Fine Al's Big Gay Tub of Love

So after pulling an all nighter on Sunday (two hours of sleep late Monday morning) I got up on Tuesday to take a final at 8am. Since we had a copy of the exam before the test, I studied some, and had a good bunch of stuff to write about early Buddhist ideas. Of the Chinese philosophy questions, I figured I'd be best able to "Give a critical account of phiosophical Taoism." After spending a little over an hour writing about early Buddhism from an existentialist perspective, I discovered that it's hard to give a critical account of philosophical Taoism. That's probably because the Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. I kept wanting to digress into extended metaphor, but I stayed on the analytical level. The strong part of that essay was probably my existentialist justification of Chuang Tsu's relativism, saving it from the throes of postmodernism. I figured my Buddhist essay would justify a B on the final, which, combined with a B on the two papers and a B on each of the quizzes I'd probably have a B in the class. Ironic that my only philosophy B would come from Eastern Philosophy. Thank you 9 AM and a bottom-of-the-list priority. But, lo-and-behold, I learned this morning that I got an A- in the course. How I get an A- from a sequence of Bs and B s I don't know. I certainly don't deserve an A-, and plan to spend a good chunk of time this summer learning the stuff I was too busy/asleep to learn in the class.

So having gotten 8 hours of sleep in two nights, I was pretty toasted on Tuesday. I'm not quite sure what I did most of the day -- I checked a couple residents out and downloaded a bunch of music, I think.

I was planning to ride with John's mini course on Wednesday morning, but Tuesday night I was starting to feel sick and was mega tired, so opted to sleep in. At about 2 on Wednesday I figured I should get started on my algorithms homework, due at 2 on Thursday. I proceeded to stay up until 5 AM alternating between staring at my homework waiting for inspiration to strike and downloading music. With the assignment about half done, I decided I needed at least a couple hours of sleep before checking most of my guys out, so I put in two, getting back up at about 8 to continue staring at my homework. At 1pm, after essentially giving up, I had about three flashes of inspiration, hastily gesticulating at a solution before turning it in five minutes late. At that point, the floodgates opened, and I proceeded to check 25 (or more?) residents out that afternoon/early evening.

Not having enough time to get more dressed than throwing on a pair of black pants and my red beret, adding to my white button-down T, I headed over to watch my friends graduate at the engineering graduation ceremony. After giving a few high fives to some of my Aero friends, I made my way to the Computer Science section, where my friends complimented me on my CS-style dress. I told them I wasn't graduating and was just there to watch, since I have a year of masters work left. But a friend in the program was participating, and my friends encouraged me to fill out a card and jump in line. Why not? So after a few boring speeches from the adults plus an awesome speech from Katie, the top graduating senior (whose two Bs came in Theoretical Physics and Intro to Programming... we broke her!) which was similar in style and bad assness to my high school graduation speech. So after an hour and a half of clapping plus 30 seconds walking across the stage, I now have an empty diploma booklet. Karl Winklemann, our associate chair, asked where my shark hat was as he shook my hand. Hehe. And I got a chance to see my friends from top floor Aden, freshman year. About half of us graduated, and those that stayed friends (not me, really) got a 4-air horn salute from the back of the arena as they crossed the stage. It was funny. So now I've done everything a CS graduate has done except receive a diploma. That gets to wait until I'm better dressed and have undergone a significant amount of pain.

Ah! But the fun was far from over! I got up at 7 on Friday, woke the rest of my residents (including Jon's dad, who'd stayed on the bottom bunk) and proceeded to check all of them out by 10. My floor had no check out problems, but we had the fun of dealing with Crosman residents who didn't start packing until a little before they were supposed to be out of the building, Crosman residents who'd left without helping their remaining roommate clean, and Crosman residents who'd just up and left without cleaning or turning in their keys. And a Reed resident (living in my future room) who called the office at 10 after being told he was supposed to leave and informed us he was still doing laundry and needed extra time. So we gave him an extension until 2, when even graduating seniors had to be out. He was still slothfully moving, so we called the cops around 3 and they told him if he wasn't out by 4 they could arrest him for trespassing. At 4 he said he had about 3 minutes left as he was stuffing individual objects in trash bags. At 4:15 we called the cops. Ah. Reed residents. Nonexistent for most of the year; a pain in the ass during the first and last weeks.

After downloading more music, throwing away a little trash, and having no clue where to start cleaning my room, I went to a party with a bunch of my graduating CS friends. I discovered that 8 hours of sleep in two days plus booze was a zany combination. I was told I was slurring after two beers in two hours and was having a little trouble with balance after another two drinks in another two hours. But it was a nice stress relief and a chance to connect with folks I haven't spent much time with lately.

On Saturday I continued to not make much progress cleaning my room, and instead went to play Feng Shui with Keith. That was fun. I need to do lots of cinematic roleplaying this summer. It then took most of Sunday just to get my stuff together and from my room to the Suburban. It didn't take that long to get it all in there...

That left Monday for actually cleaning my room. I managed to flip and bunk my beds all by myself (just as I'd unbunked them, but this time without dropping a large hunk of metal on my toe) and make it to my petty income source this summer, softball umpiring for Staff Council. Kind of ironic that after four years in college that I'm doing the same thing I was at my first job back in high school. This time it's easier and the pay's better, but it's kind of silly.
(To be fair, I pseudo-intentionally didn't get a job this summer, and will instead be doing a Masters Thesis and other academic fun.)

So that was my week. I'll see how much sleep I can get and laundry I can do this week.