Happy Birthday to Me! (100th post)

Yeah, so I could have certainly have come up with a better title, but it serves its purpose.


Registered today, so I have classes for next semester. The online registration wouldn’t accept my PIN this morning, so I went to the Engineering building and registered in person. I discovered that theology 101, a core (and thus required) class, was almost entirely reserved for freshmen, with only 10 slots left available. Kitty, the lady who does Engineering registration, was going to talk with someone to see if I have to wait until after May when they know how many freshmen we have, or if she can register me anyway. I just sent her off an e-mail.


I remember being surprised last year, but this year I more or less expected it–I’m a year older, but I feel pretty much the same as I did yesterday. Nothing all that special about 19 in the States, although everyone keeps pointing out that I can now drink in Canada. That is, of course, when I go to Canada, which could be a while. Like, more than 2 years…


Yesterday after the hall mass, I brought down the cake my mom sent me when I came back from Easter, to share it with everyone. It went over pretty well.

Today, several people have wished me a happy birthday, and I’m wondering if I should be worried about later. I was up at midnight, and about 12:15, Jake and a few others came into my room with little cap guns, trying to sneak up on me. Jake fired, and pegged me right between the eyes. (There was no chance of injury, the rubber bullets don’t really get going very fast, but it is still surprising to see it coming.) Everyone keeps warning me about my 19 birthday spankings coming, but I’m pretty sure that they’re joking serious, as opposed to really serious. Nevertheless, I’ll keep an eye out for the rest of the day.


I did have one pretty good birthday present today. I had a CS test, and after the test, the professor gives you the answers as you head out the door. I got all sis questions correct. There was one thing I forgot the syntax for, so I guessed, but I got that right, too. Not bad for a present, if you ask me. Now I just need to repeat that for my calc test tomorrow.

Not too much new to report.

–Nathan

Next Year

Well, it’s official. I’ve signed a contract for my room next year. WE ended up with the room I wanted. I would say “room we wanted”, but Cean decided that it was my decision to choose the particular room. I had been pretty open about which wing, and he declared that he wanted to room in 2B/C. He said several times “I picked the wing, you pick the room”, and “I’ll be happy with whatever you pick”. It wasn’t so bad when he was planning to be gone, but plans changed and he was there after all. I had a signed form naming me as his proxy, which would have allowed me to sign his contract for him, and thus pick a room on my own. (All roommates are required to be present when picking a room, unless they have a proxy.) I feel like he would have preferred a different room, but didn’t want to say anything. I was thinking that we wanted a room in B wing, with the modular furniture, which allows more flexibility in how the room is arranged, and allows changes any time you feel like dragging the furniture around. He said something about wanting a river view, but when I asked him if he wanted one, he backpedalled and left the decision to me. As the view is not particularly breathtaking, and would have required a C wing room, I decided to go with room 227, which happens to be the room directly above Cean’s current room. Because I felt like it, here’s a diagam of Villa:

Villa layout.This year, I live at the green star, on the first floor (which is actually one story above ground level in C wing. The red letters are the wing designations, and I marked where the RA rooms are. The hall director is on the first floor, the AHD on the second. Next year, I will live at the blue star, on the second floor. If you hadn’t guessed, the front door is right where it says lobby. There is another door you can enter downstairs by the parking lot. The river runs roughly parallel to C wing, and off the bottom of the image. Obviously, scale is a bit off, as the halls are all about the same width.

I expressed an interest in being on the welcoming crew, and will find out about that next week. The welcoming crew moves in a week early, and assists the freshmen in getting their stuff to their rooms, as well as doing all the decoration for the move-in. There is a contest among all the dorms to have the most/best decorations at move in, and welcoming crew is a coveted position. I suppose it is partly because you get to come back (or leave home) earlier.

Not much new to report.

–Nathan

Housing Selection

The other day, I mentioned to Celtic that I was in the process of picking my room and roommate. Earlier this evening, she left me this comment:

wait – you get to choose rooms and stuff? You’re going to know before you even leave for the summer? Huh? How does that work? Is it one of those schools where every single student lives in residence the whole entire time they’re a student there?

This sounds so incredibly odd to me.

If the process is confusing to her, it is undoubtedly confusing to others, too, so I will attempt to explain it here.


The process begins a few weeks ago, when everyone decides where they will be rooming next year. If you will be off campus, then you are done with the process. Those who wish to room in the row housing (townhouse style) submit their applications just before spring break, and choose rooms the week they get back. You choose the group you would like to room with, and each group gets a point total, based on the number of credits passed, the number of transfer, AP, and IB credits, and the number of semesters previously lived in the row housing or on campus. There is a big selection night, and the group with the highest total picks first, until all the rooms are filled. Anyone who didn’t fit, or anyone left over (if a group of 7 winds up with a room for 6) can go for singles there, and anyone left over at the end has about 2 days to fill out an application for the traditional halls (dorms). Again, points re awarded, 50 for coming back to the same hall the first year, and 25 for each additional year you come back, as well as 10 points for each semester lived in University owned housing, one point per credit passed, and per IB or AP credit, and half a point per transfer credit. It is heavily weighted to people who are returning to the same hall, and to upperclassmen living on campus. Tomorrow night is selection night. They go down the list of people in order of points, (which has been posted, along with a map of rooms that are available), and when your name is called, you and your roommate(s) choose a room. It is done by highest individual point total, not group total.

If you are going to be a Junior or above, you have the option to “squat”, which means that if you can find enough roommates to fill your room, you can keep it out of the general pool.

This leads to quite a bit of figuring how high you (or your roommate) are on the list, and who is going for triples, and who wants to room in which wing, and so on. Cean, my roommate, probably had quite a few AP credits, as he has 10 more points than I do. He is ranked 19, and the list starts at 6, (due to people wanting singles and squatters), and counting out triple contenders, we are ranked 8 or so. We have our eyes on a few rooms in particular in B wing, and would certainly like to be in 2B/C. It is rumored that Jake will be in that wing next year. He is my RA now, and I really like him. In honesty, though, it’s not that I dislike the other RA’s, just that I don’t know them very well.

So by this time tomorrow, I will know which room I am in next year, and will have signed a contract and meal plan. I think we have a good shot at one of the better rooms, but if everyone else is looking at one of the same rooms, then we’ll have to go somewhere else. Cean wants to go to another event that night, and has signed a letter to let me choose our room for the two of us. We’ve come to the conclusion that we’ll room somewhere in 2B/C, and that any room is okay with him. I’ll try and get one of the ones in B wing, because they are the modular rooms, and if that fails, one of the larger ones in C wing, where the desks are built in. This means that if you want to loft/bunk the beds, you need to build the loft yourself, which means that re-arranging the room later in the year is out.

On the off chance that someone is really interested in the process, the Office of Res. Life has a website devoted to explaining the details.


I started a post today in CS lab, while I was waiting for the professor to get a chance to verify that my code worked correctly, but about that time, she finally got there, and I only wrote a sentence or so. It turns out that the lab instructions were written for an older version of the program, and part of the lab involved selecting an option that was no longer on the “Tools” menu. She was trying to figure it out, but ended up giving up. She had done it successfully on the computer her office, but she must have had a different version. I eventually did figure it out, with a bit of experimenting, and some help from Google, but it didn’t matter anymore. Oh well, I showed her that I’m capable of figuring things out, I guess. You know, half of the computer stuff I learn is from Google. I don’t know what I would do without it.


Being a Catholic school, we get a 4 day weekend for Easter, which is next Sunday. Classes end at 4pm Thursday, and don’t resume until Tuesday. I’m going home for the weekend, but were I not, I’ve had 2 other invitations to Easter dinner, one specifically to me, and one blanket invitation. But I want to go home, and we’re having some company over there. Not that I have to go home, but that’s always nice, at least for a few days. I can see why some people are so anxious to get back, though.


I’d better get back to work, so that’s all for now.

–Nathan

RE: Pictures

Okay, so here’s some of the pictures requested. (All are thumbnailed, click on the small image for a larger one. I try and be considerate to those using dial-up, as I use it myself 5 months out of the year.)

Without further ado:

My DeskMy desk. The closet next to the desk, with the Jim Morrison poster, is Nik’s. Can you see the general clutter? In this particular picture, the desk was so cluttered, I had a clipboard propped across the top drawer to provide a surface for the mouse!

CordsThere are a lot of cables running around on my desk. They connect to my printer, palm, cell phone, calculator, mouse, and camera, although not all of them are connected at any given time. The power strip visible hanging in the corner is because the only plugs at the window end of the room are on the wall mounted desk lights–currently the fans are plugged into a power strip that’s just off to the right, on the windowsill. Nik’s side has an extra power strip that powers his desk, the phone, networking equipment, and our (really his) stereo, TV, and Xbox.

my loftThe loft: This is what it looks like from the center of the room. The surface of the mattress is about 6 feet off the floor, and the headspace underneath is a bit more than 5 feet, plenty to sit comfortably, and access any area underneath, but not stand without damage to your skull, as we have both discovered. Getting in and out of bed is not that much of a problem, just takes a bit of skill. I tend to throw a pillow off the edge in the morning and jump off onto it. Hitting the floor without the pillow can hurt, if done improperly.

We have the (his) microwave and fridge under my loft, and you can just see my radio, which really is in a bad spot, and my alarm clock. I have to lean over the edge to turn it off in the morning, which causes me to at least wake up somewhat. I’d like to put it way across the room, both so I can see it at night, and so I will have to wake up more to turn it off, but it would take so long for me to shut it off, I would guarantee that I woke up Nik. So I just wear my watch at night, and deal with the rest. The clock is visible from everywhere else in the room except my bed.

the bed up closeThis is what the area above the loft looks like. The clearance to the ceiling is about two and a half feet. Enough to crawl comfortably, and to sit somewhat, but I can’t sit fully upright on top. I nailed another board to the post so there’s a place to mount the lamp, which I use while reading in bed. I took the door off of the cabinet next to my bed so I would have a ledge to put things on near my bed. Nik’s bed is next to his desk, so he has his top shelf.

(I should mention, the University provides most people with bedframes that can be lofted easily, and safely. However, the wing I am in has the bed cutout (and desk) built in, and the University’s bedframes are about 5 inches too long for the space. So you get a standard bedframe, and the option to build your own loft, which I did. Actually, my dad built it at home the first week of school, as we only live an hour away, and that was more efficient than trying to compete with everyone else to build onsite. So no, Cel, it’s not one of those ones with the desk underneath. But I wish it was.)

view, at night This is a view out my window at 2 in the morning. The window overlooks the Willamette River, which is entirely industrial at this point. The campus is on a bluff above the river, and the Swan Island Industrial Park, or whatever it’s called.

view, by dayOnce the sun comes up, it looks more like this. Not quite what you’d expect from a bluff overlooking a river, but still quite a view.

On to Kitten’s questions.

my closetThe closet has hang-up shirts, and slacks. I have about 7 good dress shirts, and several knit pullover shirts. I’ll occasionally wear one for no reason, but usually they’re reserved for a situation when you’re told to dress better than normal, and to church and stuff.

the drawers On an ordinary day, I’ll just wear a pair of black jeans and a colored t-shirt. They used to be the general k-mart cheapies, but lately I’ve been trying to get ones that are at least a bit thicker. When I was in middle school (only 5 years ago, believe it or not) and earlier, I almost always wore shirts I’d gotten doing certain activities, such as a fundraiser, or a camp, or something of the like. I’ve never been a big fan of shirts with witty sayings, or corporate logos. Anyway, I shifted to solid colored t-shirts, and that’s fine with me. I’ve been getting into a mix now, but it’s still just t-shirts. If it’s cold, add a sweatshirt (which must be called a hoodie in California). To the right, you can see my drawers, with t-shirts, socks, and jeans. If anyone cares/is still with me after this long, the top drawer is where the razor, toothbrush, comb, and easy-mac go. Yeah, for some reason, they’ve taken to living together. 🙂

As to wall coverings, I really didn’t bring much with me to college. Nik brought a bunch, and as a result, most of the stuff up is his. But the thing that visitors seem to comment on most is the “Earth at Night” poster I got in the Nov. National Geographic. I used to subscribe, on my parents tab, and it’s quite interesting, but not enough to pay for it myself, so I stopped getting it this year.

One last picture. I took a bunch of pictures of the room, and stitched them together into a panorama. The Earth at night poster is right in the middle, and it came out kind of weird, as did the TV. I’m not sure how it will display, so here’s a link to it.

To the left of the door, you can see the sink. To the right, next to the fridge, you can just see the sheet, waiting until the linen exchange.

I originally had more here, but then Blogger had a duplicate post, and I deleted one. Apparently, I deleted the one that was longer. It was just rambling, anyway, about that I was posting it at 3 am, and had been working on it for an hour and a half. But now, I’m really going to bed. Even if the blog gets messed up, I’ll fix it in the morning.

[EDIT 2/13: Added the daylight picture.]

“A Night on the Strip”

this is an audio post - click to play

My second attempt at AudioBlogging. The RHA, (Res Hall Association) held a giant event, called “A Night on the Strip”. My post from there as I wait for people to cash in their chips for raffle tickets. For the record, I won … a dot.

That is, I still have the felt marker dot on my hand that signified that I had already gotten chips. As I mentioned on the audio portion, I lost all my chips, so all I had was the dot and three raffle tickets, that were not chosen.


The pictures will be posted soon, I just need to re-size them, and try my hand at a panorama.

Return of the (Drunken) Idiots

In about eight minutes, there will be an all hall, mandatory meeting. I can already hear Jake (my RA) hollering down the hall. I’m sure we’ll hear about this weekend. I’ll edit this post with details, and a scan from the campus newspaper when I get back.

The added part is below:

Villa has always been a proud hall. Our motto, translated from the Latin that is painted just inside the front door, is “Through these halls walk the proud men of Villa.” We’re simply the best on campus. We win all the inter-dorm competitions. We created and make up the entire drum squad, now such an integral part of the University that the President asked the squad to lead the parade across campus as part of his inauguration. Our bible study, called Stible Buddy, is the model for the other bible studies on campus. And we have the best fundraisers. We have the highest percentage of residents return to the hall every year, even more than Corrado, the newest dorm, which has showers that get warm, air conditioning, and doesn’t smell. The Man Auction raised over $17,000 this year. I saw an article in today’s paper that mentioned the top grossing fundraiser for another hall: $600!

In talking with other people about being from Villa, you might have to defend the all male atmosphere, or note that the residents weren’t really crazy, but it’s never been anything to be ashamed of to live in Villa. The hall staff used to brag that we had the fewest incident reports of any hall (2), and one of them was for when an RA accidentally cut his hand. Villa has always been a welcoming place. Many people from other dorms come over to hang out. I, and all residents always feel comfortable wandering the halls, talking to other residents, or just generally being here.

That all changed this weekend.

While I was out of town, at the retreat, a party was thrown in Villa, and was busted. Twice. Those throwing the party were in the wrong, and were figures of authority in the hall. The on Saturday, the second party was thrown, and many people holed up in their rooms and didn’t leave, because they feared getting in trouble if caught anywhere else in the dorm. Some people felt trapped in C wing because they did not want to pass through B wing, where the party was. Others left early for the Saturday night movie in BC Aud, and didn’t return until they were sure the party was over. I’m sure that many would-be visitors to the hall stayed away that night, too. Over 100 people checked into Villa in the span of an hour. This number of (drinking) people would certainly have reduced my feeling of security.

This feeling that one was not safe in their own homes, this was one of the worst things to come of the party. But worse, in the words of one person speaking to Fr. Pete, the Hall Director, “I was embarrassed to be a Villan.” I, too, am embarrassed to be part of the hall that threw the biggest party in memory.

The ones responsible for this are receiving their punishments. The RA who purchased the kegs has been dismissed from the University. He was a Senior, scheduled to graduate this spring. The student who hosted the party, the hall council president, has resigned his post, and faces his hearing late next week. Over 10 others received MIPs, and will be receiving their punishments. But not all who participated got what they deserve.

I think most people were affected by tonight’s plea to restore the Villa Pride, to restore the community and safety felt by all who enter this hall. But I fear that some will not hear the message. There are those for whom drinking is a normal activity. Many of their friends also drink. The Villa Pride and reputation may mean little to them, many are planning to live off campus next semester.

Please, do not look on the party, or the subsequent bust of the party, as a point of pride. It is not. As of now, people from other dorms feel welcome visiting, and do so frequently, as you all know. For at least this reason, We should collectively be ashamed of this weekend, and resolve not to let anything like it happen again. Do not host parties in the dorm. Do not attend parties in the dorm. If no one will attend a party, then none will be thrown here.

Let’s put this behind us.

Drunken Idiots, Retreat!

THE RETREAT

I just got back from the retreat this afternoon. I had a good time, and talked with several of the people there. We stayed in on of those summer beach houses that the people rent out while they’re not using them. Nice place, it was big enough for the ten of us students who went. The adults (Ryan Hendricks, the Assistant Hall Director (AHD), Fr. Pete, the HD, Fr. Brad, the pastoral resident, and Tom, who is in his last year before becoming a priest came too, but slept in another rented house.

There were several talks, and some small group discussions, as well as general reflection periods. I’m not going to go too deep into the details, but the way they had it set up seemed to work well. There was enough free time to do stuff, too. Friday night, several of us walked down to the beach. Someone had brought a light-up frisbee, so we played frisbee in the dark. Well, not exactly dark, with the light from the city, but it was pretty dark. You could usually see the darkness created by a person, but if they moved to the wrong spot, so they appeared near a light source, they disappeared. It was fun, and then we ended up playing a game of 500. Some of us waded a bit, and then we all walked back up to the house. It was up a road, about 5 blocks from the beach. Jake had walked down the hill barefoot, and declared it not too bad, so as we had all taken off our shoes to keep the sand out, we all walked up barefoot. Turns out Jake’s feet are a bit tougher than most, as there were a few parts of the road that had some gravel that kinda hurt. The road, and the sand before it, was pretty cold, so I really couldn’t feel it that much.

I stayed up talking for a while that night, but I went to bed quite a bit earlier than I did last night. Saturday, there were sessions in the morning, and then we had the better part of the evening to ourselves. Drew, Korte, Luis, and I rode down to the main part of town (1/4 to 1/2 mile) with Ryan, who was driving Jake to go talk to his dad. (His dad is a contractor, and is working on a house very near to the retreat.) The four of us walked around town a bit, stopping at a boarding shop to browse, and then getting an ice cream cone. We walked/ played frisbee down the beach to the house. When we got back, Tom, Ryan, Fr. Brad and Andy were playing a game of “Settler of Catan”. I’d never seen the game before, but it’s really fun.

It’s a strategy game, and the board has several different types of spaces. The represent different types of land, that produce different resources. Each space as a number placed on it, and any player that owns a ‘settlement’ bordering a space that contains the number just rolled by the dice gets one ‘resource card’ of the appropriate type. For example, if I had 2 settlements bordering the clay fields, and the space had a 8 on it, every time an 8 was rolled, I would get two brick cards, one for each settlement. Resources were used to build more settlements, roads between them, and Cities (larger settlements). Whoever accumulated 10 ‘victory points’, wins the game. Settlements, cities, and a few other things counted towards the points. All in all a rather challenging game. The spaces are re-arranged every game, too, so you can’t just memorize the best locations to start out.

They were just starting their second game when I got there, and I watched to the end, where Tom won. I joined in the next game, and made a good showing, but Tom had his third victory. Later last night, the game was again played, and Tom again swept it. He’s really good with analyzing things–he says that he often plays risk with a friend in the seminary, and he’s never lost. Tom then went to the other house to go to sleep, helping Drew get started before he left. I watched that game, because I wanted to get in on the next round. The game ended going on over two hours (one hour is normal) and they finished around 3 in the morning. I’d long before given up on playing, but kept watching to see who won, certain that it had to end soon. By the end, Hendricks was helping Andy get whatever he needed just so the game would end. He was in a good position, except that he got blocked in, and then developed a bad trade relationship with the person who had a monopoly on the grain. HE may have been able to win, but it wasn’t worth it to him.

I called home and talked for an hour, but somehow, I didn’t tell them most of what I just wrote. I bet when they end up reading this, someone will complain that they learn more about me through my blog than they do in person. Such is life.

THE (DRUNKEN) IDIOTS

Teige W. came up on Saturday afternoon, he’d hosted a friend from his school overnight. He talked about the things that had happened Friday night. Between what he knew, and what I heard after I got back, it seems to have been quite a weekend here. Apparently, last year, during the hall retreat was the biggest amount of drinking in Villa. It actually makes sense, as the HD, AHD and some RA’s are gone. This year was no different.

Last weekend, we had a ‘Phantom Puker’, who puked all over the hall in A wing, down the stairs, and then on the carpet from the stairs to the door. It was not cleaned up, and discovered in the morning. Hendricks and a resident cleaned it up in the morning, but the stench was left, and an emergency steam cleaning had to be done. The fellow that cleaned it got called out, and gets double pay, so the cost of the cleanup was in the ‘hundreds of dollars’ according to the e-mail Fr. Pete sent out. As no one has come forward, there will likely be a hall fine to pay for the cleanup

Apparently, Public Safety (often called P-Safe) decided to check out Villa for drinking. I don’t know if it was related to the puker, the hall retreat, or something else, but they sealed off the dorm, blocking all the exits, and must have searched the dorm or something. I understand that the word of the party got out to the other 5 dorms, and something that big probably tipped of Public Safety.

The following night, last night, the procedure was repeated. This time, two keg were found in the dorms. From what I hear, there were kegs Friday night, but P-Safe missed them. The kickers–the kegs were in the Hall President’s room, and were purchased by an RA.

Not only were these people stupid enough to pull this off one night, but even after Public Safety sealed off the dorm, and managed to miss them, they kept them and had a party again the next night. I guess there was even a root beer social in the lounge, some say as camouflage for the party.

(I should note, that while the RA was over 21, the legal age, and the President may be, there seems to have been several (minor) residents at the parties. Not that having a keg is allowed in the dorms anyway, but these people were really trying to break as many rules/laws as possible!)

Seeing as the crackdown has become serious, chances are that UP will soon have two fewer students. The general consensus is that those in charge will make an example of them.

So that was what happened this weekend!

Website Stabilization

As you may have noticed, I now have a domain name, nathanoliver.net. My website will stay at this address forever, or at least as long as I continue paying for the name. I got it for only $8/ yr, so barring any price increases, my address will never change.

I mentioned the economics of the name on my home page, but I’ll go throught them here. If I were to give you the actual URL of my site (olvr86.freeserverhost.com), you would be able to see my site, but if I ever moved it, or if the host closed down or went out of business, that link, and any bookmarks you might have had will just stop working.

On the other hand, there are free redirect services availible, (like my uni.cc address). They can be re-directed to new websites, and actually, my old address now points to my new website. The problem with this is that either the address makes all pages of my website look like they have the same address, which means that bookmarks all end up pointing to the homepage, or the re-direct sends you to the site(like I had it set up), and then shows you the real URL, returning us to the situation described above. So I got a domain name. All problems solved, adn I feel cool. 🙂


In other news, the man auction was last Thursday. I started writing a letter to the high school staff, and the first thing I thought about was the auction, this is what I wrote:

The Man Auction is Villa’s fundraiser for charity. Each dorm holds one fundraiser for a charity. This year, we were supporting a school of 150, grades 1-12, in Bangladesh. The cost to run the school, house the students (travel is not practical, so they board), and pay all the staff is $9600 for the year. Our goal was to raise enough money to support the school for next year.
For the auction, there were twelve groups, each performing a skit of some sort. Two had live music, one was a narrated slide show, and the rest were skits, dances, or something in between. Each group has also put together a date, which is then bid on. The dates varied in quality, from a home cooked meal and a movie at one end, to a private plane ride to the beach, a sunset stroll, and a starlight tour, by air, of Portland at the other end. Then the bidding begins. Groups of girls bid on the groups, which can accommodate a certain number of dates. Groups ranged from 3-8 in size.

An anonymous donor had stepped forward with a pledge to match, dollar for dollar, anything we raised. That meant that we needed to raise $4800. The first few acts did not bid so well, and it was looking as though we were not going to reach the goal. By the intermission, we were well off track. However, things were about to improve. Several of the acts in the second half received high bids. The single highest bid was on a group that called itself the “Men in Black”
The group consisted of three priests, one of whom is Italian, and one of whom was formerly a professional chef. They will prepare a 6 course dinner, with (live) Italian singing. The dinner is to be given in the house of the University President, in the formal dining room. Needless to say, this date was open to bidders of both genders. They had two groups interested, and ended up at the end offering two dates, one to each group. The final bid was $1000, meaning a cash total of $2000 raised, or $4000 with matching. Other groups also did well, the final group (which included my roommate) fetching $900+. By the end we had raised $8800, for a total with matching, of $17600. No word yet on what will be done with the extra funds.

Last year, they broke all records by raising a bit over $7000.


I’m going to bed.

–Nathan

Hey, I’m still here

Does it seem to you that now that I got a new computer, I post less? I thought so. I sit down and say “let’s write a post, and then see the link on my personal homepage to someone’s blog, or the Aloof forum, and then end up wasting an hour, after which I go back to what I was doing, and never quite remember that I was going to write a post. Or (like this weekend) I decide I should write a post, and then the power has a surge, blinks, and the network is down half of Saturday and most of Sunday. I have fun online, though. One day, I got into a friendly competition with a gal from Canada, in the forum, to see who could post more nested quotes. Go look at this page, to get an idea what that looks like. That was pretty much the whole competition, but it was fun. I conceded in another thread, and DocD posted the next morning, to which Celtic also conceded. But I bore you.

I’ve done some pretty interesting things offline, too. Every Tuesday, we have hall mass. At the after mass social last Tuesday, a couple of guys decided that they should have a Villa campout. They ended camping out right outside my window. I went outside about 1:00 to talk for a few minutes, and came back in a few minutes before 2:00. I was just wearing a t-shirt, so it took an hour or so to get warmed back up. I’ m glad my grandmother made me a warm jean quilt! (Thanks, Grammie!)

That was the first of two (three?) nights where I was outside in the cold. The next night, I was riding back to the dorm after a meeting (about 9:30), and heard some loud music/voices from across campus. I rode over that way, and ended up spending the next two hours watching Spiderman 2. Good movie, but towards the end, the whole screen may shake (perhaps shiver is a better word). 🙂 The grass was kind of wet, though, and after the movie, I noticed that the seat of my bike was damp, so I guess some sort of dew or something had been coming down during the movie.

I hinted at three nights because after mass, they mentioned potential plans for another campout. Looks like it’s not happening, though. I got distracted in the last paragraph, so there’s about an hour between that line and these ones.

Tuesday afternoon, I went over to St. Mary’s, the student lounge, for a game of college bowl. Turns out there were only 4 of us total. We broke into two teams of two, and my team took three of four rounds. The game is similar to Knowledge bowl, or Jeopardy, in a sense. Each person has a buzzer, and a toss-up question is asked. The person who rings in first gets to answer the question, for 10 points. If you interrupted the reader to ring in, and get a wrong answer, your team loses 5 points. Otherwise, it’s a no loss situation, except that your team can only have one member ring in. This is where I was dominant. I think that I may have answered over 2/3 of the toss-ups, correctly. In fact, I know I never lost points, and can’t remember ever being wrong on a toss-up. After the toss up, the winning team is asked a question fro only their team, usually from 20-30 total points, often in multiple parts. Here we didn’t do as well, but good enough. Luckily these questions don’t cost points for wrong answers. I’ll be going to College Bowl every other Tuesday, and hopefully finding more participants. W could actually go as a team to a competition, or onto a TV broadcast. But we don’t have to, and will make the decision later.

Nik just went to bed, and I should probably follow suit–I can pull late nights for a while, but REALLY late nights catch up to me before too long. You know the feeling where you want to hold the pencil and write something, but your hand thinks it better to let go of the pencil and just rest on the paper? Sleep-deprivation right there. Luckily, I have my first class at 10:20 MWF, and 9:45 TR (Tues/Thur), so I don’t have to get up really early.

Off to bed, with a promise to TRY and be a bit more regular in my posting.

–Nathan

Wedding/Laundry

I know I promised an update soon, and I fully intended to post one on Friday, but things interfered.

This is an all day post. I wrote the first part sitting in a motel in Depoe Bay, OR (north of Newport), but I wrote the remainder throughout the day, until I posted and went to bed.

I came down here for my cousin Brendan’s wedding, yesterday. The ceremony was pretty nice, and they lucked into holding it outdoors. They had planned an outdoor wedding, but yesterday morning, it was really windy, and pouring down rain. I was told about the attempt to put up a tent, and in Brendan’s words, the tent rental guys “got scared when they saw the 40 mile an hour hail.” Apparently, the people they were renting the tent from decided that it was too windy, and refused to allow them to use the tent. That meant that they would be limited to the motel for covered facilities. The family of the bride had a large suite, and directly upstairs, Brendan and Allison had another large suite. All the furniture had been moved out of the living area, and the reception was held on two floors there.

They got lucky and hit a break in the weather about 20 minutes longer than the wedding, but they started the wedding about 19 minutes into the break–it started pouring not a minute after everyone got back inside–good, because of the lack of tent.


Only in college would you be sitting in the laundry room, typing a post in Notepad, because you want claim to the washer when they get here to empty it. I started one load, and someone else had come down and started a load, so there was only one washer for me. The other two that were full just finished, and I’m waiting for a person to empty them. If they don’t show up in a few minutes, I guess I’ll just pull their clothes out of the machine and set them somewhere else. Counting drying time, I’m already pushing midnight before I can start to fold/iron the clothes. Oh well, I wasn’t planning on going to bed early anyway.

Okay, time to take their clothes out of the washer…

Done. Now I have 25 minutes until the first washer is done. Hopefully, the owner of the clothes I took out doesn’t come until after then, because there is only one dryer open.
Ironing is fun, I just did my first shirt a few minutes ago while I was waiting for the first washer–Yes, I know that you don’t Iron before you wash, it was a clean shirt that I took to the wedding and wrinkled in the suitcase.

I guess I could go somewhere else for a few minutes…


Nik went to a meeting for a business fraternity tonight. He borrowed a shirt and tie from me. Turns out that was a good idea, he says, as they chewed out several other people for not having ties. He doesn’t have any ties here, but his parents are sending some out to him. (That reminds me-I need to check my mail after the weekend-I’m expecting a package sometime this week with a replacement stylus for my Palm Pilot–I lost mine!)

If you know me very well, that sentence was typical. I’m always remembering stuff I have to do/should have done/should be doing, and losing stuff (at least temporarily) is a common occurrence.

Anyway, Nik came back with an egg, which he has to carry around to class with him for a week. It’s a raw egg, as one person dropped theirs in the meeting, and it broke all over the floor of the classroom


I updated the website partly–I have a NEW! ()picture I can put after anything I add, and an UPDATE! () image for…you guessed it, updated stuff. I also ave a script that will stop displaying them after a week, so I won’t have a section that is NEW! for months on end. Ever noticed sites (or Radio Stations) like that? I have….


Tonight at 8:00, we had “Sunday Night at the Races”. This week, we had four people laying down on longboards (long skateboards), and a person pushing each of them by their feet. They had to race around the quad, and then switch positions, followed by another lap. Two groups collided halfway around, which sent one person head-first into the prickly bushes. Ouch!
(I should note that the quad is in full view of Mehling (girls dorm), and so that is an additional motive to compete, and a reason not to mind the prickly bushes so much, if you get my drift….


I probably should move on to something more productive–I’ll call this the end of the post and go fold laundry.

–Nathan