Rejection

I got a letter from Wake Forest's Merit Based Scholarships division today. It took them two and a half paragraphs, but eventually they gave me the, "We regret to inform you that..." line. I didn't feel the need to read the rest.
So it's my first official rejection. It was only the Presidential Scholarship (based on talent in a specific area, mine being writing for publication), which I harbored no illusion I'd win anyway, but it's still no fun to be told you're not good enough. And it's not going to be the last rejection. I haven't heard from the Robertson people at Carolina (they forsake the courtesy of even the simple rejection letter) and my Poteat interview was less than outstanding.
And my forehand is keeping me from winning tennis matches. Dang.
So I hope you'll forgive me for barking when someone speaks as if I've already gotten the Morehead. Welker does it just to piss me off, but other people just don't know any better. The Mount Airy News ran an article about me being in the finals last Sunday (right underneath a picture of two mules) and ever since people have been telling me how proud they are that I won. And that is not a good thing. Allow me to explain.
There are 129 people left in the Morehead competition. Of those, 69 are from NC and the rest hail from locations as remote as New York, California, and Scotland. Let me repeat: some dude is flying to Chapel Hill from the land of Braveheart, probably with longsword in hand, to personally take me to task. The competition is intense and there are only about 45 scholarships total. Right now, 129 sets of family and friends are talking about how happy they are for their "Morehead Scholars". Considerably more than half of them will get a serious reality check.
I've got a lot on my mind; please, please don't add worry over being jinxed to the mix.
And it'll be fine. I'm not worried about winning or not winning (well, maybe a little), because, as a general rule, I have no idea what's best for me. Either way this (and all my other interviews) goes I'm gonna be fine.
So I'm asking for your prayers; not that I'll get the scholarship, but that God's will will prevail (I know the construction in that last sentence was bad, but I can't resist the oppurtunity to say "will will"). Because I can handle the rejection (though I offer no promises that I'll handle it in a particularly manly fashion) but I can't handle the disappointment of the approximately 3 million people who are "expecting great things" of me right now. Reading a letter from Wake Forest about a scholarship I didn't even care about was hard enough.

Waxing on Wang

The Winter Olypmics are boing. Someone needed to say it, and you were thinking it secretly anyway, so I just thought I'd get it out in the open.
It's not just that most of the sports I've never heard of (what, exactly, is nordic combined?) or that half of the events are dominated by scandonavians. You just know someone from Norway is going to win the ski jumping because no one from anywhere else has ever TRIED ski jumping. By the same token, Americans are guarenteed the gold in snowboarding. It's just not even competitive.
But the real trouble behind the winter olympics is that the games themselves are boring. How many times can you watch a dude slide down an icy track before getting bored? The competitors beat each other by tenths of seconds; it's all the same to an ignorant viewer like me. I'm not trying to knock the dedication and skill of the athletes, I'm just saying that the sports are no fun to watch.
This year has been especially disappointing. I haven't gotten to see much short track speed skating, and I am still yet to see a single game of curling. Instead, I've been treated to round after painful round of ice dancing.
But there has been one bright spot this year: a little-known speed skater out of China that goes by the name of Wang Manli. Wang is a girl, but that doesn't take away from the fact that her name is awesome. Wang Manli; if only those names had come in the opposite order!
Globalization being as prevalent as it is, do you think that Wang has any idea what kind of effect her name has on the average american male? "Ms. Manli, how nice to see you. You look ravishing, tonight." That her first name is Wang only adds to the delight.
So thank you, Ms. Manli. Though it has nothing to do with your dedication to your sport, you amazing athletic abilities or your years of training, you have truly made my Olympics.

R-O-L-A-I-D-S

...may spell relief, but W-A-K-E F-O-R-E-S-T F-A-N spells relieved.
We beat UNC Charlotte today, snapping a six-game losing streak and handing the forty-niners a "bad loss" that may well cripple their NCAA tournament hopes. Good to be the spoiler for a change. I'm pumped.
But wait a second, since when is beating Charlotte, Charlotte, by three at home a major victory? Weren't we the number one team in the country for a (very brief) time last year? What has gone so horribly, horribly wrong here?
I wrote a post called "Hope" a while back explaining why I can't detach myself from these situations. In the post I said that I can't help but hope for the best; maybe this year will be different.
And I was right; this year is differnt. REALLY different. Wake is 1-9 in the ACC, 13-11 overall, and not even a bubble team. Wake hasn't had a losing season since 1990. At the time I was two, so I don't remember anything about it. This means that this year could be the first in my sports-fan-lifetime without a basketball postseason.
And that has me wondering. I've survived almost two decades of tournaments as a Wake fan. Excluding the one NIT win, I've always had a season-ending loss to the season. I'm used to it; I have an annual ritual that helps keep me grounded. But this year there may be no colossal meltdown accompanied by that sickening stomach feeling. No week or so of pain and self-doubt. No identifying myself as a failure by association. No whimsical filling out of NCAA brackets with Wake in the final four only to have them (and my chances of winning the family pool) get washed out in the second round. None of that.
What kind of effect will this have on my already fragile psyche? Lacking my ritualized self-torture, will I be crushed of uplifted? Piled on top of college uncertainty and the fact that this month is february (I'll explain that one later), this lack of crushing disappointment may be too much for me. I fear I may succumb to the emptiness. On the other hand, I might, I dunno, invent something cool. It could go either way, really.
The guy in Robin Hood: Men in Tights said, "Tonight we're going to have a wedding, or a hanging. Either way, we all get to have a lot of fun, eh?" Stay tuned to see how this all turns out for me. Either way, it should be entertaining to watch.

Apparantly I'm It

So I'm walking through the sanctuary last Sunday, minding my own business when suddenly I'm whacked in the chest by a runaway Bible. "You're being tagged," I was told by the author of chrisaho.blogspot.com. What I wasn't told is what being tagged means.
As best I can figure, tagging involves sharing personal information about yourself so the entire world can cease its endless debate over what your favorite movie is. I wouldn't want to turn down the oppurtunity to talk about my favorite subject: me. So here goes...
Four jobs I've had:
1) Chief Pertroleum Distribution Engineer for the Busy Bee gas station
2) Algebra II tutor
3) Dead-flower remover at Oakdale Cemetary (thanks to Michaelf Kerley for the assist on that one)
4) Being awesome (a position I've held for roughly 18 years now)

Four movies I'd watch on repeat:
1) A Few Good Men (even if the ending is almost unbearably inconclusive)
2) Raising Arizona-that opening sequence never gets old
3) The Matrix (the first one, naming all three is cheating, aho)
4) The West Wing Complete First Season DVD

Four TV shows I love:
1) The Daily Show
2) PTI
3) Good Eats
4) Modern Marvels

Four Vacation Locales I need to go:
1) Orlando during Spring Training (actually get to go there this spring)
2) Ireland
3) New Zealand
4) Fiji (as far away as you can go before you start coming back)

Four websites I visit daily:
1) Hotmail
2) actually, that's about it
3) don't surf as much as you might think
4) except, of course, this fine site

Four foods after which I lust:
1) Breakfast casserole
2) Cookie bars (Mother makes them once a year, except for this year, because she hates me)
3) Pasta Carrabba at Carrabba's
4) Filet Mignon from the Mount Airy Meat Center

Four changes I'd make to the house:
1) Hot tub, baby!
2) Escalators
3) Move the shower in my parents' bathroom upstairs
4) The bathrooms in the Dean Dome have these amazing urinals that run the length of the walls. They're like troughs, but for peeing in. My house of the future will include similar troughs spanning various walls, not neccesarily in the bathroom, because they facilitate keeping an eye on whatever's on TV. Plus they're just plain cool.

Four beers I like:
I've never had any alcohol (except for cough medicine) so I can't respond to this intelligently. If beer tastes like it smells I fear I shall never have a favorite. However, I do enjoy these fine beverages...
1) Roibos (a brand of hot tea from South Africa)
2) Mountain Dew-without which my mother and I could not function
3) Hi-C, Boppin' Berry flavor- a beverage I've enjoyed no more than five times in my life. But it's good man, it's good.
4) Water drawn from the faucet in my laundry room-the choicest I've ever sampled. You may try to fool me with water from the kitchen but I will not be deceived.

Four tags:
Sadly, I have no one to tag (except for aho, but that would be silly). So instead I challenge you, the loyal reader, to go out there and tag four people for me. I've seen your legions of MySpace pages, find someone out there.

Alrighty, that's about it. More in a day or two.