`` and then after a horrendous dry spell , i met katherine xvi on the roof deck of a hotel in newark , new jersey , during an academic decathlon tournament in october of my junior year , and we had about as wild and torrid an affair as you can possibly have over the course of fourteen hours at an academic decathlon tournament , which is to say that at one point we had to kick her three roommates out of her hotel room so we could make out properly , but then even after i emerged from the tournament with nine gold medals-i sucked at speech-she dumped me on account of how she had a boyfriend back home in kansas and she did n't want to dump him , so i was the next logical person to dump .