(If had half of this post sitting around for a week, screw it, I'm posting it)

So, I went over to my grandmother's house last Friday to transfer a batch of my beer from the fermenter into bottles. My grandmother happens to be very stubborn and healthy (as in hasn't seen a Doctor in 52 years). As most people know, I could tell stories about my grandmothe and her wood eleves for hours.

Bob's Grandmother: So, I just got a call from your Parent's Pastor. He wanted to come over and visit me this afternoon at four (4) PM.

<>Bob: Ahh, well that isn't a problem, I only need you to help me for a couple minutes...*interrupted*

Bob's Grandmother: Don't worry about it, I told him that I was really busy today, he's going to come back next week.

<>Bob: I don't understand, you knew you had time to see him. We would be done transferring the beer by then, I would be gone...*interrupted*

<>Bob's Grandmother: Pastor “X” is not German, or rather he is not of Northern European ancestry, I cannot have him, as a man of the cloth here today. I knew the house would smell like beer, early in the afternoon, and he would not understand...*interrupted*

Bob: Well, the man is a Lutheran Pastor, I know you don't like him, and aren't going to church, but he is not a Southern Baptist, its just good home brewed beer.

Bob's Grandmother: and how would I explain it to him, I mean, he wouldn't understand that it is completely normal for us to have 7 gallons of beer brewing in the basement, and that there has been some 50 gallons there in the last two years!

(Several minutes of beer transfering activites occurs)

<>Bob: *drinks leftover beer in siphon hose, some 2-4 ounces*

Bob's Grandmother: You stop that.

Bob: You want me to waste GOOD beer!?!

Bob's Grandmother: No, but I have to say that, I'm your Grandmother.

(Several minutes of beer transferring activities occurs)

Bob: *drinks beer left in the bottle filler hose*

Bob's Grandmother: You stop that! You need to drive home!

Bob: What! It is just a couple ounces of beer! This is only the second hose-full.

Bob's Grandmother: I've had your beer! There is plenty of alcohol in that, something close to twice normal domestic beer! Besides, if I didn't say anything, you'd just keep making excuses to transfer more beer, and drink more from the hoses.

Later, the quote of the week:

<>

Bob's Grandmother: I never understood buying fancy mixed drinks in a bar, or shots: you can buy three beers for the price of a fou-fou shot in a bar, or at least you could 50 years ago. Beer is cheaper, healthier, and more convenient to drink socially. Buy the three beers instead!

So, this afternoon, on my way over to the Bookstore to be violated for one of my two environmental Law books (this one=$102+tax), I ran into a somewhat pudgy, middle aged, woman sitting on her car with the hood up. As per usual, I asked her what the problem was, and it turned out that she had left her lights on early in the morning, and was waiting for Roadside Service to jump start her car. I peeked into the car, noticed that it was a manual transmission model, and asked the owner if she had ever push started a car. She replied that she had push started a VW bug 40 years ago, and sort of smiled about it (read=in a very disturbing sense, she was flirting). Anyway, I pushed her car some 50 meters up a slight hill until it was moving fast enough to start, it started, and she drove off immediately. Weird.

There better be a very hot spot in hell for Judges that screw up.

Back In Lansing.

Today was the first day of classes, and I have a bizarre schedule:

Monday: Class from 10:00-11:15, then from 6:00PM to 9:00PM
Tuesday/Thursday: Class from 11:00-12:15
Wend.: Class from 10:00-11:15, then from 5:00 to 9:00
Nothing at all on Fridays.

Copyright law looks like a fun class, with a heavy focus on Internet issues, such as file sharing and the GPL.

Professional Responsibility (aka ethics for lawyers) seems OK, but boring. It does have a suprisingly long text book.

Enviromental Law seemed interesting this morning, but it is a small class with a heavy workload.

More on classes after I have my other ones.

I ate my Wafer
I've had a number of requests to explain what “I ate my wafer” means:
When I was a Sophomore at Hillsdale, I took Western Heritage, aka History 101 with Dr.Willson. He happens to give a pretty decent lecture, and tells wonderful personal stories. I like that in a Professor, and found myself enjoying the basic survey class quite a bit, espicially in comparision to Physics E&M. Anyway, one morning, he happened to mention that he was ordained in a branch of the Episcopal Church. Several days later, in an odd fit of motivation, I decided that I wouldn't mind listening to one of his sermons, and that I should try his church. So, the next Sunday, I went over to the Episcopal Church in downtown Hillsdale, and slipped into the back row. Unfortunately, I quickly discovered that I not only had the wrong church, I had picked a horrible Sunday to attend it: It was “beat more money out of the congregation” Sunday, an occasion such that they were not using a liturgy at all, instead, a large, and very shrill deaconess browbeat the congregation for some 40 minutes with what could be loosely termed a sermon. After the second time that the collection plates were passed, I decided to cut my losses and slip out the back.
After that experience, I forgot about the whole idea for several weeks, and attended Our Lady of the Innerspring, alternating with Bedside Baptist, but eventually my motivation returned. This time, I fished out the phone book, checked for Episcopal churches, and found the only other one in the area was located in Jonesville. So, I drove out to it on a Sunday morning, approximately 15 minutes before the published service time. On arrival, I parked on the street immediately in front of it, walked up to the large wooden door (equipped with a large brass pull handle), and tried to open it. Tried is the opportune word, as I yanked on it hard several times, then pushed on it a little, stepped back to double check the service time listed on the sign, pulled on the door again, then gave up. On my way back to my car, I heard a creaking noise behind me, only to turn and see the door open INWARDS. As it turned out, at least three members of the congregation, and the priest had been watching every move I had made after stepping out of the car (the window was located with a view of the church door). So, I stepped into the church to discover that it was a pretty small church, Dr. Willson was not the priest, and Mr. Callum was the only person that I recognized. (I don't know what Mr. Callum's title is, but he seems to manage the Chemistry labs at Hillsdale. At this time, I was about two months into my career of running Science 101 labs, and working around, but not actually talking to Mr. Callum due to an unfortunate incident involving a Bunsen Burner.) Anyway, Mr. Callum becomes very friendly that morning, and it is obvious that I must be the first college student to set foot in the place in a VERY long time, and I am the object of a great deal of inquiry and attention.
After being introduced to damn near the entire congregation, the service got under way, and things were going pretty smoothly until the communion section. At this point I have been lulled into a false sense of knowing what to do by the relatively standard liturgy, and probably wasn't paying as close of attention as I should have. (I had been informed that they very much wanted people such as myself to commune with them) I followed the rest of the congregation up to the front, randomly positioned in a group of children. Due to the children on either side, after I knelt down, I could not see any of the other adults, but was not horribly worried about things. Eventually, the priest moved down to my part of the rail, blessed the children next to me, then offered me the host, in the form of a wafer on a large plate. I took one, the priest moved on, and I ate the wafer. At this point insomuch as I put any thought into things, I assumed that the wine would be distributed in the little shot glasses, or possibly via a common cup. Anyway, the priest eventually arrived back with the wine...in a very small vessel, without the wiping cloth thing. (At this point I realize that I was supposed to keep the wafer and dip it). I have utterly no idea what to do at this point, and the priest can't figure out where my wafer is, or what the heck is going on either...and the church is dead silent. Finally after staring at the wine vessel for some very long moments, I realized that I was holding up the entire line, and the object of a lot of curious looks. So, I looked up at the priest, and rather loudly announced that “I ate my wafer.” Keep in mind that this is in a very physically small church, I've held up the priest for several long moments, and the entire congregation is dead silent. There is no doubt whatsoever that every person in the place heard me. (At this point, I'm embarrassed to the level of considering attempting to kill myself with the communion chalice). The priest pretty much locked up for a moment, then attempted to let me drink out of the cup, which didn't go well at all. After the service, I attempted to escape as quickly as possible, but the congregation, having not seen a college student for a very long time, if ever, kept herding me away from the door. (I suppose that it is possible that they thought I was too stupid to be allowed to drive). So, that's the story. I ate my Wafer.

See, sheep really are the way to go.

Hmm...I became oddly and extremely depressed this afternoon. I assume that it is sort of an emotion hangover (serotonin depletion?) after the happiness of LFTF, but it still sucks. (Also, I definitely did not have this last year...maybe I need to drink beer in the pool at LFTF's?) Among other things, this depression crap makes all of my hobbies seem oddly pointless, such that I have not bothered to call Amber and check to see if my lockpicking tools are still at her house. and my plan to save...I mean,ahh, pro bono legal project seems futile. Very, very unusual for me. Damn.

The weekend of driving.

So, I've been very busy over the last four (4) days: I got up at three (3) in the morning on Thursday, drove two hours and shot in the M16 EIC match at Camp Perry, on the way home, I stopped at a Toledo area Wal-Mart for an eye exam, and received a set of soft toric contacts to replace the RGP lens that I had broken on Wednesday evening (yes, it is possible to break a lens while opening a beer with a cheese slicer...), I then drove home and fell asleep immediately. On Friday morning, with another short night of sleep, I drove back to Camp Perry with my Dad and shot in the Springfield match. After that, I arrived home about 8:00, took a 45 minute nap, and waited for Metzger and Scott. When they finally arrived at 12:15, we left immediately. I took over driving from Metzger soon after, and drove until 7:00, at which point Metzger took over for the last little bit of easy driving. The next day, I drove another 7+ hours on the way home, including the horrible traffic around Chicago, and a ridiculous amount of backing up narrow driveways in a South Bend subdivision . (Anyone notice that like a good 1950's dad, I do all the damn driving?) Finally, Metzger and Scott dropped me off at about 1:00AM Monday morning, so I did get nearly four (4) hours of sleep last night, before my normal 2 hour morning commute. Finally, I'm typing this at work, hence the legal writing touches like numbers (#'s), and the grammatical errors from many, many short nights. (As a side note, I just declared today “casual monday” since the boss is gone, and I have taken off my jacket and dress shirt to sit around in an undershirt and dress pants while writing a blog entry.)


The National Matches:
I was pretty happy with my performance, given my utter lack of practice this year. I shot my best off-hand score of all time (at least in competition) on Friday, which also had the bonus of beating my Dad's off-hand score by 3 points.

LFTF version 2.0

Perhaps a bit less colorful than the year before, and it sucked to only be there for one night (no drinking in the pool this year:-( ). On the upside, the music was much better, the shirts were very cool, we had better quality beer, etc. Overall, I had at least as good of a time as I had the year before.

Gunar's absence probably decreased the amount of funny stories from this year, but oddly some of his essence seemed to rub off on the rest of us. I have not figured out how to appropriately euphemize everything yet, but suffice it to say that a mildly adult themed incident occurred that, when I found out about it, caused me to laugh hard enough to spray Pepsi on Metzger's steering wheel. I know that's a particularly vague description, but certainly those who were there will understand what I mean, and if I think of a better way to tell it later, I'll edit this.

Amber's knee injury, although it definitely put a damper on many of our plans at the time, has quite a bit of amusement value in retrospect. I've never seen anyone, much less Amber, bitch and whine as much as she did that evening, but it had amusing moments as well. Certainly, it was very amusing to watch her attempt to dance, while intoxicated, without putting any weight on her leg.

Talking to the police when the concert was shutdown for noise violations was fun. Despite the fact that I was sober and polite, I suspect that the Baraboo police hate me. I would imagine that small town police expecting a bunch of scared kids, and possibly a couple of easy MIP arrests really don't expect to deal with calm, rational legal arguments. Oh well, they should forget that by next year.

Lighting the post concert bonfire early. I know, I know, it is another inside joke, but last year I wanted to do that and Metzger talked me out of it. This year, I did it, and got away with it, despite the fact that I did it immediately in front of one of the Concert organizers, who due to some amazing lack of perception immediately complained to me about the fact that someone had started the fire (while I was palming my lighter back into my pocket).
I had a great time talking to Amber's Baraboo friend Jay on Saturday night. After everyone went to bed, he and I drank a vast amount of beer and discussed technical topics for several hours. In retrospect, it sounds like the start of a joke, with an electrician and a lawyer drinking beer on a balcony, but it was lots of fun.

Talking to Metzger's parents and Amber's parents in the same day is very, very scary. Sort of a parallel universe situation: both are fairly functional nuclear families with only one child, both sets are very nice and hospitable...but Amber's mom gave me a bloody mary for breakfast, and metzger's parents offered peach cobbler. In anycase, I was utterly terrified that I would slip up and mention “slash fiction”,

Taping the cheap styrofoam coolers together, in the parking lot of the grocery store, so they would hold enough beer and ice was amusing.

Quotes:
“Last weekend I got to dress Ann Daemon up, and make her do what I wanted” -Metzger

“The apartment smells like men” -Jen (I woke up to this comment, think Lord of the Rings orc-like, and extremely disturbing at the time)

“Good at networking is such a nicer way to put it than slutty”-Me

“You take one, I'll take the other”-alledgely by me, about sleeping arrangements

I'm too tired to keep typing, but someday I may type up the story of metzger and the baseball bat/stake question, and the

Heard this on the radio while commuting today...I found it several places, so I'm simply going to post the whole thing:


Police are warning all men who frequent clubs, parties and local pubs to be alert and stay cautious when offered a drink from any woman. A date rape drug on the market called "Beer" is used by many females to target unsuspecting men. The drug is generally found in liquid form and is now available almost anywhere. It comes in bottles, cans, from taps and in large "kegs." Beer is used by female sexual predators at parties and bars to persuade their male victims to go home and have sex with them. Typically, a woman needs only to persuade a guy to consume a few units of Beer and then simply ask him home for no strings attached sex. Men are rendered helpless against this approach. After several Beers, men will often succumb to desires to perform sexual acts on horrific looking women to whom they would never normally be attracted. After drinking Beer men often awaken with only hazy memories of exactly what happened to them the night before, often with just a vague feeling that: "something bad" occurred.
At other times these unfortunate men are swindled out of their life's savings, in a familiar scam known as "a relationship." It has been reported that in extreme cases, the female may even be shrewd enough to entrap the unsuspecting male into a longer term form of servitude and punishment referred to as "marriage." Apparently, men are much more susceptible to this scam after Beer is administered and sex is offered by the predatory females. Please! Forward this warning to every male you know. If you fall victim to this insidious Beer and the predatory women administering it, there are male support groups with venues in every town where you can discuss the details of your shocking encounter in an open and frank manner with similarly affected, like-minded guys. For the support group nearest you, just look up "Golf Courses" in the yellow pages.

Peter Krupa has started posting again, so I moved him out of "missing in action." Based on the interesting stories he had after visiting Costa Rica several years ago, I assume that he will have lots of material for blogging. In any case, consider his blog, No longer studying abroad, highly reccomended.