The awesome picture. 

Tommy Duffy, Mike Hodgins, and I biked up to the punchbowls a week ago on our free afternoon and hung around for awhile. 

My roommate, Will Bertain, playing volleyball at the Senior/Freshman mixer at the beach last Saturday. 

This is a view of our dorm room from the door, my bed is on the left. 

Just a picture of my side of my dorm room for anyone who's interested. 

Hamburgers at sunset. Last Saturday I went to the beach with (from left to right) Tim, Jill, Brigdet, and Lauren. Had a great time, took some good pictures, and found a cool little hamburger spot near the beach. 

Footprints on a beach. 

After we had held the prisoners for 15 minutes we hogtied them, dragged them over to their dorm and ignominiously dumped them in a heap. Hopefully they learned their lesson. 

St. Bernard's Invasion. They invaded our dorm, so we had to repel them and take a few prisoners. 

The White Ninjas of the Apocalyse. (some things on this campus are just plain weird, and it's probably better not to ask) 

Saturday the 28th.

Today all the freshmen were asked to attend the school tug-of-war and picnic at the athletic field at 3:45 “wearing casual clothes.”
Well, I think we all know what that means. ;)
I arrived early with some guys and we had a short game of Ultimate Frisbee before the inter-class tug-of-war began. They had a rope between 200-300 feet long, and one lcass would line up on one side, another class on another side, and they would attempt to pull each other into a wading pool filled with mud placed between the two classes. The first two matches were Juniors vs. Seniors and Freshman vs. Sophomores. The younger class always won as a result of the way the program here works, that people can leave or transfer out, but all incoming transfers start in the freshman class. Then the two winning teams, the freshman and juniors, held a championship tug of war. We won easily, but instead up just leaving the upperclassmen predictably ran over, grabbed all the freshman guys, and dunked them in the pool. Because I was one fo the first in line I figured that it wasn’t the best idea to resist, seeing as it was me against four juniors, so I just held really tightly to their hands as they carried me towards the pool and dragged two of them in after me. There ensued a mud fight that lasted about 15-20 minutes. Some of us went down to the ponds after and cleaned off down there. So instead of being muddy we smelled like algae. How fun.

Now you can see how we danced inside the ponds. Sorry about the dust, my roommate isn't the best photographer. I'll try to get Mary Rose to take some pics next time. 

More dancing. :D 

Dancing with Maria Cross at the Sophmore-Freshman dance. They held it in a drained pond, which wasn't the best danceing surface, because it was cement which tilted and dipped, but it worked. 

Meghan Patterson cleaning out the ponds before the dance. 

I finally got my computer on the college network! :D
What this means is that now I can use Picasa and Bloggerbot to put pictures on my blog. I don't have time for much right now because I have to go to work, but go look in the August archives, because I'll start putting pictures in there are work up to being current.
~Nick

Saturday, September 04, 2004

This morning Dominic Hayden and I joined David in going to town with his uncle. We first went to Men’s Warehouse to get a suit for David, which was rather boring. Then we went to Costco and target where we all restocked on personal item. Lunch was really great though, we went to BJ’s and got Chicago-style Pizza, and although it wasn’t as good as Portillo’s or Gino’s East it was very good. His uncle was a pretty fun guy, a republican Catholic, which made the conversation fairly easy. He works at Northrop Grumann in systems management, so I talked with him a fair amount about aircraft and Norththrop’s integrated systems approach. And he gave me a cool calendar from his work. :-)


The sophomore-freshman dance started tonight at 7:30. Of course, I was yelled at for dancing before we were supposed to. Well, cmon, what do they expect if they put on swing music, put a lot of guys and girls together and call it a dance?
Anyway, we weren’t supposed to because the sophomores put on a pretty funny skit introducing us to life at TAC.

The TAC glossary as presented by the Class of ‘07.

Homeschooling: the second most characteristic practice of married alumni. Usually follows breastfeeding.
Dating: the mating ritual order to the selection of a marriage partner, advisable only for second semester senior who have completed their senior thesis.
Cultural diversity. That means something entirely different on this campus. Cultural diversity is reading Greek and Roman authors in the same seminar.
Woman’s studies: what usually occurs in the girls dormitories when the girls are not sleeping.
Woman’s liberation: the sacrament of matrimony.
Don rags: an occasion each semester for your tutors to talk behind your back to your face.
Ten-foot pole: that with which the dorms of the opposite sex should not be able to be touched.
TAC time: at least 20 minutes behind PST.
Vocational training: being an altar server
Drug abuse: taking nine children’s aspirin in lieu of a novena to St. Joseph.
Napkin: a paper-writing surface available in the dining room and convenient for drawing mathematical objects and other diagrams when blackboard and chalk is not available.

Argument: A principle discourse consisting of premises and conclusions aimed at convincing a fellow seeker of truth. It usually doesn’t work out so nice.

[I'll type about hte rest of the night later]

Friday, September 3, 2004

Language this afternoon was quite fun, we spent 40 minutes discussing (arguing about) a single sentence. Mr. Dragoo said we were much more “feisty” than his other class, which just seems to agree with each other.
Tonight was coffee shop night, and all the people with Irish instrument were there playing music for a couple hours. It’s amazing the talent we have on this campus, they were really good and knew quite a wide selection of songs.
Will, Tommy Duffy, David Yanoshick and I played a game of Risk 2210 in the coffee shop. It ended being Will and I against Tommy and David, and Will completely demolished them. I agreed to second place and he let me survive.
Then Mike Hodgins, Gustav, Kitty, Hanna, Fiona and I went down to St. Augustine’s to get dancing lessons from Clay. We learned how to tango (actually you can’t tango much at TAC, because the majority of tango moves aren’t allowed, which is understandable once you understand that “tango” come from the Latin word “tongo” meaning “to touch.”)
We also learned the box step waltz and a few new swing moves, like the tabletop and the window.
I got back to the coffee shop where they actually had music in time for a dance with Erin (sophomore). I never knew they had late-night dancing at the coffee shop, but I found out it’s kindof a random thing that sometimes happens, sometimes not.

Thursday, September 2

Math at 0830 this morning. Mose and I demonstrated the “disproof” of Miss Grimm’s weird drawing for prop 8 yesterday which John Brungardt showed us at lunch yesterday. I also read aloud the steps for prop 11. I get the feeling I’m probably talking too much in math class, so I’ll try not to volunteer to do any props, but they’re so fun.
Mr. Neumayr was at a wedding in Denver today, so we didn’t have lab. :D
I did all of my work study in the morning, so after lunch I checked my mailbox along with everyone else for the results of our writing test.

And, to the shocking surprise of everyone...


... I failed!

Yeah, I still don’t quite understand it, and no one believes me when I tell them unless I show them the slip.
So either it was some weird mistake, or I’m just an awful writer. The class doesn’t sound that bad though, it’s taught by Mr. Goyette whom everyone describes as a fun guy, and I should learn something. All the same, it is rather a shock. I’m debating whether to ask if it’s a mistake or just go along with it.

After theology I went down to the ponds, because the grounds crew had put up a sign saying that they needed help mucking out the ponds. I met Meghan Patterson, a sophomore who knew the Ryan’s when they were in California and who had heard about me though Matt. That was fun to meet another person who I had heard about.
I also found out that the reason the sophomores were working hard to muck out the pond by Saturday was because the dance they give us on Saturday is going to be down there. So my altruistic work did have some small recompense.

I got a care package from my Aunt Rita today with a nice large batch of oatmeal raisin cookies. I’ve shared them with my roommate and some of my dorm mates. They’re very tasty. She also included a kite, although I think I’m going to have to wait until I get to the beach to use that.


My roommate Will taking care of my Aunt Rita's care package. ;) 

After discussing my writing exam over dinner with Maria Cross and Deirdre Goodman, both of whom thought I should ask Mr. Goyette about it (Maria knows him and offered to point him out to me) I went down to Pete’s Thursday pond party. I lit a nice big fire, and because some smart people had brought songbooks we spent an hour and a half singing Irish, Cowboy, Folk, and Oldies songs down there.

Sorry about the recent lack of bloggage. I was really busy over the weekend, and studying comes before this. Well, fun does too, but that's beside the point. Anyway, I should be posting several updates later today or tomorrow.
~Nick

Wednesday, September 1

Math was really fun today. We still had two props to do at the end of class, so Mr. Wodzinski asked if anyone could be “lightning props.” I volunteered and demonstrated props 9 and 10 (how to bisect and angle and how to bisect a line) in about 60 seconds. It was quite fun actually, but next time I get to do a prop I’ll have to be sure that I explain everything and make sure everyone understand so that he doesn’t think I do props like that all the time. But he did ask for it. ;)

Language with Dragoo was enjoyable as always. We were discussing sentences and reading from a small blue book on language. Mr. Dragoo’s favorite example sentence was, “The blue book burns.” I wonder if he was remembering his own days as a student.

This afternoon I emailed some pictures to my parents, and I’m still trying to figure out how I can put pictures inm y blog. If anyone knows a good way to do that try to explain the nice little comment function down there V.

And tonight was dance practice! :D
I actually learned quite a lot, Mary Rose taught me how to do aerials including the “Hip,” “Lampost,” and “Knee kick.” They’re quite fun, and the girl enjoys them as well, so everyone’s happy. And I also learned “Mop the Floor” from Mose, and we tried to learn how to do a back roll, but that didn’t work out to well, even after practicing it for 15 minutes. I think the main reason was that our shirts were too slippery so that she slid off instead of rolling over. Oh well.
Alise and John also taught us a flip at the end of the night, which is very cool. Of course, the girl has to trust you to some extent, because if you don’t hold on tight she ends up with her head bopping the floor, but we didn’t even come close to that happening. We just need to work of her landing so she doesn’t end up sitting on the grass. :p

Exhilarated and tired,
~Nick