The Duc Pond

There’s a lot to catch up on.

Wednesday:
Lisa told me my pre-review (my stuff is being pre-reviewed before it gets reviewed for real) was going to be Tuesday instead of Thursday, so I decided to join Cat, Justin, Reinert, and Rowan and go golfing. Mind you I’ve only been to the driving range 3 times in my life, and NEVER on a golf course.

First off, since I wasn’t expecting to play that day, the only change of clothes I had was a T-shirt that I happened to have in the car. This meant I played in my khakis. That sucked because it was supposed to hit around 90 degrees.

We played what I think is called scramble, which means that after all hitting, we’d play from the best lie. We ended up using 4 of my shots, which is 4 more than I expected! Most of them were just dumb luck, though. Only one was a really good shot.

I got made fun of for hitting a telephone pole, the handle of one of the hand carts, and the top of a bench. When the bench thing happened, I had already hit the first two things I listed, so everyone was saying I’d definitely hit the bench. Well, I didn’t just hit it, I managed to pop the ball up and have it land and bounce off the top of the bench. It was great.

So yeah, I sucked ass, but it was still fun. I think I can get used to this golf thing. I scanned our scorecard. As you can see, the 5 of us were 6 over par. That really sucks, especially since Justin is supposed to be damn good.

Friday:
My sister and I left for Rutgers at around 8 or so. Getting into the BAMM area took forever because traffic was backed up with all the people moving in. They had a neat little line set up where the cars could pull in, get their contents unloaded, and then drive off so more cars could come. Luckily for me, though, I found an empty parking spot that I could pull into.

Moving Quynh’s stuff only took a few trips (one of her friends helped us). She certainly packed a lot better than I did when I first came to RU. I had craploads of stuff. Moving her into her place was cool because there was lots of new stuff. The carpets and furniture were all new. The room was initially set up so that the beds were elevated above the desks. Pretty cool, but Quynh and her hot roommate Tabitha chose to bunk their beds, put away the supports that had raised the beds, and move their desks elsewhere.

I kinda wish I had been able to live in the dorms my freshman year and make a bunch of friends. On the other hand, my freshman living experience was my favorite of the 4 I had. Who wouldn’t want to meet Brent, Brandon, Greg and Jon? And Anand?! Come on now. It was good stuff. All the same, I would have liked to have come out of college with more non-Absegami friends.

So my sister’s all grown up now. It’s pretty weird, and very scary. Moving in for the first time was 5 years ago for me, but it feels just like yesterday! That stupid clich? is so true, dammit! I feel so pathetically and depressingly old. I miss college. I’m afraid of the future. My life’s great, after all. Why would I want it to end, or be hindered by being old?

Saturday:
Catherine and I had been talking about going to the beach. She hadn’t gone once the whole summer and I wanted to go again. Since the weather forecast said that Saturday was the only hot day of the weekend, I decided it was the best day to go. Turns out I was right, but it was far from ideal.

We decided on Ocean City because there was stuff on the boardwalk to do. We were only in the water for a few minutes because there was seaweed and junk in the water and it disgusted Catherine. For some reason I felt like the water was warmer than it was when I was in Sea Isle City, even though I’m pretty sure the ocean temperatures were nearly the same. It was cool to be back in the water and have waves crashing against me, my inability to swim be damned. I wish we could have been out there longer.

Turns out we picked a pretty good time to leave, though. At one point I turned around (away from the ocean) and saw a massive wall of black clouds headed our way. We went back to the car to get and deposit some junk and then headed back to the boardwalk. We weren’t back on the boards for a few minutes before it started pouring. We didn’t even try to avoid the rain. Making the best of it, though, we headed off towards Jilly’s so we could eat at Mack & Manco’s and maybe play some gameage.

M&M didn’t work out because it was crowded as hell, so we took our mega-soaked selves to another pizza place and got their tables all wet. After that we went to Jilly’s where Catherine beat the crap out of me (as always) in air hockey. The huge blasts of air from the air conditioners were great for freezing my ass off. I want to re-emphasize that we were soaked. Then it we had some funnel cake and later some ice cream. We tried to play mini-golf but the bastards wouldn’t let us. I don’t know if it was a liability issue or not, but we were willing to give ‘em money and they didn’t take.

We were in a good mood the whole night despite the rain and the freezingness. Make the best of it, I say! And Cat kept saying we had come here, dammit, and we weren’t gonna leave ’till we had our fun. That’s the kind of optimism I like to see.