G45

If you’re wondering what happened today, read yesterday’s posts, and that will pretty
much tell you everything. The only difference was that my boss showed up halfway
through the morning today. That was good, because we had pretty much run out of stuff
to do. He likes to talk a lot, so we basically spent the rest of the day listening to him
explain things to us. That gave us something to do.

Other than that, we haven’t done anything different today. We’re watching the Olympics
with one of our roommates now. All three of us have accidentally ruined at least one of
the events for ourselves by seeing the results online earlier today. Luckily I only know
what’s going to happen in one event, but still, news websites should really not put up the
results until the events are broadcast.

That’s all I have for today. We’re both just waiting for Friday.

D45

Nothing really happened today either...

What's annoying about these Olympics is they don't show the events until primetime, so I have to not spoil the outcome before watching at night. It's a bit difficult when Facebook seems safe until somebody random mentions whatever sport I'm interested in. I also don't have the discipline to stay off Facebook for a day or whatever.

Later this week, the USA plays Nigeria in basketball...uh-oh.

G44

Work today was really strange. Duke’s coworkers are all out of town this week. We were
both going to work in my lab with my boss, who I thought was going to be there today.
He wasn’t, so we were basically on our own all day. Duke really didn’t have anything
to do since all his people were gone, so I spent a little time teaching him how to use the
machines I’ve been working with. We weren’t very busy today, and we ended up leaving
early.

Other than that, it’s been a pretty normal day here. We went to the grocery store earlier
and we’ve been watching the Olympics with one of our roommates all night. Nothing
particularly interesting to report. We only have four more days of work, and it looks like
I’ll probably be starting my drive home on Friday night, so I can’t wait for Friday.

D44

Today was boring, as I predicted yesterday. Didn't do much at work at all, didn't do much at the rec, didn't do much at home. Watched HIMYM and Olympic events.

I think tomorrow at work I'm going to bring my summer reading book to take up some time. I think tomorrow I'll also write stuff for an article the Thresher wants to write. They want Jasmine and me to write an article for Powderpuff to begin the season, and we need team analyses and stuff like that, so I'll write Lovett's tomorrow. I'll try not to brag too much about how we vanquished all our foes last year.

Still waiting until my flight home Saturday.

G43

Today we finally finished our tour at the Air Force Museum. It was pretty much the same
as our other days at the museum except with more ballistic missiles. We also saw a movie
in the IMAX theatre. The movie was about a guy becoming a fighter pilot. It was ok, but
it had a bit too much talking and not enough airplanes blowing stuff up.

After the museum, we went to watch the Olympics for a while at Buffalo Wild Wings.
I had never realized how difficult it is to watch three different sports at once. It’s even
harder when they’re sports that you don’t really know all the rules to, like field hockey.

We came back home and watched more Olympics* and How I Met Your Mother.
Nothing else of note happened tonight.

*We decided the rules for synchronized diving are completely ridiculous and not
consistently enforced.

Oh, and I spent some time planning my three day trip back to Houston next week. I just
want to spend two weeks eating barbecue and watching the Royals, but I’ll be in beautiful
Houston instead. Awesome.

D43

This song has been stuck in my head in anticipation for getting to come home soon.

Today we went to the Air Force Museum for the 3rd time and finally finished looking through all the exhibits. We didn't end up doing the flight simulation because we watched an IMAX movie instead, and we were really hungry so we went to Buffalo Wild Wings afterwards.

We spent pretty much the rest of the day watching more HIMYM and the Olympics until Garrett finished leveling up his Pokemon so that we could have our second Pokemon battle. Our first round was closer than any we had before; he kept putting my Pokemon and screwing me over but I still prevailed 6-5. The second one was not very good for Garrett...My Starmie single-handedly wiped out his entire team with its vast power and speed. I wanted to end on this note but Garrett made me play one more round....which he lost 6-1. Garrett is now eating ice cream to deal with the pain and disappointment of his Pokemon being inferior (and his spoon just broke twice).

This week of work probably won't be particularly exciting for me because only one PIWW will be in this week...and only until Wednesday. I also STILL need to do the summer reading, and I guess I need to start packing and get another bag; one of my bags kinda broke on the trip here. I imagine finding stuff to blog about for this week will be difficult.

G42

Today we went to Scene 75, which is basically a giant indoor playground. There’s laser
tag, mini golf, go karts, bumper cars, giant inflatable slides, video games, arcade games,
and a bar. We spent several hours and quite a bit of money there. Of course all of these
activities turned into competitions,* and of course I won more than Duke did.

*I noticed that Duke’s post from last night discussed the merits of noncompetitive
athletic activities. Competitions are more fun.

We started with mini golf. I was leading most of the way, but I gave the lead away on the
last few holes. Then we played FIFA on a giant projection screen, and I destroyed Duke.
The race through the inflatable obstacle course wasn’t even competitive. I don’t know
what Duke was doing, but I beat him by at least ten seconds. Next, we took a break so
Duke could waste his money by setting high scores on all four of the basketball arcade
games and driving a go kart.** Finally, in the most important event of the day, I was the
top scorer out of about twenty people in the laser tag game. I believe I outscored Duke by
about 4000 points.

**I didn’t participate in the go karting because I don’t see how that’s any different from
driving around in a regular car, which I can do without paying eight dollars.

Anyways, after Duke admitted that I was the overall winner for the day, we picked up a
pizza and went home to watch How I Met Your Mother and the Olympics. Tomorrow
we will finally finish our tour of the Air Force Museum and probably watch more of the
Olympics.

D42

Today we went to Scene 75, which is this sorta big entertainment place where you can partake in many activities and use lots of money.

First we played a game of 18-hole putt putt golf. It was a back and forth match between us, but a costly double bogey by Garrett on the back nine created too large of a gap for him to overcome. I was on my (pre-scandal) Tiger Woods swag.

We then played Fifa in their huge game room. Garrett ended up winning. Eh.

We then went to this area with a bunch of inflatable slides and obstacle courses and stuff. We didn't spend too much time there because it turned out we were too big for some of the stuff, but they had some cool stuff for old people. We raced on the obstacle course; he won because I don't like obstacles.

I went on the go-karts for a while after that. Garrett didn't go because he claims he didn't want to use money on it, but I think he was scared. I dominated those that I did race with however, and I didn't need any red shells either.

Next was laser tag. The equipment we got already had pre-determined code names on them. Somehow, Garrett ended up with gear with the name "Duke", and I got stuff with the name "Wolf". Either way, we dominated the other team (we ended up on the same team). Garrett scored a bit higher than I did, and I'm pretty sure he'll try to exaggerate the amount by which he outscored me, but photo evidence will prove otherwise...

I think that was the last main thing we did. There were also these 4 basketball arcade games kinda in the middle of the area, and I ended up setting the high score in every one of them throughout the day, and every time somebody beat one of my scores, I set an even higher score. I thought people from this part of the country were supposed to be really good at basketball.

Overall, I think we won about an equal amount throughout the day. However, there's an extra rule that isn't revealed until after everything is done; because I had greater participation in the events at Scene 75, I get extra points, regardless of how well I performed. So overall I win the ultimate prize. We'll call it "the President's Cup". It's ok though, because there's a consolation prize for Garrett that shows he would've won if he weren't competing against me. We'll call his prize "the Dean's Cup".

We finished the day with pizza, HIMYM, and Olympics. Tomorrow will probably be our last trip to the Air Force Museum, and that'll probably be all for our last weekend here.

G41

We went to work for a few hours this morning, then went to the office picnic. Several of
Duke’s coworkers and their families were there. We ate there* and hung out for a while.
Once it became clear that nobody there was going back to work, we headed home to
watch How I Met Your Mother.

Incredibly, Qdoba is the best Mexican food in Dayton

This afternoon, we drove out to Columbus so Duke could get his fix of ultimate frisbee.
He’s been wanting to play pretty much the whole time we’ve been here, so he was really
excited for today. We ended up playing for about two hours** until it started raining. So
we ended up driving more than two hours for about two hours of ultimate. Duke didn’t
really see a problem with that.

**Our team dominated, of course

Tonight we watched the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. Then we sat around
and made fun of the ridiculous outfits that the athletes had to wear. Now we’re back to
watching How I Met Your Mother and eating ice cream. Well, I’m eating ice cream,
anyway.

Tomorrow, I think we’re going to go to an “indoor entertainment center” in Dayton.
Apparently this place has laser tag, mini golf, bumper cars, laser tag, go carts, and laser
tag. We may spend massive amounts of money there. It should be fun.

D41

Today was pretty much a half-day at work. At about noon we went to the picnic and ate some food and hung out with some of the PIWW and their kids. We didn''t spend too much time there, but when we were done there we just went home. Moral of this story - very little work gets done on Fridays.

Later in the afternoon we headed back to Columbus to play ultimate with Bre and her friends (Garrett referred to this as an "ultimate frisbee booty call"...he's kinda right). It was the first time I'd played an actual game of ultimate in months, but it turns out I don't suck. As a matter of fact, I'm still pretty good. It also turns out Roommate Time is back (definition - Roommate Time - the combination of me and Garrett in an athletic activity or sport  that is superior to other individuals in that sport). I will also say it's the most fun I've had doing something athletic since I've been here. Basketball at the rec center kinda drags on sometimes because people call fouls on *everything* and it kills the action (among other reasons that I'm too sleepy to discuss); non-intense pickup games of ultimate are kinda perfect for just having fun.

It's a little interesting because so much in the past year or so I've been doing sports in a very competitive manner with all the President's Cup stuff and powderpuff and it's not that often that I get to play pickup sports (except basketball). I had kinda forgotten how nice it can be to just kinda play a sport solely for fun and not care as much about winning. I still enjoy competitive stuff because I enjoy the pursuit and feeling of victory in something that matters (among other reasons that I'm too sleepy to discuss), but at times it brought quite a bit of stress and pressure. I think that's part of why I really enjoyed today (among other reasons like the fact that I can still sorta ball at frisbee when I'm on my game, and I'm not too tired to discuss that).

I think I kinda poured my soul out on that one too much. Oh well... we ended the day with Steak 'n Shake, HIMYM, and more ice cream for Garrett.

Tomorrow will be epic.

G40

Today, Duke and I took and hour and forty-five minute lunch break. Duke’s coworkers
took us out to a local bar and grill for a send-off lunch. It’s kind of ridiculous how little
people work here. Anyways, tomorrow we’re going to a picnic in the afternoon. We’re
pretty sure nobody is going to go back to work after that. I didn’t really get too much
done today, but that’s ok because the guy I’ve been working with is out of town this
week. Until he gets back, all I have to do is start experiments and wait a few hours for
them to finish.

Tomorrow is one week from our last day in Dayton (next Saturday doesn’t count because
we’re leaving in the morning), so we’re finally getting close to the end of our time here.
I can’t wait. I just want to get a phone that works, eat barbecue from a gas station, and
watch the Royals.

I just learned that my car, which is in Houston, might have died. I think a little part of
me might die if that car can’t be fixed. Hopefully it’s fine, because I don’t really want to
have to deal with car problems while the car is in a different state.

D40

Only 8 more posts... I think I need to do something epic for my last post in just over a week, but nothing epic happens in Dayton, so I might need to get creative.

Today some of the PIWWs took Garrett and me out to lunch for a going-away luncheon where we chilled and ate and listened to somebody mistake Carmelo Anthony for Allen Iverson. They talked to us about what we're going to do with our futures, and sorta suggested we go to grad school. One of them also acknowledged that Austin is a great city and has great BBQ (Kansas City was not brought up in this conversation).

The rest of today was regular. We're into season 5 of HIMYM now, and Garrett has almost finished leveling up his Pokemon so they can be destroyed by mine again. We're still not sure what we're doing this weekend though. We're at least going to a picnic tomorrow afternoon, and maybe we'll go back to Columbus as well. We'll see how we spend our last weekend.

And I STILL need to do the summer reading for O-week.

G39

Today was apparently our last real work day of the week. Duke says that we’re going out
for lunch tomorrow because his boss will be out of town next week and wants to have a
send off meal before we leave. Friday, we’ve been invited to a picnic lunch in a park. I
don’t really understand how that works, but I guess everybody just stops working around
noon and goes to hang out in the state park all afternoon. After four and a half days of
hard work, they need a break, I guess. That’s reasonable. So the next two days shouldn’t
be too busy.

It was a rainy day in Dayton. Well, it rained a bit in the morning and for the rest of the
day, there was a lot of lightning but no rain. The weather here doesn’t really make any
sense to me.

Anyways, today was our day off from the gym, so we had extra time to watch How I Met
Your Mother and the MLS All Star Game. I think Duke likes watching soccer just so he
can listen to me yell at the announcers. I still haven’t caught up on sleep after the fire
incident earlier this week, so I think I’m going to bed now.

D39

Today was regular. Tomorrow the people at work are going to take us out to lunch as our going-away luncheon, and Friday is this big picnic that it seems like most people working at the base are going to, so it seems like not very much work will happen the next couple of days. As I've mentioned, most of my peeps are leaving next week anyway, so my time left in the lab is dwindlinggg.

Have you ever had a pet dog that saw something outside and ran towards the window to get a better look at it? Earlier tonight, Garrett saw a plane flying above and hustled to the window to get a better look in a similar fashion. He's easily distracted by large planes, which sometimes gets scary when he's driving anywhere near the base. For most of the night, we've been able to watch the lightning out of the window to our balcony, and it looks kinda intense. I'm a little afraid we're gonna lose power and the ability to watch HIMYM (we're partway through season 5 on our second run now). We might've lost the ability to watch the MLS soccer game too, which would mean Garrett would have no unintelligent soccer announcers to yell at.

Also, our blog surpassed 1000 views today, which is not over 9000 but still pretty awesome. *insert statement of thanks*

I let the Hawaiian rolls go bad :(

G38

We were awakened this morning* by the soothing sound of the fire alarm going off in
our apartment. Well, I was awakened; Duke stayed in bed. Anyways, the fire alarms were
going off, and I could smell smoke in my room. I got up, grabbed some clothes, and went
down to hang out with our roommates in the parking lot. After a few minutes, it became
apparent that Duke wasn’t going to get up on his own. Everyone else had evacuated the
building, and it was clear that something was actually on fire. So, I heroically went back
into the apartment, braving the smoke and heat to save my roommate. It turns out he was
awake; he was just too lazy to get out of bed.

*At 1:30 am, so right after I fell asleep.

Apparently somebody down on the first floor had been cooking and set something on
fire. The fire trucks came and the campus police told us we could go back into our rooms,
which would have been cool, except our rooms smelled like smoke. We didn’t get back
to sleep until around 3.

Speaking of setting things on fire while cooking, Duke set off our smoke detectors again
tonight while he was boiling hot dogs for dinner. I don’t know how it’s even possible
to set off smoke detectors while boiling hot dogs, but Duke is apparently bad enough at
cooking that he can manage it.

D38

Today was pretty much the same as yesterday.

One of the few main differences today was the fact that the fire alarm went off at about 2 a.m. last night. It really sucked 'cause it felt like I was about to get an epic night of sleep, but that was abruptly ruined by the alarm and sorta slowly ruined by the smell of smoke in the apartment. I didn't smell it as much because I'm slightly stuffy, but I think it screwed Garrett over quite a bit. I tried to sleep through the alarm because my first two years at Lovett have sorta conditioned me to not do anything when the fire alarm goes off (but we're getting better about it this year. 

The fire alarm we have here goes off really easily...it went off earlier this evening when my roommate and I were making dinner (he was making this epic spaghetti dinner with garlic bread and stuff; I was making hot dogs). Garrett may try to retell this story as "Duke set the hot dogs, which were sitting in a pot of water, on fire".

Another difference in today was that Garrett had a random craving for ice cream at like 10 p.m. while we were watching HIMYM, which is leading me to believe something yet again may be bothering Garrett or affecting his self-esteem.

G37

I honestly don’t think anything worth writing about happened today. We went to work,
and both spent pretty much the entire workday in my lab. Duke fell asleep at least once.*
Then we went to the gym for a while, came back home, ate dinner, and watched How I
Met Your Mother.

*I have photographic evidence, so he can’t deny it.

Yeah, I’ve got nothing else. I never should have agreed to write a blog. I’m just not cut
out for this. We only have nine workdays left in this godforsaken place.

D37

Today was kinda regular. I'm making good progress at work, but it turns out the main PIWWs are gone for most of/all of next week, so I sorta really have 6 work days left to complete all the stuff I need to do. After work, we went to the rec and came home and ate food (didn't use too much milk in the Mac n Cheese) and watched more HIMYM.

I really don't know what else to discuss. I'm trying to refrain from getting dragged into arguments on Facebook about recent events (oh the endless notifications). There is so little to do during the week and I may be starting to lose my mind a bit. I'm also running low on words to describe today. I imagine Garrett is having a similar problem. I'm going to write this random sentence as fast as I can to see how fast I can type while laying down and watching HIMYM at the same time. My speed is greatly reduced and I'm not nearly as accurate as I'd like to be. Mavis Beacon would be disappointed.

G36

Today was quite a bit more exciting than yesterday. This afternoon, we went back to the
Air Force Museum. We spent about two more hours there, and we’re still only about
two thirds of the way through the museum. We didn’t have enough time to give the
flight simulator another try, but we’ll definitely set the high score next time we’re at the
museum.

At about four, we left the museum and started the one hour drive to Columbus for
the Jazz and Ribs Fest. We decided that we would be able to maximize the amount of
barbecue we ate by getting one meal, walking around the city for a while, and coming
back for more barbecue right before the festival closed.

So, we spent about an hour and a half roaming around downtown Columbus. Like
Cincinnati, Columbus surprised us. I think it was the nicest city we’ve visited in Ohio.
We’ve decided that part of the reason we dislike Dayton so much is that it’s surround by
cities that are far more interesting than Dayton is.

We went to the festival to eat more barbecue before we left.* I tried a sandwich from the
place that won the festival’s grand prize, and it was very good.

*As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a fatass.

Now we’re back at the apartment, watching How I Met Your Mother and discussing
barbecue with our roommate from South Carolina.

D36

More epic things happened today. We went back to the Air Force Museum for a bit, but we still haven't seen everything there, so we'll probably make another trip next weekend, which will be our last (and hopefully most epic). I'll need to buy some Air Force swag and we'll need to put up a high score on the flight simulator.

We traveled to The city of Columbus to check out the Jazz and Ribs Fest. There was much jazz music, and there were many ribs. Mainly, there was a stage where people were performing, and behind it was a street where there were several huge stands where different groups were making and selling their respective barbecue. They were from all around the nation, or at least the parts known for making good barbecue, it was pretty cool and it looked like it could've been straight from a vegetarian's nightmare.

I had some barbecue from this Texas-based place, which was excellent (one of our roommates from South Carolina had some of it too, and he acknowledges that Texas makes good barbecue.... #recognize), and some based from Atlanta. I now acknowledge (#recognize) Atlanta as a place that produces good barbecue. Garrett had some from the place that won critic's choice and another Memphis-based place. He enjoyed the former rather than the latter. Either way, the BBQ was far superior to the stuff we've had around Dayton.

I sorta realized one of the reasons Dayton feels so...lackluster. It's surrounded in pretty much every direction by superior cities (which are still inferior to my/Garrett's city). We explored Columbus more today and it's pretty nice...but there's like nothing in Dayton.

Tomorrow the work week starts again, and we'll have nothing to do after work except go to the rec center (which we need after all the BBQ we ate today) and watch HIMYM.

G35

Wow. Our posts from last night were pretty brutal. I think yesterday we both kind of
reached a tipping point. Despite the awesomeness of Batman, we both got sick of being
in Dayton. There’s nothing good to do here, nowhere to eat, and nobody else we can hang
out with. It gets old really fast.* We both just want to be at home, or back at school, or
really anywhere other than Dayton, Ohio.

*And my hand hurts because I can’t even walk through a doorway properly.

We were planning on going to the Jazz and Ribs Fest in Columbus today, but we ended
up not going. Duke fell asleep, and I was working on other things, and before we knew it,
it was too late. We probably will end up going tomorrow, though. Hopefully we can get
some good barbecue for free. At least we’ll have something to do for most of the day.

Anyways, we’ve spent almost the entire day sitting on the couches in the apartment and
watching How I Met Your Mother (and soccer games). At least we’re both in a better
mood today. We only have two weeks left here, so we’re starting to see the light at the
end of the tunnel.

D35

So last post I said I would do epic things today. I lied. We didn't end up going to the Jazz and Ribs fest because I took a nap and failed to wake up/Garrett chose not to wake me up and instead worked on our car that may be slowly falling apart, so we will go to that tomorrow. In the event that we don't go to it, we'll probably watch HIMYM all day pretty much...kinda like we did today. I'm also pretty sure that we'll go because having free time in the city of Dayton is kinda like going on vacation in Iowa... there's not much you can do, unless you know people. Therefore, all my promises about doing epic things now get passed onto tomorrow.

One thing I did do today was find the next shirt I'm going to buy. (Storytime) I have a Sonic the Hedgehog shirt, which is one of my favorite and most complemented-on shirts; I kinda bought it the moment I saw it in the store. However, I had yet to find a good Knuckles shirt...until now.

Random statement: our car here has terrible gas mileage. We refueled yesterday after work (after Garrett nearly let it run completely out), and since then we've gone to a movie, picked up a pizza, and gotten lunch, and we're at nearly half a tank of gas. I guess this is the biggest thing preventing us from just going to Cleveland (along with distance); dropping a couple of tanks of gas to go to this city is tough. We'll see though.

G34

Duke and I did our part to thwart terrorism this morning. I can’t tell you how, but we
did. Also, I was raining really hard this morning, which caught me by surprise because it
doesn’t rain in Texas and it hasn’t really rained since we’ve been here, either.

We decided not to go to the gym after work today because it was more important to make
it to The Dark Knight Rises on time. We had our priorities straight.

Duke spent the whole day worrying that the car was going to run out of gas, which he
wanted to blame on me. I told him to relax, but he kept freaking out. He’s spent the last
two days acting as if I couldn’t do anything without his help. I may be stupid, but I am
capable of most* of the functions necessary for survival. And if he doesn’t want the car
to run out of gas, maybe he should drive the damn thing every now and then.

*I occasionally forget to eat.

I’m a bit sick of driving everywhere, but today I decided to make the best of it by playing
music that he doesn’t like while I’m driving. The only problem was that I very nearly
started punching him when he criticized Nirvana while I was driving 70 miles per hour.
That might not have ended well.

This might be a good time to refute the vicious rumors Duke tried to spread in his post
last night. For the record, I never thought that writing a blog post every day was a good
idea because I hate talking. It was originally Duke’s idea to post every day. After a
week and a half, he realized that it might be difficult to do, and said we shouldn’t post
every day. I told him that he was right, but that we couldn’t stop because we had already
started. It was too late to back out, so we had to stick with it. I stand by this, even though
it means I will probably be completely silent for six months after we finish this blog. I’m
actually really looking forward to that.

Now that I’m done complaining about Duke, I should mention tonight we continued the
search for the best pizza in Dayton. Tonight’s was probably the best we’re going to find.
I don’t think Duke liked it much, but it was the best we’ve had so far, and if he thinks
we’re going to find better in Ohio, he’s delusional.

Then we went to see the new Batman movie, which was fantastic. I can’t really explain
how amazing it was, and I don’t want to ruin it for anyone, so that’s all I’ll say about that.

Most importantly, it has come to my attention that the new Gaslight Anthem album has
been posted online in its entirety. I’m going to spend the next 56 hours doing nothing but
listening to that. Seriously, I’m so happy.

D34

Nothing I did today outside of watching The Dark Knight Rises matters. I did [magical research], tried Monster Pizza (which wasn't the best in town), and did other unimportant things like pay for gas and chew gum. I also walked up some stairs and stuff, too. But for real though, it was epic and amazing. You need to go see it.

Tomorrow I think we're going to the Jazz and Ribs Fest in Columbus. Maybe Sunday we'll finish our trip to the Air Force Museum. Those things also don't matter as much as The Dark Knight Rises.

I'm starting to get to the point where I wouldn't mind being back home or in Houston. Maybe I'm just sorta anxious to see everybody and do O-week (YEAH SID O-WEEK). Time is starting to drag on a bit, especially during the week when there isn't much to do besides watch HIMYM and destroy Garrett in Pokemon. Maybe I'm tired of living with Garrett.

Anyway, that's really all I have for today because I don't want to ruin the movie and I'm pretty tired. Tomorrow I'll try to do epic things to make up for it. Fun fact of the day: Garrett has gone from wearing a bandage on his hand to a Winnie the Pooh band-aid.

G33

Duke says I’m not allowed to write about the most entertaining thing that happened at
work today, so this post will be lacking. Luckily he didn’t work in my lab today, so I
didn’t have to deal with him falling asleep all over the place.

Duke has spent the entire evening organizing this year’s powderpuff schedule (with my
assistance). Apparently I’ve been appointed the random number generator that decides
the matchups. Duke isn’t completely happy with my random number generation, though.
Apparently, when you’re told to pick a number between one and six, it’s supposed to be
an integer. I don’t know how I was supposed to know that. So it’ll probably be my fault if
the schedule is messed up or something. Even if it isn’t my fault, I assume Duke will try
to blame it on me anyways.

I was surprised to se that our blog made it into James’s member at large presentation,
but I’m glad to hear that our summer has been deemed epic. Or at least our blog has
been deemed epic. I assume Duke is the one who submitted that, because it definitely
wasn’t me. By the way, am I the only one who’s curious about why James was wearing
headphones throughout the entire presentation? What was he listening to? Because if he
was listening to music while presenting, I’d be really impressed.

We’re going to go see the new Batman movie tomorrow night, so I think I’ll be spending
the next 24 hours avoiding the internet. Hopefully nobody will ruin it for me.

Why is there no more ice cream in our freezer?

D33

Today was a very regular day for the most part. I didn't have to see Garrett as much at work today. We've advanced into season 2 in our 2nd run of HIMYM. Jasmine and I did powderpuff coordinator preparation stuff. Yeah.

However, today Garrett apparently gashed his hand on a door *name for the object that the protrusion of the door handle goes into*, and he's walking around with a bandage on his hand as if he got wounded or something. Yesterday I continued to assert the possibility that Garrett is a dumbass... looks like I was right.

Also, apparently the people here want us to make presentations on the research we've done. If that's the case, then I have quite a bit of work to do. I've done some [magical research], but I don't know if it's enough to put in a presentation. I also just randomly remembered I still need to read my summer reading book for O-week, and I need to destroy Garrett again in Pokemon when he decides to catch up to my level. Sooo much to do and so little time.

Garrett is starting to run out of stuff and is beginning to question if we should've been posting everyday now. When we first made the blog, I asked him if we were going to post everyday, to which he responded "No, we HAVE to post every day." I knew this might be a problem for him since he doesn't really speak, and I think 2/3 of the way through our stay, Garrett has become short on words. The last couple of weeks may be rough for him. I'm pretty sure he questioned my commitment to the blog a few posts ago, interestingly enough....

Tomorrow the pizza search continues and we go see The Dark Knight Rises. The pizza search will probably not be any more successful, and the movie should be tight as long as nobody ruins it, so I may need to avoid Facebook starting late tonight or tomorrow morning.

G32

Work today was much better than yesterday. We started half an hour late because he had
to get new passes to get on the base, and it took a while to get that figured out. All the
machines in the lab were behaving today (except the one I don’t know how to use, which
is perfect), and I got to watch Duke’s coworkers irritate him pretty much all day.

After work today, Duke told me that he wanted to try to find a good barbecue place for
dinner. This led to quite the argument. Basically, he thinks the odds of finding a good
barbecue place in Ohio are better than the odds of a million dollars falling out of the
sky and hitting me in the head. I disagree. I spent about an hour trying to convince him
otherwise, but he wouldn’t listen.* I think since he only knows Texas barbecue, his
standards are just way lower than mine are.

*One of these days he’s going to learn that I’m always right.

So we ended up getting dinner at some barbecue place, and, of course, it was terrible. I
almost stopped eating after one bite because it just wasn’t any good. It was so bad that
Duke even admitted that he was wrong as we were walking back to the car.

The moral of the story is the following: I was right and Duke was wrong.

Anyways, I had to make myself a second dinner tonight because I’m fat and our first
dinner was so bad.

D32

Nowadays, I do more of my work in Garrett's lab, which means I have to see him too often during the day. Earlier in our stay, I sorta worked everywhere except his lab, but now I need stuff in his lab on one of my projects of [magical science]. I'm just kinda hoping his shiny forehead doesn't blind me or something.

Today after work, I wanted to give barbecue in Ohio another chance, while Garrett equated the chances of finding good barbecue in Dayton to the chances of a million dollars falling out of the sky, which makes him either a pessimist or a dumbass. For dinner, we went to this place called Woody's BBQ. It...kinda sucked. Garrett went on to say I told you so as he was right, and I will accept that I was wrong (which Garrett would never do), but I still maintain there's the possibility that he's a dumbass. Also, we had this conversation after dinner:
"So what good food have we had here?"
"....well...."
"We've had some good pizza..."
"yeah...."
And that was the whole discussion.

The rest of the evening was pretty much spent continuing HIMYM. That whole powderpuff thing is gonna happen tomorrow I think (and I got some free Hawaiian rolls). Also, it turns out this weekend in Columbus is the Jazz and Ribs Fest or something, so we might head down there this weekend to enjoy some...Jazz and ribs. Maybe Garrett will find barbecue that he actually approves of.

G31

Today at work I learned that Duke’s coworkers are even more worthless than he is.* It
was good to find that out, because I was having kind of a frustrating day at work. None
of the machinery was working properly, so several hours were wasted today. Duke didn’t
fall asleep in my lab today. I assume he found somewhere more comfortable.** He did
still complain when I asked him to move out of my way because I needed to use a piece
of equipment that he was doing nothing in front of.

*I know, it’s hard to believe that’s even possible.

**Or somewhere he thought he was less likely to be made fun of for sleeping at work.

Duke got the info packet for him freshmen this evening, so he’s been stalking them for a
while now. So far, all I’ve learned about them is that they have terrible taste in music. I
just hope they don’t get to pick the music Sid plays on Fridays.

Now I’m eating ice cream straight out of the container and watching How I Met Your
Mother for the second time. It’s not as pathetic as it sounds, I swear.

D31

Work was regular...the rec center was regular...dinner was regular...

A couple of things not regular happened today though. We got our freshmen new students for O-week (YEAH SID O-WEEK), and thus the Facebook stalking has begun. I probably can't reveal their details, but I am positive our freshmen will be awesome. We also started our 2nd run through HIMYM because it was necessary. The withdrawal was too much and we couldn't stand the people on ESPN proclaiming that the Raiders could be good this year. None of that matters anyway because the Texans are going to the Superbowl this year. Anyway, we're on the slutty pumpkin episode.

This one will be short also because of the time I'm spending stalking my freshmen and watching HIMYM. Tomorrow will be mostly the same, except Jasmine and I will be working through the powderpuff schedule while I eat Hawaiian rolls. We'll probably adventure somewhere for dinner tomorrow too.

*Rick Ross Grunt*

G30

We had another fire alarm at work today (this was our second of the Summer). We
never figured out what caused this one, but last time somebody actually started a fire, so
hopefully today’s alarm had an equally exciting cause. Basically everybody at work took
the alarm as an excuse to leave for an early lunch.* Anyways, our morning was shorter
than usual. Duke actually managed to fall asleep in my way this afternoon, so that I had
to wake him up and make him move just so I could do my job. Also, I got to spend a bit
more time today playing around with liquid nitrogen, which is always fun.

*Except for those who took it as an excuse to call it a day.

We went to the gym after work today, which was funny because Duke didn’t get to play
a single game of basketball while we were there. I think he was kind of annoyed, but
he deserved it because he spent most of the day making fun of the fact that my phone
doesn’t work anymore.

It may or may not have been a bad idea to eat half a container of coffee ice cream right
before going to bed. We’ll see how this turns out.

D30

Today has been sorta annoying. I was awoken early by a jackhammer outside my room well before I was supposed to wake up (so staying awake during the day was kind of a challenge). I did get to continue advancing in one of my projects at work today, but I stupidly messed up some calculations I made and will have to redo some of them tomorrow. Then today at the gym, there were lots of people waiting to play basketball, but by the time it was my turn to play, everybody else was tired and left, so I didn't end up playing at all. Also, as we were watching the last few episodes of The League on Netflix, the crappy internet connection kept screwing my Xbox over, so it would take much longer to finish episodes.

That was pretty much all that happened, outside of going to shop for groceries. We finished all the episodes of The League, so we'll need to search for another show. The weeks are growing pretty boring now without HIMYM...oh, the disadvantages of living in Dayton.

Garrett is currently eating a small tub of ice cream. I wonder if anything recently happened that hurt his self-esteem or something; maybe it's because his phone hates him now. I believe he is also almost through with his 2nd jumbo-size jar of peanut butter. Now, to be fair, I chew a ton of bubble gum and I'm on by 3rd jumbo bag of Dubble Bubble...

G29

Today we decided to finally check out the Air Force Museum. It’s located on the base,
it’s free, and we had heard that it’s pretty interesting. We had kind of been putting it
off because we had been looking for things to do farther away from Dayton, but today
seemed like a good day to go.

Anyways, we went to the museum this afternoon, and it was awesome. There were
hundreds of airplanes, and some other stuff, too. Mostly just lots of airplanes. The
exhibits are set up in chronological order, so the museum starts with the Wright brothers.
We only made it to the Cold War section today (we probably got through less than half of
the exhibits), so we’re going to have to go back next weekend to finish.

They also have a flight simulator game, which was awesome. We wanted to get the
high score, but we weren’t even close. I blame Duke, because he was the one firing the
weapons. I was the pilot, so I had the fun job.* Despite Duke’s lack of ability as a copilot,
we did manage to shoot down six enemy planes, mostly due to my superior maneuvering
abilities.

*We spent half the flight upside down, of course.

There’s a gift shop in the museum, and I almost spent my entire paycheck on all the
remote control model airplanes. Luckily, I was able to resist that temptation. For now.
We’ll see if I can do it again next weekend.

D29

Today we finally went to the Air Force Museum, which is about a 10 minute drive from where we live, but somehow it took us till week 4 to go check it out. It was pretty massive so we didn't get through the whole thing, but the parts we saw were cool. We got from the first original planes to planes during the 60's. We also got to do this legit flight simulation (where the thing you sit in rotates as you steer the plane) at the museum too. We only got 6 kills, which is 10 below the record for the week, but when we take our second trip we'll be sure to put up a better score. Also, the over/under for leashed kids this trip was .5; I took the over but lost this time.

The rest of our day has consisted of Garrett playing this extended version of this Pokemon Rap remix thing in the morning, and eating dinner at the Fox & Hound, one of the places the girl working at the housing desk from day 1 suggested we go to (the one that wanted Garrett to take her out to get beer). I tried their pizza too, but alas, it wasn't the best in town either. I've gone through a lot of pizza options since we've been here and I've been kinda let down by Dayton. Some of the pizza here has been good but overall Dayton could do better.

We also watched quite a bit of The League today on Netflix. It's not HIMYM, and not nearly as long with about 20 episodes, but it might be the funniest show ever. But tomorrow starts another week of work and not much to do outside work, especially once we're through with the League. We'll also see what next weekend's adventure is.

G28

Today we went to Columbus. We had a few reasons to go there: Duke has a friend there,
I wanted to see a soccer game there, and it’s way more interesting than Dayton. It’s about
an hour drive from Dayton to Columbus, or at least it would be if people in Ohio knew
how to drive.* We arrived in Columbus a little later than expected, so we didn’t get to do
everything that Duke had planned for us, but we still had a good time.

*Ohioans are almost as bad at driving as Texans are. Almost, but not quite.

First we got lunch. Duke is an idiot and left his card at the restaurant, so I had to pay for
everything for him the rest of the day.

We spent most of the afternoon at the zoo. The zoo in Columbus is pretty nice, and they
have some cool animals there. There is also an aquarium and a water park that are part
of the zoo, too. The zoo was really big, but I thought they didn’t have a great variety of
animals.

After going to the zoo, we went to THE Ohio State University to meet up with his friend.
She kind of took us on a tour of the campus area, which was really interesting to see.
Duke wants to go back to Columbus next weekend to play ultimate with her and her
friends, so we may do that.

Finally, we went to the Columbus Crew game against Sporting Kansas City. Duke
was afraid that my support for the visiting team was going to get us both killed, but we
survived. The good guys won 2-0.

I also want to point out that the picture Duke posted last night of the google + chat is
clearly not a real picture. It shows me in the center of the screen, which would mean I
was talking louder than anyone else in the conversation. We all know that couldn’t have
really happened, so that picture must be fake.

D28

Today's adventure was to Columbus, the land of The Ohio State University. We left in The Morning hoping to arrive there an hour later, but people in The State of Ohio are weird drivers and will randomly come to nearly a complete stop on the highway for no reason really, so it took a bit longer than expected to get there.

When we got to The City of Columbus, we had lunch at BJ's (where I actually had the best pizza I've had so far since I've been in Ohio, but I've already had their pizza in Houston...) and then went to The Zoo of Columbus, which was pretty cool. It was a combo zoo/aquarium/waterpark but we stuck with The first 2 for now. I was sorta excited to take pictures for a while and it was about to become like Pokemon Snap, but I didn't quite take that many pics. I have a few though... we saw some flamingos that were probably in The original Lion King...

 we saw Rafiki...

 Dory (YEAH SID O-WEEK)....

 and I think a Dewgong...

And some other stuff. By the way, we had a bet as to how many children on leashes we would find at The zoo. We had this same bet at The Creation Museum where The over/under was 1.5; I took and under and won. This time, The over/under was 3.5 kids on leashes, and I took the under again, but Garrett found The 4th right as we were leaving the park so I lost this time... (white people *smh*)

Then we met up with my friend Bre on campus at The Ohio State University. Back in The day (4 years ago) we went to this camp in Terre Haute (middle of nowhere), Indiana at this engineering university, and this is only the 2nd time I've seen anybdoy from that camp, so it was nice to see her. Because The Activities we had planned took longer than expected/drivers in Ohio are weird, we didn't to play ultimate, but we walked around The Ohio State University. On our tour, a black man on shrooms told us not to impregnate my friend. He said a few other things but I zoned out/don't feel like explaining it all because it was stupid.

After that we went to The Columbus Crew/Sporting KC soccer/football/futbol game, where Garrett proudly wore his KC shirt in hostile territory. I was a little afraid I might get killed if things went badly for Columbus, but then I thought that soccer players aren't tough enough to start fights and stuff so I hoped that mentality would be shown in the fans as well. KC did end up winning 2-0, and we did make it out alive.

Tomorrow we may finally go to The Air Force Museum, and in the future we might go back to Columbus just to play a good game of ultimate, which we can't really do here. We also found out that Garrett knows somebody; I think he knows his friend's roommate, but he doesn't REALLY know him, so from now on I have to say that Garrett knows .5 outside people.

G27

We had a pretty normal day today, except for the guy who’s marching back and forth
down the street. He’s just out there by himself, going about ten yards, then turning around
and coming back the other way. Marching. Not walking. He’s actually prancing around
like he’s leading a parade. And in case you were wondering, yes, he does have a baton.

As usual, Friday was another opportunity for Duke to try to find a decent pizza place in
Dayton. As usual, he wasn’t particularly successful. We’re having to look farther and
farther away for places we haven’t tried. The place Duke picked for tonight was literally
out in the country. Also, he said this: “It says it’s 19 minutes away, but I don’t trust
Dayton rush hour.”

At work today, I was trained to use another complicated piece of equipment. I have no
idea why they’re still training me to do things; we only have three weeks left here. I think
they’re just thinking of things they can make me do. The problem is, three other people I
work for are going to be back at work next week, so I’m going to have like five different
people telling me what to do Monday morning. I’m not really looking forward to that.
Luckily, we have plenty of excitement planned for the weekend.

D27

Today I didn't do much at work, because it's Friday. Not many people went to the rec center either, so I couldn't play pickup games of basketball, because it's Friday. We did continue the pizza search (because it's Friday), from this place called Classic Pizza. It still wasn't the best pizza in Dayton, regardless of what day it could've been. On the way there though, we found ourselves sorta in the middle of nowhere, and we passed some houses with huge yards that Garrett approved of.

We spent most of the rest of the night getting Netflix to work, playing Marvel vs. Capcom 3/facebooking while waiting for Netflix to fix itself, watching Top Gear while Netflix did work, and G+ hanging out with Megan and Krystal. Now we're watching the League. Tomorrow is Columbus.

I'll end this short post with a couple of pictures. Here's one of the hangout...

 and here's one of a machine Garrett uses in his lab, which seems to support gay marriage...

G26

We’re still looking for a new TV show to watch. We watched a few episodes of Top Gear
today. It’s ok, but it’s definitely not How I Met Your Mother. Now Duke is watching a
basketball game between the USA and the Dominican Republic. It’s not a meaningful
game at all, and it’s really one sided, so it’s not very entertaining at all.

We’ve spent the last few hours planning our weekend trip to Columbus and thinking up
vanity rice email addresses for ourselves.* Duke has a ton of things that he wants us to
do in one day. Apparently we’re going to the zoo and aquarium, playing ultimate Frisbee,
going to a water park, and eating two meals in a six hour time period. I’m not really sure
how that’s going to work out.

*kansas@rice.edu

We left work at four today, which is pretty much the norm here. As we were leaving the
receptionists asked us if we would be coming in tomorrow. I was sort of dumbstruck by
the question. Apparently some people here just work until Thursday afternoon and decide
that’s enough for the week. We both think that’s completely ridiculous, but we aren’t
going to complain.

Something’s wrong with my phone right now, so it’s looking like I’ll be spending the rest
of the night trying to get that to work properly.** And trying to talk Duke into creating a
few stupid email aliases for himself.

**Because what would I do if I couldn’t access facebook mobile at all times?

D26

Garrett and I are starting to really feel the affects of having no HIMYM to watch. We were just flipping through channels and starting to think "this just doesn't compare". Also, my Xbox has been acting up a bit and it takes a while for Netflix to load. Thankfully, it did get working and we watched some Top Gear (UK, not the crappy US one)

We attempted to address the Great Migration to Gmail today by making our passwords or whatever, when we discovered the page about adding vanity email aliases. I'll tell you how Garrett reacted to attempts at creating specific names for himself.

"Dammit...Who took garrett@rice.edu? I'm going to find that person and kill them...What about carman@rice.edu?....FUCK...this isn't even somebody's name...there's some douchebag around Rice who likes cars and thinks he's cool...I wonder if garrett@rice.edu is open now...FUCK it isn't....is there a limit to how long you can make your name? How about betterthannonso@rice.edu?....Let's try kansas@rice.edu....YES...I'm pretty sure I'm gonna make my name kansas@rice.edu....I can't believe somebody has taken garrett@rice.edu...Duke, send me an email at kansas@rice.edu."

If you're reading this and your email is garrett@rice.edu or carman@rice.edu, beware of a blond nondescript white kid who probably won't speak.

I think for our trip to Columbus, we're going to attempt to get lunch, go through a big zoo, play ultimate, and go to a pool in about 7 hours before going to the soccer game. I'm not sure if we'll be completely successful in doing all of that, but it would be awesome if it did. Also, I haven't played ultimate in forever...

Tomorrow continues the search for the best pizza in Dayton.

Random Disney song

G25

After work today, Duke wanted to go to a going away celebration for one of his
coworkers who is leaving Dayton to go back to Puerto Rico. It started at four, because of
course everybody’s done working by four. The celebration was at a bar near the labs. It
was sort of an odd experience. Everybody there was at least ten years older than us, and
it’s a bit odd to be around coworkers/bosses outside of the office. I didn’t really know
any of them because they’re all people Duke works with. Even worse, they spent the
whole time talking about the science they’re doing. It’s cool and all, but do they seriously
need to talk about that stuff outside of work, too? Also, we were like the only people
there, because nobody else is in a bar at four on a Wednesday afternoon.

After dinner, Duke wanted to watch the ESPY awards. I don’t know why, but as I’ve
discussed, I don’t really know why he does anything that he does. Anyways, we’re
watching that now.

Our roommates seem to be gone for now. Every now and then, they go MIA for a few
days. They live in Columbus, so I guess they just go back home for a while. I haven’t
figured out any pattern to when they’re here and when they’re gone, and sometimes
it’s hard to tell whether or not they’re here because they spend most of their time in
their rooms with their headphones on. A few times I’ve been sitting in the living room,
thinking nobody else was in the apartment, and had one of them walk up behind me and
start talking to me. Actually, now that I think about it, that’s a bit creepy.

Duke spent a lot of time today complaining about a high school kid he works with who
apparently hasn’t been doing anything at work, which is making Duke’s life difficult.
I think it’s hilarious. Apparently Duke had to spend most of his time today moving
equipment around in a lab because he can’t do real work.

D25

Today at work, we got a new laser. We're in the process of switching the new laser into one of the systems we use and moving a lot of stuff around. Tomorrow we should be finishing putting in the new laser and I'll get back to [magical science]. I sorta could be doing other stuff as well right now, but people have let me down lately...

After work, we joined some of the PIWW at this bar as a little goodbye shindig for one of the people working here. It was pretty much a bunch of oldish guys chilling together talking about science and life having some beer; it's how I envision my life might be if I'm an engineer at that age. Most of the science they were talking was too advanced for me to understand, but the other random stuff was entertaining. One of the PIWWs had a life goal of being the first person to get bleeped out on Antique Roadshow. Garrett probably didn't find it as entertaining as me because (surprise) he didn't really know any of them.

We're watching the ESPYs now. Having no HIMYM is starting to get to us I think. Tomorrow we might be watching the USA basketball team play the team that Nigeria beat a couple of days ago. We'll also probably be going to the rec tomorrow as well. I think at this point I'm just sorta holding out until the weekend so we can adventure to Columbus.

G24

As I write this post, Duke is complaining about the all star game. I have no idea why
he’s complaining. Sure, it’s not the most interesting game, but this kid watches NBA
basketball. There’s no way this is worse than professional basketball, so he can shut up
and let me watch what’s going on in the Motherland for one night. Now he’s claiming I
fell asleep during the game, which is entirely untrue.

I spent most of my day at work today teaching other people how to use the equipment
in my lab. I’m not really sure how I ended up in charge of teaching people how to use
machines that I’ve only been using for ten days, but whatever. It isn’t my fault if I forget
to tell them something important and they break expensive equipment, right?

One of the people I had to teach stuff to was my roommate.* I only mention this because
I want to point out that he is terrible at mounting samples. He ruined a few. I tried to
teach him my ways, but he just isn’t talented enough.

*You have to teach him quickly, while he’s still awake. Eventually he falls asleep and, I
assume, stops listening to what you’re trying to teach him.

I miss How I Met Your Mother.

I don’t know what else to talk about, so I’ll discuss Duke’s dietary habits. He eats a
pepperoni pizza bagel every day at Einstein Brothers, then today for dinner he had a
pepperoni sandwich and pepperoni pizza bagel bites. Seriously? Does he ever get tired of
eating the same thing at every meal? He’s an odd kid.

Finally, I should point out that tomorrow will mark the halfway point of our stay in
Dayton. Hopefully the second half will be as much fun as the first half has been.

D24

I don't know if I've mentioned this yet, but there's a high school intern working at the Air Force Base named Arjune (I'm not completely sure if he has the last 'e' in his name though). He is not as smart or awesome as Arjune the recent Rice graduate (very few on the planet are as smart or awesome), so I have for now dubbed him Arjune the Lesser. Another fun fact from work: Garrett does NOT have steady hands. Today I joined his lab to do some stuff and watched him do [magical science involving the use of precise hand control]... I don't know how he gets stuff done with how much his hands shake, but he perseveres. I have far steadier hands, but I'm more bold when I try [handling magical science things], so I screw up more often than I should. 

Today at the rec center, I managed to get 2 games of basketball in today, and I could've gotten in a third but decided to leave to eat dinner. It was...ok, I guess. Draining a 3 right when somebody said "he's not gonna make it" was a *Rick Ross grunt* moment. 

Garrett insisted that we watch the All-Star Baseball game tonight (the whole being-in-Kansas-City thing). It was boring and uninteresting. It wasn't close after the first inning. Garrett fell asleep a little past halfway through the game. Falling asleep was a trend throughout the later stages of the game. I had more fun rewriting the Powderpuff Constitution. I don't understand why this game determines home field advantage in the World Series. When I mentioned this, Garrett responded "well, what are you gonna do". I said "have it go to the team with the better record?" to which he had no good response. I imagine conversations about baseball having instant replay end in a similar fashion. Can you tell I'm not the biggest baseball fan?

Tonight I relived part of my childhood with some Bagel Bites. 

G23

Today was a pretty uneventful day. Most of our weeknights are pretty boring, and we
have adventures on the weekends when we can get out of Fairborn/Dayton. Aside from
our trips to the gym and the grocery store today, we didn’t really do much. Duke finally
found a functioning game boy cable, so he made me battle him in pokemon. Of course he
won, because he’s spent way more time playing the game than I have. Because I have a
life. And friends. I notice he’s still claiming that I don’t know anybody. I definitely know
some people.

Robinson Cano sucks.

I wish I were at home right now.

I really have nothing else for the blog tonight. Duke is telling me to make things up, but I
think I’ve finally run out of words. We all knew this day would come. I have nothing else
to say for now. Maybe if I don’t say anything for the next 24 hours, I’ll be able to write
more tomorrow night.

D23

Today after work, we went to the rec, which reopened up since being closed the last week. Apparently they put in some new air conditioning system, but I couldn't really tell at all. I ended up going back on my word and played pickup basketball again today, but playing wasn't as annoying as it had been before, so I'll probably end up playing again.

When we got home, there was no more HIMYM to watch, so we resorted to Pokemon yet again. The cord that I ordered 2 days ago arrived today (and I paid for regular shipping...), so we finally had our fated POKEMON BATTLE (cue music).

In our first match, Garrett found out quickly that his speed was sorely outmatched by my superior team, as his Haunter and Vileplume learned the hard way from my Kadabra. While only using 4 Pokemon, I finished him with my equally fast Starmie destroying his Machoke and Blastoise (he was a little surprised to see my Starmie knew Thunder...mwahaha). In round two, Garrett somehow found a way to put my Lapras to sleep, and he (she?) couldn't recover, but s/he was quickly avenged by my other speedy Pokemon. For the last match, Garrett started to figure out how to better combat my team, until my Jolteon made an appearance and  ripped through half of his team.

So now that Garrett couldn't hide anymore, he was sorely defeated 6-3, 6-3, 6-4. We'll have another beatdow-er, I mean rematch when we're at level 50. Also, the reason I went into so much detail about that was because pretty much nothing else worth discussing happened tonight. The only thing we watched was the Home Run Derby and Celebrity All Star Baseball game....blah (Garrett demanded this because they're happening in Kansas City).

Oh, I also re-discovered the Rick Ross Soundboard today... *Rick Ross Grunt* (UGHN)

G22

We needed a day to recover after yesterday’s adventure, so we spent most of the day at
home today. We considered going to the Dayton Air Show, but ended up deciding not to.
Really, nothing we could have done would have topped petting a zonkey and touching a
triceratops skeleton.

We finished season seven of How I Met Your Mother, so now we’re kind of desperate
for things to do. We have no idea what we’ll fill our time with from now on. We can’t
think of any other shows that we really want to watch that badly. For now, it’s looking
like Duke is going to be spending a lot of time playing video games he’s already beaten. I
think the gym at work is opening up again tomorrow, so hopefully we’ll spend some time
there this week. I think I’m also going to have the privilege of listening to Duke complain
about the difficulties of scheduling the powderpuff season.

We tried a different Mexican restaurant for dinner tonight, but this one was almost as
bad as the first. I just need to stop trying to find good Mexican food here; it isn’t going to
happen. We were able to watch part of the Nigeria-Dominican Republic basketball game
at the restaurant, though. That was pretty entertaining.

We only have three weekends left here, so we’re trying to plan out how we’re going to
spend them. It looks like we’ll be spending next Saturday in Columbus, and we’re still
considering the possibility of a trip to Cleveland at some point. We’ll see what happens.

D22

So, we didn't do much today. We finally finished season 7 of HIMYM though, which means we don't know what to do with our lives now. We also leveled up a bit in Pokemon (I beat the game and got Mewtwo just recently), and went to this Mexican restaurant for dinner. Garrett has now given me the task to keep us away from any more Mexican food here, even if he begins to heavily crave it later on (which he apparently will).

Our adventure for next weekend will be Columbus; we got tickets for their soccer team's game next week so we'll be doing that along with other stuff we think of/Google/meeting up with people that I know because Garrett knows nobody. More random things keep popping up for us to do on the weekends, but we're sorta screwed during the week. Netflix can only bring us so much happiness, and most of Dayton brings us much less already. Right as I begin to say stuff like this, a 20-minute storm will probably hit us and take away our power for much longer than necessary.

List of random thoughts in my head in sentence form- It also turns out Nigeria made the Olympics in basketball today. Hopefully they put on a better display than the World Cup teams did. Our smoke detector is really annoying when it goes off in the morning just when I'm trying to make Eggo waffles. I wonder when I'll be part of an epic G+ hangout like last summer. I want some easy listening music, but I want it to be foreign, like Hispanic or Middle Eastern easy listening music that I seem to hear at random places/shops/people's houses.

G21

Today we went back to Cincinnati so we could visit the Creation Museum. The creation
museum is kind of like a museum of natural history, except that instead of real history,
it contains history according to religious fundamentalists who ignore logic and reason.
For example, it has exhibits about how dinosaurs were on Noah’s Ark. I really don’t
know how to explain this place, so you might just want to google it. Pretty much all the
exhibits were about how “human logic” teaches us something, but “God’s truth” tells
us something completely different. Like this: human logic tells us that the universe was
formed 14 billion years ago but God tells us it was formed 6,000 years ago and science is
bad and dinosaurs and people lived together and before Adam ate the apple in the Garden
of Eden all dinosaurs were herbivores. Obviously, the human logic thing is ridiculous.
I think that pretty much summarizes the entire museum. Oh, and if you believe in
evolution you’ll have drug problems and get abortions and your parents will get divorced.
Seriously, there was an exhibit on that.

Duke and I first learned about this place a few weeks ago when we saw billboards for
it. After doing a bit of online research, we decided that we had to go, just to see if these
people were actually for real. Long story short, they are. We also were kind of curious
where they got the money to build a place like this. We never really figured that one out,
but they ask for donations and apparently a bunch of people give, because they’ve raised
5.6 million dollars for the construction of a full sized Ark.

Anyways, Duke and I went for 4 reasons:
1. To see if people actually went to this museum and believed the stuff there
2. To see dinosaurs (bonus points if they had an exhibit of people hunting dinosaurs)
3. Petting zoo
4. Petting zoo

The first thing we noticed was that there were a lot of people there. Too many. I would
have been disappointed if nobody had been there, because that wouldn’t have been any
fun. But there were so many people there that now I just feel sad. The most disturbing
part was the number of parents who brought their kids there.

They did have lots of dinosaurs, but unfortunately none of them were depicted fighting
humans. Duke and I did touch the Triceratops skeleton, though. Duke touched the leg,
because he’s lame. I touched the horns.

And then there was the petting zoo. That’s what we were most excited about. Why
were we so excited about a petting zoo? Because they have a zonkey* and a zorse.**
Obviously, seeing a zonkey and a zorse is a once in a lifetime opportunity, so we were
thrilled. I think Duke will be posting pictures. They were awesome. The zorse was a little
more friendly, but the zonkey definitely had the cooler stripes (and the cooler name).

* Zebra + Donkey = Zonkey

** Zebra + Horse = Zorse

Anyways, that was the high point of our day. We came back home and ate chick-fil-a and
watched How I Met Your Mother, which we will probably finish tomorrow.

D21

Today's adventure was to go to the Creation Museum near Cincinnati. We'd seen a few billboards advertising it on the way here originally and looked it up in more detail online when we decided that it might be worth our $30 each to go check it out.

The Creation Museum is sorta like a natural science museum, where they teach you everything happened through creation and not evolution, so the world is like 6000 years old and dinosaurs fit in that time period; in a way it's sorta like the anti-Cincinnati Museum that we visited for American Swag Day. I don't want to get too much into religion and beliefs and stuff like that (because I probably will later in this post), so I will just simply say that Garrett and I do not agree with these beliefs. There's like...carbon dating and shit. We had sorta been planning to go around to little kids who went there and inform them that there's like...carbon dating and shit, and we were going to prepare counterarguments for any resistance we met, but we didn't really do any preparing because we're lazy and preoccupied with progressing through HIMYM.

We were a little surprised at a few things: how many people there were at the museum (particularly families bringing their young kids), how they got the money to build it (they also got $5.6 million towards building a $24 million dollar life-size Noah's Ark). I was a little surprised at the propaganda they put throughout different parts of the museum, although I'm not sure I should have been. The museum begins with explaining that there are two different points of view: "man's word" and "God's word", and how they're different and all that while saying that the latter must be true. Then they kinda extended it to stuff outside science for a while...

This is a picture of a panel (probably the most depressing panel I have ever seen in a museum) that took up an entire wall and set up the next part of the exhibit. They used these ideas to depict those who believe in "man's word" in negative ways; they were videos of "a teenager viewing pornography while his brother plays a game in which he is on a 'killing spree'", a teenager who was pregnant (the video heavily suggesting she was about to get an abortion), and "a dysfunctional family" and other shit like that, which I had a problem with. Also, as I said earlier, they put in little hints of propaganda for anti-gay marriage and anti-abortion/pro-life (although they weren't so subtle with abortion) which also bothered me.

The museum also tried reallllly hard to explain the whole dinosaur thing. They have exhibits that explain how they could possibly be from within the last 6000 years and tell about how they used to only eat plants but when Adam and Eve screwed up some of them started eating meat and all this stuff. Besides that, it just meant more dinosaurs to look at, and we've learned from a couple of posts ago how much Garrett loves dinosaurs.

One of the biggest reasons we came here was to check out the petting zoo, where they had...

A ZORSE AND A ZONKEY (mistakenly named by the museum as a "zedonk"). These animals to me seemed only possible in the Avatar (the Last Airbender, not the blue people) world, or by means of polymerization in Yu-Gi-Oh, but we got to pet them in person. When we looked this place up online, I'm pretty sure these two creatures made us decide that we wanted to come here.

Anyway, that was the big event for the day. Ever since we've alternated between HIMYM and Blue Mountain State. I think tomorrow there's an air show at the base which we'll go check out.

G20

Friday is the day that Duke tries to find the best pizza in Dayton. Today we ordered
from a place downtown. Of course we got carry out so we could watch How I Met Your
Mother while we ate dinner.* The pizza was alright, but not great. I don’t think we’re
going to find anything here that really impresses Duke.

*Speaking of How I Met Your Mother, we’re now on season seven, so we have to stream
episodes online now. Our progress has slowed a lot because the internet isn’t very good
so loading the video takes forever.

We also spent a lot of time today on Duke’s quest for a game boy link cable. He hasn’t
yet found one, but he’s pretty determined. He’s probably going to be looking for a few
more weeks.

We have another adventure in Cincinnati planned for tomorrow. We’re both really
excited for it; we’ve been looking forward to it for the past couple of days. I can’t tell you
about it yet because I don’t want to ruin the surprise, but trust me, it will be awesome.

After reading Duke’s last few posts, I have a few things to say:
1. Apparently he thinks I say and do stupid things? I have no idea where he got that idea.
2. The “Garrett doesn’t know anybody” jokes are dumb. I totally know people. I promise.
I really do. Really.
3. Did he just refer to me as the silent one? I kind of like that.

D20

I am very sleepy, so this will be short and efficient....

Work continued... discovering new things in experiments.... new things will always be discovered as long as you blast stuff with lasers...

Still can't destroy Garrett in Pokemon because we figured out the Game Boy cord doesn't work.... Ordered a cord on Amazon...Garrett's time to hide is running out...

Got through season 6 of HIMYM on Netflix, but we have to resort to other places on the internet to view season 7 episodes.... the websites take forever to load so we're now alternating between episodes of HIMYM online and Blue Mountain State on Netflix on my Xbox.... finishing HIMYM will take a bit longer than projected...

Got pizza from a place called Dewey's Pizza.... was better than it looked, but still wasn't the one....

Tomorrow I think we'll head back to Cincinnati to explore other parts of town we didn't get to the first time around... one of the places we may be exploring should be epic.... also, I am currently fighting a losing battle to allergies...

G19

I’m going to make up for last night’s long post by writing a really short one today. I’m
trying to think of thinks to talk about, but Duke is currently stealing all my ideas, and I
don’t want our posts to be exactly the same.

Other than going to the grocery store, we didn’t really do anything today. We really need
the gym to open back up so we have something to do after work on weekdays. It isn’t too
hard to think of things to do on the weekends, when we have time for trips, but there isn’t
much to do near where we live.

I may have been talked into going to Cleveland tonight. It’s a long way away, but I think
we need to go just to see if it’s really as bad as Duke thinks it is.* I also kind of want to
go to Columbus next weekend, too.

*Duke still looks for any opportunity to sing the song from the Cleveland tourism
youtube video.

I was really surprised by the number of people who told me today that they’ve been
reading the blog. I wasn’t really expecting that too many people would read this. What I
have to say can’t possibly be that interesting. Apparently we also have readers in Russia,
which is odd because we can’t think of anyone we know in Russia.

Now Duke is yelling at me to hurry up and finish my post because then we can watch one
more episode of How I Met Your Mother, and I can’t really argue with that logic. We
didn’t do much today, but tomorrow will be better and Saturday will be epic.

D19

More [magical scientific research] was done at work today.

Not too much exciting stuff happened afterwards. We found out that our Game Boy link cable doesn't work for the GB Color so I can't destroy Garrett with my far superior Pokemon. Jasmine and I began sorta planning for next year's powderpuff season (now, that IS exciting). I purchased Hawaiian rolls. Garrett ate a sandwich. More HIMYM was watched, up until halfway through season 6, which is the last season on Netflix....hmmm....

I don't have much to say today and I don't have any convenient lies to tell about Garrett, so I'll talk about our blog's fans. Apparently, they do exist. We don't know exactly how many because it's hard to tell by just looking at the pageview count though. We do know that somebody views it through an iPad (Nonso), a Blackberry (Nonso), and Internet Explorer (Hannah Huff). Some of y'all are also randomly scattered across the planet. I'm not sure who most of those views are from, and Garrett sure as hell doesn't know anybody outside the country, but I think we (I) know a few of them and where they're travelling on vacation. It's also fun to play "whose pageview is that

Anyway, we hope those of you that read this enjoy it. I assume you enjoy it because both me and the silent one post, so I guess that means we should try not to kill each other while we're here...or maybe we should try to kill each other but be unsuccessful and have to continue posting, but hopefully that won't be necessary. Comment on stuff too; tell Garrett how stupid he's being sometimes.

Tomorrow should be alright, but Saturday should be exciting. *suspense and cliffhangers forcing you to continue to read* dun dun dun dunnnnnnnn

G18

After a bit of debate, Duke and I decided to take our talents to Cincinnati for the Fourth
of July. It’s about an hour drive, so we watched a few episodes of How I Met Your
Mother* this morning and got to Cincinnati around lunchtime.

*In case you’re wondering, we’re now on season six, which is the last one on Netflix.

After eating lunch downtown, we travelled to the Cincinnati Museum Center. The
Museum Center is the old train station, which now contains several museums. We
purchased tickets to all the museums, but ended up spending all day in the museum
of science and natural history. The exhibits in the museum were actually extremely
unimpressive, but we found plenty of ways to entertain ourselves.

First, we explored the cave exhibit. The exhibit is set up like an actual cave, with narrow
winding passageways covered with fake rock and stalactites. There were two options
for this exhibit: the beginners’ path, or the advanced path. We chose the advanced path
because we’re badasses. There were a few tunnels for kids to play in, so of course I
crawled through them.

There was also an ice age exhibit. This exhibit had several interactive touch screen games
for kids. One let you create an ice age creature by picking from the skeleton parts of a
few different extinct animals. Another was a quiz about things you learned in the exhibit.
I took the quiz and got a perfect score, but Duke refused to take it because he knew he
couldn’t match my accomplishment. There was also a game in which you were supposed
to “find” the glacier, but the glacier in the game was actually impossible to find.

Finally (and most importantly), there was a dinosaur exhibit. There were a few dinosaur
skeletons and things, but I spent most of my time there playing with the little plastic
dinosaurs.** While we were in the dinosaur exhibit, a pterodactyl attacked Duke. This
was probably the high point of my day. You should ask him about it.

**I’m pretty sure Duke will be posting pictures.

After we finished in the museum, we spent a while playing in the gift shop. They were
selling little plastic guns that lit up and made laser noises, so obviously Duke and I got
into a gunfight in the middle of the store. A random guy even grabbed a gun and joined
in. The gunfight lasted until I found the plastic T-Rex head with a handle that moved the
jaw so you could grab things. I spent the next ten minutes trying to steal Duke’s hat off
his head with the T-Rex mouth. Unfortunately I wasn’t successful.

After tiring of the gift shop, we ate ice cream in the conveniently located ice cream shop.
It was almost five, and there was a movie showing in the IMAX theater at five, so we got
tickets. The movie was about arctic animals, mostly polar bears. It was kind of short, but
it was fairly interesting, and the polar bears were awesome.

We had some time to kill after the movie, so we drove across the river and explored the
town in Kentucky that’s just across from Cincinnati. There was an aquarium there, but it

was going to close in half an hour and tickets were a bit pricey, so we couldn’t go.

After dinner, we found a free outdoor music show downtown. It was some reggae
group. We watched that for a while, and then walked down to the river to see fireworks.
Cincinnati’s fireworks are set off from a few of the bridges, so you can sit in the park on
the riverside and watch the fireworks over the river. It was a pretty good way to watch
things blow up.

Neither of us had high expectations for Cincinnati, but we both had a lot of fun, and
we’re already planning our next trip down there.

I hope this is the longest blog post I ever write.

D18

This post will be about why everyone hates on Tony Romo too much.

Today for American Swag Day, we decided to hit up Cincinnati (after watching some HIMYM in the morning). We sorta had a few things planned for part of the day, and we were gonna kinda wing the rest of the time we were there.

Turns out Cincinnati is nicer than we thought. We stopped downtown near the bridges that went to Covington and Newport, and it was a pretty cool area to chill out in. After wandering for a while, we had lunch at this sports bar named Cincy's, and the headed to the Cincinnati Museum Center. It was like a supermuseum with a natural science museum, children's museum, Cincinnati history museum, and an IMAX theatre all built in. We started in the natural science section where we climbed into a (fake) cave,...

 looked at (fake) animals and bones,...

....and solved (not-so-fake) mysteries about the history of the earth. We then went to the gift shop and shot each other with toy guns until Garrett got his hands on this dinosaur toy (which I didn't get a picture of) which he used to try to take my hat. Later we went to the IMAX to watch this video "To The Arctic", which basically could've been re-titled "The Misadventures of Polar Bear Mother and Her 2 Cubs", but overall it was interesting.
[Romo's having a pretty good game as the Cowboys are winning early in the game.]

We explored some more for a while afterwards, then ate dinner (I failed to find the finest pizza in Cincinnati, I believe), and watched this reggae music performance for a while. We went back down to the river to watch the fireworks. We found a pretty good spot and the fireworks were pretty good...until they stopped about 5 minutes after starting.
[Romo throws that crippling pick-six that gives the opposing team the lead late in the 4th quarter]

Everybody around us kinda sat there wondering if the city of Cincinnati really just trolled everyone like this. There were fireworks everywhere else visible on the horizon, but the city's firework show lasted just 5 minutes. It was so disappointing that it put a pretty strong damper on the day.
[ESPN analysts rip into Romo, calling him unclutch and a loser, all while bringing up that "1 playoff win" thing]

And then the fireworks suddenly continued after a long pause, and they were pretty spectacular. It kinda got real when they released the fireworks that blew up in the image of a happy face, along with some other kinds of fireworks I'd never seen before. It ended up being a pretty awesome display.
[Tony Romo shrugs off his screw-up, leads his team down the field in the game winning drive, despite the fact he gets no help from his defense, and the game is won after all...so people hate on him too much]

Today, Ohio did good. It's still one of the few times Ohio has won since we've been here [...Romo DOES still only have 1 playoff win], but it's been stepping it's game up. Maybe that trend will continue as we keep exploring places far from Dayton.

G17

When we left work today, there were probably only ten other people in the building.
Almost nobody even bothered to show up today, and pretty much everyone who did
come was gone by lunchtime.

A kid who works with Duke spent most of the day in my lab today. After working there
for about an hour, he started telling me about how I do so much more work than he and
Duke do. He basically said that he and Duke sit around and do nothing all day.

This evening, Duke and I looked for Fourth of July events that we could attend
tomorrow. Unfortunately, most of the events are nearby small towns having parades early
in the morning. We found a few different fireworks shows we can go to, though, so we’ll
probably do that tomorrow night.

We also started figuring out when and where we can go see the new batman movie. Duke
seems to think that this is something that needs to be decided soon. It looks like he found
a place where we can see the movie in IMAX, so that should be cool.

I had to turn off How I Met Your Mother and lock the xbox controller in my room for
two hours just to make Duke take a shower and change clothes.

And now he’s fallen asleep on the couch halfway through an episode of How I Met Your
Mother.* He hasn’t written his blog post yet tonight, and he still puts mine online, so it
looks like our posts won’t be going up until tomorrow morning. **

*Who’s not thinking of the greater good NOW?

**Update: I tried to wake him up to make him write his post, but he said he was too tired
and went back to sleep. Looks like somebody’s commitment to the blog is faltering.

D17

Not that many people came to work today because tomorrow is American Swag day and most of the people were taking a good chunk of this week off. Most of the day was spent setting up samples to do [special magical research] when the PIWWs come back later this week. Another good portion was spent doing more reading; I'm not the biggest reader and I don't retain that much info when I do read but the stuff I'm doing/reading about is starting to sink in more and more as the days pass.

The only real noteworthy thing that happened today was that Garrett became really bitter at my Sid O-week shirt and stopped us from continuing to watch HIMYM until I changed my shirt. I stood my ground so we didn't end up watching anything until I went and took a shower. He was really childish and took away the X-box controller and hid it in his room and stuff; I'm pretty sure all he did was Facebook for the next few hours/play Pokemon as we had Big Bang Theory on TV in the background. At least now I know his childish attitude is one way to prolong our watching of HIMYM.

(speaking of childish....'bout to cop that Gambino mixtape tomorrow)

I'm not sure exactly what we'll do for American Swag day; there are festivals and parades and fireworks and stuff around the area, so we'll figure something out I'm sure....unless I decide to wear my Sid O-week shirt again. If you're from Sid and reading this, I know where he lives if you want to beat him up. I think it'd be entertaining to bring the wrath of an entire college upon by roommate.