Adventures Near Albany

Yesterday was an adventure and not spent in isolation to boot, it was a good day.
It started out well by getting the highest score in my class for a mental math quiz at my school, I rocked it except for for taking an extra 5 seconds to multiply 9 by 1.25. darn 11.25. I also learned another mental math trick later on in the day, if you square a number ending in 5 you just multiply what's left of the 5 by itself plus 1 then tack on a 25. 25*25=2*(2+1)->6 tack on 25, 625. or 115*115-> 11*12=132 tack on 25->13225. Very cool.
So I rocked the quiz, finished class for the day then booked it to my car so I could drive 3 hours to a town near Albany where I'll be living soon. I looked over the apt I'm gonna be in again, then signed a bunch of paperwork for my lease. I can't wait for when I get stationed to somewhere for a number of years because then I'm going to actually buy a house and not feel like I'm losing money without getting anything out of it. I hate leasing. It would be better if I had a roommate but I've said before, I don't make friends easily and quickly and everyone else seemed to pair off into groups in the navy side of things and they're really the only group with the same schedule flexibility that would allow it to work. But the signing was done with another couple who were just moving in then and we made a fun time of it and played well off each other in conversation. We kind of threw the property manager off her balance I think. But she was still nice and when we checked out the apt, asked if I was going directly back to CT but I said I would be visiting some friends and had no idea what the plans were but probably having dinner at Browns and watching a movie.
I had earlier decided that since I was in the area of my Alma Mater, RPI, I should contact some people and see if they were up for anything that evening. As it turned out, they were, and we had a general good time. We had a group of 5 that talked about all of what we'd been doing, and we played dutch blitz and watched a movie. Dutch blitz is like multi-tasking egyptian rat-screw and speed put together. It's very fast paced and tons of fun-I got creamed into 3rd place because I haven't played in awhile but still had a very good time. Then we watched Cool Runnings about the Jamaican bobsled team and I love that movie. Especially Sanka.
By then it was about 10:30 in the evening and I was getting a little nervous about my drive home. I knew I was going to be tired, but there was still more to do. There is a Navy thing called ORM-operational risk management, it's meant to create a way to minimize danger and limit bad decisions in taking risks. ORM training was starting to shout at me that I was not making a good decision about driving home so late. However, I was a number of miles from my car because I'd taken a ride with a friend in their car and I could have walked back during the evening in the middle of the movie, but where was the fun in that? When the group needed to disperse, it was still late but I'd mentioned earlier that I'd only eaten some peaches and nectarines. So the momentum of the night continued and we went down to Brown's. It was cool because I didn't even have to suggest it, it was just agreed that fast food was the non-preferred option and assumed that Brown's would be one of the only restaurants still open at 11 at night. Which was way cool, I don't think I've had dinner at a sit down restaurant that late ever. Taco bell sure, and I've had dinner at home that late with family on strange occasions, but never a restaurant. However, I would not recommend it at least on the first floor because conversation was difficult with loud music blaring at the other end of the bar.
Chemistry is a weird thing. Sometimes you care specifically for a person and find you can hardly talk to them and you can't figure out if it's because you're guarding yourself and them or you just don't have much in common to talk about. Other times, you find someone that you're naturally attracted to and have little difficulty in being able to talk about a huge assortment of topics. There's those friends where you don't have to talk all the time but when you do, you can just pick up where you left off and you still feel totally comfortable with them even after a break. I go back to remembering when I had a friend freshmen year and that's all we were, we would take a lot of walks at post midnight times, called during vacations and were there during tougher emotional times. From that, I learned that it's pretty much impossible to spend long term one on one with someone and not have those heartstrings develop that will have to be dealt with at some time or another. Focused attention always creates expectations. I also learned that even if physicalness is left out of it, that intimacy can still develop. It can suck.
Another element is that I've known since I got accepted into the military and wanted to go subs, I pretty much assumed that long term relationships were going to be virtually unattainable with a college girl since most of them are career driven and pretty much incompatible with a guy that moves every couple of months or years. And then it's even more sucktacular because I would have to be the kind for which short-term, recreational dating is something I've always disagreed with. Rock and a hard place. But back to the main topic at hand, when I find myself in a small group and we spontaneously decide to do something out of the ordinary like dinner at eleven at night at then climbing pipes and machinery to get to hard to reach places then sitting on the roof overlooking campus and shooting the breeze, including that mental math trick I started with, that's pretty cool. For someone who never goes out on traditional dates, I appreciate those moments tremendously more than I think most people do. And speaking of roofs, I'll readily admit that climbing high places is one of my weaknesses. They're difficult but rewarding and my achilles heel. Onwards and upwards!
Oh, and lastly, I always keep a pillow and sleeping bag in my car and ended up sleeping in my car and got back to CT at 11 the next morning after a goodly amount of sleep. ORM in action and no falling asleep at the wheel.

Yale and other sundries

OWNLIFE-it's a newspeak term from the book 1984 by George Orwell (which I'm currently reading) and had it's base meaning in individualism and eccentricity. In the dystopian world created in the book, anything that suggested a taste for solitude, even going on a walk by yourself was considered slightly dangerous. I must be a very dangerous person then.
I've said before that left to my own devices, I'd probably sit in my room and read or work on the computer, rather nerdy and antisocial of me. I enjoy being with my closer friends but I do not make friends easily, being outgoing is not my typical MO but I typically interact at least intelligently. It doesn't occur to me that other people may enjoy the pleasure of my company. Even in conversation, I'll interject little bits but I prefer to listen to other people talk and learn about them, both from a habitual curiosity and was also brought up to keep a good filter on your mouth to keep out of trouble. So these posts are again out of character and comfort zone for me. So, back to my point, I find a lot of freedom is derived from doing things singlehandedly, the rollerskating of yesterday was due to a whim of being only a mile from home and spontaneously deciding to find a nearby roller-rink and get some unusual exercise. Very spontaneous and not practical for a group with varieties of interests and schedules to correlate.
But back to today, I went on another run and am loving my new iPhone app Nike+GPS . It doesn't require the sensor in the shoe and it's got this really cool feature of showing you a color-coded route of where you ran and the color is associated with the pace you're running at at that location show I can see where I slowed down or set a very good steady pace. I love the applying of numbers and statistics to all the exercises and I find it pretty cool.
Yale was a fun adventure, I listened to the Netflix Movie "Suspicion" by Alfred Hitchcock featuring Carrie Grant and Joan Francis. Classic Hitchcock and Cary Grant was spot on as usual, Joan apparently got an academy award for her part too. However, I didn't really enjoy the story as some of the other Hitchcock works like Rear Window. There were too many pointers and the heroine honestly should have been killed, but Grant played a supreme schmuck. Charming schmuck but a certifiable schmuck so who cares if he's killed anyone or not? He was irresponsible, shiftless, a liar, gambler, and treated his wife as a valueless commodity.
At yale, there was a definite shift in atmosphere. Everything went to the proximity RFID passes on the doors, the architecture is decidedly old fashioned. And I loved the tall structures, tall things appeal to me in general and have for as long as I can remember. I think most people enjoy the uniqueness of a tall perspective but I have a passion for them. The architecture was incredibly classical. It looked like the entire campus was a series of castles. The population went to a decidedly uptick in the percentage of foreign heritage. And since it is an ivy league with a fair amount of environmentally conscious students and people with discretionary income, I saw a large increase in hybrids and convertibles. Altogether, I enjoyed my afternoon there.
It was a good day.

New Adventures

"Life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death!"-Aunt Mame
For a variety of reasons, which I may expound upon in a future post, I have decided to do my best to make the best of the areas I find myself in and explore. I love exploring. I've made it a point to try and visit at least one new place a week for the last couple months and I've usually made good on it, sometimes multiple times.
I'm naturally an introvert, my comfort zone would be to sit at home and work on the computer or read a book. I still do this, but I've been forcing myself to see my world and experience and it's been very rewarding.
A couple of weeks ago, I started getting into foursquare which is a mobile phone program that takes your position, correlates it to nearby venues, and gives you points based on if you've been to similar locations or that spot before, newer or exotic places being given more points. I use it like a virtual journal of the places I've been going and find it pretty handy.
This evening, I went all over the place, I went rollerskating, I had dinner at a restaurant/bar that specialized in 50's decor and music. Before both of those, I went for a run, swim, tan, and volleyball at a nearby beach. I played volleyball with three guys who, for all I know in my stereotypical wisdom, may have been russian operatives over here. They were fit, decent looking, spoke fluent russian and were very sharp in observing my navy shorts and haircut and tried asking me some questions throughout the game. But they were a lot of fun for volleyball and above average skill. For all I know, they were curious immigrants that I'll never see again.
I've also been using the beach to practice some of my acrobatics, which I've let slip for a little while. I'll find a fairly quiet corner of the beach and start some stretching, then stretch into a back-bend before starting the fancier stuff. Since I've restarted up, along with the normal front and backflips along with roundoffs and back handsprings, I've gotten a lot better at my handstands and also the sideflip. I'm now working on a one handed back handspring.
Can I just say I miss the relatively warmer water of SoCal? The waves and temperature of New England are such that the Canadians might have to actually bring a towel to warm up afterwards. This warm weather boy is not a fan.