Wildcat Update

Three weeks of the semester down, fifteen to go. Probably not a good sign that I'm already counting down. So yeah, school's more boring and more work than I remembered it being during Winter break. I'm sure my eight-hours-of-classes-with-only-two-thirty-minute-breaks Tuesdays aren't helping my morale, but oh well.

Aside from the scholastic side of college, things are going swell. I'm captain of the dorm soccer team and part of the Comedy Corner softball team, hooray for that! Both teams have their first game this Sunday, hopefully one of my teams will win. The new kids (of which I am one) are also finally able to fully participate in Comedy Corner, so I've been dedicating some energy towards that as well. The shows have been fun so far and I'm enjoying myself, so it's probably one of the few things keeping me sane here on campus (it's right up there with Vault®). I actually got my first sketch performed on stage, which I shall post here for all your viewing pleasure; this sketch is based on a true story of mine, sadly.

Comp Sci 101

Paul:

Sam:

6 chairs set up on stage

Sam is already seated, Paul sits down in a seat next to him

Neither one talks to the other, students begin filling in to the room, 2 male and 2 females

Paul begins looking around, begins looking confused, as if something is wrong but he can't pin it down

Paul: Awwww crap. (to Sam) this isn't Computer Science 250 is it?

Sam: No, it's Math 112. How did you figure that out just now?

Paul points to the two girls in the class

Paul: (Sighing)Way too many girls.

Lights

It got some laughs from the audience, however, my favorite response by far was a single person yelling "That's it?!?" As they say, brevity is the soul of wit.

Back to School

So, I've been back for 2 whole days now, and I'm still not feeling it. College seems way more boring now than when I left. Oh well. All my teachers seem cool this semester, though two of them are giving assigned seats in lectures (a 100 student class and a 300 student class) which is absolutely unheard of. My two computer science teachers are awesomely stereotypical. Also, on my way to one of my CS classes for the first time, I knew it was a large lecture class, so I just assumed it was in the largest classroom in the building and didn't bother checking room numbers. After sitting there for a minute or so, I realized something was waaaaay off. After a second of thought, I realized the male/female ratio was about 1:1. I got up, walked out, and sure enough I was in the wrong room. Funny but sad that I knew I was in the wrong place because I was surrounded by cute girls. Once I arrived to my class, the teacher took attendance. I was more than halfway down the list in a class of around 50 people. The teacher was actually getting most of the names right, including some very Asian names (think X's and lots of phlegm). He gets to my name and I hear "Oh boy. Umm... Dustin P-R-E-U-S-S." Yeah. He spelled it out. The guy can figure out Cantonese but an "eu" is too much for him. It's a good thing my last name isn't permanent or anything. Oh wait... damn.

Final Project from Hell

Wow, first off, I can't believe it's been two months since I last posted something. This semester has gone by crazy fast, especially these last 8 weeks.
Anyhoo, for those who don't already know, I took an introduction to stage costume construction. A class I took for fun, and it was, up until the last three weeks.
For the most part, we would just learn sewing techniques in the lab, but then we had to apply them and make a garment for our final project. Our options were pajama pants (boring), skirts (but alas, no kilts) and vests (ooh, you have my attention). So me, being one of two people in the class with previous experience, decided to do a vest figuring it couldn't be that bad if the teacher suggested it along with pajama pants. Wrong. I ended up putting over ten hours of work (part of which was a non-stop five-and-a-half work streak) into the darn thing while people finished the pj's in three to five hours. I actually didn't get to fully finish it, so I have a bit of a project for winter break. Without further ado, the vest from hell.


On a happier note, the teacher finally gave back the mid-term exams along with the finals (yes, it took him half a semester to grade the mid term) and I got a 99% and a 100%.

I am a costuming badass.

CAL-lous defeat

Woohoo. So we beat CAL 42 to 27. We're now tied for first in the PAC10. Best part of the game, the student section rushed the field afterward. Gotta love it. I yelled into a few different TV cameras, don't know if I actually made it onto TV anywhere though. Good times though.
That would be the view of the scoreboard from center field. For those of you counting, I have now been on both the football field and the basketball court here at U of A. Who knows what's next!

College Life: Abridged Version

So yeah... not a whole lot happens that triggers me to think "Hey, I should write a blog post about that!" So I'm just going to shove a bunch of stuff that's mildly interesting in to one post, hopefully producing something of interest.
So probably the biggest thing worth mentioning is that I auditioned for, and was accepted to, the Improv and Sketch Comedy group on campus, Comedy Corner. They claim they are the oldest college improv/sketch group in the nation, which is pretty cool. It's an 7-8 hour a week commitment, so it's a nice thing to fill some time with. I don't actually get to perform onstage until next semester though, so I'm just "learning the ropes" right now, even though I've already done this kind of stuff. So that's probably the most interesting thing I've done all semester.

I'm somewhat reluctant to bring up intramurals, but I did play flag football. Our team went 0 and 4, scoring I think somewhere around 30 point total across those games, and giving up about 150 points to the other teams. So yeah... that was fun to an extent. I ended up having to sit out the 4th game because I forgot to wear shorts without pockets. D'oh. Soccer is coming up though, so hopefully that will go over better than flag football did!

The other big thing to do has been football games; we're looking like we might be a force to be reckoned with in the Pac10, so if you haven't been paying attention, start! Could be a good season.

Other than all that, classes are pretty normal, social life is pretty normal (non-existent), and I'm just living weekend to weekend. I'm definitely looking forward to this weekend since I've been busy every weekend for the past month or so. Gonna try and sleep at least 10 hours on friday night. Good times.

2nd Semester Moving In!

So yeah. Moving in. It went pretty smoothly by my standards. Room is nice, roommate is definitely better than last year's, and plenty of space. Just a couple pics from the room for you guys.
This is all before we moved things around.

This is us pretty much fully moved in. Much better.
So far this semester nothing that exciting has happened. It's funny how quickly college has become mundane. I'm already excited for the semester to be over and I'm only an 8th done with it. Although I did attend my first Wildcats football game, which was pretty fun. We ended up winning 70-0 though, so it wasn't really an interesting game to watch, just fun to watch our team destroy the opposition. It actually was postponed for an hour due to lightning, during which we stood in the rain. Good times.

New York: Day 6

The sixth, and essentially last day, was by far the best. We started out by heading over to the Met for some early morning art appreciation. The architecture alone there was amazing, let alone the artwork inside. We spent a few hours there and explored a good bit of the museum. The paintings were phenomenal, I was actually amazed at how many really well known paintings they had.Also super cool is this group of fully armored knights in action. Sure it was heavy as hell, but that armor is friggin' sweet. Even the horses are decked out. Must have been Middle Ages bling.
So after the Met we wandered over to Central Park. The size of the park is intense. It's big enough that you really don't feel like you're in the middle of a massive city, which is saying something. We walked all around, but I couldn't pass up a picture with the Mad Hatter. Pretty sweet. He doesn't really look all that kid friendly though.
And last was the absolute climax of the trip. We went to TKTS and stood in line for just shy of an hour to get discount tickets to Spamalot. Spamalot was actually our backup plan because Wicked was sold out. It ended up being an awesome backup plan as it was one of the funniest and most solid productions I've seen. It's even better than The Holy Grail. How many times do you hear about a spoof being better than the original?
All that's left was to wake up the next day and jump on the plane. Thus ends my trip to New York City!