and so it starts...

beginning of a new semester. beginning of a new major (kinda). we'll see how it goes.

had dinner with jim last wednesday. apparently jim doesn't make decisions either, so... we were kinda driving around for a bit. anyway, eventually, jim bought me chinese (and gave me the leftovers =D), and then lent me anime... yay for jim!

matt showed up thursday... we went to kabuki's sushi bar for dinner, when it was snowing up a storm. seriously, blizzard. matt managed to spill coke all over the sushi bar... too funny.

saturday, we had dinner with sae. invited jim to come along (so matt and jim could meet), but jim was in richmond for something. so matt had dinner with a hot chick and... me. everything there is a two-step ordering process. first, you choose the dish, then you choose the spicyness (normal scale, up to hot, then indian hot). we all got "indian hot," but the dishes came out at different levels of spicyness. matt's was spicy beyond enjoying as far as i sae and i were concerned, but matt loved it. mine was second to matt's, though i could eat it without crying, and sae's was milder... most likely because hers was creamy (either cream or coconut milk... it was damn rich, and damn good).

anyway, matt and i were having my leftovers later (he'd finished his at the restaurant), and he thought mine got worse. well, spicy foods get milder as you store them. it turns out that matt didn't experience anything near what sae and i did when we tried his because he'd ordered a margarita. except, for some reason, their idea of a margarita was half tequila, a third lime juice, and a sixth triple sec (i think that's what the last part was... not sure). so yeah... matt's tongue was somewhat liquored up (he wasn't... the whole concoction was only 3oz total, and served in a martini glass... weirdest thing ever).

yeah, so a weekend plus two days and two half-days with my maffew =D it was great, but it went by too fast. and i won't get to see him for a while... he's starting work this monday. real work. in the real world. so scary.


monday, jess turned 21... we all went to el grand rodeo for her birthday... and she showed up last ("i only had five shots"). it got worse from there. she's so funny when she's drunk. matt and i got her a bottle of goldschlager, which apparently she loves (which we knew, thanks to mike). cake at mike's after the party was weird, too, 'cause 1) it was supposed to be an ice cream cake, and it was really just a frozen regular cake, and 2) jess was GONE. at one point, she was sitting on the table, rocking out like she was high. i'm leaving out some of the more profane things she did (though inadvertantly hitting on the waiters might make the cut)...

matt had to leave tuesday... but not before i skipped my first two classes (don't worry, nothing important) to spend time with him. i had to go to my third because it takes roll (yeah... roll), and your grade goes down with every three classes you miss or something like that... and i'm not going to eat up that buffer when i might need it for when i'm actually sick or something. matt was gone by the time i got back =(. not that i didn't know he'd be gone, but it was sad. he did change my background to a picture of us (a horribly out-of-focus, slow-shutter-without-a-tripod shot, but a happy shot). bye-bye, basketball background. bye-bye nike freestyle (i'm sure you know what that is... it's the first rythmic sports commercial. with jason and vince and lamar and elton and 'sheed...) i don't know how long the picture of us is going to stay up (i'm not horribly fond of the idea of personal pictures as a background, especially pictures of the user), but i did convert the image to a bitmap so i could turn off active desktop instead of changing it back... so we'll see...

my first speech was scheduled for today. i didn't get to give it. actually, i just never volunteered... because i'm a wuss. yeah.

***

the hokies were all over the top 10 from beating the wahoos. in basketball. how weird is that?


george karl reported that he's going to be the new coach of the denver nuggets. ew for george karl being on tv, and ew for george karl being a coach again. ew.


tom goes to the mayor pisses me off. who the hell thinks that's funny? no, seriously, that wasn't rhetorical. i want to know if anybody actually thinks it's funny. and super milk chan. same deal. only i think tom goes to the mayor is more perplexing. at least milk chan is cute (kinda).

and have they renewed venture bros yet? brilliant shit. seriously brilliant. they picked up tom goes to the mayor, but they haven't renewed venture bros. adult swim can suck my hairy monkey balls.

you know, i should get some monkey balls so i can actually mean it when i say that. it's probably unethical to buy monkey parts, though (kangaroo scrotums, on the other hand... are made into coin purses and sold as souvenirs...)

idle thoughts, part 4

i hate mouseover ads. damn aim (don't give me shit about using other clients... i haven't found a client where i actually like the formatting options... and i'm a font whore.)

snoop's awesome. partially for putting pharrell on tv more.
but only partially.

is there a problem, officer?

yeah, so i got a speeding ticket. on the way back. in tennessee. 86 in a 70... and there's a second charge on the ticket because we didn't have the insurance card on the car. yeah. oops. the ticket's $151.95... strangest amount... and too much out the window...

speaking of windows... leaving slidell, a rock flew up at the windshield, and matt's now got a spider-shaped crack in his windshield. insurance will cover it, but it's the biggest rock crack i've ever seen. it was a large rock... it actually hit in two points at the same time, and it's two separate impact things. pictures to follow, hopefully...

sugar bowl was difficult. i almost got into a fight (don't worry, i didn't... just a little verbal jarring). seriously, what kind of idiots decide to pick fights with their own fans when their team is losing? that's what you call destructive. idiots. and of course, after going for it on 4th and goal (short), in the first damn quarter (beamer never makes these calls, even when he should... whose idea was this? i'll bet it was beamer's...) and missing, we lose by 3 points. of course, we also missed a short field goal later in the game, too. you know, we need a kicker just for short fgs on the hash. i think that pace freaks out 'cause of the loss to nc st. it's in his head, and he needs to get over it, but until then, we might need someone else.

we spent the next day in new orleans as well. except... in the morning, we got lost looking for the trolley stop cafe. we turned off of canal street onto the wrong street, made a u-turn, and... somehow missed canal street. how do you miss a giant street? i mean, not being able to find it is one thing (you know, when you're driving parallel to it or something), but driving right through it... that's sad.

anyway, we found poydras eventually, and found st charles... and then almost lost st. charles in a roundabout. um, yeah. anyway, we eventually drove past the trolley stop, but we didn't read it correctly, so we drove right by and decided later that it was... well, it. so we went back, and there was good gumbo to be had. yes.

we headed for the french quartier after that, and drove around the damn thing twice before we found it. you know those little signs by the road that point you in the direction of points of interest? yeah, even with those, we got lost looking for it... we were about to decide to go to a museum/aquarium (aquarium!) instead when we found it. <sigh> what's wrong with us? and i thought i was alright with directions when i knew the way back to the car after the game...

that night, we had dinner on a balcony on bourbon street... (the weather down there was a huge departure from the single digit temps at seven springs). you know all the generic new orleans seafood dishes, and those were great (please, what did you expect?)... but even the red beans were good. i thought it was so weird. i mean, red beans are red beans, right? mmm...

went to oriental east for lunch today (yay for real dim sum!), and then the botanical gardens for a post-lunch stroll. i've never been there before, and it was cool. we somehow managed to lose matt, though. yeah, turned around, and he was gone. he'd gone to look at the bananas.

didn't find any flowers that really melted me or anything (though i have a general recipe for happy-merc flowers), but we did see a sensitive plant (that's its name, no joke). same plant that my grandmother showed us when i was like 5... it closes its leaves when you touch it, and then it slowly opens again. so much fun. i guess that makes me cruel.

***

i feel like i don't live here anymore. well, i don't... but i just feel like... i'm in someone else's house. which i guess i am, but... yeah. i'm getting too big for this.

there's a rumbly in my tumbly...okay... not *my* tummy...

okay, so on my way back on monday, i get a call from matt saying that he and his dad weren't feeling well, and that it was probably food poisoning because he and his dad were the only ones eating at home the previous day or something like that.

matt's tummy felt better that day, but his mom got sick on tuesday. contagious. yum.

matt came to visit on thursday and pick me up so we could go to chris's for new year's eve. matt couldn't finish his dinner, and then started throwing up after dinner. he couldn't even keep liquids in his system. any liquids. i'm pretty sure he started purging liquids that he'd already absorbed. it was bad.

my dad and i took him to the hospital. he checked at 10:22, and, long story short, two bags of saline and some shots later, we headed home with an extremely dehydrated (yes, even after all that) matt, picking up gatorade at the local 7-11 (it was nearly 4 am... nothing else was open...)

matt felt better, but extremely weak the next day, but then matt's mom said that sam got sick (this is all yesterday). matt slept nearly all day, though he was somewhat conscious (he heard random chunks of conversation... rather large chunks), and apparently sam's all weak today.

anyway... sugar bowl in a couple of days... it looks like we're going... as of right now...

wish us luck!