mid life crisis/reinvention: 10.13.06 release

Friday was another 2 class day, and this was a doozie: back to back decision science (stats) and finance. There are a lot of concepts to this stuff, and the pace is very fast. The work is also fairly math-y. These two courses will kick my ass, but I will do my best. During the lunch break, I had a quick salad (thanks Reba) in the lunchroom with Brandon, who incidentally has his own web site at www.asskicking.com. He loves this photo, so I just had to post it…

Brandon

“Brandon Stache”: Canadian Porn Star

Josh will be glad to know that I managed to spill my drink all over Brandon, something that seems to happen to people I spent time with during meals. As spilling goes, it could certainly have been much worse: I opened my bottle of carbonated water and it exploded all over Brandon, fortunately it was just water, and being the good outdoorsy type that he is, he was actually wearing a raincoat! Then I rushed across town to Merton to drop off a form applying for Reba’s associate membership to the MCR (Middle Common Room, i.e. grad student hangout) which gets her a key to Merton, dining privilege, into all the events, etc. Then, I rushed back to the business school and just made it to class as it began. Due to the relative humidity and relative out-of-shape-ity of my lazy ass, I was totally covered in sweat by the time I got there. After class, everybody went to the “common room” at the business school for a drink. “Common room” is really a fancy way of saying BAR. In the school. Seriously. The MBA folks had all just completed their first week of long classes, massive reading, and required bickering sessions (deceptively referred to by the school establishment as “case study groups”), and they were all ready to let off some steam. And boy, did they! The school sells mixed drinks, beers, and glasses (pronounced glosses) of wine at 1 pound each, which is unheard of in this town. We drank all the liquor, all the beer, and a lot of the wine before leaving to go out for more drinking. The place was a mad house: people getting loaded, hitting on one another, playing drinking games, standing on tables, and generally making a huge racket. You could feel the previous week’s stress level in the tone of the room, both by the level of debauch that people were treating themselves to and by the psycho-atmospheric tension humidity. We all went out to the Jericho Tavern, a pretty cool joint with continental beers and the honour of being the site of Radiohead and Supergrass’ first shows.

Naturally, we finished the day with the MBA dudes out drinking til 12AM.