You Know You Want Me

I've been mesmerized by this Pi thing that Swistle posted the other day (seriously, I double dog dare you to play it just once). I love this kind of crap, because I am a total sucker for viral web trends, and also because I was the captain of my high school Math Team.

So anyway, this morning for breakfast I had a ham, egg, and cheese and an almond latte, and...

Shit. Did I say that Math Team thing out loud? *Sigh*. Ok, I was a total MATHLETE. If you've never debriefed one of us, and I'm guessing you haven't since all of my former teammates are off at the Pentagon reaching their Full Potential (LAME)*, here's the deal:

As Mathletes, we competed every couple of weeks at "meets". We practiced (oh, god) on SATURDAY MORNINGS (in my defense, there were donuts). Each meet consisted of 5 events: Algebra, Trigonometry, Geometry, Calculus, and the "team event". Each of us had specialties(mine were Trig and Calc)(although now they're more like Reality TV and Doritoes), and then 4 of us competed in the team event, which included questions from all the specialties.

Each team had 2 competitors in each individual event, and one team for the team event (yes, there were "bench-riders", so it gets even more pathetic). Every mathlete in any given event answered the same 5 questions, and the winning team was the one with the most points at the end of the meet.

After our events, we would huddle conspiratorily and compare answers, making frantic doodles and hieroglyphic markings all over the place like that dude in "A Beautiful Mind". Then the answers would be posted and we would all haul ass over the board and screech with delight/dissolve into a puddle of nerdy tears as we saw how we had done.

So. *crickets chirping* Anyone still here? Bueller?

I know some of you are closeted math geeks *coughSwistlecough* so don't leave me hangin.

*In fact, my co-captain now has advanced degrees in electrical engineering and works in a super-secret capacity for the government. Dept. of Homeland Security, if you're reading, tell Kenny** I said WHAT'S UP!

**This dude is so smart that one day, on the way to a meet, the sun was blazing through the windows of the short bus (oh, the irony!) and one guy exclaimed "God! It's brighter than Kenny's FUTURE in here!"

The Toddler Room: An Update

This is AD's second full week in the toddler room at daycare, and the secret is out: there's more to life than just laying around in the infant room and going to Wal-Mart with your parents on the weekends. There is crap GOING ON! Toddler crap! Which hardly seems possible, because to me, she looks like this:

Does this look like a TODDLER to you?

Anyway, she is high on life (and also on only one nap a day) now that she is doing crafts! and playing outside! and having circle time! and story time! every! single! day!

They even have "splash day" every Friday, for god's sake

So, these days, school is awesome, and everywhere else? PRETTY MUCH SUCKS, and she doesn't care who knows it. After the first week, when her schedule included visits from a clown, face painting, and a visit from the traveling animal farm (!), BR turned to me and said "no wonder she gets home and looks at us like, screw you guys, this blows!"

A Tale From My Misspent Youth

The other night I was opening a fine bottle of Midwestern hooch courtesy of the priest in my hometown (he bottles his own wine--thanks Father!)(also Catholicism: come for the guilt, stay for the alcoholism!), and I was having trouble removing the cork with my fancy standing wine opener. I finally snapped the damned thing clean off and was brainstorming solutions when I remembered the following charming anecdote from my days as a feisty co-ed at Major Texas University:

~~~Scooby doo flashback effect~~~

I was having a get-together with a couple of friends, who we'll call Carla and Erin,since those are their names. I don't recall the occasion, probably Thirsty Thursday or some other classy, invitation-only soiree. To celebrate, we busted out one of those huge, wino-sized bottles of Corbett Canyon White Zinfandel ($4.99 for approximately 23458 oz at the local HEB). It was our drink of choice at the time and it served us well. In fact, upon my death I ask that they gently nestle a bottle into my casket, after tipping it once for our homies.

Anyway, despite the fine craftsmanship, we were having trouble opening it with the $1 corkscrew I abused nightly in my job at an Italian restaurant, and we finally ended up busting the cork. After evaluating the available options, the clear winner was: BASH THE BOTTLE AGAINST THE WALL UNTIL IT BREAKS OPEN, RELEASING ITS WINEY GOODNESS, WHICH WE WILL THEN CATCH WITH OUR GLASSES AND DRINK. I so wish I was making that up.

This time I went with just pushing the cork through into the bottle. God, I'm so LAME now. Lame, and free of intestinal hemorrhaging.

Born to Ride

AD's favorite birthday gift:

As they say on The Office:

Lord, Beer Me Strength.

Alumni Newsletter

Swistle had a great post idea last week: write a paragraph for your alumni newsletter, and then, as Paul Harvey would say (Messing With Texas! Your grandmother's favorite blog!), "the rest of the story". Here's mine, for Major Texas University (MTU)'s newsletter:

Tessie and BR welcomed a daughter, AD, in July 2006 and celebrated her first birthday with family and friends last month. This year has truly flown by! They continue to love it in Texas (it's like a whole 'nother country!) and take advantage of the 6 months of summer by running together year-round. If anyone is in the area, they would love to meet up and discuss old times!

Tessie is married and has a kid now (can you believe that shit?) and so drinks marginally less than she did in college. As it turns out, her laid-back nature makes her well suited for parenthood (no one is more surprised than she is!), but this was still the longest year of her life. She does not get all the time FLIES when you are getting no sleep bullshit. Texas continues to be full of itself and to clock temperatures upwards of 90 degrees for HALF OF THE GODDAMN YEAR. Tessie and BR have not run together in months since last time they entered a race together, they got into a fight during the race and had to split up (Tessie beat him). They are total anti-social hermits and have considered dome-ing their suburban compound so they don't have to talk to their neighbors. They don't need any new friends.

Seriously, Could She Look Any Happier?

We are the best baby-proofers EVAH:

Even though she probably ate some unknown quantity of these tissues, the 10 minutes or so it took her to remove the whole box one by one was TOTALLY WORTH IT.

Coffee Klash

Do you ever get performance anxiety when you're ordering at Starbucks? Before I roll up to the drive-through, I have to mentally rehearse my order:

In my head: "Ok, I want a grande one-pump Raspberry Mocha, no whip. Or is it a no-whip, one-pump grande Raspberry Mocha? I actually want only one pump of each, but how do I say that, it will totally ruin the flow! Ergggg(nervous tummy)!"

I've always been an order-rehearser, but my Starbucks anxiety was wratcheted up about twenty notches when a co-worker came in one morning complaining that the order-taker at her regular Starbucks had actually tried to school her in the aspects of "Starbonics". This perfectly lovely woman and paying regular customer had ordered what she wanted and was told that "just so you know, this is how you order that".

OH NO YOU DIDN'T, BITCH-ISTA! Just so YOU know, not everyone on Planet Earth drinks the tall/grande/venti no whip no foam nonfat extra hot Kool-Aid. How I order it is HOWEVER I WANT and your job is to apply your coffee rosetta stone to whatever comes out of my mouth and find the right button on your little screen!

Hoo, boy, the balls on those fuckers. Of course, instead of firing off an angry missive to The Bux, Inc., I instead channeled my anger into meekly obsessing over the correctness of my own Starbucks order. Yeah, way to stick it to the man.