Outlets for my useless random knowledge
Feb. 9th, 2009 12:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trenchkamenYeah, so, this is where I was this weekend:
Friday
Not much happened. We got to LA, I discovered that I had my own room with two beds (vagina score), and we ate at this awesome little Indian restaurant down the street. The weather was AMAZING, though, rainy and cool. I walked to the Shell just to have an excuse to walk around in the rain in a city. Very urban decay.
Saturday
I was woken from a strange nightmare at 6:30 AM by my phone going off. Somehow got downstairs by 7, piled into the partyvan (surprise, no candy), and had a long drive down to UCLA. Why we got a hotel half an hour away I will know, but I was not in charge of reservations.
UCLA has a lovely campus. This was my first time actually going there, so I was rather enchanted by the sheer grandiose nature of the buildings, the trees, the complexity. ASU is red brick and more red brick. We finally found where we were supposed to meet and were somehow the first group there. I played Disgaea DS and tried to wake my brain up.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
skuldchan showed up, as she had volunteered to read questions.
The competition itself was, eh, long. My team (ASU Wolfmanpack, more commonly called the B-team) got fifth overall out of 11, so for a first-timer team I guess that's not so bad. We had five people, so one of us had to rotate out each round. The A-team tied UCLA for first and apparently went into double-overtime during a tiebreaker round. I did not see this firsthand, because Skuld and I had already left for In-n-Out, but apparently NOBODY OUT OF EIGHT PEOPLE could recognize the song "Sympathy for the Devil" given the lyrics. What the shit. I probably would have run up there and kicked somebody in the back of the head. Apparently UCLA won by a slim margin, though that is being contested. Long story short, we're not going to Nationals. Oh well.
This was when the real fun started. Skuld and I ate, went back to her apartment, and watched the first two episodes of One Piece because I have not seen it and she is probably the world's most dedicated fan. We went tofabula_umbrae's new house, which is pretty slick, and did more nerdish stuff. Skuld drove me halfway across town back to the hotel, and I crashed promptly after I got back.
Sunday
Given that none of us had visited the La Brea Tar Pits, we got up an hour early to go to the museum, except it was closed. Apparently the hours on the website are not up-to-date. We just walked around the external lake and took pictures of the sculptures of mastodons. We got to the airport early and sat around a lot. A woman tried to brush past the people checking boarding passes with her gigantic roller-bag, but she was chased down and told she would have to check her bag. She had a breakdown and told the employees that if they lost her bag, she was seriously going to "lose her shit", which I know from my sister really means go crazy or something like that. I'm always awed that people actually behave like that. I thought that was only on reality TV.
I find it amusing thatmiwasatoshi is still spoken of as something of a legend with a degree of reverence among the team members. Apparently he's Gandalf, or something. I only caught the tail end of that conversation.
I spent the rest of yesterday frantically finishing my fellowship proposal to renew my SOLUR grant. I get to turn it in today. Thank God; I'm really fucking sick of it. Three exams this week and a paper due. Yahoo.
Friday
Not much happened. We got to LA, I discovered that I had my own room with two beds (vagina score), and we ate at this awesome little Indian restaurant down the street. The weather was AMAZING, though, rainy and cool. I walked to the Shell just to have an excuse to walk around in the rain in a city. Very urban decay.
Saturday
I was woken from a strange nightmare at 6:30 AM by my phone going off. Somehow got downstairs by 7, piled into the partyvan (surprise, no candy), and had a long drive down to UCLA. Why we got a hotel half an hour away I will know, but I was not in charge of reservations.
UCLA has a lovely campus. This was my first time actually going there, so I was rather enchanted by the sheer grandiose nature of the buildings, the trees, the complexity. ASU is red brick and more red brick. We finally found where we were supposed to meet and were somehow the first group there. I played Disgaea DS and tried to wake my brain up.
skuldchan showed up, as she had volunteered to read questions. The competition itself was, eh, long. My team (ASU Wolfmanpack, more commonly called the B-team) got fifth overall out of 11, so for a first-timer team I guess that's not so bad. We had five people, so one of us had to rotate out each round. The A-team tied UCLA for first and apparently went into double-overtime during a tiebreaker round. I did not see this firsthand, because Skuld and I had already left for In-n-Out, but apparently NOBODY OUT OF EIGHT PEOPLE could recognize the song "Sympathy for the Devil" given the lyrics. What the shit. I probably would have run up there and kicked somebody in the back of the head. Apparently UCLA won by a slim margin, though that is being contested. Long story short, we're not going to Nationals. Oh well.
This was when the real fun started. Skuld and I ate, went back to her apartment, and watched the first two episodes of One Piece because I have not seen it and she is probably the world's most dedicated fan. We went to
fabula_umbrae's new house, which is pretty slick, and did more nerdish stuff. Skuld drove me halfway across town back to the hotel, and I crashed promptly after I got back.Sunday
Given that none of us had visited the La Brea Tar Pits, we got up an hour early to go to the museum, except it was closed. Apparently the hours on the website are not up-to-date. We just walked around the external lake and took pictures of the sculptures of mastodons. We got to the airport early and sat around a lot. A woman tried to brush past the people checking boarding passes with her gigantic roller-bag, but she was chased down and told she would have to check her bag. She had a breakdown and told the employees that if they lost her bag, she was seriously going to "lose her shit", which I know from my sister really means go crazy or something like that. I'm always awed that people actually behave like that. I thought that was only on reality TV.
I find it amusing that
miwasatoshi is still spoken of as something of a legend with a degree of reverence among the team members. Apparently he's Gandalf, or something. I only caught the tail end of that conversation.I spent the rest of yesterday frantically finishing my fellowship proposal to renew my SOLUR grant. I get to turn it in today. Thank God; I'm really fucking sick of it. Three exams this week and a paper due. Yahoo.
