I feel I have been somewhat derelict in my duties

As both the person who started this blog and its greatest advocate, I am ashamed to admit that I recently went over a month without checking it (despite the over-so-convenient RSS feed which [I believe] Luke added--thanks!). And believe me, when I did check the blog I was saddened to see that we went the entire month of February without any activity. Although this isn't such a horrible thing (after all, bears go into hibernation during the winter and they're super sweet--except the one that ate Timothy Treadwell . . . he's a fucker) I was thankful to see that Tamara had recently gotten bored and Chad had recently gotten existential (and entertaining . . . ?), and thus they felt the need to awaken the GBN blog from its six-week(ish) slumber.

But, anyway, enough with the meta-blogging crap. I'm here to check in. And, in the spirit of this blog, I am going to do it in a beer-related way. So, ladies and gentlemen, fellow GBN stalwarts, Indy Z, I present to you "Things That Have Happened to Me Since I Posted Last in Terms of the Beers I Have Been Drinking." The way I view this post progressing is that it will start with the shitty* things that have happened to me/beers I have been drinking, and progress to the better ones. But we'll see how that pans out; it is admittedly a shoddy conceit.

1) I'm Back in School and Classes Don't Suck . . . Too Hard (High Life Cans)

So, as some (all?) of you know, I'm back in school. In early January I started at the SDSU Sports Business MBA Program (which several of you should think about looking into *cough* Rathwell *cough*), and so far, so not terrible. I'm not necessarily enamored with all of my classmates (I don't think I've ever liked everyone in a room with more than five people in it), but there are some pretty sweet dudes. As far as classes go, I'm currently taking Statistics (which isn't too bad since it's the third time I've taken it), Sports and Society (which is the one soft science class and is taught by a total bro, Scott Tinley--who looks like a skinnier version, un-mustachioed version of the Busey character in "Point Break" and won Ironman Hawaii in '82 and '85), and Accounting (which pretty much makes me want to kill myself).

All things considered, though, it's not too bad. While many others are struggling to find jobs, or have moved back in with their parents, or have been found by their roommates with their pants around their ankles (if, for any reason, you haven't read this post, please go back and do so--especially the edit at the end), I'm back in college. It might not be Whitman, but at least it's not the real world. One might not quite be able to say I'm living the high life, but neither are people who drink Miller cans, either.

2) I Had a Pretty Sweet Weekend at Rugby 7s (Steinlager)

For those of you who don't know much about Rugby, most of the big events you might have heard of (6 Nations, Superleague, etc) are 15-on-15, the fastest-growing version of the game is 7-on-7 (called 7s), and the beer of choice at events of both types is Steinlager (which, while a bit watery, isn't half-bad). Rugby is making a push to get into the Olympics, and, because the Olympics is worried about becoming too bloated, its the Sevens version that is being considered.

One of the tournaments on the 7s world tour (called the IRB Sevens World Series) has been in San Diego the last few years, and since it has been here people in my program have been volunteering at it. So about a month ago I spent all weekend out at Petco Park(which is usually where the Padres play and is a fucking beautiful stadium)volunteering with the Rugby 7s media relations department, which mostly entailed just standing down on the field. So I got to spend the weekend watching world class athletes-slash-big, burly men run around in short shorts and tackle each other. I mean, it was 7s, not 15-on-15, so it was a little bit watered down but not too bad.

3) My Living Arrangement, While Not Ideal, Isn't Intolerable (PBR Cans)

I will admit to being a little bit worried about my liing arrangement before I moved in. I'm sub-letting a room in an apartment, which isn't too abnormal for someone my (our) age, but what is abnormal is that one of the two other bedrooms is occupied by an entire family: a husband, a wife, a toddler, and a baby. And by baby I mean baby: D'Honi (which I'm sure I spelled wrong) was born about four days after I moved in, and is now about 9 weeks old.

Also a cause for worry was that I'm living in one of the sketchiest parts of San Diego: City Heights. As you would see if you read that Wiki (which I'm sure none of you will do), the average income of a household in City Heights clocks in at $19,393**--pretty much right at the poverty line--and, although things have gotten slightly better since then, in 1993 three teenagers were killed in a gang fight at Hoover High School (a half-mile away from me) which prompted the City Heights Business Improvement Association to erect billboards that reading "Welcome to City Heights, San Diego's Crime Capital. Won't Anybody Help?" to attract the officials' attention.

The living arrangement, though, has turned out to be okay. Home is mostly where I eat, sleep, and do a bit of studying, and occasionally (very occasionally), when I get home from the library or the gym at 10:30 or 11 at night there's no one in the living room and I can watch some SportsCenter (or Baseball Tonight--fuck yes I love the Spring) and or the Daily Show while I make (what is as likely as not some ramen noodle soup for) my dinner. So it's not quite home (which PBR bottles would be), and, in fact, it's not even that close to home by any reasonable standard, but it does what I need it to do. So my tolerable living arrangement is PBR cans.

4) My Dad is Going to Visit (Pyramid Apricot)

I guess this isn't as much something that has happened to me as it is something that is going to happen from this Thursday to next Tuesday***, but, it's my list so it makes the cut. I'll definitely be happy to see him, but I'm not necessarily ecstatic about the logistics of the arrangement: he's not staying at a hotel but instead with me. This means that one of us will be sleeping on my floor, and I'll give anyone 20-to-1 odds if they're willing to bet that it'll be my Dad.

Still, I'll be able to do some of the things that I wouldn't do on my own because they're too expensive (for thirty-five bucks a pop the zoo had beter kick ass as much as everyone says it does), he's bringing my golf clubs, and he is my Dad, so I'm excited to see him. I don't know what this has to do with Pyramid Apricot, except for the fact that my dad wears bow ties which is kind of fruity.

5) Doing an Internship with USA Canoe/Kayak at the Olympic Training Center (St. Pauli Girl)

It's probably going to be a bit of a stretch to relate my internship to St. Pauli (there are no lovely, blond German ladies there--although there have been some burly, male Czech paddlers doing a camp there for the last few weeks), but since the other posts were tenuously tied (at best!) to their accompanying beers, I won't let these difficulties stop me.

USA Canoe/Kayak, while based in North Carolina, has its primary training center at the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista. It is also a grossly understaffed organization (as many Olympic sports NGBs are, especially ones that haven't won any medals recently), and the head coach, Nathan Luce(who is Canadian, and thus awesome****), came into the program and was looking for help over the next few months organizing their World Team Trials and thier European World Cup trip, and I jumped at the chance.

So now I spend most Fridays out at the OTC, which is basically an elite athlete summer camp, and thus basically heaven for me. I've got a little office next to Nathan's down by the lake from which I can secretly gawk at all the Czechs massive pecs as they carry their boats in (and also get a little bit of work done). And, to top it all off (I would say best of all, but, as we all know, being around Olympians and aspiring Olympians all day is prety much a wet dream of mine come true), I get lunch in the dining hall every day when I'm out there. It's similar to the Whitman dining hall, if the Whitman dining hall were 3 notches better, had twice as many choices, and had 5 TVs in it (and, also, an absurd amount of nutritional information posted everywhere instead of table-toppers, which is the one down-side--I always kind of like those table-toppers).

So, yeah, this post has nothing to do with the affilliated beer except for the fact that I like both my internship and St. Pauli Girl. So it's got that going for it, which is nice . . .

6) GBN California Chapter Reunions (PBR Bottles)

Last, and certainly not least, I would like to inform you all that the California Chapter of the GBN Society***** (consisting of me, Marnie, and Carolina) has had several reunions--either two or three, I'm not really sure since I was pretty hammered most of the time they were going on. These reunions, like PBR bottles, were fucking awesome (the only problem with these reunions was how hard it was to find PBR bottles to drink at them--apparently they barely exist in SoCal).

The reason these reunions happened was that Carolina's work, which is usually in the Bay Area, shipped her off to Los Angeles three times over four weeks in late January and February. The sites of these reunions were Marnie's house (where Carolina stayed a few times and I stayed once), Merryl Farrar's house (where Carolina and I stayed many times, but Marnie, perhaps scared that one of the many blacked out people would in some way do her bodily harm, never stayed), and the Westwood Brewery (which we went to in honor of the GBN craft brewery tradition only to find out that it is, in fact, no longer a brewery).

Serendipitously, one of these reunions fell over Super Bowl Sunday, during which time much meat/veggie equivalent was eaten, much beer was drunk, much football was watched, and much Bruce Springsteen halftime show was enjoyed. A good time was had by all involved. Just like every time I drink anywhere from one to seventeen PBR bottles (although, now that I think about it, that's probably only a good time for me and is likely a horrible time for anyone around me).

Okay, that got long, and, frankly, kind of trailed off at the end there. Sorry about that. Time for some of you folks we haven't heard from to let us know what you're up to. Are you still lost in the wilderness, Todd? Did you get into UC-Davis, Marnie? Are you alive, Jay/Bhattface? Are you still tall, Schmidt? I need answers, dammit!

Be well, my friends.

*Shitty, is of course a relative term--nothing really terrible has happened to me since I posted last, and, as long as it gets you drunk and doesn't make you go blind, there's no such thing as a shitty beer.
**And as we all know, I, like most Whitman kids, am scared of poor people.
***The reason he's coming on these dates is because I have an extra long weekend this upcoming weekend. We usually have classes on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, but because we're all dumb jocks and the NCAA tournament starts on Thursday our program head moved our Thursday class to an open time-slot on Wednesday so we could fully enjoy one of the best sports weekends of the year. In order to take full advantage, some of my classmates are driving to Vegas Wednesday night.
****And also worth only $.75 on the US dollar