|
| Today I learned that "koi," those big fish you usually see in oriental ponds, are actually just big goldfish that were placed in a giant fish tank... Seriously, they just grow according to the size of tank you put them in. I'm not exactly a fish expert here, so I'm not sure on the details. I'm just saying that's crazytalk.
So... I propose we take all the fish out of the Atlanta Aquarium and replace them with "Goldie." Theoretically, Goldie could grow to the size of a couch, or possibly a Tahoe.
This is all for science, people, but just think of the applications: we could "harvest" Goldie when it came time and feed all the hobos in Atlanta for like a year. In fact, we could solve world hunger with a mere handful of Goldies. Think about it. | | |
| Apartment ShoppingThe last time I went apartment shopping I had my mommy with me. And fully equipped with our Sunday newspaper and OSU Off Campus Living Guide, she and I set out to peruse Stillwater's wholesome variety of properties. Within a week, I found my exclusive, upscale penthouse studio suite next to the drainage ditch/wildlife reservoir in the ass-end of the complex. I named it, "the Ess Hole."
I could see daylight through the cracks in the door (this would have been okay if the cracks weren't in the middle of the door), the heater broke constantly, my stairs and the lack of light made me an easy rape victim anytime after sunset, and my neighbors were all on welfare. I loved it. It was my grown up hidey hole, and I was excited because this time it was not made out of couch cushions. I stripped the door and repainted it, bought new blinds, bleached everything, ripped the laminate off the desk, etc, etc, and it rocked.
Then I got roommates and moved into the Reserve because that's where you go when you get roommates who don't own any furniture. The Reserve came complete with wild college parties/orgies whenever OSU won a game, and a lawn dotted with beer cans the morning after. More importantly, though, it came with a dishwasher.
But! Fast forward to now! I'm apartment shopping on my very own in a new town with a new car and a new job, and I'm all starry-eyed about flying and fencing and driving on highways! Here's a glimpse of what I thought it was going to be like!
*50's housewife-driving-the-car-to-the-grocery-store music plays. You know, the kind with the strings all playing pizzicato.* Cathy, wearing a sundress and bonnet, leaps gaily to and fro among brightly colored apartment complexes, purse swinging from her arm, Apartment Finder in hand, retarded smile on her face. The happy apartment man opens the door to an immaculate room with freshly shampooed carpet, everything sparkles like in those bathroom cleaner commercials, and Cathy claps like an idiot.
Okay.
Now picture Cathy driving in her new Mazda, which is not an automatic, whilst holding a map, an apartment guide, the classifieds, and a gas station sandwich. She's wearing job interview clothes because she just accepted her AirOne position, and her janky fencing clothes and the remainder of the newspaper are strewn about the back seat. After accidentally driving around to all fifty welfare housing complexes, she realizes it's after 6, and all the offices to the non-budget-restriction apartments are closed.
She parks, crams the sandwich, and juggles the endless amount of paper before her. Half an hour later she gives up because Oklahoma City property is more expensive than renting a hangar for the space shuttle. Note to self: do not even attempt California.
Two and a half weeks later she is digging through the piles on her desk looking for that damn presentation outline. She unearths the Apartment Finder, swears a little, and calls her mother. | | |
| I've been busy... No, not that kind of busy. You're sick.Yours truly has a job.
That's right guys, in a matter of weeks, I will be joining the American workforce and paying my taxes and building a new tomorrow, etc, etc. Actually I'm already doing all that, but this will be my first post-college, "real" job.
Which reminds me that I haven't done my taxes yet... Yeah.
Anyway, I'll be working for AirOne Flight Academy in Oklahoma City at Wiley Post airport doing flight instructing and aircraft sales. I'll get paid almost double what I get paid for flight instructing now, which is awesome, but not even the best part. The best part is that I will be making/performing presentations for companies who are looking to buy into a business jet. When they buy into the plane, AirOne keeps it, maintains it, and flies it for them. So in about a month.... I will sell shares in a plane and then get to fly the fancy business executives around in it, plus flight instruct in much nicer planes than the ones I'm in now. Oh, yeah, and 10% commission on stuff I help sell. FREAKING WIN-WIN.
I know. You're jealous that I have my dream job already. You should really work on that; jealousy is not a healthy feeling.
The parents have been taking this well, of course. As dad puts it, "we might launch one." They are looking forward to kicking me off the payroll, so to speak, along with the car/health/dental insurance policies and cell phone bill. Apparently I'm expensive or something.
The reason I kept looking for a job in OKC, though, is fencing. I've kind of become attached to the sport, and I find more and more that I want to devote pretty much all of my resources into becoming an elite athlete. I want to win North American Cups. I want to win World Cups. If I wasn't going to be 27 by the time the 2012 Olympics roll around, I would want to go win that, too. My coach says you have be a little crazy if you want to compete at this level. I think centering your career for the next four years around where the fencing center is located is just this kind of crazy.
Here's my logic, though. I have the talent, the desire, and the resources (hopefully). The only time in my life that I will ever be able to see how good I can get at fencing is now. Now, while I'm still young and single and stupid. For me, it isn't about winning or competing so much as it is about seeing what my best looks like.
That having been said, I'm skipping my own graduation ceremony for summer nationals qualifiers in El Paso! I called my parents up, and the conversation went as follows:
Me: Mom, do you mind if I skip my graduation ceremony? I've got to go qualify for summer nationals on the same day. I mean, I can probably file for an exemption if I need to, but I pretty much need to fence at the exact time of the ceremony. Is that cool? It's okay if you're not happy with it, I can figure something else out I guess. I mean, if you're not okay with it.
Mom: Pfft, whatever. If you want to go to the whole 3-hours-of-inspirational-speaking-about-how-you're-going-to-grow-up-to-be-a-millionaire-and-drive-a-Ferrari, I guess we can come and sit through it....... But you can go fence, too, it's up to you.
Me: Wait... Really? I thought Grandma was going come down.
Mom: Yeah, that fell through. Do what you want.
Me: Should I at least call dad to make sure he's okay with it?
Mom: Oh, yeah. Good idea.
-----------------------------------------------
Me: Dad, do you care if I skip my graduation ceremony to go to a fencing tournament?
Dad: No.
Me:........
Dad: Look, if you want to go through that whole tear-jerking walking across the stage bit, it's cool; we'll take pictures. But if you need to go, it's not going to bother me any. I wish I'd skipped my own.
Me: Amazing. | | |
| That fencing trip to Richmond I talked about was a total disaster. I wrote up a long-winded schpeil about it, but never got around to posting it. I may put it up later in a "Pop_Tart: B Sides and Rarities" post if you're lucky. The short version is that we missed our flight out of Dallas, which was the last flight out for the day in the entire airport, and Daniel fenced the next morning. After several phone calls to parents, frantic over-the-phone Orbitz shopping, several calls to every rental car service available, negotiating with the ticket lady, and a call to American Airlines, we snagged some (relatively, for the time being) cheap (see: not cheap at all) tickets to Baltimore, Maryland and a Chrysler Sebring to get us down to Richmond. Never had I pulled so much money out of my butt before, and never had it hurt so bad.
We go through security, and it turns out I forgot to take the pocketknife that David gave me out of my purse. Since I already spent all my savings on new plane tickets, I didn't have the $10 they charge to mail it back home, so I had to give it up.
Then the flight gets delayed for like four hours, and we get into Baltimore at 4 AM, which leaves us just enough time to rent the car and drive straight through the night to the venue because registration for men's saber opens at 7.
Then the Sebring turns out to be a convertible Sebring, which doesn't hold Daniel's family-sized fencing bag in its trunk, so we spend an extra ten minutes cramming it into the back seat in 20 degree weather. What the hell good is a convertible in winter? That's probably why you had plenty of them left in the lot, Dollar Rental. For future reference, convertible Sebrings aren't "midsize," asshats.
I'm still a little sore because we paid an extra $100 because we're both under 25.
So, a huge cup of coffee and three hours later, we get to the venue and Daniel fences and does pretty well, considering he's just pulled an all-nighter, but we can't check into the hotel afterwards until our friend Brian shows up because the hotel is booked in his name. Our coach, Jerry, was refereeing at the tournament, so he gives us his roomkey and tells us to go take a nap in his room. We ask about his roommates, but he says they should be working all day, but just in case, don't sleep naked.
We heed his advice, and for good cause. Jerry's roommates come back and find two people of the opposite sex half-asleep on the bed (at the opposite ends of the bed, mind you), and the most awkward conversation I have ever had ensues:
Me: "Uh. Hi. We're Jerry's kids. He... Said we could sleep here since, uh..."
Daniel: "-- Since we pulled an all-nighter to get here and can't check into our hotel yet."
Foreign referee dude: "Oh. Ok."
Other foreign referee dude: "Hey, uh..... I'm gonna go to *mumblemumblesomething* Bye."
*BLANK STARE*
*AWKWARD SILENCE AS FOREIGN GUY WALKS AROUND THE ROOM COLLECTING HIS STUFF SO HE CAN CHANGE CLOTHES*
He goes to the bathroom to change.
Daniel: "This is too awkward. I can't take it. Is he going to stay here or leave like the other one did?"
Me: "I don't know. Do we pretend to be asleep? It's totally not believable if we fake it. I'm so lost."
Daniel: *sexual remark about faking it*
We pretended to sleep. Later on, Jerry comes back and we have a good laugh about the whole thing.
So then we checked into our hotel and got stuck on an elevator. Then the bathroom flooded. Then we had a pretty good trip for a while. My cousin Paul drove over from somewhere else in Virginia (sorry, Paul, totally forgot where), and we hung out and ate really good seafood. Then I fenced, and did pretty well, and things were generally a success until the journey home.
First, let me point out that we had to check out of the hotel room before I could take a post-fencing-tournament shower, so I had to fly back filthy and sitting next to people. After the drive back to Baltimore (had fly out of the same place we arrived, plus return the car), the flight gets delayed for about an hour, and we leave Maryland at about the same time that ice storm hits Oklahoma, and all flights into and out of OKC were cancelled. Since we flew out of Dallas (ironically, to save money), we land safely and then can't find our fencing bags for like half an hour. We discover them in a corner by themselves somewhere in a hallway. The reunion is very happy.
Then Jerry calls and asks if we're still in Dallas because he's stuck in the airport since he flew out Oklahoma City... Which would have been hilarious, except that we had just been through such hell, all we had left was sympathy. So we pick him up and drive him to OKC without his luggage.
But wait. That's not all.... The ice storm hit kind of hard, so the driving is slow. We reach OKC at around 5 in the morning, so I sleep on an air mattress in Daniel's apartment for a few hours before booking it up to Stillwater just in time to arrive at school to take my final exam for Aviation Management in the clothes I've been wearing for over 24 hours now with no post-fencing shower. I did get clean on the walk to class, though, because it totally rained on me the entire way there, and the umbrella didn't help. Then I left the umbrella in the room, and someone stole it, so I walked back in the rain anyway.
And Jerry didn't get his luggage back for a week.
THE END.
| | |
| I feel the need to point out that my last post came way before Dave Barry's Holiday Gift Guide. I am not linking to the Holiday Gift Guide on his site because I am jealous and lazy.
Whatever. So I graduate in May with dual majors in Aviation Pro-Pilot and Aviation Management. "Dual" majors are better than a "double major" because it means I get two diplomas, as if I had gone to college twice. SWEET FREAKIN DEAL, RIGHT?
The majority of the role models in my life have spent years and years getting their masters/doctorates/multiple degrees in Everything Under The Sun, and you know what? I'm totally right there with them at the ripe age of 22! Take that, role models! Looks like you need to go back to school if you want me to keep idolizing you.
What's that? 40 years of experience at life? A fine flock of children to carry on your legacy? Yeah, well, uh... Yeah? Well, I fly planes. Yeah.
-----------------------------------------
Anyway, I'm flying to Virginia this weekend for a North American Cup fencing tournament, and I'll be fighting against the top women saberists in the nation. It's officially creeping me out because there are 79 of us, and everyone has a cooler name than I do. Like Aiuto or Franciszowicka or D'Asaro. Suddenly my theory that the weirder your name is, the better you are at fencing hits home because "Latimer" has an unfortunately appropriate number of vowels for all of its syllables. Also, there are no punctuation marks or spaces to offset that fact, so you are definitely looking at the little fish in the big pond now.
I need a confidence-boosting, international-sounding, fencing name.
L'Atimer
LaTimer
Guatimer
Latizowski
Zlatimer
Latimernik
Latimer-Chowski
Lasdasdlkjgasdkjgasdfgasdkgasdklgj
Any of these will do. Of course, I will have to wait to get the name change done because those legal things cost money, and I already spent all of mine on the DAMN PLANE TICKET. I'm eating Ramen noodles and cardboard, people. If anybody out there is rich, I promise I will tattoo your name on my forehead if you will sponsor me for the Olympics.
I really want to sell business jets for a living, in case you were wondering, but I might end up going regional airlines so I can deadhead on airline flights across the country for free to support my fencing addiction. Impossible life! That should be my motto. | | |
|
