Someone has been posting up flyers that parody Loyola’s advertising campaigns. There is also chalk signs, mock waterboarding, and army men scattered campus-wide with “Bring Me Home” stickers on them.

Here are some scans of the posters (click the picture to go to the flickr page)

Turns out the same weekend our Mock Trial team is going to the national tournament there is the “Illinois Federation of College Democrats” convention. Where I think I am going to run for something…

The ONLY (affordable) way I could make it to the College Democrats event AND go to the final day of the Mock Trial tournament would be to take the 6:30AM flight out of Chicago, arriving at 8:15. I would then have one hour and 15 minutes to get to downtown Minneapolis from the Airport to make it to the final round (supposedly it only takes 20 minutes to make it downtown.)

And then the day after, Monday, I would have class at 12:35. To make it to that I would have to leave the airport at about 10.

Or I could do just one or the other like any sane person.

Loyola’s mock trial team is split up into 3 ’sub-teams’ identified by numbers. 494, 495, and 496. I was a member of 496, the team that had all the new people. It was fun going to a regional tournament, but we didn’t do all that great with what we had.

494 and 495, however, did quite well. So well that both of them qualified for the national ‘Gold’ tournament. Sort of…
495 qualified to skip the ‘Silver’ nationals, which are a series of tournaments held nationwide that allow teams who were not in the top of their region to compete for a ‘Gold’ spot against other ‘Silver’ teams. 494 ended up placing 3rd, which put them one away from going straight to gold.

So this weekend were the ‘Silver’ nationals. And the one that Loyola’s 494 was at was in Waukegan, Illinois. I could have taken the Metra to Waukegen for $5, but I was running late and decided to just get a car. I reserved a car from 6:00 until 11:30 for approximately $36. I made my way over to the car and started driving.

Well, I didn’t remember an important part of the fine print. I pay $0.40/mile in addition to the rental fee. Now if I had gotten another plan I would have gotten the miles for free, but since I got this plan when I was under 21 I was stuck paying the per-mile rate. It was never a problem before (I would go all of 2 miles to/from Target over 2 hours) but when you are driving 40 minutes away at 60+mph you do start racking up miles.

When I came back that night at about midnight (I called and asked for a time extension, which cost me an additional $5 just for the time) I pulled out the electronic device that you enter a fob on the keychain into and it showed me the number of miles I went…. 72… $28.80… plus $36… plus $5… oh crap

So I’m going to call them on Monday and ask if I can be ‘retroactively’ moved to a different plan (which I want to do anyways) to cut down on that cost.

The worst part of all this is that 494 didn’t do all that well… whatever ’support’ I gave them didn’t quite evolve into a good performance. I text messaged another person on the team and asked how they did today… they won’t be going to gold. Which is sad, because they are a really deserving group. At least a good percentage of them are juniors or sophmores, so there is always next year.

Now the question is: Do I want to go see 495 at gold? It is in Minneapolis and based on the dates tt looks like that flight is going to run me $121 after tax no matter who I take (Northwest, American, and United all cost $121 out of O’Hare, AirTran has flights out of Midway but the times suck and I hate Airtran.) I may take Northwest simply because I get air-miles for doing so.

I went to Vegas last Wednesday for my 21st birthday. Brought $550, mostly in travelers checks, and decided to spend it wisely throughout the time I was there. I made sure that I had money each day.

Well, that worked for awhile. I was out of cash by the end of the trip. But I guess it was worth it.

I didn’t drink much alcohol. I bought a mini-bottle of Jager in the hotel just to prove to myself I could do it with my actual ID. It was warm and I took a few sips before I threw it out. That and a shot of Jack at 12:30 on my birthday has summed up my alcohol usage since Wednesday.

I am somewhat disappointed that I lost my money, but I knew it was probably going to happen on the way there. I followed my grandmother’s advice when she gave out some of my now-deceased grandfather’s cash and spent most of it paying down student loans and school expenses and then spent a little on fun. A friend says that it would have been better if I took $500 out of an ATM and lit it on fire… but that would be illegal.

Next time I go I’m just going to go to Planet Hollywood and play poker all day. I lost the least amount of money doing that, and the most amount of money on slots. I know it makes no sense playing them, but it was easy and fun. Poker was the most entertaining part of my trip in the way of gambling.

I went to see Penn & Teller… I had seen most of their tricks before but seeing it in person was great. Treasure Island has a big dancing/fireworks pirate-battle performance right outside of their hotel/casino every few hours at night. They call it The Sirens of TI. It was great (and free)

Oh well… back to school.

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Update: I was bored and decided to look up how exactly the lighting worked for the Sirens of TI show. Turns out there is a full overview of how they run the entire show available. Pretty cool