Wednesday, April 30, 2003

We helped cater a high school awards dinner today. Azar's catering has been using the Pikes since before I was a member to help serve and clean during his events. Personally I am somewhat embarrassed to serve the crap he calls food. It's normally good food, like prime rib, it just looks terrible. The only reason I really go is to eat pounds upon pounds of beef. Today was terrible though because the main course was basically rice. I didn't put in six hours of work to eat Uncle Ben's.

Anyway, there was this cake there that was quite possible the only good thing I've ever seen George Azar make. We spent at least an hour discussing how to get some of the cake. Eventually we (more like I) decided that we could just get a bag and throw all the unused cake in it. Then we could split open the bag in the backlounge of the house and go to town with our bare hands while wearing swimming trunks or a blue jumpsuit (Double Dare style). However, George was nice enough to pack up the cake in a tin tray for us and let us take it home, so we ended up eating it in a much more civilized manner.

Eating the cake was a brotherhood bonding experience and I even ended up getting some meat too. Odle was around earlier and he must of went out to eat. He always leaves me his leftovers as this story explains, and I had a nice half of a steak sitting in front of my computer when I got back. I love you Odle!

  Tuesday, April 29, 2003

Two words: bitches in!

Today I got up a little late and began a six hour work-a-thon to finish a design report by 5:00 PM. I was surprised how much I actually put into it, and I feel like I have made up for my lack of effort in the project so far. We ended up turning it in a couple minutes late though because one of my group memebers, Jim, came up with the great idea of binding it. After leaving and coming back with a pink folder with those little metal paper pinchers in it, we went to the print shop and paid a quarter to get it spiral bound. It looked pretty decent I must say.

When I got back home I hit the hay pretty quick and I just got up. I'm on my way to a fraternity executive transition retreat where my responsibilities as vice-president will be relieved. I'm kind of sad about it. I have been living this life for almost a year now, and I don't know if who I am is the guy I was when I had the position, or the guy I was before that. My successor, Brian, says I'm both and I believe him. But if I'm this happy go lucky guy who thinks things through and acts crazy, what hair-brained idea am I going to latch onto and drive home once my immediate focus is removed?

  Sunday, April 27, 2003

I now own seven wearable pairs of shoes ranging from flip-flops to sneakers to dress shoes. It's cool that I do different things that require different shoes, but I've become what I hate the most: a woman.

  Friday, April 25, 2003

I went to last night's baseball game with Machen. It sucked. If I wanted to watch BASEBALL I should have known better then to go to a Bucco game.

  Sunday, April 20, 2003

Five short stories about Rory:

I think I set a land speed record for things getting uncomfortable: It took less then a minute for Carolyn to ask me, "What's wrong?"

Last night only proved to reaffirm Steve's coolness: who else would could eat half a blueberry pie while relating it to economic marginal return theory.

Congratulation to Lauren for the only unsolicited Happy Birthday wish! Happy twenty two and a half birthday to you too Lauren!

I enjoy having discussions with Lauren; I also enjoy apologizing to her afterward. Church with her was cool and we joked around a lot. Plus, there still exists noone else in the world who understands me as well as her.

My brother Rob and I decided to start 'Grandma's Old Blowing Things Out of Proportion Shop.' We figured if we had a family business that's what it would be, and our mom is the queen of big deals so that's why its called 'Grandma's.'

  Saturday, April 19, 2003

Happy Birthday to me. It seems like it definatly will be happy considering everything that's going to happen, and all the things that have happened already, minus forgetting to pack my underwear.

Let me define odd: odd is going to a piano bar with your brother Reed and your friend Willby. Then while you find the environment entertaining, your brother tries to drink himself into oblivion in an effort to change a situation he describes as 'gay' into something slightly more amusing.

Reed left Sing Sing's after about an hour and a half, and I went home with Willby. We hung at at a few different people's apartments and then went back to Willby's. Nothing really special but it was more enjoyable then my at school bar experiences. The key was staying up talking to Willby after everything had died down, classic sexual fortitude discussions at its best.

This afternoon I took a bus back to Trafford; I view the bus as an adventure by the way, and it was when the bus driver flipped out on this crying kid. Regardless, after getting to Trafford I walked over to the Jewell's house where I talked to Steve's mom about random things. She adviced me to have some long talks with some certain individuals that have recently been subjected to my ability to ruin social situations.

After Steve's I headed back home and visited some neighbors. I just got back to my sister's where I have about twenty minutes to write this down before I head out again; I'm about to go on a Steve, Trish, and Carolyn adventure... we'll see how that turns out, it should be nonstop fun again until tomorrow night.

  Wednesday, April 16, 2003

We had a career fair at school today, I guess it went pretty well compared to what some of my other career fair experiences have been. I lied to a farming company and told them my ex-girlfriend was an agriculture major who grew up on a farm. I wonder where that came from. But even cooler I met this dude who ran a company who was the coolest person alive. Everyone else thought he was a prick, but I could tell he was just being direct. We stopped talking about the job and I was just in awe of all the fun things he had to say about common sense. I even talked to him about a book I was reading. He reminded me a lot of the poeple who have had some of the greatest affects on my life, and I was really glad to meet him, but its not like I'm going to get a job, ha!

  Monday, April 14, 2003

I've come to the realization, and I've come to this before, that I pretty much do things for attention. I know that's not a good thing, but I figure as long as it's not an important part I can be comfortable with it. I love helping people, but I do it because I get a kick out of it. So I pose the questions, Is there anything that is a truly selfless act?

Anyway, it would be nice to be recognized for the things I do, at the same time it would be nice to not care. I've come a long way, but I still have a lot of aspects of myself I'd like to change. As long as I can focus on self-improvement and not self-gratification I think I will learn what I need to learn. I just hope that when I eventually learn that lesson I'm not too old.

All of this has caused me to add another one to my list of leadership notes: "It's difficult to recognize what a good leader does," of course, I guess this could be applied to really bad leaders too.

  Saturday, April 12, 2003

I figured becoming a proffessional engineer would be easy, but the nine hour FE exam was actually really hard. It's not like anybody else studied, I figured it would be like the SAT's and if you know it you know it. Well, evidently I know about as much as I thought about engineering, and that's very little.

  Friday, April 11, 2003

Did you ever get up early in the morning and notice that the sun is shining just a little bit differently; and for a moment, you think to yourself, that maybe something special will begin today? I think I got that.