Archive for the ‘Day-to-Day’ Category

The Frisbie We Know

Friday, February 22nd, 2008

The Scholastic Bowl has a history of esoteric sweatshirts and mantras. (You may have been witness to one of last year’s triumphant “Panda Joust!” war cries.) This year’s shirt follows up on that with this somewhat bewildering image on an orange background adorning the front.

John Locke rides a therapod into battle

I’ve never owned a hoodie before. The Scholastic Bowl hoodie would be my first. Until now I’ve had to try to bear the school’s fluctuating temperatures, which hasn’t been very hard. My frigid home has thankfully forced my metabolic rate to increase to keep me from dying.

Only that I love this hoodie so much that I’m actually finding excuses to be cold so that I can wear it. It’s so cuddly and warmly and soft. The thing is: I found that I could only wear it at home, outside, or on days when the physics room is cold. All other times this week, the classroom has been sufficiently warm (for me at least) for just a t-shirt. I don’t know how all the PE leaders and university sports enthusiasts do it. Of course, it may be that most of the week preceded Thursday’s marathon 10-page free response 210-point ~18% of our final grade acid/base test. Due to that, I have been sweating profusely for several days.

So that’s why it was pretty damn lucky that Neal gave me his flu. The chills I get for hours on end enable me to wear my beloved garment first, third and seventh period. Downside: feeling crappy for the chem test.

Oh, well, I survived. All the way to 3:14 when I was still working on the titration progression calculation I had started at 1:07 and was almost late for the Scholastic Bowl meet at Elk Grove.

You all know about Frisbie’s love of songs from the musical Rent. Well, he finally got over his initial camera-shyness and has come out of his shell. Allow me to present Frisbie’s debut performance: a carefully choreographed number from the musical Side Show.

The Devil You Know

Our two matches resulted in one victory and one defeat. The defeat was a result of my own ineptitude, self-distrust, yadda yadda yadda. You’ve all heard one of my self-contemptuous blame-fests before.

The point is: we’re going to regionals.

Tough Crowd

Thursday, February 21st, 2008

5th period AP Psych is a tough crowd. I don’t know why. Physics and CWLT and Chem are easy enough. But all of first semester, getting a laugh out of room 215 has been a challenge. I’m guessing it’s the higher proportion of girls.

So I had to change tactics. Less left-brained jokes (which include most esotericism, some paraprosdokians, and other obscure poorly used terms) and more right-brained humor (dealing with feelings, irony etc.) Basically? Less Arrested Development, more Friends.

I first tested my technique in the Emotion unit when Mrs. A asked all of us what made us happy. Trying to cleanse my face of all emotion and to evince complete apathy, I replied in deadpan, “Sunshine”. Test successful.