Buy this Crap Now, While Supplies Last

An old camp friend was in town this weekend. In addition to working in pharmaceutical sales he also owns a restaurant around the corner from me in Ann Arbor. He loved this place so much as an undergrad that he just went and bought it. Think about if you could do the same, and about how much better your life would be if you owned your favorite campus eatery. It's more like a burger/dog joint than a sit-down restaurant but whatever. The point is that at my buddy's behest I sampled way too much of the restaurant's goods while he was in town this weekend, including a polish sausage, cheese fries, and desert crepe triumvirate at 2:30am on Saturday night/Sunday morning. I haven't done that in a while.

I had about 52 fewer hot dogs than Kobayashi

When I left the restaurant I was feeling good, so good that I turned on my computer when I got home. As I've mentioned, I'm working on this consulting project for a start-up out in San Fran. I can't really talk about the project details, but in all honesty, I'm not sure if this thing is going to work out. I'm a naysayer, but I've looked at this thing rightside up, upside down, and sideways, and I'm just not feeling it. I think the logical thing would be to just invest in Breathalyzers for computers and cell phones, you know, so you have to have a certain BAL before you can actually log into your computer. I'm not going to pretend like I'm the first person to think of this because I'm not. All I know is that I started writing an email, then read it, and was like, "what the hell am I writing this for?" and erased it. Do you know how many bad decisions get made after 3am? Like, a million. You know those commercials for the world's smallest remote control helicopter? If not, watch the Military Channel for five minutes. But really, how many of those things do you think get purchased before 3am vs. after 3am. You see this commercial at midnight and you think to yourself, oh, that would be cool if I was 10 years old. You see this thing after 3am and you're running to get your tape measure to see how high your ceilings are so you can figure out how many of these things you think you can fly at once.

Sweet!

There are some things I just don't get, and one happens to be how this stupid helicopter, which is sold to drunk people at 3am is probably turning a decent profit, while this incredibly legit start-up with major names attached to it languishes in relative obscurity in some sad corner of the internet. I mean, I get how it's possible, but it's just strange. I'm going to go to sleep now before I start thinking about buying Ron Popeil's Jerky Maker.

Back to the Grind...Kind of.

My time in San Francisco only got better after I last posted. After a couple fun nights out in Palo Alto and a few in the city I can officially give San Francisco this guy...
It takes a lot more than a few fun nights to beat New York, but San Francisco certainly was very impressive. I'm going to refrain from continuing to talk about it though, because I'm starting to sound like a girl talking about Pinkberry, and I realize how annoying that can be. One thing I do want to say about San Francisco is that it seems like every person I spoke to was either in tech or a VC firm or some startup, which is incredibly different than living in New York. I was talking to this one guy who works for a startup that basically creates scavenger hunts. Instead of your typical scavenger hunt, these guys have hired actors to interact with the participants along the way. So basically, you don't know who is a civilian and who is an actor. I think the best comparison I can think of is the movie Bowfinger with Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy.

They work out of some guy's house, and basically sit around, play video games all day and think of new twists and storylines that they can add to the scavenger hunt. I mean, is that even a job? I'm pretty sure that's called "college"...you know, sitting around your friend's living room with the guys, drinking beers, and coming up with outrageous ideas that never actually happen. I guess the difference here is that these guys follow through and actually get paid for it. Apparently, companies seem to love the activity as a corporate team-building exercise. When did trust falls become passe?

Ann Arbor is finally thawing out, but the best part is that with these consulting projects we can set our own hours and work when we want to. There's a lot of work to be done for these projects, but if I want, I can sit at my desk in my pajamas with some tunes and do research. This is obviously better than trying to fight off the Sandman at 8:00am in an accounting class. In fact, one of my team members is working remotely for the entire project, so really all you need is a laptop. I could, I don't know, work from the Caribbean for a few days as long as I have internet access, which is weird because that's what I'll be doing during the first week in April. You gotta love technology.

Totally unrelated to anything, last night NFL stud Braylon Edwards, and soon to be NFL player Mike Hart were at Scorekeepers, a bar on campus. When the bar emptied out at 2am I found myself standing next to both of them. Braylon Edwards was standing right in front of some girl trying to take a picture of a bunch of girls. The girl taking a picture said something like, "Can you get the hell out of my picture?", which I thought was pretty damn funny. I guess the moral of the story is no matter how much bling you wear on your neck and wrist and fingers, or how many TD passes you catch in the NFL, nothing gets between a college girl and a picture she's going to post up on her Facebook profile.

California Love

Now I can understand why East Coasters go out west and never come back. It's been in the mid-60s and sunny for the past three days out in San Francisco and I've probably eaten two of the best meals I've had since I don't even know when. These restaurants change their menus more times than I change my underwear, which means that dem chickens is fresh. Two nights ago I ordered a leg of lamb that was so tender and cooked with so much love that I swear my Mom Dukes was back in the kitchen cooking. And yesterday, I ordered a burrito for lunch from a real taqueria and I almost cried because I realized what I'd been missing in Ann Arbor. I think I might've put on a few lbs., but it's all good and definitely worth it.

The reason I'm out here is that during the 4th Quarter of the school year, MBA1s do consulting projects. Projects can be domestic or international. Truthfully I was bummed about not being able to go to Brazil or India or something, but I'm actually happy I'm only away in San Fran for a week on the front end, and then a few days in April to present our findings. I'll be doing some travel (aka Spring Break Part II) in between and the best part is that all I really need to work is my laptop. In fact, I'm blogging right now from the glamorous lobby at the Holiday Inn Express. I'm working for a startup (MyWire.com) and it's been pretty interesting so far. They're actually relying on my team to create a new iteration of their overall business plan for one of their major products. It's nice to know that what we recommend won't get filed away in some cabinet somewhere and will actually be used.

The one thing I'm having trouble adjusting to is watching sports in the early afternoon. Big East basketball is best watched on the couch after dinner. This is actually the first time in four years I won't make it to MSG for some of the games. I guess you can't have your cake and eat it too, unless that is, you're on the corporate expense account like I am this week and have more bread pudding than is humanly possible. If MyWire goes under, looking back, I'm sure they'll put the blame on the fact that they gave us pretty hefty meal allowances and they didn't account for the fact that I'm pregnant and I eat for two.

That's all I got for now. I'm just waiting for my friend to pick me up from the hotel. Hopefully I'll have a few stories for you all later this week.

The Spring Break Redux: Part Two

Picking up from where I left off...our house...
was located on Sandy Beach, which is basically a huge sandbar with good surfing waves. I had never surfed so one morning we all decided to take a lesson. I consider myself pretty athletic, so I really envisioned myself being pretty decent at surfing. Um, not so much. Our first mistake was that we didn't have any rash guards. Rash guards are those shirts the surfers wear. I figured that my chest hair would be a natural rash guard much like how hobbits have hairy/leathery feet that act as a natural shoe. Not only did I get scraped up on my chest and some fierce nipple chafing (sorry), but I got a ton of surf wax in my chest hair. Between that, the constant banging of my ribs against the board, and the horrible sunburn on my back from paddling around all morning, I can say that surfing was WAY harder than I thought it would be. I only got up on a few waves and that's because the surf instructor pushed me into the wave (which was essentially what we were paying him for). I did learn some surf lingo though, like "hey brah, you're sitting in my pocket". While I'd like to tell you that we were surfing on 4-5 foot waves, in reality they were probably a solid 1-2 ft. Later on in the week when we rented boards and ventured out on our own I had my ass handed to me by 4-5ft waves that I had no business trying to catch. The good/experienced surfers just sit on the board quietly, exerting minimal energy, and then they'll just turn and catch a wave. On the other hand, my shoulders were on fire from all the paddling I was trying to do to position myself. All said, I will definitely try again. At least I looked like knew what I was doing when I was out on the shore...

Isaac Newton's high school gym teacher once said "for every athletic activity there is an equal and opposite nonathletic activity", and for us that nonathletic activity was drinking. I'm not a big drinker by any stretch, but I'm pretty sure that the first day back in the gym after break my sweat could've probably been sold for $5 at Rick's. One night one of the guys had the bright idea of doing a Power Hour, which entails 60 shots of beer in 60 minutes for those who don't know. Doesn't seem too hard, but come Minute 45 you don't want to sip another sip of anything, water, juice, Nesquik, and certainly not beer, especially when you're drinking Medalla Light, which tastes somewhere between a Fresca, a Natty Light, and Pine Sol.

One night after playing several hours-worth of quarters and heading to one of the local bars we met four girls from Rhode Island. The four of us gentlemen were chatting with these marginally attractive girls for a while and it was getting late and one of us had the bright idea of inviting these girls back to play quarters with us. I didn't wear a watch for a week, but it must've been close to 2:30am. While I lauded the plan, I reminded my friends that we had finished every single beer at the house. One friend said he'd take care of it and then left. About 20 minutes later he showed up with a box full ($70 worth we came to find out) of Rum and Medalla which he had purchased from the owner of the bar down in the storage room. Of course, the girls were gone by this point and one of us had to carry the box back to our house. We convinced Big T, our German classmate, and Black Out Specialist, to carry the box home. The next morning we were in the kitchen eating some cereal, and T comes in and opens the fridge and says, "Holy Shit, who got us all this beer?". He didn't even remember hauling this huge box back to the house. We could've told him he got naked and carried the box home and still would've had no recollection. Basically, that was our five nights in Rincon. On the first morning in San Juan I asked the concierge for directions to the highway and asked him about the nightlife in Rincon. He said "There are beaches, and beaches with teeth, you know what I'm saying cabron?". No, I didn't, but later I understood that he was calling the women of Rincon "beetches with teeth". After five nights it was time to leave the beaches and beaches with teeth and step it up with a final night at the Ritz in San Juan.

Adios Rinconcito.

After waiting waaaaay too long to get our room, we finally made our way to downstairs ready for the last night. One of the guys asked the valet where the best place on the strip was on a Saturday night. When the valet responded "the El San Juan", we kind of didn't believe him, because we'd been there the first night and it was dead. Well, the valet was right, he was 1000% right. After gambling for the first time ever (I lost a little) but drinking a few of the largest glasses of scotch I've ever had (a "perk" of gambling and losing I guess), it was time to dance. The only issue was that you can't get into the club if you have flip flops on, which I had on as did my buddy. I was able to get in with the help of some girl and my buddy, well, he paid the El San Juan valet $100 to trade straight up shoes for flip flops. All I can say was that we all had a ridiculously fun time and that the flights the next day were pretty freaking miserable. The guys who checked luggage didn't get their luggage until the middle of last week. But despite the luggage snafu, we had an excellent week and all I can think about is of course more vacation and more sun. It was a perfect Spring Break.

This past week we started our school consulting projects and I leave in a few hours for San Fran for a week of work/play. I've had an excellent time hanging out this past week, playing ball, going to the gym, going out and relaxing. I'll write more about this consulting gig later, but the next blog will be from a hopefully sunny Silicon Valley.

The Spring Break Redux: Part One

I missed you all. Monday was the first day of the new quarter and the Brain Surgeons at the Ross School of Business started off the day with an 8:30am meeting for the entire class. Considering the majority of the people got back from Spring Break Sunday night/Monday morning, I'm willing to bet that the unaided recall of today's presentation was pretty crummy. That said, it was nice to be back in Ann Arbor, but only because I'm not sure how much longer my body could've held up.

As some of you may know I went to Puerto Rico with three friends. The mission was simple...fun, sun, beach, party, in no particular order. I don't even know where to start so I'm just going to divide this thing up into parts.

FLIGHTS
A few years ago I flew to St Croix with a connection in San Juan. Upon landing in San Juan, the captain put on Ma$e's "Welcome Back"over the loudspeaker and I kid you not, the entire plane of Puerto Ricans started dancing in their seats. This was a sassy bunch. Going down to San Juan last week, we had a connection in Orlando, but we were flying our second leg on the same exact plane. We got off the plane, grabbed a bite and then boarded the plane again. We flew down to Orlando with a bunch of old pale skinny people from the Detroit area, and when we got back on the plane the average passenger weight had increased by about 30 lbs and the color palette was way darker. It was almost comical. All I knew was that if the plane went down somewhere I was stranded without food, there would be enough meat to last a hundred BBQs. And with all the weaves these women had I'm pretty sure I could've made a hammock or two. You gotta love those Puerto Rican mamis.

DETOUR
We stayed in San Juan the first night and had a mellow night since we arrived at about midnight. The next day we were off to Rincon on the west side of the island, but one of the guys wanted to take a detour and see this old thing...
It's the largest radio telescope (yawn) on Earth. It was featured in one of the James Bond movies. I believe the movie was called "Why Are We Cutting Into My Beach Time?", but it might have been "GoldenEye". It was definitely one of the two, I can't remember which though. If you know me, you know I can a bit of a taskmaster when I travel, but I figured what the hell, it was Spring Break and you just gotta let things flow. Well, mother effing Arecibo was closed on Mondays, so that was great. Time to drive to Rincon...

LORRAINE AND HER GLORIOUS BEACH HOUSE
I found a beach house online and booked it based on just a few pictures. All I knew was that it was on the beach and we could each have our own bed for $175 total per night. Pretttty good, prettttty pretttty good. Truth be told, what sold me on this place was that it has a perfect formica table in the kitchen so we could play quarters, and play quarters we did. We were literally on the beach, with a large backyard, steps from all the bars and nightlife. It was perfect, especially for four guys. The only issue was that we were sometimes woken up by ridiculously loud reggaeton at like 7am. Apparently it's a law that you have to put 15 inch subwoofers on your Honda Prelude. It took me about 5 minutes after arriving to climb a tree and take a few coconuts, which I promptly cracked open over a rock and drank the nectar a la Bear Grylls. The juice tasted like Gatorade G2, which is to say, if you are stuck on an island you would probably would think it tasted great, but in ordinary circumstances, you might as well drink something else. I'm thinking G2 might end up in the company of this flop-tastic launch...

The Edsel

And speaking of juice, since we had a fridge and a kitchen it was time to stock ol' Lorraine's fridge so we headed to the local supermercado. If you've gone to supermarkets in the Caribbean or I guess anywhere abroad you know it just ain't the same as your local Kroger. I don't know why I think it's so damn funny, but I like to grab the nastiest local item and put it in the shopping cart until someone notices. This time around it was this...

Unfortunately I don't have the actual picture. There's something very pure about tears of laughter in the meat section of a Puerto Rican grocery store. I only hope you all have the same experience one day. So after shopping we were set to commence what would be five great days in Rincon. Because I'm still exhausted from the trip I'm going to stop here and come back with Part Dos at a later date, when I hopefully have some pictures.