Wednesday, September 30, 2009

College life feels sludgey

I had a post all loaded up and ready to go concerning Cadel Evans' well deserved World Championship win but I shelved it because I have nothing new to throw onto the fire.

Yes, he deserves it.
Yes, he finally attacked.
I hope that Silence -Lotto will actually back him up next year in the Grand Tours.

You see? Nothing that hasn't been said already.

Therefore, I will proceed to less pressing matters.

My diet.

This semester started with a bang.
I have been up on campus nearly every morning at 8:00 a.m., with a couple of exceptions mostly coming after late nights at The New Hampshire (UNH's student newspaper).

But with long workdays on campus comes miserably irregular eating patterns that have left me feeling as though I need dialysis. I feel like I am supposed to be running on 10W-40 but instead someone got lazy and put in some cheap 90-weight gear oil.

Oh man... Let me give you an example of my intake lately:

Monday went like this;
Breakfast = ghett-o's (market basket brand cheerios), one banana, 1% milk. {not so bad}
Lunch = Buffalo chicken sub (three fried chicken tenders with Blue cheese dressing with lettuce and tomato on whit bread. {tasty but not so nutritious}
Dinner = tomato soup and grilled cheese. [from Dining hall] {SUCKED, that is not dinner nor is it nutritious AT ALL}

Tuesday:
Breakfast = the usual.
Lunch = one slice pepperoni pizza, luke warm, fresh out from under the warming bulb. {SUCKED, but at least it was something...}
Dinner = maybe...

Wednesday went like this:
Breakfast = the usual
Lunch = "slider" sized cheeseburger and waffle fries. {SUCKED but something is better than nothing.

[ Let me explain to you waffle fries. Like waffles are delicious because there are nooks and crannies for peanut butter and syrup to hide, waffle FRIES are awful for you because there is more volume and surface area for grease to absorb. The label should say "Fat-ass fries".]

Dinner = Barb's (my dear, sweet, tiny, sailor-mouthed mother) Turkey and Black Bean Chili with a scoop of Homemade Macaroni and Chees on top. {Finally, the first REAL thing I hav eaten all week!}

I reflected on all this (except for Wednesfay dinner) as I drove home from school. I thought, "Of all that is good and holy in Oden's beard! No wonder I feel like shit, have been sleeping like shit, and had no energy lately!"

How the hell am I supposed to perform while I pump this sort grog into my body?
Better question, what am I going to do about it?
Fruits and veggies? Good idea. I'll have to get over my phobia of green food stuffs, though.
No more coffee? You got a better chance of seeing God, my friends, before I give up the delicious Brown Serpent!
More sleep? Tell that to my editor, professors and work ethic.


So, it's now Thursday - or it will be by the time you read this.

And I am going to start my day with a cup of coffee, bright and early, frantically work till 1:30 when I run to the MUB Food Court and put a burger on a piece of pizza, eat it on the way to class, then work till 11 p.m. at TNH while eating some combonation of fried food and cookies and then, as your hair shampoo label reads, LATHER, RINSE, REPEAT!

Until the end of the semester, when I will schedule a high-colonic enema, dialysis, angioplasty and a dental cleaning.

Sunday, September 13, 2009

King of SchoolWorkNerds

I got up at 9:30 a.m.
I ate pancakes for breakfast.
I washed the dishes.
I showered.
I left my house at 11:15 a.m.
I arrived at the McConnell computer lab at 11:30 a.m.

I was the first one here. I had to turn the lights on because there was NO ONE ELSE HERE!!!!

I am such a NERD!
It's Sunday! Go ride your bike all day. Go to Portsmouth with your friends! Go do something other than schoolwork DWEEB!!!!

Or not. Keep working.
It'll be worth it. I promise.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

from the Practical Joke File

I was showering this morning and I thought of a great practical joke.

Install a super high-power exhaust fan in your bathroom, right over the shower.
When you have a guest and they are showering and the bathroom is getting all foggy, turn on the fan.

Let me explain how powerful this fan should be. It should be powerful enough to suck the shower curtain right off of the rail. And powerful enough to suck the shampoo suds out of their hair. And powerful enough to suck the washcloth off its hook. And powerful enough to suck the falling water out of the air so that no water hits the tub.

But not powerful enough to inhale your guest because that would probably be considered negligent manslaughter, which is never funny.

Now, let me paint the picture.

"Oh wow, Sylvia. You sure love hot showers. Don't we have great water pressure? It's getting a little foggy in here. Let me turn the fan on for you."

"Oh thanks, Jerry. Yeah, I don't want fog up your walls to badly."

You hit the switch and seek shelter.

Well... I'll let your imagination do the rest.

Have a wonderful day.

Monday, September 7, 2009

Yelling bad puns

I like to yell.
I like to yell things at people also.

As a cyclist, I know how futile it is to yell things at people while you are moving past them at high rates of speed. Usually a simple phrase shouted from a car moving past a cyclist turns into a doppler smear of unrecognizable sounds.

Therefore, today when I saw a couple walking through Durham, I chose not yell at them.

I saw a sweet couple walking hand-in-hand.
They were enjoying the cool late-summer evening, stolling along, swinging their arms in unison as they held hands. They were really swinging their conjoined arms.

So, I thought it might be funny to yell, "It looks like you guys are swingers, eh?"

Get it?
I thought it was funny.
But they wouldn't have heard it and it wouldn't have been worth ruining their evening.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

The last semester and bit of history

This is my last semester at UNH.
It feels good to write that.
It, also, feels odd to write that.

Maybe it's time for a recap.

Last year at this time, I was sitting in Piazza Del Popolo, in Ascoli Piceno. I was totally confused, awestruck and drinking un caffe. I was sitting with my dear roommate Alex who, bless his soul, was not afraid, like I was, to walk in to anywhere and ask for a coffee or buy produce.

Oooh! I also bought grapes on my first day in Italy. They were green and had seeds. Funny story about that -- Alex and I walked into a grocery store and found the produce. We both picked out what we wanted, and as we were doing this we saw a local fellow being helped by the produce attendant. This was strange and new. After you selected and bagged up your produce, you took it to the produce fellow so that he could weight it and put a little price sticker on it. If Alex and I had not seen this local fellow do that we would have gotten to the cashier (who presumably spoke no English which complemented our "No Italian" status nicely) and would have been totally confused as to what we supposed to do, but didn't.
But it all worked out and I bought grapes.


Four years ago at this time, I was starting my first day at UNH. I remember that a week or so before classes started Tilly and I came up to campus and she showed me the buildings where my classes were. On the first day, I confidently strode across campus thinking, "Man, this is great. I'm not one of those confused freshman that have to ask someone where their building is."
Then a young lady asked me, "Excuse me, do you know where such-and-such-building is?"
I didn't know and answered, "Sorry, I don't. This is my first day too."
Hah! Take that stupid freshman Phil! Eat that awful, bitter Humble Pie! That's right. Every last bite of it!

Five years ago at this time, I was yelling at my freshmen through a bullhorn as a senior at Tech School. (The Williamson Free School of Mechanical Trades, for those of you who aren't familiar.)
I had them up on the platform ladder doing some dumb shit. I had thought all summer about what I would have them do.
I remember Oren in particular. A good-looking black kid from the Baltimore area. He tried to look like a thug, but he was too small and I could see the anxiety in his eyes.
When he got up on the ladder, I asked him what kind of music he listened to.
"Rap," he said.
"Who have you been listening to lately?"
"Lloyd Banks," he answered.
"Sing a little for me. Give me your favorite lines," I demanded.
He stammered out the chorus.
"OK. That's good enough," I told him. "But I know you've got a soft spot. You like Celine Dion? Because I do." I got up and handed him the lyrics to My Heart Will Go On.
"I know you remember this song. I know you took your girlfriend to see it, hoping that you would get some [action]." Oren took the lyrics and, now I can't remember exactly , but I might have let him get down and read them over before returning to the ladder to sing to a crowd of 20 kids.
When he got back atop the ladder, I said to him, "Go ahead. Sing to me. Make me feel pretty."
And Oren sang. He gave us what we wanted.
He was a real trooper that day. I really admired him for doing that. He could have been a real pooper and refused to do it. But he was a real man about it - he got up there and sang his heart out. And, indeed, I did feel prettier.



Seven years ago at this time, I was starting Tech School.
Man, oh man. I was a different person back then...
I had just finished an intense one-week Soccer Manager Training Program -- also known as the "I can play soccer, oh wait, I just tried to kick a ball and my foot hit the ground before it hit the ball, hmm, I think I'll cut my losses and be a manager instead" training program.
I was meeting my Seniors for the first time.
All the freshmen had to get up on the platform ladder and do something - tell a joke, answer a humiliating question, etc.

When it was my turn, Stinky looked at me and asked, "Gordon? Oh wait, you're Bunyon's roommate right?"
"Yeah," I answered.
"You can get down," Stinky told me as he and all the other senior and juniors laughed and laughed.
You see, Tony (a.k.a.; Bunyon- as in Paul Bunyon) was one of my seniors. This was a fairly odd arrangement having a freshman and a senior, from the same shop, rooming together. I might add that Williamson was structured in a para-military, highly-regimented fashion, and had fabled and horrific tales of hazing from the distant past.
Before I got down from the ladder I asked them, " You want to hear a joke anway?"
"Uh-oh. We've got ourselves an overachiever," Stinky said.
My joke flopped. I turned red. I slunk down from the ladder.

That's as far back as I care to remember. I have already tipped my hand too completely as to how wretchedly old I am.
More importantly, these events were much more influential to my development than high school was.
At this point in my life, looking forward and backward with equal fondness and contemplation, I wouldn't want to go back and do it any other way, nor would I want to tell Young Phil anything that Old Phil now knows.

Except, maybe, start winking at cute girls more often.