Is school back in session?

I decided to venture out today, and campus was pretty damn crowded today. However, it was filled with parents of graduating seniors, as well as a surprisingly large number of alumni. Exciting times.

Commemorating a few songs

This is for the late nights that probably went on a bit too long (different video because the artist himself sucks and doesn't allow for YouTube embedding):



This is for the last-minute cramming for many an exam since sophomore year:



And this is a song that came to be known as #1 during freshman year:

Men in bars wearing suits

One thing I will never be caught doing is going to an on-campus bar as an alum removed from college more than a couple years...while wearing a suit.

I can understand trying to relive the glory days, but it made for a less-than-optimal atmosphere. Watching Iron Man and eating overpriced junk food was a better use of my time.

I should've gotten out more

Yesterday, I spent all day wandering around Center City here in Philadelphia with my girlfriend. We had lunch at Vic's Sushi Bar, a couple blocks north of Rittenhouse Square. For the price, it had to be the best sushi I've ever eaten. They also use fresh ingredients, and they're one of the few places that doesn't make rice-to-fish/veggies ratio too high. When I come back to visit Philly in the future, Vic's will definitely be on my place to sit down for a nice, quick lunch.

The aftermath

It's messy as hell outside after everyone moved out, so the folks who work at Facilities are doing a lot of cleaning up. There's also a bit of landscaping going on...I've never seen Penn in the summer before, save for the visit I paid almost 5 years ago when I was figuring out where I wanted to go to school.

That was a long time ago.

Self-mutilation

Over the past few weeks, I have incurred a bunch of really painful injuries that are short-term in nature but could have been prevented if I had been a little more careful. I nearly bit through my entire lip when I was eating shortly after I had woken up from a long nap; that took almost a week to heal completely. Last week, I bruised my right thumb badly after getting it caught on a huge bag of trash I was tossing down the chute; that healed (or at least wasn't painful) after a couple of days.

And just now, I kneed myself in the chin, causing me to bite my tongue and making it bleed on both sides. Who knows how long that will take to feel normal again. I'm not quite sure what I did to deserve this spate of bad luck.

Deserted

Campus officially looks like a ghost town. I'm sure the bars are packed with seniors, but after many a time going to Smokes or Blarney's, it really doesn't hold the same kind of appeal when one is on the cusp of graduating than it does just after you turn 21.

Also, after looking at the schedule for senior events, I'm surprised by how few of them I'll end up going to. There was definitely a cutback on events from last year.

Okay, so today's the exodus

I thought most people had already moved out. I was most definitely wrong; it's pretty insane today...either a lot of people had exams yesterday and couldn't leave earlier, or everyone who finished decided to relax on-campus until the last possible day.

Either way, it's nuts - and I'm glad the bulk of my remaining stuff isn't going home until tomorrow morning.

Tweedle dee, tweedle dum

Six more days until I officially graduate...too long, in my opinion. I may end up reading a few books that I've been meaning to get to over the next week.

A most excellent dinner

Tonight, I had dinner with my girlfriend at this restaurant called Twenty Manning. It's a couple blocks from Rittenhouse Square, and eating outside certainly lent a nice atmosphere to the dinner. Speaking of the dinner, the prix fixe 3-course meal for $30 was absolutely fantastic. I had a potsticker appetizer and oven-roasted chicken for the main course. She had a Vietnamese spring roll appetizer and a main course of Angus short ribs. Dessert was basically a delicious chocolate souffle topped with vanilla ice cream and raspberry glaze.

It was quite possibly the best meal I've had in recent memory.

Whistling past Dixie

I've never been a great fan of the South. Every time I have visited the region, I've never felt completely comfortable. It may be that it is a distinct culture within America that one has to be born in to understand it (although they make some great food), as well as the fact that it is far more conservative than the rest of the country by a long shot...and as a 'bleeding heart liberal', so to speak, that also bothers me.

But when I see stories like this (go read it) - and then see that a majority of the people who voted in the online poll don't find something like that racist - it makes me wonder just exactly how much progress has been made in terms of racial relations, or if the progress that has been made makes it easier for everyone to paper over the deep, underlying difficulties that still exist.

Rambling about gaming

Back in high school and in my first year in college, I used to be into video games, particularly those played on the computer. I never played console games much, since I have never owned one, but I got into a few computer games. Starcraft and Diablo II come to mind at first, but I moved on to Counter-Strike somewhere along the line. I played other games sporadically, such as Unreal Tournament, Halo, Sim City 3000, and more recently, Rise of Nations (recently is a relative term, given that I haven't played it since last summer). I've taken up CS more recently again with boredom, along with some of the Windows Vista games (Hearts and Spider Solitare), but it's not really amusing anymore. I'm not sure why, but somewhere along the line, playing games lost some of its fun. Maybe that's a function of growing up, or something like that.

Exodus from campus

It's a beautiful day outside - in the mid-60s with a nice breeze, no humidity. The pace of students moving out has also picked up; the vast majority of those left are packing their bags for the summer today and tomorrow. It's a ritual I'm usually not around for...in the past, I would tend to leave campus as soon as my final exams were finished. Although it was a lot of work, I'd always be relieved once I was headed home - it was nice to take an extended break from the intensity of my studies.

The only difference this year is that I'm not coming back in the fall.

Disturbed

Went to see Disturbed in concert tonight, up in Atlantic City...first time I had attended a concert since I went to see Rise Against before Thanksgiving in 2006. A good deal of bands are sloppy live, but Disturbed played a very tight 13-song set. The vocalist has a good set of chords - which really drives the rest of the music. I was somewhat surprised by the older age of the crowd (I would definitely say the crowd trended to the late-20s, early-30s demographic; there were a few metalheads who hadn't quite grown up yet as well), but all in all, it was a very solid experience. If I can figure out how to hook up my cell phone to my computer, I'll try and get some of my crappy little pictures up.

Here's the setlist:

-Prayer (Album: Believe)
-Liberate (Believe)
-Perfect Insanity (Indestructible)
-Voices (The Sickness)
-Just Stop (Ten Thousand Fists)
-Remember (Believe)
-Deify (Ten Thousand Fists)
-Stupify (The Sickness)
-Land of Confusion (Ten Thousand Fists)
-The Game (The Sickness)

Encore:

-Inside The Fire (Indestructible)
-Stricken (Ten Thousand Fists)
-Down With The Sickness (The Sickness)

One song I wish they had really played was 'The Meaning of Life', which is a completely kickass song. It would have also been interested to hear them play one of their slower songs - whether it was 'Overburdened' from Ten Thousand Fists or 'Darkness', the last track from Believe.

Having fun

Today, some friends and I flew a kite we picked up at Dave & Buster's. While it ultimately met an untimely end in some trees, they were good times while it lasted. I also learned a thing or two about kite-flying that I didn't know before.