~Thursday~ I rode the Wolfline bus in again this morning. Students. Lots of them. Nuts to butts.
We had our monthly area meeting to which our CIO was invited. Surprisingly, there was no lull in the Q&As. In fact, it took up a whole hour of the 1.5-hour meeting.
We canceled our weekly 1.5-hour working team meeting, as Rhonda had a ton going on with Cybersecurity Day coming up on Monday.
I met with the two other Alternative Spring Break leaders who I’ll be going with to Thibodaux in March. They were both very personable and knowledgeable, and I felt very comfortable with—and welcomed by—them.
I caught the #9 Greek Village bus home from Carmichael Gym, and at one point I looked across the bus of about 20 people—only two people didn’t either have ear buds in or weren’t reading a book. One guy had on a shirt that I at first thought said, “I’d rather be playing hookey” but when he turned his body such that the folds in the shirt shifted, I saw that it said, “I’d rather be playing hockey.”
I went to the gym, where I skipped the ab crunches today and went right to the elliptical machine. I did 60 minutes on level three, for an 850-calorie burn.
While doing the cardio, I listened to the podcast of the 09/11/09 episode of This American Life, whose stories explored the psychological reasons people stay friend with each other who really don’t care for each other that much.
I was excited to hear that Act 3 was by David Rakoff, but surprisingly it turned out to be my least favorite act of the four.
Act 2 was by far my favorite, in spite of never having seen a reality TV series. I would imagine that people who do watch them would love it. It talks about a type of character that every reality show has, which the author dubs the “NHTMF” character. The NHTMF character is the one who says, “I’m not hear to make friends.” It talks about the statistics of how often such a character wins, and it plays audio snippets of this montage created by the author of this story with the NHTMF characters from various shows.
| Frenemies This week we bring you stories about friends. Or wait, enemies? How about both? Tales of estranged sisters, BFFs breaking up and making up and breaking up, and how reality stars walk the fine line between making friends and making a name for themselves. Prologue. Host Ira Glass plays tape of two women who ended up as frenemies.They kept trying to be friends, but couldn’t help themselves from fighting. Ira then speaks with psychologist Julianne Holt-Lunstad who has run scientific studies to answer the question: why don’t we simply end these troubling kinds of friendships? Holt-Lunstad’s research also shows that these relationships are much more common than you might think. (7 minutes) Act One. Chasing Amy. Family members can easily be frenemies. You’re stuck with them. You love them. They sometimes do things that make you feel very strange. Which is how Jeanne Darst felt when her sister married a Muslim man and pulled away from her family. Darst is finishing her first book, Fiction Ruined My Family. (15 minutes) Song: “My Sister,” Julianna Hatfield Act Two. I Am Here to Make Frenemies. We head to deep inside the natural habitat of frenemies: reality TV. Rich Juzwiak is a full-time blogger for VH1 and his own pop-culture blog which means he’s spent a lot of time watching and dissecting reality TV shows. And last year, he noticed that one sentence seems to repeat an awful lot in the frenemy friendships that happen on reality TV. (5 minutes) Act Three. Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace. David Rakoff demonstrates—in rhyme—how to make a wedding toast for people you never wanted to see married in the first place. Rakoff is the author of several books, most recently Don’t Get Too Comfortable. (10 minutes) Act Four. The Case of the Long Lost Frenemy. Ira talks to a woman about a childhood friend of hers who mysteriously shows up after decades, for reasons that are only revealed as their correspondence unfolds. (15 minutes) Song: “When I Change My Life,” Pretenders |
I received a call from Alex asking me if I was going out tonight, so I decided to join him for Trailer Park Prize Night. Bill joined us, too. Lots of laughs laughed. Lots of drinks drunk.
