Warning: School is Hazardous to Your Health

When I was in college, I had all kinds of health annoyances.  My hands got really shaky.  My eyelid twitched a lot.  My eyes started bothering me (watering a lot even though I don't have pollen or dust allergies).  I actually went to the doctor about all of these things at various points and none of them were ever diagnosed.  I have since come to the conclusion that medicine sucks at things that don't seriously impact your life.

Well, now I'm back in school again.  And guess what.  All of these things, which largely went away when I was working the 9-5, are back.  I don't see how it can be stress because I was certainly stressed while working - maybe even more stressed than school has me.  It has to be something about school, but I don't know what.

My eyelid has been twitching for over a week now and no matter what it won't stop.  I've gotten more sleep over the past few days than I have the whole week prior.  I've been diligent about taking my daily vitamin.  I haven't had any caffeine.  Out of desperation, I even stuck part of a dollar bill onto my eyelid on the recommendation of someone I know.  That actually worked for awhile until the twitch migrated to the other side of my eyelid. 

I'm hoping to be officially done with everything schoolwise tomorrow.  Hopefully my eyelid will stop twitching.  Quite annoying.

Wow...I can't believe I just wrote a whole post about a twitchy eyelid.  School is turning my brain to mush. 

In other news (that people might (or might not) care about more) I finally got my funding assignment for next year.  I will be molding the minds of UM youth by TA-ing sections of the intro to American government class...  Muhahahahahahaha.  I have been told by those more in the know than me that this assignment can be a workout.  Especially if you get sections of non-majors who don't really want to be there.  One of my friends told me that he had one of his students come in and complain about the fact that he was getting a F in the class.  My friend, who must have been completely frustrated because he is normally uber-polite, told the student that he should be happy with a F because he really deserved a G.  !!!  Hopefully I am up for the challenge. 

Just in case you are wondering...

what it is like to get fingerprinted at MPD HQ, spend all day riding around in a cop car, and visiting 5 booking facilities in 5 hours...

it is pretty exhausting.  And your hands get dirty from the printing. 

Had to do some prep for the upcoming J-O-B today.  Getting printed was pretty funny.  I have shaky hands (all the time, not just when I am nervous or something) and the woman printing me was like: "You got a record?" 
Me: "Um, no."
Her: "'Cause usually when people come in shaking like that, I look them up and they have a book of a record."

Guess now I am officially in the system.

Surviving

The semester is winding down and I am still hanging in there.  I'm actually in my stats class right now, waiting to present the results of my final paper.  Then I have two papers due on Friday, my final paper due sometime soon after that, and a take home final due on Wednesday.  It's going to be a rough rest of the week.

Next week I have the Trachtenberg retirement party, the annual ex-presidents reunion dinner, and the Americanist field end of the year party.  I'd also like to play some poker during my "week off" before I join the 9-5 on 5/21.

I also went to AC this past weekend to blow off some steam.  As an added benefit I made some $$$.  :D

Woman is the N***** of the World

John Lennon has a song with the same name as this post.  It's a good song.  I'm not a FEMINIST, but I do believe in "the radical notion that women are people" (apologies to the originator of that quote).

We make her paint her face and dance
If she won’t be slave, we say that she don’t love us
If she’s real, we say she’s trying to be a man
While putting her down we pretend that she is above us
       
       

We make her bear and raise our children
And then we leave her flat for being a fat old mother then
We tell her home is the only place she would be
Then we complain that she’s too unworldly to be our friend       
      

We insult her everyday on TV
And wonder why she has no guts or confidence
When she’s young we kill her will to be free
While telling her not to be so smart we put her down for being so dumb

I had a conversation with a friend today that was like a Sex and the City moment.  She was telling me about trying to break up with her boyfriend (who I have never met, but think she should break up with based on some of the stuff she has said) and she ended up not only not breaking up with him, but somehow apologizing at the end of the conversation for all of her faults. 

Why do we do that to ourselves (yeah, I do it too)?  Being a woman is awesome; why do we always end up apologizing for things we shouldn't?

Another good thing finds its way west

One of the many things I miss about England: Wagamama. 

It has nothing to do with dogs or pregnant women.

Wagamama is one of the most perfect noodle houses ever.  Noodley goodness served with good beer at huge communal picnic tables.  And it is cheap (relatively speaking).  They remedy the only downside (no ressies accepted which = long lines during tourist season and weekends) by having waitresses bring you alcoholic beverages while you are in line(!).  Sadly, the last time I ate at Wagamama was last February.  And before that it was circa 1998. 

But now it is in Boston!  Just one more reason to visit the fam.

HOE tourney at the SHOP

I played a HOE 70+10 tournament on Saturday and actually did just about as well as I could have hoped, I think.  Early on I was seated at a table with Nelly, me, and E at one end, Stu on the other, and a bunch of people who had no clue in between.  And when I say no clue, I mean really no clue.  We were asked what cards you needed to make a low, what the nut low was, how many cards you needed to play from your hand in O8, etc.  Ummm, ship it?  LOL

I was pretty card dead, but managed to make some moves with marginal hands and pure aggression.  It was pretty awesome, actually.  I felt like I was playing really well.  I don't know why, but when I've been up for a really long time, I tend to have a 3 hour zone before I completely crash where I play awesome poker.  If only I could get in that zone every time I sit down at a table.  Ah well.

So I'm hanging tough and playing pretty aggressively...The tourney structure was pretty bad, so I think that kicked my butt to play more aggressively too.  I pussed out on one hand against Stu where I should have bet at the end and he probably would have folded to my low, but oh well.

I make it to the final table, and fold QTo under the gun to a raise in the HE round.  Pops (who is dealing) looks at my cards and scolds me...and then proceeds to put QT on the flop and another T on the river.  Well, I still stand by my decision to not waste a decent number of my chips on QTo, under the gun.  The guy to my right took out a few players and then we were down to 7 players left at the final table by the time the O8 round started.

The first hand of O8 and I get dealt a hand with some good potential.  A9h23d.  I call the blinds and the flop comes Qc4h6h.  Ummm...Bet!  By the time the turn comes off, I have a significant part of my stack in the middle and I'm thinking I'm sitting pretty.  I have the nut low draw with counterfeit protection, the nut flush draw, a gutshot straight draw...  and I'm against two other players who I feel are pretty weak.  The turn is some kind of huge blank for my hand, but it doesn't put anything out there for anyone else either.  Maybe it was a Ts or something.  Then I keep betting while saying to Pops: "I have like more than 20 outs here Pops, you better get me there!"  He looks at me like I'm fucking crazy and says: "you have like your whole stack -$300 in there, how can you not be there yet?"

The river is a puketastic board pairing 6.  I kind of wish I had said "pair the board hold the low" before it came off b/c if I had, I think I could have scooped the pot with crapola.  Trying not to look sick, I toss my last $300 into a pot that has to be at least 50x that.  Amazingly, the guy to my left auto folds.   Even more amazingly, the guy to my right who is now last to act looks like he is about to fold!  Please fold, I am saying in my head....PLEASE!!!!  I don't know why anyone in their right mind would fold for $300 more, but....  After at least 40 seconds of thought he calls.  I flip over my cards and say: "I completely missed."   The guy called me the whole way with  AKxx (if the turn was indeed a T, I guess he had a Broadway draw) and ends up scooping the pot with AK high...in O8.  And then he tells me he almost folded.  "I wish you did," I say.  That would have been so sick!

I would play it over again the same way every time, but it's beyond me how I continually brick so badly!  If I had won, I would have been the definitive chip leader.  I could have folded into the money and had a real good shot at winning.  Heck, even if I had only made a low and ended up chopping I would have doubled up.  I wish I had "bricked" by pairing one of my non Ace cards.  *sigh*

The Lives of Others

This weekend, Jeff and I went to go see The Lives of Others at AFI Silver.  It won the Oscar this year for best foreign language film, and has gotten amazing reviews.  It's also a political movie, so I was really interested to go see it.  I was kind of sleep deprived, but I dragged Jeff to go see it anyways.

Without giving too much away, the movie is about the East German Secret Police (the Stasi), their observation of an East German playwright and his girlfriend, and on a more philosophical level, what it means to be human. 

As with a lot of super-critically acclaimed movies I have seen recently, I think the build up kind of let me down.  It was certainly a good movie, and one worth seeing, but it wasn't one of the best movies I've ever seen.  Some parts seemed to kind of hit you over the head with the point it was trying to make (like one scene in which the main characters are discussing manipulation of their lives by the government and we see a marionette hung on the wall behind them.  Who hangs marionettes on their wall, even if they are in the theatre???  That just seemed kind of ham-handed to me).  Anyways, I would still recommend it (though be forewarned, some scenes are disturbing).  You can watch the trailer here.  It's only playing at the Silver for another week or so, and no news on when it will be released on DVD (though no doubt it will be).

On another note, I am going to see another movie with Jim and Jill on Wednesday night at the Silver called "The Guatemalan Handshake."  It's the baby of a Silver Spring resident and I guess one of Jim's friends worked on it.  Looking forward to seeing that too.