weekend
Friday I had class, and then went over to lab to start working since I was going to be leaving at 3. I didn't end up having time for lunch aside from a handful of cereal I had brought from home. At 3, I left to go pick up Ray, Charles, and Dwight to head up to Berkeley for ACF West Regionals at Stanford. Why, you may ask, did we head to Berkeley to go to Stanford? Because no one at Stanford would host us. At work, I checked my email far too many times, as usual. One of these times, I received an email from Jeopardy! I add the exclamation mark because I believe the official title of the show includes it. I had taken the online quiz a couple weeks ago, and figured I did pretty well. It wasn’t too hard. I missed a few, such as the master work of Khalil Gibran (which I later found to be The Prophet) and naming some waterfall in Washington state. Anyway, the email said that I was invited to come audition for the show on a Wed in a couple weeks at 3 pm. Which means I’ll have to miss a significant amount of time in the lab that day. But my boss will probably be ok with it.
So the 5 was closed at some point, and we had to take the 99 up to the Bay Area. Which meant we would be passing near UC Merced. For those of you who aren’t Californians (and maybe for some who are), UC Merced is the newest University of California, located in beautiful Merced, population approx. 240,000. We had to stop a couple times to ask for directions, at a KFC, as well as a grocery store called Raley’s. Eventually, we found a sign for UC Merced, and headed down a very foggy road. After almost killing ourselves, we finally came upon a large sign announcing that we were at the entrance to University of California UC Merced, 5200 North Lake Road. We wandered around, went into the classroom/administration buildings that were finished, and tried to find some students with UCM shirts to take pictures with us. Eventually, we succeeded. pics here.
We continued on our way to Berkeley, and finally arrived, to meet Brendan, a member of Berkeley’s college bowl team, as well as Charles’ high school team. The other 3 of us slept on couches in the living room. A couple hours into our sleep, two of Brendan’s housemates, who are dating, got into a fight. Right outside the living room. This woke me up, and I tried to move around and make as much noise as possible to show them that I was awake and able to hear everything they were saying. Some crap about how the other one was making them not be themselves. The next day, the 5 of us drove down to Stanford. Four teams total. No one wants to go to ACF Regionals. I had never been to an ACF Regionals before, only ACF fall. ACF fall was quite difficult. I averaged 8 points a game. ACF Regionals was even harder. Plus, Charles, Ray, and Dwight are all very good players. Who pretty much know everything I know, but know it better. Thus, I only buzzed in twice during the double round robin, and happened to have buzzed in too early, negging. For those of you who are not college bowlers, that means I answered a question incorrectly, losing 5 points for the team, as well as the chance for us to buzz in again and get it right. The first question was with NMR for IR spectroscopy, and the other was proteasome for ribosome. Neither was too bad a guess, but there had been enough info at the time I buzzed in for both to know that I was wrong. And to know the correct answer. Pretty much everything else I knew, Ray buzzed in first and got it, or Charles buzzed in first and negged. In 6 games, my average score was -3.33. Which wasn’t too horrible, seeing as how we won. I suppose I was able to help on a couple bonii at least. The Stanford people had forgotten that the Stanford bookstore is not open on Saturdays, so our prizes were various treats. I chose the Breakfast of Champions, mini chocolate donuts (old John Belushi SNL sketch for anyone who didn’t recognize the reference).
After the round robin, we played a weird singles tournament, wherein we each received a number, and were assigned randomly to a team. The winner would be the person with the best record. Not being on a team with Charles, Ray, and Dwight, I did significantly better, answering 4 tossups in 6 rounds for 6.67 points per game. I finished 3-3, beating Ray, and tying with Charles (though this really had nothing to do with my ability, merely the luck of the random team assignments). Dwight and Paul from Berkeley ended up tying for the lead with records of 5-1.
Sunday, I decided to go into lab to try to get a little work done. While there, I checked my email, of course, and found an email from Charles, asking if anyone was interested in going to the LA Coliseum to see the Lingerie Bowl. They were supposed to play the Superbowl on the Jumbotron screen, and the Lingerie Bowl between the LA Temptation and the NY Euphoria. Seeing as how I had not been invited to the only party that I knew about (I’m not really friends with the guy from my class who was hosting it), I decided to go with Charles. The Lingerie Bowl was sponsored by Monster, the energy drink. At WashU, Brian, Chris, and I had tried the varieties of Monster. Unfortunately. It was not particularly good. In fact, it was pretty awful. Thus, I stayed away from the blue and green Monster. They did have a couple new kinds of Monster, and I was quite thirsty, so I had some Monster Assault. It was not nearly as bad as the originals. We went in to the stadium after being searched with portable metal detectors, and sat down by the speakers. Every now and then, they would stop playing the pop music, including PCD, Black-Eyed Peas, Rihanna, Good Charlotte, and Fountains of Wayne. The first three sucked (Dontcha, Don’t Phunk With My Heart, and Pon de Replay), the fourth was ok, and the last was actually good (Stacey’s Mom). I generally like the Black-Eyed Peas, but Don’t Phunk is their second worst song, bested only by My Humps. The Jumbotron was showing the game, but we could only hear it every once in a while. Charles and I got fed up and went up to watch the game on tvs at the concession stands, coming back down only to watch the halftime show (in LA, not in Detroit). Some guy did the play-by-play, and Jenny McCarthy and Cindy Margolis blabbed idiotic junk in between. They were across the field, so we couldn’t see them. The players, all models, I believe, were closer, but also hard to see. New York was qb’ed by Trishelle from some of those crappy reality shows. I believe there was one completed pass in the game, while most of the yardage was gained rushing. One “wardrobe malfunction” occurred-a player lost her top, but she quickly covered up and got a new one. New York won, 13-12. Charles and I proceeded to try to go watch the game again, failed as the concessions were closed, and left. I tried calling the two girls I know who might have some idea where a nearby sports bar was (the Coliseum is near USC, and I know one girl who went there, and one who works nearby), but met with no success here either. We ended up driving down Figueroa and finding a restaurant that had a tv. We weren’t allowed to sit at the bar because they were filming something there, but were able to sit near another tv to watch the rest of the rather unexciting game.
Next Friday, I’m driving up to Berkeley again, this time for an NAQT tournament (which is a much easier format than ACF). Charles wants to take one of the Caltech people (they have requested rides from us) so we can randomly go to Merced again and piss him (the Caltech guy) off. The next Wednesday is our next Cell Bio test, as well as the day of the Jeopardy audition.