Saturday, May 2, 2009

A second Saturday stroll down memory lane: Total geek in many ways

I had so much fun last month looking back at my college days--specifically, what I had been up to four years ago--that I thought I'd do it again. So what had I been doing in the month of April 2005, following the bee incident? These are excerpts from my private journal...

4/9/05
Well, I had an adventure tonight. Anna and I failed our Stealth check, in part due to carelessness, and in part due to Anna's dismally low move silently. Luckily, my persuade was high enough to make a successful Persuade/Lie check. Jeff made a lucky stealth check, and when his stealth failed he made up for it with speed.
Mischief managed, but just barely.
There's a silly one. Room draw for the next year was coming up, and my two friends and I were planning on selecting rooms from a dorm that was currently under serious renovations--they spent the whole year gutting the building and changing around the rooms and hallways. But we didn't want to choose a room that we hadn't seen yet; the floor plan did not satisfy us. So one night we climbed through a cloister window and squeezed through a slit in the fence to enter the forbidden dorm's courtyard. From there, nothing was locked. We tiptoed over unfinished floors and found our way to potential rooms. At some point my friend Anna and I decided to head home, leaving Jeff behind. But when we were in the courtyard, we saw someone coming. Who else would have access to waltz into the forbidden courtyard but someone from public safety? We tried to hide behind a pile of something, but Anna tripped on a metal pipe that clanked quite loudly. We were caught! She didn't say anything, but I basically talked our way out of trouble, and we left the forbidden courtyard. Jeff had been about to exit the building when he saw the man coming and was able to duck back inside. Once he thought the coast was clear, he started to leave, but the guy saw him and called out. Anna and I were already waiting in the cloister when Jeff came leaping through the window, yelled "Run!" and continued sprinting down the walkway. It occurred to us afterwards that the man we saw was not particularly public safety-like. We wondered if he wasn't some random dude who had no more business being there than we did. Well, at least we got away. And we got really nice rooms the following year.

4/13/05
[My friend] Cal Johnson said that the day he gets tenure, he's going to smoke a tobacco bong in class.
This is fairly self-explanatory.

4/13/05
So I beat Knights of the Old Republic tonight. It was a wonderful day. Before dinner, I finished my evil 303 problem set. After dinner, I cleaned the room. I hadn't swept my own room since, well, ever. Dana had swept the room, but never under my bed or my desk. There was so much dust and dirt and...stuff...under my desk, I couldn't really put my feet down very far back there. Anyway, I cleaned the room, sweeping and vacuuming because the prefrosh are coming tomorrow. Then, I put up my away message, "It ends here, tonight," and beat the game. Away message after: "And so it ends." The ending makes me very happy.
This one's a bit embarrassing. First, ew, that I hadn't swept under my desk. I'm pretty sure that by "stuff" I meant like bits of paper or very small rocks. Yes. Second, I continue to be a total geek and write about playing KotOR. But it was a fun game. The next entry is even worse. I'm not sure if I should include it, it is so embarrassing...

Excerpt from 4/15/05
Earlier in the day, I counted how many of my iTunes songs I had listened to 0 times, 1 time, etc. and made an Excel spreadsheet and graph of it.
What more can I say? Sometimes I have to let the totally dorky nerd out. The fact that I included it in my journal means that even at the time, I recognized it was a totally crazy thing to do. All right, time for more KotOR comments...

4/16/05
Conversation today on the phone with my little brother:
Me: I wish I could play KotOR again for the first time.
Bro: Well, you could hit yourself really hard on the head...
Me: No, brain damage is not the answer.
He's so cute. More random snippets of conversation:

4/18/05
Funny bit tonight at dinner, Todd said to Dave:
"What are you doing? It's like Stonehenge, but with a squash... and salt."
Can't make that any more clear than it already is, except perhaps to clarify that by "salt" he was referring to a couple of salt shakers.

This last one was a really big event, so it is very odd that I didn't say more in my journal about it. I did get back to my room really late, so it's not so strange that I didn't write about it that night, but I would have expected me to write something up the next morning. As it was, all I did was copy my AIM away message from that day.
4/22/05
Facebook away message:
I'm with the Choir. We're singing at CARNEGIE HALL tonight!
Yes, I probably haven't mentioned it before, but I was once a professional singer, and I even performed in Carnegie Hall. It's not actually as impressive as it sounds, but since it sounds so impressive, I'll just leave it at that for today.

7 comments:

Sebastian Anthony said...

You threw in your boxing glo-- ballet shoes and your vocal coach to become... a BIO NERD?

Or were you always a bio nerd, but forced to focus more on the academic work than fun, artistic endeavours?

I think the first entry is by far the most geeky of them all... the others are all quite endearing, really. But relating real-world events in D&D terms = dork. Perhaps with a bit of gigglesnorting too:

'And... like... ::snort::... he totally failed his stealth roll.'

Eleni said...

You're right about the first one being the geekiest. I meant it to be silly when I wrote it, and in my journal I went on to explain the actual events quite extensively in normal terms (my summary here is a short retelling). Still, the fact that I was able to talk in D&D terms (and thought to do so) is perhaps geeky enough itself.

Sadly, I don't think I was ever talented enough to make it in the competitive dancing or singing professions. I've always planned on doing science of some sort. For the record, though, I will be getting my degree in physical oceanography. Not bio.

Sebastian Anthony said...

Like... seismology and underwater tectonics and things like that?

(I don't know enough to sound any more intelligent than that...)

Oh, oh, ERASION AND EROSION? (It's been a while since I studied that stuff...)

With most 'competitive' arts like that, it's only a tiny bit about raw talent I think... it's all about putting in disgustingly long hours to become the best of the best :)

Eleni said...

Waves, circulation, tides, eddies, heat, sea level--those sorts of things fall under physical oceanography.

Unknown said...

I love that you made a spreadsheet and graph of iTunes songs...

I love the name of your blog, btw!

Eleni said...

I think the logic was that first I just wanted to count the numbers of songs. But once you're counting them, you might as well write them down, and a spreadsheet is a neat way to do that. And once you have the numbers in a spreadsheet, you might as well graph it.

And thanks, I felt the name was fitting :-)

Sebastian Anthony said...

'Might as well...'

Famous last, geeky words. Up there with 'Well, we've come this far...' and 'It's worth waiting 8 hours in the rain and snow, right?'