Animal's Blog

Homework (and the Mets) Suck; Elton John doesn't

The hardest part of going back to school is definitely doing homework again. We only have four classes a week -- Stats, Micro, Policy Analysis and Policy Process -- but I think that actually makes the homework harder because you feel like you can just put it off. In a weird twist of fate, the major homework assignments for my policy process are to write policy memos. Amazing I was just getting paid to read and edit these things, now I have to pay to write them. Just unbelievable.

The fact is that there is just not much incentive to do the homework. My policy memos get graded on a check +, check, and check - scale. Who knew that grades in grad school are the same grades you get in 1st grade. With so much time between classes and when homework do I find myself putting it off which certainly isn't good.

So I'm heading to DC this weekend and when I originally planned it, Jared and I were talking about going to all three Mets/Nats games because there was a chance the Mets would still be going for the wildcard. Well we know that's no longer the case. The Mets have done what they do every year. Tease the diehard fans for a good part of the season and then just pack it in. At one point the Mets were about 7 games over .500 and a half game out of the wildcard. Now they are 10 games under .500 and out of the race. They got swept at home last week by the Nats who are fading just as fast. Hey thanks a lot for that one Looper you jackass. I don't care what they do in the offseason, but if Braden Looper is the closer next year when the season starts I'm gonna be a damn Devil Rays fan. At least they beat the Yankees a lot.

Last weekend I saw Elton John at MCI Center which was an amazing show. For all you that are going to make fun of me for seeing him, just remember its better than paying money to see Journey who I also saw this summer. Elton played a great set and is a great performer. He played with passion the whole time and didn't mail anything in at all. I wish I could have seen him with Billy Joel when they played together a few years ago.

Had my first experience with a place called Power Plant up here in Bawlmer on Friday night. This place was scary. It's basically a shopping mall of bars. There are like 10 bars in a one block area and a lot of whitetrash wherever you look. We went to this place Have A Nice Day Cafe, which had a dance floor with neon lights and more whitetrash. The best part was getting two free drinks because of a buddy's coworker. Needless to say we all got smashed. They had a drunk pizza place right outside, but it wasn't nearly as good as Adams Morgan drunk pizza. When we got home I got into a huge argument with one of my roommate's brother's friends about politics and kicked him out the house. Altogether a nice ending to a good ending.

Okay I gotta go do some homework...

posted by JR @ 8:35 AM 0 comments

The Party

So we had our housewarming/welcome back party which the 2nd years have dubbed benders on Saturday night and this is what I have learned about the program's students is that we can drink. We killed the keg by midnight and then drank at least 35 bottles of beer. At the same time, the booze was being consumed. At least a handle of Swedish vodka, (including straight up shots -- which by firsthand account is not good), a handle of Captain's, two bottles of Malibu and a lot of Gin. One of the partygoers actually created a new drink -- gin and Malibu. Mmmm good. Not surprisingly, the bar was a big hit.

It was definitely cool that so many of the 1st years showed up and they definitely contributed to the keg kicking. There was tons of dancing, including a wonderful air guitar of Sweet Child o' Mine, and there were people on our front porch when I went to bed at 4am. People were falling up stairs and people were falling downstairs and people were just falling on the ground.

Needless to say, the cleanup was nuts. I'm not really sure why but the floor of both the living room and the kitchen were really sticky and took several moppings to clean. We, of course, did not have much booze to take care of, but we did run the dishwasher quite a few times. Anyway it was a great start to the birthday week (for all those people wondering my bday is September 7th). If you are in the DC area Feldgus and I are having a party at Buffalo Billiards on Friday, the 9th. Much props to Sugg, Ridg and Lyle for coming to the party on Saturday night. It means a lot guys.

posted by JR @ 8:52 PM 0 comments