Quietly Disruptive Saints

Sometimes, we aren't the most engaged people in Sunday School.  We fall asleep, we play games on our kindles, we doodle and write various notes to each other.  But at least we find ways to entertain ourselves without disrupting others, right?  It's the thought that counts....  Ok, not my best excuse, just roll with it.  Today, Katie and Marina and I wrote a story together to keep us awake.  We each wrote one word and then passed it the the next person.  I started with "Dear," and then Marina went, and then Katie.  I tell you this so if you see a particularly strange or concerning word, you can use your math and pattern skills to determine which of us is the culprit.  Or, you know, not.  That would be an incredible waste of your time.  Go make us some cupcakes instead.


Dear Prudence,

Don't forget about th'Alamo!  Everyone will kill small indigenous Irish elephants, unless Batdog viciously intervenes.  Should the battle prove lasting, gather all bears.  They always attack enemies, hurling hula hoops toward medium sweaters, bursting bubbles, and cinderblocks.  Luckily, bears are very susceptible to brainwashing.  Unluckily, they tend to have short-term attention spans.  It seems that you only benefit if you curl Elizabeth's limbs.  Weird.  Though dolphins inevitably revolt, bears are essentially victims of the dolphins.  Grotesque conspiracies arise due to widespread elephantitis.  Sick specimens are transported due to contaminated blood.  Avoid drinking unbleached blood.  It causes telekinesis, but also leprosy.  When hallucinations end, grab your compass.  North is bad.  Run East, but only if bears limp with elephantitis.  The sunrise signals safety.  Roll left if moss grows under walrus graves.  Roll backwards determinedly.  Don't jump diagonally, else incite the wrath of superhuman children.  They smell like rotten rutabagas and mushrooms, beating acidic pulp into orange sippy-cups.  Obviously bears enjoy pulp-free OJ, thus superhuman children torture them with forced pulpy OJ.  Luckily children aren't able to escape if there are cookies.  Trapping them is simple, especially when oreo's are available.  Remember to remember the Alamo.

Love,
The Hunchbacks.

Because we just can't do anything the normal way.

There are lots of quirks to living in an apartment. One of the most classic of these is having disruptive neighbors. Plenty of people have resorted to banging on the ceiling with a broomstick to get their above-neighbors to stop stomping around. We actually witnessed this in our neighbors' apartment today when we went Visiting Teaching. We of course, don't have this problem. That would be much too mainstream. We did, however, go to visit our upstairs neighbors today.

Another trial of apartment living is lots of things that only sort of work. One example of this is the ceiling light in Sara and my bedroom. There are three light bulbs in it, and the number of lights that actually work tend to rotate. At first we thought it was just random, but finally, we figured out the pattern. Our light bulbs tended to flicker on when our upstairs neighbors walk right above it. We can actually hear the footsteps, immediately followed by magically more light.

Usually, this isn't much of a problem, and we tend to have at least two of the light bulbs shining, making the lighting level fairly tolerable. However. today, we had been going on twenty-four hours with only one working light, and it was getting depressing. So, finally, we decided to take matters into our own hands.

Not half an hour after witnessing our regular neighbors' struggle with their overly loud upstairs neighbors, we set out on our quest. Despite having no idea who it was that lived above us, we located their apartment, knocked on the door, and asked if they would do us a really weird favor. Their first assumption was that we were going to ask them to stop walking on the floor above our room, but that wasn't it at all. To looks of increasing astonishment, we explained our situation, and asked that they please stomp really hard on the floor above our ceiling light. They seemed skeptical of this plan, but we quickly called Katie and asked her to report our progress. Just as they began to believe that this couldn't possibly work, Katie announced a flicker. "HARDER!" we admonished. Soon there was more than one girl literally jumping up and down on the floor just above our bedroom. Katie began to be alarmed by the noise. But finally, to our relief, another light bulb flicked on. We shouted out our victory, graciously thanked our still slightly bewildered neighbors, and continued on our way. They did, however, tell us to let them know if we ever had problems again.

I'm pretty sure there's a lesson in here somewhere. Maybe it's "Know Your Neighbor" or maybe it's "Your life will be funnier if you ask your neighbors to be more disruptive than they currently are." Or maybe it's "Take a closer look into the apartment appliances before you sign a contract." You be the judge.

We Have That Kind of Friendship.

I'm sitting here, trying to explain a schedule to Sara.  She's a little confused, so I reword it a little (probably making it more complicated... that's how I do.) and try to explain it again.  She stares at me and says "Oh, okay." And goes back to her computer

A minute later, she looks up again and says "I don't really get it.  The 'oh' was for sympathy."

Yeah, we're in college.

Work- It's dangerous.

I suppose that people who are employed in a typically dangerous line of work might come home with things like "shark-bites" or "infectious diseases." I'm sure that's very traumatizing for them and whatnot, but hey, at least they get a good story out of it. Provided that they survive the experience, I suppose. I, on the other hand, am routinely injured at work in what is possibly both the most painful and the most unexciting way imaginable. I get papercuts. ALL the time. And while, usually, I think I average about one or two a week, I think I was assaulted by paper twelve times today at least.

Sometimes, I branch out a little into the realms of "cardboard cuts" or "plastic cuts," which are, believe it or not, worse. It's not unusual, at work, for someone to cry out in pain, and leave their machine to go get a band-aid out of the first aid kit. In fact, several months ago we ran out of band-aids, and I don't think they've been restocked yet. Today, I stopped an entire assembly line (I have a magical work stopping button) when I began to bleed profusely.

Let this be a lesson to you, kids. Don't work. Or, at least, choose a line of work where you can at least be hurt in an interesting way, and garner the proper sympathy.

Matt Is the Best.

I have all sorts of problems with my computer.  I'm pro at picking up viruses and malware. It's probably all of those "You're the 1,000,000,000th Visitor" notices I keep clicking on.  The flashing banners get me every time, darn them.  Since my fields of specialty don't extend past Facebook stalking, hoarding candy corn, and making a fool of myself in public, I leave technology to technology people.

Enter my friend Matt.  I took my computer to his apartment last week and left it there with a vague "something is wrong, please fix it."  I picked it up a few hours later with high hopes.  Matt said he cleaned several viruses off and handed it over.

When I got home, I realized what he really spent three hours doing.  Messing with my settings.

I thought I was crazy at first, because computers don't talk.  Well now mine does.  Every time I turn it on, off, open a new window, open a new tab, click a link, etc., my computer reminds me that I shouldn't trust Matt with my computer every again.  It alerts me to system changes with a kindly "Matt is the best."

Sometimes, if I leave my computer alone for a while, it reminds me anyway.  Just to keep me on my toes.  It might be the best thing that's happened to my computer, and I kind of lovehate it.  For now, anyway.

Eat All the Food!

So Katie and I are in a cooking class together.  Yes I realize many of you might be laughing about this, thinking, "Seriously? You're in college and you're choosing to take a cooking class?" (or maybe that's just my mother thinking that).  But let me point a few things out.
1. This is my only class on Fridays.  All I do is cook and eat delicious food for 3 hours.
2. We get a free meal every Friday.  We usually stuff ourselves to the point where I don't even really need dinner, so it's basically two meals at this point.
3.  Since we are the last class on Fridays, we get all of the food that they have to throw out.  So I get even more free food!!
4. We get delicious recipes out of this as well.
5. We get to rock out to Rebecca Black's "Friday" every week.

Ya I know, the last point doesn't get me either.  But the first four are great ones!  While we're cooking, we love to sneak food.  We're hungry, poor college students!  We can't help it!  Our favorites are the batters....This is a problem.  There is a rule against eating batter.  How rude!!  No worries readers; we found a solution! We said, "Smerf it!"

This was taken by our lab partner.  That behind us is our sink: the only safe zone in the lab.  We both suddenly ducked down and started licking this delicious chocolate frosting off of the beaters.  A couple people saw us (luckily none were the teacher or strict TA's).  We got some weird looks, but I think they were just jealous they didn't think of it first.

The awkward trials of being accidentally funny

Apparently, I said something funny a few days ago.  Katie swears by it.  But she can't remember what it was.  However, even though none of us can remember me being funny, I have been pressured into remembering it and then writing a blog post about it.  It's possibly the most stressful thing I've ever been through.  I try to dig through my memory for something funny I might have said 3.6 days ago, but I just can't recall it.  Every once and a while I'll say something that I think might be it, but then I look at Katie and she makes no response, or worse, gives a pity laugh.  I'm patronized by the idea that I might have said something amusing that might have changed my entire life for the better and perhaps could have made me money and fame and gotten me several boyfriends, but I just can't remember it.  Also, apparently that one sentence (thought, word, idea?) that I sputtered out 3.6 days ago used up all my funny.  Sorry guys.  I can only be funny when I'm about to go into a memory lapse, apparently.  And that memory lapse also affects my roommates.

Maybe that funny phrase was actually a magic spell, and it makes whomever hears it forget what I said.  Pretty useless, admittedly, unless your goal is to make several people crazy trying to figure out what it is that I said, including myself.  I'm pretty sure if I figure out how to harness this superpower, I could be president of the world.  Or something.  Because I could say something stupid that would make people stop voting for me, but then they would just forget what I said and just remember that I was funny.  Success.  I'm gonna have to practice this.

...

What kind of bear has no teeth?

A gummy bear!

....Yeah, I don't think that was it.  *sigh*

Puftina the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Woman

Once upon a time I signed on to sell concessions at football games. This seemed like a good idea at the time. That time was summer. I worked the last game yesterday night, when it was distinctly not summer. In fact, the high was 36 degrees, and the low was 17. And part of the time it was actually snowing. The solution? Wear every article of clothing that I own, and some that Sara owns.  Here's me beforehand:

And here's everything that I wore and/or packed for the game:

But not the bed sheet.  Don't be ridiculous.

The sad part is that when I got there I put on most of the things in the bag.  And zipped up the jacket.  And wore two hoods.  And wrapped a scarf around most of my face.  I think I was wearing eight layers in total, and it was still a little cold.  But, at last count, I still have all of my fingers and toes, so I'm putting it down in the success book.  Imagine that I ended this with a picture of me coming in the door, wearing everything, clutching a cup of hot chocolate, and covered in about an inch of snow.

Foot In Mouth Disease.

I celebrated unofficial "Ugly Sweater Day" on campus yesterday.  On my way to my first class, I passed a girl wearing a borderline ugly/ironic American flag sweater.  I was booking it to class and clearly high off endorphins.   As I passed her, I stopped and shouted "Hey, ugly sweater day?"

No.  She was just wearing it.

I mumbled an obligatory "Oh... well I like it?" and ran away.  I really hope I didn't ruin the sweater for her.  Thank goodness there are 30,000 students here.  Although by Murphy's Law, she will be joining me when I go abroad next semester.  And possibly be my roommate.  That's kind of how my life works.

I'm good at breaking and entering. Or others are just bad at locking doors.

Our building, good ol' Glenwood Number 4, is the furthest one from campus.  It's so far!  Once I even get to the Glenwood parking lot I have to walk past 3 buildings just to get to ours.  Sometimes my subconscience gets impatient, and I become sure it can't be that far.  So I unconsciously turn into the third building and go into the matching apartment there.  The first time this happened was during the first week of school.  We were still unpacking, and there were boxes and dishes and misc. items all over the kitchen. We all left that morning vowing that we would organize when we got home.  Well, when I walked into the apartment after school, everything was clean and tidy, and there was even a vase of flowers on the kitchen table!  I froze, thinking to myself, "Wow!  My roommates have been busy!  I wonder who got the flowers!"  As I continued to walk through the entry way, however, something felt off.  The couches were in different spots, and the decorations that we had haphazardly put on the wall that morning had disappeared.  That's when it hit me.  This was not the apartment I was looking for.  I quickly exited that apartment and shut the door, then walked out of the building like nothing had happened.  When I finally got to our building and entered our real apartment, there were the boxes and dishes and a distinct absence of flowers in a vase.  Home, sweet home.

This has happened numerous times since then.  You would think that I would learn that we live in building 4.  Actually, no, let's be real here.  I'll never learn that, but you would think that the owners of the apartment I keep walking into would learn to lock their door.  I've met them now, they're very nice.  They were pretty convincing when they pretended to understand why I can't figure out where I live, even after 3 months.  I'm sure we'll soon be on first name basis, and then they can give all my information to the psych ward and have them come pick me up.  They know where I live and everything.  So, if one day I just up and disappear, I'm either at the matching apartment one building over, or in the psych ward.  Either way, please come get me.

Wow dad, your Alzheimers has really gotten bad!

We think we are hilarious.  Sometimes I'll relate our stories to a member of my family; I can barely get the story out due to laughing so hard.  Our antics our met with silence and occasionally a courtesy laugh.  Every now and then I get lucky and can get actual laughs.  That's when I know we've scored; we've been validated.  As this only happens every now and then, there's a small part of us that hates those people who are naturally hilarious.  Mostly it's respect, but jealousy is definitely in there.  We wish we could be that funny on cue.

There's one person we know who we can't hate, even though he fits the funny person profile perfectly.  We love him too much.  His name is Ian.  He was the RA of the boys hall we were paired up with last year.  Since we moved, we don't see him anymore (which is rather depressing).  One day on Facebook, Ian posted about how he needed to borrow some racquetball equipment.  Being the lovely person that I am, I told him he could use mine.  A day or so later I receive this wonderful voicemail from him:

Ian: "Hey Jessie. How's it going?  It is Ian.  I just want to thank you for letting me use your racquetball racket.  I'm actually using it for a date on Saturday morning.  So if things go well, I'll name my first daughter Jessie "Smerfson".  Then one day in the future, she'll ask me, 'Dad.  Why am I named Jessie?' And I'll tell her, 'Well Jessie, I actually don't... I actually don't remember anymore.' And she'll be like, 'Wow dad, your Alzheimers has really gotten bad.'  Sorry I couldn't say that without cracking up."

You see why we love this kid? I listened to this voicemail on the way home class.  I had to control my peals of laughter seen as how I was around random people and did not want to look psychotic.  As soon as Katie arrived home, I played it for her.  Repeat with Sara and Marina.  The only reason we could hear the rest of the message is because pillows were near by that we could shove our faces into.  All of us loved it.  It still remains saved on my phone.  Every now and then, we pull it up just so we can listen to it again.  Our dream, maybe with some practice, is that we can be on the same playing field as these type of people.

I think I'm actually becoming clumsier as I get older.

Recently, my life has been sort of complicated. I've gone from being mostly unemployed, to somehow having three jobs. It's manageable, most of the time, and it will be back down to one in the fairly forseeable future. For now though, one of the jobs I'm working is in the snack bar of the campus bowling alley. The truly pitiful thing is that I like working in fast food, and this is the one I've quit and am just working until my two weeks notice runs out. The good news is that I'm getting better at it, and I hardly burned myself at all today, while my first day on the job resulted in at least three burns. I may have done something worse though.

So there I was, minding my own business, innocently cooking fries for a customer's order, like a good little food service minion. While I waited for them to cook, I decided to wipe down the counter next to them. This was going fairly well, order was being restored and whatnot, when suddenly, a terrible thing happened. I managed to take our lovely timer, which keeps track of all the things that are being cooked, and beeps at us when it's time to take them out, and knock it into the vat of boiling oil on top of the french fries.
<-- Visual Aid

At first, I just froze for a moment. I really had no idea what to do from here, but I was pretty sure that electronic devices do not belong in boiling vats of oil. After a moment, I had the presence of mind to at least pull the fry basket out of the oil, and call for my supervisor's help. We used tongs to retrieve the poor timer, no one was burned, and everything remained more or less intact. And after I spent about ten minutes removing the oil from the timer, the back of the timer, and the batteries which had fallen out on impact, (side note: Do batteries explode if left exposed to burning oil?) I put the device back together, and wonder of wonders: It still worked. More or less. All of the times had to be reset, and, as we later discovered, it no longer beeped properly. But that probably had more to do with something that needed to be reset than it did with my apparent subconscious need to murder electronic devices. Right?

So anyways, the incident passed, and after my shift I ordered a corn-dog from my snack bar (because you try cooking and serving food for four hours and not slowly becoming starving). When my coworker served it to me, it was fairly overcooked, and she said "Sorry if it's crunchy. The timer didn't go off." The jury's still out: innocent mistake or passive-aggressive revenge?

Things I Hate.

The following list is a collection of things I have found distaste for since coming back to school.

1. People who ride their bike handless.
2. People who hold hands in public.
3. People who have relationships.
4. People who make up their own harmonies to hymns at church.
5. People who can go for long, healthy jogs in the mid-day heat.
6. People who don't ever not speak in double negatives (Marina, that's directed at you).

I could smerf on for ages, but I would like to be thought of as a charitable and kindly person.  So I'll stop before things get crazy.  And if you examine items 1-5 closely, you'll notice a general trend.  Go ahead and read the items again, but add "because I can't" after each sentence.  Maybe then my distaste will be easier to understand.  Or maybe you'll just feel sorry for me that I live a lonely non-athletic life.  Either way I'd probably hate you a little bit.

Hold the Carrot

In the middle of our adventures this morning, Jamba Juice called.  They asked us to please never ever ever (like ever) apply for a job there.  In fact, I think we could get them to pay us to NOT work there!  Why you ask?  Great question.

Last night, we had an Avatar: The Last Airbender marathon with some friends who had never seen it.  It's a wonderful show and if you haven't seen it, you'll love it.  Anyways, as most marathons go, this was a call for major amounts of junk food.  We did not skimp.  Double stuffed Oreos, donuts, two bags of chips, jelly beans, 3 bags of popcorn, and a tube of cookie dough.  Unfortunately, a better part of the food was eaten that night.  Katie and I stayed up even later after this watching a chick flick.  We woke up this morning wondering what to have for breakfast.

After so much junk food, we were so sick to our stomachs and overloaded on sugar that even Pinterest's deliciously sugary recipes had no appeal.  That's when you know it's bad! We have recently acquired a blender and thought it would be a fantastic idea to make a smoothie!  We thought we would throw in all sorts of healthy things such as an apple, strawberries, yogurt, and juice.  Having seen my parents my make an extremely healthy smoothie everyday for years, I thought, "hey! why not throw in some of their ingredients!  You can't even taste the carrots they put in!"  I just received some free carrots from our cooking class so we pulled them out.  I grabbed the biggest one thinking the bigger, the healthier!  Can't go wrong with that right....wrong. very wrong.

We threw the massive carrot in and cranked that puppy up!  Excited to taste our masterpiece, we grabbed a spoon and tried it out.  Note to the audience: carrots have a very dominant flavor.  It tasted heavily of carrots!  This is not how we imagined our delicious fruit smoothie turning out.  What else could we do but add in more ingredients to make up for the taste!  Lots and lots of strawberries were added and a splash of juice. Repeat.  No matter how many more ingredients were added, it still had a slight taste of carrot we could not shake.  We finally cut our losses and gave up at the point when our blender was full.  We could not repeat anymore.  That smoothie was about as smerfed up as it would get.  All in all, it was still pretty decent!  Although we might have just been saying that to make ourselves feel better...please just let us believe the former.

what not to do in the grocery store

there I was, happy as can be. grocery shopping. FOOD. you know when you're with your friends, nothing that would normally "embarrass" you really matters? well this time it did. tired of the same old toast and jam, one of my best friends, rachel, and i decided that enough was enough and that we needed actual food. we went to the local "smith's" grocery store to get all the essentials: greek yogurt, lettuce, and dark chocolate almond milk. we were in the vegetable isle when rachel told me she was going to get her bread. i was like, "ok! i'm staying right here and NOT MOVING!" not even 5 seconds later, i was like "hmm i need celery", so i took the cart and started running towards the celery while leaning on the cart. suddenly, i felt a sensation i had never felt before. i thought i was flying. the excitement died immediately when i realized what was happening. i leaned too far on the empty cart and it was tipping over and taking me down with it. all of the sudden, i found myself on my knees with the cart flipped up and pointing to the ceiling. i was in complete shock about what just happened, looked around, and i literally rolled myself into a circle of about 12 people who were all silently staring at me as i kneeled on the ground with a hypnotized look on my face. a woman quickly rushed to help me up and pick up my cart. she asked me if i was alright, but all i remember is saying "thank you so much" with glazed over eyes. i couldn't believe that rachel didn't see that. i was so embarrassed. i wanted to crawl into a pit and cry. she came back with her bread, confused at why everyone was staring at me and whispering. i explained what had just taken place and just like i would have been, she was surprised that that all happened in about a minute. if she was there, i wouldn't have felt as bad. it's official, never let your friend leave your side. not even for a minute because this can happen to you...if you're like me and get yourself into these situations seriously 4 times a day on average. 2 if i'm lucky, but let's get real here. i'm not.

My Growing Mind Control Powers

I don't know if any of you knew this about me, but I'm actually a superhero. Or something. I always suspected that I was psychic, but only recently have I begun to discover the true extent of my powers. I, it turns out, have the ability to magically implant the song of my choosing into the head of anyone around me (or at least all of my roommates). Additionally, by pure psychic prowess, I convinced about a third of my self-defense class to do jazz hands every time an annoying alarm went off. (It went off approximately every fifteen seconds, for like twenty minutes.) My song-implanting powers are especially potent when used on Sara, and are truly devastating when applied to the song "Some Nights" by Fun. In fact, I've advanced to the point where I don't have to play it or sing it at all. I just have to look at her the right way. I'm still working on how I can use this ability to completely take over her mind and force her to do my bidding, but if you have any suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

The Story of Why I'm Not Allowed to Go Back to the Library. Like, Ever.

There are two places in the library where I study.

1. The periodicals, my favorite place on campus.  Open, well lit, lots of windows, some trees (real ones, I kid you not), and plenty of space.

Unfortunately, I have a hard time focusing, so if I need to study hardcore, I can't stay in the periodicals.  There are too many people and far too many loud librarians who think loudly refilling the printers with paper is an hourly task.  In such conditions, I peace out and head upstairs to my second study spot.

2. The carrels on the opposite side of the south elevator on the fifth floor.  There are just two, they face a wall, and they are very hard to find.  Seriously, you go around a corner, then around another corner, then around another corner to find this little nook.  There is even a window to gaze out of when I feel stir crazy.  The big problem?  There is no local outlet.

Luckily, I'm a problem solver.  There is an outlet about fifteen feet away, and if one doesn't mind disturbing the tranquility of the fifth floor, you can shove the carrel over to sit by an outlet.

One lovely Tuesday, in an attempt to get into study mode, I went to the fifth floor and started to set up camp.  I started pushing the desk to an outlet when everything went smerfishly awry.

One of the legs of the desk broke.
(In my defense, I'm pretty sure that thing was structurally unsound before I got there!)

So there I was, panickily holding up a desk that was getting heavier by the second, with no idea what to do.  And the longer I stood there, the more hysterically funny the situation got.  Do other people get into these situations?  Seriously.  I was just standing, supporting the desk, trying so hard not to burst into laughter, doing my best to look completely innocent whenever someone came near.

Although the leg was precariously loose and threatening to snap, I managed to wrangle the desk back into a moderately reasonable position against the wall.  As soon as I was convinced it wouldn't fall over, I high tailed it out of there and have since resolved to avoid the fifth floor

I'm still trying to decide if I should a) never speak of this again, b) leave an anonymous note for the library staff about the broken carrel, c) show up in a carpenter's disguise (complete with mustache and toolbelt) and attempt to casually fix the problem on my own, or d) break the other legs (in for a penny, in for a pound).