monkey fight!

So, I woke up today with my throat burning and now I'm really really lethargic and sore everywhere...gah.

Anyway, there was a huge monkey fight at the lab today. Basically, all the monkeys ganged up on Auric (oldest monkey in the cage...also possibly the stupidest...) Anyway, his hand got cut by other monkeys scratching him, so he started dripping blood everywhere. btw, monkey blood looks like typical fake blood: really bright red and not all THAT viscous.

We had to get him into a squeeze cage so that the vets can knock him out (VALIUM!) and then stitch up his hand. It kept bleeding though, and all the monkeys in the cage recognize the vet, so the entire cage was going absolutely crazy. And that when he was waking up, he looked just like drunk. Kinda tragically funny. Anyway, during that time, it was like someone put multiple adrenaline shots in me because of all the monkeys screaming and blood, because I was hyperactive, and now I'm kinda feeling like Auric. I can't even sit up or sit without my head just swaying everywhere. Ugh.

Let me Make Sweet Love to You,

babayyy.

HARRY POTTER!!!!!!

We went to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince at midnight!! And it was great. Joe went all out.


Paul stocked up on the goods.

The team assembled.And Joe got caught on film.

Notes from the D.C. Underground

So, sometimes I have neither the desire nor the time to post to the blog. These past two weeks have been those times. But, now I'm ready to blog about what the BHouse and I have been up to.

For the Fourth of July, Marcus, Jae, David, Taylor, and I went to Marcus' place.

The boys strike a pose.

We walked around the same part of the Mall over and over again. I passed this statue multiple times. Jae was only on it once.
Jae wanted to get as close as possible to this hunk of a man.

Loving all things free that can be found in D.C., we descended upon the zoo, where we saw the cutest thing ever.

Jae continues to get it on.

Oops, wrong picture. Let's try this again.

Awwww.... soooooo cute!

This is a very rare picture, where the panda eats a ball of energy!!!

After the zoo, we moved on to the Georgetown part of town, after stopping to see a bad-ass pacifist.

These sandals are made for walking,
and ...one of these days these sandals
are going to stand by side as you do
what ever it is you want.

And then we ran into something amazing! Some of the creatures from Jae's lab had escaped!



The next day, I went to the parade. It was the first time I had actually seen one of those huge floats you always see in the movies. And guess who it was.

No, not Jae again. It was Arthur!!!!


Unfortunately, this was no mere float. This fiendish creature was actually the cousin of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man! We thought all was well, until the fireworks...



I need say no more. We fled the spectacle and broke through the crowds to the metro, where we sped through the underground of Washington to safety.

P.S. For all you How I Met Your Mother fans, I licked the Capitol. And it tasted like freedom. And gridlock. Nom nom nom.

Six Flags

If you know me, then you know I love roller coasters. I. really. really. love. roller. coasters. And having lived in New Jersey for like four years, I love Six Flags Great Adventure. And I'm pretty good at convincing people that they should go with me. Just like last deadweek, I convinced Chris, Elliot, Julia, and Ally to go, and we had a blast. I was so bummed that I couldn't go during this deadweek.

But, as some of us are sitting Criterion, waiting to see HP6, in our massive fatigue, Joe, Alan, Gonzo, and I spontaneously decided to go to Six Flags that Sunday (yesterday).

If you don't know this already, you should know that I'm a hardcore amusement park person. I get to the park at least an hour early so that we can get tickets without having to stand in a line, be one of the firsts to get through the security, and get on one of the most popular rides without having to wait in stupid lines. That is what we did.

So, we'd agreed to leave at 6, which meant 5 a.m. morning call for some of us. Joe, our masterful driver, after waking up at like 5:15, powered through CT, NY and onto New Jersey. With empty coke cans in our hands ($15 off during weekends!), we got to Six Flags Great Adventure around 9.


It was a beautiful sight. Anyway, we managed to get on the third Nitro car in the first row, screaming "legen-wait-for-it-dary" 230 feet above the ground. It was legen-wait for it-DARY.

Though, I must say, the best was El Toro. It was my first time riding it, and oh man, it was soo freakin' awesome. The first drop looks pretty much like a 90-degree incline (decline?), and the negative G from that first drop is simply impossible to describe in words...You simply cannot capture such amazingness properly in words.

Our last ride of the day was Nitro, one of my now two favorite rides in Six Flags. We made YPMB in American sign language for our on-ride photo, but Joe was too enthusiastic like a little freshman that he is (well, he's not a freshman anymore, a little sophomore) and failed to align his hand with ours. it was like... ypmB!

Anyhoo, so we left the park around 7 (basically spent 10 hours there), exhausted of course, but decided to go to Princeton for dinner. We went to Tiger Noodles, the best Chinese restaurant I've come across in the Western Hemisphere. Hell, no one can make General Tso's sauce like they do. Srsly. Ask Alan, Joe, or Gonzo. Even Gonzo, who was not a fan of the Chinese dinner idea at first, loved it. After that, we went to Thomas' Sweet for ice cream.


I'm sorry, but Ashley's got nothing on Thomas'.

Now the fun part begins.

We drove up the Turnpike to get onto G. Washington Bridge. We had a minor freak out that woke up everybody in the car because we stayed in a wrong lane that was for Lincoln tunnel instead of G. Washington Bridge. Unlike Joe the Chill, I freaked out. I hate hate hate going to the city in a car. Driving there is a freaking nightmare. But, with Joe's GPS, we managed to turn around and get back on our way toward G. Wash Bridge.

Normally, I'd avoid this route, but it was Sunday around midnight. No need to be worried about traffic on the bridge, right?

Wrong.



There were hordes of trucks and cars, trying to cross the bridge...and it took forever. By the time, we got back, it was around 2:15. Joe and I were pretty much effectively up for more than 20 hours.

I was so lethargic at work today, that my project head just sent me home, saying I look like I'm about to collapse. Joe apparently had a productive day, though. It must be the age difference. Then again, he began to go mad as we neared New Haven, terrorizing everybody in the car, especially Gonzo.


What an epic weekend. Oh yeah, and we're thinking about doing a road-trip to Cedar Point at some point. I'm serious. Whether Joe, Alan, or Gonzo were serious, I have no clue. They'd better be though.

Still, I love Six Flags. AAAHHHH Alright bed time, because I'm still reeling from all the exorbitant amount of adrenaline pumped through my body yesterday.


Oh yea, and of course, an obligatory rides-in-the-background picture. I really like this picture.

A Wenzel by any other name...

One time, Antonella was making chicken cutlets. That time was tonight. Coincidentally, today is "Try-to-make-a-Wenzel-Thursday", so I had to seize this opportunity. I purchased some bread and of course some

and then I was ready to go. They dain't got no lettuce or tomaters at G-Heav, so I decided I would go with what I could get. Once the chicken was prepared, I put it in a bowl, and emptied half of the bottle of hot sauce in, and stirred it around, just like they do at A-Delt:

I deftly threw some cheese on my baguette and slid it in the toaster oven. Having witnessed the naissance of The Wenzel hundreds -- if not thousands -- of times, the process was practically second nature:


Unfortunately, it was granulated parmesean cheese, so it didn't melt on in proper provel fashion. Oh well. I slapped the chicken on, and hoped for the best -- it was time to feast....


Oops I forgot Mayo:


That's more like it. And feast, I did. It looks pretty damn legit, right? Overall reaction.... *drumroll* ... It tastes like a wenzel! The hotsauce brand was a little off, and the parmesean definitely changed the taste... and lettuce and tomato would have probably made it more authentic as well. Oh well. It was frikin awesome. Half way through the meal, I looked under the table and thought my eyes decieved me --Beneath the table was a bag of Lay's Potato chips! This must have been a sign from the Wenzel Gods! Everyone knows that the Alpha Delta Wenzel comes with a bag of potato chips. My wenzel was real, and my night was a success. And the sea rolled on as it had five-thousand years ago.

back in eastern time

Well. It's been a busy July so far, having been to Mexico and Chicago in the last two weekends. It's the most time I've spent in Central time in a while, but now, I realized, I'll be in Eastern time continuously for probably 5 more months.
And maybe I'll even spend some time in BHouse! The last few weeks have meant that I've only spent a few hours a day awake and in BHouse. But now I am going to be starting to pack, and also spending my last full weekend in New Haven this weekend. (Though AJ is coming down, so not fully normal, I guess).
Yeah. Sorry this isn't super coherent. I'm not super coherent. I got back late last night and have had my brain frazzled by my superawesome and totally brain-challenging job.
<3

Miscellany!

Hi readers! I am a bad blogger, as you all know. I blog only slightly more often than David, and, more often than not, I avoid Bhouse-specific antics and tend to write about whatever the fuck I want. So I'll keep it up! At least until people start throwing things at me.

I just spent a week in Texas! San Antonio is a wonderful place, where the temperature is always above 100, no significant rain has fallen since about 1996, and an army of deer have taken to hatching anti-human revolutionary plots in my front yard (but the fawns are so cute!). (One of these facts is true, guess which one!) I won't relate too much about San Antonio, except to mention an already-blogged-about-in-the-'09-blog delightful visit from Rita! (I have no pictures for you, because she took all the pictures since I always forget to bring my camera everywhere.) I may have dragged her around downtown San Antonio until she nearly got heatstroke. That makes me a bad person, I think? And the world should also know about the extraction of my wisdom teeth! That's right, there's a faux-Greco-Roman temple somewhere that can get new columns on the cheap, because these dental colossi can act as load-bearing pillars certifiable to between two and three metric tonnes. A hippopotamus somewhere with horrible oral hygiene can breathe a sigh of relief, for he can easily spruce up his decaying grill with gargantuan molars. What I'm saying is that I've already stolen four of the rocks from Stonehenge, and replaced them with my teeth; nobody'll ever notice the difference.

The corollary to this fact (the fact that my wisdom teeth were actually small planetoids in disguise) is that there is a staggering amount of empty space in my skull at the moment. You know how greasy, unlikeable men with scraggly beards sometimes store food for later in their facial hair? I could store a fourteen-course banquet in these. I'm half-expecting to bump into a confused hobbit on the street, trying to destroy his Ring of Power in one of the yawning abysses at the back of my jaw. I'm fortunate I got these removed in July, because if I'd done it in the fall I'd have to worry about bears taking up residence for winter hibernation (and I don't think grizzlies appreciate being flossed). One particularly insightful person even went so far as to compare the gaping holes to the Sarlacc, the immense spiny maw that Jabba tries to drop the heroes into in Return of the Jedi. Except just as the Sarlacc was defeated by Luke's Force powers, so too were my sockets defeated by the sprinkles on a donut, standing in as hapless Jedi prey.

The Pantry

When people complain about Twitter, they often cite the fact that they don't really see the necessity of knowing what people are doing at all times. Those who really get the power of the medium, however, use Twitter not for posting "at the gym" and other schedule updates but instead for sharing funny and thoughtful insights that otherwise would pass and fade, never to be read or heard by anyone else. (I haven't gotten an account yet, but if I do, it will only be for the sort of witticisms that demand being spread to the masses.)

In some ways, I feel like the Twitter critics when it comes to this blog: who reads this, anyway? And why do they want to know what we're doing? For that reason, I never found the need to post about what we're up to, unless there were ever a really funny or amazing story to share. Even when those funny and amazing things have happened, two things have kept me from posting: others in the house have posted about them already, and in some situations, the stories are best kept private.

What's prompting me to post today is a curiosity about how much people care about our having fun. It's late afternoon, and it has already been a great day. On a day of firsts, I went to The Pantry for the first time. We all left stuffed, after each downing our own meals (I would highly recommend the salmon benedict) and splitting the pancake special of the day (cherry garcia). We came back to the house, where we realized that we all wanted to see Bruno. So off we went again, first stopping at Target to load up on movie candy.

The movie is as you would expect. There were times we were all laughing, times we were all shocked, and a few times when we were all mortified. Of course, they weren't mutually exclusive. It's not Borat, however: Bruno lacks the element of storytelling that made Borat what it was.

Brunch also provided a few interesting topics of conversation. Here are two good, but very different, conversation starters for your next brunch/dinner/date: 1) What probability would you assign to the likelihood that years from now, people will discover that atomic theory, as we understand it today, is wrong? 2) Under what circumstances is it acceptable or normal to use an aphrodisiac food?

We're planning a picnic for tonight, to be had as we watch the New Haven Symphony on The Green. What an ideal summer day!

Aditya

Look! A puppy!

Jae is being lame

I'm not technically in BHouse anymore, but I feel the need to comment on this recent increase in lameness (which I would like to point out directly correlates with my departure). If you haven't read Jae's post and the pacifist, alfalfa-munching cuddlefest Joe posted in his comments, go do that right now. I didn't know Care Bears were allowed to use Blogger.

"Health issues and gargantuan ethical problems"? What are you, gay? This is America, bitch. If your meal doesn't kill some corn-fed antiobiotic-sucking meatsack and doesn't cost enough ancillary resources to feed Ethiopia, you're fucking doing it wrong.

It's 2009, we live in the best country ever, we shoot shit, cut it up, and eat it, and then we go drink beer and watch pageants and vote and shoot Mexicans. Get with the program already.

Christ. Kids these days.

Back!

I'm back from an awesome trip to Mexico! Since most of the house was gone all weekend it isn't in terrible shape, but it's been better. Oh well, I guess I have to do some more shopping and such.
Also, going back to work sucks after an awesome vacation.

Dear world, I'm turning to the dark side

I have an announcement to make.

I am, as of today, a (pesco-)vegetarian...at least for the summer. (though I probably should finish all that marinated stuff in the freezer). Hopefully this public declaration will actually help me power through this...endeavor, if you will.

I used to say I'll never give up meat...

And yes, declaring on Facebook and Twitter was not enough.



Also, in other news, Marcus, David, Alan, and Taylor went to DC, stayed at the Parrish residence for a few nights, for the Fourth of July weekend. Happy belated birthday, Amurrika. Thanks for not deporting me yet.