A Week in the Life

I’ve got all of my stuff moved into ML 113 now, but I need to unpack most of it. It is very, very hot in here. I will try to find my fan before anything else. In the meantime, I am checking my e-mail and updating my LJ.

I was back home in Minneapolis from Saturday afternoon until Friday morning, and I certainly managed to pack a lot of activities in. Here’s the day-by-day breakdown:


Saturday

  • Arrived at PHL, got checked in, had Burger King’s new Angus Steak Burger (which is pretty good)
  • Arrived in Minneapolis after sleeping almost the entire flight (a rare event), although I was on the flight next to one of my future hallmates in the new dorm
  • After showering and unloading Ernie (my family’s burnt orange Honda Element), we went out to have dinner at Old Chicago. I had a good stout of some sort with my calzone
  • Unintentionally fell asleep on futon in front of TV
  • Refused invitation to go drinking with my high school friend Markus, staggered to my bed (complete with Anakin Skywalker sheets), and slept

Sunday

  • 7:30 – Woke up very early due to excessive sleep, talked with parental units
  • 11:00-12:00 – Church service
  • Ate leftover calzone for lunch
  • Fixed my Ogg Vorbis stream reading code for the Advanced Perception music analysis project (with and Zach), speeding it up by a factor of about 20, and removed some unfortunate pointer math that led to memory problems
  • Helped to entertain guests at my parent’s bible study/dinner party
  • Started to catch up on this semester’s West Wing episodes
  • Had very late-night microwaved Macaroni and Cheese while watching Minority Report

Monday

  • Slept in, did very little all day other than watch West Wing and muck around on computer
  • Went to high school friend Gus’ house to drink with him, his girlfriend Chelsea, Markus (also from my HS), and Markus’ roommate (a computer engineer, as it happens)
  • We played drunken Telephone Oracle; I think they’re hooked, because the game was great fun (albeit more vulgar than usual)
  • I had a couple of Kamikazes, as well as my first batch of Jello shots (Yum, but they sneak up on you)
  • Got home at 5 am :o)

Tuesday

  • Slept in again, finished up West Wing episodes in preparation for season finale airing on Wednesday
  • Went to brunch with my mom, who was working from home
  • Beat my mom at canasta before she had to leave for the airport
  • Started to prepare D20 Modern one-shot
  • Went to see Big Fish with my dad and my sister
  • Emery arrived early after two days driving from Pullman, WA
  • I tried to disassemble my parental units’ old DVD changer to fix the drawer I had broken, but I gave up

Wednesday

  • Emery and I slept in, then did work
  • I coded up the last step in our image clustering program for E127
  • Emery drafted a proposal for my parents’ home theater in their new house
  • We went to Gus’ house to play the D20 Modern one-shot I had prepared
  • I finished some encounter information while Gus, Markus, and Emery generated their kick-ass characters
  • The party blew up two apartments (one by booby trap, one by grenades), and destroyed an intersection by ramming a delivery truck leaking fuel with their government-issue black suburban and causing a huge (but awesome) explosion
  • Emery and I returned to my house and he got to sleep around 6 am
  • I stayed up to 7:30 finishing up the image clustering code and packaging it for Bruce to look at

Thursday

  • Somehow woke up at 11 to go meet Jenny for brunch in Wayzata
  • Got a call from that made it sound like was really pissy about our E127 work
  • Stayed at home working while Emery and Jenny had fun
  • Discovered that my e-mailed code never went through, so I finished that, and added a lot of content to our class wiki for the final project reports
  • Took a nap after Emery got back
  • Had dinner (falafel, hummus, peppers, pitas, etc.) while watching this week’s Enterprise episode (the effects were absolutely amazing; they one-up themselves every week)
  • Emery and I went to Jacqui’s in Edina to visit, hangout, etc.
  • Jacqui showed us her hundreds of pictures from her Tanzania trip, and we were naturally jealous and amazed
  • We ate carrot cake and hung out with Jacqui’s little sister (Tweeblet) and talked about what high school was (is) like
  • I got home and watched the West Wing season finale
  • Woke up early to get packed, and made sandwich lunches for Emery and I
  • Emery picked me (and all of my stuff) up, and we dropped Jacqui off and said goodbye, since she had tagged along for the ride to my house
  • We hit the road, although it took us forever to get out of the Twin Cities along 494
  • We made very good time, with the exception of the JFK and Dan Ryan expressways through Chicago. Gotta love it when the express lanes are practically a parking lot
  • Very quickly looped around the bottom of Lake Michigan, stopping for some TBell outside of Gary, ID
  • Got situated at my grandparent’s house, and then rushed to the beach to try to catch the sunset over the lake
  • We were thwarted by clouds, so we ate as much fruit salad as we could, just as it was starting to rain
  • We watched some DS9 on TV (yay Spike!), and then took much deserved showers before hitting the hay amid the thunderstorm

Saturday

  • We got up early to get a head start on our (well, Emery’s) longest day of driving
  • We grabbed some food at a truck stop, but the portions were so huge, I barely ate half of the theoretically normal sized meal I ordered (aren’t silver dollar pancakes supposed to be tiny?)
  • We cut across part of Indiana on US 20 to go from 94 to the 80-90 turnpike at South Bend, which gave us a nice view of a few small towns (as well as saving gas and tolls)
  • I read some stories from my latest issue of Asimov’s to keep Emery entertained, so my voice got a bit hoarse
  • We were parked on I-80 for about 20 minutes while an accident ahead was cleared, so we started watching “The Best of Both Worlds”; it was nice that Emery could actually watch the screen while we waited
  • We grabbed lunch outside of Youngstown at a rest area; I had an excellent sandwich from Au Bon Pain, while Emery had a McDonald’s gutbomb
  • We cruised along the turnpike through PA, despite some very narrow lines, construction, and jerk drivers
  • We determined that there is a continuous spectrum of asshole drivers that increases as you get farther east
  • Emery (probably) killed a turtle, although he didn’t hit it with his wheels
  • When we inspected the turtle damage at dinner outside of Philadelphia, we found that Emery’s bumper had cracked and his license plate was bent
  • Since the turtle wasn’t that big, we concluded that it must have gotten sucked into the underside of the car by our wake
  • We reached Swat (mostly) in one piece, and dumped some of my stuff in ML
  • Since it was so hot there, we decided to sleep in Hicks, which is air-conditioned
  • We moved the couches from the lounge into 211, a classroom with a projector, and watched some more ST:TNG
  • A worthless public safety officer found us and asked us to turn the projector off when we were done; he didn’t ask us for student IDs, or if we had keys to the building (which we do), and this is after a number of projector thefts…
  • Emery and I slept on the couches in the back of the classroom

Sunday

  • Woke up in Hicks 211, stuck to vinyl couch
  • Picked up Emily and Mike and went out for breakfast at Dunkin Donuts
  • Moved Emily’s futon to Hicks
  • Took two carloads of stuff from Hicks to ML
  • Picked up Emery’s carload of stuff from Yale House
  • Went to Genuardi’s to get food
  • Had lunch with Emery in front of ML
  • Unpacked, and as luck would have it, my fan was in the last box I opened
  • Sat completely immobilized for a long period of time
  • Went to Nifty Fifty’s with , , , and ; good food was had by all
  • Played a number of card games with same (excluding ) in the Science Center commons
  • Came back to ML and had a beer with Aongus while talking about grad school and the future
  • Wasted time; may play Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates…

Rocky Racoon” from The Beatles (The White Album) by The Beatles


Comments

One response to “A Week in the Life”

  1. * Got home at 5 am :o)

    Woah, dude…::raises eyebrows::

    * Got a call from flammifera that made it sound like entropydevice was really pissy about our E127 work

    ::glares at Nick and sticks out tongue::

    He was quite vocally curious, and I just figured the easiest way to shut him up would be to call you and find out where the heck you were. ;)

Nurd Up!