Huzzah for Promotions.
  The store closing, while sad and awful and all that, has at least one bright spot. Amy and I both get promotions because our Assistant Manager is leaving to go to a new Barnes and Noble. We both get a 10% raise, and Amy gets more hours, so our little household is doing pretty well, financially. This is good news for those of you expecting Christmas presents. =)

For once, they're right.

discover your jack-o-lantern face @ quiz me

Philly Phetish.
  I like Philadelphia. It's crude, noisy and stinky, but in a charming sort of way. It's positively drowning in history, has an awful lot of culture and entertainment choices, and its politics are nothing if not entertaining. Philly has always been the planet that my moon has orbited around, from my default interest in the Eagles to the way I've always referred to it as "the city." I enjoy Philly, a city that is not quite as thoroughly maligned as my home state of New Jersey.
  Having said all that, I demand to know why the fuck everybody and their humpbacked, web-footed, sub-70 IQ cousins had to start mackin' on the Philly cheesesteak?
  It's happened in fits and starts over the years. This time around, I first noticed it when I started seeing commercials for Domino's Philly Cheesesteak pizza. You know, the one which suggests that Pavlov would have made a killing delivering pizzas? I was intrigued enough to try it, and I wasn't impressed. I liked the toppings, but american cheese and no tomato sauce on a pizza is just wrong on both a taste and texture level.
  The next one I became aware of was the Quiznos ad for their Toasted Philly Cheesesteak. I have been long interested in Quiznos, since the idea of toasted subs intrigues me. Alas, there aren't any around here, nor have I stumbled across one in my travels. The sandwich sounds like it might be good, actually, but the ad is slightly creepy. The guy eating the Quiznos sub asks the man eating the (implied inferior) sandwich if he was raised by wolves. The second man has a mini flashback, and then replies that yes, he was.
  I know that I said the american cheese and no tomato sauce on a pizza was wrong, but the Quiznos ad is so wrong it's tainting surrounding advertisements. Not only is the image of a grown man in a suit suckling along with a litter of wolf cubs kind of disturbing, the fact that it appears he was raised by wolves, whom I'm sure he cares for and identifies with, makes the Quiznos-eater look kind of like a jerk. It's not good to make your pitch-man look like an asshole. He can look stupid, sure, but I don't want to buy something because a big meanie-insulter-face says I should!
  I didn't even get riled up about the McDonald's Philly Cheesesteak. I don't think anyone, least of all me, expects the McCrapSteak* to be any better then their burgers, which isn't really saying much, and I highly doubt that their steak sandwich is going to be so wildly popular that it will drive the privately owned shops in Philly out of business.
  The last straw was when Arby's started getting in my face with ads for their Philly Beef 'n Swiss. Come on! Fucking Arby's? Arby's is the slack-jawed, hairy-backed, vestigial-tailed mutant of national fast food chains! Why do they have to step to a Philly steak?
  I can just about boil water and add pasta without a recipe. I don't know much about food beyond the fact that my mother and my girlfriend are both quite good at making it. But I do know that what makes a steak sandwich a Philly cheesesteak is as much the experience as it is the ingredients. Standing at a counter, watching a guy standing over a grill making your sandwich. Smelling the juices sizzling in great clouds of greasy steam off of the grill two feet away from you. Picking your toppings, knowing that they were sliced or diced or shredded by somebody that morning. Warm rolls, baked somewhere around the block. Hell, even the sometimes dubious sanitation of the dining room. It's all of these things that make it a Philly cheesesteak. I(f you want to get really picky, you could argue that it's the Cheese Whiz, but the idea of putting that on a cheesesteak appalls me, so I'm going to stay out of that debate.)
  I'm not ruling out the possibility that any of these foods could be good. They might, in fact, be quite tasty. But they're about as genuinely Philly as my landlord is competent and considerate. And that's not very much.
  *I think it's interesting to note that the Blogger spellchecker tried to change McCrapSteak to McGreevey's. I won't speculate on what that means, I just thought it was fun.

I like to score.
  So, the GRE did not kick my ass. It glared at me some, but it knew not to start shit. I think I did pretty well, considering the long years I've gone with out studying any math. They give you the scores to the verbal and math sections right away, and I did slightly better than I did when I took the practice test, so I am pleased. I will await my scores on the writing section patiently. Very... very... patiently. *twitch*
  By the way, I love that they don't even call it "math" anymore. Now it's called "quantitative reasoning," because seven syllables are always better than one, and are especially not any more intimidating.
  Thanks to all of you who offered encouragement. You are appreciated. I must take this opportunity to single out my wonderful girlfriend, who put up with my poorly-hidden anxiety, my insomnia, and my tendency to get defensive when I'm nervous. She always has more faith in me than I do, and this experience would have been far more nerve-wracking without her patient insistence that I would do well. She is beautiful and wonderful, and far too good to me, and I love her very much.

Nerves of Pudding!
  Today I am taking the GRE test, which is the second to last step in applying to Grad school. I test fairly well (I don't get the shakes or the dry heaves or anything), and everybody tells me it's like taking the SAT all over again, and I did pretty well on the SAT, so all in all I'm not worried.
  Much.
  Okay, so I'm a smidgen concerned. After all, I want to get into a good school, and I want them to give me an assistantship or a fellowship or a scholarship or a battleship or something. I can't really afford another $25k in student loans, and if I don't get really good aid, I'm not going. So I sweat just a bit. Luckily, I have a solution.
  I'm going in there like I own the place. I'm wearing my sweatpants and a big comfy shirt. Two comfy shirts, actually, in case they have either the heat or the air conditioner running. (And a shout out to my Mom. Dressing in layers really does work.) I'm going to wear my sunglasses until the last possible moment, and I'm not even going to be concerned that they'll want to see my driver's license, with that goofy-ass grin I had on my face. I will be so cool that hail will fall out of the sky, just to hang out and ask me for tips in being so chilly.
  And I won't, absolutely not, never, no how, think about how I haven't had a math class in 8 years.