G12

Apparently this “Tattoo” thing that’s happening at the base tomorrow is kind of a big
deal. At least it is to people in Dayton. Today four different coworkers asked me if I was
planning on going. I’m still skeptical, but we might have to leave work early* tomorrow
so they can set up for it. So even if it isn’t interesting, some good will come of it.

*I’m not sure what counts as “leaving work early” in a building where most people are
gone by 4 anyways. I don’t anticipate working much tomorrow.

Duke had been sitting on the couch watching an internet stream of the NBA draft all
night. I think he needs help. I didn’t think there was anything more boring than a regular
season NBA game, but that is way worse. I have no idea how any sane person could
possibly watch that.

I’m writing my post early tonight so Duke can’t complain that I’m taking too long. I
think tonight I’m going to keep telling him that he needs to hurry up just so he can se
how it feels.

I think tonight I’m going to have to get late night food in Dayton for the first time. I have
no idea what the options will be. I’m not really expecting anything decent to still be open,
but I’m sort of sick of eating the same cheap food every day.

My roommate** has been sitting in the living room writing code and drinking beer
since dinnertime. He’s exactly like a lot of my friends. It’s actually sort of reminiscent
of hanging out in the Lovett commons late at night. I’m not doing anything while other
people write code. Unfortunately I won’t be able to ride to Whataburger in the back of a
pickup truck now.

**Sadly, not Duke. One of the other ones.

D12

Lately at work I've been learning to do more intense [magical science] with [machines and contraptions that look like they came from Tony Stark's lab in Iron Man 2], so it's gotten back to the point where I'm learning almost too much at a time again. A lot of the stuff we do is chemistry-ish and I haven't done too much chemistry since freshman year, so it's all kinda faint but slowly coming back to me as I learn some of this stuff. Also, it's kinda funny to listen to conversations other people are having when you pass by them in the hall. They're all super science-y conversations along with the occasional "yeah, my wife is doing fine" discussion.

There wasn't really an after work adventure today. We just sorta came back home, ate, and watched more HIMYM, so I'll try to um...think of other things to discuss. I can't promise they'll be particularly interesting though.

Tomorrow is that event thing at the base. It's called Tattoo, and I think the main act is some artist that I haven't really heard of before. However, there will be fireworks and airplanes and stuff. I think they're gonna make us leave base early and have to come back again to find parking, which will be kinda annoying, but whatever.

Tomorrow, the pizza rep will search for another worthy pizza restaurant in town. We'll see how successful I am compared to last week.

Yeah, that's kinda it for today. Tomorrow I should have more to talk about. Pretty sure this is also the first post I haven't mentioned Garrett since we've started the blog.

G11

Today at work we learned that there will be not one, but TWO free* music events here
in Dayton this weekend.** And both will have fireworks, because apparently music and
fireworks go together. One of the concerts is at the base and is called “Tattoo.” The name
is kind of questionable, but we’ll be there anyways, so we might as well check it out. The
other is a folk music festival downtown. No doubt it will be crazy.

*Well, five dollar suggested donation…so…free.

**Yeah, there’s so much to do here.

After work we went to the gym again.*** Duke waited for an hour and a half just to play
fifteen minutes of basketball. Apparently that’s fun. Whatever. Starting Friday, the gym
is going to be closed for like two weeks, so we’re going to have to find something else
to do in the afternoon. I’ll probably just play soccer by myself here at Wright State or
something.

***“NOD bod” is by far the most annoying and overused phrase in this blog, and I’ll bet
he’s going to use it again tonight.

I’m a little worried that we might run out of episodes of How I Met Your Mother to
watch by the end of the week. We haven’t exactly paced ourselves, and we’re going to
regret it. We just can’t stop. It’s sort of becoming a problem. We were going to watch the
Spain-Portugal soccer game tonight, but we decided not to because we could spend that
time watching How I Met Your Mother instead.

Duke is complaining that I’m taking too long to write my post again, so it must be time to
stop. I don’t know how he writes his so quickly; it takes me forever to think of things that
happened during the day.

D11

Today after work we went to the gym again. I don't know if I'll be able to finish a complete list of traits of people who play basketball here because it's too frustrating and the waiting time to join a game is incredibly long. Games last forever for no good reason at all really; people are good enough but they just don't play well together. People also call every little foul that slow everything down tremendously. I'm better off doing other stuff at the rec. Either way, I think it's going to be closed for 2 weeks after tomorrow, so I'll need to find something else and Garrett will have to figure out a way to maintain his journey toward getting NOD bod.

Apparently one of our roommates and Garrett had a short argument over KC barbecue. Turns out he doesn't like it because KC doesn't do pork...or something. It was a little entertaining to hear, even if there's the possibility that Garrett ends up ninja killing him or something because he believes KC barbecue is the greatest thing on earth.

Tonight we ate dinner at W O Wright's, or something like that. It was a pub and grille, as they spelled it. The food was aight but not great. We still agree that the best food we've had here was that pizza place (mhm), and the rest have been at or below "aight" level. Step yo game up, Dayton.

There's some other event going on at the Air Force base this weekend, involving bands, planes, and fireworks. It seems that random things are becoming available for us to do on weekends, but during the weeks we're short on things to do. This is problematic because this is when a lot of HIMYM gets watched, and we've been watching it for about 5 days and have gone through so much. Maybe this will mean that Garrett will finally have to level up his Pokemon so they can be sacrificed before me and my immensely more talented party.

I'm trying to continue HIMYM but Garrett is taking too long to write his post because he's screwing around on other parts of the internet (interpret that however you wish). Maybe this will be how we don't finish the entire series before we're done in Dayton.

G10

I think we were planning on getting up early this morning to go get our permanent ID
cards. That definitely didn’t happen. And it’s looking like it may never happen, because
I don’t think either of us is ever going to get out of bed that early. I don’t really have a
problem with using the temporary passes for the summer; it’s only like five more weeks
or something.

Living in Eastern Time is the worst. I don’t know why anyone would ever want to live in
the Eastern Time Zone. Everything starts later than it’s supposed to, and you have to go
to sleep earlier than everyone else. I’m really getting sick of it.

I guess we didn’t really do anything today. I’ll try to make sure that interesting things
happen tomorrow so this isn’t a problem in for the next post, too. I just asked Duke what
he’s writing about in his post, and he said he’s just pouring out his soul. Unfortunately,
I don’t have a soul, and even if I did I wouldn’t pour it out, so I can’t do that. I have no
idea what the rest of this post will be about. Most likely I’ll just think of something Duke
did today that I can complain about.

I know: he put his laundry in the dryer while we were trying to watch How I Met Your
Mother. The dryer is really loud, and it made it really hard to hear what was going on in
the show. That was extremely inconsiderate of him.

I’m still pretty convinced that Duke doesn’t actually do anything at work. He gets done
way before me in the afternoon and aimlessly wanders into my lab a few times a day.

Duke is complaining that I haven’t finished this yet, and I’m really tired, so I think this
will just have to be a really short post. I’ll make up for it tomorrow.

D10

Today at work I spent some time talking to Benji (a PIWW) discussing in more detail the kind of stuff he does and the questions he's trying to solve through his research (and the stuff I'll do once my [magical samples] arrive). I don't want this post or blog to become too science-y so I won't really talk about his [magical science], but I found it really interesting. I've gotten to do research a few summers and I've usually been kinda lucky to research stuff I found interesting. *Insert sentence about how I'm not sure what I want to do with my future yet but this stuff might help me decide, but the sentence can't sound really sappy or emotional because I don't get down like that*

After work today, we went to the on-base rec center again where Garrett worked more on his NOD bod and I played more basketball. I think I'm beginning to figure out my list to describe how people here play basketball. One thing on this list is people here occasionally play incredibly lazy defense. This is a little different from my complaint about Asians-who-only-play-with-other-Asians-at-Rice "never get back on defense", but "incredibly lazy defense" might be worse. It's short periods of time where people just decide not to guard their man at all, allowing them to hit multiple open 3's or get easy layups or stuff like that. Sooo frustrating.

There's supposed to be some music festival this weekend in town...the City Folk Festival or something. It sounds sorta like ACL or SXSW but far less epic (because it's not Austin) and free (because it's Dayton). Looks like we have stuff to do for this weekend at least. I also just realized I need to start reading the O-week book (yeahhh Sid O-week) over the summer as well. I guess that'll happen once we're done with HIMYM (now we're 8 episodes through season 3). Oh, I'm also starting to feel sick as well. If what I have is in any way contagious, then a couple posts from now, Garrett will probably be blaming me for getting him sick.


THE BCS IS GOING TO DIE

G9

Today, we went to a Dayton Dragons game. The Dragons are Dayton’s minor league
baseball team. Apparently they’re a big deal here in Dayton. They sell out almost all of
their home games. The game wasn’t very exciting, and the Dragons were pretty bad, but
we think we found the “nice” part of downtown Dayton. We’re going to go back during
the day sometime to check it out.

Getting tickets to the game was a bit of an adventure, though. We bought the tickets on
ticketmaster,* but it took us forever to find somewhere we could print them off. We spent
a while wandering around the Wright State campus before we finally found a printer we
could use.

*ticketmaster sucks

We each bought a hat at the game, which led to a heated debate over the correct way to
wear a baseball hat. Obviously, I was in favor of leaving the brim flat, but Duke thought
the brim should be bent.

The most entertaining part of the game was watching Duke pull his shirt up over his head
to hide, turtle style, while “Call Me Maybe” played over the PA system and all the little
kids around us sang along.

We also learned that next weekend there’s some kind of live music festival that’s
Dayton’s biggest event of the year. It starts on Friday and goes through Sunday night, so
we should have something to do over the weekend.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that Duke fell asleep at work again today. That means he’s
fallen asleep four out of the six days we’ve been here. Of course, if what I’m doing were
as boring as what he’s doing, I’d probably start falling asleep, too.

Roommate update: Our two roommates have spent their entire afternoon in their rooms
on their computers. It’s as if we’re still the only ones in the apartment. We’re ok with
this.

I’m going to end this post here because we haven’t been able to watch any How I Met
Your Mother yet today, so we have a lot of lost time to make up for.

D9

Today after work, a few things happened. First, we bought a Game Boy Link, meaning Garrett can't hide his Pokemon from mine forever anymore. Next, after spending an hour searching Wright State's campus for a library to print our tickets, we went to a Dayton Dragons baseball game. Some of you might know that I don't particularly like baseball, but I've been to a couple of baseball games and have had a solid time. It doesn't change the fact that y'all need to get instant replay still. [Whenever I strongly disassociate with something, I attribute it to y'all. Y'all need to quit listening to Call Me Maybe.] It was fun though; hot dogs were eaten, and hats were bought (Garrett got a fitted; I got a beanie), mediocre baseball was watched, more fat people were seen. It was a good time....until they (y'all) played Call Me Maybe...

We also realized that while the part of downtown we drove through on Friday was kinda awful, the part near where the baseball stadium was looked a lot better. There were even more >4 story, non-abandoned buildings that we missed. Maybe when we need to adventure, we'll do another, more thorough assessment of downtown Dayton and reevaluate. 

It also turns out that Rachel wasn't making those samples in the lab that I needed quickly enough, so we're getting supplied from another source. I should be starting the really interesting [magical science] soon, but we may also be moving some of the machinery and lasers around soon. As time is progressing, I'm doing less shadowing/watching and more hands-on stuff though. 

We're about to watch more HIMYM because our roommates seem to just stay in their rooms and play computer games, so it's sorta like they're not here...

G8

Today was not a very exciting day in Dayton. We watched a LOT of How I Met Your
Mother. Like we’re approaching the end of season two. We also watched the England-
Italy soccer game, which was a boring 0-0 tie that England lost in penalty kicks.

We decided to go out for dinner, but Duke couldn’t decide what he wanted to eat.
Actually, I think he either wanted to go to a pizza place or a grill, but I refused because
we’ve only eaten at pizza places and grills since we’ve been here. So, Duke was forced
to step outside of his comfort zone a little bit.* We ended up wandering around until we
found a Mexican place. Bad decision. I hope I never again eat in a Mexican restaurant
north of Kansas City.

*Unfortunately he didn’t really step out of his comfort zone; he ordered ribs.

It’s really going to be a struggle to make Duke go to different types of restaurants. I’m
pretty sure I’m going to have to go eat by myself every now and then. He started telling
me tonight about how he was craving Domino’s. I’m trying my best to keep him from
ordering pizza every night, but I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to control that.

This evening, our two new roommates moved in. They’re engineering graduate students
at Ohio State who are also working at the Air Force Base this summer. We haven’t
really talked to them too much yet, but they brought a remote control helicopter into the
apartment, so I think we’ll get along pretty well. Hopefully that goes well.

Our apartment does have one problem: there’s a street light somewhere near my bedroom
window. My room is bright all night long. It’s really starting to bother me; I can’t fall
asleep if my room isn’t dark enough. I’ll have to find a way to solve that problem soon.

D8

Today wasn't particularly epic...

After watching more HIMYM and Eurocup, we tried to figure out where to go for dinner by looking at the Urbanspoon ratings of nearby restaurants. We still weren't able to decide where to go, so we just drove around and randomly decided to eat at a store called Don Pablo, because it was different from what we'd eaten before. We didn't use Urbanspoon to confirm how good it was though, and it turned out to be kinda awful. We know now to decide where to eat before leaving the apartment. We have also continued to realize that there are a lot of fat people around here.

We also got not one, but two roommates today. The lady working at the housing office said we were supposed to have just one roommate for a week. Turns out she lied. Our roommates seem pretty cool though, and they got us beer (or I guess...2 beers for Garrett?). They also enjoy HIMYM, so we're still winning, and I think they're also working at the Air Force Base, probably doing [magical research].

Tomorrow we're going to a baseball game in Dayton after work... butGarrett and I are starting to wonder if there will be enough stuff to entertain us for the next 6 weeks, because we're almost 2 seasons into HIMYM in 3 days, I almost have 4 badges in Pokemon already, and I still sorta question all that Dayton has to offer. There are also a few cities nearby to visit; Cincinnati and Columbus are nearby, and I'm sure Cleveland will be safer to visit about a month after the NBA Finals. I also know people who live not too far from here, but Garrett doesn't have that luxury since, as I mentioned a few posts before, he knows approximately 15 people outside Lovett. Anyway, we'll see what stuff we think of to do the rest of the time we're here. I also mainly wrote this out because I feel this post would've been much more boring without it.

*Rick Ross Grunt*

G7

I was awakened this morning by another of Duke’s disastrous attempts to prepare food.
Somehow he managed to set off the smoke detectors in our apartment while making Eggo
waffles. That’s a whole other level of incompetence in the kitchen. Anyways, I stumbled
out into the living room to see what was wrong, and Duke was standing there with his
breakfast as if nothing had happened. It was a great way to start my day.

After a bit of debate, we decided that we would go on another adventure this afternoon.
Since downtown was a big disappointment yesterday, we decided we’d head in the
opposite direction today. Yellow Springs is a small former college town about twenty
minutes east of Wright State (in a pretty rural area). My sister had suggested we go there,
so we decided to check it out.

It was actually a pretty cool place. Way better than downtown.* It has a nice bike trail
and some interesting stores. My favorite part was the Lego shop. They had a great
selection, including a bunch of vintage Lego sets. They definitely had a few from the 90s
that I vividly remember building. Once I get my first paycheck, I’ll definitely be going
back. Hopefully I won’t spend all of my money there.

*Of course, it’s not hard to beat downtown Dayton.

Duke’s new obsession with Instagram has resurfaced in the last few days.** I’m not too
sure how I feel about this. There are definitely some good things to take pictures of here,
but does he really have to use Instagram?

**“Yeah, I’m a hipster now”

We were supposed to have a third person moving into our apartment today and living
here for the week, but nobody has arrived yet. We’re quite pleased about that.

Finally, I should mention that we are almost finished with the first season of How I Met
Your Mother. After two nights.

D7

Woke up this morning to watch the season ending of the Legend of Korra. ASDFASDHJGA was my reaction. I seek people to discuss it with so if you watched it, hit me up.

After yesterday's sorta unimpressive adventure through Dayton, we decided to try again and go to this part of the city called Yellow Springs, which is this small village about 20 minutes away from us. Even the drive out to the village was more pleasant than the downtown trip yesterday.

[Quick side story - last semester, a bunch of us were bored and started watching House Hunters on TV. All the homes in this one episode were pretty impressive, but Garrett disapproved of all of them because they "didn't have a very big yard". I'm pretty sure one of the homes had an acre-large yard, but he was still like "no, that's not good enough".]

We passed by a lot of nice farm homes with yards that were essentially those endless fields that I think Windows takes pictures of to set as the default desktop background picture of their computers, except these fields had more trees. These yards were also sufficiently big enough for Garrett's approval. 

Yellow Springs itself was this nice collection of mostly hippie-esque shops, cafes, and eateries in the middle of a nice, nature-y nowhere, with bike trails running through the village. I'm pretty sure a few of my friends would love to live here (I'm looking at you Montsho). It sorta reminded me of Goree Island (this small island off the coast of Senegal I visited years ago) in that it was a small, nice, simple place to hang out or live or shop. It wasn't like a mall or anything, but it was just nice. We went to a Lego store, where Garrett relived his childhood, a comic book store, where we bought a souvenir, and some other interesting places. There was another toy store and an old school record store...umm, some other hippie stores....and yeah. Overall, a vast improvement from downtown Dayton. Next time I go I'll take more/better pictures....probably on Instagram. 

That's pretty much the main thing we did today. We came back and watched some of the soccer game (I fell asleep about halfway through), and nearly finished the 1st season of HIMYM. We also still have no roommate. I also didn't mention yesterday that I beat Lt. Surge. Winnin' all day, e'er day. 

G6

Today, we left work early because one of the machines we have to use wasn’t working,
and nobody knew how to fix it. It’s ok, though, because apparently everybody leaves
work early here. Especially on Friday. We were some of the last people in the building at
4:00.

Duke has decided that as Lovett’s pizza rep, it’s his responsibility to find the best pizza
in Dayton. We found a place with pretty good online reviews, and while we were waiting
for our pizza, we decided to drive into downtown Dayton to see what it was like. It was
extremely unimpressive. At one point, Dayton was probably a quaint little city. It is
no longer a quaint little city. There are a few buildings in downtown, half of which are
abandoned and on the verge of collapsing. There is a lovely little bar called Bingers,
which looked like a fine establishment. Other than that, there’s pretty much nothing in
downtown. I don’t think we’ll be going back. We have yet to figure out where the place
to go in Dayton is if you want to, you know, do anything.

While we were driving through downtown*, we started talking about MTV Cribs. I don’t
really know why I’m mentioning this, but we both think that MTV Cribs should still be
making new episodes. We’re going to try to find it on DVD or something. It was high
quality entertainment, and we want to watch it again.

*This only took about thirty seconds

After dinner, we spent most of our night watching How I Met Your Mother. We’ve
decided we’re going to try watching as much of that as we can. We got through six or
seven episodes tonight, which is a pretty good start. It’s way better than watching the
NBA Finals.

We are supposed to have a third person moving into our apartment tomorrow and living
here for the next week, so expect tomorrow’s posts to be complaining about having to
share our quad with a third person. Life is hard.

D6

Today's post-work adventure was a trip to downtown Dayton. I mentioned earlier when we first arrived that it looked like Cleveland, but we decided to get a closer look while we were waiting for our pizza to be made. Things that we saw on our path:
fat people
broken down homes
abandoned buildings
5 buildings above 4 stories (abandoned buildings or those that at least looked like it was abandoned didn't count)
many drifters
a place called "Binger's Bar"
a fat dude in an unbuttoned pink shirt

Overall, Dayton's gotta step its game up.

Also, as the ultimate pizza rep of Lovett, I feel it's part of my duty to test some different pizzas here and compare them to others that I've had. Garrett and I got a large pepperoni and sausage pizza from Joe's Pizzeria, which claims to be the best pizza in Dayton. There was no crack on the crust like Domino's, but the pizza itself was pretty good. I'll have enough time here to find out whether or not it's the best pizza in town.

We also started watching HIMYM today (sorta like everybody else on the planet it seems). We got through about 6 episodes tonight on our new Netflix account before Garrett was done and had to focus on writing his post, so I switched to Top Gear, which also seems to have distracted him as well. Speaking of TV shows, I'm a little sad the season finale of Korra is tomorrow, but hopefully it'll be epic and Korra will go avatar state and kill (or as close as they can get to "kill" on Nickelodeon) some equalists. I'm also still pretty sure Asami is gonna betray everybody in a clutch situation.

We're apparently getting a roommate tomorrow, by the way. Apparently he's only here for like a week though, but it's probably gonna be weird for him because Garrett and I know each other and he...doesn't. I'm also not sure what adventures we'll have tomorrow. We might go to the Air Force Museum, and Garrett also really wants to go see that Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter movie...so we'll see.

G5

I think Duke’s post tonight isn’t going to be a very long one. We’re both in a bad mood
because Miami is going to win, but he’s taking it worse than I am, so I think I’m going to
have to carry the team tonight. I’ll see how long I can make this.

Duke and I had to drive to another part of the base today to get ID cards for ourselves.
The drive itself wasn’t interesting enough to merit mention in the blog, but the directions
we were given were. The lady who was telling us how to get to the ID office mentioned
at least twenty other buildings or landmarks we could use to find our way. And she told
us to turn left even when she meant right. By the time she was done (it probably took
about 3 minutes for her to tell us how to get there), I was actually just standing there
laughing. It’s a good thing she also wrote the directions down for us,* because I couldn’t
pay attention to the last half of what she said. Remarkably, we didn’t get lost (despite
Duke’s terrible navigation skills), but the office was closed by the time we got there.

*She filled up a sticky note with writing so small I couldn’t read it. Just to tell us how to
get somewhere less than two miles away.

After work, we went to the gym on the base. We get in for free, which is awesome
because we thought we were going to have to pay a gym membership somewhere. The
gym is in an old hangar, which is really cool. Or It would be really cool if it was air
conditioned. It’s kinda hard to do much when it’s 92 degrees in the gym. We ended up
spending about two hours there, which was Duke’s fault.** He was trying to play pick
up basketball, but he spent most of the time sitting there watching other people play. He
was probably only playing for a quarter of the time we were there. So I had to entertain
myself for a while until he decided he was ready to go.

**You may notice how nothing that goes wrong is ever my fault. I can’t help it. He’s the
one that’s always messing things up, and I have to deal with the consequences.

Duke tried to make Kraft Mac and Cheese for dinner tonight, but somehow he did it
wrong. I don’t even know how that’s possible. The best part was that he defended himself
with “Hey, I don’t know how to cook,” as if preparing macaroni and cheese out of a box
with cheese powder in it was actually cooking. Bonus quote: “You’re going to talk about
that in the blog, aren’t you?” Yep. You can’t screw up Kraft Mac and Cheese without
being publicly ridiculed.

D5

So I'm gonna write my post a bit earlier because I know I'm not going to want to write anything if this game doesn't turn out right, even if it means Garrett can read what I write and plot out his post accordingly. The sacrifices I make for you all...

Today at work was much of the same, observing and learning from PIWWs. The first few days it seemed like I got hit with a lot of knowledge at once and it was a little much. Nowadays it's much easier to take in all the information I'm getting. Still waiting for Rachel to quit slacking and send me some samples though.

After work today, we went to the rec center on base so Garrett could get his NOD bod and I could play some pick up basketball. Now, from my time at Rice, I've come up with a set of principles for Asians who only play pick-up basketball with other Asians. Some of y'all might've heard me rant about some of these things before (they don't get back on defense, they will defer to me because I'm black). Hopefully after 7 weeks here, I'll come up with a list for ballers who serve in/work with the Air Force. It was rather inefficient for me since I only played a couple of games in like 2 hours.

Garrett will probably mention how I screwed up the Mac & Cheese because I put too much milk, and overstate my cooking deficiencies. He will probably also tell you a story about how we got directions to the building where we get our ID cards. That's all I have though, because I just lost it after Fisher got called for that flagrant foul....

Oh, one more thing...we got a request to see what our plates looked like...

G4

Duke spent most of his workday sleeping today. The kid doesn’t actually do anything at
work. I am actually working on experiments in a lab, and he’s taking naps and making
structures with chemical model building kits. He claims he’s waiting for his lab to
receive some materials, but I don’t believe that. They must not trust him to do anything
important. I can’t really blame them.

At work, there’s a really big doormat with the Air Force logo on it. And I want one,
because it would look awesome in our dorm room. So, since I’m a college student, I
found myself pondering how I could steal it. Then I realized that I can’t do that, because
I’m not on a college campus, and because somebody would probably tackle me before I
had even picked the doormat up. I’m quite disappointed about that.

Duke insisted that we go to some barbecue restaurant tonight so he could “see how it
compares to KC barbecue.” I told him it was a bad idea, but he refused to listen. As
always, I was right.

We were both tired tonight, so we just sat on the couch and watched Zombieland for a
while. Duke spent a long time on his post, and I don’t have anything too interesting to say
tonight, so this will be a short one. I’m not sure if it will be up tonight, because he may
already be asleep. We’ll see.

D4

Today was another mainly learning day, although Garrett will probably lie and say I slept again. For the most part, I don't have to see him most of the day, so thankfully I'm not spending like 24 hours a day with him *shudders*...but I spent most of the afternoon watching Pasha, one of the peeps I'm working work (PIWW), use lasers to [do magical science]. However, the morning was spent attending this chemical safety training session where they basically showed us a movie that used scare tactics/blew up a dummy with a bunch of common chemicals "when misused".

Today's postwork adventure was eating dinner at a place called "City Barbecue". It was aight, but I still think the BBQ I had in Kansas City was better, meaning Garrett still has respect for my taste in food. He agreed it wasn't as good as BBQ in Texas, which means Garrett isn't a fool.

I think I'm beginning to figure out why Garrett occasionally sucks at navigation. Whenever he's the least bit distracted, we are at significant risk for missing a turn/making the wrong turn. Apparently, my job as the passenger is to assess when he is distracted, and act accordingly and preemptively. After 7 more weeks of this, I should be able to easily identify when people are distracted, and hopefully this new skill will enhance my coaching ability, and our powderpuff team will reap the benefits this coming year....at least, that's what I think will happen...

We spent the rest of the evening playing our respective Pokemon games and watching Zombieland. I beat Misty and am now in Vermillion City, and my team has been doin' sooo much work. Soon I need to pick between keeping my Geodude or going with a Diglett though. I also don't know which electric-type Pokemon to roll with for the rest of the game either.

Like I said yesterday, the length of tomorrow's post might be affected by the outcome of Game 5. Just warning y'all.

G3

After work today, Duke and I decided we’d drive around and explore our surroundings a
bit. It didn’t take long. We wandered around a mall and shopping center area looking for
restaurants and other helpful stores. Duke wanted to stop and shop for shoes in the mall,
but I just ignored him and kept walking, because, to quote a brilliant* man**, “I am not
putting up with that shit.” We did find a few restaurants that looked decent, but all Duke
cared about was the Chick-fil-A.

*He thinks so, anyways.

**Really more of a child.

I think we’re going to have to venture into downtown Dayton soon in order to find things
to do. The doctors we’re working with gave us a few suggestions for things to do here,
so that should be helpful. Also, I bought a soccer ball at Dick’s today. After five months,
think my ankle has finally healed from my floor hockey accident, so I’ll probably start
playing on the fields here at Wright State.

Duke fell asleep at work again today. That’s two for two. Solid.

He’s started criticizing my driving habits. I don’t know why; I’m a fantastic driver.
And he hasn’t done any of the driving since we got here, so I don’t think he should be
complaining. I liked it better when he was sleeping.

A few observations about blogging:

1. This is really hard. As I mentioned, I’m really bad at using words. These posts
probably contain more words than I’ve spoken all day. It’s incredibly difficult to do.

2. Clearly, I am a better blogger than Duke is. My posts have generated way more
comments than his have.

3. I’m running a kind of experiment with my roommate. He set the privileges on the blog
so that I can post my own entries. But I’m lazy and stubborn and I don’t really feel like
posting things myself, so I’ve just been emailing my entries to him so he can put them
online. How long will it be until he stops posting my entries? Will it matter that I just told
him what I’m doing? Stay tuned to find out.

D3

Today at the base wasn't particularly filled with [magical science] because apparently I need some samples from Dr. Ajayan at Rice before I can do too much. For now, I blame Rachel Tenney, who's working in his lab this summer, for the delay. Instead, I did a lot of reading, observing, and learning of [magical science]. Also, we got desk space today after being told they ran out yesterday, which is nice.

After work today, we went exploring around town to find what stores and restaurants there were around town. We bought balls (mine was of the basket variety, his was of the foot/fut variety) from Dick's Sporting Goods. We came back and ate dinner. Today was pretty average. However, I learned that if you're riding passenger while Garrett's driving, Garrett will always stay on course when you're looking. Look away from the road for like 2 seconds though, and Garrett will have missed a turn or taken the wrong path, and then proceed to blame you for not alerting him to his mistake. Terribly annoying. Also, it hindered my ability to play Pokemon in the car pretty badly.

OKC just lost which killed my mood and is hindering my ability to think of stuff to write at the moment... so maybe y'all shouldn't expect a post from me one night if they lose this series. Ughhhh

G2

Today was our first day of work at the Air Force Base, but before we could go to work
we had to meet with the people in the housing offices here at Wright State about our
rooming situation. They said they’d try to find us a new apartment during the day.

Our first day of work was pretty uneventful. We probably can’t tell you exactly what
we’re doing*, which is awesome. We’ll be working on different projects, and of course
my project is way cooler than Duke’s. He will tell you otherwise, but he’s wrong. The
stuff he’s working on is so boring he fell asleep several times at work today.

* And even if we could tell you, I would probably say we couldn’t.**

**Asterisk footnotes back by popular demand.

We got off work a bit early and came back to the housing office, where we learned that
the lady working there had put us in a four-person apartment by ourselves. It’s pretty
awesome. We have our own little deck in the back, and we each get our own bathroom.
I’m excited to have a pillow and blankets on my bed tonight. Most importantly, my room
is far enough away from Duke’s that I no longer have to listen to his terrible, terrible
music. Seriously, his music is awful.

The only thing that’s disappointing about the new apartment is that I won’t have a chance
to befriend the family of raccoons that was living outside the old building. Oh well.

This evening, we went shopping for food and supplies. Our best purchase was the set
of plates and bowls we bought. Duke’s plate and bowl have owls printed on them; mine
have a frog and a cow. We ate a gourmet dinner of Kraft mac and cheese, and then
finished moving into our new rooms. Remarkably, Duke has not yet taken an Instagram
picture today. I’m sure that will change soon.

I’d like to conclude today’s post by pointing out that our blog is now only two days old,
but it has twice as many posts as some other blogs that have been around for more than a
month.

D2

Day 1

Stupid room I slept in last night had no sheets and was freezing cold...I've had the most random sleeping arrangements the past week...(shoutout to those who provided me with a bed/couch/inflatable mattress this past week)

Anyway, today was our first day at the base. I don't know exactly what I'm allowed to blog about in case evildoers try to stalk by blog I guess, so I'll probably be using brackets a lot to describe stuff I think I probably shouldn't discuss...or things I just don't feel like discussing. See, that'll throw off the evildoers, because they'll have to figure out whether or not what I don't describe is worthwhile.

When we first arrived, they made us wear these [small items of a distinct bright color] as temporary passes so we could walk around the area unaccompanied. I'm pretty sure the [small brightly colored items] were a complete giveaway to the people that work there that we are...um...I believe the official term is "n00bz". But we met Dr. Ajit Roy, one of the peeps we'll be working with, and a couple of other n00bz who will also be helping with research. Today wasn't particularly eventful though because we had to go through a lot of processing which we haven't quite completed yet still. Dr. Roy went back and forth between helping us and the other two n00bz, so we spent our down time discussing random things, like how Garrett knows fewer than like 20 people outside of Lovett. We eventually met Dr. Benji Maruyama and Dr. Steve Fairchild, two more of the peeps we're working with. We were toured around the base, looked at all the cool [stuff], learned what we're going to be doing. Turns out Garrett is [doing magical research of a high level] while I'll be [doing magical research of a slightly higher level].

We returned to WSU to find that they finally fixed our rooming situation; we're in an apartment made for 4 people...but for now it's just two of us. When we learned that nobody else was in the quad, I began to victoriously sing "Wonton Soup" as we moved in our stuff. #thenihitthatdougie

We went shopping for "stuff that is regularly provided to you at Lovett/home but isn't in the real world so you have to go buy it yourself" kinds of things. It was sorta weird since this is the first time I've lived in a "stuff isn't provided for you" setting, but so far it seems pretty nice. I feel like I should go on more about this....but I won't.

But that's kinda it for the day. I learned Garrett is competent enough to make Kraft Mac & Cheese, so that's good. I also beat Brock with my Butterfree I mentioned last post. CONFUSIONNNIEJROIJHROEIJODFAOIF and that was all that was required. Now I just need to level up [small yellow mouse that may or may not be the face of its respective video game franchise] for Misty.

G1

A few days ago, someone suggested that Duke and I keep diaries of our experiences in
Ohio this summer. Tonight, Duke decided he wanted to turn the diaries into a blog. I’m
not a big fan of this idea,* but if I don’t participate, this blog will just be him making up
outrageous stories about me. So I’ll reluctantly contribute.

* It’s kind of like talking, and I don’t really like doing that, either.

We spent the day yesterday at home in KC. Duke admits that it’s the greatest city in the
world. It was a pretty uneventful day.

Today we drove from Kansas City to Dayton, Ohio.** It’s a 10 hour drive, but you have
to drive through St. Louis, so it’s pretty much the worst experience you can imagine.
Duke spent the first five hours of the drive sleeping and playing pokemon. He wasted
about two hours of his life on a pokemon game that could no longer save properly, which
I found funny. We stopped for lunch at some café in the middle of Illinois. Duke was
bothered by the lack of black people there, but stopping in St. Louis wasn’t an option.

** Dayton, Ohio may sound like it is a city, but it’s actually not. From what I can tell, it’s
just a collection of abandoned factories, Wright brothers museums, and pollutants.

The billboards were the most entertaining part of the drive. The two most interesting
were a Tea Party billboard in Indiana that said “America- Bless God” (yeah we couldn’t
figure it out) and a billboard for an adult video store in Missouri that apparently was also
a shoe store.

Eventually, we made it to Ohio, where we found that the people at Wright State didn’t
have a bed ready for Duke and wanted me to live in a double occupancy apartment
with some other guy. While they tried (unsuccessfully) to resolve this problem, the girl
working there was eager to tell me where and when I can get cheap beer in Dayton. So
I’m prepared in case I ever feel the urge to drink cheap beer alone in a bar in Dayton. The
people who organize housing aren’t available on the weekends, so we have to try to get a
new apartment tomorrow.

We spent a bit of time driving around exploring the area around Wright State and the
Air Force Base. It appears that the highlight of the area is Colonel Sanders Drive, which
features not one, but two Taco Bells.

D1

So Garrett and I are in Ohio for pretty much the rest of the summer because we're working at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton. We're gonna be doing research on carbon nanotubes (we don't know specifically what we're doing yet), and we've spent the previous week at Matteo's lab learning how to handle and test them and whatnot. But we're writing a blog so we can share the weird stuff that happens to us with you all. Also, apparently it would be funny if Garrett and I wrote separate posts about the same days so y'all could compare what we say...For now I don't know what to title it so since it's my first post, I went with "D1"...Garrett will write something which will go up later tonight, and it'll be titled....can you guess....G1!

Day -1 (6-16)
So before we actually got here, we spent the day in Kansas City (Garrett's hometown). I guess the main reasons for mentioning this day are...
1 - Kansas City is a cooler place than I thought
2 - they make good barbecue there (Garrett will probably mention how he thinks it's better than Texas BBQ)
3 - we shouldn't hate on KC

But pretty much we chilled with Garrett's sister as she took us around town and fed us good food and helped us raid Costco.

Day 0 (6-17)
We left Garrett's place at like 7 in the morning for the 10 hour drive to Dayton. The first half of the trip I went between falling asleep in the passenger's seat and playing Pokemon Blue. We sorta decided that in the (likely) event we can't find stuff to do around Dayton, we'll play old Pokemon games and eventually battle them after buying a Game Boy link somewhere. He claimed Pokemon Yellow, but it won't matter once I get my Lapras.

We stopped at a restaurant in a town where I'm pretty sure there are no black people, or maybe I'm the only black person they've seen in about 3 months or something....Fun story

I drove for a few hours until Garrett drove the last bit into Dayton (which looked a lot like Cleveland from what I've seen from the Hastily Made Cleveland Tourism Video) and we arrived at Wright State University, where we're going to be staying. We got directed to the wrong place for check-in for a while until we finally found the office to go to. It was there that we learned that Garrett had a room but I didn't... turns out the peeps at WSU kinda neglected the part where he mentioned on the application that he was bringing a roommate with him... or I guess they misinterpreted it because Garrett got paired with somebody else who was already at the room he was given. For now, I have a temporary room that's a short drive across campus.

After getting over our frustration of the screwed-up rooming situation, we went to Buffalo Wild Wings to figure out our to-do list for the next couple of days. Here's the stuff we came up with:
-figure out exactly where we're working
-find a gym
-find a video game store and buy aforementioned Game Boy link
-fix rooming situation after complaining to WSU people
-possibly create a blog
This is not in order of importance but in the order that it came to my mind, which also happens to be alphabetical order. We've done some of these already...like that last one.


Right now Garrett is watching highlights of his Royals win and looking over my shoulder at what I'm currently writing so that he can hope to write an entry half as cool as mine. Tomorrow morning we go complain to the WSU people for about 15 minutes before having to head to day 1 of work. Maybe by the time tomorrow's done, we'll actually be roommates again. Even better, I will have beat him down with my newly evolved Butterfree.

(insert expletive of choice here) the Heat won tonight....

edit - I think I gave Garrett the power to post what he writes by himself now...so I don't know if he'll title it G1 anymore...probably not, just to spite me