Ultimate Scrimmage

First off, I don't want to talk about the GA-Florida game. We're just gonna pretend that didn't happen. But win or lose, Gators still wear jean shorts.

I hope everybody had a good Halloween. I certainly did. In addition to all hallows eve, Friday was also close to a couple birthdays, so we had a joint 80s themed Halloween/birthday party. I was pleased with my last minute costume which took inspiration from Don Jonson era Miami Vice. The mustache really made it, in my opinion. What did ya'll dress up as? We went out to the Duke of Cambridge, which is a fancy cocktail bar down the road, then tried to meet up with some Keble students at a club. The line was too long, so we instead attempted to get into our old favorite, the Purple Turtle. Fortunately (I say fortunately because despite what they think at the time, no one really ever wants to go to the PT) one of us lacked an acceptable form of ID and so the doorman wouldn't let us in, even though my mustache and I did our best to talk our way in the door. We called it a night, got a Kebab from Hussein on the way home, and watched Dazed and Confused.

Saturday was mostly spent preparing to watch the football game. We even had some Keble kids that had never seen American football join us. Oops. We told them that we had actually won, and I think that they may even have believed us.

Today it rained (surprise!). The Ultimate team had a friendly scrimmage against St. Annes, a college from down the road and a rival to Keble. Last year St. Annes (pronounced "Stann's) won Cuppers in Ultimate, meaning they were the best college team within the University. The game today was a lot of fun. Both sides were very evenly matched, and Keble ended up winning 13-12 after coming back from being down 7-9. Even better, I think we played much better at the end because we learned some. I was happy enough with how I played; I caught the first and last points and had some layouts on defense, for which I have curiously awarded a "flapjack". I'm not sure exactly what that is (I asked and it's not a pancake), but it appears to be some sort of foodstuff and I'm excited about it anyway. Next week is the Beginners tournament, and since I'm technically a beginner I can play in it. We'll be playing against lots of other teams from other colleges, and hopefully we'll do just as well as we did today. But I can only play if we don't go to Dublin.

The trip to Scotland that was supposed to happen this weekend fell through because it was going to be too expensive. Instead, a smaller group is contemplating a trip to Dublin. While the train to Edinburgh was going to be 110 pounds, the airfare to Ireland is only 10. It would be better for me if we go the weekend of the 15th so I can make the aforementioned tourney, but the trip would be a priority since 1. I'm really not a true beginner and 2. I've only got five weeks left on this trip. It would be a fun trip since I get along great with the other guys who are thinking about going, plus where else can you drink legit Guinness? I just hope we don't get beaten with a shillelagh.

Classes are grinding on. I got a B+ on my first paper for psychology, not bad but with room for improvement. Hopefully he's giving lower grades at the beginning of the semester, which is something some dons apparently do. Not a big deal, since our final grades aren't necessarily related to grades on papers. I'm reading my paper aloud in my other seminar again this week. Last time it went okay, but I want to do a little better. Rousseau here I come. Hard to believe that after this week we're halfway done with the term.

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween everybody. Or should I say, Happy All Hollows Eve. As I'm sure all of you know, the GA-FLA game is tomorrow. Here's something to keep to busy till tomorrow afternoon. Go Dawgs!

Is it seriously snowing already?

It's been a while. But it's also been a solid weekend. For one, on Friday I briefly met Emma Watson, who plays Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter Movies. Apparently she's from Oxford. We were at a bar downtown and someone said something like "that girl looks like Emma Watson". Eerily similar in fact, seeing as she actually was Emma Watson. We didn't talk long, but it was still cool to meet someone famous. Now that I think about it, there are lots of famous people in England and not a whole lot of space for them to spread out in. You'd think they'd be everywhere.

Saturday was dominated by the UGA-LSU game. I was of course very pumped that UGA won, but on the other hand I expected it. The thing I couldn't get over was how all the LSU fans were gone by the end of the game. I always thought that LSU fans were the craziest in the SEC, which is really saying something. So I was duly impressed that the dawgs played well enough to empty Death Valley before the end of the 4th quarter. The offense looked good, which means that I'm going to go ahead and call the UGA-Florida game next week for UGA. You're not going to lose many games by scoring more than 50 points. Of course Florida can put some points on the board too. At the very least it should be a very exciting game, doubly so considering the winner will likely play Bama for the SEC championship later in the season. All I can say is Go Dawgs! And that Tim Tebow is wierd (I mean that in a good way! I like the guy).

Following a successful Frisbee practice on Sunday, a group of us began planning a trip to Scotland for the coming weekend. At the moment its not very well planned and I'll have to miss a Ultimate game, but if we do go it will finally be some of the travel I've been wanting to do. It's gonna be cold there. But hey, it's cold here too. As a matter of fact its snowing right now. I doubt it will stick, but still; snow? In October? Fortunately I am prepared. I finally found a sweater vest I like. It's navy and dorky, exactly what I wanted.

Perhaps because of cabin fever resulting from the inclement weather (or because we don't have Halo 3 here), a few of my housemates and I have started a rather unique game. We're calling it a slap bet. Last night, each of the four people playing split into pairs and flipped a coin. The winner of the coin toss gets the enviable prize of getting to smack the loser at any time 3 times before the end of the trip. In a uncharacteristic display of luck, I won both my tosses, meaning that Eric and Rob are both destined for some slaps. I've already used two on Eric (once in botched videotaped ambush and once after cycling back from dinner in the snow) so I owe him one more and Rob three. Now to bide my time till they forget about it...

With travel planned for this weekend and a growing weariness of staying up late the night before a paper is due, I'm finally determined to get ahead of my work this week. I've said it before, but this time I'm serious.

Tomorrow is a bit of a special occasion. Some members of the Georgia state assembly are coming to the house to see what exactly we did with all that money they gave the program (we've already hid our plasma screen TV). They get here tomorrow afternoon, so we've been instructed to clean our rooms and dress nice. There's going to be a catered reception, so I'm excited about getting a night off dining hall food.

That is all.

First Rowing Practice

It's 10:30 am and I've already been up for 4.5 hours. It's amazing how much time there is in a day when you don't sleep in till 11. The reason I've been up so long is that today was the first on water practice we've had for rowing. It was interesting, to say the least. We had planned to assemble at Keble at 6:40 and then ride down to the boathouse together. However, at 6:50 there were only 5 of us plus a cox'n and a coach. While the cox went to rouse additional rowers, the rest of us made the relativly brief ride down St.Giles and Cornmarket streets to the Christ Church Meadow, where most of the college boathouses are. It's not quite the Schuykill's boathouse row, but with 30 some colleges sharing the river the boathouses were numerous, to say the least. Unlike most colleges, Keble actually has their own boat bay, which was quite nice. The boats inside weren't new, but at least they weren't wooden. Apparently the really nice boats are up the river a ways at Keble's "training base" at Godstow. I'm not sure, but I think the 1st eight races a new looking M2.

The stretch of river we rowed on is somewhat confusingly named the Isis, even though outside the city the river is the Thames. It's about as wide as the hooch at SA's boathouse, and I would guess it's about 1.5k of rowable water from the locks at the south side to the bridge at the north. With 30ish colleges trying to share the same small stretch of water, it was very crowded, even this morning, and the general lack of boat handling skills on the part of the novice crews made for quite a few bumps and locked oars. Because of my height, or lack thereof, Julien (the coach for the day and captain of the team) put me in 2 seat. For some reason, I had it in my head that everybody was going to intuitively pick up the stroke more or less instantly and we'd be cruising the river all eight on the feather by the end of practice, blades barely skimming the water and taking the occasional power ten. This was, of course, not the case. We spent most of practice rowing by fours, finally making it up to full slide by the end of the morning. I'm not discouraged, since we made a lot of improvement over the course of practice. I got corrected for leaning away from my rigger at the finish. In my defense, the boat was rigged extremely low and the stern four weren't balancing the boat quite level. Plus there are some comparatively good rowers that have the same bad habit while racing (looking at you, 3 seat). Other than that it was a pretty successful outing.

Over the next few week I hope to move into the stern pair, but I won't be that bummed if that doesn't happen. We're only going to race once before I leave, at the Christ Church regatta close to the end of term. The format is different then anything I've experienced; its head to head racing in a double elimination bracket over the course of a week. With luck we'll get a good draw and advance through the rounds. We should have the personnel, seeing as some of the guys are pretty big. I just want to be in the top 8, and that should be doable. Practice today was a good start, and if nothing else it was nice to see the sun come up over the Thames/Isis and get back on the water. Now I've got 5 hours to wait until my tutorial. Amazing how much time there is when you get up early...

A paper forged on the anvil of caffeine

I may have slightly miscalculated how long my latest paper was going to take. I thought I would be up all night, but I'm effectively finished now and it's only 2:40! Unfortunately, I've consumed enough coffee that I may be awake (and twitching) for some time yet. And so, why not take a moment to blog? The weekend in review:

Friday- My psych tutorial was very relaxed. We turned in our notes, then discussed any questions we had for the rest of the hour. Much less stressful than my philosophy tutorial, but at the same time it places a lot of pressure on us to make sure we understand the reading. At least the assigned papers are shorter and fewer

Saturday- There was supposed to be a rowing practice on Saturday morning, but it got canceled. I was disappointed that we wouldn't get out in a boat this weekend, but not that bummed to miss the 6:30 wake up that practice would require. Further than that, I actually can't remember what I did all day...

Sunday- Got up late, went to Frisbee practice. Again "practice" pretty much means 15 minutes of instruction and drills followed by 2 hours of playing Frisbee. Altogether not a bad arrangement, especially since we're getting noticeably better at executing the stack offense. Our coach promised that our modest grasp of the concept would serve us well in competition: "If we can actually get good at clearing out of the open side, we're going to be far ahead of any other college team". I bough some cleats to enhance my game. They're Umbro's and they're cheap; I can feel the tops of the spikes through the sole of the shoe, creating the uniquely unpleasant sensation of running atop six rolls of quarters. But now I can turn on a dime, so I'll just wear an extra pair of socks for padding and get over it. We should be scrimmaging against another college team before the end of the month. I can only hope that I get one of the awesome Keble Ultimate jerseys before I leave. After practice, I took a really long nap.

Monday-All in all a fairly crappy day. First, I misplaced my keys sometime Sunday night. Since I need a key to go through just about every door in the house, this was a wee bit of an inconvenience. I looked everywhere I could think of, but just couldn't find them. Fortunately, in my infinite wisdom I kept a spare key to my bike lock and so at least I didn't have to walk to my meals. Second, the books I needed were checked out of the Keble library. Third, it was raining all day, and actually raining hard rather than the drizzle we've been getting. Fourth, and worst, I just could not keep my eyes open all day. Every time I wasn't standing up, I dozed off. I got 9 hours of sleep the night before, but I fell asleep reading for about an hour this morning, then felt compelled to take a 3 hour nap this afternoon. I don't know if I'm getting sick or something, but I'm feeling very fatigued. Fortunately, all these problems had solutions: 1. My keys were in Eric's nightstand, I don't know how they got there but at least I found them after dinner 2. I borrowed the books in question from Rose who had checked them out last week 3. I put on my jacket and got over it 4. Coffee! I feel much better now that I've got my paper for tomorrow done and am in possession of my keyring. However, I feel the caffeine starting to wear off, so I think I'll take the opportunity to retire before I fall asleep at this table.

Potatoes!

I am getting so tired of eating potatoes. It may be insensitive of British culture to bash their cuisine, but this is getting ridiculous. I have consumed potatoes in virtually every meal I've eaten here. Yesterday alone, I had five different types: hash browns, french fries, mashed potatoes, boiled potatoes, and potato soup. I like a tuber just as much as the next guy but seriously, enough with the potatoes.

Feels good to get that off my chest. Other than eating prodigious quantities of a certain starchy vegetable, I've be busy this week. My first tutorial on Tuesday went fairly well. It's going to take some getting used to taking a philosophy class, seeing as we didn't do that great on the whole making-a-coherent-and-logically-valid-argument thing, but hopefully that will come with time. My next Tute (as the lingo goes) is tomorrow when I head down to the Psych building. This class doesn't seem like the workload is going to be quite so backbreaking. Even so, I feel pretty cool walking around with a textbook titled "Cognitive Neuroscience". Makes people think I'm studying to be a brain surgeon or something.

We've got a rowing meeting at 6.15, before our next potato dose. We'll be discussing safety, which means that we'll probably be getting out in a boat soon. The boathouse is quite a long way from the house, but as always I've got my trusty bike. My next Frisbee practice is on Sunday.

Besides reading about brains, a fair portion of the last few days have been spent trying to get things in order for my return to the states in December. I've been trying to work out a place to live, and after a great number of wheedling emails I managed to annoy my advisers into giving me the classes I want next semester. My schedule is exactly what I wanted; class from noon to 3pm solid every day. Also, today I submitted my application for an internship next summer. Hopefully I'll get through to the first round of interviews, which should take place in the next few weeks. Not exactly sure how I'm going to interview from here, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. As for now I need to get back to work, since its only a few hours until potato time. [not Bye! because this isn't a xenga!]

Busy Weekend

It has indeed been a busy couple of days. I suppose that won't really change very much from here on out, but this week has been especially dense since we've had a week's worth of work to do in 3 days. I still found some time for sports stuff though

Saturday was Frisbee day. We met up with the other freshers that had signed up and returning members of the team at about 1. Practice pretty much consisted of playing ultimate for about 2 hours, which is to say that practice was a bunch of fun. I was concerned that the returners would be insanely good, but I fit in pretty well as far as skill level goes.The level of competition was just a hair above Myers League, with the addition of stall counts and a stack offense. Plus there were lots of beginners. If I'm feeling particularly brave, I might go out for the University wide team, which is a little more competitive. Once I get used to actually having a plan instead of just running around, I think I'll be alright. The next practice is scheduled for this weekend. If nothing else, I'm determined to make the team to get the awesome Keble Ultimate jersey. It has a cow on it. Nice.

The running around on Saturday made my legs surprisingly sore, which did not bode well for my erg (rowing machine) test on Sunday. Rowing practice took place in the Keble gym, which is a room in the basement that is, to put it charitably, of decidedly modest size. But it does have four new model D's and a big mirror to watch yourself erg in. Why you would want to watch yourself erg is beyond me. That's like putting a mirror next to The Rack so you can watch yourself get taller. We novices took turns, 4 at a time, getting a brief crash course in erging technique from a few returning team members. I was very impressed at how student-run practice was (that goes for Frisbee too). Everything from recruiting to coaching so far has been other students, and they've been very patient and friendly about all of it. At least I thought so until they made me pull a 1k erg test.

As it was explained to us, the test was more "just to see how it feels at full pressure". Well I can personally attest, it feels a lot like pain. My tentative goal was to finish in 3:30, which would be about the same speed I would aim for in a beginning-of-the-season-after-sitting-on-my-butt-all-winter-eating-cookies kind of test back in the day. Of course, back in the day the distance was twice as far. My final time was 3:32. Yeah Matt, I know I know, but it's been three years and we can't all get recruited by Harvard. Cut me some slack. While I might not quite have a shot at The Boat Race, I was pleased that I at least got close to my goal. I'm not sure what the varsity rowers thought; my technique was rusty enough that I didn't have to try really hard to appear to be new. In the last 200 meters or so, I actually felt it more in my arms than in the lungs. Once I get over the muscle stiffness, perhaps I'll do some push ups or something. In any case, I couldn't go to the optional rowing tank session today since I have work to do for my first tutorial tomorrow.

This weekend I had to read an awful lot of Thomas Hobbes, the 17th century English political philosopher who holds a less than optimistic view about human nature. I finished most of the reading, but I'm actually writing this post mostly to avoid starting on my essay. I'm turning it in during class tomorrow, but it could be worse. Rose, my classmate, actually has to read hers aloud to the don and me. It's my turn for that next week. No pressure, but I want to make a good impression and represent my family, school, state, and country well. Now that I put it that way, I really must go write my essay. Wish me luck.

Oops, almost forgot. Desert at hall tonight was spotted dick. Many jokes were made. Delicious.