First Day in Boston

Weather: wet, but not punishingly cold. Reminds me
Sports thought: Cal won the Emerald Bowl, so the Pac-10 is 2-0 in postseason. I can't help but think that because of its 'off year,' the Pac-10 had the ability to pull easier bowl pairings, and is thus going to win a lot more than people would expect from the conference as a whole. I wouldn't be surprised if the teams go 4-1, with Oregon dropping their game to Okst.
Accomplishment: For the second time this break, I read an entire book in one day. Today it was "Game Boys" by Michael Kane, about the explosion of professional video gaming in the past three or so years. Pretty interesting read, but I don't think it would go over well with someone who doesn't have a rudimentary grasp of Counter-Strike.
Currently: Three Jamaicans are sitting next to me arguing about faith pretty intensely. It's probably really philosophical, but I just keep hearing Sebastian the Crab.

Today has been a pretty long day (although thanks to the power of time zones, my brain thinks it's eleven when it's actually twelve), but I'll see if I can't run down some of the highlights.

Got up around seven am to make the trek out to the Houston airport. Thanks to the wonderful geography of College Station, you can either fly out of the podunk airport (baggage, boarding, waiting = 30 minutes, flight = 45 minutes) to Houston, or just go ahead and drive there in an hour and a half. But of course this adds about two hours to your travel time, so we were gone as the sun was coming up. IAH was pretty standard, airport stuff was really only highlighted by my dad showing me how to bypass all of the security lines(Continental people flying out of Houston--terminal E! Use it! There's nobody there!), so I avoided a 30 or so minute wait in favor of a zero minute one.

The flight was three hours and some change, with no movie (I didn't think they still did flights that long without some sort of tv...), although it would've been "Ghost Town," so maybe it was for the better. Did the crossword. Slept. Woke up after the beverage cart passed me by. Slept. Woke up after the meal cart passed me by. Slept some more.

Got into The Cradle of Modern America around 4 Eastern (noon Hawaii), and got to do my best impression of a big city expert, taking the Silver Bus to the Red Subway to the Green Subway, without having to ask anyone for help or making eye contact with anyone. The subway system was really easy to navigate; reminded me a lot of the London one, which was a cinch to use, but a little grimy. The street performers were pretty disappointing; the only one that stands out was a dude playing a two stringed violin poorly.

Met up with my other half for the convention, Eman. He had been here since five am and, having at that point gone 28 hours without sleep, was the definition of running on fumes. But, since the room at this super swanky Sheraton was in my name, he was forced to bum around for twelve hours. Although they promised us a double, they super overbooked, and we got bumped up to this way-too-glitzy-for-us corner king, with a roll out bed. It being a corner, we've got an amazing view (from the nineteenth floor), with the capital building on one side, and some sort of Christmas-y lit place on the other. Plus a flat screen tv. But the Sheraton seems to think that once we're in the doors, we're gonna drain our wallets for them, offering 30 minutes of internet for $5, and a full breakfast for $20.

We killed some time at the Prudential Center, an opulent mall attached to the hotel. Eman, being the child of the West Coast that he was, remarked how strange it was to see a mall entirely indoors.

Then we had the opening ceremonies for this whole APO business. I'm not really sure how to describe our fellow brothers in a way to properly convey them, but I really feel like I'm at some hybrid of a Renaissance Festival and Comic-Con minus all the costumes. The people surrounding us are...well...strange. I'm sure there are normal ones out there (it's my mission to go find the larger universities--I know Georgia, WashU St. Louis, etc. are here--because I bet these delegates are a bit more...socially adept) (although I absolutely refuse to go talk to the people from Tech), but for the most part this is a convention of people from obscure liberal arts universities, state colleges, and Alaska.

The ceremony mostly consisted of the pretty obnoxious and self-promoting national president cracking obnoxious jokes and self-promoting. The president of the Philippines APO (which he calls ah-poh)gave a pretty amusing speech, complete with an 'authentic Muslim sword' that he gifted to the American prez.

We're not quite sure what else we'll be doing for the next few days. There are workshops and meetings scheduled, some of which I'm sure we're supposed to go to. And we're voting delegates, which I guess means some time we'll have to vote. Plus, we're going to try and do some touristy things. And turns out the world's largest globe is two blocks away. Can't pass that up!!