NOT friends.

    I cannot even explain to you my excitement about starting college in the fall of 2009. It consumed my thoughts, my dreams, my conversations; it was a problem. But it wasn't the classes that I craved, nor the "college student" status. It wasn't the freedom to be a party-crazy teenager (okay, maybe a little), or the ability to go get a Big Mac at three in the morning just because I wanted to. Believe it or not, I was most excited about getting a dorm roommate.

    After filling out the questionnaire inquiring me about my sleep patterns, my preferred noise level, and my number on a scale of friendliness (weird question), I impatiently awaited my roommate assignment. Every day I checked the mailbox, hoping to see that letter. Days and days and days went by until FINALLY I was matched with a person. Obviously, the first thing I did was get on Facebook and check this chick out. She turned out to be from Colorado, was a volleyball player, was pretty (dammit), and seemed nice. At least I gathered that from reading through four months worth of wallposts and comments. Oh, that's weird?

    I mustered up the courage to send her a message that went something like this:

Heyy! so i just got my dorm assignment and it gave me your name! so we must be roommates :) :) :)

    After pushing SEND, I immediately regretted the third smiley-face. A little extreme. I figured I seemed like a nice, semi-normal person, however, and awaited her response.

    More waiting. About three days later, I got this:

Yeah...i'm actually rooming with another girl from the v-ball team. sry

    Say what? 

    I most definitely did not wait two months to be shut down by this volleyball player.  I immediately went whining to my mom and begged her to "fix it! fix it!" so she called the school. It turned out that they had an abnormally high request for dorms that year and therefore had some complications. I, apparently, was accidentally matched with Miss Volleyball and would be re-matched with someone just as suited as soon as possible.

    More waiting. Luckily, they had a short timeframe to work within because by this time, it was approaching the first week of school. I received a letter two days before I left for college with a new name. A little hope was restored in my heart.

    Move in day was a rush. I still remember being on some sort of high as I walked the route to my new little "home". Using my key, I unlocked then entered my dormroom, expecting this amazing space in which I could place all my little trinkets and bejeweled picture frames. Instead, it looked as though my new roommate had decorated it to her particular taste:

    I was in shock. Not only was it a mess, but she had stolen the best spot in the room: the window area. All I was left with was the lonely unlit spot next to the door. Yay me.

    Just as my family was joining me in my disappointment seizure, the culprit walked in. Gathering myself and trying my best to be friendly, I remembered that you can't judge a book by its cover. The name on the paper I was sent read "Tysha" which I assumed was just a new-wave way of spelling the common name "Tisha", so I said:

"Hi! You must be Tisha! I'm excited to finally be here, and to me-" -myself, a little forced enthusiasm coming through

"It's T-y-sha." -Tysha, the interrupting messy person

From that moment, I knew it was going to be a rough year. My family stood awkwardly with matching awkward smiles painted on their faces. Tysha walked in, plopped onto her bed, grabbed three Cheetos off her desk chair, and began texting.

To Be Continued....

where am i?

    I'm an accounting student. When choosing this particular path, I realized I was subjecting myself to a group of individuals that would probably be classified as "nerds". I was ok with this because I've found that nerds tend to have a sort of Secret Nerd Club, or Smart People Club if you're more politically correct, and oftentimes congregate in study groups and help their fellow Nerds/Smart People out. I could use all the study help I can get, so I was willing to expose myself to such a lifestyle.

    Unfortunately, I didn't take into account the people who are Nerds, but who also contain some other traits that classify them as Weird. The thought didn't even cross my mind.

    Let's make the differences a tad clearer:

1. Nerd: "A foolish or contemptible person who lacks social skills or is boringly studious" (according to Wikipedia)

2. Weird: "eerie, uncanny, unearthly" (according to answers.com)

    Ok, so answers.com's definition is not really what I was intending, so let me break it down into my own biased explanations:

1. Nerd: a person that lacks social skills (a given) and who also tends to be ultra smart and you envy them because they can understand stuff really quickly and you can't, oh and they tend to have a mild case of acne

2. Weird: a person that does really distracting and inappropriate things in class and for some reason thinks no one else will notice

    Those are pretty vague, but they'll do.

    Basically, the people who surround me in my Business Finance class are Weird. I figured this out the other day when I showed up a little late for class and was shunned to the back row. (On a side note, that's one good thing about choosing this major: people are really serious about getting to sit up front, which leaves me at least the back four rows to spread out in.)

    As our professor began lecturing about straight-line depreciation on a long-term asset (you just gagged, didn't you?), I couldn't help but notice the fairly normal-looking gal to my right fiddling with her pen. Upon closer inspection, I realized she was digging gunk out of her fingernails and cuticles. It wasn't just one fingernail, it was all ten. And it wasn't just for a minute or two, it was for the whole damn class. I'm not lying. I watched. Why? Because it was really, really distracting.

    While watching her out of the corner of my eye, with probably a really disgusted look on my face, something else caught my attention. Farther to my right and up two rows, another fairly normal-looking girl was messing with her hair. Of course I got distracted again and began watching her instead of Fingernails. This girl took it up a notch. I watched as she reached up, found a stray strand of hair, twirled it around her fingers, gave it a taught little tug, unwound the now unattached hair from her fingers, held it like dental floss, and put it in her mouth (I'm assuming between her teeth).

    What. The. Hell.

    That also continued through most of the class. I couldn't help thinking "If she does this during every class, every day, how does she still have hair?!" Some people are just blessed I guess.

    Meanwhile, the boy next to Hair Eater was getting all worked up about this enormous leprosy-looking scab on his forearm. I watched, silently praying please God no, don't let him pick it, please no but to no avail. I stared in horror as he proceeded to pick and scrape and tug on his scab, flicking the newly detached pieces sporadically across the classroom. I even saw a fragment go flying and stick to Hair Girl's purse.

    If you're feeling nauseous, I apologize. But I had to give you a glimpse into my life as well as my evident future. Next time you hire an accountant, make sure they aren't Weird like Fingernails. Or Hair Eater. Or Mr.Scab. 

anger toward computer

    I know I just posted last night, but something has happened and I must explain.

    At work, I get to use a computer. This is awesome because a) I can blog and b) I can Google things like "Worst Celebrity Plastic Surgery". (Go ahead, look in my viewing history. It's there, and it's not pretty.) I never really know where I'm going to be "placed" (I say "placed" because it's more like "sent" but to make myself feel better, I pretend like my boss actually cares where I go) from day to day, which is ok because my usual basement location gets kind of drafty.

    Right now, I have been "placed" in the basement to work on probably the oldest computer in the entire building. It's not old old, like those ancient desktop computers that look like some creature made from mega-blocks, but it's pretty old. It would be fine if they updated it once in a while, or at least ran a virus scan, but they don't. Which is why I get to use it, no one cares about the basement computer!

    My place of work is in the midst of organizing a ton of school-related events which means I get stuck updating addresses of invitees and making "reserved" signs. Sounds pretty easy, right? It would be if the computer didn't hate me.

    Today I was told to update invitation info. I opened up the attachment in my email, began the mindless process of copying-and-pasting, and then I made the amateur mistake of trying to minimize a window. I should have known better. After trying to patiently wait for about three minutes, this is what my screen had for me:

   Nothing. It literally hadn't even began to "minimize". Getting a little irritated, I wiggled the mouse around. Nothing. More wiggling=nothing. Exaggerated ESC key jabbing=nothing. CTRL+ALT+DEL=nada. Slamming mouse up and down= aha!

   Progress! I can just imagine those little fish taunting me, saying "haha you still can't see all of us! And you're not going to for at least five more minutes! Haha you suck!"

    By now, I was thoroughly pissed. I contemplated punching the screen but realized that would be dificult to explain to my boss. I resorted to just slapping the sides, which probably wasn't a good idea, either. I clicked around, moved my mouse, CTRL+ALT+DELed probably fifty times, and ESCed to no avail.

    SEVEN MINUTES LATER (I'm not even kidding you) it finally sorted itself out. I was relieved but still overwhelmingly irritated. Can't wait for it to happen again! Lesson learned: don't try anything "fancy" on old computers. Stick strictly to simpler methods such as typing, clicking with mouse, and using Word for as many projects as possible.

ironing

    Every trendy person owns a pair of cuffed beige shorty-shorts, fact. I say "person" because I have indeed seen menfolk sporting them as well as overly tanned teenaged girls. They are a great investment; they're comfy, they're casual, they're cuffed. They're just overall fashionable.

    What they don't tell you in American Eagle and Old Navy is that there is a very important requirement you must adhere to after purchasing said shorts: you must iron.

   I don't think I've ever really ironed anything in my entire life. Sure, I asked my mom if I could "iron" her work shirt once or twice when I was younger, only to drench it with that cool misty-button and leave weird waffle-like marks on the cuffs. That's why I said only once or twice.

   I remember going over to my grandma's house on a laundry day and she would literally shut herself in their "den" all day in order to complete the entire laundry process. It went something like this:

1. gather all clothing
2. separate into a bajillion little piles (don't even think about putting a tan shirt in with the whites!)
3. begin washing/drying process
4. after every load is dried and folded in basket, bring to den
5. begin ironing EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF CLOTHING

    My young brain could wrap around the first four steps, but the fifth just seemed a little extreme. And even the extreme would be taken to the extreme when she began ironing my grandpa's underwear. I could do nothing but gape in awe.

    Now that I am in the real world (a.k.a. my mom doesn't do my laundry every week anymore), I had to figure out how to look normal in my clothing. I could handle the sorting, washing, drying, and folding pretty well, but ironing was this foreign word that made me angry. I got an iron somehow, but I don't think I've taken it out of the box. Besides, I only have one item in my closet that really needs to be ironed: the cuffed beige shorty-shorts.

    I really love those shorts, they have been there in both good times and bad, but whenever I consider pulling them out of my rubbermaid stacker/dresser I get all overwhelmed with the daunting task of ironing those damn cuffs. Why don't the sewers in Vietnam or wherever just add a few extra stitches here or there so the cuffs will stay up on their own? This I don't know.

    To avoid getting the iron out, and to still maintain a look of self-caring, I have found a solution.

    Why yes, that is me ironing my cuffs with a straightner. Genious!

an unexpected christmas

   I traveled back to my before-college home a couple times in August to visit my family, and during one of my visits we pulled an old memory out that I just had to write about.

   My little sister, and only sibling, went through a phase about five years back in which she really, really wanted a doll house. Not a Barbie Dreamhouse, but an actual wooden dollhouse with wooden dolls and wooden furniture. I thought that was really lame, to say the least, and asked Santa for a 2006 AmericanGirl stone-age-looking equivilant to today's touchscreen devices. So cool.

   Christmas Eve, my parents were setting up all the gifts that Santa had brought my sister and I when they made a discovery that will forever make me laugh.

   They had looked high and low on the internet to find the perfect wooden dollhouse and family. They ordered everything, getting excited about my sister's expected reaction to her dream present, and the package showed up shortly after at our little home. They didn't even bother to check inside the box, trusting that everything would be just how they had ordered.

   Well, the night before the big day, my mom was unwrapping all the parts and pieces when she gasped.

    "Uh, honey?" - my alarmed mother

    "Hmm?" - dad

    "This family is black."

    "Black?"

    "Yeah. And there's no dad. We got a black family with no dad."

   Inside of the bubble wrap sat a mother, two children, and an infant.

   I don’t in any way intend this post to sound racist. But seriously, a black family with no dad? How much more stereotypical could you get? I can just imagine the person whose job it is to wrap up mass manufactured little wooden families looking at my parents’ order form and thinking “Another perfect little white family, eh? Suck on this!”.

   My parents couldn’t exactly give my sister a dollhouse without any dolls, and not many stores in our little town stay open until the crack of dawn on Christmas Day, (or stay open the week of Christmas, period), so they had only one choice: act normal.

   The next morning, my sister was completely elated after seeing her new house and its inhabitants. She didn’t mention their color at all! It was actually really cool; look how far we’ve progressed, America! When my mom asked where the daddy was, she simply replied “the war”.

   I didn’t get the pleasure of hearing this story until a couple years ago, and it’s by far one of the funniest tales I’ve heard. Lesson learned: check to make sure the dolls you ordered are what you ordered. Or, better yet, raise your kids to not care! Acceptance is essential.