So, you want to blog, too?

sheesh.

people, there is more to blogging than meets the eye. just because you can type, doesn't mean you should blog. just because 90% of the adult population of soddy daisy, tennessee can reproduce; doesn't mean they should.

nay, consider this, neophyte bloggers, before jumping into the fray:

1. is what you have to say interesting to anybody besides your mom? she loved you from the day you popped out of the womb, wrinkly face and all. she is forgiving. she sees through your many faults. she bakes cookies for you and your friends when they come over to play warcraft in the basement. do not let this woman's judgment give you a false sense that anybody besides her wants to read about last night's sojourn to waffle house.

2. are you at least two of the following?: a. ridiculously witty b. really really good at a sport (barsports included such as flip-cup, beirut, billiards, and darts) c. hopelessly hot d. have a cabana boy/girl e. model lingerie.

3. do you abuse punctuation and the king's english? if you have to a. ask "what is punctuation? who is getting punched?" b. pause slightly c. call your mom and ask her...YOU PROBABLY DO! and i will come after you. sadly, the interwebs doesn't have the equivalent of a grammaryzer (breathalyzer spin-off) and anybody can type anything at all. just because you can ingest a tub of crisco doesn't mean you should. just because you can type and string together 2 sentences without forgetting nouns; doesn't mean you should blog.

thanks

-mandy. (told by the cabana boy feeding her grapes that she is indeed ridiculously witty, hopelessly hot, and very good at billiards)

ps: you are not allowed to ask why i am home on a friday night. this may blow my cover as possessing any of the qualities mentioned in item number 2. and this isn't even me:

Getting the green light

years ago, when wi-fi and that izzanet thing were taking off, tech-savvy darden installed it troughout the building. darden students, being an honorable bunch, thought they could self-regulate during class and keep off the crack...er...i mean internet. well, leaving kids unsupervised (no matter how mature they think they are) with the internet is akin to leaving scott weiland alone in a room with 3 kilos of heroin. who are you fooling?
so, now the internet comes on only between classes, and its arrival is touted by the little green light at the back of the room. located next to the clock: in case you can't tell time, the green light tells you when class is not in session. hey, we're smart but sometimes the after-effects of thursday night parties make basic logic a bit hard to follow.
so, we're good that way. but last week i left my email open during class though the izzanet was not streaming into my lappytoppy. sometimes our classes run over, which ordinarily isn't an issue: we are caught up in some good convo. so last week, when the green light came on, so did strongbad. i have him programmed to tell me i have email "oooohhh....electronic may-il". and he told me plus 62 of my classmates.
speaking of embarrassing: until i turned off my error message on my computer, every time i did something my lappy didn't like during class, homestar would yell "oops, you broke it". you can't be young forever, but you can always be immature. case in point: my error message and the fact that i belly-laughed at this blog post (and this one).
this may sound lame, but i am giving myself the green light to say it: this place is truly amazing. i keep having to remind myself that yes, it's true, they genuinely care about us around here and want us to succeed. yeah, we'll be stretched; but hopefully not broken.
guess i drank the kool-aid.
the light is green.
(which means go)
and that we will...

'Crossin and crushin

i'd be lying if i said i was doing both simultaneously.

instead, i leave the crushing for school and the 'cross for what's left of me.

regarding crushing: darden had a 7-hour teambuilding afternoon for us on friday. my learning team crushed it. we especially dominated in the: beanbag toss, hunting, starting fires, sudoku, and archery. we were mimicking lewis and clark's journey, minus the dysentary and "no showers for a year" rules.

to those who guffaw at teambuilding afternoons, i challenge you to try this one. the name of the company who conducted it slipped my mind (except, of course, that they were assisted by target and johnson & johnson; no accident there), but they absolutely rocked it! i got all warm and fuzzy after each adventure; all were to mimic the real-life challenges we will face when we leave darden in two years with master's degrees and $120,000 in debt. sweet!

now, about the 'crossin.

i stayed out until 3 on thursday night. and then until 2 on friday night.

so i was tired on saturday. i slept in until 1. unheard of in the last 4 years because every saturday in the past held one event: a bike race!

no longer.

so, i slobbed around the condo for a while. aaron wandered in shortly thereafter and we shared hangover stories. i wasn't really hungover, but i felt his pain nevertheless. there are a lot of bars in this town!

i checked my email, managed my dwindling celebrity, made some phone calls. the usual. i complained to sven about my mountain bike. she currently sits dejectedly in the corner waiting for sven to cut her steer tube. he'll be here this week, so the vanderbikey can get some exercise! sven told me to suck it up and i went on a ride on my bianchi 'cross bike. it is sweeter than sweet, with a fattyphat fsa single ring up front (42 baby, aw yeah!) and only 9 rings in the back. we rock it old skool. sven gives me hell about my cheater brakes on the handlebars, but whatever. once he teaches me to be a 'cross goddess, then he can take them off. until then, they stay on. plus, they give house spiders a place to spin cobwebs.

i can't wait until i upgrade to the new ahren's vanderkitten 'whole shot' cross rig! it shall be unveiled at 'crossvegas, ridden by yours truly oh! did imention that one of my 'cross teammates is christine vardaros? she rizzzzocckks!

here she is, passing me at cyclocross nationals in 2006. i'm screaming curses at the extra cookies i ate the night before.

i just digressed. apologies!

so anyway, i headed out to observatory hill to find some trails and get a bit dirty. at the trailhead i found out that there is a code among mountain bikers not to ride on muddy trails because they will be compromised. this was news to me: we 'crossers revel in the mud.

fortunately, i didn't have to wrestle any moral dilemmas because there wasn't much mud. just rocks. and more rocks. and, wait, what's this....? more rocks.

i was cursing and raging mad. i am a bad mountain biker to begin with. put me and my lack of skills on a trail, add a 'cross bike, and you have ROYAL SUCKAGE! i was pissed. at life. at myself for being lazy as hell. for wasting a day puttering. for forgetting to wear gloves so my hands slipped all over the place. for banging my shin on my top tube. for not bringing enough water. but basically, because i suck at guiding my bike over large boulders.

i went to greenberry's and pouted into a cup of decaf. i called my sister and watched the lightning strike all around town.

i came home, took a shower, and fell asleep. at 9 p.m.

i am so lame.

do the math, people: that's 15 hours of sleep yesterday.

think i needed it?

It's 4 a.m., do you know where Mandy is?

in her condo. after a night of fun fun fun. it's tndc, or "thursday night drinking club" at darden. am i in college again?
yes! and with a better football team!
i am now reminded of a quote for no good reason except that one of my classmates had it on his shirt today:
In Heaven the lovers are French, the engineers are German, the cooks are Italian, the money is handled by the Swiss, and everything is organized by the British. In Hell the lovers are Swiss, the engineers are French, the cooks are British, money is handled by the Germans, and everything is organized by the Italians.
or something like that.
maybe i shouldn't blog when i've been out at bars?

The Breakup

dear fast,
i am writing to you with a tear in my eye and sadness in my heart. i have realized, with the onset of my business school curriculum, that i will no longer have time for you. as much as i have wholeheartedly enjoyed our relationship over the past few years, i need to see other people. namely: eric, meredith, susheel, brendan, and nate. oh, and 313 of my other classmates and my professors. yes, you could say that i'm jumping into another relationship rather quickly, but it is rather structured as to not have me endure the emotional roller coaster i have in the past when you have abandoned me for no reason during a stage race.
to illustrate
8 a.m. - 110 p.m.: class
130 p.m. - 330 p.m.: interviews/case prep/company presentations
4 p.m. - 7 p.m.: individual case prep time (3 business cases per day, every day)
7 p.m. - 10 p.m.: learning team meetings (with the aforementioned 5. no one-night stands here)
so i guess it's rather organized dating. kind of like "it's just lunch", but we'll call it "it's just business school" for the bargain price of $120,000 of student loans.
and, because of my strict schedule and even more strict attendance policies (only two absences per class), we can't meet up for mid-day rendezvous when we're feeling spunky. i will miss those from days of old!
so, my darling fast; my love for the past 4 years: i hope that you can move on from this. i know that there are other cyclists you can romance. i even know a few right here in charlottesville if you would like me to introduce you. however, perhaps that maybe awkward: your ex- helping you meet new women. but i promise you that those i find will have quadricep muscles and wattage deficiencies that will welcome you with open...synapses.
i do not think that this is the end, however. if it's okay with you, i'd like to remain in occasional contact. perhaps we can go to athens next april for the twilight criterium. or philadelphia in june. yes, philly would be good: you could redeem yourself after abandoning me on manayunk in 2007. i have forgiven you, mostly.
i sign this letter with love and kisses.
your mandy
us, in happier times

Let's maintain those ratios, people!

i went on a rippin bike ride today! out past monticello to milton, all the while the impeccable virginia pavement never fails to impress. i mellow-rocked out to the now-indespensible ipod, and rode in my new u.va kit. a lady even stopped me at bodo's bagels and told me i looked "smashing" in it. true story.
there, i think that satisfies my aforementioned "25% cycling" rule by virtue of font size.
now, about this school thing. i went to the first orientation activity. it was fun and every moment i am more and more excited. and, in turn, scared. the case method, utilized by other top mba programs such as harvard...will challenge us like no other. every day you have 3 business cases/problems to
1. read
2. analyze
3. solve
and you have to do this every day. for every class. because every day, your professors may call upon you to discuss your theories. and probably (for the good of your leadership development) tear it apart like a sunday pig pickin. beware, firstyears (a term that makes me feel like i'm in a harry potter book with less capes and broomsticks; more fratty polos and topsiders): the cases are coming.
today's orientation had opening remarks by the associate dean, the dean, the admissions director, and the secondyear "class president". all were inspiring. i am such a sucker for that shit!
our demographics are interesting: a record-high 31% women (up from the usual 20-25%)! and, apparently, 8 people applied for each seat in the 318-strong class of 2009. kinda puts it in perspective, eh? and when the powerpoint slide came up with a list of 15 or so "past employers for class of 2009", good 'ol burt's bees made the list. yup, my data point contributed! and there is a guy from tom's of maine, too. i picked him out because he was wearing crocs, carhart pants, shoulder-length hair and a beard. perfect. we compared notes on the personal care industry and had a generally raucous talk. he has a 102-inch hi-def tv. he lives about 700 meters from me. i am so there: march madness at alexander's house, anyone?
in all...fun and scary at the same time.
what should i wear to school tomorrow? will it influence the ratio of "really hot firstyears"?

w.w.e.d. "what would eddy do?"

On your left

these days, the kind of passing i prefer to do entails muttering "on your left!" and the production of massive wattage from my massive quads.
alas, the only kind of passing i've BEEN ABLE TO DO lately is the academic kind. like last night. economics pre-entry test: 82%. sweet!
however, my new academic life has been boring some readers, and i promise to keep things vaguely lycra-ish from now on.
the percentages will be as follows:
50%: my life
25% or greater: cycling
10% or less: mba skool
15%: other. usually obsessing about how much i love burritos or how much i loathe babies and dogs that play fetch.
so there you go. someone feel free to track this and graph it. if you can't, i am learning how. regression analysis, probability, price elasticity of demand (oh wait, that's economics), verteces, etc. yay, me.
so back to the "on your left" moment i had today. someone in a myfirstbeamer decided that they belonged next to the curb, and turned into my handlebars at a stoplight. i paid them back, inadvertently, by leaving a long scrape in their black paint from my sti lever. take that, noveau riche hoochie.
i then proceeded to go on a killer ride past monticello and walton school (starting place of the infamous jefferson cup road race). i was smashing it and felt so good! i guess 2 weeks of pure f-ing around while riding/running was just what the body needed. that, and i'm on a produce fast today: only items grown in albermarle county are in my body. i am practically buzzing with (temporary?) vitality.
when i was about 30 minutes from home i stopped to pet some scraggly-looking kitties owned by a local named leroy. he had a nascar hat on, and one eye that i believe he picked up off the jungle floor in vietnam after a mine explosion. this is not a sleight on leroy; he seems to be the mayor of his section of old lychburg road and was very kind. he offered me a calico cat and i declined, sadly. then he told me that he was about to leave for richmond for some bluegrass concert. he had won some tickets. i'm not sure if he won them in a radio contest, or intimidated some poor soul in a grocery store into surrendering his/her tickets. i couldn't understand all that leroy was saying, but he did remind me to be careful because people drive awful fast these days. however, he said, since he could see that my bike was fast he thought i'd be okay most of the time.
then i skeedaddled to the tech department at darden to pick up lappy. lappy had a clean install of xp pro. gone is media center. gone are my homestar and strongbad error messages. i must obtain them from the site again before next week carries me toward mba-oblivion.
in all, a good day. i even got to do some sunbathing on my patio. don't worry mom: i was laying on my stomach studying statistics. i am not in the south of france and therefore spared my neighbors a view of my buddha belly and what lies above it.
now, the only passing i have to do is my business math and statisics test. i can do all sorts of formulas, but my wee brain struggles with one of the building blocks: factoring quadratic equations. how have i gotten this far in life without a deep understanding of this?
on your left, business math and statistics. get outta my way.

bmw makes great cars, but the people who buy this one are just after that blue and white logo. lame.

Down to the wire...

prepping for grad school is tough. i have had to shelve my efforts to blend my cycling tanlines into those of a normal woman (by laying on my patio, reading the 10-day mba and the goal) in order to pass my final two exams for darden. and let me tell you...they are a biatch!!!!! i can't seem to understand the economics, especially. odd, since i lived 1/3 of my life with an economics phd candidate. but no matter...i'll figure it out somehow.
seems like someone else was feeling the crunch, too. congrats, henry. i don't know if w's full-court press "you gonna marry m'daughter or what?" was worse than these pre-entry exams... i'm willing to bet that buying the rock was less painful than spending 6 hours last night on 40 questions, failing to have a high enough score, and not knowing what questions were wrong. so much for feedback.
i'm stoked for jenna: "hager" is a much better last name than "bush", anyway.
so, i implore you not to ask me anymore about mr. alliteration, henry hager. i don't know him yet but i will be sure to update you, dear readers, when i make his acquaintance in darden's hallowed halls. until then, i will continue to amuse you with stories about trying to ride my bike and the 6 hours i spent on the phone with hp and microsoft on tuesday. fun!
oh, and this just came in. take that, wharton!
enough mba-speak. back to studying.
economics sucks: it makes accounting look easy!

Lappy (and HP), you have screwed me for the last time...

that was a strongbad quote, by the way.
so on goes the saga of my lappytoppy. the power cord is on its last legs/wires. 11 months of being crammed into/on/about/under various pieces of luggage have taken their toll and it is conveniently out of commission the week before i start my mba.
i didn't need my computer or anything.
thanks, lappy!
so i called my friends at hewlett packard parts for a replacement. they ordered one and it was supposed to arrive monday (oh, that's today). to hedge my bets, on saturday i spent 58 minutes (thankfully weekend minutes) on the phone with hp to order power cord #2 that was covered under my rapidly-diminishing warranty. 58 minutes! for a lousy power cord! i could have charmed some engineering student at u.va to make me one in half the time!
so today, in the midst of my piles-of-junk mitigation that is dominating my days, i thought i'd call hp and see where in the samhell my power cord was. the one i ordered under warranty (numero dos) wasn't to arrive until thursday. this was okay. but i want the one i paid for to get here, stat! especially since the buffoons at best buy sold me one on saturday that would "probably work and be ok" but did not. i didn't want to cook my hard drive because some $12/hour dude told me it would "probably" do the trick. i wasn't about to lose my 5000 photos from the vanderkitten lingerie shoot. to say nothing of the pre-entrance exam modules i have to complete before they let me sit my ass in a lecture at darden (oh...that).
so, back to the hp story. i call the folks and inquire about my power cord.
oh, that's out of stock.
were any of you people going to tell me? or do you think i'm so bright that i have the hp parts inventory status running like a ticker at the bottom of my (not-working) laptop screen? sheesh! cut me some slack, people! i think that i deserve some special treatment, since after all my dad grew up in the silicon valley and rode bikes and ponies and whatnot with all those packard/hewlett/varian kids. i mean seriously: dad and jack varian (part of the famous varian family that did research with dave packard on vacuum tubes at stanford university) used to compete in team roping together. if running horses around an arena chasing horned beasts isn't bonding and 6-degrees of separation, then what is? (i think it's more like 2 degrees, in fact)
my qualifications as "nearly family" aside, i expect more from hp. i did a bit of assertive arguing with the customer service manager, and i will have my power cord tomorrow. i'm a bit miffed because i lost many days of work (so much to do!) on account of lappy's faulty equipment, but i'll live.
at least the lappytoppy doesn't have viruses.
oh
my
god
my life sounds so boring now that i'm not road racing
there you go. an exciting picture of me suffering! more to come in the fall, when us hotties on the vanderkitten cyclo-cross team hit the dirt. aw yeah!

What to post now that I'm not racing?

don't know.

but here's a start:

me telling pro cycling to peace out. the hanes park criterium is right down the hill. i am departing for good. feels nice.

me suffering in charlotte. thanks, laura and emory for the cyclingnews pic!

other than that, dear readers, what would you like to see on my blog in the future?

-the mba will be hard. but i'll try not to bore you all with case method and 10 o'clock "first coffee" meetings.

-the latest from vanderkitten would be good. rumor has it that their new line of lingerie (modeled by yours truly) will soon be up and running online.

-on top of that, vk is going to have a biatchin cyclo-cross and pro road team. stay tuned!

other than that...?

log your requests.

oh, here's a good one. last night in richmond the ultimate pizza-delivery mobile was spotted. a battered and broken mazda miata driven by a kelly osborne look-alike. when we passed her and took her photo, she smiled and said "that shit is fucked up!" i think that she has aspirations beyond papa john's.

A review...and preview of things to come

so this past weekend was really it: the end of my road racing foray. i was in the area (by "area" i mean the dirty south) for a wu-tang show, so i did the big$ charlotte criterium. i wasn't feeling it. hated every second of it. found a little love the next day in winston-salem but got caught behind a penultimate-lap crash and rode in by myself. bummer.

so i thought i'd share a bit of the mayhem of saturday night. much fun. leigh did my makeup. the peeps we partied with are some of cycling's highest-quality individuals. we even got yelled at for posing with the bronze statues: the security guard clearly had a bad day to justify such a 3 a.m. tongue-lashing for a few dozen drunk cyclists.

oh, and this is a preview of things to come because apparently (when one isn't studying their brains out) mba skool is rather party/networking-intensive. sweet. i KNEW i had all those fancy high heels for something!

ps: darden starts in 13 days. yikes!

Take that, Managerial Accounting

so there.