you know your friends are dorky when...

they say things like:

I'm trying to convince a friend to let me borrow his nanobot factory to make self-replicating pollen eaters.

In layman's terms: I have hay fever and I want to kill myself.

hanging in there

I think...

finance faux pas

Me: You're going to London Empirical College?
Friend: Ha ha. London Imperial College, and don't worry, you're not the first person to say that.


Friend: I'm going back to A-P-T.
Me: Arbitrage Pricing Theory?
Her: Are you serious? My apartment. I'm going back to my apartment.
Me: Oh.

Dancesport

Last weekend, my friends and I went down to Baltimore to check out the US National Dancesport Championships. If you've never heard of this event, it's because ballroom and latin dance isn't as popular here as say...college basketball. Nonetheless, it was loads of fun for two days, with bright colors and footwork weaving in and out for hours on end.

At the Friday day session, we saw some senior dancers (people over 35 who dance for fun). I managed to snap some decent pictures because they were moving at approximately 1/100th the speed of the amateur dancers that we saw later. Still, I would be quite happy to have their modest skills.

One of the more disturbing aspects of competitive dancing is watching kids (under 13) dance the rumba. Kiddie porn, anyone? While dancing is a great type of exercise, it does involve quite a bit of back and forth seduction, which looks awkward when performed by little kids wearing scandalous costumes that I wouldn't even wear. Did I mention that these little kids self-tan and the girls apply about five layers of make-up to their faces? Still, it's fascinating to see how technically savvy these children are at dancing. Some of the girls especially move with the maturity of women more than twice their age. Dancing is a show, and it's sometimes hard to watch young people (as well as some adults) because they can't decide what bright and inappropriate expressions to plaster onto their frozen faces.

On Friday evening, Yiyan and I went to watch the amateur Latin dance championships. The guys and gals were smoking hot. I would take up dance just to have a set of legs like those that were flying in abundance that night. The dancers were all extremely talented, with an acute sense of rhythm running through their bodies (I guess that's the point of dancing). Latin dance is a lot of fun to watch and reminds me a lot of hot sex while standing up or two Porsches going at it. My personal favorite is the paso doble, where the males vigorously pound their heels onto the floor (the ladies do too), puff out their chests, alternate between snarling and frowning, and do everything short of beating their chests. It looks painful, but well worth the effort. The men have to be incredibly arrogant to dance well, especially in testosterone-driven Latin dances.

My second favorite is the samba, which is a fun dance that's both light and heavy at the same time. One of the two hundred youtube clips that I regularly visit informs me that the story originates in Brazil, where two strangers meet at carnival and get it on. The cha cha cha is fun as well, though very difficult and danced primarily on straight legs (youtube again). And no one can resist the fun-loving kicks and tricks of the jive (which isn't a latin dance?). My least favorite dance is the rumba, which is the slowest and fits uneasily with the other dances. It's especially disturbing when brother-sister couples do a very intimate while excellent rumba (I guess it would have been better if I left the family tree out). Latin just has that oomph and a beat that makes me want to jump up and shake my uncoordinated limbs and nonexistent hips.

The ballroom dances are more boring to watch, despite their higher difficulty level relative to latin. Posture and subtlety are much more important in ballroom, and the mistakes are amplified. Also, the big ruffled dresses in lurid colors reminded me of tea parties and the teacup ride at theme parks, especially when five couples twirl in sync. Other evocative images: sherbet, Disney, and Tropicana. My problem is that I think two of the dances, waltz and foxtrot, are deathly boring. The Viennese waltz is at least cute as the ultimate teacup dance, and the whiplash tango and quickstep are both fun to watch. Colliding couples provide some tension to the otherwise cultured menu of European based dances. After watching this for five hours straight, my eyes felt incredibly saturated...and I went home dreaming of becoming a hot latin dancer (no self-tanning required!).

being single

This must be a hallmark of being a single girl...suddenly getting a craving for ice cream on Friday evening after dinner with friends. Or maybe I just want to reminisce about undergrad, where my friends and I would eat pints of dulce de leche and only dulce de leche for dinner, and me pulling an all-niter, scarfing down a pint of Ben&Jerry's (I think it was chocolate fudge brownie), then going blithely to play some tennis.

Alas, my metabolism has slowed down. I could only manage two scoops of dulce de leche, and didn't even open the Cherry Garcia. It might have something to do with eating burgers and fries every day for lunch and dinner during my entire sophomore year of college with tuna subs here and there to break up the monotony...let's not forget about eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner at ABP during my junior and senior years. If only actions didn't have consequences, my stomach and I would be much happier now. Humans are destined to make the same mistakes over and over again, so I still eat my fair share of food truck grub, although I do try once in a while to make things like mashed potatoes with kale, terrible tasting guacamole, and microwaved hot dogs on occaision. I try. Not very hard, but I do try. As my friends know, I also eat out more than enough in Philadelphia. My goal is to eventually eat at every restaurant in Philly worth going to (this is one goal that I consistently take great strides in). When all else fails, there's the comfort of calories.

Finally, this is super cute: Ben&Jerry's Ice Cream Graveyard...all of the sad and dead de-pinted flavors.