:: Closing Time ::

:: Monday, June 03, 2002 ::

This is the Veronica blog.

You'd think if I were going to have my first ever "named after a person" blog, yet alone my first ever named after an 18 year old girl blog, it would be a social interest. Instead, she's my cousin. Let's clear the air on that one right now, I don't want any shit about that kind of stuff. This means you Jay. That kind of joke is off limits.


Yeah, so Veronica is my cousin who lives in Newton. Err, technically my second cousin (which explains to some extent the about to be seen problem). I'm honestly not sure what her father's name is, her mother is Anna Lisa, her brother Martin. She goes to Windsor, he goes to NNHS. I've seen them about eight times in my life. They live in Newton, and always have.

So why don't I know these people? Simple: Anna Lisa is a pain in the ass, and my mother seriously dislikes her. I don't blame my mother; I seriously dislike her as well. She's the most crazy conservative nut I've ever met. Single most overprotective mother in the world. Consequently, Martin, who is naturally quiet, is the worlds largest twerp (although high school seems to be slowly solving that problem, but VERY slowly), and Veronica, who is naturally outgoing, needed to go to private school so as to have a life. Anyhow, Anna Lisa is my mother's annoying cousin who she keeps at arm's length. This is the story of that family, but more importantly the incredibly cool cousin who I never knew.

So around six months ago now, my mother gets a random call from Anna Lisa (the family, The Rotenbergs, will be referred to as such if neccessary). After 20 minutes on the phone with her doing their usual catching up and shit, she finally comes to find out if I can do family dinner on saturday night. I can. Apparantly the story is this: Veronica somehow heard about -me- at her school, by name, through some connection. She was very impressed about something I'd done or just with me in general, and was upset that we barely knew each other. So we went that Saturday and things were... kind of awkward. Everyone knew the supposed situation. Veronica and I were supposed to be getting to know each other (shit, this DOES sound sketchy. I swear it's not). So of course that didn't happen, and we were pretty quiet. Dinner wasn't great, which didn't help.

Six months pass. Time for gradumation.

So her grandparents, my grandmother's brother and her sister in law, are here for her gradutation. My grandmother came to visit us, but more to see her brother. So we allllllll went over to the Rotenbergs for dinner Saturday night. I hear I missed some fun times, but I wouldn't change anything looking back on it.

Tonight the stage was totally different. There were no premises of meeting people; that was over and done with. We were both on our way to college, both graduating Friday. Somehow somebody started talking about standardized tests, and the Sci/Tech MCAS pilot test we took. I explained the corrugated cardboard problem (remember that one?) and SOMEHOW she started talking about how she'd be fine if they asked her to design a robot, but other shit just went over her head.

I stopped dead in my tracks. Backtracked. And played the scene again.

So yeah, apparantly my hot windsor girl cousin who I never knew is a female engineer, and a member of Northeastern's nationally ranked US FIRST team. I know very little about First except for the fact that it's another robotics competition and that our team sucks, being comprised primarily of James Strauss and James Atwood, not the brightest lightbulbs around. So I asked if they had BotBall. Well that was a fucking dumb question, now wasn't it? I would have seen them at regionals, and BotBall's a high school thing.

Nevertheless it got the ball rolling on the conversation, HARD. Between my explanation of BotBall, botball stories, usfirst stories, perils of a female engineer at a 200 person all girls school (no tech department), etc etc. We ended up estimating the cost of producing a grocery store egg based on the volume of a carton, the volume of a shipping truck, the milage of the truck, the truck driver's salary, the price of diesel, the cost of labor to load and unload, the price of chicken feed (negligible), and finally ran into a snag at heat and electric costs at the factory. The conclusion is that Veronica, who I barely knew before last night, is the single coolest female dork I have ever met. Shit, she's the -only- one I've ever met in our league. Did I mention she's hot? Damn.

Anyhow, throughout these botball stories she started to get really interested in Jay, and his double elimination heroics and other such stuff. I didn't actually think to mention his interest in military pursuits to her. I guess it would have made sense to, given that her first choice of schools was West Point. She got in, yet is going to Harvard because she couldn't do it to her parents (who didn't want her to go). Hey guess what, she's on her swim team, and a very good singer. Is this getting a little scary here or what? Let's run down the list here:

- Basic engineering
- Successfull robotics pursuit
- Military aspirations
- Swims
- Sings

The details are harder to summarize but umm.... that's Jay. And Veronica. The difference seems to be a y chromosome. Kind of odd.

Yeah so I learned just how cool my cousin is. And now I'm a little bitter that I haven't known her better. We coulda been really good friends. She lives in Newton.

That's the Veronica blog.
:: Peter 12:47 AM [+] ::
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