Thursday, December 22, 2005

Finals, Finally: An Update

Grades are in.

I got 4 A's, and 2 B+'s.

I know that's good, but I kind-of feel like if only I had studied for, like, 20 more minutes I would have gotten all A's. Damnit.

The sad part is, I've gotten a 3.7 or better for the past 5 semesters, and I just graduated with a 2.9 cumulative GPA.

You may wonder amongst yourselves exactly how dumb I used to be, that I allowed myself to get such a piss-poor GPA that 5 semesters of 3.7's couldn't fix it.

But I shall not speak of it.
Oh, no--I shan't.
Because that's a good story that can make up a blog some other day when I again have nothing to write about.

The end.
For real, people.
My undergraduate career is over.

I'm officially a smart bartender now.
Go me.

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

How To Behave In A Bar--A Public Service Announcement

Now that I'm all done with school and no longer have 18 hundred credit hours and 46 million papers to write every week--I seem to have run out of things to blog about. It's amazing how many things I can find to blog about when I'm supposed to be doing homework. But, now? Not so much.

So I now present Things You Should Not Do In A Bar, some advice from me to you, in list form--because I'm feeling mighty lazy.

*it should be stated that this list is not organized in any particular way. For example, one item does not necessarily constitute a worse offense than the next. Because that would require too much thinking.

1. When you first approach the bar, do not stand there--in plain view of the 25 beers that are on tap, and then tell the bartender that you want 'a beer.' Even if you can not read, you must have been able to learn what the Budweiser tap looks like, right? Just pick a beer!

2. If you do happen to be the annoying person that walks up to a bar where you can see that there are 25 beers on tap and insist on saying you want 'a beer,' don't say 'whatever's cheapest' when the bartender asks you to be more specific. At least not if you expect to be served quickly the next time you come up to the bar. It's kind of like poker--you don't show your cards to the table, right? Likewise, at a bar, don't let the bartender know that you don't have any money if you want good service.

3. Do not remove tips from the bar when you think the bartender isn't looking. I have a fruit cutting knife back there people. I will stab your hand if I see you trying to steal my tip.

4. Do not be a crazy person who comes in everyday and refuse to speak at all, except to say "labatts is good." because really, what does that mean? would you like a labatt? or, are you just letting me know that you like it? it's really confusing to me.

5. Also do not be a crazy person who does all of those things and then go into the bathroom and drop a 10 dollar bill in the toilet and then try to leave without paying, but try to make up for it by letting me know that I can go get your 10 dollars out the toilet if I want to.

6. Do not swear at, or be otherwise rude to, the bartender.

7. Do not whistle, snap, or bang your glass at the bartender.

8. If your bartender or waitperson is female, it is not okay to call her 'darling' or 'sweetheart' unless you are over the age of sixty. And even then you must be careful--because not all girls are as nice as me.

9. Do not roll your eyes at the bartender when you are asked to present your I.D., and then turn out to be 22. Because that makes you dumb.

10. Do not play an entire Mariah Carey album--from 1990--on the jukebox at 11 pm on a Saturday night. Please, please, I'm begging you.

11. If you go up to the bar and order one drink and pay with a credit card, that is ok. It is not ok if you keep doing this every 20 minutes for the entire night. In other words, start a tab!

12. If you and your 27 friends want to do a shot, you should at least pretend to make an attempt to not each order something different. But hey, when you do order 27 different shots at one time, be sure to get pissed that they're not ready in 35 seconds. Because that makes bartending soo much fun.

13. Don't make-out at the bar. I know this is a controversial one. I must admit, I've made-out at the bar before, and I think it might have been fun. But next time you get that urge, try to remember this advice--everyone else in the bar thinks you look like an idiot. Because two people in a bar who are drunk enough to start making-out NEVER look as hot as making-out looks on T.V.
We're all laughing at you. So, keep that in mind.


Oh, I'm going to stop now, because Sex and the City is coming on, and I can watch it because I Don't Have Any Homework.
But I'll post more, better, funnier things not-to-do later.
Or maybe something more interesting will happen.
You never know...

Saturday, December 17, 2005

If I Were The Queen Of The World, and I really mean it this time.

1. I would not have just finished writing a take-home final, considering that it is Friday night, and, hello? Teacher people of the world? Don't play choose-your-own-adventure finals are due Saturday morning game. It's not fun.

2. I would have had at least some sort of idea of what I just spent 5 hours writing. Unfortunately, I don't. This could be really bad.

3. I would not have gotten a call while I was trying to write this final, in which I found out that my mother had broken her wrist so badly that my sister-in-law puked at the site of it, and when my mom got to the hospital they gave her morphine--morphine, people! As in, holy shit. They also actually put her to sleep when they re-set her wrist. I think this injury may put a really big damper on my mom's Christmas shopping abilities. I think my sister and I may also need to learn how to cook in the next week. Oh, my poor mama.

4. Considering that I just finished my under-graduate career, something more fabulous would happen than my dad informing me that I must now begin to pay my own car insurance.

In other words, this was the worst Friday ever.
I can't wait to wake up tomorrow.
It's got to be better than this.

Thursday, December 15, 2005

Finals, finally.

People, I promise I will have something interesting to say, soon.

maybe tomorrow.

can't really think right now.

frankly, going a little delerious from the studying.

but will officially be a smart person, by next week.

stay tuned.

although, my blogs will still be disjointed and ramble-icious.

that's how you like it, right?

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

How to Survive a Family Holiday; or Fun With Board Games, a Rhapsody in Two Parts

Well, people—it’s officially Christmas, Kwanza, Hanakkuh time, or whatever. In other words, you will probably have to spend some time with your family in the very near future.
Personally, I enjoy spending time with my family.
But a lot of people I know would rather pull their own toe nails out.
It is for them—and for Rumplebutt, who specifically requested it—that I now present How to Survive a Family Holiday: or, funny things over-heard while playing board games, a rhapsody in two parts.

Part One

The first time I played Catch-phrase, I was with my immediate family and some of our close friends on Christmas day. Catch-phrase is a kind-of weird game that I still don’t know the rules to. Because in my family? We make up our own rules. Because we are Board Game Gods, or something. We passed the little electronic disc-thinger around, and tried to get each other to guess whatever word had popped up on the screen of the--electronic disc-thinger. My little sister has the disc in her hands, and gives us the following clue
Umm, it’s like a stream of moving liquid—with a fence around it.
We all look at her silently.
She repeats her clue in various word-order as the timer on the electronic disc-thinger ticks away, faster and faster.
Still, we have no freaking idea what she is talking about.
The timer stops.
We all look at her in anticipation, eager to see what this thing that she described as “a stream of moving liquid with a fence around it” could possibly be.
She looks at us like she can’t understand how we didn’t guess, and says,
Watergate.

And ever since, Catch-phrase has never failed to reduce me to a chair-falling-out-of, liquid-squirting-out-the-nose, about-to-pee-my-pants mess.
And I think that’s a good thing.

***My little sister would probably like me to tell you that this happened 5 years ago, and she now knows what Watergate is, thank you very much.

If you didn’t find this funny, allow me to tantalize you with another Catch-phrase story that just occurred over Thanksgiving.

I’m sitting next to my cousin’s wife, as the electronic disc-thinger is passed to her. I accidentally (?) look down, and see that the word on the disc is “Tonto.”Then my cousin’s wife says
Umm, I think this is in Canada.
And I immediately fall off the couch.
I am a laughing mess, on the floor, 2 giggles away from peeing my pants.
But while I’m down there, she gets her husband to guess “Tonto,” anyway.
I’m not really sure how it happened.
I couldn’t really see or hear anything in my own fit of laughter.
What I do know is this.
People?That is true love.
If you say that something is in Canada, and your husband still guesses “Tonto?”
Then even if you may not be good with city names, you’ve probably got something better than that going for you.
More power to ya, Emily.

Part Two

Scattergories is a fun game. I don’t feel like explaining it, so if you don’t know what it is, here are some suggestions
1. Google it—for I am too dumb to make links for you.
2. Don’t Google it, but keep reading. You will probably have no idea what I’m talking about—but I often don’t make sense anyway. So maybe it’ll just seem like a normal day in Tiffany Blog-land.
3. Stop reading and curse the day I was born, because I will not reveal the age-old mystical ways of Scattergories.
Anyway.
The most important thing that you can know about Scattergories is that
People Will Lie Their Asses Off For A Point.

Here are some examples:

When challenged to come up with a ‘term of endearment’ starting with the letter R, one of your own family members may try to convince you that “Rumplebutt” is a term of endearment. Which, even though you know it is a bold-face lie, you can’t really make a solid challenge against. Because you have no idea what your family member's butt looks like. It may or my not have a “rumpled” appearance, and their loved one may or may not refer to them by that name. Really, you would rather just not think about it. And so, “Rumplebutt” gets a point—and also gets stuck with a nick-name.


When challenged to come up with ‘something people exclaim’ starting with the letter G, your own 15 year-old little sister will try to convince you that “GOO” is something that all the kids ‘exclaim’ these days. She will try to convince you that all the kids at school say it. Why? Because she Wants That Damn Point. And also she believes you to be too old to know any better.

Sometimes Grandpas have been known to lie to their own grandchildren, all for the sake of a Scattergories point. To this day, our Grandpa maintains that “Red-eye” is a ‘term of endearment.’ I don’t think he banked on the fact that we would all continue to call by this name, though.

Still, I think my favorite Scattergories moment happened this Thanksgiving, when we all had to come up with ‘something round’ that started with the letter I.
Basically, all of us put igloo, which means no one would get a point—because you only get a point if no one else has the same answer as you.
So, we’re all reading out answers off, and feeling very sad as each person answers “igloo” and then my Grandpa’s girlfriend pipes in.
And she’s very excited.
She says
Well, I have snowman, and no one else has that!

True enough.
Too bad it didn’t start with the letter I.
I fall onto the floor again, as does everyone else in the room.

The moral of the story is this:
If you are dreading spending another holiday with your family—there’s a pretty good chance that following this simple recipe will make your day better.

1. Bring Scattergories and Catch-phrase.
2. Disburse amongst family members.
3. Add vodka.
4. Laugh your ass off—but try not to pee your pants. You’d never live that down.

oh, fuck.

I just spent an hour writing a very humorous--I thought--blog about how to survive a family holiday.
Included were very funny descriptions of stupid things that are said when people are playing Scattergories and Catch-phrase.
The blog even included links to stuff.
Links, people!
In other words, things which are not easy for me to do, or whatever.

I can't go into detail, because I'm still so upset.
All I can say is that my blog must have been damn good, because Blogger ate it right before I hit 'post.'

It no longer exists, except as a hateful memory of a time when I sat at my computer for an hour for absolutely no reason. Also known as, right now.
If I were the Queen of the World, this totally wouldn't be happening.

So.
I'm now going on strike.
At least until tomorrow.

A small part of me is actually hoping that blogger will get drunk on all the juicy goodness of my piece, and get hung-over, and throw it up, right back into my drafts.

please, blogger?