Swimming to oblivion

When in doubt, count it out…

1) Ok, I’m pretty sure that there are some ND alums from the undergraduate side who read this blog and I need their confirmation of a CNN story. Does Notre Dame still have you pass a swimming test in order to graduate from college? That is what the story said and I couldn’t remember if it was true or not. It’s thankfully not true for graduate school, or I’d be the first A student to fail to get a degree because he has the floatation characteristics of a large piece of concrete. I’ve always heard about these sorts of things but I never had to go through them at Illinois. They basically figured out that a degree in electrical engineering was punishment enough and that the threat of drowning would actually be considered an improvement from lab.

2) For those who are wondering what Jack Ingram saying he had a hit equates to, his song “Wherever You Are” is the number three country song right now. This is really, really shocking to me since I have that album and I heard the song and it might make my top ten of Jack’s songs but it’s not at the top of the list. That’s not a knock on the song, he just has a great catalog of tunes. But wow, a guy that I’ve hung out with after shows has a number three song on the charts. Something is going seriously wrong here.

3) True story from the weekend. I was hanging out at the bar late at night, enjoying the fact that it was pretty empty and I could relax. Until I heard the crowd enter behind me at which point I thought that things would get interesting very quickly. I didn’t even turn to see them, I just looked at the bartender (who also manages the place) and you could see him thinking “How the hell can I get these people out of my bar as soon as possible?” Somehow I had the two very drunk girls crashing into my bar stool, one of whom essentially ended up on my lap and the other asked me if I was married. To be honest, I don’t think that I’ve ever had that be the first thing anyone has said to me before.

4) How I Met Your Mother Update Part 1: So we finally have it stated that Ted is 28, which makes him four years younger than me. So, he’s my younger self I can deal with that. I mean, I won’t be five years older than him for…dear lord, am I turning 33 in four months? When the hell did I get this old? Seriously, I think I turned twelve last Thursday and then just fast forwarded through the next twenty years of my life. And while my 30th birthday did not involve a goat I am proud of the fact that even though I was alone in Kansas City I still got an awesome story out of it.

5) How I Met Your Mother Update Part 2: They really have to be careful on this whole Ted and Robin thing. It is becoming another Ross and Rachel where you don’t actually give a damn if they get together or not you just want them to do something. Things like this make you start counting the days until the show jumps the shark.

6) How I Met Your Mother Update Part 3: What, you want me to comment on the matchmaking service mentioned in the show? Why would I have a comment on a matchmaking service? Stop looking at me that way, I have no idea what you are all snickering about.

7) How I Met Your Mother Update Part 4: Absolute best line and idea from the show: sometimes you know that what you are doing is a mistake but you have to go ahead and do it to prove to yourself that it is a mistake. Because if you live your life doing everything perfectly (like I have mistakenly tried to do) all you end up with is feeling that you haven’t actually done anything because you never knew what you could actually do. Sometimes you need to fail just so you can fail.