Sunday I flew to San Diego for a workshop. The workshop is now over and I'm still hanging out in the area with my friend Matt from Arkansas, but I figured I'd post about Sunday.

Russ drove me to the airport. I got there around 12:15. My flight was at 1:25. Everything was pretty routine despite the Orange Alert, until I got to the security check. I took my shoes off and emptied my pockets and whatnot, and got through the metal detector fine. My tray, however, didn't make it through. The dude stopped me, held up my keys, and said "Are these yours, young man?" Whoops. I forgot to take my 4" knife off of my keychain. I'm pretty sure I could've gotten in big trouble over that, but thankfully, I just gave up the knife and that was that. Yeesh. (I also found out I was supposed to have taken my laptop out of my carryon bag for the check. Duly noted.)

The first of two flights was to Atlanta. I sat by Luther, a young professional-looking dude, who was going to Atlanta to recruit teachers to the Wake County school system. On my other side (the aisle side) was Laurie (I think), a 40ish mom of two. She was flying to Florence, and was going to meet up with her friend 3 days into a 10 day tour of Italy. She had quite a tale to explain why she was running late!
( Laurie's Tale )
I got off the plane in Atlanta and hurried to the nearest sports bar to watch the last few minutes of the ACC championship. Our pilot, knowing that the game concerned many of those on a flight from the Triangle area (Carolina was playing NC State), informed us at halftime that Carolina led by 8. I found a bar with 7:20 left in the 2nd half. State was closing the gap, but we held them off to become the 2007 ACC Champions. Woohoo!

The next flight went straight to San Diego. To the aisle side sat Mason (or Davis, maybe?), who was in the Army Reserves. He was flying back from Panama. I don't remember what project he was working on, but it was basically a goodwill project to help out the Panamanians, so that was cool. The weather was just barely good enough in Panama for him to catch his helicopter to the airport. If he had missed it, he would have had to go home after his orders expired, which means he would have had to pay for his own flight.

To the window side sat Sam, a 9-year-old. I don't really consider myself good with kids, but Sam and I had some fun. We talked (well, he talked, mostly...he was a chatterbox!), we played rock-paper-scissors, he listened to my iPod, and he watched the movie for about 5 minutes. At one point, the lady in front of us turned around, smiling, and made a "Mr. Chatterbox" motion with her hands where only I could see. Of course, the flight was like 4 hours long, and that's a long time to sit still if you're a 9-year-old. I think another couple hours and I would have gotten pretty tired of entertaining him, but it was OK as it was. Mason also helped entertain Sam. Heh, Mason asked him if he liked football, and Sam said he did. Mason said "I bet you're a Raider's fan, huh?" Sam, of course, was a Charger's fan. You should have seen his face, all pinched up in disgust. ;-)

We landed and went our separate ways. I caught a shuttle to the Radisson La Jolla, talking with the driver, a Brazilian named Felipe, on the way. I got to my room and met my roommate, Alessio, an Italian going to school in Napoli. He was busy working on a paper, so I left him behind and went out for a walk. There was a shopping area very near the hotel, so I thoroughly checked that out.

Across I-5 there was a beautiful, shining structure of some sort. I walked a while and found a gate, but it was locked. A motion-sensing camera clicked at me. I retreated a bit, found a good vantage point, and just stared at it for a while. I was just captivated. It was so beautiful. (Here is a picture.) It turns out it is a Mormon temple, and apparently only Mormons are allowed inside.

I eventually left there, grabbed a gyro at a place called Daphne's, and got back to the hotel around 10:30. I fell asleep quickly and slept well. I fell asleep on Eastern Time, and awoke on Pacific Time, so I was quite well-rested for the workshop.

Carolina played Duke last night. I actually got lucky with the ticket distribution, for the first (and last) time all year, so I got to see it in person. We controlled the game pretty well, and ended up winning by 14 points. I'm really glad we won, but honestly, Duke is not that great of a team, so it's not as big of a deal as, say, us beating them in Durham on their Senior Day last year.

The victory had a shadow cast on it, though, because, with 14 seconds left in the game, Gerald Henderson decided to foul Tyler Hansbrough hard. There was no need for that. And despite what you may hear from Duke fans, the foul was most definitely intentional. I don't think Henderson intended to break Tyler's nose--just to foul him hard. But break his nose is exactly what he did.
( graphic detail... )
The refs stopped the game for about 10 minutes. I heard that the TV stations agonized over every detail of the play, but they didn't show a single replay in the Dean Dome. I think they didn't want to start a riot. The fans were angry enough. When Henderson was slapped with a flagrant foul, ejected, and suspended for 1 game, he left the arena under escort, the crowd's boos chasing him.

Anyway, when I finally got home last night, I flipped on Sportscenter and caught the replay. That was the first time I realized how bad it really was. I read some articles online and discovered that Duke's Coach K basically blamed our team for the incident. "They shouldn't have been playing their stars with 14 seconds left", he said. (I'm paraphrasing.) Well, Coach K, neither should you. Furthermore, Henderson was not apologetic. He said (paraphrasing--but I kid you not, he said these things) "I wasn't trying to hurt the kid. And c'mon, basketball's a physical game. I guess I'll apologize if I get a chance." I went to bed upset at Henderson, Coach K, and Duke.

I woke up the same way. I got to school, and that's all anybody was talking about. So I was basically thinking about it all morning. Then I went to lunch with Andy and Jay. And guess who was walking down Franklin St.

Yep. Psycho T himself. All he had was a bandage on his nose. As we passed, I said, "You're my hero, Tyler." I was giddy for like an hour after that. Heck, I'm still giddy. That made my day. ;-)

My church occasionally does this thing called [random] acts of kindness, or AoK. Tonight, under that aegis, 5 of us went out with 1200 candy bars (Twix, Snickers, Reeses, Kit-Kat, and Butterfinger) to "Krzyzewski-ville" on the Duke campus to hand them out to people (for free). What a deal, huh?

K-ville is where the students go to compete for tickets. They set up tents days (or even weeks) in advance, and so long as at least 1 member of a tent is there for random roll-calls, everybody in the tent gets tickets. This involves spending a lot of time in tents! This sucks, especially during cold weather, which we have been having lately.

Oh yeah...I should mention that people are camping out for none other than the UNC-Duke basketball game tomorrow (2/7) at 9pm. It's one of the biggest and most anticipated rivalries in any sport, let alone NCAA basketball. So there's some irony there, that I, a loyal Tarheel, was being kind to dookies. That's, like, the good Samaritan, ya'll. ;-)

Anyway, the idea was just to hand out candy bars and "stats sheets"--pieces of paper with current statistics on the players and teams, along with a little bit of info about the church. We didn't preach to them at all. If they asked why we were doing it, we said "to show God's love in a practical way." So anyway, the point wasn't to convert people or anything, but just to be charitable.

I loved people's reactions! Many people were zoned out, and we had to ask "free candy bar?" several times before they realized what we were saying. Some were very enthusiastic. One guy looked at Erin (a UNC grad) suspiciously and said, "You're from UNC, aren't you?" Erin said "Yeah, how did you guess?" He mumbled something, put the candy bar back in the bag, and left. One girl took a candy bar and then looked at me suspiciously and said, "I know you, don't I?" I said, "uh, I don't think so," not going into irrelevant details about which school I went to. She left, and then, over her shoulder, she called, "I won't let you forget that night!" Eh?

I am so glad to be a part of a genuine church! The people here love God, and it shows.

I'm going to be paying the price for tonight, though. My biceps and shoulders are already way sore from carrying those heavy bags around. (Did you know that Butterfingers are the heaviest?)

A few weeks back, some friends and I went to see the Borat movie on opening weekend at Southpoint. It was packed! I instigated the outing, and when it looked like the show would sell out, I bought a few extra tickets, in case some of my friends weren't going to be able to get there in time.

The show did sell out, but all my friends had tickets. Some of them bought tickets online; others just showed up early enough. So, I was left with 4 tickets to sell. I got rid of the first 2 fairly easily, and then I had to wander around a bit, yelling that I had 2 tickets to the Now showing of Borat. Well, I found a buyer, alright...

Bobby Frasor! The sophomore starting point guard for UNC basketball! He bought both of my remaining tickets, and gave the other one to none other than Tyler Hansbrough! (You know, the best college basketball player on earth right now? I'm not exaggerating--he's amazing, and everybody knows it. Yet somehow, he's still humble. And 6'9".)

I played it cool, not even acknowledging that I knew who they were. I wasn't trying to be cool just for the sake of being cool--I just didn't want to say something that they'd heard a thousand times before. In hindsight, I should have said something like "thanks for doing what you do, and keep up the good work," but I didn't think of it in time. Ah well. But regardless, that was pretty awesome. ;-)

I finally found the poster seen in Sutton's! Check out it!

Friday night, a big group of us went out to Top of the Hill to celebrate Vince's birthday. When he got there, we all gathered around, loudly sang the happy birthday song, and generally made a spectacle to try to embarrass him. It was his 24th birthday, and it was March 24th. At midnight, it was officially the 25th, and thus Tynia's 25th birthday. She tried to sit down while we insisted on singing for her, but Andy and I picked her up and made her stand up. I think she was a bit more embarrassed than Vince. ;-)

Saturday, another big group went to Spice Street (a restaurant) to celebrate Tynia's birthday before the big party they were throwing. I got Tempura-style catfish with black bean sauce for like $17. I don't think it was worth it. I mean, I'd rather have a burger from Sutton's or a Burrito Bunker burrito any day, and it costs less. I've decided there is probably a correlation between restaurants that value the presentation of food and restaurants I don't like too much. ;-)

The party started shortly after that. Mike got a keg, and there was sangria, jello shots, beer pong, and flip-cup. As always, it was a blast! At first things were ominous, because the tap that came with the keg didn't work, but Mike ran over to Harris Teeter and got another one. Oh, and Vince's friends from Virginia are pretty darn cool people and are fun to talk to.

Today, I ate an unsurprisingly delicious meal of biscuits and gravy at Elmo's Diner with Jason, Sarah, and Jeff S. (who's in town for a couple of days). I then dozed and watched UConn lose to Cinderella-story George Mason. Later, I went over to Jason and Sarah's to eat, hang out, and watch a couple of episodes from season 1 of the Sopranos. Good times, good times... ;-)

I haven't posted in a while! I guess I've just been busy with work and all. Weekend before last, I went contra dancing with Jason, Sarah, and Claire. My shoes were dirty, so I went barefoot, so after I got done dancing my dogs were very sore. Thankfully, the blister pads Sarah gave me worked wonders.

I think it was that Sunday that was the Superbowl. Whichever day that was, I enjoyed an evening at Mike, Tynia et al's place, eating meat cooked on Mike's grill and enjoying the company.

Last weekend, I went out with mrsmalkav, Kevin, and others to eat at Patio Loco after the "tea" part of "systems tea". Afterwards, I joined up with a large CS contingent at Crook's Corner for Andy's birthday. We then tried Tallula's, which had a $3 cover, and opted for the Cellar instead. After a couple of hours there, we went back to Tallula's and danced a while. There were a lot of the electronic music crowd there, which was very cool...it had been a while since I had seen most of them.

All that was last Friday. On Saturday, Jason, Sarah, and I went square dancing on Ai-Ling's invite. I can't decide whether I like that or contra dancing--both are so much fun! After dancing, the 3 of us went out to Fuse to have a drink. For some reason, despite the loud 80's music, I really enjoyed hanging out there. Even the beer tasted unusually delicious. I guess I was just in an exceptional mood. And hanging with exceptional friends, too. ;-)

Since then, I've been busy at work. Tuesday, I somehow got it into my head that it was Wednesday. Long story short, Andy and I end up at Carolina Brewery asking for seats "where we can watch the game." "What game", replies the hostess. I was like, duh, "the Carolina game!" She looked kinda confused, and at that point I realized it was freakin' Tuesday. D'oh! Anyway, I ended up getting a lower-level student ticket to see the game versus Georgia Tech (thanks a bunch Cory!). I'm still a bit hoarse. ;-) Despite being down 20 points at one point, we came back and won it, thanks to the heroic effort put forth by our fantastic freshman, Tyler Hansbrough. That kid is insane. He got 40 points on the night, which is more than anybody had every scored in our current stadium. And he's just a freshman!!