Friday, October 16- Midnight Madness
  Well, Friday was an extremely fun evening.  About 9 PM, two girls from my wing, Beth and Celine, and I left for Midnight Madness.  We trooped over to Schmidt Fieldhouse and stood in line for the next hour and thirty minutes.  It was a long time to wait.  A lot of people in line were drunk, including an  RA from my hall, whom shall remain nameless.  While we were waiting, the Coca-Cola FANATICS worked the crowd, blowing up balloons, playing basketball with a body pack (don't ask), and tossing rings onto their heads.  They gave Celine a balloon to go blow up, but, she couldn't blow it up.  Neither could anyone else we tried to get to blow it up.  (She never did get it blown up.)  We were finally admitted into the Fieldhouse only after a lot of pushing and shoving and extreme loudness.
    They had a smoke machine on inside the Fieldhouse, so, my first impression of it was one of haze and mystery.  After walking around to the other side of the Fieldhouse, my two wing mates and a group of guys we acquired along the way, sat down in the stands and began watching the festivities.  Beth's roommate, Sara, is on the dance team and was performing, as was my roommate, Amy, who's in the band.  (She plays the flute and piccolo, so, I couldn't hear her what-so-ever, but, she said that would be okay.)  The cheerleaders performed a bit with the dance team and then the frisbee dogs came out.
    Okay, I'm not real impressed by basketball.  But, you train a dog to catch a frisbee like the dog that performed could and I'm awfully impressed.  This dog caught it in ways that I didn't think were possible.  (By the way, I know I said dogs before and then only mentioned on dog catching the frisbee.  This is because the other dog ran away and wouldn't perform.)  Then, next, they had tumblers, who tumbled and jumped in ways that impressed me ever so more than the dog did.
Most impressive was the finale when they made eight cheerleaders bend over and jumped over them.  Then, as each one jumped, he bend over next to the cheerleaders.  There were about, oh, ten tumblers and they each of them tumbled over the cheerleaders and their teammates.  It was incredible.
    Then, they had a big long section where they did basketball contests (you'd think that basketball had something to do with the evening).   There was a three pointer contest, a free throw contest, another contest of some sort, and a slam dunk contest.  They were mildly entertaining.  Throughout the evening, various corporate sponsors such as Skyline Chili and Ameristop, had the cheerleaders toss out things like basketballs and T-shirts.  A girl down the hall from me, Heather, got a Skyline T-shirt and she's never even had Skyline before!
   Finally, the main event of the night came along.  This, of course, would be the introduction of the basketball teams for the 1998-1999 season.  Though many of the names were unfamiliar to me, and though I don't really like basketball all that much, it was very exciting.  I was thrilled to realized that one of the players on the women's team is a girl from my high school!  Her name is Nikki Kramer and she's a senior this year.  I now have someone I know to root for!
    Celine, Beth, and I watched most of the two scrimmages, but left during the men's because we were tired and whatnot (hey, it was 1 AM in the morning and I had had an 8:30 AM class that morning).  We walked home and my roommate followed shortly after.  It was a pretty great evening over all.
    But even better was the next night...