A busy week...seriously!

Wow, after a barrage of blogs like never before I am deeply apologetic that it has been so long since my last entry. For once, however, I actually have a very legitimate excuse, as last week was actually extremely busy. For one, I went back to working full time at Dollar Bill to save some money for when the fall and (potentially much later) graduate school starts...oh, who am I kidding, I'm working to pay the bills and put the food on the table, but I'm making a good monetary comeback I think. Also, this past week I took the GRE, so of course I studied for it all three mornings before work the week I took it, so I was too occupied to write any blogs of merit. Lastly, and certainly not least, my dad got married this past weekend. So, while I may have been too busy to blog, I was not too busy to come up with things to blog about.

I would like to address a concern that has been expressed to me lately during my blitz of blogs - with so many blogs coming out it has been noted that they are too long to read all the way through. I personally think this is preposterous, as they measure only about one written page at the most, but I am here to satisfy the public...partially. To make things easier on you all I will segment this blog into a few well defined segments so that you can read one of them one day and another the next without getting lost. So, anyway, let the blogging begin.

SECTION 1: THE ULTIMATE PICK-UP LINE

This rather humorous story arises from my excursion out to Rick's on Saturday night (my dad's wedding was the next day btw) with Cara and her Ford crew. We stopped by Dominick's and chugged a few sangrias before moving on out to Charlie's, where all the action took place. The group included Cara, Josh, Emily, Paul, Mario, Kevin, and myself. I just met Paul last week, but he's one of those guys who are hard not to get along with because he tends to laugh at just about anything, funny or not, ala my old roommate Adam Cole. We were discussing who at the table had "game" when talking to the ladies, and I lied and said that I did. I will say that I once did, but I would be lying to say I have it now. My proclamation led to an inquirey on the source of my game however, which led to me preaching about the UPL, or ultimate pick-up line as it's more commonly called. The UPL is not really an oral line at all, but something you write on a small piece of paper and hand to a girl. Here's an example of what it would look like:

I'm taking on a survey on the best pick-up lines. Please choose one of the following.

1. Is that a keg in your pants, cause I'd love to tap that ass!

2. Is your daddy a terrorist, cause you da bomb!

3. Hand a girl a survey about pick-up lines.

Get it? Some people actually don't. When they do they invariably laugh, which is why the UPL is the UPL. Laughter of the you're not creepy sort is all it takes to get your foot in the door usually. After explaining this amazing method everyone was in agreement that I had to try it out there at the bar for them to watch. From somewhere deep within me that I haven't visited in some time I said "what the fuck?" and agreed to their request. A girl at the bar was scouted out and I was on my way to potential humiliation...if not for the UPL that is. To make everything even more ridiculous I added an opening line of, "Hi, I work for the census burea, could I have a moment of your time to fill out this survey?" The girl smiled and took my written on napkin of a UPL and started smiling almost immediately. Once she got to the punch-line she laughed, and said the following.

"Wow, that's really cute and funny, but I gotta tell you that I'm actually engaged." Now it was my turn to laugh. I was prepared all along for such a response though, and I smiled and explained that it was all a test to show my friends that girls love the UPL, and she agreed that had she not been engaged she would have thought it was a creative way to start a conversation.

I returned to the table and Paul says, "I can't believe you just did that, I think you're my new hero." Pretty lofty admiration I'd say, but Paul was self-admittedly "gameless." I told them about the whole engaged thing, and everyone got a kick out of that. We decided it had to be tested again. Not a moment later a table of 4 relatively cute (6-7.5 range for you Adam) girls sat down at a nearby table. I sprung into action again, this time taking on an entire pride of hungry lionesses...well, not really, I had already decided to explain it was test no matter how well it went. I used the same line as before and the girls were smiling right away. They read the UPL and laughed pretty hard, especially at the tap that ass comment. They all got it, but they loved that line as well. I explained myself, and they thought the whole thing was pretty funny. I decided to take the opportunity and quiz them on how the UPL would have actually worked out, and the concensus was that as long as the guy wasn't creepy, the UPL was a real winner. I kinda regret I didn't pursue things further, as the cutest girl there seemed genuinely interested in extending the conversation, but my game meter was tipping towards E, so I bailed on back to the safety of my group, with the UPL confirmed as my method of meeting new girls when I finally move away from here.

SECTION 2: THE GRE TEST

There isn't that much to write about this except to say that I made it through. The writing section gets graded and sent out to you a couple weeks later, but the verbal and math scores are reported to you immediately after finishing. Without getting into specific numbers, I scored about 200 points over the recommended scores for the grad schools I looked at, so I'm not too worried. Also, according to Adam, who used to work for the ChemE admissions department, my math score means a lot more than my verbal, and let's just say that's a good thing.

I looked up some old percentiles from previous tests and saw that my verbal score was around average, roughly 55th percentile. Not too surprising considering I haven't taken a class where I had to learn a non-technical term for about 5 years now. Also, my vocab really does suck, I'll admit it straight up, no excuses. If I had only had the thesaurus on Word for the test... There were several questions featuring words I'd never ever even seen or heard before, let alone know the definition. Oh well, hardly anything to get upset about.

My math was, without mincing words, pretty much a perfect score. I didn't think I did that well when I took it, but the scores didn't lie. For any of you who are going to take the GRE or are not familiar with it at all, none of the questions are really that hard on the math, it just comes down to how fast can you do them and how well you can avoid getting tricked. Pictures are warped and not drawn to scale, wordings are obscure and incomplete, etc. Beyond that, even the GRE website refers to the math as high school level. You just have to be quick and think of every possibility for every question.

In conclusion, my "arrogance towards standardized testing," as Nicole put it when I told her I signed up to take the test the next week without having ever even seen what it was like or what content it included, worked out in the end. I could probably do better, but $115 tells me I'll sit where I sit. Now I just gotta get some letters of recommendation...

SECTION 3: MY DAD GOT REMARRIED

As the title makes so obvious, I now have a new step-mom, not to mention two step-brothers. At this later (by adolescent standards) stage in my life I'm mostly just happy for my dad, and have no reservations about the whole thing. I actually really like my new family, and it's fun having two new brothers, especially since they share similar interests to myself. Anyway, I guess I should mention a few highlights of the evening, after first saying how glad I am that it was indoors, as the heat index outside was a whopping 105 degrees. Simply unbearable.

The funniest part of the ceremony was when my dad had to repeat all the vows given by the minister. On the last line, something about pledging his eternal faithfulness to Renee, he froze, having thought the repeating part was over. Then everyone looked at him and he tried to repeat it (it was easily the longest vow) and the minister had to walk him through it again. Everyone laughed, as it was a horrible line to hesitate on, even accidentally. Not surprisingly, the minister split the vow up for Renee (my step mom if I didn't mention that before) to make things a little easier.

Once the festivites got going my brother got drinking. I've only seen my bro really drunk once before, and neither time did he dissappoint. By the way, he's 25, and yes, I really do have a brother. Nobody ever believes me. People even make comments to me like, "It's so obvious that you're an only child." I'm not. Anyway, the first time my brother got drunk with me he ended up puking on the bar at TDs, and this time he was just funny.

About 10 rum and cokes into the night he was starting to not make as much sense. Then he started incorporating the word "fuck" into everything he said. He suddenly became extremely friendly, telling my step brothers and everyone there that he was extemely sorry he didn't visit them more. He was especially sorry that he had only come up to Ann Arbor twice in the 5 years that I've lived here. At one point he even felt so bad that he asked if I had vacation days because he would pay for us to go on a trip somewhere since I can't afford it. He reads this sometimes, and I bet if he doesn't remember saying that, he'll take it back now. He wants to come up sometime within the next couple weeks, so for any of you who want confirmation that he exists, you may just get your chance. Anyway, the drinking was all in good fun, and to my knowledge he avoided puking. I personally didn't really drink so that I could drive home later in the night, and I did without concern.

SECTION 4: REAL WORLD MEMBERS GET PICK OF THE LITTER IN AUSTIN

Has anyone been watching Real World? If there was any season I wish I were on, it's this one. For one, there's Melinda to look at, but I'll touch on that a little later. Secondly, for the first time, they sent all these young wild kids to a place where they might actually be appreciated, a college town. This is how it should have been all along. The lesson learned from past seasons is this: send young kids followed by a camera to big cities and people with big egos will want to fight them every night. Send kids to a place where every kid has imagined being on the show, and you get respect and intrigue. Now, I know they got in that fight the second night, but that wasn't like the other seasons, as they were all running around looking for someone and everything was all chaotic. In other seasons people in line would taunt them and follow them into a bar just to start fights. Maybe that's happening now, but I doubt it from the way they act on the show.

Getting to the title of this section, I'm really envious of the new hook-up drawer. That's just damn amazing. For any of you who don't know, Wes and Neh have a drawer full of all the phone numbers they've accumulated in the maybe month they've been in Texas, and they randomly pull the names out to see who they want to join them that particular evening. According to the girls' commentary, they aren't actually that great at sealing the deal, but they have fun nonetheless. This past episode they met a UT cheerleader, and she told them to look at the team's website to see some of the other girls. They went through the site and hand-picked the girls they wanted her to bring when they all went out together that night. Simply amazing.

My last Real World related tidbit comes from a conversation that arose during our time at Charlie's as can be read about in Section 1. An argument began over who was better, Cameron or Melinda? I must say, a very very difficult decision for anyone to make. Both are extremely hot in the face, Melinda has the curves, and Cameron had the tight little thin body. To the dismay of many, I just keep finding myself going with Cameron. Boobs are fun for only so long, and there's just something about Cameron. Maybe it's her little southern accent, that just drives me wild. Plus, Melinda seems to be a little too much of a nympho (in the untrustworthy way, otherwise no complaints). Also, Cameron reminds me a lot of a girl I used to have a crush on, so that contributes. Please, anyone with an opinion on this argument write in and have your voice heard. Ok, enough for now, hope to talk to you all in the near future.