For your reading pleasure...

Cindi Textor's bare soul.

I had sort of an emotional afternoon today, when I attended a reception for Scheide scholars (the Sheide scholarship is one of the awards I got from Princeton). I got to meet a bunch of the people responsible for giving me the opportunity to come to Princeton. I spent a fair amount of time talking to one of the Scheides from the class of '36 because he grew up in Titusville, a town about 20 miles from Corry. Everything was going fine; we just made small talk for a while. Then, all of the sudden, of Princeton he asked, "Do you like it here?" I took a moment, trying to find the words to answer, but could only break down in tears. Poor guy...

But I guess that pretty much sums up how I feel. There are no words for how much I love it at Princeton. I savor every breath I take from when I get up in the morning to when I go to sleep...also in the morning.

I wish the same for all of you, wherever you are, and wherever you go.

Cracks me up.

I feel like I've accomplished something in life.

So there's a chip in one of the steps in 1939, and today building maintenence finally got around to fixing it. Stopping in the middle, they left an orange construction cone duct taped to that part of the step so that people wouldn't step on it. However, the cone completely covered the chip, so it appeared to be just a random cone that some jackass had duct taped to the stairs.

This evening, three people on my hall independently asked me why I duct taped a cone to the stairs. They had no evidence that it was me, save their assumption that the only way a cone could have been duct taped to the steps was that Cindi Textor must have done it.

I have never been more proud of a conclusion drawn about me.

Same day, different post.

And why not?

On the way to Erie, just outside of Corry, I saw this billboard, paint chipping, bearing the following message:

JESUS A FRIEND CLOSER THEN A BROTHER

Disrepair? Check.
Probable lack of tolerance for all things not white, American, Christian, Republican, etc? Check.
Spelling and/or grammatical errors? Check.

Yep, it's official. This billboard sums up everything about my childhood home.

One other thing I forgot. Given the random nature of BoI, I need to remember to gloat while I'm on top. That said...um...I'm on top. Ha!

News from the Homeland

Only about an hour left at home before heading back to campus. I guess it's been a relatively decent stay, but I'm dying to get back. Let's see...what did I do this past week...?

Well, the old man's been milking my uncle's cows this week, so I got to roll some cows up into my life. I even got to work on trucks for a bit, for old time's sake, working a few muscles I haven't used in a while. And aside from about half a game of pinochle, that's about all the quality time I got to spend with my dad. Maybe it's the early mornings or something, but he just wasn't very pleasant this week. I got a lot of "Why aren't you going to church," and "You should be going to bed and getting up earlier," and "My daughter is a democrat. Woe is me." He might as well say, "Why can't you be more like your little brother?" I mean, I can see his point. Success and personal satisfaction aren't everything, and while Keith may not be setting the world on fire in homeschool, at least he hates gays. Perhaps this is why I don't feel guilty for staying on campus a couple extra days during the breaks.

*Funny note: At the end of this bitter rant, I wrote an html style closing tag for the bitter rant, and the blogger got all confused and angry. My bad.

Those few frustrating moments aside, it wasn't a bad visit home. Paid the ol' high school a visit. Ha ha, suckers! You thought you were rid of me! I'm pretty sure I broke about eight rules while I was there. It was just like the old days: wandering aimlessly about the halls during class without a pass, disrupting what little bit of learning might have been going on, playing fake Scrabble with the Todd. It was a close grudge match. I took an early lead with words like "mint'd" and "saste," and was looking totally dominant when I got "yokozuna" on there, but he took the lead when he turned it into a fork that said yokozuna/Yoko Ono. Fortunately, I pulled ahead again by grabbing the Q and sticking it on the triple letter score square. Zing! Ah, high school...the only thing more pointless and repetitive than laundry. Administrators, you can relax. CAHS should be safe from burnination for a while.

I guess the only other highlight was today. My mom's the champion of cheesy home movies, and her most recent creation was a recording of the baby shower she threw for my cousin. Just for background information, and because it's hilarious, the father is an illegal Mexican alien, with whom she worked for some time at a Taco Bell in Kentucky. Anyway, before I know what's happening, the video, which I had wanted to avoid watching at all costs, begins to play. Nice title screen, it's beginning pretty calmly, and BAM! Loud, obnoxious latin music. I feel like I'm sitting in Chi Chi's. Way to be subtle, Mom. Oh, and in exchange for being allowed to smear my mother's name all over the internet, I'm supposed to say that the footage was really high quality.

Well, time to pack for campus! Zw00t.

A Very Merry Shonichi.

Yeah, it's six in the morning. Just finished watching a post-sumo sunrise. What do I do? Blog.

Spring break is off to a wonderful start after a not entirely stressful midterms week. After monday, I had only one midterm left, so I became completely worthless for the rest of the week since the Japanese midterm didn't have me super stressed out (to say the least). It feels great to waste some time, and I'm getting remarkably good at it.

I filled quite a few of those empty hours with poker, at which I've been doing really well as of late. Sandhya and I rocked the Wilson casino night and scored a Lost in Translation dvd, and the following weekend I won two big tournaments in a row. Fun wow.

However, I do have something to offer in compensation for my being a complete degenerate. I started training for a 5K. I've never done one before, and I've never been a very solid runner, but I've been running with my roommate a little, and the 5K seems very doable. So excited. I've never done something so physical before.

At any rate, enough with all that lame crap.

It's Haru Basho!

So I implemented my plot to make chanko (sumo stew) for the other members of BoI, being that I'm a shindeshi, and that's what shindeshi do. Definitely didn't do a stellar job, but the stuff was edible, and I think that if I did it again I could do much better. In any case, it worked perfectly. Showed up fashionably late, had them all wondering where the hell I was, and then burst onto the scene with friggin' chanko. I was instantly promised a special prize. I'm hoping for fighting spirit.

To top off a wonderful evening, I beat Kratville in my first bout. It was a hardcore trash talk battle to the very end, when it all came down to a single bout. Now, no matter how I do for the rest of the basho, he'll never live that one down. All in all, a very productive Shonichi...and that not having cracked a book.

Spring break is good.

It lives!

I just smacked my dead calculator really hard and it came back to life!

Now watch it crap out on me in the middle of my physics midterm.

Okay. Back to math now (for which I will never need a calculator).

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.

There were midterms right around the corner; the sumo season officially began with the release of this basho's banzuke (rankings). There was good news about the summer; there was bad news about my favorite calculator. E-commerce had blessed Fort Dod with Karaoke revolution, e-commerce had dealt me the big screw, and no snowman was safe.

So yeah. My day to day life isn't random at all.

This big news of late is that I'm quite likely travelling to Japan this summer. I applied for Princeton's summer program, at which I'd basically just be taking a year of Japanese in two months, at the same time immersed in Japanese culture. The other day at the language table, Makino-sensei, the coolest little Japanese guy ever (he imitated shiko at the table, come on) who's also in charge of decision making for Princeton in Ishikawa, asked me when I'm buying my plane ticket for Japan. Good news. Also, I'm pretty confident that I'll be able to grab enough financial aid to make the trip feasable. I'm told that even if the East Asian Studies department doesn't give me as much as I need, there are other sources of funds that I can take advantage of if need be. Wow. I've never been overseas, and the prospect is exciting to say the least. I mean, it's Japan! I can ride the frictionless subway in Tokyo and watch senshuraku live in Nagoya!

So anything else I could write about is dull by comparison, but I feel like I should explain the random crap from the beginning of the post.

• It's midterms week next week. Booh!
• The banzuke came out on monday, and since nobody cares, I'll add that I was shocked to see Kotooshu at Komosubi, since he was predicted to be at M2 or M1 tops. That makes him tied for the record for fastest rise to the sanyaku. Ha! I just wasted ten seconds of your life.
• My roommate asked me a question about torques tonight, and in order to demonstrate a point, I grabbed a random object from my desk, namely, my favorite calculator. This baby's been with me since high school algebra. During said demonstration, I dropped it and it broke. In the five stages of grief, I'd say I'm still in denial. Every once in a while I stare blindly at the screen whilst repeatedly pressing the on button.
• Fort Dod bought Karaoke revolution, the singing version of Dance Dance Revolution. It's quite silly, and hence perfect for that circle of friends. Hey, I got to witness a grown man singing Genie in a Bottle. If that's not five minutes well spent, I don't know what is.
• I ordered this BMW lighter (near replica of Strong Bad's model) like months ago, and the guy sent me a Volkswagen lighter instead. I emailed him asking for the right one, but I still haven't received it. It's high time I took action. Maybe I'll fly to Australia and burn dog shit on his doorstep. Yeah.
• The other night, my friend Noah (trumpet player with the PUB) and I and some other people went on a snowman killing mission. Equipping ourselves with baseball bats, two by fours, a sword, a copy of what is perhaps the worst physics text ever written, and a video camera, we headed up campus to beat the living hell out of a snowman we'd been told existed in the Mathey quad. We looked more than a little ridiculous, which prompted Noah to tell us all: "If anyone asks, we're doing, quote 'nothing.'" Who will challenge my possibly correct use of apostrophes and quotation marks? Anyway, it was a pretty productive mission, as we managed to completely destroy not one, but two snowmen, break up a friendly snowball fight, and stick it to my crappy physics book.

To conclude, 'tis a far far better thing...meh. I got nothing.