my brother sent me his old digital camera so i am going to start taking pictures like mad as soon as i can figure out all the buttons. i uploaded a bunch of really great pictures to my website and then mary saw them and made me take down all the really funny (embarrasing) pictures of her sticking her tongue out, but you know who to ask if you want to see them (wink wink, nudge nudge) but you should still all flock over the picture gallery and check out the other cool pictures.
snyder quotes:
"this is a routine, just like baking pancakes, you gotta do it"
"systems is like a water buffalo"
"i've been accused of claiming the whole word can be represented by springs and dashpots"
more to come
His other notorious moments are just stoping the lecture mid sentence and walking out for his cigratte break. Picking up the tape recorder someone is using to record the lecture with, and then continues with the class, holding the recorder about a foot from his mouth, before giving the tape recorder back after five or ten minutes, or just picking it up whenever he is making a really important point. Also he just continues to write even after he hits the end of the chalk board.
I will write more of them down, they are great. he is probably the coolest teacher i have ever had, for sure in college, but i liked mr. carter a lot too. pete would say it is because he is am MIT grad, but i think it is because he failed his first two years at MIT and later taught elementary school (he says they were smarter than us) at some point after getting two phd's.
I know these don't seem that funny, but hopefully i will be able to include a picture and sound clip, maybe it would make the image of him complete. chuck might be able to explain it better but he saw him on a pretty tame day. It says a lot about a teacher when nobody shows up late to his class, and the room (100+) is dead quite before he even finds the chalk.
I am just getting ready for nationals, i just need to shoot an 1143 so that i can break mary's record and my record, and so that i am not embarrased at nationals. I really want to go backpacking though, i am still thinking about doing the PCT this year, hopefully by writing it here it will actually get me to commit to it. everybody keep me acountable, i need to finish at least one thing i try to start.
i forgot to mention the most interesting (read worst, unless this is my mom reading it) part of the whole birthday thing. it was the longest birthday i have ever had (literally and figuratively speaking). seeing as how i started out in reno and ended up in hawaii, i added two whole hours to my birthday. but more to the point, i only slept for two hours the morning we left, and i didn't get to bed until after midnight, so i was awake for over 24 hours of my birthday.
but what made it so much was my mom. now my mom has done some pretty wonderful (read cooky) things before, but never has she brought a cake to the range on wednesday, given a bag of candy, hats, laies (spelling?), odd looking sunglasses, and other assorted items to people on the team to get out during the plane flight, convinced members of the team to have it announced that it was my birthday during the flight, and even remembered to include a button that says happy 21st birthday with a little bear (it oringially said happy 2nd i think, but she added the one) for me to wear around.
she paid off mary (mary of course denies any and all involvement) to handle all of this while she wasn't there. now i should have just enjoyed all of this but i was in a pretty bad mood because i don't like to celebrate my birthday and she just does it to annoy me i think. looking back it was really nice though, i wish i could have spent it with the crew like years prior, but all in all it was a lot of fun.
i had to explain to everybody else why i don't like my birthday, and i don't want to work right now, so i will explain it here, for no one to read. in elementary school we always went to the skating rink on valentines day and near the end they had a couples skate, now of course anyone who knew me in elementary school knew there was only one person i wanted to skate with (jamie might be the only one who is going to read this who witnessed that episode of my life, but that is besides the point) and i never got to skate with her. also they never annouced my birhtday but they always annouced matt theisens (odd how i can't remember anybody elses name, just his). i figure there are other people with the same birthday and so i feel bad that i am now getting recognition and they aren't (i am still working that theory out) but also i can't remember other people's birthdays at all, and i think it is unfair that mine should be so easy to remember, kind of ironic, in that alanis morsette kind of way.
my mom is just sad she didn't have a girl i think, and so valentines day gives her an excuse to act like super mom and get out the pink and purple things (yuck). isn't that annoying when you start off wanting to be pissed off but end of happy that you have people that love you.
now andrew can't be mad at me for not updating my blog
lots of exciting things have been happening, i should have entered them as they occured, but oh well.
went to the bob marley's whailers concert with my dad, it was very cool. it was weird seeing my dad on the other side of the "whatever you call a mosh pit when nobody is moshing but just all enjoying the energy (as little mike jones put it, that was even weirder seeing him there)". the best comment i heard was the lead singer pondering "if we are all praying to the same god, then what the fuck are we all fight ing for". remember, one love.
i went to hawaii with the rifle team, we had a match there against san francisco and nebraska. the team lost by 4 points out of 3200, kind of sucked, but ryan still hasn't lost an individual match in two years, i think he can win nationals again this year and keep the streak going. i shot okay, but i wasn't really there to shoot. anyway, nebraska may have won, but we are going to nationals and they aren't, so there (why does that sound like how a little kid would say it)
as andrew indicated, i turned 21 last friday, which is cool, i guess, i didn't really get a chance to do anyhting seeing as how NCAA athletes aren't supposed to drink and i really like being on the team, but i think it will be nice to not have to deal with that anymore.
back to school, this semester isn't shaping up so well yet, we will see though. it would be fine except for the fact that my western traditions teacher keeps bad mouthing the movie "the last of the mohicans", it is hard for me to see through that. i added some pictures from sledding with pete, the ones with mary somehow dissapeared, and i should have some hawaii pics up fairly soon.