Football, Pool & Fried Chicken (or Tales of a Freshman Year)

When I sat down to write this chapter, I looked through some old journal entries to try to remember some events more clearly.

There was so much that happened in those four years, that it’s hard to pin down just one particular memory.

When I was a freshman, the Resident Assistants and Orientation Leaders organized a bunch of events during the first weekend on campus.  They were a great way to get to know people on campus, and have a good time before classes started.  One event was a dinner cruise.  It was the same boat that my senior class in high school had our Senior Banquet on.  It was a fun event, and I met a lot of people.  There were three or four people that I hoped to spend more time with.

Over the following weeks, our little group expanded as we all invited friends, roommates, and classmates to join our outings.  One time, we all went to an event on campus, where a speaker came to talk to us about legends of ghosts on campus.  It was a fun event, and it led to our group wandering around the woods near campus every night for the first couple of months of the semester.

Over time, our large group broke off into smaller groups.  Somehow, one of the groups started playing football every Wednesday night.  Eventually, the football group broke off into smaller groups too, and it led to the group that I would spend most of my time in college with.

There were three of us who replaced the Wednesday night football with Wednesday night Billiards.   We always ate dinner together in the campus center cafeteria, and then we would make our way up to the game room.  We were all so horrendous at pool that we started naming techniques after ourselves, inanimate objects, and various countries.  We even had “Djiboutian pool”.

Many nights, after a game of pool or a marathon study session, we would walk down the street to the grocery store, a convenience store or coffee shop to extend the evening and our time together.   One of my favorite nights, was in the spring, and after a particularly busy and stressful week.  We ate dinner and played pool as usual, then decided that we wanted snacks.  We made our way down to the  Kentucky Fried Chicken/Pizza Hut/Taco Bell (or, KenTacoHut, as we college students affectionately called it.)  At that point in the evening, the dining room was closed, but the drive-thru was still open.  We actually tried to WALK through the drive-thru.  As it turns out, that doesn’t work.  We tried jumping up and down in front of where we thought the sensors were.  We tried waving through the window to see if someone would see us.  Passers-by offered to drive through for us to get our food.  We eventually conceded defeat, and headed back to campus laughing the whole way at our own silliness.  At that time, only one member of our little group had a car.  When we got back to campus, we got in the car and drove back to KenTacoHut, wondering why we hadn’t just thought to drive in the first place.  We got our fried chicken, and the rest is deep fried, greasy history.

So many silly, weird and wonderful things happened throughout the four years I spent in college, that now it’s difficult to remember what events happened what year, and with what friends.

Being a member of the college’s Program Committee is another memory that I’ll always treasure.  We were a group of students who worked to plan events for the college community.  We sponsored concerts, coffee houses, bus trips, and larger events like Homecoming and Springfest.  I met many great people from that group too.  I was never as close to them as I was to my core college crew, but the members of Program Committee were my Tuesday night companions for most of my college career.  We planned events together, celebrated birthdays together, celebrated together in times of success, and commiserated together in times of stress.  One particularly memorable event was the celebration of a fellow Program Committee member’s 21^st birthday.  We made our way to the 99 Restaurant near campus, and ate dinner together.  We laughed and joked together for hours, and stayed until closing.   I was employed at the 99 as a dishwasher at the time, so I joked with my loud friends that they were going to get me fired for being so loud and silly.  One of the funniest moments of that evening, was when one of the more inebriated members of our group left the table to use the restroom, and almost walked into the wrong one.  Writing about this now, it doesn’t seem nearly as funny, but that evening, we laughed about it until the tears ran down our cheeks. 

Being a member of Ensemble Theatre was also a great time.  We were a group of theatre lovers, most of whom never got the chance to act on campus, but just wanted to support the theatre department.  We did a lot of public relations, and staffed and supported events.  One of my friends and I quite often sold concessions at intermission during shows.  We would bring all the supplies to the lobby outside the auditorium, and greet the audience members as they passed us, offering them a snack or drink to enjoy during the show.  Some nights we snuck in the back of the auditorium to catch a glimpse of the show, and other times, we played card games to pass the time.

One night when one of my friends and I were going to sell concessions, there was a power outage on campus, and the play was postponed.  That night, we ended up playing cards in the hallway of one of our dorms, as the hall lights were all that stayed on during power outages.  We got so many strange looks that night, but to us, it was just another one of our silly college adventures.

Go Celtics!

Last night, after the ice cream, I came home and watched the rest of Game 7 of the Celtics-Sixers series.  The Celtics won, and will go on to play the Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference Series.

Rally towel from game 4 of the Celtics-Hawks series

Today, my Dad went to Fenway park to help fold the flag and prepare it to be raised at tomorrow's game.  He's going to help raise it tomorrow, and the whole family is going to the game.  I'm not sure where our seats are, exactly.  We have to get them at Will Call.  I do know that we're going in at Gate A, which is near 3rd base, so we should have a great view of the park!  I'm poor, so when I go, I usually buy cheap tickets, but these tickets were gifts from my aunt's boss.

Enjoy the rest of Memorial Day Weekend, all!

Ice Cream is delicious.

One of my childhood friends is home for the summer.  Another is home for just this weekend.  We were trying to decide what to do tonight.  We knew we wanted ice cream, so we decided on Putnam Pantry.  I hadn't been there in years, so it seemed like a good option.  We used to have one in our hometown years and years ago.  That was always the place to have birthday parties.  Well, that and the Ground Round.  Remember when the Ground Round had a pay-what-you-weigh plan for the kids meals?  Good times.

So, Ice Cream was fun.  I love toppings!  My friend wanted to get just a bowl of toppings.  This is the same friend who always asks for extra whipped cream at the Cheesecake Factory.

here's my ice cream.  Pretty, right?

Reflections on the Glee season finale

If you haven't seen the Glee Season 3 finale yet, and are planning to, I advise you not to read any further as there are spoilers abound.

I felt like this episode flowed more like a series finale.  Many of the characters were graduating seniors.  There preparations to move forward and say goodbye to their peers along with the tying up of loose ends made it feel very much like we weren't going to see these characters ever again.

I've read in a few different articles, that we will be seeing many of these characters again, so it might not really be goodbye.

Over the course of the last few episodes of the season, the Glee Club won a national championship, and the respect of their peers.  Will and Emma discussed their upcoming wedding.  So many things happened; so many loose ends were tied up.  Even though the Glee Class of 2012 will be appearing in season 4 episodes, I wonder if the new season will go the way of Saved by the Bell.  After the main characters graduated, the New Class episodes weren't the same.

Anyway, it's just a thought.

Rachel got into NYADA, and Finn did not.  That was a shock.  I kind of assumed that by some miracle, Rachel would get in despite choking at the audition, kind of like how I assumed that Puck would magically pass 12th grade just in time for graduation.  I never thought Kurt would get rejected though.  Finn didn't get into the Actor's Studio, which meant that Rachel would be heading to New York alone.  She chose to defer enrollment for a year and help Kurt and Finn with their auditions so all 3 of them could go to New York together.

At the end of the episode, Rachel and Finn were in the car, and Rachel assumed they were on their way to their wedding, but Finn was actually taking her to the train station with a ticket to New York.  He told her that he didn't want her to stay in Lima for him.  They broke up, and he walked her to the platform, where, SURPRISE! the entire glee club and Mr. Schuster were waiting for her so they could say goodbye.   Not only was the breakup a shock, but the fact that everyone knew about it except for Rachel was kind of a weird plot twist.

Even though it was a sad ending, it was realistic.  Sometimes people have to let go of things in order to find new experiences.  Like Finn said, if they're meant to be together, they'll find their way back to each other.

I don't really know how to wrap this up, but I'm not being graded.  It's a blog post, not an essay.

Life

I really need to figure out a way to improve my life.

When I was around 25, I was living in an apartment with roommates (perhaps too many roommates) and working at a job I truly enjoyed.  It wasn't the best paying job, but the work was interesting, I was making great contacts, and I had great co-workers.

When I was laid off in the spring of 2010, I was so disappointed.  I spent that summer searching for a new full-time job.  When nothing came up by the time my lease was up, I moved back to my parents house, and continued the job search.

By the Spring of 2011, I had been on countless interviews.  One week, I had 5 in a row.  A couple weeks later, I got and accepted an offer.  The job ended up not being a fit for me, so I left after 6 months.  I got an offer from a local organization that I had been involved with for many years.  It's only part-time, but it's a good way to make contacts and keep busy while I look for a job that fits me.  I can't do part-time forever, and being broke is really stressful.

Until then, I plan to keep looking and tell everyone I know that I'm looking.  I hope that by searching and networking, I'll stumble upon the right opportunity.

Once I find a job, and start building up my savings account again, THEN I can look for a place to live.  I'd love to live alone, but that's pricey.  I've also considered buying something.  We'll just have to see how things progress.

Welcome!

I've been wanting to do this for a while.  The problem is, I never seem to know what to write about.  I wanted to create a blog where I could write about random things, and share funny or interesting stories.

This will be a work in progress.