Mmmm, Decadent American Grocery Stores
So I’ve moved out of the swanky hotel downtown and into the staff apartment a few blocks from work. It’s pretty nice! Somehow it just feels a lot more relaxing to come back to a place with a kitchen and a couch. There’s a grocery store nearby so I headed over last night to get some supplies. Man, I forgot how amazing American grocery stores are. You guys just have no idea. I was walking around in a daze, like some Eastern European immigrant getting my first taste of capitalism. I’m pretty sure my jaw was open the whole time. And this wasn’t even, like, a Super Walmart or anything. It was just a normal grocery store. I was freaking out. Too. Many. Choices. Everything so cheap. It is both the pinnacle of American achievement and a symbol of its decadance. I love it.

So there I was, wandering around like a slack-jawed yokel, trying to concentrate on the few things I knew I needed: something for breakfast, toilet paper, laundry detergent. And as I walked the aisles, I had a sudden epiphany: Snookums is my dietary Jiminy Cricket. Without him to keep me in check, my impulse was to load up on junk. It took all the willpower I had to buy some actual decent food (I got ingredients to make spaghetti carbonara for dinner tonight)… and even so, I still walked out with Golden Grahams, Pop-Tarts, and a pint of Ben & Jerry’s. *sigh* At least I managed to get in a good run on the treadmill and start to work off some of the inevitable calories.

Coolness! My little brother Joey went to the Elkhart County Fair this week with his Day Camp group and they ended up on the evening news! My Mom put it up on Youtube. He’s the one in the blue Cubs hat waving and pulling faces behind the camp leader.

Wired Magazine has a really cool article about the creation of WarGames, the Matthew Broderick movie about a computer hacker who ends up causing Global Thermonuclear War.

Holy crap! I was settling in at the staff apartment yesterday when I switched on the TV and nearly fell over. There on the screen was my ND friend Rob Sudduth, starring in a State Farm insurance commercial! You will recall, of course, that I got to kiss him in a play in college. (Previous posts about him have included his Dell commercial, a photo of us at a cast party, and his guest appearance on Veronica Mars.) It’s just very, very amusing to me that Rob seems to really be making a go of this working-actor gig, whereas a lot of the “serious thespians” I knew in the theater department, um, aren’t.

Not happy, Target!
ARGH. A couple days before I left, I went to Target to pick up some cropped pants to wear to work here. I figured it would be hot in LA so I’d take advantage of the Australian winter discounts on summery stuff. I found some nice taupe capris and tried them on. Great fit! Maybe even a little big. On my way out, I impulsively grabbed the same size pants in black as well. That’s what you do, right? When something fits and looks good, you get it in multiple colours! I packed them both in my suitcase, and I wore the taupe pair yesterday. All good. This morning I went to put on the black pair… and I could barely get them over my hips. SERIOUSLY. I double-checked the labels to be sure, but both pairs are exactly the same size. Yet somehow the black ones are at least two sizes smaller. I’m so annoyed. I can’t even wear these. And I’d already cut the tags off and everything, so I doubt I’ll be able to return them when I get home. How can there be so much variance in IDENTICAL pairs of pants? 🙁

“The Disadvantages of an Elite Education”. Fascinating article about how an Ivy League education isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Now, Notre Dame isn’t officially an Ivy, but it definitely aspires to be… and there’s a lot in there that really rang true for me. (Especially since I spent three years in the ND Honors Program, which emphasized what elite intellectuals we chosen 40 were.) The homogeneity of the student body. The emphasis on “career” degrees like pre-med, business, and law. The sense of entitlement and the “old boy” network that goes along with it. And here’s the bit that – shamefully – applied to me the most:

“How can I be a schoolteacher – wouldn’t that be a waste of my expensive education? Wouldn’t I be squandering the opportunities my parents worked so hard to provide? What will my friends think? How will I face my classmates at our 20th reunion, when they’re all rich lawyers or important people in New York? And the question that lies behind all these: Isn’t it beneath me? So a whole universe of possibility closes, and you miss your true calling.”

It definitely applies. I won’t lie; when I started back in IT four months ago I definitely thought about sending in an update to the alumni magazine. Working in the knitting shop… Well, I wasn’t embarrassed to tell you guys or my real-life friends about it, but somehow I worried whether the other alumni would be snickering. Isn’t that stupid? I still struggle with feeling like my college education was a bit of a waste (especially when I pay my student loan). If I’d stayed in the US, there’s no doubt that it would have opened a lot of doors for me. Overseas, though, most people don’t seem to care where your degree came from.

Wii Shame. Just reverse the genders, and this comic is sadly all too accurate. 🙁

WiiMMbledon Champions!
Ohmygosh, I can’t believe I forgot to blog this! On this past Friday at around 5pm, Lucas Poole and myself became the Mobile Messenger Wii Doubles Tennis Champions! There were 32 people who originally signed up a few weeks ago, and people got paired up randomly into teams. There was a round robin group match (during which Lucas and I didn’t drop a single set!) before going into the elimination tournament. It got tougher then, but somehow we found ourselves going into the final against Alek and Eliot. It was a match for the ages. People were standing on the sofa behind us trying to get a glimpse of the match. We ended up winning three sets to one, but every single set went right down to the wire. And the winning shot? I got an ace on a Power Serve. I knew that the receiver would totally be expecting it – I always go to the Power Serve in pressure situations – but some how he didn’t! It was glorious. And the funny part is, Lucas might get sent out to the LA office before I leave. Snookums suggested we hold a similar tournament here, just so he and I can legitimately call ourselves WORLD CHAMPIONS.

Emily posted a photo of me and Snookums from the Christmas party Saturday night…