STO: Bored at school

I'm in the tale end of a 2 hour break between Phonology and Linear Algebra II. It hasn't been the most exciting of academic breaks. At RL, I once made it to downtown Boston between classes, and at Georgetown, I'm pretty sure whiskey was consumed between History and Foundations of Math once. Today I had expensive sushi and made plans with this girl Mary Clare from Notre Dame to make plans for a trip to Edinburgh in early October. Seriously, we agreed to call later about setting up the trip.

Now I think I've managed to drive away all the people who aren't really interested in reading this blog with the sheer boredom embedded in the previous paragraph. So for the rest of you who are still here, I think that includes less than 4 people now, I've been living the chill life in Ireland. This is my average day:
Oversleep my 9:15 alarm. Get up around 10:00. Brush my teeth and toss in the contacts, throw a little bit of cereal down my throat and walk to the 46a bus stop. The stop is about 20 minutes walk away, and the bus takes at least 15 minutes to get to school, so I usually realize that I am cutting it very close before my 11am class and start walking faster. Then I realize that all my classes are required to be pass/fail, and I ease my stride a little bit.

My bulky backpack provides plenty of awkward situations in the bus, whether I'm hitting people or occupying two seats. I generally lock in the iPod and ignore the death stares. When I finally get to class, I wish I could repeat the process, but I do actually pay attention and take notes. In the classes when the teacher asks questions, I generally silently chuckle at how simple the questions are, then wait, and when no one else answers it, I reluctantly answer the disturbingly easy question. I also try to exaggerate my sore throat so that they can't detect my American accent. My Linear Algebra class is particularly full of awkward silences when my classmates can't answer questions. I buy some sort of 4 or 5 euro sandwich at the cafes here, besides today when I splurged on €7.90 sushi.

All my days end around the same time, early to mid afternoon, and I generally take a different bus route that takes longer but requires less walking back home. I'm famished by the time I arrive due to my insubstantial breakfast and my penurious lunch. At this point my cooking has become legit, and I've made some good spaghetti with mushroom, minced beef and onions, and surprisingly tasty fried rice with egg and the aforementioned mushroom, minced beef and onions. It helps to come from a household with a good cook, and when I get back home, I'm going to spend more time with Auntie so I can improve even more. But right now I know enough so that I can avoid starvation or nutritional depletion (i.e. I can make more than eggs and ramen).

(although I still make mean eggs and ramen)

At home, it's basically homework time - minus the homework part. So I do all the things I would normally do during homework time - Facebook, AIM, Wikipedia, ESPN, e-mail - for an uninterrupted period of time. I'm not going out to the bars cause it's too expensive and I don't want to drink now unless I get to meet new people, which is not always a guarantee.

But some interesting things have happened in the past week. On Sunday, the Pats game was on at 9 and I got to watch nearly the whole thing. I missed Patriot football so much and getting to watch them from the first time since the Tom Petty concert was a treat. My take? Matt Cassel sucked. Everybody's raving about how he managed the game and oh the Patriots won again and beat Brett Favre! I didn't realize how stupid the general media was - on most snaps, Cassel looked nervous, unconfident and thoroughly not in control of the situation. He would bounce around the pocket when his protection was good, and scramble and get sacked or tackled for no gain. His O-Line is used to holding their own while Brady stood still and delivered bombs, and now happy feet Cassel is throwing them off. Cassel also didn't show that he memorized the playbook during his 4 years on the sideline, forgetting what side Maroney was on during one handoff. Then his underthrow of Moss really did it for me, and after that I officially pronounced his performance as underwhelming. That said, I think he can improve and I won't crucify him yet. Shit I gotta run to class, but I'll talk about Ultimate and the Garda National Immigration Bureau later.