Shockball

Sometime around 2AM the night before my last exam I decided that it would be a good idea to buy myself a small present.  It came in the mail the other day.  It's called Shockball.  It is a small ball that emits random electrical shocks every ten to thirty seconds.  That's what it does.  The fun lies in the constant fear of not knowing when the next mini-electrocution is going to occur.  I think I like it because Shockball is sort of like law school, in a way.  Also, on big letters on the front it says "This is not a toy."  

I took Shockball to Sarah's party Friday night.  Tyler Brown and Josh L came with me, which was awesome because it meant I had people from high school, college AND law school all at the same party. Anyway, back to Shockball.  The most common way to play Shockball is via a rousing game of Hot-Potato.  But the fun of Shockball is in inventing new games to play with it.  "Here, hold this," is a classic game, for example (No, I didn't do that, I'm not THAT mean).  The best games were the ones that piggy-backed on other games.  In Shock-Taboo, you play Taboo just like you normally would, except in addition to making people guess random words you're also holding the Shockball.  It ups the stakes a bit.  

Saturday morning (by which I mean afternoon) I went back to the National Gallery for more caroling with Ben and Jeff.  You can't do enough singing of Christmas songs.  I did notice, though, that very few Christmas songs are written in keys which are... singable.  A Capella people tend to do fine singing things like "Jingle Bells" and "Silent Night," but throw in an instrumental accompanist playing the song in its original key and people just lose it.  After that Jeff and I accompanied Ben to the train station where he departed for Rhode Island.  Then I researched internships.  It was super fun and/or terrifying.  Like Shockball.

This is the view from the Capitol around Christmas- it is beautiful and multi-colored and deserves much better treatment than my terrible built-in phone camera can offer.  I took this picture when I was meeting Rachel for dinner this past week.  I'm not sure I actually mentioned it in the blog.  I should have... I, of course, love seeing my little sister.  AND we went to a great barbecue place.

Saturday evening I went over to Josh's new place for an official housewarming.  We played Beertrek (rules found in a previous post) and ate pizza, which is pretty much the best Saturday evening ever.  But then it got better, because we invented a new game to play with Shockball (yes, I brought it.  Yes, I also have the perspective to see that it seems like I'm being a bit obsessive with Shockball.  I am going to be embarrassed of this post one day, but I'm okay with that).  The game is called Shock the Dealer, and is a variation on what is usually a drinking game played with cards.  All you have to do is guess what card is on top of the deck.  You get two tries.  After the first try, the person holding the deck (and who is looking at the card) tells you whether the actual card is higher or lower than your guess.  If you guess correctly, you get to hold the cards and they have to guess.  If you guess incorrectly, you have to guess again.  Oh, and you're holding Shockball.  Best game ever.  And Trevor and Stephanie W were there, which would have made the entire evening awesome even without Shockball.  

This note was on Josh's refrigerator.  It says "Welcome Home Josh" and is signed "Josh."  As it turns out, Josh was the name of Josh's apartment rental agent.  The note is much funnier and also much sadder if you don't know that fact the first time you read it.  We purposefully placed all the liquor in the apartment on top of the fridge for this picture to play up the "much sadder" angle.

I'm very glad to be able to officially welcome Josh to DC.  The House never had a better historian and we're going to have many excellent times together in the next three years.  Maybe longer.  I do like DC quite a bit, and as I hear it the city has a shortage of lawyers (it sounds like a joke, but people keep telling me this fact like they're serious and once enough serious people tell me something I start to believe them.  Character flaw, I know).