No Sweat (Or, Wine All You Want, You're Still at Work Until 5:00)
Whew, I am glad it's Friday! I've got quite a busy weekend ahead of me, though, so I won't be able to get in as much couch time as I would like. It all kicks off at 4:00, when the entire Becker House staff will get together for a wine tasting courtesy of Scott Hafner '80, who runs a great vineyard out in California; thanks Scott! Later tonight, Mitch and I will probably go see There Will Be Blood, which, contrary to my previous understanding, is not the film adaptation of my post from last week about donating to the Red Cross (but then who did I option those production rights to?). I'm excited that the movie is finally playing around here because southeastern Connecticut is typically pretty bad about getting flicks that aren't in the mainstreamiest echelon of film (how many Dane Cook movies can a man see?).
The rest of the weekend will be pretty much entirely Conn-centric (see what I did there?).....
....Tomorrow I'll be staffing the Men's Ice Hockey alumni game as well as the Swimming & Diving alumni reception; both should be fun, but they still kind of cut into my Saturday. I had been planning on heading up to my parents' house in beautiful Nashua, NH, to work on my taxes with my dad (did somebody say PARTY?), but since the S&D event will probably go until 5:30 and my parents are typically in bed by 8:00, it's probably not going to work out. Instead, I'll stay in town tomorrow night and hang with fellow blogger Jaime "5 Feet of Heat" Pepper, who will be around to work on a physics paper on campus (I think I'd rather eat sandwiches and chat with water-bound alumni than try to eloquently describe the redshifts in the spectra of quasi-stellar objects in print).
Sunday through Tuesday I'll be up in Boston for a conference and to do visits with some alums. I'm actually pretty excited about it because this will be my first trip for the College where I'll be staying in a hotel, which definitely has its perks (I find that having someone deliver otherwise unremarkable food to your room on a cart and a silver platter just makes it taste better). It's also a chance for me to score some tasty burritos at Anna's Taqueria, which all the Bostonians out there probably know has some great 'ritos.
What I'm most enthusiastic about regarding this trip, however, is something unrelated to both Conn and to Boston. When traveling, I'm often running (sometimes literally) all over town from appointment to appointment, going outside and inside and just generally exerting myself to a degree that isn't conducive to looking good in a shirt and tie. Not surprisingly, this can result in unwanted underarm perspiration, which I find extremely distracting during a meeting. Fortunately, about a week ago I started using this new Gillette Clinical Strength antiperspirant that works incredibly well! The only drawback is that it costs about 10 times as much as the kind that I had been using; I guess confidence doesn't come cheap (except in alcoholic form). I've definitely got a couple long days ahead of me, so I'm eager to put this new product to the test. I predict that within five years Gillette will make every item in my bathroom; it's getting to the point where I don't even feel clean unless I've used at least two of their products that morning (which probably explains why my breath always smells like shaving cream).
Speaking of teeth, I snuck in a dentist appointment during my lunch break today. Typically a visit to the dentist is a breeze for me since I take pretty good care of my chompers, but today the dental hygienist found this one spot between two teeth where apparently I'm not flossing properly (nobody's perfect). She told me that there was a calculus buildup under my gum but that she could clear it out fairly easily. I told her to go for it and let her get underway; what resulted was one of the most severe gum lashings in the history of dentistry. She was picking at my gums like a mother lion tearing into a zebra carcass so that her cubs could feed (sorry, I've been watching a lot of Animal Planet lately). Fortunately, the bleeding has since subsided, but the emotional scars will last a lifetime (I'm so traumatized that I'm at a floss for words...).
Well, it's time for the wine tasting, so I'll wrap this post up. Check back soon for Ross's and Sophie's first posts!