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After a few cocktails last night I ended up giving some random girl who’s shoes were hurting her a two block piggy back ride home. Towards the end I was getting pretty tired but I didn’t want to admit it and soldiered on.
In today’s busy world were it’s tough to fit in trips to the gym and the bar, this is an excellent way to get a total body workout AND work towards a liver transplant, just make sure your balance isn’t too impaired before attempting.
And for the record the piggy back ride was as intimate as things got.
I was picking up milk at Trader Joe’s when I noticed they make scotch. Trader Joe’s brand scotch. I would’ve called it Trader McJoe’s scotch, but none the less, I have ordered my dad, I more refined scotch drinker than I, to investigate. I don’t think he will.
I also came across two different six packs of beer for $2.99 each. For those of you who aren’t pursuing advanced degrees in numerical disciplines, that works out to less than fity cents a can, which is about as cheap as beer comes. I bought one of each and came home for the taste test.
I had the Red Oval first. It’s packaging wasn’t as intriguing, white can’s with a red oval containing the name. I wondered if the simplicity of it’s promotion would lead to a great product, after all, if the beer is that good, why mess around with labels and slogans? For cheep beer it was quite tastey. Like the packaging, it’s no frills, a standard lager that doesn’t really stand out in any way.
The competition was Simple Times Lager. It’s old timey, and old timey is hard to hate. It’s also rocks a 6.2% alcohol content, which is pretty potent for any type of beer, much less a lager. When I finally got around to tasting it, I genuinely enjoyed it. Did the flavor remind me of simpler times? No, but it still tastes good.
And thus The First Annual WFS Blue Ribbon For the Best Cheap Beer At Trader Joe’s goes to Simpler Times lager. Will it surpass Busch as my favorite cheap beer? i can garuantee it will never have the same sentimental value as the Official Beer of Western Washington University, the beer of $1 pitcher nights at the Up & Up, but on quality, I may have to concede that Simpler Times has it beat. I will have to do extensive research before I have a conclusion on that one.
After a couple of pitchers of margaritas, I found myself at an open mic night for storytellers named after a Battlestar Galacta* catch phrase Saturday night. One of my fellow students of the statistical sciences had promised me it was a good time, “if you can get past the uber-hipsterness” of the whole thing. The (weekly?) event features people in ironic t-shirts telling true stories that somehow related to the nights theme, ‘It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time.’ Judges scored the storytellers, and I’m assuming clapping, a small trophy and a gift certificate for very tight jeans went to the champion.
At intermission we decided our time would be better spent at a bar, but the contestants up until then fell into three categories.
- Guys who got up and did a reasonably good job telling funny stories. Poop stories seemed to get the most laughs.
- People who told emotional stories poorly. This seemed to be the route to high scores.
- The guy who was drawn from the crowd to tell a story. Unlike the rest of the storytellers, who had been practicing for an unknown length of time, this fellow had to wing it. He opted to not so much tell a story, but make bad Seinfeld like observations about things not mentioned in polite company, like anal sex, masterbation and poop. The poop was thrown in because it had worked for the previous guy.
While I don’t think I’ll become a regular, and I wouldn’t drop the $5 suggested donation on the event, it was a good change of pace from standing in a bar or going to a movie on a saturday night.
*There was no mention of Battlestar Galactica, but my roommates are big fans so I know a BSG reference when I hear it.
Schools done, I might be working like a sucker soon, but for the last 9 days I’ve been left entirely to my own devices. Here’s the rundown.
Drinking.
- Statisticians are better at beer pong than basketball.
- If you give a friend $5 to get himself a drink at a bar with $2 you-call-it’s and tell him you DO NOT want a shot, you’re probably going to get a shot.
- Flip cup should be played by teams of four, give or take. If you have significantly more people multiple teams should be formed that rotate in.
- 39 year old’s birthday parties are pretty much the same as 29 year old’s, which is very different than 19 year old’s and even more different than 9 year old’s. I find that comforting.
Movies.
- The new Star Trek is good, but not as good as everyone says it is.
- The new Terminator is bad but not as bad as everyone says it is.
- Valkerye was pretty good. Tom Cruise played a cocky Nazi, which was a nice change of pace from his normal cocky American character. Actually it was the cocky American character with an eye patch.
- The Wrestler was good, but I got tired of the camera following characters from behind as they went about their business. Sure, Marissa Tomei and Mickey Rourke have nice backs, especially for their advanced ages, but I got tired of looking at them. Worst Darren Aronofsky movie I’ve seen, but he makes good movies so that isn’t so bad.
Family. I made my annual pilgrimage north of LA with my sister to visit Grandma, as well as various cousins, Aunts, Uncles and second cousins.
- Anyone know how to convince one’s grandma it’s time for a wheelchair? Maybe send her video’s on how great a rascal is? She’s too proud to admit it, but I’m pretty sure her life would be greatly improved if she could travel at a speed greater than 5 ft and hour. And she’d annoy a lot fewer motorists.
- Family is cool and all, but I’m not sure mine is worth spending 12 hours in a car over a 3 day period to hang out with. Sorry gang, but I can’t stand that LA traffic. Maybe if there was some bribes I’d feel differently.
I’m hoping to get some beach time in soon but we’ve got June gloom greying up the skies. I’m looking for other ’staycation’ activities to stay busy, but realistically I’ll probably just watch some movies and drink cheap beer.
I’ve recently realized that it’s shocking what a responsible person my high school buddy MC (only part of his name has become) over the last five years. He holds down a good job, owns a house and doesn’t need to attend AA. This would’ve been a hard future to imagine for him ten years ago. I attribute much of his responsibility to his special lady, who he had the good sense to lock down last Friday, making her Mrs. MC Dude and checking off 2 of my 3 steps of growing up. I skipped four classes to hang out on Maui for the wedding. Now I own a winestopper!
Being a small destination wedding, I got to know every attenddee under 40 a little bit. One of the brides college friends (go Vikings!) brought her husband. They live in Alaska and are snowboarding bums. She’s a waitress and he does web design. Web design apparently allows him to choose what days he works and what days. So when the powder comes down he abandons his keyboard for chair lifts. He was also very fond of wasabe.
This got me thinking, as I often do, about how I should be living my life. Grad school is okay, it does give me freedom to do what I want about 1/4 of the year (if not much money to do it with). But I couldn’t help be a bit jealous of this guy who could travel all over the world snowboarding and fill in the free time with some work. As far as I could tell, he isn’t getting rich, at least not monetarily, but isn’t the point of getting rich so you can go on ski trips? I didn’t come to any life altering conclusions, just thinking I’d like to find similar freedom in my post academic life (if that day ever comes).
I’d also like to say if you go to Maui stop by the Maui Brewing Company and order the Coconut Porter, and grab a few growlers of it on the way out. I’m philosophically opposed to beer that tastes like anything other than beer, but coconut gets the WFS Seal of Approval.
I didn’t want to, but got talked into going wine tasting yesterday by a friend who’s male companionship on the trip bailed on him. I had hoped to study but conced after being promised no pressure to drink, free lunch and a four hour trip. None of these promises were kept.
We went to some cool and not so cool (read: generic) wineries in Temecula. I’d recommend some but I didn’t pay much attention to the names. Most of the day was enjoyable, I refined my palatte a bit, visited five winiries at a total cost to me of $2 for a tip. Holding to the hope of getting my learn on in the evening I only tried a few wines at each spot. Which turned out to be a good thing.
One of my co-horts claimed he saw the Rock at one of the spots, but I doubt it was him since the same guy claimed to see Wee-Man in Pacific Beach the night before. Later on when an obviously not Wee-Man midget strolled buy dude insisted it was a different midget with skater clothes on he had seen earlier.
I was told a charming story by a drunk 50-something about how she had met her husband five years to the day earlier at the same winery, I didn’t want to hear the story but she started talking with her mouth about a foot from my ear when I had my back to her, everytime I moved to reclaim my valued personal space she moved right along with me.
The day ended with me convincing the DD that I should drive, drunken arguing, crying, and a pit stop for vomiting. I didn’t get any studying done.
This was my second trip wine tasting, and I’d say it can be enjoyable but one should choose their co-tasters carefully before setting out.
I think I posted on the importance of voting a while back. Over at MR they linked to this video espousing the irrationality (in econo-speak) of voting. While your personal vote might not make much of a difference, the influence you can have on others may. This of course, depends on whether you write a blog with one reader, or Oprah. The former having less effect on election outcomes than going to the polls yourself, the latter having the ability to swing the entire soccer mom demographic.
The problem with video’s like the one I linked to (maybe I should delete the link) is they are going to convince logical people who make informed decisions from going to vote. I may be biased on this, but I think those are the people who should vote. What we need is an argument for the emotional, irrational decision makers. Like, if you go to vote you could run over a baby on the way to the polls, so you should probably stay home.
I am going to vote, not because of the Presidential election. As a California, there is no way I’ll influence that election. But as a San Diegan I have a slightly greater chance of deciding whether or not we will be able to enjoy PBR on the beach next summer. I feel it’s my patriotic duty to stand up for the pursuit of happiness on this issue during these tough times.
Addendum: A related quote from another MR post:
voting and not voting are motivated by the thought that you are better than other people.
If your like me, you get a little guilty when you aren’t being productive. Society, or ‘the man’ as I like to call it, has manipulated me into thinking I should do things that will make my life better in the long run even though I don’t enjoy them at the time. Excercise, school work and watching PBS all fall into this category at times (and sometimes they don’t, go figure). So this is what I do to have a relaxing day where I don’t do anything productive.
- Drink copious amounts of alcohol. Preferably mixing various types of liquor and homefully some sweet mixers as well. You don’t have to be planning on the rest of the steps when you start drinking, they’ll follow from this one once you get going. I’ve recently learned that following reasonable beer with blueberry bear that actually has blueberry juice (it was all that was left in the fridge, really) and then white russians can do.
- Wake up and feel horrible. But you have to really feel bad if you want to keep the lazy guilt away. If you try and convince yourself you feel horrible but you actually feel okay, at some point you’ll think, “Well, I could at least go to the gym to watch other people work out…” and that ruins everything. If you wake up and don’t feel horrible you should probably go to the gym, watch Jim Lehrer and then go back to step one. Having to drive home also helps, as it will make you feel even worse. The key here is to feel so bad you convince yourself that trying to do “something” could have horrible consequences.
- Watch tv and or movies. I like seasons of good but not great shows on DVD (or Hulu). That way you can watch for hours without having to think about what you want to watch. I avoid great shows because I don’t want to feel obligated to really pay attention. In the past I’ve had good luck with Behind the Music and the West Wing. Tried Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip yesterday and it seemed to fit into the category nicely.
- When you feel up to it, eat something really greasy that you’d feel bad for eating if you weren’t hungover. I’m partial to Little Caesar’s, McDonalds cheeseburgers or Jack in the Box has a variety of good options. My choice is often dictated by what’s whithing walking distance, since getting into a car when properly hungover can be unpleasent, as was previously mentioned.
- Go to sleep whenever you feel like it. You’ve succeeded in relaxing!
Hangovers are one of the few bulletproof excuses that keep one from feeling obligated to play the man’s game. Vacations work well too. I am aware of people who never seem to feel obligated to do anything they don’t absolutely have to do. They probably should avoid step #1 since they will endure the hangover without the relaxation benefits.
Not too far away from where I live is the Stone Brewery, I’ve been enjoying their beer for years, going back to $5 pitcher night at Anna’s Caddy Shack. Oh, the Caddy Shack, I wish I could say I did something there besides get really drunk, but I’d be lying. I haven’t made it to Stone yet, but I’ve talked about it a lot. I’ve heard good things and hope to make the journey sometime before Christmas.
A thousand miles North of my current location, and very close to Anna’s Caddy Shack is my favorite brew pub in the whole wide world, Boundary Bay Brewery. In between lies Portland, which I’ve heard has the highest concentration of micro-breweries in the country. It seems like the obvious thing to do is road trip the Pacific Coast, trying to hit two micro-brewerys a day.
This idea is in it’s infancy, and my biggest challenge might be finding co-horts to go along with this. But I envision something like leaving San Diego late one week, maybe friday, hitting up two brewerys a day, possibly three when it works out. Planning on rolling into Bellingham the following Saturday to leave Sunday for a recovery. The direction could be flipped. Do some camping if it’s nearby, staying when friends when they can be found and otherwise hoteling it. I think a minimum of 3 people would be needed for this adventure, taking turns at designated driving. More people would mean less driving.
If anyone wants to steal the brilliant plan, I don’t mind provided you let me know how it goes and give credit whenever someone looks at you with awe regarding your awesome vacation. It would be great to get a VW microbus for this, making it a microbrew tour in a microbus.
A while ago I mentioned Little Ceasar’s, and how it is underepresented on Working’s For Suckers. The thing is, I love Little Ceasar’s like fat kids love, well, pizza. It’s not because there pizza is that good, it’s because it has consistently been good to me over the years. I remember Ceasar’s busting onto the scene with all the Pizza! Pizza! stuff when they pretty much made you buy two pizza’s, which was strange.
My senior year in high school some school organization sold these discount cards, they were like coupons at a bunch of places but you got to keep them. One of the deals was free breadsticks at Ceasar’s with any pizza purchase. So one semester, me MC-Dude and Stefan would sneak out of PE a little early so we would have time for the trip (about 20 minutes round trip on a 30 minute lunch). I’m sure the deal was intended for people buying whole pizza’s, but if thats what they meant, they should have said so. We’d buy the slice slice, two slices and a soda for $3+tax and get our free breadsticks. We did this every fucking day, which actually got old, after talking my classmates into going to Dairy Queen once I never heard the end of it.
A couple years later I lived a block away from Little Ceasar’s in college. My roommate D$ and I road the same bus home from school every day, and would hit up the slice slice three or four days a week, prompting one employee to comment that we must really like pepperoni pizza. I don’t want to speak for D, but I can’t argue with the statement.
After college Little Ceasar’s became the go-to hangover cure. I would often wait with whoever I was enjoying the hangover with in anguish until 11:00 when Little Ceasar’s opened, they dimly lit dining area in what I believe was the only Little Ceasar’s with a dining area was a perfect place to sip Dr Pepper and listen to soft rock and discuss the previous nights antics. Eventually the dining area was removed, supposedly because it didn’t fit with the corporate standards. Booo!
Little Ceasar’s outside Whatcom county don’t seem to push the slice! slice! deal, but the $5 large has allowed SoCal Ceasar’s to keep my business (but not as much of it). I think I’ll go grab a Hot-N-Ready for lunch tomorrow.
We previously recieved a request here at WFS for a statistical analysis of my happiness related to how far I live from Little Ceasars. So I ran a regression analysis, and I don’t like the results. But since I pretty much made up the numbers (not very scientific) I don’t think there’s much to them. For those of you who don’t read regression analysis very often, the parameter estimate could be looked at as how much affect the variable has on my happiness, the Pr > |t| is more or less the probability that there is no correlation. They’re all high enough to throw out these results, which is good because this says that I’m happier the farther I live from Little Ceasars. The regression also shows a negative relationship between health and happiness, which makes me wonder if spending times in gyms makes me sad. It looks like my t-shirt collection and my living situation have the biggest influence on my happiness. Guess I’ll buy some shirts after I eat my pizza tomorrow.
| My Happiness | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Variable | DF | Parameter Estimate |
Standard Error |
t Value | Pr > |t| |
| Intercept | 1 | 3.16739 | 2.74281 | 1.15 | 0.2690 |
| Distance | 1 | -0.00082327 | 0.00465 | -0.18 | 0.8621 |
| QofF | 1 | 0.27142 | 0.27289 | 0.99 | 0.3381 |
| WorkSchool | 1 | 0.18447 | 0.34447 | 0.54 | 0.6013 |
| Health | 1 | -0.01547 | 0.17328 | -0.09 | 0.9302 |
| Tshirts | 1 | 0.43083 | 0.58441 | 0.74 | 0.4741 |
| LivingSituation | 1 | 0.43638 | 0.31852 | 1.37 | 0.1939 |
