Delay me a day and I'll take two Weeks

Although I suppose this is the first any of you have heard of any delay. To be honest, I was actually going to post this the Monday before Thanksgiving, but due to weather (which I shall get to later), I was forced to postpone it. Due to forgetfulness, I forgot to update earlier this week. Eventually, I decided I would just get it done today even though the quarter ends on Wednesday and it might make more sense to do it then. I couldn't wait though, I anticipate this being a longer post, so I'm going to refrain from talking about my classes in it. I will post next Wednesday or Thursday, after the quarter has finished. In that post, I'll talk about my final thoughts on classes I took. I'll get into the post now and hopefully that will leave me with more to say at the end, leaving for a less awkward signoff than usual.

Campus Life:
It's been going pretty well here. I've found places that I hang out regularly, so I've gotten pretty easy to find if one knows where to look. I've continued getting to know people around campus, though most of those people are on the frisbee team. I've hung out with my friend that is in the philosophy class with me more often. We went to a Vietnamese place recently (whoaaahh the picky eater ate there!) which was pretty good. Aside from that, I've been doing homework or exercising in my downtime after classes and before I leave each day.

I also found out that I am in an incredibly small major. There are about 8,000 people in the entire school. I attend Albers, the school of business and economics. I think business is the largest major in the whole university, but I'm not sure. It also happens to be paired with one of the smallest, economics. They list the school as Albers School of Business and Economics, but given the amount of econ majors there are (54), I'm surprised they even bother to mention economics when other majors get lumped into "School of Fine Arts" or "School of Science" and all that. Recently, an email was sent out to all econ majors. Usually when you get an email like that, it is sent to a group that might be named something like "Albers Econ Majors." In this case, there was no group. There are so few of us, they just list all our names when they need to email us. Despite that small number of econ majors, I somehow still get picked out as one by people that I meet. When people guess my major when they're first meeting me, most of the time they guess econ correctly. I don't understand why people go to that small of a major as their first guess for anyone, maybe I just have some strange mannerisms of an economist or something. It is an interesting phenomenon.

Frisbee:
Frisbee has been going both good and bad. I've been doing well at practice showing off my ability to play, which got me invited to one of the two tournaments we went to (the one that required an invitation). Two weekends before Thanksgiving, our team attended Sundodger. It was my first one, but I had played on the Burlington fields before back at Spring Reign, so it wasn't too unfamilliar. We even played our games on one of the fields we played on for Shorewood (I only remember because it was the one I had a great catch on). For Sundodger, it was open to any people on the team that wanted to come. We were able to get 24 guys on Saturday and 21 on Sunday as well as 10 girls both days for their own team. Of the guys team, half had never played in a tournament before (I counted Spring Reign even though it had been a long time) and almost just as many people had never played ultimate before the school year began. Unfortunately, we were pitted against U Montana (who were really good surprisingly), U Vic (there are no bad Canadian teams), and the UW A team. I ran into Steven who was playing for Eastern on Saturday, that was pretty cool. We lost all our games, but managed to do pretty well. After we played four games on Saturday, I came back to another game, but this time with UWB. We won that game, so it was a nice change of pace from losing. On Sunday, it was bracket play. We won our first game against University of the Pacific, then lost to Eastern. The Eastern game was really fun because it was so close and I was playing against people I had played with the night before (a lot of the guys on Eastern were staying with Zack and they came to play with UWB that night). After that, we had one more game that we decided would be for the people that didn't get to play much. Even though I had played a sufficient amount, me and one other guy that had played just as much decided to stay with the newer guys to help them out and get some experience. The captains and other guys that had gotten a lot of playtime went to cheer on the girls. We lost our game of course since it was the rookie game more or less, but it was good to get some practice for the newer guys.

The weekend after, we had our other tournament down in Eugene, Oregon called OMG. For that, the top 16 players from SU were invited (myself included obviously). Of those 16, only 11 of us wound up going, which was fine. We had to cram into one 12-seat van for a 5 hour ride though with 12 people (our coach came). In this tournament, there was a higher level of play and I was on the low end of the top 16, so I was not up at that level. Due to that intimidation, I made some mistakes, but generally had some good play. On the second day, the weather was bad and I was not playing well. On top of that, I had really hurt my knees and couldn't run hardly. We did win a game though and had a lot of other close losses, so it could have been better, but not a terrible weekend. On the Saturday night, the team had a party which was kind of interesting. I stuck around in the room, but did not consume alcohol due to my bet. I made the excuse that I was doing homework (which was not entirely false) and just generally observed what happened. One guy took up the challenge of doing a disc chug (four beers fit into a disc, you have to drink it as quickly as possible). He made it to the end, but barely. His puke unfortunately did not make it to the toilet. It was a fun weekend overall. I found my offense was rather lacking both weekends. I ended them with 0 interceptions, but a handfull of forced turnovers. I was proud of my defensive play however. I was especially happy that between 12 games in 2 weekends, there were only 5 instances where the person I was marking caught the disc for the point.

This week, practice started up again. I thought my knees healed, but that was incorrect, they are now just as bad again. I'm looking forward to having time off so I can let them heal up. We were practicing forehand throws only during scrimmage on Wednesday which was interesting because we were supposed to force forehand on everyone, but everyone kept forgetting that I was left handed. I made some pretty silly looking forehands trying to throw like that, but a lot of them worked. I had to literally hug my defender on one throw to get it around him the right way. I was intimidated by how poorly I performed during the first part of practice, but by the end, I was doing well again. I even ended the scrimmage with a hammer for the win, so that was pretty nice. Today, I was doing even better. I also found out that I have some sweet dance moves (referring to my flailing that I do when I am trying to fake out a defender).

Now let's move to something everyone understands!

Registration:

At SCC, registration was a simple process. One would simply get a schedule form, fill it out ahead of time, then wait in a 20 minute or so line on the day of registration in order to get into the classes they wanted. If one was not motivated to wait in line on the first day, they would risk not getting into maybe one or two of the classes. In short, it favored the motivated and I liked that. At Seattle U, it is done all online. Well, I should refine that, it's done all online if you happen to get selected to register on the first day. If you don't, then chances are one or more of you classes will be filled at which point you have to go in person to the office for your school and fill out a bunch of forms before embarking on a small fetchquest to get (a chance at getting) permission to enter that class. They claim registration goes in order of credits earned, but I have my doubts as it seemed people with similar standings to mine were registering days ahead of me. Perhaps they just really hate transfer students and that's why I got to register in one of the last couple time slots.

Not knowing the pain I was about to go through, I happily went to search for and register for my classes that I had selected earlier. Unfortunately, all three of the classes had been filled. Disappointed, I checked my three backups; all three of those were full too. Now concerned, I checked my two remaining double backup classes that I didn't think I would need to use. Both were full. After a large "FFFFFUUUUU," I sent out some emails to my advisor, the office of the registrar, and the professor of the micro class I really wanted to get into. Fortunately I emailed all three because each one only gave me a small piece of the puzzle. If I had only emailed one of them, who knows how lost I would have been. I was able to find out that basically, to get into my classes, I would need to embark on a huge fetch quest.

So the next day I was on campus (Friday unfortunately), I went to the office in the business and econ school which I am enrolled in. It didn't open for another half hour, so I had to kill some time to wait for it to open up. When it finally opened, the guy manning the front desk was kind of snarky, so I avoided asking him too many questions. I did manage to find that to get into the closed classes, one must fill out a closed class registration form. To add to the annoyance, each form only covers one class, so in my case, I had to fill out three. Even better, for each class I don't get into, it would be one more. With my enchanted papers that gave signatures meaning, I had to head out to find a place to print my education plan which details credits I've earned and credits I need. I decided first to head over to the school of Theology and Ministry for some information since one of the classes I needed was a Theology class. Upon arriving there, I met the man at the front desk.

Me: Hi, I'm trying to get into a closed Theology class. I'm an econ major, so do I get a form from my school or from here?

Guy: Well actually for that, you want a form from the school of Theology and Religious Studies.

Me: *Blank stare*

Guy: This is the school of Theology and Ministry

Me: *Continued blank stare*

Guy: It's in the 2nd floor of the Casey building.

Confused still, I headed off to the Casey building to get the information I so desperately sought. Upon arriving in that office, I was informed by a sign that they don't handle that type of problem there and that I would need to go downstairs to the department of Arts and Sciences. I went down there to see the people and they were about to send me to yet another place when they realized I was talking about a core class and they could help me there. I scheduled a walk in advising session and waited about five minutes. After five minutes had passed, I got called to the desk where they had just realized I was an Economics major and as such, I would need to go to Student Enrollment Services way across campus.

I headed off yet again in search of a simple answer. When I arrived at the entrance to the services area, I noticed they were closed and wouldn't open until right before my first class of the day. The office of the registrar was right down the hall, but I couldn't see anyone staffing that either, so I gave up on the whole thing. I decided to go back to Pigott (home of Albers, the school of business and economics) to print out my education plan and turn in the two forms that I knew I could turn in there. To print out the plan, I went to the computer lab for the first time. Upon entering for the first time, I was greeted by a familiar voice. It was my friend from econ and frisbee. I guess he works in the computer lab. He helped me figure out how to print (there are about 50 printers you have to choose from and the nomenclature is somewhat confusing). Each education plan is 4 pages long and I had to print three copies. At first, I felt guilty, but then I thought about the pain that this terrible registration process had caused me and that helped the guilt go away. With plans and forms finally in hand, I went to the front desk again to turn them in. The guy was much happier this time around (someone must have brought him some coffee or something). Since he was in a good mood, I decided to ask him about how to get into that pesky theology class. He told me that all I had to do was schedule a walk in advising session in which an advisor would help me register. Another great "FFFFFUUUUU" moment.

 

I got into the session pretty quickly (they really mean walk in). The advisor said I would not be able to get into the class I wanted and asked if I was interested in any other theology classes. I told her I was interested in the kind that were offered on the days I hope my other classes will be on. She managed to find me "Theology of Peace," not very interesting sounding and it's another 7:45 class that runs two hours, but it was offered on the days I needed, so I took it without a second thought.

 
Eventually, things sort of worked out. I was told it would take 3 weeks to process my applications, but it only wound up taking two, so that was nice. I was able to sort it all out without coming to school during the break. A spot actually opened up in the Theology class I wanted, but I decided Theology of Peace sounded better (the other one actually started to sound super lame). I got into one of my classes, but not Micro which I really wanted. Instead of filling out a form to get into a class I more urgently needed, I decided to just take a general elective so I'm going to take Law, Politics, and Society. It's required that you be a legal studies specialization for it, but I petitioned the teacher and told her about my plans for law school and she was totally fine with it. I have a feeling I'm going to like that class.


 
Other stuff:

I guess first off, I'll talk about my possible narcolepsy. I'm more suspicious that it is actually that now because I recently experienced a couple more of the "signs" that I had previously never though I had experienced. Once I experienced them again, I realized that I had indeed had that happen before. What I'm referencing here is a loss of ability to move. I wake up from sleeping and I still have some lingering sleep paralysis. In the most recent instance, it happened to my arm. It felt like it was asleep, but I wouldn't feel it tingle unless I moved it. I could not move the arm though unless I moved it using my other arm. Eventually I think I should go in for a sleep evaluation or something and try to discover a way to combat this. For now though, it's not causing a problem. In fact, I find the more often I fall asleep in a class, the better grade I get in that class. Perhaps there is some merit to the idea of listening to tapes while you sleep to gain information.


 
In videogames, I've been playing a lot more Starcraft 2 now. Keir and I are doing some 2v2s and it's going pretty well. We're improving to say the least. I haven't played much Trackmania lately due to my increased playing of SC2.


 
I also started using Goozex again. I randomly checked the other day and one of the games I had listed as an offer since the day I first joined was finally requested. In my excitement, I decided to trade away another few games. The next day before I was going to send them out, another game I had offered since my first day as a member got requested. In total, I have 7 games going out this weekend for a total of 1300 points. That means I'll be able to get a new game if I want. I plan to sit on the points for a bit though as I am still playing several games in my library and I anticipate getting a couple more soon. I'll let the values of games on Goozex go down so I can get more for my points.


 
The last thing on my list of things to get to is Thanksgiving. We went to Sunriver (Central Oregon) for the third year in a row with mom's family. Grandma did not come this year and one of my cousins and her husband did not either. The way over and back were slow going due to icy road conditions. On the way there, it was a good 8 hours of driving that I did because I don't trust the rest of my family to drive us safely through hazardous road conditions (I don't feel safe with them and bare in mind, I suspect I have narcolepsy!). We had a good few days there. Kathryn and I used icicles to unicorn our car (pictures to come) which got us many looks from people as we drove past. The day after Thanksgiving, some of us did the Turkey trot which is a 3 mile run. For the first time in my life in a timed race, I ran sub-10 minute miles. I finished the 3 miles in 27 minutes and got second place for my age group. I was pretty happy with that. I didn't get a ribbon though because I cheaped out and signed up to walk instead of run (it was less than half the price). I was the first walker to come across the finish line though and I'm sure I also beat about half the running crowd. I lost to my cousin who is good at running by only 5 minutes so I was pretty proud of that. That day, we also went sledding. My 2 year old second cousin got really into it and my cousin and I took some turns taking him down some of the less bumpy sled runs. He really enjoyed it. Coming back only took about 6 hours and it was significantly clearer than on the way there, which was nice. I still drove the entire way and it was nice because everyone was sleeping a lot of the way.


 
Ok that's pretty much everything I planned to cover here. I'm looking forward to seeing most or perhaps all of you this break. Unless your name is Keir, we have not talked as much as we should during this quarter, but that is partly/mostly my fault in many cases. Actually, if your name is Keir, we still have not talked enough. We should play SC2 right now. In case you're not getting it, that's what I'm going to go do right now. How was that for avoiding an awkward signoff? Fail.


 
Peace out.