to the tune of: Hope On Fire by Vienna Teng
22 is old. Older than dirt. Older than some things older than dirt, since according to Nick, dirt is 19 1/2. And what a birthday it's been:
Morning interactive grading: 1 for 2. Even with the reminder e-mail, I still had one sectionee forget. This does not bode well for the quarter.
After missing two calls during my one successful IG, and AT&T playing a cruel trick on me (who'd have thought I had to reboot my cell phone to make a call), I ended up with an interesting three-way call with my parents and little brother. Something about three-way calling just seems opposed to the two-way dialogues typical of social conversation. But one resulting phenomenon: I got three different weather reports; they were each proud to report that Detroit was experiencing a freak heat wave in the 80s. Given that this month it's usually been about, oh, 10 degrees warmer here, this was a Big Deal to them.
I started off with a Wheel of Fortune taping in SF with TBP. It was a lot of fun... We got there and discovered we had VIP tickets, which means we were the part of the audience that actually got taped. Along with a disturbing number of Santa Clara students and people from Cal. For good measure, Cal brought their whole band and their cheerleaders. We clapped our hands sore, Ryan Bickerstaff of FroSoCo fame won some money, and some Stanford frosh won a car and $20K. They actually have people whose job it is to walk the aisles and indicate to people when they should clap and to shush them when everyone in the audience knows the answer to the puzzles.
The second show featured this guy from San Jose State who must have been trying to become the next William Hung. He definitely had energy, screaming at Pat that he wanted to buy vowels every chance he got (and even some chances he didn't get) and gesturing wildly each time he guessed wrong or lost a turn. He also thought he could will the wheel away from Bankrupt spaces by screaming at it. (Aside: Why would you ever buy vowels unless you can't think of any consonants to guess?) But he was a somewhat lovable guy, and so when after racking up $13K and (through buying out their stock of vowels) getting the puzzle down to "DON'T BREATHE A _ORD OF THIS TO AN_ONE" he spun again, and guessed...L? Granted, he spoke English with a Chinese accent so maybe his grasp of spelling wasn't the best, but still...
Later tonight I got back and had just about forgotten about my birthday when I was heading out the door to a group meeting when Guy stopped me, saying, "Something might happen..." It turned out some of my friends had been plotting a surprise party at 9, the exact time I was going to meet with my group. And it was a nice surprise, certainly. And unexpected. But all was good; I shifted the meeting forward and did my best to feign surprise even though everyone knew already. Surprise parties rarely turn out to be complete surprises in my experience, but knowing people were planning a party for 15 minutes is just as good I think. I felt kinda bad for making them ruin the surprise but they had no way to know, and they'd been secretive enough beforehand so neither did I. Still, it is truly the thought that counts, and it was much appreciated.
Questing for: An English translation of Vienna Teng's Green Island Lullaby.
Taking nominations for: A superhero to dress as for Big Dance next month.
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