sex, love, and...waltz?

to the tune of: Windmills by UO On The Rocks

Oh it's been a busy week.

So it turns out that yes, Cingular did cut off my service for about 12 hours, and no, I wasn't pleased. Even after talking to the cut off your toes-style collection agency, and even after paying them everything I owed them. And they could make no promises that they wouldn't do it again. So once again, anyone who has a choice don't sign up with Cingular.

Friday was a rapid-fire succession of midterm, dance, lunch, trip to Palo Alto with Kat, dance lesson, performance, and Friday Night Waltz. Expensive tuxes are so complex. Now granted, I have no idea how most ball gowns work, but I doubt they have as many detachable (and losable) parts and adjustable parts. And they don't have as many layers I suspect. But after our performance Jason and I decided to go to Friday Night Waltz fashionably late. Very fashionably. And very late. It's amazing how many more people want to dance with you when you're wearing a tux than blue jeans. We did get a few weird stares, the best of which came from the guy in a suit who used to be the best-dressed man there until we showed up and stole his thunder.

Lesson learned: Tails are cool, but jacket is hot. We'll see how long the jacket stays on Friday night. With the last dress rehearsal over, the reality sinks in: Aaaaah, Viennese is Friday!

I got this amusing questionnaire from soc lecture on Wednesday. My favorite? Why do you insist on flaunting your heterosexuality? Can't you just be who you are and keep it quiet?

Random culinary discovery (hold your judgment until you try it): Goldfish on pizza. Hey, it's just like adding cheddar cheese...

And now it's time to finish our 140 project over the next 18 hours. Whee...

zozo the deadbeat

to the tune of: Radetzky March by Strauss

It seems I've been delinquent. Delinquent in updating this blog. And delinquent in paying my wireless bill, which has currently swelled to over $247.

Why, you ask? Because they're still overcharging me for a phone I never ordered, and they haven't been too interested in rectifying this problem since I called them back in October. But apparently someone must have noticed because I've been turned over to a cut off your toes-style collections agency.

I was standing outside Gates talking to Kendra and my research advisor when my phone rang. The shadowy caller blocked caller ID so I thought it was someone calling from a dorm. But no, when I answered the phone I was talking to a husky-sounding man who sounded like he could come hunt me down and break my kneecaps. They get their most intimidating-sounding people to hound people to pay their bills I guess. Turns out this was in fact a Cingular customer service rep.

To make a long and not particularly interesting story involving another hour of phone time short, I may or may not have phone service come tomorrow. Cingular remains on my hit list.

In other news, I shamelessly plug, as heckled at Flicks and derided in a Daily column: Viennese Ball!. Free dance lessons start Saturday if you don't know how to dance but still want to experience "one night of strappy blackness". 2.5 weeks left and the entire Opening is finally choreographed, including tonight's little workshop on walking and bowing.

If I ever donate to the Stanford Fund (oh no, that's The Stanford Fund with a capital 'T'), I'm going to be sure to make it contingent on students not having to write any of those bloody letters. Speaking of which, and delinquency, I need to go start them now...

ahhh, i'm back..

Over break I learned my parents' list of Subtle Ways to Wake Mike Up:

Burst into the room to check your e-mail

Ring the doorbell

Call the house

Vacuum the whole downstairs

Use a leaf blower outside

But I'm back in the Bay now, on Caltrain after a harrowing race to the AirTrain, and then BART. Someone actually published a study on how awful BART ticket machines are and how hard they are to figure out. I never really appreciated that until now. (You would think they would have done something about it after achieving such notoriety. You would be wrong.) They demands money without telling you how much or what for; you're supposed to look that up on a chart first. But it doesn't like just any dollar bill...oh no, it's quite selective. Naturally you can't use a credit card to buy less than $20 of BARTness, or if you can I couldn't figure out how to do it in the 10 seconds I thought I had. Finally I found $2 and just resigned myself to get gypped out of 50 cents. I still don't really have time to read so I push the button next to the thing that looks like a ticket. Nope, the most alluring option is an expensive BART Plus ticket, which I didn't care to figure out what was. Finally I get my stupid ticket, charge through the gate, and just make it onto the train, only to sit there at the station for 5 minutes anticlimactically, as if BART were laughing at me.

Lesson learned: It takes exactly 22 minutes to get from row 19 of a Northwest flight full of people in no particular hurry to get off to a BART train, including a bathroom stop. All in all, not bad.

Another discovery: Life Aquatic: Weird movie. Funny at times. But way more of Bill Murray in a Speedo than I needed.

And a massage is the perfect antidote to six hours of Northwest.

10...9...oh dick, we love you...7...6...dick, wish you were here...4...3...did we mention dick's not here?...1...happy new year!

Yes, happy new year everyone! I was ready to shoot Regis and getting a little sick of the Dick Clark lovefest but, yup, that ball dropped right on schedule. There's something great about having Colin Powell be in charge of pushing The Button, cause he tries so hard to do the same thing in his day job...

It's green again! All the snow is gone, washed away in a freak rainstorm and warm day. "How long until it gets cold again?" Dad had to ask while we were walking the dog. Sure enough, it plummeted 30 degrees within 12 hours. Nice going, Dad. Although tonight's ice will be gone come Sunday. Michigan weather is fickle.

All in all it's been a quiet break. Got a nice dose of euchre...if I didn't get so rusty throughout the year I probably wouldn't suck so much now. And I got my snow and kielbasa for the year. And more than enough family politics.

Someday soon I'm gonna have to stop staying up till 5 AM. But not today...

got a few extra bucks for christmas?

<PSA>
After days of trying to ignore the media frenzy surrounding the Asian tsunami, the scope of the relief need finally sunk in. The $6 left over on my gift certificate to my least favorite record store could feed 150 kids over there right now. (That is, if gift certificates at crappy stores were redeemable for cash, but that's beside the point.) If you've got a little extra Christmas gift cash or maybe you forgot someone on your list, if you haven't already, think about donating to something like Mercy Corps--these guys are one of the most efficient relief organizations out there.
</PSA>

dashing through the snow

As I watch the dawn break over the empty rolling hills of eastern Pennsylvania, Christmas carols in some undecipherable language wafting from the radio--no, the CD player: it's that damn Polish CD--I come to reflect on my discoveries of the past 12 hours or so:

I actually found a use for their Jeep's 4-wheel drive! This Ohio service plaza apaprently never got plowed, so the car was stuck in about 9 inches of lovely gray mush. A little 4x4 lovin' is all it took.

The nice thing about the radio on Christmas Eve is that a bunch of stations decided to forgo commercials for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

These stations, however, did not give up bragging about their 48 hours of music. You'd think they'd send their DJs home so they could annoy their families, but no. (Though apparently some stations prerecord their DJ chatter a week in advance. Those DJs can then do the nifty cocktail party trick of "predicting" what songs will come on the radio next and what they'll say.)

48 hours of solid Christmas music is a lot.

My winter coat makes decent soundproofing material in a pinch.

Why you should have a real Christmas tree

Perhaps a thinly veiled, shameless plug from the Christmas tree lobby. But still...