish people dance to the hokey pokey in the hokey-pokey theme room where I think they just put the hokey pokey on repeat for a few hours). I had never seen Valdemar’s place before, so it was nice to finally see where he lives. His theme was a cleaning theme, and he served this green drink out of empty detergent bottles. Since we got there late, I watched him improvise a drink in about ten seconds using the leftover alcohol (he just poured a bunch of orange juice, rum, and green food coloring into a punchbowl and added ice), and it actually tasted pretty good. Impressive.

Springtime in February?

It’s springtime! The weather these last few days has been absolutely perfect, mid-to-upper 70’s and sunny. Yesterday after coming back from church I was just sitting in my apartment with the window open and a gentle breeze blowing through, having soup for lunch with some leftover bread and wine from the poker party the night before. Or today, in my office, in the afternoon with the lights dimmed and the cool breeze wafting fresh air in that smells an awful lot like summers in Seattle. For those of you still dealing with freezing temperatures, perhaps you should consider moving to Austin for a few weeks.

A Lenten invocation

“We put no stumbling block in anyone’s path, so that our ministry will not be discredited. Rather, as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: in great endurance; in troubles, hardships and distresses; in beatings, imprisonments and riots; in hard work, sleepless nights and hunger; in purity, understanding, patience and kindness; in the Holy Spirit and in sincere love; in truthful speech and in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and the left; through glory and dishonor, bad report and good report; genuine, yet regarded as impostors; known, yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed; sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything.” (2 Corinthians 6:3-10)

Today is Ash Wednesday, and the above was one of the Scripture readings at church tonight. For the first time tonight I realized how powerful a description of the Christian calling this is, especially near the end where some of the paradoxes of the Christian life are told: genuine, yet regarded as impostors; sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything. God often acts in a way that’s different from how the world thinks, and that’s part of what makes faith so difficult — we must figure out how to extract ourselves from how the world views things, and try to live according to how God sees things. That’s more than enough of a challenge to last a lifetime, yet it is what we must try to do if we are to be faithful to God’s call. That’s where struggle comes in, that’s where repentance
and forgiveness come in, and I suppose that’s where Lent comes in as well. So lead me, Lord, lead me in your righteousness. Make your way plain before my face. For it is you, Lord; you, Lord, only, that makes me dwell in safety. Amen.

Lord, who throughout these forty days for us didst fast and pray,
Teach us with thee to mourn our sins and close by thee to stay.
As thou with Satan didst contend, and didst the victory win,
O give us strength in thee to fight, in thee to conquer sin.
As thou didst hunger bear, and thirst, so teach us, gracious Lord,
To die to self and chiefly live by thy most holy word.
And through these days of penitence, and through thy passiontide,
Yea, evermore in life and death, Jesus, with us abide.
Abide with us, that so, this life of suffering overpast,
An Easter of unending joy we may attain at last.
-Claudia F. Hernaman, 1873

Machiavellian dreams

So today I almost ran for student government. I get this e-mail from Mike, who apparently had been contacted by some guy named Chico who was desperately looking for additional candidates on his tickets, and was willing to pay the $50 filing fee for him. In the e-mail Mike said that Chico was looking for another person to run for student senate representative, and that he thought I might be interested. From what it sounded like, you really didn’t have to do anything if you didn’t want to, and few enough people were running that we would have a good chance at winning even without any publicity. I thought it would be hilarious for these two random transportation grad students who have no clue about and little interest in student government to be on the ballot, so I agreed. However when I called Chico back he had already found someone else who actually had the time and interest to do the job for real, so he didn’t need me, so this is kind of anticlimactic. But Mike already filled out his paperwork, including getting photos taken for the campaign, and I think this is incredibly funny. Maybe I’ll be his publicist.

O RLY?

I went to Waco this weekend. It wasn’t that exciting.