Ro Two Oh

"I've got the girl for you" Sean N announced as he burst in to my office last Monday morning. Monday mornings with Sean usually involve mom jokes and him farting in my office* so the possibility of female interaction for me was a welcomed change.

"Yeah?" I responded, pretending not to be half as interested as I was.
"That girl from Romania is cute."
"Yeah, I remember her from last time she was here. She was cute... in that Cold War kind of way, if you know what I mean."
"No, not that one. It's a new one. She's even cuter. She's Ro Two Oh(2.0)" he said, obviously pleased with himself for the joke.
"She seems friendly. I said hi to her and I think she smiled." he continued, now beaming as any nerd would after a cute girl had smiled at him.
"Well, I guess I'll have to check that out"

My interest was now piqued. Erik recently married a Brazilian girl, and Adam a German. Maybe I could make it a clean sweep? Maybe the nerd pot of gold lays outside of US borders?

Soon, like news of a blog contest for a free lunch, the word had spread and half of the office was going to try to "hook Jesse up"(Aside from Liang who was trying to hook Liang up despite the fact that Liang is married).

I decided to have a little fun with it and marched in to Jim's office. Jim was the Romanian's contact while they were here(There were 2 guys and the girl).

"Why you gotta block Jim? Why haven't you introduced me yet?"

Much to my dismay, Jim was in to the idea too and decided to help. By Thursday a plan was set up where some people from the office would take the Romanians out to Mill Ave. over the weekend. A trip to Mill on the weekend for me is generally about as uplifting as "Bring Your Parents to School Day" for Bruce Wayne, but I decided to tough it out.

Friday Sean came down with Bronchitis, and other people started bailing. I found out that two of the Romanians were going to Vegas for the weekend, but the one guy (Mihi) still wanted to go out. Then Jim told me that the girl (Andrea) had a boyfriend anyhow.

I ended up showing him downtown Tempe and it was a cool experience getting to hang out with a Romanian dude for the night, but it was still no Ro 2.0.

* It's not just Monday mornings, that's pretty much every day.

Nerd Games: The Free Lunch

Generally, sometime around the New Year, I take my coin jar and cash it's contents in for the much more convenient paper form. Three years ago I started offering a free lunch to the person who came closest to guessing the value of the coins in the jar. I would also place my guess.

Unfortunately(for everyone else) I've won three years in a row. This leads to me having a celebratory lunch by myself, which isn't as exciting as it could be. This year I've decided to extent the contest to.... well, anyone who wants to wager a guess. If you don't live in Phoenix and/or I don't know you, then we'd have to work something out, but we'll burn that bridge when we come to it.

The winner will be decided sometime next weekend, so feel free to comment a guess, email a guess, call, web cam, carrier pigeon, or however you choose to contact me.

Rules:
1. The location of the dinner must be mutually decided upon, and the value per meal not to exceed 25 dollars.
2. I reserve the right to kick anyone out of the competition for any reason.
3. Results may be modified to ensure the winner is a cute girl who is single and in to short nerds.

Edit: After two guesses now in the 20 dollar range I feel it's impotant to state that the jar is apparently larger than the photos give it credit for. Therefore I took 2 more pictures of it comparing it to a normal sized coke can. It still looks small for some reason though :/

Robo-babe of the day: Shirley Manson

For well over 10 years now I've had a slight crush on Shirley Manson. She's cute, slightly emo, red headed, and has a thick Scottish accent, what's not to love? She's also in one of my favorite bands(Garbage) with Butch Vig, one of the biggest producers of music in the 90's.

I didn't find out until recently that she was also a fan of mine. Exhibit A:

When was the last time your celeb crush wore a shirt declaring his/her love for you?

I actually met her once(sort of), and pulled my usual nerd/turtle move and didn't say anything, but this isn't about me, it's about her.

Christmas Traditions: New Undies

Much like a head cheerleader after prom, I'm about three weeks late here, but never fear. I'm getting back in to the swing of things. I had an interesting, albeit completely unblogable Christmas break, and therefore the blog gets another mediocre story where the leading lady is my mother, and not some cute girl that I've managed to embarrass myself with. (And much like that cheerleader, that last sentence had to wait a long time for a period.)

It all began with a novelty pair of boxers that had glow in the dark Christmas elves that I received as a present. Until that point in time I had worn strictly "tighty whities". It wasn't necessarily by choice, but as a young boy you kind of just wear whatever mom buys. The Christmas boxers were intended to be a joke, but one day either out of curiosity, or lack of clean briefs I tried them on.

To quote Garth Algar:

At first it's constrictive, but after a while it becomes a part of you.

By the end of the day, like Jessica Simpson presented with a horrible movie role, I was sold. The freedom, the excitement, the ability to live the way god had intended... I was a new manboy.

Apparently my mother also thought it was cool(Every other male in my household wore the TW's as well). Either as a means to encourage my new found undergarment love, or to drop a not so subtle hint to my dad and brother, she thought it wise to buy me boxers the following Christmas, and the Christmas after that, and so on and so forth.

Unfortunately for her, they never picked up on the hint.

A traditional x-mas outfit

It soon became my tradition on Christmas day to wear these boxers on the outside of my clothes for entirety of the day. Sometimes I'd receive more than one pair, and wear them all. They generally complimented my traditional Christmas hat well, and it was an absolutely silly thing to wear all day. (More on the x-mas hat soon.)

The goal is generally to hike them up as high as possible

Eventually my mom must have gotten bored because the undergarment choices for Christmas became more and more outrageous. On one fine Christmas day I found myself wearing a pair of boxers(over my clothes) that felt a bit... "stiff." Stacey, my girlfriend at the time, sat watching me for a while before commanding, "Come over here"

"There's something funny about these" she said as she grabbed the top of them and then gave a stern tug.

Much to my surprise, and that of my mother and surrounding family, the boxers ripped completely off. The "stiff"ness that I had felt was the Velcro pieces holding the break away boxers together.

"You bought him stripper underwear?" Miranda shouted.

We all had a good laugh at my mother, and while I haven't gotten any more "stripper" underwear, the tradition continues to this day.

This year's boxers... now with more class

Interesting note: While checking the Wayne's World quote for accuracy I stumbled upon a wikipedia page that claims that Wayne's World is the first known usage of the classic phrase, "That's what she said.

Now you know. And knowing is half the battle.