Well... YES

I tried I really did. I waited for ted's post about musiz or about christmas tunes. but it never came or it will come.

but i promised alredo or was it tim or was it toto? i saw them all in the last week. that i would drunk blog. it happned. now. but it will all be good. i challenge all to look back a ytear ago and see drunk blogging to the extremem. its awesome.


well to us, i guees..
i cheered to stadium with the rainbow.
yes.

A Dowist Perspective

So the term is over and for a few of us (sorry non-Carleton folks), winter break has started.

First, a few updates:

I think where I left off last was when the men’s team Tasted the Rainbow on Halloween. I said I was gonna write a whole post on it. But now I feel as if too late. I could probably write a whole novel on the night, although not from my perspective, which is missing completely… I’ll just say this: We started at 8 and I don’t remember anything after 9:45pm. 12 shots in an hour and a half is NOT a good idea, but hell I knew what I was getting into. We went through the rainbow, then did primary colors, then did our favorites. Allegedly, people were trying to make me drink water as early as 10:30 and I was two people I don’t know tried to take me home and put me to bed. I also know that I woke up at 5am in Davis 304 (Sjoberg’s current room) not knowing where I was, how I got there, or what was going on. I also felt great. But that is because of the massive purging that occurred around midnight…

So clearly the rainbow was a success.

On the last day of classes we had a flippy cup swim party at Dow. It started out with just the swim team, and then a jewgressive when through my house because of one of my housemates (the swimmers challenged them to a few rounds of flippy cup), and then all hell broke loose. The place blew up. It reminded me of that one party we had in the winter of last year in Stadium when the hall director came. Not only was it packed to the brink insider, there were probably about 100 people outside. The RAs kept wandering outside asking people, “Does anyone know who lives here?!” And supposedly the hall director came and was ignored by everyone she talked to. Security eventually came at 12:47 exactly and shut it all down. If you want to hear really funny stories, talk to Alfredo about this evening - you won't be disappointed.

Finals came and went. They sucked. Much of my time was spent on papers. But to give myself a pick me up in the middle of writing them, I would watch the video that Nonberg acted in for his friend’s project. Nonberg, your zombie walk made me laugh out loud so hard that some girl in the library asked me to keep it down or move to the 4^th floor. I recommend everyone watches it. It was so good that Mia and I thought we’d send it to btin.

Overall, I’d say this was my worst term at Carleton. But I won’t bore you about that. It mostly was because of my classes - very hard they were. But I think the fact that I had the best term of my life in the spring made this one seem worse than it really was. I do think that the living situation played a part as well. Living with swimmers is just so much easier. I think its the fact that everyone is on the same page and all. I’m very much looking forward to the break though, which is going to be much different than winter breaks past, mostly because of the difference in the training trip.

For those of you that don’t know, the team is doing something different in terms of winter break training this year.

Starting Monday of next week, the whole team (I think except for one or two people) is meeting back at Carleton to train. We are going to train twice a day for a week. Practices are 8-10 or 10-12 and 2-4 or 4-6. Morning practices are lift/swim (four days a week for sprinter and 2 days a week for distance) or all swim, and the swim is mostly technique based (filming, experimental stuff, etc). Afternoons are, as Andy put it to me one day when we were teaching SwimFit, “We are really gonna hammer you guys.”

OH! And practices are all gendered, which will be a fairly new experience for the team. It should be fun, since we don’t get that opportunity much during the normal season. But it also will be weird because we probably won’t see the women’s team during meals either, because we are cooking our own meals in the floor kitchens (because Bone Ape Tit isn’t open during the break).

So yeah, we are cooking our own meals. And because our room/board over the Northfield part of the training trip is covered by some fund from the Athletic Dept, we don’t have to pay for our food. The original plan was to have us buy all of our food and then give the business office receipts. Turns out, they are just gonna put the money ($22 a day!!!) directly in our checking accounts. And if we don’t spend it all, we get to keep it… Obviously, this part is awesome because I’m a thrifty/stingy asshole. We had a good chuckle about how if Jared was here, he’d be eating PB sandwhiches for the whole trip.

We also are going to go a Macalester Invite on the 5^th of Dec, which I’m glad about, because I have not been doing so well at meets this year and I want another opportunity before January.

Then we head to Puerto Rico! Group flight, which should be awesomely chaotic. In PR, we are practicing from 6-8 and then 3-5 and we gotta drive to the pool. The hotel we are staying at is a different one from when the team went before. This one doesn’t have kitchenetts – only a microwave and a minifridge (which should be interesting). But we do get like an amazing continental breakfast (with like omelets and stuff).

Then we all head back to campus and train like hell for 3 or 4 days until the 18^th, when we all go home for the rest of the break. Andy said those three days are gonna be the hardest of the whole time.

Should be a pretty cool time!

We’ll that’s all I really gotta say. I’ll leave ya with this.

Do You Guys Still Organize Your Life By Weeks? or WTF: It's 8th week

Well I think its time for a good ol Carleton update.

Let's start with one of our most common threads: swimming. Bottom line - its goin well. We are well into our 2nd three-week cycle. So its been a bit more intense, except for Halloween practice, which made me miss the class of 2009 quite a bit. We turned in our forms for winter housing last week, which made me realize how close winter break really is. We are on campus from November 29th to the 7th of December then off to Puerto Rico for a week and then again for about 4 days. Pete is already planning some pranks that he wants to pull on the basketball team. And Joe is planning the party we are gonna have the last night. Are any of you gonna be in the area?

Most of the freshmen boys have acclimated well. Some of them are still a little awkward/shy, but I think its just their personality. We got one with humor similar to Casey, a few hardscore partiers (for their grade), a spacecase/"baller", and some funny dudes. They good people. Its kind of weird because it makes me think of when some of you guys were Juniors and I was a Freshman. And then also when you guys were freshman and Free-Ho and Will were Juniors. I think the college social system is prone to Juniors being more willing to better befriend freshman as opposed to sophomores and freshman. But its just a hypothesis.

So Dan Deacon came to campus this past Thursday. I actually started exploring his stuff a few weeks ago and I like it for the most part. But I like most electronic/techno stuff. I'm not as good as talking about music as Ted, Tim and Bk are. But I know what I like. I didn't stay long because of morning practice, but I'm glad I went because he is a really good performer. He likes to get the whole audience involved, which I always appreciate as a concert goer. Plus he's a legit name (a rarity for Carleton). I will, however, admit that I was kinda annoyed with some of the audience members. There are quite a bit of pretentious muisc snobs are Carleton.

So H1N1 has hit Carleton by storm. I remeber last year joking about it a bit, but it's kind of crazy how its affecting our year. Professors are more lenient about attendence and students now have a better excuse to feed professors when telling them why they aren't gonna go to class. One of my professors is pretty paranoid because she doesn't want her kids getting sick. And actually Andy is pretty crazy about it too. He frequently reminds us to wash our hands and he has been telling us to shun members of the team who are sick and to stay as far away from them as possible. He got sick this week though with like a fever of 104! As far as numbers go, According to Carleton's H1N1 Influenza Website,

"Simply put, the College is experiencing nearly double the amount in the number of reported influenza-like illnesses (ILIs) this week compared to last. So far, we’ve had 114 new cases reported this week alone, compared to 65 cases reported last week."

When it gets cold out, its going to be even worse... Winter is gonna be crazy in terms of sickness.

Last night we also tasted the rainbow... but I'm too lazy right now, so I'll update on that later.