On Tilt: The New Bromfield Blog

New Blog

2008-07-09T13:47:00.003-05:00

Since Bromfield is now inhabited by women, we have created a new blog at

theporchinglife.blogspot.com about our new house.

Thanks,

The Management

Balkans and other stuff

2008-05-04T08:36:00.002-05:00

I've spent the last two weeks travelling around the Balkans:

1)Women here are unbelievably attractive. Like at any given moment when you're walking down the street (especially in Serbia) you'll see a girl who would easily be a top-3 girl at Tufts. Except she doesn't stick out, because there are so many of them. Good deal for the Serbian guys I guess.

2) Belgrade isn't really the grey drab city I imagined. There are actually a lot of parks and stuff (though there's also a fair share of Soviet-era apartment buildings.)

3)These are my memories of my night out in Belgrade. Drinking and talking in the hostel (they have these 2l bottles of beer there for like a buck fifty), me getting ready to go to bed and then people saying they were still going out at like 12:45, going to some basement bar with Serbian rap music playing...in the some massive courtyard of these old Soviet apartment buildings smoking joints...somehow struggling back at 4am and passing out. It was a pretty solid night.

4) I'm going back in 5 days. I'm real excited to be back in America, and see everyone again. I've also already devised a schedule of my breakfast, lunch and dinner of Tufts area restaurants that I'm going to go/order from the first day I'm there. ( Broken Yolk, Tasty Gourmet, Andreas.) On the other hand, I am not looking forward to work/school. Over the past 6+ weeks I've had pretty much 0 responsibility or commitments. So having to go to a "job" (even if it's only the library) and attend "class" is probably not going to go well. Well either way, I'll see you guys in about a week. Later

Sam

Observations

2008-04-13T11:13:00.003-05:00

Squat Toilets: They have these all over Turkey and the Middle East, especially in the poorer/rural areas. I despise them. I've exercised bowel control I didn't know I had in order to not use them. There's also never toilet paper and instead a pitcherful of water next to them. I'm not exactly sure of the mechanics of how this is supposed to work, but I'm not really interested in finding out.

Fantasy Baseball: I'd say since I've been travelling I go on the internet 1-1.5 hours/day. Besides talking to people online the large majority of that time is dedicated to fantasy baseball. But even with this hour a day of fantasy baseball I still feel horribly unprepared. Clearly this means I need to get back to working at Ginn Library quickly in order to save my season.

Public Transport: I've been taking buses everywhere and I'm a big fan. Not only are they clean and have decent leg room, but they supply you with snacks and soft drinks like an airplane. And not even crappy airplane snacks, but this marble cake-like thing. It's delicious.

Turkish Food: Pretty much its just variations on grilled and fried meats. Which is excellent though I feel like any more time here would begin the descent into heart trouble. Though none of their meat is ever mixed with cheese. I don't get this. If I have an option of meat and meat with cheese unless I'm trying to be healthy I'll always pick meat with cheese. Someone should open a kebab shop here with that option. It would clean up.

Sam

Travel

2008-04-07T13:30:00.002-05:00

Right now Im in Amasya Turkey which is as random as it sounds. This blogpost also wont feature commas or apostrophes because I cant fınd them on this keyboard-it also mıght feature a lot of i s that look lıke thıs ı because Turkish keyboards suck. Ok-heres what ive been up to.

Aquaba-Pretty much Sarasota Florıda in Jordan mınus any scantıly clad women but wıth equal the old people.

Petra-one of the sickest places I've ever been (sick I found the apostrophe button.) I don't want to be one of those "omg you have to go here people" but if youre ever randomly ın the Israel or Jordan area it's worth the trip. It' s basıcally an ancıent cıty carved ınto these sandstone slot canyons and once you see the maın cıty there are plenty of hikes in the area that give beautıful vıews and get you away from the multitude of tourists.

Amman-Not the most excitıng place in the world. I spent 3 days here-mostly on daytrips to surroundıng areas. However I dıd meet some interestıng people:

1)Ben-I met Ben on the minibus coming to Amman from Petra and we split a taxi to downtown. You know the tall sort of fat kıd from hıgh school that was always ırratıonally opinionated about stuff in social studies class. That was Ben. Unfortunately I had already agreed to go to this cheap hotel he knew about before I figured thıs out (wow that sentence looks really gay.) So for the whole day I was forced to listen/see things like this:
-watching him argue with a shopkeeper over a keychain of Israel that had Palestine written on it
-watchıng him buy an Iraqi flag hat and then where it throughout the city
-hearing him talk about an alcohol promotion company he suposedly started in San Francisco and then sold in exchange for a lifetime percentage of the profits (he was 25 and had just graduated from San Francisco State this winter because of "time off" for the aforementioned company)-im almost positıve this is a lie
-listening about how he picked up his current girlfriend at starbucks by slipping her his business card

2) so suffice ıt to say I was glad when I saw that someone else had moved into our dorm later that night. The new guy's name was Sam and he was a 2006 graduate of Brown. He had lived in Israel the past few months and was probably the most stereotypıcally looking Jew I had ever seen in my life. He was also a pretty big hippy-he had played on frisbee team-smoked lots of pot and was into organic food. However he liked sports and travelling and was overall a pretty cool guy so we got along pretty well. Also moving into the dorm was Steve who was Britısh and as he later dropped into the conversation had served in the British Army for 10 years including an advance force into Kosovo and in Iraq. In addition to this he had travelled around the world for a year and had a loaded girlfriend who was Jewish (huge plus obviously.) Anyway the point is thıs guy was a huge baller.

The last night in Amman I got pretty drunk for the first time in a while (I know the opposite of what's supposed to happen on study abroad.) The three of us went to this bar hidden in a bookstore. You walk in this small bookstore on this abandoned street and theres a security guy standing in front of what looks like a closet door. Except when you go up the stairs you enter this really upscale looking bar/lounge with a lot of uncovered and relative sluttily dressed women (huge plus in the Arab world.)

Istanbul-2 days ago I flew from Amman to Istanbul. Istanbul is really modern-essentially completely European. Aside from being really pretty in general-it had a sick pedestrian walkway with tons of bars cafes and restaurants. There were so many people walking down it that I literally thought I had stumbled into a demonstration. Im looking forward to coming back there in a couple of weeks.

Ankara-I took a bus here yesterday. The landscape was really cool-rolling green hills. I also saw random patches of snow on the ground in some of the higher parts. This doesnt bode well for my trip further east wıth towns at 6000ft+ since my only wınter clothing is a rainjacket. Downtown Ankara is really nice and has a really energetic vibe to it. Unfortunately the cheap hotels are in the sketchy northern section. For the still absurdly high price of 15 bucks I got a shared squat toilet-a Turkısh business man busting into my room at 630AM to ask if I had any shampoo (or I think thats what he was motioning for with his hand gestures and this was partially my fault since I forgot to lock the door)-and was afraid to walk in more than a 2 block radius from my hotel for fear of being mugged. This morning I visited Ataturk's (the founder of Turkey) Mausoleum. It was creepy. The museum was essentially pictures of him in heroic pose accompanied by what I can only describe as Nazi march music.

Earlier today I took the 6 hour busride to Amasya and now I'm here for another 2 days. Then I head East eventually flying back from Van on April 15th. Or at least that's the plan.

Sam

Long Day

2008-03-31T11:28:00.002-05:00

So on Saturday I left Cairo for good and started my trip through the Middle East, the following is an after-the-fact diary of the longest day I've ever had.

8:30: I get to the bus station 2 hours early because I thought the bus left earlier than it did
10:30: After reading maybe 20 pages in the past 2 hours I board the bus (sidenote: I was reading The Education of Henry Adams, which is as boring as it sounds. I don't know why I was reading it except I brought it from home in my pre-trip maybe I'll read hard books when I'm abroad phase-that phase ended quickly. Anyway the point is I was like halfway through, and decided that it would be stupid to stop, so instead I decided to grind out the rest. Except the rest was like 150 pages. Poor decision on my part.)
10:35: It looks like I have 2 seats next to me to myself. Score.
10:36: The fat middle-aged Egyptian man in the seat next to me decides he wants to practice his English and asks if he can sit next to me. After a few seconds past and I fail to find a reason why not, I begrudingly say yes.
11:30: I've spent the last hour talking about this man's family, job, and what America is not. He also told me he had no interest in going to America, and then asked me about almost every conceivable scenario for getting a visa/green card. I assume the conversation must end soon.
12:30: He's still going. Now asking in detail what the earning potential of accountants (he's an accountant) in America is. He also asks about American movie stars. His way of learning English is to repeat words to himself then spell them out loud. ("Chaos. C-h-a-o-s. Can you use that in a sentence for me?")
1:30: After a brief pause in the conversation I close my eyes and pretend to sleep. At a rest stop I sort of array myself across the seat hoping he'll go back to his old seat when he gets on. He doesn't
2:00: I'm awakened by the bus driving blaring an Egyptian Musical on the TV. Why he's doing this I don't know. But Egyptian bus drivers love to blast random movies at random times at night, I've come to find.
5:00: I finally resign myself to not sleeping. The guy next to me after seeing me wake up (I'm pretty sure he didn't sleep all night): "You sure slept a lot."
5:30: We reach the Red Sea. It's pretty.
6:30: We reach Nuweiba, which is where I get off. I am now going to take a ferry to Aquaba, Jordan.
6:45: I sit on the steps outside the bus plaza area waiting the 1.5 hours until the ferry ticket window opens, I'm joined by probably 300 other Egyptians. It looks like a refugee collection area. This will be a recurring theme.
8:30: I buy my ticket. It costs $70. This seems kind of exorbitant, but since there are no other options I agree. There are no ferry schedules posted anywhere, which in retrospect was a pretty ominous sign. I ask the man when the ferry leaves, and he tells me to wait in the port.
9:00: I enter the Ferry waiting room. It looks like a slightly less extreme version of a deportation center to a concentration camp. It's in a warehouse sized room. There are benches for half the people. The rest are lying on the dirty cement floor. Some are sleeping and are covered in flies. I hope I will not stay here long.
9:05: I settle in on the floor near a group of Syrian painters returning back to Syria. They are pretty friendly.
10:05: I get through 10 more pages through Henry Adams no announcements on leave times
11:05: Nothing's changed. Except a guard comes in periodically and yells at people to stop talking, and pushes people who gets in his way. He's also really short. I think he's on a massive power trip.
11:30: Still nothing, I ask and get told that we will leave at 1.
12:30: Signs that Egypt has made me racist: I start wondering why they don't have a separate area for foreigners
1:00: Still nothing except the Syrians have started to give each other massages: (sidenote: they were also alternating giving each other massages. The amount of homo-eroticism in Egypt still sort of weirds me out. Men always hold each others hands or links arms as they walk about. But none of them are gay. It's weird.)
2:00: I ask again and am told we will leave at 4, at this point, the lack of sleep, heat and flies are starting to get to me
3:00: Signs that Egypt is racist: Some other foreigners walk outside, so I follow them. The guard lets me wait outside. It's now completely segregated with all the Egyptians inside and all the Foreigners outside
4:00: We board a bus to bring us to the boat. The man at the boat tells me I can't board because I was supposed to have gotten an departure stamp somewhere else in the port. When I ask where he vaguely points "there." After asking 2 more people and getting 2 more vague points I find the building. I also am ready to hit someone.
4:45: I enter the office and the man tells me he is not stamping right now, but if I come back later he can stamp. When I inform him that I have a boat leaving, he says there is another one at 8pm (given what I've seen over the past few hours I don't believe this at all.)
4:48: I start yelling that there's no way I'm not getting this passport stamped. The man gives in, but then comes back a few minutes later to tell me that he can't find the man who enters the names into the computer. When I say maybe he can just write down my name and enter it later, he laughs. I am not pleased.
5:00: I am pacing around the room certain that the boat will leave. The Jordanian woman who also needs a stamp's daughter starts crying. When her mom asks why, the daughter comes over and whispers something and then they look at me. I take this as a sign to calm down.
5:15: The man returns with a stamp. I set off running the 400 meters to the boat. My sleeping bag starts unravelling from the bottom of the backpack where I strapped it. I don't care. There's no way I'm going through this hell again.
5:20: I make the boat. The man tells me the fast one is finished boarding even though it's sitting right there. I argue, until I realize some boat is better than no boat.
5:30: Boat leaves
8:00 We reach Jordan. The oddessey is over. I sleep for a long time.

After spending last night in Aquaba, I am now in Petra. It's definitely the coolest place I've ever seen. Hopefully I'll have pictures up on facebook soon.

Sam

Update from Egypt

2008-03-23T07:26:00.002-05:00

Ok I haven't posted in a few weeks, so this might be a little long.

Last weekend, I went to a concert at the Pyramids. It was some French rap group I had never heard of (Iam,) celebrating their 20th aniversary. Evidently, they're a pretty big deal in France, but it's not particularly surprising I didn't know them such I know a total of 0 French rap groups. But I went because the idea of a concert at the pyramids sounded sick to me, and my friend spoke French, so I figured I wouldn't be totally lost. And it actually was really awesome. It was one of those rare things that you hype up and then it actually lives up to expectations. I have pictures of it on facebook, but it was just felt really surreal to be standing there, listening to people rap, as the sunset on the pyramids. For the last song they brought out part of the Cairo Philharmonic Orchestra and a traditional Arabic music group and they all played together with Iam. The synthesis actually sounded pretty cool. The French rap was pretty catchy, much less "gangsta" than American rap, but still good.

Last week some people in my class skipped class and went to the zoo. The Cairo Zoo was supposedly world-class like 30 or 40 years ago, but now it's decayed significantly. It also has the most random layout I've ever seen. As well as not putting related animals near each other, they have multiple cages of the same animals spread out through the zoo. I'm pretty sure I walked by 3 or 4 different peacock cages. They also keep the biggest animals in the smallest cages. I assume this is so the people can see them, but it's pretty depressing. They keep their only elephant chained to a fence, on a chain so short that it can't really move. And they keep their bears, in these small dark, dingy cages, with water perpetually falling from the ceilings. I'm pretty sure it would border on animal cruelty in America. However, the Cairo Zoo's lax standards did have some upsides. For example it only cost 20 cents to enter, and we were able to come right up to the bearcage and feed/pet the bears for 60 cents each. I'm pretty sure if we had given enough money we could've gone into the cages with them. It's nice living in a non-lawsuit happy society sometimes.

Also last week, my arabic teacher dedicated an hour of one class to teaching us belly-dancing (he used to be a belly-dancing teacher-he's a little sketchy.) Anyways, as you can imagine I was sort of a trainwreck. I got a lot of "SAM, what are you doing?" but I think I mastered some moves by the end, so maybe I'll have something special to bust out on the dance floor this summer.

This past weekend I took a trip to Siwa. I couldn't find anyone else who wanted to go so I went alone. Siwa is an oasis about 500 miles away from Cairo close to the Lybian border. To get there, you have to change buses at this random beach town called Marsa Matruh, which is 5 hours from Cairo. I took the 10 pm bus on Wednesday night, because I didn't want to waste a whole day just getting to Siwa, since I had to be back in Cairo by Sunday. However, the first bus to Siwa didn't leave till 7am, so I was facing a 4 hour layover in the middle of the night, in some small town in the middle of Egypt. Probably not the smartest decision in retrospect...So the bus pulls up at 4am, I get off, shivering (it gets cold in the desert at night and the buses don't have heat) and exhausted (Egyptian buses are pretty crappy and it's really hard to sleep on them) and look around. Luckily there's a random stretch of like 3 24 hour cafes across the street. I quickly ordered tea and started to warm up. I met 3 other Americans and 3 Italians also going to Siwa. I spoke Spanish to the Italians, and they were able to somewhat understand me. It sort of legitimated my last 9 years of studying of Spanish. Blackhawk Down was on the TV in English. A line from Seinfeld kept going through my head (which I'll get from Imdb, because I don't have anything better to do)
Jerry: Are you sure you want to get married? I mean, it's a big change of life.
Elaine: Jerry, it's 3 a.m. and I'm at a cock fight. What am I clinging to?

Except substitute cockfight for watching Blackhawk Down in a random cafe in a dead Egyptian town.

The bus came and 4 hours later I got to Siwa. There are no towns or anything besides a few military checkpoints between the two towns. All you pass on the road is just flat desert as far as you can see in every direction. Then finally you reach this enormous grove of palm trees. I think it's like 40 x 20 miles or something like that. Siwa is a small old town right in the middle of the oasis. Half the people still used donkey carts for transportation and DSL hadn't reached it yet. It was that kind of town. The first day I biked around and went to the main sights around town (the ruins of a temple of an oracle that Alexander the Great went to see, a big oddly colored salt lake, and a ruined fortress in the center of town.) My hotel room was pretty gross, but it was only 7 dollars, and I was way too tired to care.

The next morning I met up with one of the Italian girls and biked to the Mountain of the Dead, which was full of tombs from Ancient Egypt, and had a great view over the entire oasis. In the afternoon I had arranged to go on a desert tour with the 3 Americans I had met on the bus. So at 3pm we pile into this ancient looking toyota land cruiser and head off to the desert. Right at the end of town the dunes start. It looked just like the mental image I had of the Sahara Desert with enormous dunes going on and on into the distance, and a bright blue sky with no clouds. Our first stop was to go sandboarding. To go sandboarding you climb onto a crappier version of a sandboard and go down a steep dune. It was pretty cool and I got going pretty fast until I wiped out at the bottom. However we each only got to go a few times, cause the wind was really strong and was blowing sand everywhere. Next we went to a hot and cold spring. It was an odd feeling to be swimming, when everywhere you looked around were huge dunes of sand. After this we were going to go to a "special spot" to watch the sunset, but just as we were about to go down a huge dune (as the jeep went down the dunes there was a split second when you looked out the front windshield and could see nothing but air, it looked really cool.) the driver slammed on the breaks and said something was wrong with the truck. He fixed it, but we had to watch the sunset from where we were.

Finally we reached the desert camp where we were going to stay the night. The camp was not really what was advertised, since it was at the very edge of the desert, and was shared by a bunch of other groups. We mostly just hung out and played euchre. 2 of the americans were really cool (one had just graduated from Swarthmore last fall and the other one was named Sam, so he was automatically pretty awesome,) but the 3rd one was one of the biggest tools I had ever met. Like Gary, if you read this, he was a bigger tool than those kids we played beruit against at that random house on Bromfield. While trying to explain Euchre he dropped lines like these?

"So are you guys familiar with the rules of War? Good, that's an excellent starting point to begin learning euchre."
"You can think of the trump suit as sort of a superhero suit"
"In high school I was known as the king of making cheesecakes"
These were all said in Gay/Hipster accent. If anyone from Guilford reads this he was like an 1000x worse version of Colman.

We slept in tents but the bugs were horrible, and I maybe slept an hour all night. The next morning I got a ride back to town to try to make the 10am bus. Unfortunately when I arrived, I was informed that there was no 10am bus. So instead me, and this spanish couple who were also waiting got into a minibus. A minibus is basically the size of a road trip van except way more packed. The minibus took us to Minus Matruh. Then we got another minibus there filled with Egyptian Electricians returning from Lybia, and 6 hours later we were in Cairo. That last minibus was one of the hottest places I've ever been, and I was happy to get out of there. The Spanish couple was pretty cool, they had been all over the world, so I was distracted a lot of the trip listening to them talk about that.

Finally, exhausted, I reached my apartment at 8:30 PM only to find my key not work. Since I was working off of like 10 hours of sleep in the previous 3 nights I sort of lost it. After repeatedly kicking the door, I finally was able to get in on a kick/key turn combo, and collapsed onto my couch. And slept for like 12 hours. It was amazing.

Sam

An Email from David Tilton (and Friends???)

2008-03-09T15:19:00.000-05:00

Hey Sam and Mike,

How's Egypt Sam? Don't tell Mike, but I love you and I want your BABIES. Please deliver said babies by the time this email arrives at your portal. Otherwise, much grease shall ensnare your pyramid. Here is thine code: sassojolly4611500spiffyandwhorishhorseyellowzombiwcreaturedefinedinamongstcellularcontextintheelephantparadeofyesteryear.

There. There, there there. Memorize inside yourself beside the moonlight of the seventh hour. Regards of this.

together, we are

THE ELECTRIC EEL

know it

love it

it knows

make love to it

:-------l

Damn. I miss Tufts. Also there were hearts stuck in the middle. But I had to delete them because the carrot fucked with the Html or something.

p.s. someone else should start posting on this blog too. Skye????

Things I learned in Arabic Class today

2008-03-04T09:33:00.002-05:00

1)My teacher told us this story about his cousin's village in south Egypt. Evidently some guy just got the first satellite dish. Satellite dishes here come with all channels unfiltered (so you don't have to pay extra for porn, it's just there.) So this guy set up the dish and wired it to a tv in his basement, where he charged anyone a dollar each to come watch porn. So every night for a week, 35 or 40 people showed up, like real adults in the village (his cousin went, who I think was around 30 or 35), and watched porn in this guys basement until 5 or 6 am. Then they would sleep most of the next day, skip working in the fields, and start it all again. This went on for a week straight until one of the village elders died. The men got together, decided it was because of their "sinning," went to the guy's house who had the satellite tv, and smashed up both his satellite dish and his house. Now they banned satellite tv in their village.

2) The hotel next to my school also acts as a brothel. And the mosque near my apartment is evidently where the prostitutes gather to pick up customers. I guess they still dress traditionally, but make eye contact at you when you drive by, and then you wave them over (you know, in case you were wondering about how to pick up a prostitute in Egypt.) Anyway, the weird thing about it is that all this time whenever I take a taxi back to my apartment at night I'd just say the name of the mosque, because it's much easier than describing in my broken Arabic how to get back to my apartment. Sometimes they gave me weird looks when I asked for it. Now I know why.

DSL, Porn and Bureaucracy

2008-02-20T03:17:00.002-05:00

Here's some stuff that's been happening to me:

1)I tried to purchase DSL for my apartment. They had English speaking people working their phonelines so I was able to order it easily enough. Unfortunately it gets much more complex after that. First they send a "bill collector" to your house to collect the money and sign a contract. Then they mail you your router/DSL stuff, then they activate the DSL at some mysterious date. Anyway, so a few days after I bought the DSL I get a phone call that goes something like this:

Egyptian Guy: 3 minute long monologue in Arabic w/ the words "Link DSL" thrown in
Me: Enta Fayn? (where are you?)
Egyptian Guy:Another 3 minute long monologue where I only understood words like "street" and "where"
Me: Enta Fayn?
This was repeated for like another 10 minutes until I had to go to class. Then I just gave up and hung up.

An hour later an English speaking guy calls me and tells me that the guy with the contract is waiting for me outside a mosque near my house, and is wearing a black shirt and has a briefcase.
Since there were like 20 people meeting this description, I kept walking up to people and doing sort of a half-nod until I finally found the guy. Then I handed him the money and signed the contract on the hood of a car outside the mosque. And now I'm still waiting for my internet to get turned on.

2)I went to the Suez Canal last weekend. The town itself was pretty boring and I mainly just walked around. But since I had already been to the Panama Canal and the Erie Canal I felt like I had to complete the Canal trifecta. But the highlight of the trip was on the bus ride back, when I look over and the guy sitting next to me, is just chilling, watching pretty hardcore porn on his phone. It took like a triple take before I could confirm this. The other funny part, was the guy was evidently really into it and didn't realize when we stopped at a military checkpoint. So the guy looks up, sees a soldier standing over him, and hurriedly throws the phone in his pocket with a really guilty look on his face. I almost burst out laughing. But this brought up a number of questions: What's the motivation for looking at porn in a crowded bus? If you're going to look at porn, why not put on headphones and get the full experience? In a country where I haven't seen a girl dressed slutily in weeks, how is this possibly acceptable?

3)This morning I went to the mogamma, which is the place where you get anything bureaucratic done in Cairo (I had to get my visa extended.) It's like a super-DMV. I went with other people, and I'm 100% sure that if I hadn't I would've gotten horribly lost. First, the entrance is just a constant stream of people from the Metro Stop into the building. If anyones seen Joe vs. The Volcano (the random old Tom Hanks movie) it's something like the opening scene when people are filing into the factory. Then inside there's just an endless series of dingy hallways on like 8 or 10 different floors. To get our visas renewed, we had to go to like 6 different desks on 2 different floors. It took over an hour (which is also why I decided to skip class today.)

So that's about it. My dad's coming tomorrow for 5 days. So that should be interesting.

Good luck at all New Englands. Though I guess the Brom's competing athlete count is dwindling fast.

Sam

dub's triumphant return to the brom blog

2008-02-12T23:52:00.008-05:00

i think the only other post i made was a trip report of las vegas when i was there for a month this past summer. so it only makes sense that i follow it up with another poker related trip report (or at least trip report preview), as well as a heads up to why i wont be living at the brom for the next month. my friend bill and i planned a 1 month trip to LA to play poker at the commerce casino during the Los Angeles Poker Classic (LAPC)

i flew out of logan airport in boston yesterday (monday 2/11) at 8am (red eye, imo) after not getting any sleep the night before because i feared i would sleep through my flight. on monday morning it was about 10 degrees outside when i stepped out of bloom's car and at that point i was unsure of whether i could make it all the way inside the airport. the good 15 second walk from the car to the check in building almost proved too much... luckily, i survived. the plane was pretty uneventful, pretty much me going in and out of sleep for ~6hrs while watching sportscenter about 4.5 times.

when i finally arrived at the long beach airport i was ready to get in a cab and fall asleep asap. to my surprise, we deplaned right onto the runway (guess that's what they do in warm weather places, who knew!) and it was gorgeous weather- 75 and perfectly clear skies. i waited a while for my bags then got in a cab and we found our way to my apartment.

i signed all the lease stuff when i got there and moved my bags up to my room and remembered that the place was unfurnished and that the furniture guys weren't coming for another "3-6 hours". my friend bill, who set this all up, told me earlier that our internet wasn't going to be available til thursday and he wasn't going to be here himself til late tuesday night with his car, so i was dreading having to entertain myself for the next day+ w/o tv, internet, a car, any knowledge of my surroundings, or friends in the area (not to mention no furniture for the next few hours). luckily i turned on my laptop and found a wireless network with no password and a great signal so i've been using that to pass the time away. the furniture guys actually came at a decent time and they were done moving stuff in by 5:45pm. i flopped on the bed at about 6pm...woke up the next day around 1pm, i can only assume that's what gary feels like all the time.

today i got up, ate some cereal that i bought from the store yesterday, and played a session online (+$4.3k on the trip so far). now i'm just waiting for bill to come so we can go buy some more stuff for the apt. and then probably go check out the commerce casino tonight. hopefully the trip goes well like the vegas one did and i can tell some cool stories about how i stacked celebrities or pro athletes. wish me luck, hope everything goes well back at tufts while i'm gone.

ps. skye get off my couch and go take a shower.
also, anyone playing halo in my room, please clean up after you're done so i dont have to come back to more of a shithole than it was when i left it

Egypt

2008-02-07T10:48:00.000-05:00

So as most of you know I'm studying abroad this semester in Egypt. However I'm still a member of the Brom at heart, so I'll continue posting on this blog. I didn't really know what to expect coming here. I had it in my head since before I entered college that I wanted to study abroad, and one day last spring while looking over my options in the spanish-speaking world, and not really getting excited over any of them, I thought maybe I should try somewhere new. The idea of Egypt just sort of popped into my head, and so I bought a guidebook and it looked cool, and then I took Arabic classes last summer, but the reality of where I was going never really hit me.
Originally my plan was to enroll in the AUC (American University of Cairo) as an exchange student, but then last fall hit and I realized that I really just needed a break from classes in general. Also it turned out I had enough AP/Summer Arabic credits to graduate in 7 semesters. So I changed my plan to studying at an all language institute called Kalimat, and staying abroad only 3 months, instead of the original 4 or 5. Anyways I went with that, and somehow managed to find an apartment and book a plane ticket and I was off.
My first feeling when I was on my own in the airport was panic. The Egypt Air area was filled with veiled women and large and to my eyes "somewhat scary-looking" Egyptian men. I mean, I like to think I'm not prejudiced, but at that counter all I could think was "and it's possible this guy wants to see my dead." I was so nervous my hand was trembling when I handed the guy at the desk my passport, which I think is the main reason he assigned me for a "random" search. Once I was actually on the plane I was much less nervous, and the Egyptians sitting near me started making conversation with me, and the one next to me (who taught Chemistry at Cleveland State,) taught me the "correct" way to fly on Egypt Air (evidently you wait till the last 1/4 of people are coming onto the plane and then claim an empty row for yourself and hope that none of the remaining people are coming into your row.
The flight was uneventful (though the movie choice was atrocious: Mr. Bean's Holiday and High School Musical 2 twice in a row.) At the airport I was met by this guy my dad vaguely knows named Adel. He had studied with my Dad's old boss in America for 2 years. It turns out that he is by far the most hospitable person I've ever met (though I think a lot of this is cultural.) Adel drove me to the apartment he had found for me (the beginning of his hospitableness.) The apartment is enormous. It has 5 rooms, 2 balconies and is at the intersection of 2 main streets in Monhandessin (a part of Cairo like 30 minutes outside downtown-it's sort of like Brooklyn I think.) It's way more than I needed but my Mom insisted I live in a "nice place." It costs 800 dollars a month, which is pretty expensive for Cairo, but considering school will only cost 1200 dollars total for the semester, it's not bad. Also these are the restaurants I can see from my balcony, Baskin-Robbins, Hardees, Pizza Hut and House of Donuts (which are advertised as "America's Finest Pastries.)
Anyway, I feel like this is starting to get really long and I'm only on the first day (not that I'm going to give a day by day recap,) but I'll just say some of the interesting stuff:

1)I watched the Super Bowl in Cairo at a "sports cafe." It was one of the few places in Cairo showing the game so it was packed with Americans. Unfortunately they did not serve alcohol (a lot of places here don't since Muslims are technically not allowed to drink it.) I watched the game with 2 other Pats fans I met there. One who was sort of tool and gave me awkward hugs after big Pats plays and another one who looked and sounded exactly like Seth Rogen to the extent that I wikipedied him the next day to see if he was from New England. Needless to say, the night ended in disappointment.

2)I love international CNN. It's the only English channel I get and its excellent. The announcers all have reassuring British accents, plus they do features on the most random stuff.

3)My morning class has only 5 people and all of them are girls. There is one especially attractive British-Dutch girl, whose British accent only makes her more attractive. There's also a girl in the program who I thought looked a lot like OB, except she's British.

4)More women wore the hijab here than I realized. I'd say 90-95% of Egyptians. Adel's daughter who is 22, and seems pretty progressive wears one, as do most of her friends. Plus even those who don't wear it dress really conservatively. It's a pretty big culture change. Though I heard it's really different in the bars and clubs, but I haven't been out yet so I don't know. Maybe I'll see tonight.

5)Egyptian food is really cheap. At the excellent Lebanese restaurant below me I can get a huge sandwich and a drink for 3 bucks. It's amazing. I also think I'm losing weight. Ironically.

6)I still don't have internet access in my apartment, but my cell phone here is nicer than my cell phone at home. I guess it's a trade off.

7)I fight to make it up past 11 o clock here, but I still get 10 hours of sleep a night. At first I blamed it on jet-lag, but if this keeps up I might start thinking mono.

8)Last night I went to Khan-Al-Khaleli, which is the giant bazaar in Cairo. There are hundreds of alleys, all with these small stalls selling everything imaginable. There are souvenier stalls next to spice stalls, next to shoe stalls next to stalls selling expensive jewelry. And it just keeps getting deeper and narrower until you feel like you'll never find a way out. We had tea at this famous coffee-shop in the middle that has been open continuously (like 7 days a week 24 hours a day) for more than 200 years. It was pretty cool.

Ok, that about sums everything up. Hope the Brom/Tufts is holding together. You guys should update frequently.

Sam

Thank you Bloom

2008-01-01T15:50:00.000-05:00

Dear Alexander Rafael Bloom,

Thank you for letting me sleep in your bed this week.

Sincerely,
Tbach

PS: you're still a nit

PPS: happy new year!

ZZzzZZzzZZzzZZzzZZ

Beer

2007-12-30T12:51:00.000-05:00

Beer is the new water, according to the Boston Globe. And I quote, "Early last month, medical researchers at Spain's University of Granada called a press conference to announce their findings on the thirst-quenching properties of beer. In a study, 25 university students, after exhausting themselves on a treadmill in 104-degree heat, had been given either water or Spanish lager to drink. According to the University of Granada team, it was the beer that, by a slender margin, proved more effective at rehydrating the students, thanks to its bubbles, salts, and carbohydrates.

VICTORYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!

Article at http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2007/12/30/the_new_new_things_of_2007/

Christmas Break

2007-12-28T12:27:00.000-05:00

Are there five more boring days in the world than Dec. 26-30? If you're like me, you wake up at noon, eat cereal, watch a movie, convince one of your family members that you need to go spend a gift certificate, do that, realize it only took 45 minutes (Fuck!), watch another movie, and then because you and your twin brother are so bored, you go out drinking at a bar. Then you get home at midnight, drink another beer and watch reruns of Scrubs, go to bed at 3am, and do it all again the next day. Sometimes you go out to a movie instead of a to a bar. Other days you throw in a family game of Monopoly or Risk. It's all just stalling for time until you get to go back to school.

Some of you are freshmen or sophomores and you still have high school friends who you hang out with. But if you're like me, you live in Charlotte, NC and the only people you know are kids whose parents have forced them to hang out with you because the parents are friends with your mom. We call those "play dates."

Me: "Really mom? You set us up on another play date where we are forced to pretend we like some kid we met for the first time and then be interested in demolition derbies, deer hunting, and the Appalachian State Mountaineers? Thanks!!"
Mom: "You guys can try to have a positive attitude on this."
Me: "When have you known either of us to have positive attitudes?"

This happens all too often.

You ask me how I survived a whole summer here? I spent lots of time at my job, I spent about two or three hours each night running and going to the gym, and I drank a glass of a wine (or three) each night. It helped.

So these five days are pretty much a Purgatory until I get to ascend into the Heaven that is driving up to DC to drink for three days with my older brother and his friends. Don't ask me how that can be compared to Heaven. It's just gotta be better than hanging out in Charlotte. We're leaving tomorrow and staying through Tuesday, when I'll be driving back down to Charlotte to resume the aforementioned fast-lane lifestyle until I head back up to Boston for early return.

And your next response:

Puzzled Reader: "Bloom, why don't you just drive up to Boston after DC rather than spending the next week in Charlotte."
Me: "Well for some odd reason, my family likes it when I come home, which I can only assume to be because misery loves company."
Puzzled Reader: "Dude, sucks man."

- Bloom

Merry Movies and Chinese Food Day

2007-12-26T00:26:00.000-05:00

So I figured that while I'm sitting here adding Puff Daddy and The Family's single of "Been Around the World" and "It's All About the Benjamins" (Rock Version) to my iTunes, I'd update the inquiring readers of this blog about my Christmas (as we Christians refer to December 25, you heathens).

Loot:
- Dunkin Donuts gift card ($40), Dunkin Donuts ground coffee (12-pound bag), and new coffee maker (my parents are not helping my caffeine addiction)
- Season 5 of "24" (I got this for my birthday -- my mom is losing it)
- A New Balance winter running shirt (will come in handy for my three-mile training runs during early return)
- An Abercrombie & Fitch sweatshirt thingy. As you can see, this is definitely my style, except mine is orange and says "-CC->" -- that's why my mom bought it (this thing smells awful)
- Boys of Summer (should be good)
- Stephen Colbert's new book (we'll see)
- An Olympus voice recorder that has a computer adapter -- pretty sweet

And the highlight of the gift giving -- my dad presented my twin brother with a ball signed by Chase Utley that the Phillies sent us. They sent it to us because my dad asked them to give him a ball after my brother dropped a game-breaking pinch-hit two-out grand slam that literally hit him and bounced onto the field. I wrote a column about it back in the day and my dad sent it to the Phillies as proof that my brother deserved the ball. They thought it was a great idea and agreed.

This goes down in Bloom lore of great presents along with when my twin brother and I convinced a staffer at our congressman's office to send my mom (an INCREDIBLY ardent Democrat) a birthday card from President Bush (an official birthday card sent by the White House). She was pissed. Good times.

Merry Christmas all. Except you heathens out there.

- Bloom

Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas (or Hanukkah)

2007-12-17T02:49:00.000-05:00

Time to start posting again.

We're having a Christmas movie marathon tomorrow at Bromfield, so for all of you that read this blog, come on over around 6pm and join myself and Sam for some holiday fun. We're not making cookies. We might drink beer though. It won't be wintery-flavored.

On tap:

National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
A Christmas Story
It's A Wonderful Life

I love all of these movies. You should too.

- Bloom

Katie Rizz isn't funny

2007-09-02T00:19:00.000-05:00

apparently 55.43 does not equal 80 something LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL you're so funny.

The most degenerate brom party ever: Marcy's 21st

2007-08-04T01:35:00.001-05:00

In my long, illustrious collegiate career I've seen more than my fair share of degenerate, retarded, shit-show parties. Of these, tonight's celebration was the pinnacle.

Things that happened:

1) Dub got drunker than I've ever seen him
2) Dub and Sam were flipping for 100s of dollars at a time. At one point Sam was down $600. This was all accompanied by screaming and instigation from the crowd. They flipped like 50 hands.
3) Dub and Shanley raced and Shanley bashed into a car
4) Gary got more retarded than I've ever seen him and hid his own keys and promptly forgot where he put them. He then spent a long time searching for them, finally found them, unlocked his room, and then forgot he unlocked his room and tried to search for his keys again. He was also falling off chairs and shit.
5) Shanley was absolutely retarded and tried to make out with me. He also fell off the beer fridge.
6) Nora got dangerously drunk and has been cared for by Katrine for the last 2.5 hours while she has been lying on the bathroom floor of apt. #1
7) Tilton got both high and drunk and engaged in some fight with a random kid.
8) Marcy (it being his birthday) passed out on top of the garbage on our back porch. He also assaulted me, and I was forced to try to finger his asshole so that he would relinquish his hold.
9) A lot of guitar hero was played, along with beirut (often accompanied by prop betting).

Frankly, I don't know how the cops weren't called tonight, especially since there was a lot of screaming outside. I've stayed sober through the whole ordeal, and am in shock: tonight I witnessed the lowest tier of human nature. I have been reminded why I love this house.

The Reunion of Team Oceola

2007-07-23T16:17:00.000-05:00

For those of you who were at camp last year, you might remember the success of Team Oceola. After running 22 miles in 2 days, we hiked up Mt. Oceola (an event that directly led to the breaking of Marcelo.)

This weekend we decided to have a reunion trip. The proposed target was Mt. Hancock and South Hancock, which provided great views of Mt. Oceola (but which we soon realized was a much harder climb for a less impressive summit.)

The crew included: PG, me, Chad, Tilton, Sorensen, Churry, and Rony.

We left Teele at 9:30, to drive up to the Mt. Hancock trailhead. After a lot of stream crossings we started to climb. For some reason (maybe because we’re all runners) we started to pick up the pace as we climbed, and when we finally reached the summit we were all dead. The summit was a little disappointing because it was wooded so there was only a small cleared area. But the cleared area provided views far into the White Mountains, and because there were no roads or cars or other people visible, you really got the feeling that you were in the middle of a wilderness. There were also birds at the top which would eat food right of your hand. Of course, this terrified me, since most birds sort of creep me out, (my whole family is like this, I don’t know why, maybe something happened to us when we were little that we don’t remember) but it was a lot of fun for people who don’t have ornithophobia (yes I just wikipediaed that.) The hike down was uneventful except we all reached the bottom famished and exhausted.

After finishing the hike, we went back to Peter’s house and discovered that his parent’s had left behind a large quantity of high-class alcohol. This was tempting. We also went to the club by his house to use the hot tub. Evidently Loon Mountain does not attract a lot of college-age girls in the summertime. However, it does have a plethora of middle-aged women. And as I quickly found out, the best possible conversation starter with middle-aged women is having a Harry Potter book by your side. No less than 3 separate women started conversations with me about the book, and I think I was getting somewhere with 2 women sitting in the pool (who could best be described as elderly) before everyone else decided that they were ready to leave.

After the hot tub we went to the Woodstock Inn for dinner. This (judging from the 45 minute wait) seemed to be the center of nightlife of Lincoln, New Hampshire. During the wait I ordered a beer, and I started to feel drunk. Then I started embarrassing myself. This began with me changing my side order three times in the 2 minutes the waitress was at the table. I then just started scarfing down any food that came to the table, until I finally hit my massive steak sandwich which I couldn’t finish.

After dinner we went mini golfing at Hobo Village. This is by far the nicest mini-golf I’ve ever played on, and one of my favorite places ever. Tilton won overall, and Phase 1 (people still in College) defeated Phase 2 (people out of college) pretty handily. The highlight of the game were drunk people in front of us and behind us. From the people behind us, speaking about Gorranson:
Drunk Girl: Look it, there’s the kid that sucks!
Drunk Boyfriend: Hysterical laughter

The people in front of us was a family. But the mother was drinking a pink liquid (which we assumed to be alcohol) out of a thermos, while mumbling nonsense to her two daughters. Her father (I think) was probably the worst mini-golf player I’ve ever seen, and I have to assume he was drunk. Overall the mini golf trip was a success and Chad even won a free (though probably never to be used) game.

Following golf we headed back to Gorranson’s house. Someone had the idea to make Strawberry Daquiri’s, partially because there was mix and rum, and partially because that’s the natural choice to make when 7 guys are hanging out and drinking. I passed out shortly after this, partially because I’m kind of lame, and partially because I was exhausted from the hike. I think a lot of Taboo went on upstairs, along with other funny stuff, but someone who was awake should probably write about this, since it probably warrants a blog post on its own. Tilton?

The next morning we got up and went for our long run. We did the same 12 mile loop we did at camp last year, except this time we added on by going to Franconia Falls. Franconia Falls is a natural waterslide, which ends with a 6 or 7 foot drop. While this was a lot of fun, the less strong swimmers of the group (me, churry) were pulled by the current back towards the waterfall, which was a little scary. There were also two girls there, sunning themselves. They kept looking at us, we (I) thought.

For lunch we grilled up Cow #23 from the Gorranson family farm, along with some other bbq stuff. It was delicious. Then everyone watched the end of Homeward Bound (except for me-I was reading Harry Potter).

Finally, before heading home we tried to go to Echo Lake. The highway to Echo Lake was one of the best drives I’ve been on because you’re in a valley, surrounded by mountains on all sides. Upon finding that it cost 3 dollars a person to enter, we tried to drive around to the other side, which was technically a boat launch. However, there we were accosted by a Franconia police, who casually informed us that this was a boat launch , not a public beach. When asked why a handful of other people could sit on the beach, he mumbled something about fishing licenses and people waiting for boats. Since we didn’t really feel like arguing, we left and visited the Basin instead. The Basin was essentially Franconia Falls, except with a lot more fat people (because it was road accessible) and no waterslide. On the plus side it did have a pretty cool sounding name.

We returned back to the Condo, cleaned up, and left for Boston. Since I lost my contacts, Tilton drove my car back (probably better than I would’ve) and at one point we nearly ran out of gas, but eventually we got back safely. Overall I would say it was a very fun trip, and I’m sure we will have a reunion of the reunion of team Oceola at some point in the near future.

Sam

As if we needed more proof that Dub is a huge luckbox...

2007-07-09T10:47:00.001-05:00

Taken from his 2p2 post:

playing 10-20nl at the wynn, i just moved into the main game recently and it's sick soft. lamont jordan (oakland raiders RB) is in the game with a [censored] of cash and he's pretty bad overall, loves to make ridiculous moves and pretty much never folds pf. anway

i have about 12.5k, donk has about 3.5 and lamont has us covered

2 limps including lamont, another donk makes it $100, i make it $400 with K K on the button. lamont cold calls (very standard), and other guy calls
flop ($1250) K 9 4
lamont checks (as he is immersed in his dvd player watching 24, lol), donk leads out $800, i make it $2.2k, lamont asks if i have any "flags" (5k chips), i tell him i dont, he looks at my stack and cash and shoves (yahtzee!). other guy folds i call all in for $12k.
turn (~$27k) A ...omg, plz no god, not another suckout for my new biggest pot...
river 7

i had flipped my kings up, lamont flashes his set of 4s and starts counting the $12k

fwiw, lamont is a really good guy and isn't phased at all when he loses a pot to a suckout or cooler...or in most cases just bad play. it's was pretty funny that immediately after he had counted out the $, he had his headphones back on and was watching 24 again on his dvd player.

-Arak

ROFL LMAO

2007-06-14T15:02:00.000-05:00

This is representative of my life somehow.

-Skye

Biggest Surprise of My Life

2007-06-05T07:58:00.000-05:00

And so castlest made of sand
Slip into the sea
Eventually

So guys, Courtney decided to surprise me by just showing up at our door this morning. I really had no idea she was coming. In fact, her presence here hasn't registered psychologically yet, nor has the fact that she kept this trip completely secret from me.

Being stuck at work in Eaton is a horrible beat right now. Unfortunately for Courtney, my room is currently so vile that I (of all people) detest being in there (I have trouble breathing). So after catching a red-eye and getting three hours of sleep, she has to wait 5 hours for me to get home from work so that I can spend the next two hours cleaning. So she isn't going to get solid rest for another 7 hours, which really sucks.

I, on the other hand, really do run good.

One year anniversary

2007-05-31T08:56:00.000-05:00

WHOAAAAAAAAAAAA a lot has happened in the last year. One year ago today, we moved into the Brom. If you remember, we drank some Coronas and watched the Sox + NBA playoffs. IIRC, it was the night Dwyane Wade hit the most ridiculous shot of all time. That cemented my man crush. Annnnnnyway....

Since then, I have had knee surgery, moved home, come back to the Brom, and moved home again. In January, I was informed I was going to need health insurance, and there were two ways to do that.

1. Get it free by going to college.
2. Pay for it myself.

LOL @ option 2.

So I took Microeconomics over "Winter Session," and obv shipped the A. Now, here is my grade report for the spring. (You have to click the link to make it bigger I think.) Also...the W in the Philosophy class is just variance.

I also applied to be a matriculated student for the Fall, and they let me in, which is cool. Minutemen '09!!!!!!

Some NBA news...

-May 22, 2007, is thus far the worst day of my life. The Celtics had a 39 percent chance at a top 2 pick, and lost out. Sometimes I will be doing something like pouring a bowl of cereal, or in the middle of a rep of benching at the Y, and the image of the Celtics being presented the fifth pick will snap back into my head. This causes me to pour milk all over the counter, or drop the barbell onto my chest. I need to get psychiatric help for this.

-Current UMass student Stephane Lasme looks to be the first UMass player drafted since Marcus Camby. He's worse than Ben Wallace, but better than Stephen Hunter. I'm hoping the Celtics grab him in the second round.

-How much is Nike praying that the Cavs can squeak by the Pistons to play the Spurs in the finals. The Spurs are the most hated team in the league, and LeBron is the new posterboy of the league, referred to by many as the second coming (of MJ). It's very unlikely, but if the Cavs win it all, talk will already begin about LeBron possibly overtaking MJ as best ever. Just saying.

More life news...

-I'm moving into my apartment tomorrow. This means I can GTFO of my parents' house.

-I got a road bike and have been cruising around the Northampton/Florence area. It's insane doing some of the "long" 12 mile routes I used to do running, that feel so short on the bike. I will add mileage soon.

-I'm reading Catch-22 right now. It's very funny/good so far. I'm like a third of the way through, but there's a decent chance it could end up in my top five books evar.

-This weekend is Teddy's high school graduation. None of you really knew him in his early teenage years, but this is a wicked fuckin' huge accomplishment, as he is on his fourth high school. Coincedentally, he is graduating from THE Williston Northampton School, which is my alma mater.

-The weekend after that, I am heading down to Florida for my grandfather's 90th birfday party. I hate Florida, and I hate my grandfather, so that should suck. The only redeeming thing that could possibly come from this trip would be running into either Shaq, D-Wade, or Miguel Cabrera in da clubs. Smoking a joint with Ricky Williams would suffice, if he somehow were to find himself in the Miami area.

-The weekend after that, I have no plans, and will be coming to teh Brom. I will try not to come incredibly hungover + sleep deprived this time, so it will be a fun time. Skye, please try to get your hands on an any-key if you can so we can engage on activities off the Lewis roof. Holla.

****OFFICE SPOILER IF YOU FOR SOME REASON HAVENT WATCHED THE SEASON FINALE***

-The season finale of the Office was kinda surreal. A significant basis of the show was Jim and Pam's chemistry that was never acted upon. Now that it has materialized, I'm not sure what's gonna happen. I've heard rumors of one hour episodes for next season, which would be hot.

***OFFICE SPOILER OVER***

I just wanted to reflect on last summer again for a moment. On the old blog, I made a sentimental post last September about the happenings of summer, and it was awesome. Because Bloom is a nit, that is gone forever.

My main memories are lots of consumption of light beer, and me running worse than anyone has ever rune before. FUCK JESUS CHRISTDJLKF:S FDSKLDS (etc. etc. etc.)

That's all for now.

D-Bach

Updates From the Brom

2007-05-19T17:54:00.001-05:00

So I know we haven't posted in a while. A lot has happened.

-I qualified for nationals.

-Dub won 9k at TS.

-Nathan started running daily. We took a house run today.

-Ciaran visited us.

-I got voted captain for next year, so now I can keep Bloom in check.

-We had more girls than guys for a while at our party last night. Additionally, Dub actually killed Longley in a race. Longley slipped on the rainy street and knocked himself unconscious. On an unrelated note, he was not sober. We had to carry him up three flights of stairs so he could pass out on my futon.

-Nathan lost $400 in about half an hour last night playing poker.

NESCAC CHAMPS BABYYY

2007-04-30T11:47:00.000-05:00

The Nestrack

2007-04-23T13:41:00.000-05:00

Skye has a half-written blog entry about our Third Eye Blind experience on the laptop in the living room that I expect him to finish shortly. I would write about it to, but as circumstances would have it, I was a bit inebriated and am slightly hazy on certain details. Details as in:

a) Why I saw a picture of Alander with his shirt off lying in a gutter.
b) Why my entire left side hurt when I woke up in the morning (probably a function of sleeping 12 people in a hotel room and falling down while running in the middle of the street)
c) How the hell I jumped 6'5 on Saturday after being, as Skye said, "One of the drunkest I've ever seen you. And that's saying something."
d) Most other things that happened during the night until I was reminded of them.
e) How in god's name 4 out of 5 members of team "I got really hammered on Thursday in Providence at the Third Eye Blind Concert" PR'ed at the meet on Saturday. I was the lone member to dissapoint.

So after hearing about the Nestrack Party on Facebook, I figured it would be a great opportunity for Round 2 of the weekend. Everyone had Friday night to recuperate and rest, and then be recharged for a trip to Amherst to show the rest of Nescac what we're made of.

Unfortunately, everyone else on the team is a pussy. Alander and his freshmen hoes backed out, Sam decided he was lame and didn't want to go, and slowly the numbers dwindled. Even Skye decided he'd rather get laid, (and let his new "girlfriend"'s prefrosh sleep in my bed) than have fun. Not even the question, 'What would Bloom do?' dissuade him from his obviously irrational refusal to attend. So we set out with a skeleton crew.

Crew: Myself, Shanley, Churry, Bons, Kathleen, and the immortal Daniel Sullivan himself.
Supplies: 12 Pack of Blue Moon, 12 Pack of Magic Hat, Bottle of Absolut Orange.
Plan: Invade Amherst. And find a place to sleep, preferably not on a floor.

So we get there and roll into the dorm where the party is. Yes, the dorm. In Amherst, they don't have houses. So in the basement of their dorms, they have a huge room where they hold parties. It's actually kind of cool, but I could see it getting old pretty quick. We quickly realize that between the six of us attending, we know a grand total of one person (Shanley's friend from high school). Luckily, we find her and she introduces us to other Amherst girls. This is where Shanley's story ends. He decided that he wanted Vodka. So he finds a red cup and fills it with vodka. And then drinks it. And then takes a few shots. 20 minutes later he was running around with his shirt off and screaming.

Now supported by Williams, Amherst, and Wesleyan runners, the party progressed as parties do. At one point, I'd say 3/4 of the people were naked ready to go streaking. I started talking to a very cute girl that I know was on my fantasy NESCAC squad. We talked for a while, but then a guy who I learned later she was kind of dating showed up, and so that went busto. But I hit it off with her suitemate, and we hit a couple frats (you can walk outside with beer there. It's sweet) and then went back to her place.

I woke up the next morning at like 8:30, we went to Dunkin Donuts and then progressed home where I won $50 from Dub playing 1 on 1 basketball.

-Arak

Bromfield Mascot

2007-04-18T22:26:00.001-05:00

So my parents got a puppy a couple weeks ago. It's a Shihzu/Poodle mix named Bruno. No Bloom, unfortunately for you, he's not gay. So my mom is away visiting her mom in Montana, and my Dad had to go away on business for 3 days this week. No problem, my parents thought, my degenerate brother who got kicked out of college will be home to take care of it. Not that we want him taking care of the an 11-week-old puppy, but hopefully it'll live. Then he got a job. As anyone who has met my brother can attest, there was no way to see this coming. But, you can't leave a puppy alone at home all day, so I volunteered to take care of it. Now, there were two things that I didn't know, not living a home and having only met the dog 3 times.

A) It's not housebroken. I guess this isn't unusual for a dog this young.
B) It screams when you leave the room. Especially when it's locked in its little kennel/cage/home.

So my Dad drops it off at 7am on the way to the airport. I figured I'd get up, let it in, and go back to bed. Dogs don't let you do that. Especially not puppies.

On the flip side, even though it's not housebroken, it's really smart. Last night while I was at dinner it had to take a shit. Where did it go?

That's right, Skye's room. Is anyone remotely surprised?

Okay, on with the pics.

-Arak

Best Week Ever

2007-04-17T19:10:00.000-05:00

And if you say to me tomorrow,
Oh what fun it all would be,
Then whats to stop us, pretty baby,
But what is and what should never be.

We just came off a 2-round weekend, and this is what's left for me:
1) Third Eye Blind concert
2) The second coming of Neil Orfield
3) A date with a girl who i)seems genuinely cool and ii)has explicitly said that she genuinely likes me (Beat: She doesn't know me that well).
4) Nestrack party

I have a ton of work that needs to get done, but all-in-all this should be sick.

Do you know Alex Bloom?

2007-04-15T00:51:00.000-05:00

Unfortunately, this post was too epic to be put on the interwebs. A copy has been generated, however, so the contents are not forever lost.

Party

2007-04-12T10:31:00.000-05:00

Let's have a party at the Brom.

It can't be this weekend because I am going to AC holla.
It can't be the weekend after that, because I have business to attend to.

Any time after that would be quite crucial.

People I would like to see there:

Any alums who live locally
Ciaran
Sully's uncle

If you guys have to not drink for track, make it after the season ends, because I would prefer people not be nits.

I will purchase the keg.

Arak let me know, because this is directed at you, as everyone else is pretty useless.

That's it for now.

DUB wins seat to world series of poker main event!!!

2007-04-02T00:43:00.000-05:00

yea so i just finished playing 7hrs in a $650 satellite to the world series main event and i "finally" (after playing in like 3 or 4 satellites over the last couple weeks) won my seat!!! i'm pretty psyched and i doubt i'll be able to get to sleep tonight and this might be cause for celebration where i need to take a... "rain day" (like a snow day from high school, duh) and skip class tomorrow. anyway, when this eventually takes place in early july this summer and i luckbox my way to the final table, i'll be sure to fly all you guys out to vegas to cheer me on and enjoy all the "perks" that come along with making the WSOP final table. that's all for now

~dub

Taco Bell

2007-03-27T21:02:00.000-05:00

We were watching American Idol tonight and saw a commercial for Taco Bell. So we decided to go. But, before we could go, Nathan had to look up the nutrition facts at tacobell.com so that he could eat healthy at TACO BELL.

As far as I'm concerned, he's replaced Bloom as the house nit.

That is all.

ps-- We are thinking about starting to keep track of "you know how I know you're gay" points.

Dub's winning with the quote, "I think Ryan Seacrest is really cool."

Lol Turningstoneaments

2007-03-24T17:50:00.001-05:00

So, contrary to what you might believe from reading the most recent entry, everyone made it home from Turningstone safe and sound. We were probably saved by the ridiculous lack of alcohol on the reservation and the fact that Bach and I didn't count on the unmatched drinking capacity of the class of dymz and Sam. The liter of Captain's was gone very quickly, and the 18 quality beers (saranac and yuengling) quickly followed.

So, what could there possiby be to do at a casino when you're either drunk (like billy and tirrell) or buzzed (myself, bach, and sam and jason). Play table games! GOGOGOGOGO BLACKJACK.

Now, Billy and Tirrell went busto from poker pretty early in the day. So they were naturally more excited to win their money back. The problem being that they didn't have any money left. So somehow Billy and I got separated from the rest of the pack and decided to sit down and play blackjack. I lent him 10 bucks. (its not real money, its red chips)

10 minutes later, I had turned my $150 that I allotted for table games (of my $465 poker profit) into 60 bucks and Billy had turned my 10 into about 90. We then met up with the rest of the crowd and announced how good Billy was at blackjack.

His trick? We rarely stayed more than 4-5 hands at the same table. We would win a few, then lose one and get up and leave. We went by feel and I was quickly back around even. I can't even really document the rest of the tabling gaming experience because its all a huge blur. I do remember Bach putting $86 on black, hitting, and then being way too much of a pussy to let it ride.

To say that we were a loud, probably obnoxious group is probably an understatement. We especially attracted the attention of one blackjack dealer, Lacy. She said she hated us because we were loud and obnoxious, but we all knew that she really loved us. We kept coming by her tables, but we knew that she was destined to deal for us when we moved to a new table, and she showed up. She cooled our streaks for a while, until she finally met her match.

Teddy Bach.

Bach's little brother knew the right things to say to get under Lacy's skin and make her bust. A highlight:

TBach-- "So, Lacy, do you want to go out to dinner with me?"

Lacy-- "No."

Tbach (looking at his watch, seeing that it's 3:17am)-- "Well, that's convienient, because it's breakfast time. Do you want to go to breakfast?"

So, aided by Lacy's busting, we quickly built a profit on Blackjack. Then we spotted Sam's wild-eyed stare at the craps table.

[ninja-edit] Now, for most of the night, Sam spent the time alone. After he busted at poker, he went off on his own and made around 300 bucks at blackjack, putting him up for the night. After he started drinking, he took a liking to craps.

I'm not really sure what happened but it culminated in Sam losing all his money, except for 60 bucks he had hidden in the room. We'll just say, with Sam's attitude, its a really good thing that he left his ATM card at home, and he came back to the room around 6:30am with six dollars.

Now, if you asked me before I left what time I thought I'd be going to bed, I would have said definitely by 1 or 2. My plan was to lose my money, go buy alcohol, and then drink until I went to bed. Now, winning almost 500 bucks in the first 4 hours kind of took away these plans.

So, there I was at 4am, still near the blackjack tables with $250 in 25's in my hand. I was tired, but not ready to go to bed yet. I look around and theres a $10 min table right there. I sit down. Play one hand at $25 cause that's the smallest chip I have. Win. $275 (up $125 in table games). Play another hand. Win. $300 (up $150). I turn around and see Hanrahan there. "That was an easy 50 bucks." He observes. And I quit right there.

[ninja-edit] We woke up at 10:30 and checked out at 11.

If my calculations were right, we were up as a group, both overall, and against the house (table games).

Bromfield & Friends: 1
Donkingstone: 0

Pwnt.

-Arak

TUrning Stone WOOOOOOOO

2007-03-23T22:25:00.002-05:00

We are in the room right now.

I (Bach) am on my fourth beer, and like Bloom, thi si sgetting me drunk (LOL). We are watching UNC-USC, getting wasted, convincing Tirrella to ask his girlfriend to do anal, and other such things. Im down 100 or so, but money means nothing to me. Literally. It is just the pieces of the game that is poker. Holla. Im going to own roulette later.

Here's (G)arak...

This is the best idea that we've ever had. I'm up $465 from poker. I doubled up in the first 10 hands and then flopped four-of-a-kind for another $150. The day went well from there. Then me and bach drove the 25 (!) minutes to the nearest liquor store to buy beer. That brings us to our current state of drinking in the room before we go to play table games. me and billy are the best blackjack team evar!!!!1!11one!

Heres Hanrahan

yoooo duuuuuuudes
[ninja-edit] sam and billy are arguing which will probably end up with sum type of sexual intercourse in the shower. [ninja-edit] There are many prop bets going on behind me right now, basketball, coin flips, etc yea people are betting on anything. This trip=degeneracy=amazing. So today i played 5 straight hours of poker in the same seat at the same table. yes i know that sounds rediculous and very bromfield like but i did it. and during that time i happened to make 200 bones despite losing over 100 on the last hand. Right now im pretty pumped that we are going to play table games pretty soon. heres a sick play by play of the action in the room right now

(Bach tripes over plastic bag filled with beer and ice on the floor)
Arak:ohhhh we run so bad
(no one else seems to notice wuts going on and instead sam and billy and focusing on betting on the unlv-oregon game)
Sam: I'm up 300 in blackjack
Arak: GIVE ME A COLD BEER!!!!!!!!
Bach: lol (he didnt actually say this but he did it)
Arak: I'm literally down 5 bucks since i walked in the room
(yes unfortunately we are at a a casino but still feel the need to make prop bets in the room of the casino even though there are many degenerate gambling games just an elevator ride away)

ok boys, my time is up, heres the one they call mr william hale

so this night has degenerated into coin flips for 10-20 dollars a pop.... i love how we roll. The fifth of captain was killed instantly, 1/3 tirrell, 1/3 hale, 1/3 randos + tirrell + hale. Hale, Tirrell, and Bach are the only ones down, although Hale is coming back with a solid blackjack run... now the conversation has turned to hookers and hot chicks met in the elevator, how good is this is night? 7 guys (teddy has not returned from the poker tables) were decent friends before this trip... now we have become so much more. What a trip.

[ninja-edit]
"If we close our eyes and then circle jerk would it be gay?" Bach
Interesting question, and one that will be kept for a later time.

THISI SBACH I AM SO UNLUCKY THIS IS A FUCKING JOKE.

the end for now

Spring Break!

2007-03-18T20:15:00.001-05:00

So, I guess I've been way too lazy updating this blog. But, in my defense, over the past few days, I've probably been either drunk or sleeping significantly more often than I've been sober. [ninja-edit]

[ninja-edit]

Speaking of drinking heavily, that was a relatively common theme for the weekend. Thursday night I went to the Burren with Cleveland, Maggie and Churry. Of course, I couldn't possibly start drinking at 10:30, but there wasn't much of a drinking presence at the Brom for the first time since its doors opened. So what did I decide to do?

Play one-on-one beirut with Nathan until it was time to go. The rest of the night, BBV-style..

Brag- I beat him in all four games, the first two 10-cup, the second two 6-cup, shutting him out in game 3
Beat- The 7 beers that I drank in those games got me drunk.
Variance- Nathan sucks at Beirut

Brag- Carberry was out at Sligo's and bought us a round of drinks
Beat- Carberrys hot friend totally stopped talking to me after he told her I was 21
Variance- The $2 drafts that he bought us were PBR

Brag- The Band at the Burren played whatever me and Cleveland told it to
Beat- It cost 5 bucks to get in
Variance- We didn't end up getting to the Burren until almost midnight

Brag- I beat Cleveland in drunk RPS so he had to buy me the last beer.
Beat- I was really drunk.
Variance- We went to the Chinese place after.

Brag- I made it home without falling over
Beat- I lost 10 bucks to all-ins when I got home because pokah hates me.

Beat- I felt like shit all day the next day.

So I get a call from Anna at 11am the next day. The news? She's having a party. At the Brom. To quote Cleveland's email "buh, my body hurts. this email made me nauseous."

So, long story short, we ended up having a party for Cat and Anna's 2nd facebook anniversary. Attendees included the immortal Matt Lacey, the immeasurably awesome duo of Cummings and Doran, and the unmistakable presense of Josh Kennedy. And all of them lost at Flipcup.

Brag- I got the drunk people to clean up after themselves at 2am
Beat- I didn't go to bed until like 5am.
Variance- We almost ran out of alcohol.

St Pattys day recap to come later.

-Arak

Separate Invitation

2007-03-18T13:10:00.000-05:00

Apparently certain Minnesotans (is that it? who gives a fuck?) need a separate invitation to blogs. They can't just find out about them like everyone else. They're VIP. They need to be told personally. I didn't even start one, but I'll graciously extend this invitation to Neil Orfield.

Hey Neil, Arak started up this blog after I destroyed the old one. You should read it. Awesome, hope things in Minnesota are going well!

There's your separate invite. Happy?

- Alex "Still Angry, Still In Madrid" Bloom

Atlantic City, Baby!

2007-03-12T22:54:00.000-05:00

I wrote this very sleep deprived on the train ride back to WMass Sunday morning:

At about 2AM Friday morning I fell asleep. Three hours later, my mom woke me up to give me a ride to Springfield for the train to go to Philly to visit Owen. Owen is a friend from high school who goes to Penn. I taught him to play the pokah, and now he is a fellow degenerate.

I couldn’t really get too many ZZzz’s on the train because of the constant stop/starts, people coming on and off, and people behind me talking with what my kindergarten teacher would refer to as a “non-indoor voice.” Needless to say, I was pretty fucking tired when I got there.

I arrived in Philly at about 11. Owen and I headed back to his apartment, and I dropped off my bags off and O told me I am going to get a tour of Philly. Boy, did I get a tour! We were out for about four hours, walking around the city. I saw the Rocky steps, a bunch of historical places, and some other sites you wouldn’t expect degenerate gamblers like Owen and I to explore. He is very proud of his new city. And I don’t blame him. It’s a much underrated city IMHO, and even better now that Bloom isn’t there.

However, when he asked me If I wanted to go to a museum, I declined. It was time to gamble, bayyyyyyyby!! We took the train over to Atlantic City, talking about how much money we are expecting to make off the donks. When we get there, I was absolutely in awe. There are so many huge buildings, and compared to Turning Stone, it’s amazing. Owen, fresh off a Vegas trip, is a huge badass and starts talking about how tame AC feels compared to the Vegas strip.

We decide to go to the Tropicana casino. Owen is only 20, so he feels it necessary to dress up “like a balla” in order to not get carded. He is sporting a Bob Kraft-esque blue shirt with white collar and cuffs. He also tries to act extra casual and cool by referring to the employees of the casino by the names on their shirts. An example would be at the board in the poker room, where a young gentleman’s nametag read Kenny. Owen said something to the effect of, “Good evening, Kenny. I would like to get on the board for 2-5 No limit, please.”

I’ll spare you the poker details of the night with the exception of the following hand:

I get pocket aces and raise to 15 dollars. A guy behind me makes it 50. I raise to 150, and he then goes all in for 500 dollars. I call, and he shows his pocket Kings.

SHIP ITTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT

OMG WAIT THERES A KING ON THE FLOP IM ABOUT TO LOSE A THOUSAND DOLLAR POT ON A TWO OUTER

I STAND UP WITH A “ZOMG WTF KILL ME NOW” LOOK ON MY FACE.

However, the flop had a jack also. The turn brought a queen. They were teasing me. However, the tease came through in the form of a ten on the river.

TEN

JACK

QUEEN

KING

ACE

YAAAAA NUT STRAIGHT SHIP A GRAND TO ME HOLLLLLLLA

I tipped the dealer 15 bucks, and that was possibly my most exciting hand I’ve ever played. It took me so long to stack the seemingly abundant red (5 dollar chips) that I had just receieved. I just did the math. It was 200 of them.

I finished up about 450 that night, and Owen won about 600. We went back to Philly at 430 AM, and slept from around 6am to 2pm Saturday.

We got up, and went back over to Atlantic City. On the train on the way over, this unbelievably drunk chick named Lisa sat with me and Owen. If any of you have seen that show on MTV that follows around those Northern Jersey girls, this is exactly what she looked/dressed/talked like. She was drinking a mixed drink out of a coke bottle, told us she had been drinking since 11am, and was on her way to a beer convention in AC. She reassured us that she ONLY does this on weekends because she’s a responsible person. I didn’t believe her.

When we arrived in AC, we parted ways with Lisa, and as I was leaving the train, I saw a guy wearing the greatest t-shirt ever. It read, “I’m not angry, I’m just from Philly,” I think I know just the person to get one for.

Upon arriving, we went to the Atlantic Ten basketball championships. Although UMass didn’t make it, I already had the tickets so we decided to go to the final game anyway. It was a really entertaining and close game, but George Washington pulled away at the end over URI. Congratulations and good luck to them in the NCAA tournament. (UMass would have destroyed them had they been healthy, but that’s another rant.)

After the game, we hit up the casinos again. I made another 3 hundred, leaving me up around 750 for the trip. I am now walking around with 16 100 dollar bills. I feel like Dub. People play really, really bad in AC, and it’s as if they are just trying to give their money away.

You do meet some interesting people at the tables. The guy at my table next to me this night was awesome for two reasons:

I made a huge bluff for $150, and this lady was thinking for a while about calling me. The guy blurts out: “I can tell he has pocket kings you should fold.” She folded her winning hand, saving me a lot of money.
He drank five red bulls while I was at the table. FIVE. I had three once this summer, and I was shaking. He owns me in the caffeine department.

We headed back to Philly in the morning (Owen again beat me by winning 500 that night) and now I am writing this on the train at 7am Sunday morning going back to Springfield. I am ridiculously sleep deprived, and am very, very excited at the prospect of getting home and sleeping for 12 hours +.

PS…I noticed I changed tense a lot in this. I’m too lazy to change it, and cut me some slack because I’m Nathan-level tired right now. SFT.

PPS…Does anyone want to go to Foxwoods next weekend?

---DB

Crashing the party

2007-03-11T14:24:00.001-05:00

I felt that I needed to react to some of the subjects discussed in this blog, and didn't feel I couldn't comprehensively do so without a post of my own.

1. "a Bloom-like 95 pounds"

I don't take cheap shots in my blog at you guys. We all know I'm a portly fat ass who doesn't even run anymore, much less lift. And maybe I do clap my hands in order to lose weight (the perpetual motion gets my blood pressure circulating and my adrenaline going....what a rush), can we just drop the issue that I'm a poor athlete and worse runner?

Also: I went for a run today. I'm shooting to do one tomorrow too. We'll see how it goes.

2. "I've realized I don't know how to make friends"

I think it's kind of ironic that Bach also included information that he was in a class called "Social Problems" in that same post. What are you learning in that class if they're not teaching you how to make friends?

3. "OMG THATS SO GHEY!!11!"

Know how I know you're gay? You want to ask a guy to hang out.

4. "I'm already a better journalist than Bloom"

Honestly, do you really think it's hard to be a journalist? You guys don't understand. It's actually the easiest damn profession EVAR.

5. "I posted these pictures ... to piss off Bloom"

I've mentioned this to a few people -- the excuse "Bloom will clean it up when he gets back" is just not reasonable. I won't be back living at The Brom until September. The excuse is just pathetic.

And Nathan you said you guys cleaned The Brom. Post pictures and prove it.

A question:

Most of you who read my blog know that the bathroom in my host family's apartment is ridiculously tiny. So when they aren't here, I've started to use the toilet with the door open. Do you guys do that when you know the house is empty at home? Why would you need to shut the door if nobody is there? Also, how do you guys feel about using the toilet in front of a pet? Changing clothes in front of a pet? I've always debated this and was looking to get more feedback. Do you really want your dog watching you change?

DBach, nice style of posting.

I'll leave you with this: Wicker Man

- Bloom

Current State of the Brom

2007-03-09T12:16:00.002-05:00

So after Bach's post about Karma, I should make it very clear that I've just gotten Karma'ed to all hell. Someone clearly didn't like my lack of practicing or doing any academic work. After drinking in Ginn Library Wednesday night with Cleveland, Sorensen and Anna, I was all excited for the drinking part of drinking season and the return of midweek drinking to the Brom.

Of course, this was only until I woke up on Thursday morning and wanted to die. Nathan thinks I have the flu. Basically, I didn't stop shivering the entire day, even in the shower or underneath every blanket I own in bed, and my throat is unbelievable sore. Being the overachiever that I am, I go to two out of my three classes (I'm pretty sure that yesterday was the first time that I've ever skipped class due to actually being sick at Tufts), stopping to sleep from 12-2 and like 6-8:30. Thats after sleeping til 10am.

So, unfortunately, I was unable to drink and uphold the Brom's repuation. But I did hang out with everyone and play poker until about midnight when I went to bed. Luckily for me, my bedroom was far enough away from Alander and Tirrells screaming that I actually fell asleep rather quickly.

So I wake up around 11:30 (thats 16 hours of sleep in the previous 24, if anyones counting) to lend out my car keys and survey the damage. This is what happens when we leave Nathan, Dub, and Skye in charge.

Okay well I guess I can't blame them for this one. My room is a pit.

Thats the upstairs hallway.

The bathroom and the stairwell. In decent shape except for Skyes dirty clothes in the bottom right-hand corner and the pile of random crap I've stepped over every day for the past 3 months.

The living room. Actually moderately clean.

The Beirut Room. The fact that I needed three pictures to capture the beauty that is our beirut room is legendary.

Kitchen

Nathan finding something to watch on tv before he starts cleaning. Putting the TV in there is the only way to make him do dishes.

And if you guys think that I posted these pictures for any reason other than to piss off Bloom, you clearly don't know me well enough.

Karma (Obv)

2007-03-08T21:01:00.000-05:00

This week I started skipping classes for the first time at UMass. I rationalized it by going to the gym, cleaning my room, or sleeping. (I did sleep through a 1220-110 class, which made me feel like a huge degenerate).

This has started a multitude of problems in two of my classes:

1. Philosophy of Religion. This meets Monday Wednesday and Friday. I literally have done 0 work for this class, and I missed Monday and Wednesday. I am missing Friday's class to go to Atlantic City, and we have our mid-term on Monday. (Worth 40 percent of the grade). This does not bode well for me.

2. Social Problems. This class meets Tuesday night for 3 hours. I missed Tuesday night's class. The professor told me I could pick up the assignment outside his office today. It wasn't outside his office today, and I'm not going back to UMass until Monday. This will give me one day to do a one week assignment, which happens to be a 5 page paper.

However, I do like two of my other classes.

1. Creative Writing. We are doing poetry now. Mine obviously sucks because I haven't tried to kill myself (yet). When I write a short story I might post it, although it will probably be tl;dr.
2. Journalism 310- Press and the Third World.

This class deserves it's own part of the entry.

1. It's a pretty interesting class. We talk about how and why the US Media represents different things from the third world. I had already read one of the books, "Mountains Beyond Mountains" that is required for the class, which was reccomended by Mcneish also (even though he said he didn't actually read it).
2. We got our first assignments back today. I got an A+. Not an A. An A+. It's like elementary school all over again, where I was Michael Johnson, and my classmates were the other competitors in the 1996 Olympic 200m final.
3. I'm already a better journalist than Bloom.

Friendship

I've realized I don't know how to make friends. In high school all of my friends were the kids who:
a. played basketball after school freshman, sophomore, and junior year.

and/or

b. gambled all senior year.

In college, all my friends came from TUXC (plus Dub).

It just kind of happened. Now, I have no idea WTF I am supposed to do about "making friends." I feel like asking a guy to hang out would be like asking him on a date (OMG THATS SO GHEY!!11!), and asking a girl to hang out would be like asking her on a date (Am I allowed to do this??)

Any ideas on the topic would be appreciated.

Back to the karma thing.....

I bought tickets to the Atlantic 10 semifinals and finals for basketball, assuming UMass would be making it. The only had to win one game (that took place today), and they were decent favorites. This is where the karma comes in.

I skipped classes this week, and I get punished for not going. Umass blew a 9 point lead in the second half and proceeded to lose in overtime. I will still go to Atlantic City, and this bad luck will continue there, where I estimate I will lose about two thousand dollars.

Trip Report of Atlantic City will come on Sunday night while I procrastinate studying for my Philosophy of religion exam.

--DB

I love Skye Isard

2007-03-08T03:06:00.000-05:00

I thought I would give a DB life update....

1. Al Jefferson was recently named Eastern Conference player of the week. I cannot tell you how ridiculous that would have sounded even four months ago. This makes me happy.
2. I go to Umass now. I have come to the realization Tufts didn't suck. College sucks. I just cannot stand sitting in a classroom. The plus side is that Umass has division 1 basketball games that are wicked fun to go to.
3. I worked out yesterday for the first time in 2007. My back felt okay. However, I was repping a Bloom-like 95 pounds on bench. Again, this made me sore, which is very pathetic.
4. I am no closer to running than I was the last time I talked to any of you.
5. I am most likely living in Las Vegas this summer, and will play at least one event at the World Series of Poker (No Limit Texas Hold'em). If I final table, I will pay for the Brom to fly out on the condition that everyone GO MONEY'd me on every big pot I won.
6. I turned 21 a couple weeks ago. Speaking of being 21, here's a funny story about that age:

In September of freshman year, I was talking to Mac about the alcohol situation for an upcoming party. My experience with drinking was very limited at the time, and having come from high school, it was a big deal for someone to

1. have an ID
2. be able to steal beer from their dad
3. have an older sibling get it for them.

Even though I knew Mac was a senior, I still felt him to be my peer because he was my teammate, so it never really crossed my mind that seniors were of legal age. I asked him how he would get alcohol. His response: "Uhhh I'll go to the liquor store and get a keg."

OHHHHHH you are 21!!! Damn!!!

I can do that now. How time flies.

7. When is Tufts graduation?
8. My hangover is gone.
9. Where is Neil Orfield and what is he doing?
10. Oden >>>> Durant.
11. They aren't airing new episodes of "The Office" for a while. This makes me very angry, especially considering I stopped watching 24 and Lost because they suck now.
12. I am going to Atlantic City this weekend for the Atlantic-10 conference championship. UMass needs to win to get into the NCAA tournament, so it should be exciting. I will also be gambling.
13. Bloom should post his short story that he sent me a while ago on the new blog. It's awesome.
14. Why did Bloom delete the old blog?
15. Is it okay for me to still post on this?
16. Thoughts on my new style of blogging?

PS

17. How good does Dub run??

PPS

18. I need to write an essay to officially get enrolled at UMass full-time for the fall. Ideas for a topic??