Stupid Fucking Open House Bastards! or Do I Dare Ask What Else Can Go Wrong?
Mood:  irritated
Now Playing: So not true music: "Perfect Day" by Hoku on "NoAlbum"
Topic: Random Rant
A little backstory: Open House requires that clubs selling food must either keep their food above 120? or below 40?. To comply, last year the Math Club brought in a mini-fridge and two coolers of ice to keep the pies in. The fridge of course required electricity which we were able to get.

This year, we again applied for electricity. Open House told all the representatives that unless they received an e-mail saying they didn't have electricity, we did. Jay, our Open House rep, never received such an e-mail. Only when Jay and I went to check in at 4 today, they didn't give us an electricity permit. I said that we should have it and the girl said we weren't listed but she made a note of it and would look into it and call us at 6...tomorrow morning. Without the electricity, we can't have the fridge in the booth to hold the pies. All we'll be able to have is our one guarnteed cooler with 2 pies and people running to the fridge in the book room to get pie slices. In other words, we're completely and utterly fucked if we don't get that electricity. I was about to walk home after setting up the booth but decided to see who I could argue with at the Open House office. I fortunately ran into the girl in charge of such things. She said that there was nothing she could do and that our rep should have been contacted. If the contact info wasn't up to date, that wasn't her fault. So basically, she tried to blame her oversight on Jay, who has received every other e-mail that Open House has sent out. I called Rebecca to let her know that electricity was definitely a no. She said that she got another cooler from Dr. Morrison and that he was going to ask his neighbor for one and ask other faculty members. Tami had said she would try to get one from her brother. I said I would call all of my friends to see if they had one. Fortunately Steve said he had one I could borrow. Of course, now we still need ice. I had bought a 20lb bag earlier today and put it in the department freezer. I originally thought it would be too much. Now it looks like it might not be enough. I did just fill up all 5 of our ice trays and took the ice from the three that were full and put that ice into baggies. Of course now I have to figure out how to get the cooler and more ice onto campus tomorrow. I could drive it on, but I would have to do that before 8 and without access to the department freezer, it would probably melt. I could walk, but...ow. I could take the bus but the first one runs at 8:44 and will only take me to Mustang Stadium (close but not quite close enough). *sigh* It's a big mess. We need to sell those pies. At least 8 of them. And we also need to sell those sweatshirts. 23 of the 29 remaining to be precise. Shit. We also need to sell at least 7 MAtheletics shirts, at least 30 M*A*S*H shirts (some have already been sold though) and more of the Fight Club and Friends shirts. Bascially we need to sell out of everything to really make money tomorrow. In other words, we are totally and utterly fucked.

We were also suppose to have an organized gathering at SLO Brew tonight from 5-7. Since I didn't even start to leave campus until 6:30, I said screw it as I would be home at 7. I went home, grabbed a diet Pepsi and hopped into the car and went to South House to get the cooler. I hung out there for a little bit trying to get the guys to join me for dinner. At 7:38 or so, Tami calls me, asking if I was coming to SLO Brew. I was surprised there were still people there. She asked if Math Club was paying for the appetizers again. I told her that we couldnt' afford to and I know I told a few people that we weren't doing that and we never said that we were in the e-mail this time. So I managed to convince the guys to join me at SLO Brew but we had to wait for Matt to get home. Then Matt had to shower and then we left. We probably got to SLO Brew at 8:15. No one from Math Club was there. Okay, yeah it took me a while to get there but I didn't expect it to break up that fast after hearing Math Club wouldn't buy anything. The good news is that I did get to have a nice dinner with South House and Shane, all of whom sans Leigh I haven't hung out with yet this quarter.

Rena had helped set up today and afterwards she asked me about the possability of a Yosemite deposit. I told her it wouldn't be more than $10. When I do finally get home, there's an e-mail from Randy saying that Rena didn't quite feel comfortable going and with a deposit being required she really doesn't feel like going. And therefore Randy won't be going either. Which would bring us down to 9. I sent an e-mail out to everyone, including Randy and Rena, if they would back out if they had to put down money. I honestly don't see why anyone would back out if they had to pay $10. I mean, it's a trip to Yosemite for only $10. You couldn't even get into the park for $10, let alone buy the gas to get there. And the campsite cost more than $10. I mean, $10 really isn't all that much is it? But basically, what it now comes down to, is that if two or more people say they won't pay, the trip is cancelled.

Math Club Finances
Mood:  d'oh
Topic: Math Club
Remember when I went through and did the finances for this quarter? Well, that starting balance is off by about, oh, $545 or so. Yeah, the Epicenter gives us full transaction reports that are kind of hard to read. See, what happened is that we got money for the Banquet through co-sponorship which they put into the account but as "ghost money," ie, it goes towards our balance but we can only touch it for Banquet and anything we don't use goes right back to them. So yeah, my final calculation previously was leaving Math Club with about $260. Now it's about $200 in debt. Great, just fucking great =P.

The "good" news is that we decided to not provide appetizers at SLO Brew tomorrow night so that should save about $30 and I recalculated Yosemite because I forgot to redo the campsite total. Although I did forget to put in the bear canisters. Anyway, after recalculating, I brought the high estimate down from $1000 to $900. Oh, and we got about $23 back from the sweatshirts so that would only leave us in about $50 worth of debt. Now, if we can get whatever we're getting for the social donated, we might actually break even. *crosses fingers*

Hypocrites!
Mood:  incredulous
When we were discussing the prices for the pies last month/quarter, Rebecca said that last year we sold them for $3 and had little signs saying "pi~$3." I was questioning it, thinking it was a steep price and saying that I thought we sold them for cheaper. Then we realized that we had the little "half off pie slice #2" coupons and that's why I was confused.
Then today we were discussing the pie prices and I said that they were $3 and we were doing 6 slices, possibly 8 slices since we discovered that we actually have about $545 dollars less than we thought. And all of a sudden Rebecca is saying that she thought $3 was too much and that she wouldn't have done $3. And I thought WHAT THE FUCK?!. And then Tyler was also saying that he thought $3 was too expensive too. "What the fuck!?" I thought so too which is why I was questioning Rebecca's memory of last year when we discussed it last quarter. Why does it seem like every decision I make is the bad one? Even if it's exactly what we did last year? ARGHHH!!!!!!!

The other hypocrites are my groupmates for Plastics. Tuesday we picked our topic and the day we will be presenting. Right after we discussed when we would meet to start working on it and decided that after class was a good time. We agreeded to start on Thursday.
I come to class to today and ask if we were still meeting. Darlene says she can't because she has to do some survey stuff at Farmer's tonight for Open House. So then I turn to Kim if she still wants to meet and she says that she can't because she also has to do something for Farmer's. *palmforhead,headshake* Did we or did we not 48 hours previously agree to meet after class today? Fortunately class got out about half an hour early so we quickly decided to just divide up the work and would update on Tuesday what we had done, if anything (we're all busy due to Open House). Oy vey.

Yay for distractions
Mood:  not sure
Now Playing: "Love & Devotion" by Real McCoy on "Another Night"
I've busied myself for the past uhhh 2 hours or so with making the presentation for the Inter Club Council meeting for best small active club to use in 2 weeks. It's not funny or anything like Nick's was last year but hopefully people will vote by the definition.

Of course I didn't today for best website. But, except for one that was almost too technical, they were all pretty much the same so I voted for the one my friends were in. Besides, Leigh made me feel guilty when I was pondering ;-). Hopefully the clubs I'll be running against will be like the ones last year. "Hi, I'm so and so from some small just starting out club and we're pretty new so we don't have any money to do any events because it takes money to make money. So yeah, vote for us!" That was the gist of most of the competition last year. Or they only put on one or two events. Whereas we do one every week.

I'll take a morning like today any day
Now Playing: "Extraordinary" by Liz Phair on "Liz Phair"
Topic: Work
Today at work it was so dead it was so wonderful. I came in and there weren't any voicemails. I check the Remedy queue and there was nothing to work on except for possible user notification for a guy in Iraq so wasn't really sure about that one. I checked e-mail and there were only 3 messages: 2 delivery failures, 1 auto-reply from Tonia. During my hour and a half, there was one phone call and two wireless requests which came at the same time just before I got off. When I talked to Bridget later at the gym, she said that apparently it stayed dead today. She said she went in around 3 to check her e-mail and the people there said it had also been dead. The deadness allowed me to update the UNIX FAQ that Terri asked me to do last week.

Now if it can only be that dead tomorrow afternoon....

Well, I can no longer say never
Mood:  surprised
Now Playing: "October" by Evanescence on "NoAlbum"
Topic: Apartment
I went to put my watch on the bathroom counter and noticed something different. Julie's side was clean. Not all of it, just her half of the middle section. It was clean. I hadn't cleaned it. Which means she must have. I was wondering what she was doing for soo long in the bathroom last night. So now it's been once. Once that I've seen evidence of either roommate take any sort of cleaning product to any surface that didn't just have raw chicken on it.

Yosemite and Other Math Club Ramblings
Mood:  blue
Now Playing: "Here Comes The Flood" by Peter Gabriel on "Felicity"
Topic: Math Club
I found out on Thrusday from Eddie that some people were talking about not going anymore. So I sent out an e-mail saying that I heard a rumor of it and asked that if anyone was having second thoughts to please let me know. Tami replied that she was having second thoughts. Rena talked me Friday about her having second thoughts, not feeling welcome and the whole co-ed tent thing. I just got an e-mail from Dave saying he had to drop out due to midterms. That leaves 11 people, only 9 of which are, to my knowledge, committed to going. I guess I should actually drop that to 8 since even I don't want to go. Not only do I not want to go, I don't want the trip to happen. I mean deep, deep, deep down inside, I want more people to drop out. Enough to make me cancel the trip. Is that horrible of me? I mean, I'm a logical person and logically, Math Club should not take this trip. Quick math computations:
Starting balance for Spring: ~$1700
- ~$380 for jerseys: $1320
+ $908 from yard sale, car wash and booksale: $2228
- $1222.5 for sweatshirts and shirts: $1005.5
-~$140 for pies for Open House: $865.5
+ ~$500 from Open House: $1365.5
- ~$30 for SLO Brew event*: $1335.5
- $38 for mini golf event*: $1297.5
+ $250 from car wash*: $1547.5
- ~$60 for social*: $1487.5
-~$70 for drive-in event*: $1417.5
+ ~$400 from banquet ticket sales*: $1817.5
- ~$1000 for Yosemite trip*: $817.5
- ~$500 for our part of Banquet cateering*: 317.5
-~$50 for end of year BBQ*: $267.5
Okay, I had actually forgotten about money from ticket sales before I started going through it. But everything with an * is actually an unknown amount. I mean, I could be grossly over estimating how much we'll be depositing from Open House. Or with the rising gas prices, underestimating the cost of Yosemite. I mean there are a lot of factors here. But basically, the club will be left with very little money to work with for next year unless we again win the Pepsi Grant. I mean, I started at around $800 for this year and money is tight for us. Imagine how it will be for the next President. The only reason we took an end of the year trip two years ago was because there was an excess of funds. We could afford it then. We could just barely afford it last year (without the Pepsi Grant, I would have had only $300 some odd dollars to work with at the start of this year). And we can barely afford it this year. So logically speaking, we shouldn't take an end of the year trip. Something like an end of the year trip should be something more like a reward for some good fundraising, not a guarnteed event we start planning during the first few weeks of Fall quarter. I think it would be a better idea to try to make sure the Math Club becomes financially stable so it can have regular events and an annual end of the year Banquet. I mean, Rebecca was right about one thing last year: giving out scholorships and awards during UU hour in casual clothes over cookies sucks. It should be more of a ceremony to honor those receiving something. But it would suck more if we introduce this idea and then not be able to afford to make it an actual annual thing. As far as I can tell, there won't be a 3rd annual banquet.

All of Math Club has just become one huge headache. Previous years I looked forward to all things Math Club. Now I look at it as something I just have to do. A chore. Don't get me wrong, I still have fun at the events; Game Night was a blast. It's just the planning and making sure we can afford to do it and all that stuff. And my...my...I dunno, presence? Influence? Prestige? I can't find the word I'm looking for. No one has said it to my face, but I know there are quite a few people who feel that I'm a lousy President. Hell, I'm one of them. But I don't know how to make it better. It's too late now, but if only I knew what I did wrong aside from not being the overly ambitious and outgoing Rebecca.

When Rena talked to me, she said she felt like her ideas and values weren't being accepted. I'm not really sure how to put it since these are her feelings but that's about the best I can do to summerize. I guess I seemed not open to ideas. I thought I was being open to feasable ideas but I guess not. I absolutely had no intention of making anyone feel unwelcome and I feel terrible for making anyone feel that way.

You know how sometimes people ask "If you could change anything in your past, what would it be" or "Knowing what you know now, what in your life would you have done differently?" You know, something like that? Before this year, I had two things: 1) Running against Kate Cowen for Echad N'siah and 2) Leaving that one BBG event in anger which led to me going out with Chris. Perhaps had I run against Kate for N'siah and won, I would have been better prepared for this year or would have convinced myself to never be President of anything ever again. Or perhaps if I had lost (I like to think that that would have been unlikely), I wouldn't have had the delision that I could do this. But now I would amend my answer to those questions to include #3: becoming Math Club President. As in not doing it. But I do believe #1 and #3 to be intimately related. Actually, I might even back it up further to include not being a Math major. Really have to hate epiphanies for coming months, or even years later than when they could have been useful.

Club E-mails
Mood:  irritated
Now Playing: "superxero1" by Linkin Park on "NoAlbum"
Topic: Random Rant
Do I send out messages about Math Club to people who don't care about Math Club? Yes. But they are Math majors so at least it's fucking relevant. I don't send out the e-mails to every math class. Not only would it be an huge hassle just to type all those up, but for most of 100-level classes (and there are a lot of them), the people in there aren't Math majors and therefore don't give a flying fuck what the Math Club is up to.

This one person from the Industrial Technology Club keeps e-mailing every IT class (all less than 20 of them) about doing things for Open House for the IT club. Plastics is a fucking general education class which means that at least half the people in the class don't give a damn about the IT Club and most certainitly don't want to help with Open House. So after like the third e-mail from this person I replied asking why I was getting the e-mails. She (at least I think it's a she) replied saying that they e-mail all the IT classes and that she can't just take one person off of her list. After receiving yet another e-mail from her, I again replied and suggested that she get a club account, gave a link for the form and make an alias of all the people who give a damn. Except I said it slightly nicer. But I did imply that her e-mails were spam to those in the plastics class for GE credit. I'm tempted to include her on the next couple Math Club e-mails just to give her a taste of her own medicine. What I should have said at the end was "If you are planning on responding, don't bother. I put a filter to just delete all of these irrelevant e-mails from you." I also should have brought up the fact that by e-mail just the classes, she's not necessarily reaching all the IT majors. I mean what if they're not taking an IT class this quarter? Then they would be "missing out" on all the IT Club dealings.

My point being that while we are both annoying people with all of our e-mails about club activities, at least I'm e-mailing relevant people. She could at least have the decency to do that.

The weekend thus far
Now Playing: "I Turn To You" by All-4-One on "Space Jam"
Friday
Hillel was having a video scavenger hunt and I said "those are always fun, I'll go!" And I did have fun. First there were some getting to know each other games and then we were put into teams and off we went. My team was Felicia, Rena and this alumni Ava. I did the majority of the filming. Our six tasks were to find some nail polish (because we couldn't spend any money) and give a guy a manicure, ask someone out with a cheesy line, sing our favorite Hanukkah song for a minute in a store downtown, pump a stranger's gas and talk to them the whole time, have a "bum" sing a Christmas carol and dance for a dollar, and find items that make up a bannana split. The guy for our manicure was so weird. I swear he was already high/stoned and then was trying to sniff the nail polish fumes. The condition of asking a guy out with a cheesy line was that you didn't stop until he said "fine." The poor guy Rena was trying to ask out...she and the rest of us were trying to make him say fine by rhyming it and it took him a few minutes to get it. We went into some random store downtown to sing our Hanukkah song and filled out some business class survey for the girl working there's friend in exchange for letting us sing. The woman who's gas we ended up pumping ended up being from Calabasas so Rena and I got so excited and we totally were able to talk to her for the whole time. She and her friend also wanted dinner recommendations so that worked out really well. And then there was the "bum" thing. One group got to the only "bums" downtown and had them do it. By the time our group go there, they, and this other guy with them who was denied doing the carol by the previous group because he wasn't a "bum", were pissed that we turned their situation into a game. We left but came back a few minutes later and said that we agreed with them and asked if we could get his opinion on tape for the organizers. Then there was the banana split thing. It wasn't made clear that were suppose to bring all those ingredients back and not just get them on film so none of the groups had those. We found out why when we got back and there was ice cream for us. Fortunately they had some items there already so we did have a special treat. The event was a lot of fun. It restored my faith in Hillel events.

Saturday
I spent a few hours cleaning up downstairs in preparation for Game Night. Both Kathryn and Julie saw me cleaning. When Julie saw me she said "Oh wow, you're cleaning? Thanks!" I had to bite my tounge from saying "No problem." She then promised to "clean next." I'd like to note that that's what she said the past two or three times I've cleaned up the place and she hasn't done anything. Kathryn did clean up a bit by doing most of her dishes (finally!) and clearing the hallway to the bathroom and her room. Nothing like having company to get your roommates to clean up. Well when inspection time comes I'm going to just sit back, relax and say "have fun." Anyway, after the cleaning I went and got a new light bulb for our lamp in the living room, had dinner and then people started to arrive. By 7:30 it was just me, Tyler, Kevin, Randy and Rena. By 8:30 we had doubled that with the arrival of Victor, Ian, Hagan, Nick, Joe, Eddie and his roommates Dave and Kevin G. We started out with Ultimate Outburst that Randy brought and just kept adding people to teams as they arrived. Ultimate was fun in that you played 3 different kinds of rounds: regular, "Reverseburt" and Challenge. Lost of fun. Then we split a bit with some people in the kitchen playing "Give me the brain" and the rest of us playing Taboo. We agreed to play to 25 and we ended up being tied at 25. And then it was my turn but no pressure ;-). I ended up getting 4, whoo! So then it was Eddie's turn and he had to get four to tie and five to win but no pressure. He only ended up getting two. Then we played Uno with a few Reverse wars between Ian and Eddie. Ian ended up kicking our butts. By that point it was 10:30 or so and the party started to break up. After Kevin, Ian, Randy and Rena took off, there was something about a bet to be paid off by Dave to Eddie involving drinking so I offered my 10 month old tequila. But apparently that didn't satisfy the bet completely so they were going to go over to their friend's house and get 151 and drink that. I went too. So Dave took his shot of 151 and me and Ricky, the friend, had some sweet and sour with the midori that I gave them. I didn't finish mine, it started to give me some heartburn. We watched some TV but then I started to crash so they took me home. Such a fun night!

Today
Well I'm very sleepy right now (hey my alarm just went off =P) because of the birds in the nest outside my window. But the plans for today are to work on (and, if a miracle occurs, finish) my senior project and Number Theory homework. Also to clean my side of the bathroom and vacuum my room. We'll see how much actually gets done.

Mood:  irritated
Now Playing: "Feel It" by The Tamperer (Featuring Maya) on "Ultimate Dance Party 1999"
Topic: Random Rant
Don't get me wrong, birds are my favorite animals. But when they build a nest right outside my window and then make an on and off racket from 7am-8am on a night where I didn't crawl into bed until 1:30am doesn't make me very happy. Especially when said racket at first sounded like rat squeakings. x_x