- Good and bad things come to those who wait at about an equal pace, I find.
- Why didn't Damocles just move out of the way? That would clearly solve the problem of the sword hanging above the throne and his head. Just step to the side and you're out of danger.
- A rolling stone gathers no moss; which explains the longevity of The Rolling Stones.
- I think The Rolling Stones are under a curse in which if they ever stop playing music they'll finally die of old age
- Never trust a man with three first names.
- Ten gallon hats cannot actually hold ten gallons of liquid.
- St. Patrick's Day combines American's two favorite pastimes: reveling in ethnic pride and getting drunk. This is not unique to Irish-Americans.
- Sadly, baseball is no longer America's favorite pastime; but you can get drunk at a game. So that counts.
- With that said, Opening Day should totally be a national holiday. (Go Giants!)
- The sequel to Prometheus should be a buddy film about Noomi Rapace and Michael Fassbender's head.
- Better yet, someone should make a movie about "Prometheus and Bob." Or an "Action League Now!" film.
- The American health care system is messed up. It sucks; and no politician wants to actually fix what's wrong with it. (No, this isn't based off anything personal that happened to me recently. Where did you get that ridiculous idea?) (But seriously: fuck our health care system!)
Monday, March 31, 2014
Even more of Dylan's deep thoughts
Monday, March 17, 2014
The fall of the 9th floor
Before starting my freshman year at WSU, my father told me: "The friends you make your freshman year are the people you spend the rest of your time at college trying to get rid of."
Those words proved rather prophetic. Although it didn't take me nearly that long to terminate my relationship with the gang from the 9th floor of Stephenson North.
Things initially remained pretty tight between us all after Winter Break, but by February there were some distinct cliques formed on the floor. There had always been the unsocial kids on the floor, who weren't part of the gang and kept to themselves, but those of us who constituted the true heart and soul of the 9th had previously operated more or less as one homogenized group.
By February, however, that unit was split largely into two groups.
The first group was sort of the "cool" kids. Alex, August, Matt, and Hayden formed the core of this group, along with several non-9th floor students. They spent more and more time hanging out behind closed doors, which had previously been unheard of on the 9th floor. All of us had open door polices - if one of us were home, our door was generally open and anyone could walk in. But they also had reason to spend more time behind closed doors as they started spending more time engaging in unhealthy (not to mention illegal) drinking and smoking habits.
The second group, on the other hand, kept the open door policy going. Steven, the Dans, Colton, Nick, Mike, Billy, Tyler, and myself were the primary members of this second group. We were basically the "nerdier" contingent of the 9th floor. In that second semester, we entertained ourselves largely with epic video game battles or watching movies (not that there wasn't drinking and some "herbal relief" going on. Our group just spent considerably less time doing this. And none at all, in my case).
The rest didn't fit in with the other two groups. They were like free agents who might drift between the two social groups or just started doing their own thing.
It's not like the different social groups completely cut off all interaction together - there was definitely crossover. In general, however, these distinct cliques were formed. You might hangout with someone from the other group a couple times per week, but you'd see your own clique members everyday.
Personally, I didn't find this so bad. Video games and movies are right up my alley, so I had no regrets about my particular group.
At least, not at first. Even this group of friends proved short-lived.
As the school year drew to a close, I started growing weary of the 9th floor. And frankly, I sensed many of my floormates growing weary of me.
I never touched a drop of alcohol before turning 21 and to this day I've never smoked, snorted, injected, etc. any drugs. This earned me quite a bit of grief during my four years at WSU. People looked at me funny whenever I told them "I don't drink." Some people treated me like I was diseased because I didn't enjoy such vices.
It's nice now that I'm out of college because people don't treat you like a freak for not regularly drinking alcohol or ingesting drugs. My body is a temple reserved only for food - and lots of it!
My tastes and personality often give me a certain (arguably false) sense of maturity. I'm an "old soul," as GF likes to put it. There's only so much sexual or scatalogical humor I can stand before it goes from funny to stupid. Needless to say, that attitude didn't mesh well with a bunch of 18/19-year-old dudes who, to put it nicely, generally acted more appropriate for their age. Not that it was always penis and fart jokes, but it was pretty close to always.
Things would just get uncomfortable for me sometimes. I felt like I really had little in common with these guys, and that they were feeling the same way and doing their best to get ride of me.
These factors, combined with my knack for social awkwardness even amongst my closest friends, proved to be my undoing.
Even amongst the smaller, "nerdier" clique, I became an outsider. They started doing activities without me. When I was around I sometimes got left-out in conversation, which was preferable to the increasing amount of mockery and condescension some 9th floor members threw my way.
Sadly, I had few friends outside of the 9th floor. Yet I was growing more and more fond of the few I did have as time wore on. In particular my friendship with an older, bizarre, ginger-haired South African/Scottish neuroscience student I met in English 101 (known alternatively as "The Lord of the Dice" or "Bad Motorscooter" for the purposes of this blog).
The 9th floor gang was good for a loud, rowdy time, but they weren't the sort of friends I could have real conversations with. They weren't the sort of guys I could talk to about important things.
Bad Motorscooter, for all his eccentricities that I hope to detail in a future post, was that type of friend. A conversation with The Lord of the Dice might start out sociable, become deeply personal, then move on to politics, before winding up as a discussion on Japanese fetishes (kittens and heels...kittens and heels. I shudder just thinking about it). You could have a good laugh, a good cry, and intelligent conversation with him all at once.
Bad Motorscooter reminded me of Big G and Puma from high school, or my Berkeley friends (who I really must get around to writing about in more detail someday). Friends I could rely upon in any situation.
Hell, they aren't friends - they're like family.
The 9th floor was a pretty cool group to hang with, but they weren't family.
After the school year ended, my contact with the guys from the 9th floor pretty much ended. They didn't seek me out, and I responded in kind. Thanks to social media I can tell you that much of the friendships built on the 9th floor did continue, some just for a little while and others to this day, but I had no such luck.
The days of the 9th floor were over; for better or worse.
However, the next chapter of my college career was poised to begin. Starting with my arrival to Olympia Avenue, walking through the doors of Murrow East 113, and a phone call that led to a chain of events that forever changed my life.
Those words proved rather prophetic. Although it didn't take me nearly that long to terminate my relationship with the gang from the 9th floor of Stephenson North.
Things initially remained pretty tight between us all after Winter Break, but by February there were some distinct cliques formed on the floor. There had always been the unsocial kids on the floor, who weren't part of the gang and kept to themselves, but those of us who constituted the true heart and soul of the 9th had previously operated more or less as one homogenized group.
By February, however, that unit was split largely into two groups.
The first group was sort of the "cool" kids. Alex, August, Matt, and Hayden formed the core of this group, along with several non-9th floor students. They spent more and more time hanging out behind closed doors, which had previously been unheard of on the 9th floor. All of us had open door polices - if one of us were home, our door was generally open and anyone could walk in. But they also had reason to spend more time behind closed doors as they started spending more time engaging in unhealthy (not to mention illegal) drinking and smoking habits.
The second group, on the other hand, kept the open door policy going. Steven, the Dans, Colton, Nick, Mike, Billy, Tyler, and myself were the primary members of this second group. We were basically the "nerdier" contingent of the 9th floor. In that second semester, we entertained ourselves largely with epic video game battles or watching movies (not that there wasn't drinking and some "herbal relief" going on. Our group just spent considerably less time doing this. And none at all, in my case).
The rest didn't fit in with the other two groups. They were like free agents who might drift between the two social groups or just started doing their own thing.
It's not like the different social groups completely cut off all interaction together - there was definitely crossover. In general, however, these distinct cliques were formed. You might hangout with someone from the other group a couple times per week, but you'd see your own clique members everyday.
Personally, I didn't find this so bad. Video games and movies are right up my alley, so I had no regrets about my particular group.
At least, not at first. Even this group of friends proved short-lived.
As the school year drew to a close, I started growing weary of the 9th floor. And frankly, I sensed many of my floormates growing weary of me.
I never touched a drop of alcohol before turning 21 and to this day I've never smoked, snorted, injected, etc. any drugs. This earned me quite a bit of grief during my four years at WSU. People looked at me funny whenever I told them "I don't drink." Some people treated me like I was diseased because I didn't enjoy such vices.
It's nice now that I'm out of college because people don't treat you like a freak for not regularly drinking alcohol or ingesting drugs. My body is a temple reserved only for food - and lots of it!
My tastes and personality often give me a certain (arguably false) sense of maturity. I'm an "old soul," as GF likes to put it. There's only so much sexual or scatalogical humor I can stand before it goes from funny to stupid. Needless to say, that attitude didn't mesh well with a bunch of 18/19-year-old dudes who, to put it nicely, generally acted more appropriate for their age. Not that it was always penis and fart jokes, but it was pretty close to always.
Things would just get uncomfortable for me sometimes. I felt like I really had little in common with these guys, and that they were feeling the same way and doing their best to get ride of me.
These factors, combined with my knack for social awkwardness even amongst my closest friends, proved to be my undoing.
Even amongst the smaller, "nerdier" clique, I became an outsider. They started doing activities without me. When I was around I sometimes got left-out in conversation, which was preferable to the increasing amount of mockery and condescension some 9th floor members threw my way.
Sadly, I had few friends outside of the 9th floor. Yet I was growing more and more fond of the few I did have as time wore on. In particular my friendship with an older, bizarre, ginger-haired South African/Scottish neuroscience student I met in English 101 (known alternatively as "The Lord of the Dice" or "Bad Motorscooter" for the purposes of this blog).
The 9th floor gang was good for a loud, rowdy time, but they weren't the sort of friends I could have real conversations with. They weren't the sort of guys I could talk to about important things.
Bad Motorscooter, for all his eccentricities that I hope to detail in a future post, was that type of friend. A conversation with The Lord of the Dice might start out sociable, become deeply personal, then move on to politics, before winding up as a discussion on Japanese fetishes (kittens and heels...kittens and heels. I shudder just thinking about it). You could have a good laugh, a good cry, and intelligent conversation with him all at once.
Bad Motorscooter reminded me of Big G and Puma from high school, or my Berkeley friends (who I really must get around to writing about in more detail someday). Friends I could rely upon in any situation.
Hell, they aren't friends - they're like family.
The 9th floor was a pretty cool group to hang with, but they weren't family.
After the school year ended, my contact with the guys from the 9th floor pretty much ended. They didn't seek me out, and I responded in kind. Thanks to social media I can tell you that much of the friendships built on the 9th floor did continue, some just for a little while and others to this day, but I had no such luck.
The days of the 9th floor were over; for better or worse.
However, the next chapter of my college career was poised to begin. Starting with my arrival to Olympia Avenue, walking through the doors of Murrow East 113, and a phone call that led to a chain of events that forever changed my life.
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
The 9th floor of Stephenson North (Pt. 2)
Now that you've met the cast and gotten to know the setting a little, allow me to proceed with the tale of the 9th floor of Stephenson North.
As I said, about half my floormates wasted little time in bonding with one another. It all started with some basic group-bonding sessions hosted by our RA, Craig (who just so happened to come from the same town as Jon. Small world.), but it quickly grew from there.
We had a lot of fun on the 9th floor. Weeknights often ended with group hangout sessions in someone's room, usually Alex/Karl's for whatever reason. We'd pretty much just sit around, shooting the breeze, work on homework together, and once in awhile pull a prank on someone.
One of Steven's favorite pranks was to yell out the window at random passerby crossing Stadium Way; mocking something about them or pretending it was God speaking to them from above. We pulled a few good ones on each other from time to time, such as the group session in Jaimeson's closet I mentioned last time, but our best was reserved for strangers - especially those who dared enter our territory without our permission.
One evening I came home from attending a theater production that a friend of mine starred in to find an unknown couple watching TV in our lounge room. The boy wasn't from the 9th floor and I didn't recognize the girl either, so I was a bit confused why they were on our floor, but not as confused as when I noticed two shirtless men with pillow cases over their heads sneaking up on the lounge room. I watched as they burst into the room, screamed some weird gibberish at the couple, and then quickly ran back out and around the corner laughing.
It was August and Steven. I followed them and discovered several of my floormates were gathered together in Jon/Steven's room. Apparently these strangers had taken over our lounge about a half hour before my arrival, and some of the 9th floor gang had taken offense and made it their mission to annoy the hell out of them while they were here.
Previous attempts included August just silently sitting in the room and creepily staring without saying a word for several minutes, and both Dans standing outside the lounge by the elevators loudly (and vividly) discussing gay sex together while they waited for the elevator to arrive (for clarification, they are not actually gay. In fact, White Dan is now engaged to a lovely lady I met sophomore year at college. Small word again). Yet the couple stubbornly refused to vacate our lounge.
I wanted in, so they tasked me with coming up with the next strategy to scare the invading couple.
Some of you who know me know I am particularly good at giving my voice a "demonic" tone. Basically I lower my voice and sort of half growl my words - GF can attest to how scary it sounds; she doesn't like it. Anyway, all the guys knew about it, but these two lovebirds had never had the pleasure of hearing it before.
So I stood just out of sight of the lounge doorway and started speaking to them with my "demonic voice." It was warnings to "leave this place and never return" and threats of "agony and despair" if you didn't, etc. I was going for a haunted house vibe. But the only effect it had on the stubborn couple was cause them to finally close the lounge door.
We reconvened again and came up with one more all-out attack. Hayden, the Dans, and myself would pose as repo men come to repossess the couch and table out of the lounge. Surely that would drive them off!
As it turned out, we never got to enact that plan. By the time we were ready to play our parts, we discovered the couple had vanished. Mission accomplished.
So that was a typical weeknight. Weekends usually included some form of debauchery.
I think it was the second weekend of the year when we had our first "floor party." A couple of students' parents were generous enough to provide alcohol for their kids before dropping them off at WSU; so that they could truly enjoy the "college experience" right away, I guess. And enjoy it we did that night. There were many a red Solo cup to discretely dispose of by night's end, and Jaimeson was down a lawn chair (I didn't mean to break it! I swear I was sober too!).
The only thing maybe more popular than drinking together on the 9th floor was smoking together. Hookah parties became a semi-daily occurrence. We had a few nicotine addicts in the group, but even guys who didn't smoke cigarettes would get in on the hookah parties. I know there are plenty of legal substances you can place in a hookah, but I'm fairly certain half the time they were using stuff that wasn't legal in this state until recently.
(Can I just say that before my freshman year at WSU I didn't even know hookahs were still a thing. I assumed they hadn't been in style since 19th century Arabia and India. I was so innocent before WSU.)
Floor-wide dinners together were also very common. We often commandeered entire sections of the local dining center for ourselves. One time about 10 guys sat on the same side of a table with only one on the opposite side; it just sort of happened naturally. They proceeded to start mock interrogating him until he switched sides, and then they tried re-enacting the scene from The Last Supper instead.
On other occasions we commandeered materials from the dining center. A small number of utensils and food trays made their way from Southside Cafe to Stephenson North. "Borrowing" food trays was a fairly common practice during winter in all the dorms as students sought ways to sled and snowboard even if they didn't own any sleds or snowboards.
In between Thanksgiving and Winter Break, Southside was festooned with Christmas decorations. Among these included large paper candy canes (about four feet long) tacked onto several walls.
One morning, I awoke to find one of those candy canes stuck to the wall across from the elevators on our floor next to the floor lounge. Someone had also bent it to form the shape of a "9." And there was clearly a open spot of wall that had been previously decorated in Southside that morning.
Our candy cane 9 was taken down by the afternoon, but no punishments were ever handed out or anything ever said to any of us. Lack of evidence and witnesses saved us, I guess.
We heard a lot of noise complaints from the girls living on the 8th and 10th floors. We developed a tongue-in-cheek answer every time one of them voiced their grievances.
"Oh, that wasn't us. That's the guy who lives between the floors."
"The guy who lives between the floors" was like a boogeyman we could pin all our shenanigans on. With a little wink and a smile, we'd watch accusatory neighbors get flustered and leave in a huff at our answer. Our poor RA Craig heard that answer a few times too on the rare occasion he'd catch us being too rowdy.
Suffice to say, our floor earned itself a bit of a reputation. But it wasn't all hooliganism, all the time.
During the harsh winter of 2008, where temperatures got so low it physically hurt to breathe the frigid air (it felt like a punch to your windpipe and gut simultaneously), some of us showed off our heroic side.
Steven, Mexi-Dan, and myself were in Alex/Karl's room one night, just relaxing, when we noticed car after car struggling to get up Stadium Way out the window. Traffic was light, but rapidly becoming a mess as more and more cars struggled to make it up the icy hill. After spending a few minutes enjoying their misery, Steven and Alex flipped gears and got the idea of going down and helping out the drivers. So the five of us donned our winter gear and spent the next hour directing traffic and pushing cars up Stadium Way.
See? It wasn't all mischief and mayhem. Not everything we did upset Craig or other RAs.
We loved Craig, and not just because he so rarely knew what we were up to (he was an engineering major and spent a LOT of time away from the dorm working on projects). You always got the feeling he knew what we were up to, but since none of us were getting ourselves or others seriously hurt, he was content to let things slide. As long, that is, as he didn't directly catch us in the act. He always seemed relaxed and was never overbearing as an RA.
Besides, Craig owed us big time. He organized a competition between the floors of Stephenson North called "Floor Wars." Various challenges and activities were planned for weeks during the middle of Fall semester, and the floors who won the most events and also showed the greatest amount of participation won a pizza party. Not to mention dorm bragging rights.
The competition wasn't even close. The 8th, 6th, and 3rd floors were the only other floors to show any real interest in "Floor Wars," but they still lacked our level of camaraderie.
From the very first event, a drinking contest with shots of apple juice instead of alcohol, we dominated the competition. Maybe 30 people showed up for the first event (not a good showing), but about 2/3rds of the participants were from the 9th floor; and the top three drinkers of the night were Alex, August, and Mexi-Dan (trust me, they had a lot of practice).
The only event we struggled in was a karaoke contest, but we made up for it by having the winning team in the Frisbee bowling tournament. By the time the final event came, a casino night, it was academic. Four of the six biggest winners that night were from our floor, and we earned our free pizza party.
Yes, life was pretty good on the 9th floor. But as documentaries and biopics about rock bands have taught us, the good times weren't destined to last...
(What? You don't like cliffhangers? Give me a break; it ain't easy coming up with topics on a weekly basis. I got to stretch things out sometimes. Don't worry, I'll have the finale posted next week.)
(Edit: The finale is here!)
As I said, about half my floormates wasted little time in bonding with one another. It all started with some basic group-bonding sessions hosted by our RA, Craig (who just so happened to come from the same town as Jon. Small world.), but it quickly grew from there.
We had a lot of fun on the 9th floor. Weeknights often ended with group hangout sessions in someone's room, usually Alex/Karl's for whatever reason. We'd pretty much just sit around, shooting the breeze, work on homework together, and once in awhile pull a prank on someone.
One of Steven's favorite pranks was to yell out the window at random passerby crossing Stadium Way; mocking something about them or pretending it was God speaking to them from above. We pulled a few good ones on each other from time to time, such as the group session in Jaimeson's closet I mentioned last time, but our best was reserved for strangers - especially those who dared enter our territory without our permission.
One evening I came home from attending a theater production that a friend of mine starred in to find an unknown couple watching TV in our lounge room. The boy wasn't from the 9th floor and I didn't recognize the girl either, so I was a bit confused why they were on our floor, but not as confused as when I noticed two shirtless men with pillow cases over their heads sneaking up on the lounge room. I watched as they burst into the room, screamed some weird gibberish at the couple, and then quickly ran back out and around the corner laughing.
It was August and Steven. I followed them and discovered several of my floormates were gathered together in Jon/Steven's room. Apparently these strangers had taken over our lounge about a half hour before my arrival, and some of the 9th floor gang had taken offense and made it their mission to annoy the hell out of them while they were here.
Previous attempts included August just silently sitting in the room and creepily staring without saying a word for several minutes, and both Dans standing outside the lounge by the elevators loudly (and vividly) discussing gay sex together while they waited for the elevator to arrive (for clarification, they are not actually gay. In fact, White Dan is now engaged to a lovely lady I met sophomore year at college. Small word again). Yet the couple stubbornly refused to vacate our lounge.
I wanted in, so they tasked me with coming up with the next strategy to scare the invading couple.
Some of you who know me know I am particularly good at giving my voice a "demonic" tone. Basically I lower my voice and sort of half growl my words - GF can attest to how scary it sounds; she doesn't like it. Anyway, all the guys knew about it, but these two lovebirds had never had the pleasure of hearing it before.
So I stood just out of sight of the lounge doorway and started speaking to them with my "demonic voice." It was warnings to "leave this place and never return" and threats of "agony and despair" if you didn't, etc. I was going for a haunted house vibe. But the only effect it had on the stubborn couple was cause them to finally close the lounge door.
We reconvened again and came up with one more all-out attack. Hayden, the Dans, and myself would pose as repo men come to repossess the couch and table out of the lounge. Surely that would drive them off!
As it turned out, we never got to enact that plan. By the time we were ready to play our parts, we discovered the couple had vanished. Mission accomplished.
So that was a typical weeknight. Weekends usually included some form of debauchery.
I think it was the second weekend of the year when we had our first "floor party." A couple of students' parents were generous enough to provide alcohol for their kids before dropping them off at WSU; so that they could truly enjoy the "college experience" right away, I guess. And enjoy it we did that night. There were many a red Solo cup to discretely dispose of by night's end, and Jaimeson was down a lawn chair (I didn't mean to break it! I swear I was sober too!).
The only thing maybe more popular than drinking together on the 9th floor was smoking together. Hookah parties became a semi-daily occurrence. We had a few nicotine addicts in the group, but even guys who didn't smoke cigarettes would get in on the hookah parties. I know there are plenty of legal substances you can place in a hookah, but I'm fairly certain half the time they were using stuff that wasn't legal in this state until recently.
(Can I just say that before my freshman year at WSU I didn't even know hookahs were still a thing. I assumed they hadn't been in style since 19th century Arabia and India. I was so innocent before WSU.)
Floor-wide dinners together were also very common. We often commandeered entire sections of the local dining center for ourselves. One time about 10 guys sat on the same side of a table with only one on the opposite side; it just sort of happened naturally. They proceeded to start mock interrogating him until he switched sides, and then they tried re-enacting the scene from The Last Supper instead.
On other occasions we commandeered materials from the dining center. A small number of utensils and food trays made their way from Southside Cafe to Stephenson North. "Borrowing" food trays was a fairly common practice during winter in all the dorms as students sought ways to sled and snowboard even if they didn't own any sleds or snowboards.
In between Thanksgiving and Winter Break, Southside was festooned with Christmas decorations. Among these included large paper candy canes (about four feet long) tacked onto several walls.
One morning, I awoke to find one of those candy canes stuck to the wall across from the elevators on our floor next to the floor lounge. Someone had also bent it to form the shape of a "9." And there was clearly a open spot of wall that had been previously decorated in Southside that morning.
Our candy cane 9 was taken down by the afternoon, but no punishments were ever handed out or anything ever said to any of us. Lack of evidence and witnesses saved us, I guess.
We heard a lot of noise complaints from the girls living on the 8th and 10th floors. We developed a tongue-in-cheek answer every time one of them voiced their grievances.
"Oh, that wasn't us. That's the guy who lives between the floors."
"The guy who lives between the floors" was like a boogeyman we could pin all our shenanigans on. With a little wink and a smile, we'd watch accusatory neighbors get flustered and leave in a huff at our answer. Our poor RA Craig heard that answer a few times too on the rare occasion he'd catch us being too rowdy.
Suffice to say, our floor earned itself a bit of a reputation. But it wasn't all hooliganism, all the time.
During the harsh winter of 2008, where temperatures got so low it physically hurt to breathe the frigid air (it felt like a punch to your windpipe and gut simultaneously), some of us showed off our heroic side.
Steven, Mexi-Dan, and myself were in Alex/Karl's room one night, just relaxing, when we noticed car after car struggling to get up Stadium Way out the window. Traffic was light, but rapidly becoming a mess as more and more cars struggled to make it up the icy hill. After spending a few minutes enjoying their misery, Steven and Alex flipped gears and got the idea of going down and helping out the drivers. So the five of us donned our winter gear and spent the next hour directing traffic and pushing cars up Stadium Way.
See? It wasn't all mischief and mayhem. Not everything we did upset Craig or other RAs.
We loved Craig, and not just because he so rarely knew what we were up to (he was an engineering major and spent a LOT of time away from the dorm working on projects). You always got the feeling he knew what we were up to, but since none of us were getting ourselves or others seriously hurt, he was content to let things slide. As long, that is, as he didn't directly catch us in the act. He always seemed relaxed and was never overbearing as an RA.
Besides, Craig owed us big time. He organized a competition between the floors of Stephenson North called "Floor Wars." Various challenges and activities were planned for weeks during the middle of Fall semester, and the floors who won the most events and also showed the greatest amount of participation won a pizza party. Not to mention dorm bragging rights.
The competition wasn't even close. The 8th, 6th, and 3rd floors were the only other floors to show any real interest in "Floor Wars," but they still lacked our level of camaraderie.
From the very first event, a drinking contest with shots of apple juice instead of alcohol, we dominated the competition. Maybe 30 people showed up for the first event (not a good showing), but about 2/3rds of the participants were from the 9th floor; and the top three drinkers of the night were Alex, August, and Mexi-Dan (trust me, they had a lot of practice).
The only event we struggled in was a karaoke contest, but we made up for it by having the winning team in the Frisbee bowling tournament. By the time the final event came, a casino night, it was academic. Four of the six biggest winners that night were from our floor, and we earned our free pizza party.
Yes, life was pretty good on the 9th floor. But as documentaries and biopics about rock bands have taught us, the good times weren't destined to last...
(What? You don't like cliffhangers? Give me a break; it ain't easy coming up with topics on a weekly basis. I got to stretch things out sometimes. Don't worry, I'll have the finale posted next week.)
(Edit: The finale is here!)
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
Battle of the sexes: Round 3
GF likes these type of blog posts more than anyone. She basically told me to do another "battle of the sexes." If you missed out on either of the first two, you can read them here and here.
When she's used to eating dinner: 6:00pm
When I'm used to eating dinner: 7:30pm
Her bedtime: After 9:00pm - she absolutely refuses to go to sleep before nine
My bedtime: Anytime I want - I'm probably sleeping as you read this
The movie I most regret not seeing in theaters last year: American Hustle
The movie she most regrets not seeing in theaters last year: Frozen
My response when the kitchen light burned out: "I'll take care of it! Just find me a stool or give me a boost."
Her response when the kitchen light burned out: "Call the maintenance guy."
How she shops for groceries: Compare prices, find the best deal, examine labels for ingredients/additives
How I shop for groceries: Buy the stuff that tasted good before; if no precedent exists, grab the first thing you see
How long it takes her to shop: 2 hours (because of all the examining and comparing)
How long it takes me to shop: 1 1/2 hours (I never remember where to find stuff, so I'm not much quicker)
Her pet of choice: Medium-sized dog, like a lab
My pet of choice: Kitty!
What I want from a movie/book: Good storytelling with fascinating characters
What she wants from a movie/book: A happy ending (she refuses to read The Hunger Games or The Fault in Our Stars)
My ideal places to live: Northern California, Portland, Austin, Australia
Her ideal places to live: Alaska, Canada, Norway, Sweden (this from the woman who always complains how cold she is)
What she forgets when we visit each others parents: Water bottle, chapstick, and glasses
What I forget when we visit each others parents: Clothing
Her least favorite people: People who are anti-vaccine/believe vaccines cause autism ("I hope Jenny McCarthy gets herpes! No, that's mean. What's something that is nasty, but goes away easily? Food poisoning! I hope she gets food poisoning!")
My least favorite people: Bicyclists (two incidents last week really reaffirmed my hatred for them)
The only activity I curse frequently during: Sports
Theonly activity she curses the (most) frequently during: Driving
My average rate of curse words while watching sports: 20 per hour
Her average rate of curse words while driving: 125 per hour
When she's used to eating dinner: 6:00pm
When I'm used to eating dinner: 7:30pm
Her bedtime: After 9:00pm - she absolutely refuses to go to sleep before nine
My bedtime: Anytime I want - I'm probably sleeping as you read this
The movie I most regret not seeing in theaters last year: American Hustle
The movie she most regrets not seeing in theaters last year: Frozen
My response when the kitchen light burned out: "I'll take care of it! Just find me a stool or give me a boost."
Her response when the kitchen light burned out: "Call the maintenance guy."
How she shops for groceries: Compare prices, find the best deal, examine labels for ingredients/additives
How I shop for groceries: Buy the stuff that tasted good before; if no precedent exists, grab the first thing you see
How long it takes her to shop: 2 hours (because of all the examining and comparing)
How long it takes me to shop: 1 1/2 hours (I never remember where to find stuff, so I'm not much quicker)
Her pet of choice: Medium-sized dog, like a lab
My pet of choice: Kitty!
What I want from a movie/book: Good storytelling with fascinating characters
What she wants from a movie/book: A happy ending (she refuses to read The Hunger Games or The Fault in Our Stars)
My ideal places to live: Northern California, Portland, Austin, Australia
Her ideal places to live: Alaska, Canada, Norway, Sweden (this from the woman who always complains how cold she is)
What she forgets when we visit each others parents: Water bottle, chapstick, and glasses
What I forget when we visit each others parents: Clothing
Her least favorite people: People who are anti-vaccine/believe vaccines cause autism ("I hope Jenny McCarthy gets herpes! No, that's mean. What's something that is nasty, but goes away easily? Food poisoning! I hope she gets food poisoning!")
My least favorite people: Bicyclists (two incidents last week really reaffirmed my hatred for them)
The only activity I curse frequently during: Sports
The
My average rate of curse words while watching sports: 20 per hour
Her average rate of curse words while driving: 125 per hour
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