The Worst Six Hours of My Life

This past Saturday I participated in taking a lovely little exam known as the LSAT. For those of you who don't know, the LSAT is essentially the entrance exam to get into law school. Do well on your LSAT, then you go to a good law school and start stacking mad cash; do poorly on your LSAT, then you go to a horrible law school and end up being a pro bono environmental lawyer. The point being that a lot of my future was going to be determined by how well I did on a test when I would rather be sleeping and then watching college football.

Now the LSAT is made up of six 35 minute sections (only four of which are graded) and a 15 minute break in the middle. I'm not a math major or anything but I believe that adds up to three hours and 45 minutes. I was willing to accept 45 minutes to an hour for instructions putting me somewhere around four and a half hours for the whole test, which while an incredibly long amount of time, I was prepared to handle it. Somehow, in a turn of events inexplicable by either science or theology, this test last for over six hours. You heard me right, six. The actually time that it should have taken the test was almost doubled. It was unbearable. Excruciating. It may have been the worst six hours of my life. But this wasn't a title I was willing to give the LSAT lightly, and so I did some thinking. Here is what resulted:

The Top Four

4. 2003 American League Championship Series Game 7

As a diehard Red Sox fan it is difficult to even bring myself to recall this event. You may remember it as the Aaron Boone game. Red Sox vs Yankees, locked up into the 11th inning, Aaron Boone hits a walk off homer to send the Yanks to the World Series. This game probably only lasted about four and a half hours but the heartache which followed was more than enough to fill up the remaining 90 minutes. This would be much higher on the list if the Sox had not turned the 04 Yankees into the biggest choke artists in history.

3. The First Night After My Ankle Surgery, 2007

I had undergone surgery before, so I thought I would be alright with this ankle surgery, but that was not the case. Before I went under the knife, my doctor warned me that I was going to have some deep bone pain the next day, I had no idea what that meant but it sounded awful and I would soon find out that it was much worse than I ever could have imagined. Ironically having gone through the the previous surgery actually was a detriment because I had built up quite a tolerance to pain killers already. So rather than needing the standard percocet, vicadin or oxycotton to put me down, I needed a fistful of bear tranquilizers, which apparently are not readily available outside of vet clinics in Montana. But to make a long story short, my ankle hurt a lot until I was overcome by shear exhaustion until I fell asleep about 6-8 hours later. Moral of the story, if anyone tells you that you are going to have deep bone pain, you should probably leave immediately.

2. The LSAT. Nuff said.

1. The Stomach Flu Catastrophe of 2005

It was the night before a basketball trip my freshman year of college and I woke up around midnight with some rumbling in my tummy. I walked down the hall to our lovely community style bathrooms and found out that this rumbling in my tummy was actually some rather unpleasant diarhea. As it turns out, this bathroom break at midnight was the first of what would become a clockwork like need to purge my insides from one end or another every 20 minutes until about 6 in the morning. The worst part was that somehow, my body knew when I was in the bathroom and the 20 minute clock wouldn't start the countdown until I had left and gone back to bed. Needless to say this night was awful and to make matters worse, I was forced to stay home and not go on the basketball trip for obvious reasons. And that my friends, was the worst six hours of my life.

Rules of the Road

I'm not a fantastic driver. I'm not bad really. Certainly not bad enough to put me in the same league as female drivers, if you can even call them that. I prefer to use the term traveling multi-taskers of death, but that's besides the point. I'm just saying, in a little over 6 years of driving I have been involved in 2 accidents (1 of which was my fault) and gotten one speeding ticket. So like I was saying I'm a decent, maybe even pretty good driver, just not an outstanding one. I would however consider myself rather well versed in the rules of the road, both the written and unwritten ones.

The topic of road etiquette I'm concerned with today is when 2 cars are traveling opposite direction on a residential street and there is a car parked in the road. It is the responsibility of the person who is driving down the side of the road where the car is parked, to yield behind it so that the other person can get through, and then pass the parked car once the way is clear. This is not an merely common courtesty, it is your legal obligation because if you decide not to yield and you end up getting in an accident its your fault. This being said, I was in this situation today, yielded as I was supposed to, and then before I proceeded, the other person waved to me as if I had just done them some sort of favor by allowing them to go first. Really, I didn't have a choice though. It isn't like people wave at me for stopping at red lights or for not running stop signs. I don't get any sort of praise for going to speed limit. So why this? By waving at me when I yield behind a parked car for you, you're basically telling me, "Hey, I'm a terrible driver because if I were in your shoes I woulda plowed right through and killed us both." Do me a favor, if I wave you through at a stop sign, go ahead and give me a wave, but if I yield behind a parked car for you, go ahead and put that hand right back in your pocket so you don't openly admit that you have no idea what you are doing behind the wheel of a car. I feel better not knowing.

a moment of silence

I would like to take a moment of silence . . . My oldest sister Amber, is officially a Texan.

Now if you know my family at all you may know that Amber abandoned me 11 and a half years ago to attend college in Texas. However all this time I believe we all considered her a displaced resident of Omaha who would someday return to the greatest city on earth. She backed up these sentiments with her constant and unwavering Omaha pride, and hatred of all things which are considered the culture of Texas (examples: shotguns, pickup trucks, cowboy hats, rodeos, a southern drawl).

All of this came crashing down this morning when I learned Amber had purchased a pair of cowboy boots. She had jokingly invited me to a rodeo the day before, but there was no way I could have seen this coming. With the acquisition of this information, all of my hopes and dreams that my oldest sister would return home were brutally murdered like so many victims in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies that I can only assume Amber now loves. The sister I grew up with is gone, all that is left is . . . Texas Amber.

I imagine this is kind of what it feels like when someone you know becomes a zombie. Obviously you still recognize and and love them, but now they are dangerous and not the person you knew before. Here is hoping that Will Smith can find a cure for being a zombie.

my triumphant return

I don't know that I ever had enough readership to have anyone really mind that I stopped blogging (immediate family excluded), but my ex-girlfriend's mom has apparently been upset that I haven't written anything in a while, so I apologize for my hiatus, and I appreciate the loyalty of my limited fan base.

I feel like I owe an explanation for my abrupt disappearance from the blogging world. Sometime ago I was watching Donnie Darko with my roommates and became fascinated with the idea of time travel. So I began researching and reading about the structure of space-time and the relevant theories on its nature. One thing led to another and I've spent much of the last several months developing a theory on the nature of space-time and simultaneously a love for theoretical physics. Upon my graduation next spring, my plan is to take undergraduate courses in physics and mathematics with the hopes of being admitted to grad school to earn my doctorate in theoretical physics. If anyone remembers my blog about what I should do with my life, I believe I finally have my answer. I thank you all for your inputs and opinions and whether you believe it or not, you helped guide me to what I want to do, even if you did so indirectly. Anyway, I hope that that is a satisfactory explanation for my absence. I will attempt to blog more regularly from now on.

On a completely unrelated note I really miss my siblings.

The Trifecta

Several minutes ago, I displayed a complete mastery of my bodily functions by peeing, tooting, and blowing my nose all at the same time. I know it doesn't sound all that impressive, but try it, its a tricky act to pull off. Here's to multi-tasking.

Under-rated

I realize that underrated, like overrated is not traditionally spelled with a hyphen, however I was going for the chanted version, you know like when a rather highly regarded team is beaten but a significantly lesser team in some sort of sporting event, the fans of the lesser team will often chant, "over-rated!" to mock the team that lost. Which I never really got that, because if you beat someone, doesn't it look better for you if they're really good? Why would you want people to think they're overrated right after you beat them? If it weren't so wordy, I'd probably chant something like "You are every bit as good as people say you are, but it turns out we are just that much better than you!" or something to that effect. Anyway, that's not the point of this post, rather the point is to mention a few of my very favorite things which are extremely underrated by our culture and society as a whole.

1. "Can't Hardly Wait" - This classic comedy with romantic overtones set as a group of seniors graduates high school not only contains Jennifer Love Hewitt in her prime, but also some pretty memorable quotes and even a solid soundtrack. It has the 90's written all over it. But most importantly, it has the guy who plays The Bass Player in "That Thing You Do." . . . Speaking of which . . .

2. "That Thing You Do" - A romantic comedy about a band called The Wonders who have one smash hit before everything comes crashing down, this film is rather hilarious. One of Tom Hanks first ventures into directing did not do well in theaters but developed a cult like following. Anyone who has ever seen this movie loves it. You cannot prove to me otherwise. If you say you can you're a liar. Just kidding . . . but seriously.

3. R.E.M. - I don't know exact song titles, because I, like everyone else, severely under-appreciate the greatness of R.E.M., but a few of my faves are "Losing My Religion," "It's the End of the World," "I am Superman," and "Stand in the Place Where You Live." I just don't understand when discussions about the great rock bands of the 80's and 90's how this group is forgotten. Also their front man Michael Stipe does a great song with Coldplay's Chris Martin called "In the Sun," check it out.

4. Elementary School Pizza - You know the stuff I'm talking about, the rectangle pizza with the cheese too white to be real cheese, but man was it delicious. I think elementary school cafeteria food got a bad wrap in general, but maybe that's just me.

I think that's all for now, I'm sure there are a lot more things, but I noticed people basically only read my posts if they're under a certain length, so I'm trying to bend a little toward my fan base.

Buffalo Wild Wings

I was at Buffalo Wild Wings this afternoon with my buddy watching some football before he went back home to Illinois. If you've ever been out to eat with me, you know that I go through my glasses of pop rather quickly and then about halfway through the meal they all hit me and I end up peeing about every 14 minutes until we leave. Well today was no different. As my first trip to the bathroom was coming to its conclusion, I was about to throw away the paper towels I used to dry my hands and noticed that the trash can was labeled 'Patio.' I looked at it for a minute and I'm still trying to figure out if someone just misplaced the trash can, or if I actually peed outside.