Let's Get Fiscal

I just turned on my TV because I wanted to watch this week's DVR-ed episode of Lost and then I got pretty angry when I realized my DVR didn't record the show this week. It took a few minutes to realize that today isn't Thursday, it's Wednesday, and Lost hasn't aired yet. Over the last week I've been lost in the space-time continuum, not knowing what day it is, or what activity I have planned. It's been great. Last night I made it to Detroit to watch the Yankees whup up on the Tigers. I know I've said this before but Detroit is a sad place. All the buildings around the stadium were dark and some didn't even have windows, and it wasn't because people were done with work and trying to save on air conditioning costs.

By my next post I will have graduated, and I keep checking to make sure that those last 1.5 credits come through the system so it is official. But I have other problems. Not the swine flu. Not the minor bug infestation in my apartment. Something bigger. I'm a wanted fugitive in Australia. Apparently we received a speeding ticket in Victoria, Australia. Were we ever pulled over by a cop? No. So clearly it was some sort of camera or speed gun or something, so it's kind of impossible to dispute. I don't remember going too fast. If anything we were extra sensitive to the speed laws because we were driving in a different country, and the fact that we were driving on the opposite side of the road made us more cautious. The damage is about $250 USD which split among 5 people is palatable, but still annoying. I don't know how this whole thing works exactly, but in the Finger Economic Stimulus Plan I'm making sure that I'm ticketing foreigners renting cars two months after leaving they leave US. "But I don't know the kilometers per hour to mph conversion and I don't remember speeding"... well tough cookies Jean Claude, that'll be $400 paid to the state of Connecticut. If we could somehow convince foreigners to travel to Michigan we could revitalize Detroit on speed tickets alone. Can we do this? Yes we can. Ok, we probably can't but it's probably the best idea I've had all day.

Campus is getting crowded and it truly is a pleasure to see these Jappy girls with their parents in tow. There's no better barometer of how a jewish girl is going to look and act when they grow up than by looking at their mother. Ann Arbor waiters and waitresses beware.

Fin.

So I have this kind of weird reoccurring daydream whenever I'm in class. If class is boring or I don't particularly want to be there at that moment I dream that I reach into my backpack and pull out this little box. In this little box is a baseball with a note taped to it and the note reads, "You know what to do". And what I'm supposed to do is stand up and throw the baseball through the clock and then every clock in the entire school explodes and everyone comes rushing out of their classes and right out the front door throwing all their papers and notes in the air. It's magnificent. I can't even begin to tell you how many times I've had this daydream in class, but now what's the point...classes are over...forever...until I apply to Michigan Law School and get another three years as a student. No, I'm just joking, I'm done with school. Now I just have to start the cleaning up process of getting rid of stuff I can't possibly need or want once I move home/to NYC. For a packrat like me that's not going to be easy, because you know, seriously, I think I'll need that Make a Wish Foundation Charity 3-on-3 Basketball Tournament t-shirt for the rest of my life; not to wear of course, but to have in my drawer to look at from time to time.
Thankfully I was able to sell the vast majority of stuff to the next tenant of room 402, but I still have a bed and a lot of dishware to contend with. Who the hell was I kidding when I bought a set of wine glasses from Ikea, or when I brought my wok to school, or my reading pillow, my DVD player, or my copy of Sun Tzu's Art of War. Jay-Z said, "All I need...rocawear (check), nike airs (check), mean bucket (uh-huh), Armadale in the club, couple of duckets (yeah), couple of chicks by my side now let's ride...". That would be nice of course but all I need is a phone (check), a fridge (check), some chicken (uh-huh), internet connection in my room, couple of duckets.

I traveled internationally this past weekend. To Windsor Ontario. Which is right across the Detroit River. Yeah, there's a Detroit River. I went to a bachelor party on Friday night, and was back on Saturday morning. I'm still baffled how the bachelor is still alive right now, and am legitimately scared of what Las Vegas would be like. I've never been, and I'm guessing I probably need to go at some point in the next few years. And on Saturday we kept it rolling in Ann Arbor.

Rolling in Ann Arbor.

Segways are kind of awesome and kind of scary at the same time. I wonder if you can get a DUI riding a Segway. So here I am on Tuesday counting down the days, counting the number of sneakers in my closet and wondering how the days of school decreased so rapidly while the number of sneakers increased so rapidly. I just don't know. I just, don't, know.

One or Two? Two or Three?

My pupils are dilated from a visit to the optometrist, so in true creepy blogger fashion I'm sitting in the dark, alone, listening to music, eating peanut butter from the jar and typing. It's been a while since I've been to get my eyes checked, and it's been a while since having my favorite optometrist conversation, which obviously centers around looking at letters and determining how blind I actually am...

Doc: One or two?
Me: Two.
Doc: Two or Three?
Me: Um, three.
Doc: Three or Four?
Me: I can't really tell if there's a difference...
Doc: Three or Four?
Me: Can I see Three again?
Doc: Three.
Me: Okay, and now Four
Doc: Four.
Me: Jeez, Three one more time please.
Doc: Okay...Three.
Me: Wow, they are sooo similar. I think I'm going to go with Four.
Doc: Ok, now tell me...
Me:...wait, definitely Three. Three. Definitely Three.

For those of you scoring at home my prescription is a slight -.75, -.75, which is good enough to avoid wearing classes most of the time, but just bad enough to have to squint at people standing far away, thus looking like a total creepy weirdo, especially at the bars.

Tomorrow I will hopefully be squinting into the sun, as Wednesday marks the first of three consecutive days of golf. I'm praying for an appearance by my friend Ra, the Sun God.

Ra, with one of those newfangled putters.

I've played at least once a week for the past three weeks and I'm definitely getting into it. With local greens fees coming in at a whopping $25 (including cart) and kosher hotdogs at the turn it's hard not to get excited for Spring in Ann Arbor. I've been spending the last couple weeks pretending that school isn't coming to a close, but my nose was shoved in it last Saturday at the Michigan Spring Football game, which is simply a practice/scrimmage that 50,000 people show up to. Walking down Hill towards the stadium in 50+ degree weather with everyone outside drinking and grilling made me realize that come September that won't exist for me. Depressing. Very depressing. It's like I'm living the life of a retiree without even having worked. Actually more like a retiree who eats like a 20 year old, and drinks like a 23 year old scientist. The reason I say scientist stems from shenanigans last night. We have an MBA bar crawl next week, and one of the stops is a German rathskeller called Heidelberg. At Heidelberg my team of five will drink a boot of beer (88oz of glory). It will look like this...

So being the competitors that we are, and it also being a Monday, we decided to go and practice. Between the debates about handoffs, the possible anchorman, proper beer temperature to maximize speed, and of course the navigation of the air bubble, you would've thought we were taking all the fun out of drinking beer, however, in two "dry" runs we were able to go sub-55 seconds twice, plus we shaved two seconds by smoothing out our transitions. Also worth noting is none of us tested positive for performance enhancing drugs. I think we can go below 50 seconds. I really do. These are the things that keep me awake at night, and now you can understand why the prospect of leaving this place in three weeks makes me want to cry little boot-shaped tears of beer.

Authentically Yours, The Chef

So I had class again this Saturday. It was my Authentic Leadership class, which as you could probably imagine sometimes feel like a lot of smoke is being blown. I was surprised this past Saturday because it really didn't feel like that much smoke was being blown. In fact, the only smoke that was being blown was courtesy of Ann Arbor's annual Hash Bash event, when I went outside during a break and a cloud of marijuana smoke smacked me in my face.

This Saturday actually had me thinking about certain career goals, the pursuit of happiness, and all kinds of stuff you just never really think of "on the reg". What seems to have resonated most with me was a quote that went a little something like this: "You do what you have to do to do what you want to do". Oddly enough this quote came from one Denzel Washington. This is how I feel a lot of us live, but believe it or not, there are people out there who ACTUALLY LOVE THEIR JOBS. I know, what a crazy concept, but it's true. All I know is that all these discussions in class brought up all these dark questions that have quietly been kind of rocking my world a little bit since yesterday. It wasn't all depressing "working for the man" stuff on Saturday. There were some fun moments as well. During one segment of class we were given construction paper and colored pencils and were asked to draw "where we are now" and "where we want to be". How much is tuition again? Since my class is mostly evening MBA students who have spouses, kids, mortgages, crappy jobs, etc you can imagine that some of these pictures were kind of depressing. You know, like a stick figure juggling a baby, a student loan, a bicycle, and a calculator. And then there was me. I drew what I see from my couch in my apartment. I had my thai food on my coffee table, basketball on the TV, and some golf clubs and a running sneakers leaning against the wall. I mean, these days it is almost ridiculous how much I'm enjoying myself. The only drawback is that the more fun I'm having now the worse sitting at a desk is going to feel come September. The juxtaposition is just going to be silly, but I'm not going to think about that until I really have to. Until then I'll just continue going to the bars and coming home with my clothes stinking of cigarettes and perfume, and I'll have it no other way.

Not this past February, but in February 2008 I was sitting at school with my friends talking about the garbage school newspaper. It really was pretty weak and the Opinions section had this writer called Anonymous Rosser who wrote what I believed to be a pretty lame gossipy/opinion piece each week. At this point I wasn't involved with a whole lot of extracurriculars. I ran for the VP of Corporate Communication of the Entertainment & Media Club, which I lost because I wasn't willling to whole-heartedly commit to an industry that paid like shit and wasn't hiring, and was still exploring other industries that didn't pay like shit and actually were hiring. How ridiculous of me, right? Losing left me with a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth and I just stopped going to the E&M Club meetings. After talking with my friends about how lame the newspaper was I decided I was going to try to change that. So from March 10th 2008 I penned an article entitled "Shout Outs" for the Monroe Street Journal under the name The Chef. It was tongue-in-cheek, it was mean, it was playful, it was true and half-true all at the same time, and it was fun to write.

The Chef commented on the ridiculousness that happened at business school, and The Chef called people out, and The Chef just generally said whatever the hell he wanted to say (although the editors used to edit the crap out of my submissions). A few weeks ago I killed the "Shout Outs", mostly because I was sick of writing it and partly because I think people might've been sick of reading it. I was wrong about people being sick of reading it. Apparently The Chef is what made a lot of people open that paper every week. Only one person knew I was The Chef and he was a friend who worked at the paper and the person who everyone thinks is The Chef. It was always funny when people would be like, "Yo Finger, did you see what The Chef said this week?", and I'd be like "No man, I don't read that shit". I also like watching people read it and watching them laugh or smile, as cheesy as that sounds. But the best was watching people read it and they would think that maybe, just maybe The Chef was talking about them. Of course I never called anyone out by name, but I insinuated the hell out of things, and sometimes I got just a little too specific. These b-school folks are an interesting breed, they really are. You get a more uncensored version on this blog, but in case you want to waste a few hours at work or just on your own time I'm going to link you to the Monroe Street Journal archives. You may have to subscribe, but I assure you a roughshod paper such as our costs nothing, just a few seconds signing up. I'm still not telling anyone I'm The Chef, but since I'm done writing it I thought I'd share it with you all. Like I said, "I don't read that shit", I just wrote it.

Monroe Street Journal Archives
I didn't contribute every single week, but from March 10 2008 to about a week ago I was pretty consistent. You won't understand a lot of these b-school jokes pertaining to school, but there's something there for everyone. Just to give you a taste, here's an excerpt from this past September...

"Michigan football was off this past Saturday, and what did you Gunners do with your spare time, you sat around sipping Zima, playing Magic: The Gathering with the rest of your Gunner friends, and practicing how to best utilize your buzzwords. Well done. I guess it's true that you can't spell The Ross School of Business without L, O, S, E, and R. As for me, let's just say my Saturday was more productive than yours. I hit the gym (Spring Break is only 22 weeks away after all), then took my signing bonus, converted it to singles and went to Deja Vu where I made it rain for a couple hours. Then it was time for lunch. After lunch I came back to the B-School to dispense some harsh truths to some wide-eyed MBA1s (Lehman wont be coming home for Christmas this year), caught a nap, actually watched some decent college football and then went to Skeeps. Come on people, you're back in school, live it up a little. As they say, get busy living or get busy dying, or was that get rich or die tryin? Onto the Shout Outs..."