geeker

Phil and I got all geeky yesterday again.

He came to visit me after work, and we had plans to meet up with some of my friends for wings at Buffalo Wild Wings. But before hand we went to Barnes and Noble, like we do practically every time he comes to town.

Now, my friend Ray at work has been studying for the GRE. He's kind of brilliant, and I've always enjoyed talking to him because he talks SMART. A lot at work is "so and so got drunk last night and did this stupid thing, and so and so is going to get drunk tonight, thank goodness, or we wouldn't have anything to talk about tomorrow!" And I can only handle so much of that. So I like to talk to Ray, because we talk about school and our futures and traveling, and it's just so much more interesting.

So, GRE. He's going to graduate school for math, so he has to take the math version of the GRE and the general version. So he's been going through his huge calc book, and his goal is to be able to open that book and be able to do any problem without having to review. This is a goal I'd never be able to accomplish(part of that being because I have ZERO ambition with calculus), but there's little doubt in my mind that Ray will. He'll do great on the math GRE.

However, he's also feeling the need to study for the general GRE, in particular, the vocabulary parts. He uses words really well, another reason I enjoy talking to him, but he doesn't have that large of a vocabulary. Which is actually kind of cool, that he can use words that well without using that many of them. But, alas, it doesn't really help him with the GRE, where they have questions like "indolent is to zealous like deft is to ______?", where his reaction is, "ehhh, uhhh, banana?"

To fix this lack of vocabulary, he bought a book made specifically for the GRE full of vocabulary words that he goes through every day, adding ten new words each time. And he had it at work on Monday because it was deathly slow but he need to be there until 11. So as I was leaving I stopped to talk to him like I always do, and thought the book was totally cool.

Okay, now, the difference here is, Ray NEEDS to know more words. He has to to get into grad school. I just think it's cool to know a lot of words. I love language. I get excited when I use words I don't often use. That would be why I am a total geek, and Ray's just a good student. However, I may have called him a geek to make me feel like less of one.

So when Phil and I go into Barnes and Noble, he heads to look for a Russian cookbook and I head to the Standardized Test Study Guide section. And geek out over all the books. I wanted the psych one for the GRE, and I wanted more than one vocab book, and I wanted French vocabulary flash cards, and grammar flash cards, and I just totally geeked out. And finally decided on the English vocabulary cards by SparkNotes, because they were $10 and there's 1000 words and I didn't know the word on the back so I figured it'd be hard enough. Some of them had words like "convince". I wanted it harder than that.

Meanwhile, Phil found a Russian cookbook that even got me excited about the food in it, and found German vocabulary cards just like my English ones when he came to find me. So we head up to the check out with these three things, and as he's checking out the cashier starts TALKING TO HIM IN GERMAN. He asks him how long he's been studying it, and Phil's all taken aback and goes, "uhhh...awhile". And the guy keeps talking in German and Phil keeps answering in English. And my eyes are bugging out thinking the whole thing is totally cool! We found out the cashier's about to graduate from UWGB and is this linguist who knows a bunch of languages. I was sooo excited to see Phil understand another language.

Now that I think about it, this could probably become a trend for us, if we ever travel like we talk about. Phil understanding and talking and me standing there with my eyes bugging out. Oh well, I do all the talking when we're speaking English, he can take the reigns in everything else.