Out of Time™

This morning I finally made it through the above issue of Time Magazine, dated Feb. 5th, 2007. This marks the end of my almost 4 month backlog of Times. Over the last several weeks I've been slowly working my way out of the Time sink that I had gotten myself into. Today I'm proud to say that my self-enforced semi-weekly time alottment per magazine has paid off. Of course the new Time just showed up today. And I haven't read that yet. But I'm pretty sure that it doesn't count as backlog until it's at least a week old.

On another note, the word of the day is:

Inveigle: 1. To win over by coaxing, flattery, or artful talk. 2. To obtain by cajolery. Etym. - From Old French aveugler - to blind, from Vulgar Latin aboculum - away from, without + eye

Confusion in the Print Room

At lunch today I opened up my paper to do the NYTimes crossword and encountered an unwelcome surprise. I had already done the crossword printed there. This was confusing to say the least. Above is a picture of pages B2 (today's crossword page) and B11 (the opposing sheet). You may notice something odd about them, especially since they are actually one piece of paper.

That's How We Roll?

Last weekend was spent in Chicago, courtesy of Sysco Food Services. That meant cocktails and dinner at Petterino's Saturday night, VIP passes to the Doobie Brothers concert at the House of Blues Sunday, and a room at the Sheraton Towers until Tuesday. As a result, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night were all marked by open-bars and we didn't make it back to Madison until Tuesday afternoon. The extended time spent with Leslie (and her family) basically turned us into a married couple, albeit one that still sleeps in separate beds. We even seemingly had children for a time when we (both 6'3") meet another friend of mine, Kate, and her boyfriend Tate (really), both of whom are 5'1" (literally). One of the great achievements of the trip, and ostensibly the whole reason for me going to Chicago, was the purchase of a suit. I learned two things from this experience:

1. I look really good in a suit. (I may have already known this)
2. I'm the same size as a mannequin.

Besides for the snide remark about how long I wanted my jacket to be from the hyper-fashioned salesman at Barney's with a disturbingly short tie, the whole suit-buying process was surprisingly easy. The dark charcoal Hugo Boss number with a subtle light blue pinstripe was just what I was looking for. Perfect for upstaging the brothers in June, and it fit like it was made for me right off the rack.

Friday Night Frights

What's a Friday night without waking up the next morning to a girl sleeping on your couch wearing your argyle sweater? Well, if she's from Jersey you're just glad she's not in your bed. Also, you start to worry about where your wallet is. Turns out I had lost my wallet, but the cause of that was no Soprano-ette in training. Rather, it was Leslie, who decided to take my wallet out of my pocket at some point during the night and then proceed to give it to some guy I hardly know. Funny. Not funny as in "Ha, that's funny", but more funny as in "Leslie I hate you." This situation was compounded by the fact that we were leaving for Chicago in an hour and the kid that had my wallet was in Reedsburg, WI. Nice.

A Karmatic Approach to Bicycles

A few weeks ago the back tire of my bike was stolen. Now, I have been planning on getting a new bike for a long time actually, and if I was stealing a bike tire I certainly wouldn't take the beat up piece of rubber I had been ridding on as of late, but, c'est la vie. This bike and I have been through a lot together though. It was a 16th birthday present. That means I got it in November of 1997. Almost ten years ago. It made it through two years of city life before moving to Rochester, NY. While there it weathered 5 winters outside, one of them locked to Bausch & Lomb hall. It spent its summers in Philadelphia, making regular trips up and down the Schuylkill River. In 2000 it killed a goose that had made the poor decision of getting in its way. In August of 2004 it made its way to Wisconsin (and 3 more winters outside) strapped to the roof of The Van. This would prove to be a harbinger of a shared fate for these two vehicles. By 2005 The Van had dropped its transmission and the bike could no longer reliably shift. Now both are dead. Perhaps surprisingly, I am not, despite the fact that I have been riding a bike with only front brakes for over a year.

But, what goes around comes around. While Evan (who is supposed to be in charge of overseeing the shipping of all of Fuji Bike's inventory from China) tried to figure out how to ship a bike to Wisconsin, I found an ad on Craigslist for a single speed road bike with a 62" frame. For $60. Mine. Oh, and it was a Fuji.

Pent Up

I feel like I've got a lot of pent up blogging in me right now. Expect several in quick succession. For now I will be brief. This afternoon I turned in my Stat take-home final and finished my work for the semester. This concludes a roughly 2 week period in which I completed and defended my first prelim paper, wrote two papers, graded 90 Linguistics finals, and did the aforementioned Stat final. Because of my patented methods of procrastination there were at least 3 nights were I never went to bed. The result: an apartment strewn with notebooks, papers, a big pile of exams, and stacks of library books, as seen in the above picture. In the corner you may notice the topic of my next blog. But that won't be 'til tomorrow.