Social Awkwardness

Social awkwardness. Yes, these are two words I know very well. We're good friends, actually. I'm not sure if we're friends because I bring those situations upon myself or if it's just simple misfortune, but I'd rather us not be friends.

Take Christmas Day for example--the trek to my dad's girlfriend's house to eat an "early dinner" and to exchange the presents my dad mandated we buy for her. I'd been dreading this interaction since he suggested the idea a few weeks earlier. I respect my dad's desire for us to be closer with the woman he's about to get engaged to (as well as her young sons) but this is ridiculous. My brother, sister, and I barely know the woman and in order to rectify that, my dad forces us to smile and pretend that her house is the only place in the world we want to be at that moment and that we'd love nothing more than to share stiff conversation with her on several general topics. My brother was amicable, I was cordial, and my sister was stone cold silent.

And I could see/
That she was offended/
She said, "Well, anyway..."/
Just dying for a subject change

So what do I take away from such experiences? Don't force people to be close right away. If you want me to like someone, then let me get to know them on my own terms and in my own time. Don't force me into awkward situations so frequently and expect me to be completely comfortable. That's all I'm asking.

Lists

1. Three things that scare me:
spiders
heights
a broken heart

2. Three people who make me laugh:
Jimmy Fallon
Tyler Braddy
Captain Jack Sparrow

3. Three things I hate the most:
stupid girls
narrow-minded people
fighting

4. Three things I don't understand:
economics
people who don't try
people who hate to read

5. Three things I'm doing right now:
listening to RENT
thinking up answers to these questions
waiting for David to call me back

6. Three things I want to do before I die:
go to Europe
to love and be loved back
get published

7. Three things I can do:
recite lines from movies I love
sing (not particularly well, but I can)
play basketball

8. Three ways to describe my personality:
introverted
altruistic
compassionate

9. Three things I can't do:
hate you
play the guitar
drive fast

10. Three things I think you should listen to:
your parents
your true friends
the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack...it's awesome

11. Three things you should never listen to:
people who can't sing
Dido
bad advice

12. Three things I'd like to learn:
how to play the guitar
how to surf
how to stop caring so much about what other people think

13. Three favourite foods:
french fries
buffalo chicken sandwiches from Charley's
gyro wrap platters from Great Wraps

14. Three beverages I drink regularly:
water
chocolate milk
Mountain Dew Code Red

15. Three shows I watched as a kid:
Boy Meets World
Salute Your Shorts
Hey Arnold!

Christmastime at the Miller House(s)

I've been back in the Snellville/Stone Mountain area for a few days now, and already my trip home has been quite the experience.

First of all, I'd like to point out that while I don't enjoy the very commercialized aspects of this holiday (i.e. the shopping frenzies, the commercials for Christmas sales on tv, the Christmas music on 94.9 FM starting in October, etc), I do enjoy putting up the few Christmas decorations we have and putting up the Christmas tree. That being said, let me say that I'm pretty much the only one in my family who does. My mom gets into in once I do, but otherwise, I'm all alone in that respect.

So on Sunday, my mom and I brought the decorations down from the attic and I put them around the house. I tried to hide the box containing all of our contruction paper stockings, wreaths, and Santas from elementary school, but my mom has a radar for that sort of thing. I'm surprised she still keeps some of it. Nevertheless, she found the box under some other boxes (it wasn't placed there unintentionally, mind you) and displayed said decorations prominently in the kitchen. Now when people come visit, they can look at my artwork and see that I couldn't write my name in a straight line at age 5. I'm doing better now, you'll be happy to know.

Our next task? Find a Christmas tree a week before Christmas. This was a harder task than we previously anticipated, but we did eventually find one. I don't think you could call it a "tree" exactly...it's shorter than I am (I'm 5' 7") and looks more like a Christmas bush. Or maybe we could call it a "fun-sized tree." My brother (who's about 6' 4") said it best -- "If it were a fish, we would have thrown it back." Too true.

I've done a few other things since coming back...I went to the dentist and had a strange woman clean my teeth and tell me that I just need to floss more. Of this fact I'm well aware; what I wasn't aware of was how easily my dental hygenist could carry on a one-sided conversation with me about the importance of flossing and how an electric toothbrush is so much better than a regular one. "Why am I telling you this?" she'd say, and without looking for a response, she'd immediately finish, "I'll tell you why..." Honestly, I didn't really need to be in the room for her to talk. She just kept going and going...eventually she made a note on her records not to cover teeth whitening with me the next time I come since she'd told me everything there is to know about the subject in a span of 30 minutes.

I also saw the movie "The Holiday" with a few friends. Good movie--a chick flick, yes, but still good. I was surprised to see Jack Black in it, and not as one-half of Tenacious D but playing a man who composes the music for movies for a living. What a cool job! It was a tad long, but worth seeing.

Finally, my brother came home last night, which is awesome. We jammed to Journey this morning (by the way, search YouTube for their "Separate Ways" video because it's terribly entertaining) and then went to a nearby park to play frisbee and walk around. After tossing it around for a while, we took a short walk on one of the trails and came back to find his Duke frisbee and the light jacket I was wearing gone. What? In a small park in Gwinnett County? Apparantly so. They were sitting by a picnic table on the ground, but someone decided to take them anyway. LAME.

And so, for the rest of my holiday, I will be writing soon while travelling between my dad's house, my mom's house, my dad's girlfriend's house (awkward), and my high school friends' houses. Hope everyone has a great holiday!

This Day in History: Basketball

The "This Day in History" part of my Google customized homepage was great today--on December 15th, 1891, James Naismith invented the game of basketball. It reads:

James Naismith Invents Basketball (1891)
"Looking for a way to relieve the boredom of his students during indoor gym class, Naismith nailed a peach basket to each end of a gymnasium, created 2 teams of 9 players, and thus invented basketball. Basketball was inspired in part by a game Naismith had played as a child, called Duck-on-a-Rock. One month later, Naismith published rules for the game, which did not allow for what is known today as dribbling; players had to move the ball up the court via a pass. ollowing each "goal" a jump ball was taken in the middle of the court. Although it wasn't a rule, players would commonly use the dust of coal to cover the palms of their hands, allowing them to get a better grip on the ball. The coal palm was used up until the early 1930s when the Depression hit, making the raw materials very pricey. Also interesting was the rule surrounding balls out of bounds - the first player to retrieve the ball received possession."

Today I honor you, Mr. Naismith, because I don't know what life would be like without this great sport. Everyone in my family played basketball, and my dad used to coach it when he was a history teacher (before he became a journalist).


Also in honor of this post, I salute the Duke men's basketball team on their excellent season so far. They lost some great players (like Sheldon Williams) but they've got some great players still there (like DeMarcus Nelson). Here's their record so far:

Duke 96, Shaw University 45
Duke 92, N. C. Central 63
Duke 86, Columbia 43
Duke 72, Georgia Southern 48
Duke 75, UNC Greensboro 48
Duke 71, Air Force 56
Duke 62, Marquette 73 (our only loss so far)
Duke 75, Davidson 47
Duke 54, Indiana 51
Duke 61, Georgetown 52
Duke 57, Holy Cross 45
Duke 69, George Mason 53

Keep up the good work, gentlemen.

Buyback Time Once Again

At the end of every semester, students can go back to the bookstores to sell their books back for cash. Don't want to see that chemistry book ever again? No worries--get rid of it and get some money in return. So I find myself back at the bookstore once again to buy your books back and get some cash money for Christmas presents in the process.

As the days go by, I've started to notice some trends among my fellow students. Hey, you stand at a counter at the front of the store for a few hours every day and you tend to pick up on little things.

• People tend to avoid reading signs. I've got to admit, I've been guilty of this one myself. But it does bring a smile to my face when people try to pull on the front door when you really should push if you hope to go any further. Especially when there's a sign on the door that says "PUSH." Or even better--when we're closing for the night and people try to open both doors at the front of the store when they're locked. The confused almost-customer tries both doors again, then turns his attention to the open/closed sign with the CLOSED tab visible and our hours clearly listed. Comprehension dawns on his face as the lights go out and the last employees drive away. Way to go, champ.
  
• Some people might want to look in the mirror one more time before leaving the house. Ugg boots and Soffe shorts? Not a choice I'd make, but some girls do it. Hopefully they were rushing out the door and grabbed the first pair of shoes they could find on their way out. More than likely, however, they thought it looked cool. Poor things.
  

Hmmm...that's all I can come up with at the moment...more to come later I'm sure...maybe when I'm not worried about another final exam...

Exams, Real Men of Genius Style

"Today we salute you, stressed out college student during exam week. As you sit in your lonely cubicle in the library, doped up on Starbucks and Aderol, you think to yourself, 'Am I ever going to need to know this stuff in life?' The distractions are tempting, and you have suddenly diagnosed yourself with ADD, along with advanced delusionary schizophrenia with involuntary narcissistic rage. I'm sure by now you know exactly what everyone is doing because you have checked your buddy list 800 times. Christmas break is just days away, and your Prozac prescription will be in tomorrow. So crack open an ice cold (root!) beer after that last exam, because for most of us, Christmas will be spent in rehab." -Real Men of Genius

I dedicate this post to all those taking final exams starting this Friday (or for my high school friends, a week or two from now). I think the Real Men of Genius guys hit the nail on the head here--change "buddy list" to "facebook" and change "cubicle in the library" to "table in the SLC" and you've got a relatively accurate representation of finals week at UGA. Especially the part about getting easily distracted; I was studying for my 19th century British prose final a few minutes ago, but the internet seemed a little more interesting somehow. Or take this past Saturday for example--did I study hard all day? Of course not. Christmas (or Hanukkah in Alison's case) shopping seemed much more appealing. ;)