This weekend was both fun and exhausting, which makes it both good and bad for my sanity in the upcoming week. Friday night, I went to Doug's to play Mafia and Circle of Death. He had invited over ~12 of his former frosh, and Shedletsky showed up as well. The funny thing was that the kids who were still in college were intent on playing Mafia, while the kids who were graduated (or, in the case of Doug, should be graduated), wanted to play a drinking game. So, we played mafia while Doug's frosh were there, which was somewhat fun--and yet also somewhat annoying, because they didn't want to play with truly crazy rules, and the one game that they did allow a non-standard role, there was an absolutely terrible moderator who kind of messed up the game. But, I do want to play with that non-standard role again--it's called the 'polonium poisoner' (or vladimir putin). The polonium poisoner is in the mafia, and is carrying a lethal dose of polonium. S/he may, once in the game, decide at night to poison someone (in addition to the standard mafia kill). That person dies five minutes after the beginning of the next day with no warning; if the citizens can get their act together and vote before the five minutes are up, they can forestall the poisoning, but the clock would reset the next day. However, because the poisoner was also in contact with polonium, he dies the night after using it. The doctor can't save anyone from polonium. It's not clear if this would help or hurt the mafia, but it was going to be fun until an idiot moderator ruined it.
Anyway, after the kids left, Doug, Shedletsky and I alternated between playing Circle of Death, drunken Indian poker, and three-person mafia until around 4:30am. I had more fun playing that than I did standard mafia, and I can't tell whether that's normal or sad. I spent the night at Doug's, woke up around 10:30, came home and showered, and then met Adit and Sri for a fun and delicious brunch at Mike's Cafe. Then, we went to San Jose to watch Vidya's dance competition; there were eight acts up for various prizes in choreography, so I had to sit through a couple of hours of modern and traditional dance. I think that I like Indian dance, but I'm not so fond of experimental white-person dancing--those people all seem to shop at the same stores for ripped-up hippie skirts, and they do a lot of writhing on the floor to show the degradation and downfall of society. Adit claimed that his scoring rubric was '(number of loose hippie chicks)/(duration of performance)', which I thought was pretty good. There was this one Korean kid who had such amazing muscular control that he could have a believable full-body seizure on command; again, not sure if this qualifies as dancing, but it was quite interesting nonetheless. Unless, of course, he was having an actual seizure, in which case we should have put a wallet in his mouth to keep him from biting off his tongue, rather than applauding him when the lights went off.
Anyway, I enjoyed watching the competition, and Vidya looked lovely in her bright purple outfit w/her fake hair and styrofoam flowers (she actually looked much lovelier than it sounds). Then we went out for burritos at a place in San Jose that makes mediocre burritos topped by an addictively-delicious sauce. I took my leave of the Indians (Vidya and another girl who danced at the competition, who were still in their makeup and outfits, and five normally-dressed Indians including Sri and Adit) and drove from San Jose to San Francisco to pick up my coworker who was flying in from Hyderabad. Luckily, I brought my gameboy, since it took her ~45 minutes to get through customs. The fun of picking her up, checking her into her apartment, getting her luggage to the apartment, and taking her to the office to call her family took over three hours, and so I came home and slept for ~11 hours.
Today, I went to San Francisco (aka the evil city) to read applications for TASP. I drove up and back with Tanya; our lives keep intersecting in strange and interesting ways. We went to TASP the same year, but at different colleges; then we lived on the same floor freshman year; then we were on staff in FloMo the same year; then she lived with Tammy; now we're both working for the same company. It was great talking to her on the drive, and we had fun reading applications. It made me nostalgic for a simpler time, when I used to read a book every day and look forward to the intellectual rigor of college. Now, if I read a book, it's usually something comforting that I've already read, and I usually don't have time to pick up a book anyway. How sad. But, I felt that I did some small part to help pick the next class of TASPers, and I even refrained from just trying to pick the crazy kids.
Okay, I was going to go off on a brooding tangent about my life, fueled in no small part by the lures of academia, but I'm too tired and I already wrote it in my journal. Also, other than that, I'm in a pretty good mood; I like my friends and have been spending more time with them recently, and I'm making dinner for 'family time' on Tuesday, so my life isn't exactly a vale of tears right now. So, it's time for me to go to bed so that I can make it to work tomorrow without being completely wiped out. Goodnight!
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