An email to a roommate MIA

Dearest Katie,

I have to be honest with you.  Ever since you left, we've had a hole in our hearts.  We were afraid that our apartment would be forever lacking one, and we couldn't bear living like that.  But then, something marvelous happened!  We replaced you!  Hannah is great, but after a few days we knew that she would never fill that hole in us created when you went to Jerusalem.  This led us to think:  Is Katie the reason for that hole?  We have replaced you, you'd think the hole would be full.  But no, after a few weeks thinking on the matter, we discovered the real reason for the hole: Zac Efron.  He's gone, Katie.  You dragged him out of our home, and we miss him terribly. Hannah doesn't replace him the same way she does you.  We needed another "Zac Efron"-esque roommate.  And we needed him fast.


That being said, it was Jessie's birthday yesterday!  We had a party and balloons and cake and the whole shibang.  It might be worth mentioning that it was Tyler Nicholas' birthday as well.  Have you ever met Tyler's sister, Sarah?  I've only met her once, but she's fantastic.  In fact, she printed out ginormous pictures of Tyler and hung them up in the halls of Building 4 so that anyone passing by would be bombarded with his smiling face, with text on the picture announcing it was his special day!  


It is now that our two stories combine.  It is here that I feel I must also warn you.  It has been far too long since we've seen you, Katie.  Like, a whole two weeks!  You may have forgotten.  Katie, I beg you to remember that we are the kind of people who would keep a bottle of urine in our fridge until it starts to freeze and turn to slushy pee.  We are the kind of people who get very excited over a new product known simply as "Handerpants."  And yes, Katie.  We are the kind of people who take full size pictures of other people's boyfriends and hang them on the walls of our apartment.  Especially if said pictures are this one:

Yes.  T-Nick is in the house.  Specifically OUR house.  And though he may not be a celebrity like Zac, you've got to admit, we've definitely got the next best thing.


Hope all is well with you and yours!  Have a wonderful day.  And please, try your hardest not to miss us too much.  Crying like that is just embarrassing.

-Sara

Marina can read my mind better than I can. I'm not sure if I should be worried or not. Probably.

So, there's something you need to know about me:  I think in colors and pictures.  This makes for some odd conversations sometimes.  Such as, when I was trying to describe a guy in our ward to one of my roommates, and the only way I could think of to distinguish him was, "he just exudes the color red.  All the time.  He just has a very maroon feel to him."  Believe it or not, this statement was met with several concerns about my sanity level, and they still didn't know who I was trying to describe.  Yeah....words is hard, guys.  :/

So, once upon a time, Marina played a song she liked while we were both in our room.

*skip forward about a month*

Me: Marina, what was that one song you played that one time?

Marina: uh.... Can you think of the tune or any of the lyrics or the main message of the song or what it was about?

Me: Nope.

But after thinking for a while, I was able to come up with three hints.  1) It was sung by a woman.  2) It may or may not contain the words "dog" and "mom."  3) It reminds me of the color yellow.

Really, the third hint made no sense to anyone but me (weird, I know), and no, I was not thinking of the song "Yellow" by Coldplay.  Or "Nothin' but a Hound Dog" or "Bohemian Rhapsody." The second hint was unsure.  I didn't actually know if the song contained those words.  So really, the first hint was the only one that was even somewhat helpful.
 
So we did the only rational thing: we played every song Marina had played on itunes from the last 3 months that was sung by a woman.  Surprisingly, this only took a few hours.  I didn't immediately recognize any of them as "The Song," but we found one that I thought might maybe sorta kinda was it. Emphasis on the maybe.

*skip forward a week or two*

I was playing the "Maybe Song" with Marina around.  She commented on what a shame it was that we didn't know for sure what "The Song" was.  That would have been the coolest detective moment ever.  Like on Psych, when they figure out the crime with almost no evidence.  Except, we literally had no evidence.  So cooler than Psych, if that's even possible.  We might even have to crack open a celebratory pineapple if we ever figured it out.

Since we had played every song she had on itunes, she mentioned offhandedly that it might have been a song she had just randomly played off of youtube or something.

"GASP!!" *Marina runs out of the room with an excited scurry*

She comes back and plays this song, which, by the way, is "THE SONG."

It's sung by a woman, and it totally has the words "dog" and "mother" in it!  :D

The moral of the story is, don't even think about thinking something you wouldn't want Marina to think you're thinking.  I think.  Or, the moral of the story is, if you ever have a thought, but aren't sure what that thought is, ask Marina.  She'll take your crazy hints and make sense of them.  Even if the hints make no sense at all.  We still don't know what's up with the color yellow.  Come on, reader.  Doesn't this song just bleed yellow to you?  No?  ....oh.  :(

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.

Mercenaries For Hire

Ok well maybe not mercenaries, it just sounded cooler. Actually, Katie and I are now master Private Investigators. But I mean that's basically the same thing right? Who hires a PI unless they plan on killing people. We just multi task. I guess that means we can charge you double! Anyways...

Once upon a time, there was a girl named Marina. Marina was in the process of obtaining housing with her friends. But you see, Marina was running late for class and did not pay attention to the instructions given to her by her friends. Those instructions were to fill out her information on the last sheet of her contract. At least she was kind enough to provide her signature (but only one, don’t get crazy).

[Insert Marina’s friends: Katie and Jessie, here after told from Jessie’s perspective]

So we made our decision on where to live for next year. We read the contracts…well really I read the contract and told them the important stuff. Now all we had to do was sign and turn in our contracts. However, we were having trouble finding a time where we could all trek over to the office. You see, we all have very different schedules and there is never a very good time that all of us are at home. It was then decided that Katie and I would have the honor of representing everyone. As they both had class and would be gone by the time we retrieved the documents, we told Sara and Marina to fill out their contracts and leave a blank, but signed check in the rooms and we would handle the rest.

Apparently Marina felt we should get to know a little bit more about her.

The back of the contract held tons of information such as home address, emergency contact, driver's license number, social security number, birth date, etc. There were also portions that needed to be initialed and a signature at the bottom. Guess which part we needed Marina to fill out? Yes, that's right, all of it! Guess which part Marina filled out?....only the signature. This put us in quite a bind. I had a class that I needed to be back for shortly, the office was closing, and Marina had no service for her phone nor would she had seen it if we texted her. So we did what we do best..creeping :)

That's right. We stalked Marina. We started with what we knew: her name, birthday, phone number, favorite color, age, email, and we hoped for our sake that we assumed correct on her criminal record. Next came the ward directory which had her home city. Then we moved to Yellow Pages where Katie searched her last name in the right city to find her home address. Using Facebook's contribution of her mother's name, we confirmed the address. All that remained was a social security and driver's license number. Being Marina's close and personal bestest friend...or her roommate...I happen to know where she keeps important documents. Luckily this super secret place was unlocked. I rifled through all of it until I held in my hand that golden little card with her SSN on it!

Yes, I know you are thinking how we failed to obtain every aspect of information, but cut us some slack, it was our first job. And if I had my dear friend Matt on call, I'm sure he could have easily walked me through hacking into the DMV to get her DL#. But seen as how I had already reported on my contract that my criminal record was clean [and it was written in pen!!] , there was no risking it. I don't think they would take lightly me smerfing government organizations.

Katie willingly took the identity of Marina long enough to initial all spots. And there you have it folks: a finished contract, completely and totally true. That is the whole and honest story of how Marina got hijacked. So the lesson here is...do what Jessie tells you! Or you run the risk of identity theft.