Hello darkness, my old friend...

Last Saturday, I did everything I could to get into my apartment, courtesy of the Case of the Missing Keys (sounds like a Hardy Boys book...). This past Saturday, I did everything I could to get back out. Being cut off from the outside world is very unsettling for me. My weekend-long radio silence stems from the following three ocurrences (listed in order of increasing degree of annoyance.)

1. My roommate has a cell phone. Granted, he hates it. It's one of those new-fangled models that only works when using it on his right ear. Apparently, Verizon is seeking phase out peoples' left ears, so by creating phones that utilize the right size, their strategic model has quite the northpaw bias. Personally, I always thought God was a fan of anatomical symmetry. We'll find out if CNN reports some smiting on the Avenue of the Americas in NYC later today.
Not that my lefty-tilted ways could have benefitted from the phone this weekend - he was up in New Jersey seeing J-Vo as he, too, has underestimated the drawing power of the Garden State. And where roomie goes, cell phone will follow, and thus, my backup mode of communication didn't dress for this weekend's game.

2. Round 2 of the Cox Communications vs. The Tandem at the Random was in full swing starting on Friday. While Round 1 went to the tag-team Monrovians, the Round 2 points go to the ISP (Internet Suppression Provider). Our cable modem is on the fritz. It's probably old-fangled. And without the 'net, my fantasy football teams were in a state of flux. (wait, it doesn't matter, I'm awesome no matter who I play...) Ok, at least a state of Unimportance.
So if you tried to e-mail me, IM me, send a carrier pigeon through my monitor in the last two days, it would have been as productive as kicking a basketball against the side of an apartment building at 7:30 am this morning.

Stupid neighbor kid. I told him that Christopher Columbus would have slept in today, and he should too.

3. The real reason sitting in my apartment this weekend cut me off from all contact from the outside world -- IT WAS CONVULSOR.

When you are in Business School, there are some classes that are just too hard to take with A.) a straight face and B.) open eyelids. The practice of giving nicknames to classmates began in a class I took in 2000 with Chris Nordberg, and it became a bit of a phenomenon. Most people who ended up with nicknames got them because they deserved to be singled out for their ridiculousness, and the names never got outside of Nordberg, Jasen, Sara, and occasionally MeWhee. Here's a sampling of the classics:

• Shoe Girl - Amanda Weil - a different pair every day, and minimum heel height was around 7 inches.
• Trophy Wife - Christy Boardman - self-admitted aspiration the first day of Consumer Behavior. It stuck.
• Dante - Tony Rea - looked just like protagonist from Clerks. But less-motivated.
• Finance Dork - Chris Nordberg. Self-explanatory.

And while I thought I had traded in the practice when they handed me a diploma back in 2002, I was not yet considering the fact that someday I'll enter grad school, and there, too, will be people just begging to leave behind their given names for a new "C.C. Special." Enter CONVULSOR.

Convulsor has a real name, but her actions literally speak louder than her GQ-issued name tent. The way I like to describe her as a combination between "comedian" Wanda Sykes and the woman from Seinfeld with the awful laugh that Jerry goes to heckle in her office. (Toby?) Everything this woman does is with her entire body. She's the one in class who answers rhetorical questions. She's the one who laughs with her entire body, slamming her hand on the desk (or my shoulder) in glee. She's the one who when responding has talked non-stop and uninterrupted for 4 minutes and 28 seconds (I time her now.) She's the one who stole my cell phone.

What?

Since I have the cheapest Verizon phone on the market, and the same GW-issued bag as 95% of the class, I can understand the mix-up. Class ended late at 1:06 pm Saturday (since Convulsor had one final point to make.) And while I was speaking with another classmate about the aforementioned Garden State, she made the common mistake of assuming good ole' "You're a Phone" was hers, put it in her bag, and fled to her Castle Convulsor in Silver Spring. Once I got to my car, I realized my lack of cellular communication apparatus, and realized the horror. Even if she realizes she has my cell phone, what is she going to do - call me?

If anyone needs to know brevity is the soul of voice mail, it's her.