head above water

i have no idea how i earned the college reputation of being the zen roommate. granted, in our house of 3, my roommates were a pierced angry feminist social work/chemistry major and a tiny punk neurotic microbiologist who's allergic to everything, so that might not be saying much. but it certainly doesn't fit my recent bouts of irrational anger.

briefly, the good mb is training for some event this weekend involving flying to san francisco and swimming from alcatraz to the mainland then running 7 miles. in preparation for said event, many negotiations have been had regarding training swims in lake michigan. i had recently lost a long-standing bet in which he insisted that the ohio street beach is a mecca for crazy triathlete swimmers and i told him crazy triathletes did not deserve their own mecca. having discovered said mecca (there are lane ropes in the water and up to 100 people at a time decked in head-to-toe spandex), i finally agreed that we could go swimming there. does mb accept this graciously? of course not. he blinks at me a few times and says (to his girlfriend who has just conceded that she is wrong) "i was actually hoping we could drive to the point and swim in the big scary open cold pointy waves, because that will more closely simulate the conditions at alcatraz." so now every single time a swimming-related negotiation arises (which in our household is frequent) i am immediately angry. even though i like swimming, and even actually like swimming in the big scary cold pointy waves off the point. but what kind of person takes his girlfriend's concession of defeat and pushes even further? and then, this weekend when we finally agreed to a morning of swimming and lounging at the beach, found out that the beach was closed (e coli), and on my return later to discover a re-opened beach, i thought i was doing the right thing and called mb to have him join me for the swimming i assumed he desired. do i get any thanks? no, i get "i think you like to do too many things. can't we just sit instead?" sit? am i the one who's planning to fly cross-country to plow through sea-lion infested 50-degree water? so, in conclusion, swimming = angry.

with the upcoming event at alcatraz this weekend, i thought that my random angriness might be over, but fast forward to my current enrollment in this summer course through work that teaches research methods and cost-effectiveness analysis and such. now, my vocabulary is pretty good, but i could not for the life of me understand why every single instructor needed to use the word "heuristically" in every lecture. each time it comes up i have gotten a little madder. do they need a thesaurus? then i asked mb to look it up online, and discovered that "heuristically" means "rule of thumb," or "a set of guidelines based on estimates or best guesses instead of actual data." this explains why economists love it. i concede.

in the end, i have a new job that lets me take classes, a hobby involving playing at the beach, and a new word that i can use for just about anything and sound smarter. and blog material to satisfy my recently-deserted blogmate and self-appointed critic sm (which reminds me, s, when you were in law school i can count on one hand the number of phone calls i got from you, so if i don't have a blog for a few weeks while i'm trying to be in school and start a new job, i don't want to hear it. you're long since forgiven for the few-year pause in correspondence, but if it happens while you're in new york i will show up on your doorstep anyway and demand to be entertained. heuristically, of course. i think.)