tbradshaw.net

I’ve never been this tempted before. The last weekend has been remarkably devoid of productivity, mainly in the form of artful procrastination. I’ve spent the memorial day weekend pretty much bored, but just keeping myself occupied with mundane tasks like reading slashdot and Planet GNOME at a frequency that has me almost awaiting each new post.

The real goals of this weekend should have been cleaning my room and preparing for a set of lectures that I’m giving Tuesday and Wednesday, but I’ve been just getting by with “I have plenty of time” and I haven’t really be accomplishing anything.

So the Dark Side? A lot of my time that I’ve been doing nothing with has been reading about World of Warcraft, or watching my roommates all play the game. It really looks great and if my pace this summer keeps up, then my primary excuse for running away from Massively Multiplayer Online Games is going to be destroyed. Previously, I would say that all of the time that I would spend playing an MMORPG would be better spent if I were being productive.

But if I’m not being productive, anyway…

Anyway, must continue to resist, though it gets more difficult each day. I don’t really have any money to buy a game, of course. But my roommates are more than willing to give me a shot on one of their accounts to try it out and play a bit, in hopes that I’ll get hooked. (The first hit is always free…)

As my good friend Brandon said, “We really want you to play. Not only because we like to play with our friends, but we know you’d be good at it.” Those are words that just pry right at the heart of an aging gamer like myself.

My second big caveat to staying away has been the amount of time it always takes to play MMORPGs. Tons of time, more time than I’m willing to spend on any game. But it seems that every review that I read about WoW says that this is finally the MMORPG that caters to “casual gamers” and you don’t have to be a “power gamer” to have a good time. GameSpy (my former employer) went so far as to say that this is “finally the MMORPGS for the rest of us. You can play for just thirty minutes and still accomplish something.”

Ack! Why does the dark side have to be so strong… just keeps pulling!

… we got Death Stars, we got Death Stars, we got Death Stars …

I’ve got a little bit of resistance left. This would mean that I would have to install Windows on my primary computer. Something I honestly loathe to do. My saving grace at this point is that there isn’t a native Linux client for WoW.

While browsing Slashdot I came across this article called A Gamers’ Manifesto. The author David Wong goes over 20 points that he wants from the seventh generation of games with a keen eye and a good dose of humor. Great read.

I also have been spending quite a bit of time looking over the shoulders of my good friends Dan, Llama, and JD as they play World of Warcraft. It reminded me of a great paper that was written about the types of gamers that play MUD’s (which are really the best precursor to the modern Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game [MMORPG] that I can imagine). This paper, titled Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Players Who Suit MUDs by Richard Bartle is a long respected analysis on the four different personality types that are present in interactions with MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons).

I’ve found that this analysis is just as useful for analyzing MMORPGs, and was kind of surprised when my gamer roommates had never heard of the paper. (Hence me linking it here.)

Then again, it could be that I’m just the only one geeky enough to look up sociological research on a video game phenominon instead of just playing the game. (I don’t, by the way, play the game.)

My blogging is about to get a little bit out of chronological order, but this blog is just more pressing.

Yesterday I had just finished my econ510 final and was feeling good. I stopped by my office briefly, planning to stay just a moment before going to Burger King for a snack. I parked my motorcycle on the line between two reserved spots in the circle drive here at Nichols Hall. It’s a pretty common practice for motorcycle parking in parallel spots, since a motorcycle can easily fit between two parallel spots without impeding the parking of either car in any way.

I ended up chatting with my office mates for about 20 minutes before we all decide to go to Burger King to get something to eat. When walking over, I get a call from my Mom to tell me that I had just been wheel locked for parking in a reserved spot. “Surely not,” I think.

I dash over to the front of Nichols, and sure enough, I’m wheel locked. I already knew that they never check the reserved spots in front of Nichols unless someone calls it in, and I’m extremely surprised that I have a wheel lock which is typically reserved for those vehicles with a fourth outstanding ticket (I have none). So I call over to Parking Services to see what the deal is. Sure enough, the owner of the spot, Dr. Gustafson, has called me in. So I pay the fine, which is $35 freaking dollars plus $25 freaking dollars just for the wheel lock. So an entire day’s pay.

I’m almost ready to hang up when I have to ask, “Any idea why I was wheel locked? I thought that never happened for a ‘first offense’.”

“Oh it doesn’t,” she replied, “, but for reserved spots we will put on a wheel lock of the owner of the spot explicitly requests it.”

Oh super. So dag was just feeling a little extra spunky yesterday and decided to up the punishment, just for fun. What a nice guy!

It takes about 45 minutes for the truck to come over and unlock the wheel lock, mainly due to an accidental mix-up with parking services dispatch. During that time I climb up to the second floor to talk with Dr. Gustafson about the wheel lock and let him know how I feel. Unfortunately he’s not in his office and I didn’t want to have that conversation in any type of public facility since that would be a little bit too disrespectful. So I go back out to my bike to wait for the facilities.

A bit early a police officer shows up and we get to chatting. Apparently they send police officers because a lot of times people who are wheel locked are really pissed off, and he’s even hauled some people off to jail. We laugh and chat, and he’s especially amused with the situation.

Even to the police officer, it was obvious that I wasn’t even kind of blocking his spot. I used maybe two feet at a maximum off of an approximately fifteen foot parking spot. We both laughed at the fact that I even worked here with everyone in the lot, and I just didn’t think any of them would bother calling in a vehicle that wasn’t blocking anything. I mean, our professors are nice? Right? The officer and I laughed a bit at how wrong I was. He asked, “Did he know it was your bike? Did you piss him off sometime recently?” He also got a kick out of the fact that this rediculous ticket came out to $60 freaking bucks.

After it was all unlocked, I sped off to join Sterling and Tyson at Burger King, but not before leaving a note for kind old Mr. Gustafson. It read (more or less, a very close paraphrase):

Dr. Gustafson,

Don’t you think a wheel lock is a little excessive for a vehicle that in no way impeded your ability to use your spot?

I mean, a fine, sure, but a wheel lock doesn’t seem a little excessive to you?

I’ll be sure to remember your kindness and generosity next time you need something from me in a hurry.

Travis Bradshaw

It’s not a very nice letter, but I thought I summed it up pretty well. I mean, I was technically in his spot, and clearly by the thousand dollar bill he paid and the contract he signed, he can have someone come wheel lock me. I’m not saying some great tragedy has taken place and I dutifully paid the fine and drove off.

But the fact remains that I in no way stopped him from parking in his spot. I didn’t slow him down; I didn’t inconvienence him; he didn’t even have to make a second glance towards my cruddy little sport bike. Sure, he paid a thousand dollars for that spot, but I didn’t stop him from enjoying that expensive convience for one second.

Then, out of pure malice, he decides that he must exact revenge my for trivial trespass. He takes time out of his valuable day to call parking services to come to his spot and for compensate himself for this little bit of time he chose to use for vengence, he decides to up the punishment a little bit to drive home the message. The message is clear, of course, “Don’t park in my spot! And I’m a over-reactive, possessive, and territorial jerk!“.

Of course it’s not over. Dr. Gustafson considers my, “I’ll be sure to remember your kindness and generosity next time you need something from me in a hurry,” to be some kind of threat, apparently. So he takes the note to Dr. Wallentine, our department head. I find out today after our meeting regarding the ESSI high school student outreach program when Dr. Wallentine brings up just how pissed off that Dr. Gustafson is, especially about the “threat”.

Dr. Wallentine tries to explain to me that the situation with the parking is touchy with the faculty and they pay a lot of money for those spots, so when I do something minor like that I’m just icing on the cake, more or less. I laugh and clarify that I wasn’t threatening him, but I certainly wasn’t trying to be nice. Dr. Wallentine assures me that it could be interpreted as a threat, and that I should sent Dr. Gustafson an email to let him know that I was not threatening him. “Sure,” I say. Since I didn’t intend to threaten him, I have no problem with sending an email to clarify my position. And I did… this one:

Dr. Gustafson,

Dr. Wallentine has asked me to send you an email to clarify that I did not mean to imply a threat when I stated:

“I’ll remember your kindness and generosity next time you need something from me in a hurry.”

This was not intended to be a threat of any kind. Instead is was a very sarcastic statement meant to imply that wheel locking a vehicle that in no way prevented you from utilizing your spot was a poor reflection on my opinion of your character.

Of course I will continue to perform my job in the department to the best of my ability and to the instructions of my managers, in complete disregard for this incident. I was instead stating that I would put no effort above or beyond that requirement because you don’t seem like a nice person.

I hope that this email will clarify what was a petty insult made in passing, so that you don’t feel threatened in any way. I mean to lay no claim on your safety of any way at all. I just think you were being mean and excessive.

Travis Bradshaw

I’m sure this isn’t the submissive apology that would be preferred, but I’m really not sorry. If I was sorry for anything, it was that I inadvertently made facilities waste some time locking and unlocking my bike. (Though, no doubt they got more than enough money to cover the wages for that little jaunt.)

Though, I have been warned by many people after I left that note that I should watch out for pissing off Dr. Gustafson. Apparently he’s known to fail students that he doesn’t like, and likes to think of himself as the gatekeeper that decides when students should be allowed to gradutate, since he teaches the 540 and 541 senior project classes that finish the major. Super.

This wouldn’t be the first time that being open and honest about my opinions gets me into trouble, but I guess I’ll get to see how much this guy holds a grudge whenever I take those classes. Hopefully he’s a little bit more professional in his teaching than he is generous when it comes to his parking territory out front, heh heh.

I just had another great inspiration for actually doing something with the Boof project that I have been putting off for quite some time now.

After nearly completing a great weekend summary blog, I lost it when I accidently closed the tab.

/* Insert lots of cussing here */

I need that auto-save feature.

For the longest time I’ve had relatively unconventional reading habits. I’ve never been a big reader of fiction books and I rarely find the time to read book that make it onto any kind of big syndicated best seller list.

For the most part I’ve always enjoyed textbook-like technical books, or promenent libertarian readings about political economic philosophy. I’ve even–for the most part–stopped visiting mainstream book stores, because I just never see anything but the same old drivel in the politics or economics sections, and the same old tired reads in the philosophy section.

However, recent blogs from John Fleck on Planet GNOME have gotten me quite interested in a couple of mainstream best sellers.

The one I’ve most recently started lusting over is Freakonomics. This is a book by a highly regarded economist that appears–at least on the surface–to have a very similar world view to mine. Specifically with the regard that economics is (or should be) the study of the way things actually work. The book is filled with observations and conclusions about the world that most people wouldn’t recognize as economics since they don’t have dollar signs or algebra/calculus involved. This fits perfect with my long standing belief that economics is the study of rational decision making in all of it’s varieties.

I’m not sure exactly when I’m going to have any spare money that I can use to purchase the book, but it’s going pretty high on my “wishlist”.

Another text that he’s been mentioning lately that sounds very interesting is Tipping Point. A sentence description from the author would be “Thinking of the world in epidemic terms”. Reading a little about this book reminded me of a conversation that Matt Hoosier and I had at a seminar in Atlanta with Michael Cloud. We were talking about the geniune possibility of any significant libertarian shift in popular thinking and the direction of social change. He was talking about how it only takes a surprisingly small amount of people to start a wave of vast social change. I’m starting to think that he might have read Tipping Point.

Generally, I’ve started to isolate myself a bit from popular media. I haven’t had cable in almost a year, primarily because I just became so absolutely discusted with the news media that I used to enjoy. The recent religious shift in politics killed all of the political coverage and commentary that I used to enjoy, and the general malaise in the markets dulled my interest in CNBC (a previously favorite channel of mine). Any recent mainstream political book I’ve seen has been representative of the biggest crock of logical fallacy reinforcement I could imagine. Generally speaking, I just haven’t felt like anything in the mainstream media has had any value for enjoyment of intellectual endeavor. It’s just been… blah. (I suppose a notable exception to this would be Cartoon Network which continues to improve child and adult entertainment, alike. But as much as I adore animation, it wasn’t enough to hold me with cable or any other mainstream media.)

However, the synopsis of Freakonomics has me kind of excited about a new mainstream title for the first time in a long time. Maybe there is hope?

Oh, and I’ve also added the seventh chapter (I think they’re called Chapters) of Romans to my reading list. Sterling hit me with a couple scripture quotations the other day in #ksucis that piqued my curiousity. Regardless of my cloudy opinions on the infallability of the Bible, I think it would be rediculous not to consider it a valuable tome of wisdom at least as worthy of my curious investigations as any other modern text. And as a added bonus, I already have several bibles I can read without purchasing anything new. Free reading is a huge perk. Heh heh. The Bible… my free-as-in-beer reading. Ah the cute juxtaposition.

So it’s 2:00am on a Saturday night and I’m participating in epitomie of cool. I’m cleaning my room and doing laundry. Oh yeah, you’re jealous.

But really, my room has needed cleaned in a serious way since well before the Jager Olympics and I haven’t yet gotten to it. It’s embarrassed me several times in the past (pretty bad here recently), and so I’ve actually been looking forward to the opportunity to give my room a good cleaning.

The biggest change I’m having the opportunity to make is a rearrange of my closet. Nothing to drastic is in order, but it’s been ages since my closet has been this freaking empty. Pretty much every piece of clothing I can fit on my body is dirty (hence I’m doing laundry as well), and I threw my dress clothes all over the room while I was packing in a hurry to attend Leary’s service. I couldn’t help but see this as an opportunity to rearrage my closet and try to optimize my closet usage.

So far it’s going good. I’ve made drastic moves in arranging t-shirts, reversing the order of my colored shirts and moving a large portion of my “less important” t-shirts to a folded status rather than hanging. (Yes, I order my t-shirts primarily by spectral wavelength and then secondly by preference. I also put all of my books in alphabetical order by author and sort M&M’s before eating them. I gotta be me.)

I’ve also wasted an amazing amount of time–as I always do while cleaning–with distractions of crazy irregularity. Most of my time wasting this time has been reading about The Dresden Dolls, a very interesting band that is currently touring with Nine Inch Nails.

But the most interesting serious of fun connections happened after wisetux left an interesting comment on the blog entry right before this one. Please with his comment, I went to investigate his blog that was linked from the comment.

However, I was kind of unsatisfied that there was no blog history for me to glance over, which seemed odd for a blog without one of those “this is my first blog entry” blah-blah-blah type posts. Quite convienently there was a link to Alan’s livejournal. So I casually meandered over to his livejournal to see what was shakin’.

I’ve never checked out too much of the livejournal stuff, but I noticed that one of his recent entries was a critique on the emphasis of drinking in college. I’m a huge proponent of collegiate drinking (Hell, we’ve made a sport out of it.), so I checked out the full post and the comments on that post. I found a post by Heather, a mutual friend of ours that I met playing pool at Fast Eddy’s quite a long time ago, and another post by a ksubuttercup01 that was more of the same opinion on Aggieville craziness that I am–so I followed to check out ksubuttercup01’s livejournal.

Well holy crap. Right at the top of Ms. ksubuttercup01’s blog is a picture of the “Carnival Girls” with their graduation diplomas. ksubuttercup01 is none other than Kate Collings, the Yankee fan hottie that I jello wrested at the Jager Olympics and have been seeing a little bit ever since.

Huh. Funny how that works. A fellow geek Alan makes a post to my blog, and I end up finding the blog of a seemlingly unconnected friend that I’m more than just a little bit interested in. Craziness.

Now I won’t go into how much time I’ve spent reading Kate’s blog, but it sure has been interesting reading. Heh heh. Now I wonder if she’ll find this and check up on me? I’m pretty damn easy to Google, if Kate know’s my last name, anyway.

While most students have long forgotten about classes and left for whatever summer shinnanigans they have planned, I’m still trying to wrap things up. My departure in the middle of finals week to visit Leary has left it’s mark on my “report card”.

As acheiving a semester GPA of 2.0 is absolutely critical for me this semester, it’s been pretty stressful having it drawn out like this. The “plan” was pretty clear. Based on my poor scheduling for the semester and previous screw-ups, I was going for a straight. An A, B, C, D, and F, right down the line.

Well grades have came out, and I’m close to there with an I, B, C, NR, and F. Here’s the breakdown:

• cis690 - Games Programming - I - This class currently sits at an “incomplete”. There is a final paper and interview that I was supposed to have on Thursday or Friday of finals week. Dr. Wallentine graciously let me postpone the interview while I left for Boston and Connecticut for Leary’s services. I’m currently working on the Dodgeball project even after the semester has completed to prepare it for release. I’ll write more about that at a later time, but I’m hoping that this additional work will seal the “A” that I need desperately from this course.
• arch301 - Architecture Appreciation - B - Dr. Seamon was also incredibly gracious and allowed me to take the final a day early so that I could make my flight in Kansas City on such short notice. Unfortunately this meant that I took the final with absolutely zero studying or preparation. I know that it was bad, and I suspect that Dr. Seamon may have taken my situation into consideration when grading the exam as I completed the course with a perfect 80% for the B. I had a 87% going into the exam, but I really felt poorly about my performance on the exam. I greatly appreciate being able to take it early though.
• cis520 - Operating Systems - C - As expected, my attendence brought me down to a C. My exam scores weren’t exceptional either. I’m okay with this grade though. It’s not going to hurt my chance to acheive the 2.0 that I need this semester, and I really learned a ton. Besides the mediocre grade, if all of Dr. Andresen’s classes are this rewarding, I’m going to have to hunt more of them down.
• econ510 - Intermediate Economics - NR - This is the class that I completely missed the final exam on the Wednesday of finals week. Yasin has offered me an essay exam to make up for the exam that I missed, which I am hugely grateful. I was supposed to take that exam today at 10:30am, but unfortunately Yasin is sick and couldn’t make it here to proctor the exam. I desperately need the “D” from this course, and I need to acheive at least a 50% on the final to hold that D. It really shouldn’t be a problem, to get at least half of the points on an exam, but the importance of the exam is still making me very nervous and stressed out. I hope that we can get the exam taken soon so I can be relieved.
• math551 - Applied Matrix Theory (Linear Algebra) - F - Yeah, I just totally messed up with this class. I’m in 15 hours, down from 18 when I dropped cis505. I should have just dropped this class too, becuase there was just no way that I was going to do all of the homework when I was already overbooked this semester. Lesson learned, I’m not going to “chance” another relatively challenging class that I’m already performing poorly when I could safely drop it. I got greedy when I was ace-ing the exams even without doing any homework at all. Of course without doing the homework later in the semester, those exam grades fell proportionately. (This is one of those Sterling would see from a mile away.)

So there’s the end wrap up. I’m “on schedule” to acheive my 2.0 and “succeed” for the semester. But it’s very close and I’m incredibly nervous about the remaining few weeks of my coursework. Surely I’ll learn my lesson from all this tremendous stress and cut myself a little slack next semester by doing some of the work at the beginning. Surely…

It’s been quite some time since I’ve been back to Manhattan, KS from my visit to Boston and Hamden, CT, but I haven’t hit the blog until now. My delay as been partially due to a a relatively busy schedule (though admittedly full of primarily recreation) and also in a large part because my journal of Leary’s services has been getting so much attention.

I’ve gotten a lot of kind notes, both via comments on the blog entry and from kind instant messages and email. Since it’s helped so many people, I wanted to leave it on the top of the page for easy access for a while.

After arriving home from Chicago on Monday morning, I found my room a bigger disaster than I’ve seen it in a long, long time. It was pretty bad before I had left, but in my rush to pack and race to the airport in Kansas City I had completely demolished it with clean and dirty clothes everywhere, along with trash and refuse to disgusting degrees.

Particuarly bad were the drinks left at my computer desk. While my computer desk is often littered with cups, rarely do they have anything in them (maybe some water). But since I left in such a hurry, I completely forgot about a half filled mug of beer on the desk. By the time the weekend was over and I had returned it was absolutely fowl.

I haven’t yet finished cleaning my room, but I’m really looking forward to the opportunity to get it un-nastied. I think I might do that this weekend.

It’s 7:51pm Eastern, and I’m sitting in a mostly abandoned end of the Boston Logan Airport. My 7:49pm flight has been delayed until 8:35pm. I’ve got plenty of time to kill, so I’m writing this blog entry in advance for posting later when I get home.

Arrival in Connecticut

Hartford, Patrick, and I departed for Hamden, Connecticut Friday around noon. The drive was a couple hours of relatively easy highway miles, and we arrived in plenty of time. Our first order of business was hunting down black dress socks for Patrick and Hartford. Patrick had a friend from college that lived in Hamden, so a quick call for directions was all that was needed to get us to a department store where we could pick up some socks (and Patrick and Hartford picked up some rather nice discount Red Sox merch).

The next task we had was to find a room for the night that we could stay for the night so we could attend the service in the morning. Our first stop in Hamden was sold out, and we discovered that there was a graduation of some kind in Hamden that was booking most of the rooms in town. We fell back to the Holiday Inn in North Haven where we picked up a double bed room for a reasonable price.

After checking in, a quick role call found that I was the only guy on the trip that knew how to iron clothes, so I set about warming up the iron so that I could get the wrinkles out of Hartford and Patrick’s shirts. Though not before I gave the high speed internet access connection a shot to see how expensive it would be to buy internet access at the hotel for the duration that we were in Connecticut. Turns out that the first day was free for all customers. Perfect.

After ironing a couple shirts (adequately), I rushed to put on my suit and get ready to go. It’s been quite some time since I’ve had to wear any of my suits, and I could certainly tell in the sizing. Everything was just a little bit smaller since last time I put it on. Luckily I had remembered these little metal collar extenders that my Mom had bought for me back in El Dorado. That bought me at least another inch in the collar so that everything could fit adequately. I wish I would have gotten a hair cut before I left, but I was forced to just add a little gel and make due with my long hair that had been hiding under a hat for at least a couple months. It was okay though, we all looked nice enough to be more than respectful for the seriousness of the event.

The Wake

Next we went to Sisks Funeral Home in Hamden for the wake. I didn’t know what to expect from a “wake” as I don’t think that I’ve ever been to one before. Turns out they are pretty much the exact same thing as a “viewing” in Kansas. You sign a guest book, view the body, and then share your condolences with the family.

When we first arrived at the funeral home, we were greeted by friends of Leary that were standing outside, milling around, or having a cigarette break. Anthony and Lauren were outside along with a dozen or so friends from Leary’s college years. Soon after greeting Anthony and Lauren, Nils, his girlfriend Jenn, and Dani came out from the funeral home. Everyone was noticeably upset, but still exchanged greetings, hugs, and hand shakes. After a bit of brief conversation Patrick, Hartford, and I went inside to participate in the wake.

I signed the guest book relatively legibly, then put “Ash / Kansas” in parentheses after my name for the two nicknames I have been known by in Boston each time I have visited Leary. Ash from gaming and then “Kansas” was given to me by the regulars at the Peeps. It seemed fitting to put that in the book as well.

Viewing the body was difficult, but not nearly as difficult as it could have been. They had an excellent photo of Leary from college on display. This was great, because an excellent photo of Leary is very hard to come by. He never liked having his photo taken in virtually any circumstance. (I later asked for a copy of the photograph and received one from Mr. Leary, Leary’s father.) The casket itself was closed. This was a bit of a blessing for me, because I knew that I was absolutely and completely unprepared for viewing the body of my good friend. I was going to lose it, but closed casket saved me in that regard. Apparently it was a necessity, as Leary had been gone for a couple days before Martha and Patrick found his body on the floor of his apartment earlier this week.

…

My time for writing at the Boston Logan airport expired, as my delayed flight finally departed around 9:00pm. After lift-off I’ve resumed this blog from my first class seat on the way to Chicago. This marks the first time that I’ve ever flown in first class, a necessity due to the limited flights available on such short notice. However, after flying to Boston in a coach middle seat next to fat guy, it’s nice to be in a recliner having a grilled chicken in red pepper sauce with a complimentary bloody mary and water.

…

After taking a moment for prayer with Leary, it was time to move down the line to share condolences with the family. All three of us had talked initially about the expected awkwardness of meeting Leary’s family for the first time in such dire circumstances. I introduced myself to Mr. and Mrs. Leary and was very pleased when Mrs. Leary had remembered hearing about me from my visits to Boston. She shared with me her memory of Leary being worried that he wouldn’t have enough time to spend with me over the St. Patrick’s Day weekend because of deadlines he was facing at work. I assured her that he had done just fine balancing his time and that we had a great time over the weekend. She was very happy to see me. Leary’s oldest sister and especially his brother were quite grateful that I had traveled from Kansas to be at the services on such short notice. Leary’s other older sister was unable to stop crying after talking with Patrick and Hartford and only started crying heavier when she realized who I was and that I had flown in all the way from Kansas. Or at least that’s how it seemed. I simply gave her a hug and moved on rather than waiting to talk. I didn’t really want to join the ranks of crying mourners if I could avoid it and I was already having a lot of trouble keeping myself together from meeting the family.

We soon went back outside of the funeral home to join or friends from the People’s for shared conversation. More guests came and went, including Robert and Mary, the owners of the People’s Republik pub. Hours passed before we left the funeral home and departed for the hotel. It was a generally positive experience, with some good stories shared regarding Leary and some difficult tears shed. Most of the visitors from the People’s went back to Cambridge leaving Hartford, Patrick, and I to return to the hotel.

Friday Night and the Next Morning

After returning to the hotel and changing clothes, we swung by a Cingular store that I had spotted from the highway so that I could buy a car charger for my phone (I had forgotten mine in a rush to leave Kansas) and then headed into Hamden to a local pizza shop that Jed (Patrick’s good friend) had recommended and even joined us at for dinner. I got a the house special pizza that was a spinach and riccota pizza, and tried a bit of Hartford’s veal parm. We also made a visit to the liquor store and picked up some drinks for back at the hotel room.

We returned to the hotel room and found ourselves exhausted. While it wasn’t late by any stretch, the combination of intense emotion and little or no sleep was wearing on us significantly. Martha and Laura arrived at the hotel not long after we returned, and we all sat around and relaxed with a few drinks. Soon we decided to go to sleep and prepare for another difficult day.

The night was a difficult sleep. The uncomfortable hotel floor made for poor comfort on an already painful night of restless sleep. Thankfully the bottom end of the hotel comforter from Hartford’s bed fell down towards the end of the night making for a brief comfort aid before the intruding sunlight warned of a coming alarm. I was nominated for first shower very early in the morning, since I take so long to prepare myself in the morning. I had no objections, as a long shower was exactly what I wanted.

We checked out and departed from the hotel around 9:00am and started making our way back to Sisk Funeral Home to join the procession to St. Rita’s Church where the service was to take place. We stopped at Starbuck’s on the way to pick up some morning caffeine and met Martha there before traveling to the funeral home.

The Service

The funeral home provided a valet parking service and registration for the procession vehicles as we arrived. We calmly waited inside and I took the opportunity to separate myself from the group and quietly consider the situation from a solitary chair on one side of the furnished room that Leary’s remains were currently resting in. The seriousness and somberness of the event was at it’s apex during the tense wait at the funeral home, and that tenseness was magnified as the funeral home made an announcement, “Would you please prepare yourself for departure.”

They then began calling off names in the order in which they had prepared the vehicles outside. It was a strange and awkward moment as groups quietly waited for their name to be called from the hallway and then promptly left the room. It emptied significantly before Patrick, Hartford, and I were called to depart leaving the family alone with Mr. and Mrs. Leary praying at the casket in the front of the room. It was nearly more than I could take and I felt relief when I was dismissed from the room and could escape into the less somber and more practical task of loading a vehicle and leaving.

While outside waiting for the car to arrive, I was briefly surprised when someone to the right of me said, “If I snuck up and bit you would you recognize me?” It was Schene “Aggs”, another gaming friend that I hadn’t seen since August of 2000 and only spoke to online rarely. He had driven in from New Jersey and was joining the procession to the funeral service. It was great to see him, especially after so long. I was also concerned about how easily it would have been to get information to him since he was more distant from the current QuakeCon crew, but it was of great importance since I knew that he and Leary were great friends. I was also happy to not be the only “online friend” that had made it to the service.

After the procession arrived at St. Rita’s my joy was extended when Joel “Nok” and his wife Tara were standing in the parking lot preparing to enter the church. We exchanged greetings and it was again great to see Nok and his wife. We then joined a line of mourners as we all entered the church.

Mass

The service was a catholic mass, something that I have very little knowledge of but great respect for in regards to funeral services. Each catholic funeral that I have attended have always been positive experiences where the ritualistic nature and formal surroundings have left me with an impression of great respect for the departed and the departed’s family. This service was no exception. Some notable moments included: the musical selections performed by an elderly man that Leary would have hated, a superb liturgy delivered by a monsignor that personally knew the Leary family and spent holidays with Mikey, and the sharing of an annual award that was created at his junior high (in his 6th grade) for the student that “gets along with everyone” that is still awarded to this day. We all smiled at the ridiculousness of an award like that for Leary. Not that Leary wasn’t nice to everyone, but he had such a small and rigorously selected group of “real” friends that it was funny to think of him as a “buddy of everybody” as a kid. None of us were surprised that he had never mentioned that award in conversation with any of us.

I found the service very difficult at times and caught myself silently weeping on several occasions. This was especially true when the monsignor would emphasize how young Leary was or how short of a time that he had spent with us. It was already incredibly difficult to comprehend exactly what had been lost when Leary died, but it became unbearable when the repetition of his youth underlined the tragedy of the entire situation. This was clearly a service that shouldn’t have been happening, a situation that should have never came to such an extreme, and a horrible tragedy that radiates in a way that only a preventable death can. Watching the casket getting wheeled out was also difficult, mainly because of the finality it represented.

After the service I stopped to chat with Aggs and Nok and their SO’s. I bid farewell to Nok and Tara who left to return to New York and expressed his condolences and appreciation of me flying out. I appreciated him coming just as much.

Burial

We then attempted to join the procession to the All Saints Cemetery in North Haven where Leary was to be put to rest. I say attempted, because we missed it. Through luck and some good ad hoc navigation by Patrick and Hartford had us joined up with the procession before it actually arrive at the All Saints, though, so we ended up arriving fine.

The All Saints Cemetery is huge and beautiful. It has no headstones and instead utilizes plaques at ground level. The effect is a serene and comforting, rolling green field, marked with beautiful sculpture of all of the saints, the stations of the cross, occasional trees and building facilities of classic beauty. The onsite services were touching and marked with challenging moments like that of nieces and nephews choosing flowers from the arrangements to give to family as keepsakes. The burial service finish and the majority of the crowd remained motionless in solemn private moments of parting. Gradually the crowd thinned and began to move back to their vehicles. The family had provided directions to the reception and those directions had been placed under the wiper of the cars from the procession.

We took quite a while to leave as each of the members of our group had a large emotion investment and took a significant amount of time to attain a personal closure with the event. The crane had already arrived, the decorations removed, and the burial process underway, before we were prepared to leave.

I shared a moment with Aggs before rejoining Hartford and Patrick to follow Anthony and Lauren to the reception.

The Reception

The reception facility was an Irish pub called The Playwright back in Hamden. It was a very nice pub that also had banquet facilities. Everyone from our group immediately went to the bar to begin, and then joined the reception group in the banquet facilities that included a nice indoor dining room and an outdoor deck. We set up camp on the deck and began drinking before Mr. Leary came out and offered a reminder to have some of the food that was prepared for the event.

I went back to the car and changed clothes, let Aggs know that we were out on the deck and asked him to join us, and then had a third plate of food. The reception continued with great stories of escapades with Leary. There were stories from college, stories from QuakeCons, stories from my trips up for St. Patty’s day, lost of stories from the People’s, and more memories than I can commit to paper.

Chatting with Mr. and Mrs. Leary (Cause of Death)

I wanted to share with Mr. and Mrs. Leary how much I had appreciated Leary’s friendship and their hospitality. Once again i was flattered with how nice Mrs. Leary was and how she immediately recognized me by name and shared what few stories she had heard of me from Leary. As she put it, “Leary never mentioned last names or talked to much about his friends. He never wanted us to check up on him.” Sounds exactly like Leary and I had to chuckle. She expressed how she was drawing strength in this shocking and painful time from the friends of Leary’s that had came from so far to join in the services.

I also had a bit of an agenda. I knew that many of our friends in #quakecon and online were still grasping with the tragedy of the news and didn’t have the powerful experience of wake, funeral service, and reception to bring closure to the anguish. Instead, it had become clear that information was the salve that those online friends were looking for, specifically in a cause of death. Without personal daily knowledge of Leary’s life, his death was a complete and unexpected shock, one that had seemingly come without any reason or explanation. So I had to ask Mrs. Leary, why was Mata gone?

The reply was simple, “It looks like the extra weight and the stress did it.” She explained that the examinations so far as revealed that the death was due to ‘natural causes’, which is to say it wasn’t a suicide, murder, or accidental death. The most likely reason was some kind of heart failure, though the details are still sparse. The family has not yet received a death certificate with an official cause of death from the coroner.

…

The first half of my journey home came to an end as I landed at Chicago O’Hare. Much to my dismay, the delays in Boston took a turn for the worst. By the time I had landed in Chicago, my flight for Kansas City had already left. They have booked me for a flight to Kansas City that leaves tomorrow morning around 8:15am.

…

Speaking with Mr. Leary was more difficult. He expressed his concern that this was a completely avoidable death, that Leary just wouldn’t listen on getting a hold of some things, and that he wishes he could kick him in the ass. I completely agree with Mr. Leary, and I can’t imagine how difficult this is for the family. It’s been a nightmare for Leary’s friends, it must be a hundred times worse for his parents.

On the Deck

We end up staying well past the end of the reception, but Mr. Leary assured us that we should stay as long as we want on his tab, as that’s what Mikey would have wanted. And we did stay for several more rounds sharing stories of Leary and our times with him. Hours after everyone else was gone, Patrick, Hartford, Laura, Aggs, Aggs’ girlfriend, Rose, Rose’s friend and myself were still chatting and having a good time remembering all of the ridiculously good times we had together with Leary. In the end we all had a Woo-Woo shot in honor of Leary and went our separate directions.

Closing Thoughts

I went back to Boston, enjoyed a fun night with Nils and Jenn, went to a house party, back to the People’s, drank there until 6am, and then went back to Patrick’s for the night. It’s all over now, and there are lots of things to think about.

First, when it comes to Mike “stigmata” Leary. The reasons we became friends are pretty simple to discern, we hit it off because we have a lot in common. We were both interested in gaming, Quake, and QuakeCon. We’re both computer science guys, coders, and programmers. We have similar taste in music, both huge fans of Nine Inch Nails and similar music, etc. But the reason we were such great friends over time was because of something else we have in common. We’re both honest. That’s a relatively rare quality, real honesty, but Leary had it in spades. That’s the trait that I appreciated most from him. I truly believe you can tell the quality of a person’s character by the depth of their honesty, and Leary never disappointed.

In no small part due to that honesty, Leary had an amazing ability to discern good people, or “good peeps” as he used to call it. He drew to him and surrounded himself with good people, ones that can be trusted. If Leary said someone was his friend, you didn’t have to worry about second guessing his judgement, that person should be your friend too.

In short, Leary was an amazing person. He was intellegent, witty, charming, and honest. His laughter was contagious and really betrayed his kind inner-personality, even if he was rough around the edges to those that didn’t know him well. He was a friend for life.

I also have been reminded how many good friends I’ve made through Leary in Cambridge thanks to my annual visits. Everyone there is just amazing. I’m constantly stunned at just how welcome and at home they make me feel when I come to visit every year and especially this visit. I’ve been urged to not stop coming up to visit, and several of my closest friends there are even considering a trip to Kansas to visit some of these crazy Bunker parties I’ve been telling stories about. There’s no doubt that Leary surrounded himself with great people, and by having him as one of my best friends I’ve also been blessed with knowing those same great people. The same thing holds true for a lot of my friends in QuakeCon that I got to know better because of Leary.

I don’t know how much my life will change with Leary gone. I know that it isn’t nearly as painful for me as it is for my friends in Cambridge. While I talked to Leary at least once every couple days, he was an integral part of their every day. Rather than a quick but rough recovery, I think I have a longer and more sporadic mourning process ahead of me. Most of my days will be exactly the same as when he was here, only when I leap to the keyboard and want to tell Leary of the latest news, he won’t be there. And when something interesting, fun, or important happens in Cambridge, I probably won’t find out. Most of the time I’m just fine, and then every once in a while it hits like a ton of bricks. There’s no mistake that I’ll be missing Leary for the long, long time.

I apologize for any typos, grammatical errors, or screwed up names in this post. It’s been a difficult weekend, and I’m just not up to the task of proofreading something of this size. But I hope that this post helps some of my online friends that desperately wanted to attend the services in Connecticut, but couldn’t on such short notice. It’s not the same as being there, but this write up was the best I could do. Feel free to email andy corrections to me and I’ll get things fixed up as soon as I can. Which will be a while, because I’ll be sleeping in a cold airport terminal for a while before I get back home.

I recieved the IM from Patrick just before my cis520 final that let me know that the Leary’s wake was 4pm-7pm on Friday in Connecticut, and the service was in the morning on Saturday. He also let me know Dani’s number so I could get more information.

While it killed my last chance to study before the cis520 final, there wasn’t much time to act. I started the hurried task of trying to find flight reservations from Kansas City to Boston such that I could attend the services. The latest flight from Kansas City to Boston was 6:59pm.

Then I went about the task of trying to find a way to fit all of my finals in to the next two hours, so I could make the flight. I took the cis520 exam as fast as I could and make an honest effort at every problem. It wasn’t hard to save time, since I hadn’t studied a single bit since the news about Leary’s death.

Dr. Seamon’s offered to let me take the arch301 final at 3:00pm, just one hour after the start of my cis520 final and just five minutes after I had completed it. I ran to Seaton and took the arch301 final to the best of my ability. Which is to say I did kind of poorly. I had planned to study arch301 tonight (Thursday) since the test wasn’t until Friday. However, I figured that taking the test completely cold was better than not taking the test at all.

I went directly from Seaton into a dead sprint to Leisure, where my economics instructor, Yasin, had asked to see me regarding my previously missed final. He graciously offered me a rigorous essay exam as a replacement for my missed final. Even more blessed, he informed me that it wouldn’t be today or tomorrow. I let him know that was perfect, because I was leaving soon due to the death of a friend.

After talking with Yasin I gave Dani a call to find out more of the details, and she forwarded me a copy of an email from Leary’s Mom that had the service arrangements. I kind of started to lose it after talking to Dani. I’d been so busy, but after the stress of taking two finals in two hours and then a tense discussion for a third, it was just getting to be a little too much. I quickly pulled myself together however, as the next task was at hand. I needed tickets, and to get to KC fast enough to use them.

I raced home from campus on my Ninja, which was a painful experience due to a nice rain that had set in, and went to my room to start packing. I enlisted Dave as my travel agent, tossed him my credit card and my ID and asked him to find me the latest, cheapest flight to Boston he could and that I’d be leaving immediately. He rounded me up a perfect flight itenerary, but then was stumped when Orbitz would only allow purchases 6 hours in advance. So I had him round up American Airline’s number for me, and I hit the road.

And by the time I hit the road, it was pouring down rain. I don’t have defrosters right now, so I was trying to drive as fast as possible in a torrential downpour through foggy windows. Then I added to this, calling American Airlines to purchase tickets while not missing a beat. Well, I almost made it, but I ended up pulling over for a little bit so that I could write down the terminal and gate number for the departing flight.

On the way to KC I called my Mom to let her know I was leaving, and text messaged Dad. I raced as fast as I could, when I ran into problems on the Turnpike. I didn’t have $2. This time, I didn’t even have my check book. So I stopped at the rest stop just before the Eastern Terminal and hit the ATM, never even turning off my Jeep in the parking lot.

The real clincher was when I got to the airport, and was cutting it too close to get the cheap parking. I’m currently paying $10 a day, twice the economy rate, just so I could be within running distance from the terminal.

And run I did. I sprinted for what seemed like eons to gate 77, just in time to get my boarding pass and jog onto the plane. Thankfully it had been delayed by about 5 minutes.

I didn’t get to leave KC that easily though. The huge storm that I had raced through and beat to Kansas City ended up catching back up to me by the time our plane was due to take off. So we sat on the runway… for about an hour. I had a chance to talk to some friends via text messages, but then it was off to Chicago.

The Chicago landing was tense. The connecting flight had been delayed, but there were still only 10 minutes left before it departed. A couple other connecting passengers and I started a long sprint across the Chicago airport to catch the connecting flight. I was happy to make the connection, but saddened at the loss of my layover. I hadn’t had a chance to eat at all today, and was hoping to eat in Chicago.

I landed in Boston at 1:05am, more or less on schedule, and called Patrick for a lift. A Dunkin’ Donuts was open, so I pigged out on like three donuts and a muffin. I also had a couple really nice voice mails from friends that had found out why I left in a hurry. Unfortunately I had forgotten my phone charger in my rush, so calling everyone back wasn’t an option. I needed to save the batteries for getting my ride. While I was waiting for my ride is when I realized the other thing I had forgotten… a jacket.

Patrick picked me up around 2am, and gave me a ride back to his place to crash in his spare bedroom. It was good to see him again and we shared some miscellaneous goofy stories, and then some slightly more serious stories regarding Leary.

Hartford, Patrick, and I are leaving for Connecticut tomorrow around noon and getting a room there to stay for the service on Saturday. I’ve checked my email and chatted with friends a bit, just to relax before bed. I also sent an email to Dr. Wallentine regarding my cis690 final interview that I haven’t done yet. I hope he’ll be understanding about me skipping town on him until next week, he seems like the type that will.

Anyway, I don’t know what my internet connection will be like in Connecticut over the next couple days or if I’ll find a place to buy another cell phone charger, so I might be out of touch. It’s going to be a pretty rough weekend.

The last two hours or so have been surreal. I received a call from Hartford around 11:45pm tonight to inform me that Leary had passed away.

It took a bit to sink in, and I certainly think I asked Hartford if he was “kidding” or something several times. He relayed the story that no one had seen him for a couple days, so they called the cops. When the cops checked his apartment they found him there, dead. Hartford was understandably brief, and we ended the call just about as abruptly as it started.

I sat in shock for a second, then went to the private channel on IRC that Leary started to see if anyone was around. I caught erwin there (who’s currently in Iraq) and shared the news. He was as stunned as me and asked if there was any way that we could call someone up there and verify. I hadn’t really thought of that (I think I liked it better when it was deniable) so I gave Patrick a call. He was able to confirm the story and let me know that he would call me later with more details when they find out more.

As of now, cause of death and such is unknown. It’s too early for obituary pages or anything, so it’s been a slowly growing group of friends “in the know” for the three hours or so that I’ve known. After talking to erwin online, I started working the phones to let more friends know. I called EJ in Austin, Mel in Denver, then left a message (to call back) with Nok in New York. I called Alric in California and got the number for Dean in Mississippi. Then I called Wino in Chicago, to let him know as well.

After those calls, EJ called Mysh in New Jersey, and said he would call Rao and Conq in Atlanta. Erwin mentioned he was going to send a line to Aggs. Wendigo from Texas and Thrax from Quebec stopped in the channel soon after that to hear the news. It wasn’t long before word spread and I got a couple calls soon after, includng one from BedMan in Colorado.

I’m going to call Patrick again tomorrow to see if I can find out some more information. I want to find out the funeral plans as soon as possible, so I can get plane tickets bought to attend the service. Some of the guys were also asking where to send flowers and stuff.

Out of all the QuakeCon staff that knew Leary well, I think I’m the only one that knew his close friends in Cambridge. This has kind of put me in the place of a sort of official information conduit for the entire QuakeCon community. It’s an awkward position, but I’m doing my best to keep in touch with the huge group of close friends we have strewn all over the country.

Previously I had been wondering if I liked the idea of having all of my finals at the end of the week instead of towards the beginning. Now I’m really wishing that they were already over, because I have no idea how I’m going to concentrate tomorrow and the next day to accomplish anything of merit.

But for now, I’m having a few Woo-Woos. One of the drinks I was introduced to by Leary when I first visited Cambridge years ago.

Rest in Peace, Leary. I love ya, man.

For I don’t know how many semesters in a row now, I’ve made a mistake reading the final schedule. However, while each time in the past I showed up a day early for my final… this time I’ve missed one.

Yup, that’s right. My 11:50am final in econ510 happened without me this morning. I was still lying in bed, mostly asleep between coughing in that lovely fashion I’ve described before.

This is undeniably a Bad Thing. I was right “on the line” before with my grade, and a zero on the multiple choice portion of the exam will no doubtedly ensure a failing grade in the class. So I’ve sent an email to Yasin hoping that he’ll have something that I can do to get some of the points from the final. There was take home portion of the final that I have already completed and turned in, so hopefully that will help.

I don’t know. Things are not looking good. I can only hope for some mercy from Yasin, which is something that he’s already shown a lot of to me over the semester.

Update: So it doesn’t look too good. I’ve gotten a reply back from Yasin that pretty much just reminded me that it was all in the syllabus, but that he’d talk to his department head to see what he said. I replied back to let him know that I realize (now) that it was in the syllabus, and that I just completely messed up and am looking for a bit of mercy from him or hopefully his department head.

We’ll see what happens. But it’s not looking good.

It’s a balmy 80 degrees outside today, definitely the weather to shed the jeans and start wearing shorts. Unfortunately I’ve recently found that I don’t really have any shorts. That is, I’ve gotten too fat for almost all of the shorts that I had last summer (though I have a feeling they were probably getting to be a little small back then too).

It looks like I’m going to have to do some clothes shopping in the very near future, something that I don’t really like to do on my own. I feel another Wal-Mart trip is eminent.

Summer isn’t quite here yet, but if I’m lucky the summer was foreshadowed tonight. Right now I’m typing this blog entry from out on our deck in front of a nice open fire in the firepit. I’m surrounded by friends, all drinking beer, while JD Hillen and Chase Thayer jam out on acoustic guitars.

That’s right, we’re having a campfire moment, at 3am, cooking smores, and telling stories on a Tuesday night. Oh yeah, and I’m on my laptop with a cable ran from inside. I love this place.

I’m almost thankful that I slept all day to escape a horrible sinus induced headache, because now I’m awake to hang out here, and I won’t even be late tomorrow. Excellent.

Man, I hate my nose.

I’ve been fighting a bit of a sinus infection since early last week, and it appears that I’m going to lose.

Warning, the remaining portion of this post is going to be graphic. Don’t read if you have a weak stomach. Seriously, it’s gross. Don’t read this if you’re going to think less of me after reading about me describing an illness in gory detail.

I’ve historically had problems with sinus infections. A bacterial infection of the sinus cavities is something that happens to just about everyone now and then, but luckly can be stamped right out with some perscription antibiotics. But there-in lies the rub. I’m allergic to pretty much all of the mainstream antibiotics, with a pretty significant likelihood of being allergic to the rest. And not allergic in a small way, allergic in a “move back home to live with my RN mom for 24 hour care and nearly daily visits to the physician for diagnostic treatment” kind of way. So, long story short, I won’t be taking any antibiotics.

So the result is a long standing sinus infection that just continues to beat the crap out of me every night and morning. I’m to the point now where the mucus that I managed to dislodge and spit out is completely opaque and stunningly yellow. It’s more like spitting out a coagulated ball of rotton mayonaise than a “loogie” or any kind. The sinus cavities have become a bit pressurized, leading to minor headaches due to pressure. Nothing migraine-ish, but bad enough that I’m trying to keep tabs on things to make sure they don’t get to bad. Wouldn’t want a skull fracture or anything.

In the meantime I spend my mornings periodically suffocating as large balls of hardened mucus roll back onto my trachial “door” thingie and choke me. I promptly cough it up and spit it out into absolutely discusting “spit cups” strategically placed around my room. The time not spent “spitting” is spent with a mild to medium nausea, induced from the copious amounts of disgusting mucus that I’ve accidently devoured in failed loogie attempts that resulted in quick “swallow or die” scenarios.

After as much sleep as I can get between nauseous spats, I get up and begin to prepare myself for the day. Lots of the pre-described heinously disgusting hacking up and spitting as I try to sit up for increasingly long periods of time without booting. I then queue up some music and start a very long shower that emphesizes steam as a decongestant. After the shower, more time is spent spitting and blowing my nose to rid myself of as much of the dislodged mucus as possible.

After blowing my nose, I end up nauseous and dizzy, so I sit down for a while and start to rehydrate and down a Drixoral (miracle decongestant). After about an hour of hacking up the results of the Drixoral out and drinking lots of fluids to combat the dry and course throat from coughing up so much crap, I’m just about ready to leave my room and face the day.

I have a small lunch–as the ol’ stomach is generally about half full of snot at any given time–stuff a couple ibeprofin in my pocket for headaches, and zip off to do whatever it is that needs to be done.

At this point, I’d almost be willing to give the antibiotics a shot and see if I can make it. But I’ll probably kick this sinus infection in a week or so more of my “morning rituals”, while the antibiotics might put me down for four to eight months. I think I better just stick it out.

I’m actually spending a lot of money on Gatorade trying to stay hydrated, which is pretty annoying. I mean, the Gatorade is good stuff, but I’m probably spending close to five dollars a day in beverages. I should probably just carry a water bottle everywhere, but I really like how the Gatorade covers the nasty taste some of the snot balls have, heh heh.

The plus side is that the late afternoons to early nights are pretty tolerable. I end up having a pretty average day between those times and I don’t appear overly sick. I sound sick when I speak, due to all of the harshness on the throat and the thick mucus messing up the vocal chords.

But I’ve been worse, so I’m still optimistic.

It’s been a little while since I’ve updated the blog. Mainly it’s been one of my back-log type scenarios. There’s been lots going on, but since I haven’t blogged about the Jäger Olympics yet, I just hadn’t gotten around to writing any of it down.

I’ve been working on the Jäger Olympic write up, and I’m almost finished. I completed the “Happenings” section today (while sick at home) and hope that I can get most of the event results up soon. The Jäger Olympics was just the most amazing party that we’ve had to date, and I couldn’t have hoped for a better result.

Between the cook-out that started the day, the shot-putting in the yard, the beer bong races, and (of course) the jello wrestling, I just couldn’t have hoped for much better of a year-end party.

Well, that’s somewhat of a lie. After every single party we ever have, we immediately dig right into what we can do improve and what we can add to make the parties run even more smooth. This was no exception to the rule. But everyone was incredibly happy with the results. It’s fun to know that we’re money enough to pull of Jello Wrestling in a big big way.

Most of the Jäger Olympic wrap up stuff I’ll be doing over at The Bunker’s website, but I figured I would add my own personal thoughts here on my blog. Makes sense to the point of being obvious, I guess.

The weekend was really more than a college student can handle. We had Relay for Life on Friday night, followed by the Jäger Olympics on Saturday. I didn’t even know until the weekend was over how much I had pushed aside other responsibilities to make sure that the Jäger Olympics went off without a hitch. Though, regardless of the grade hit I might have taken in my economics class by missing that homework deadline… it was worth it.

As I look back at another year here at K-State, this party summed it all up for me with perfection. It had my most of my great friends helping out–including even Mel from Boulder, it had craziness–like me in a giant jello wrestling arena, it had excitement–like when the girls I had the hots for all showed up (plural… yeah… that might have got me in trouble), it had the potential to be legend, and it had heavy drinking with my best friends at the end.

Now that it’s all over, I’m doing damage control with my grades and stuff. Thankfully, it looks like I’m going to pull it off. While I’m a little sad that some of my best friends are going to be graduating and leaving, I can’t help but think that we really did this year Right. And that next year can be even better. Better for the grades, better for the fun, better for everything.

The life of a college student has a lot of ups and downs. But it’s just nice to be really happy for a bit.

I suppose I’ll kill that and go study for finals now.