Jeff Stuart - Memoirs of a CPUNERD

Today… today was fun. I chilled at home, catching up on sleep and doing nothing productive until after noon. I went to school to take care of some projectors in the VR lab around 1:00 PM. I stuck around until 3:00 PM for TGIF. Jeff bought some good bread and dips (Hummus, etc.).

After the food, I went up with Conny and Daniel to help Conny with some threaded programming in C++. Afterwards, I went home and chilled in for a little bit, then it was off to Antoine’s farewell BBQ.

The BBQ was a lot of fun. I got to see a bunch of old friends and meet some new ones, and wish the absolutely insane french-man goodbye.

I took off around 11:15 PM and then crashed… hard.

You’d figure that this would be full of all sorts of wonderful stories about the first day of class… nope. All of my classes were “Hi, nice to meet you, we aren’t doing anything today, next time.” I luckily did get to throw a frisbee around with some people.

I didn’t really do much besides that though. I went out to lunch, got some work done, and I think that was it.

But while I’m here, doesn’t it seem that PE classes and instructional classes are flipped? Wouldn’t it make more sense to have an “ease-in” day for instructional courses, where-as with PE courses, you’re there to play so just play on the first day? Am I the only one who thinks this?

Antoine is only here for three more days! We decided to take the silly french-man wine tasting in Napa Valley. The original plan was for Steve, Antoine, Anna, Jeff, Ananya, and I to go. As it turns out (probably for the best), two people couldn’t make it due to spur-of-the-moment responsibilities put on by their advisor. That meant that we could take just one car, hence the “probably for the best” part.

We arrived in Napa around 1:00 PM and went to the Beaulieu winery first. The place was alright, it had a really good dessert wine. I bought three bottles of it, and then we proceeded to the reserve tasting room. Steve apparently is more of a Cabernet fan, and the initial tasting didn’t have any cabs. The reserve room was nice, but nothing special. Steve tried a few different wines, and then we took off.

We headed to Rubicon, the Coppola winery and vineyard, on foot. What happens when we get there you ask? We find out that there’s a twenty-five dollar fee to just enter the place. We said screw it and just headed back to the car. Considering that Jeff and I weren’t even going to drink, and I’ve already seen the place, I had no desire to pay to go in.

The next place we went to was the Mondavi winery and vineyard. The place itself was very nice, nicer than Beaulieu, and different than Rubicon. Rubicon has a large chateau for visitors, where as Mondavi has an “interesting” complex set up in front of the vineyard. The group of us did an initial tasting, then headed over to the reserve room to try their cab and dessert wines. After the reserve tastings, we went to check out the rest of the complex, which included a private party room (hey, no one was in it, so we were the party).

We wandered around the room and explored the place a little while Antoine played the piano. We didn’t have time to stay for too long, as we wanted to visit one more place. We stuck around for another song or two from Antoine, then headed out.

We didn’t really have a place in mind, so we ended up stopping at the V. Sattui winery and cheese store. We first had their cheese tasting (free, much more low-key than the wine-tasting). Surprisingly enough, I actually liked a lot of the cheeses (not the duck liver though…). This summer definitely seems to have broadened by palette.

After the cheese tasting we tried the wine. Antoine and I had the complimentary wine (Jeff had a sip or two), while Steve bought the “extra tastings” for ten bucks. He definitely got his money’s worth, the server kept pushing more and more wine on him, it was awesome.

One of the more interesting wines we had was this mix of wine and brandy. I had the thick taste of butter in my mouth afterwards. I also enjoyed the Vin Santo, but not so much the Moscat.

Once we were done with the tastings, we gave Steve a chance to sober up a little, then headed over to the CIA. It was a nice day, so we sat outside and enjoyed some wonderful food and wine in the beautiful backdrop of St. Helena.

After we got home from Wine Tasting, I went to Sophia’s to meet Dan. I met four of the five girls from Mexico City that Conny and Dan had mentioned. I also saw a bunch of other international students there, including the Spanish Dan. He invited me to come play soccer Saturday at 6:00 PM.

I stuck around, talking to Monica (one of the girls from Mexico City) for quite some time, actually much later than I had planned (school starts tomorrow!). Dan was both slightly enebriated and carless, so Francesca and Anita gave us a ride to my place, and then I gave Dan a ride home. I talked with Conny and Dan for awhile, then finally got home and in bed around 1:00 AM.

Today started out as I’m sure many of my days will… I woke up, went to the gym, came home, and proceeded to be bored out of my mind for quite some time. I had a visitor from about 7:00 PM to 8:30 PM. We had a bite to eat and watched some stand-up on my computer. Eventually, around 9:00 PM, Dan called me from Chipotle and said there was some big party happening downtown. Robert and I decided to head down and check it out, and sure enough, E street was blocked off between 2nd and 3rd for a huge block party in the town square area.

As it turns out, it was a UCD organized recruiting event for clubs, fraternities, and sororities. It was fine with us though, we were just there to hang out and enjoy the crowd. There was a live cover band that played a variety of music, mostly stuff from the eighties though, which was kind of odd, being as a lot of the people there (freshmen) were born in the late eighties. Fire-dancers were also there, performing for the crowds.

We stuck around until the band stopped playing at 10:00 PM, and then headed over to Sophia’s. I was instructed to drink, so I asked for something with a lot of alchohol, but not a Long Island. The bartender recommended a Tie (Thai?) Breaker, so I said sure. Half-way through the drink, I was already feeling it, but I said screw it and just finished it all. Robert then wanted to have a Dead Nazi and a Liquid Cocaine (which was supposedly made wrong), and Dan was driving, so I did them with him… Bad idea.

I got home around 1:15 AM, drank a bunch of water, got undressed, and slept at the foot of my bed since the entire room was spinning. Around 3:00 AM I woke up feeling terribly sick to my stomach. I didn’t want to throw up though, so I just suffered through and went back to sleep. I almost almost almost made myself the “I’m never going to drink again promise” but I was stubborn enough to not actually do it. Around 6:00 AM I woke up again and this time felt a little better. I turned off my phone alarms, crawled under the blankets (the right way) and went back to sleep for a few more hours.