Updated: NATURE IS FUN

   The weather was so nice today that I decided I’d join the resident Campus Hippies and chillax on the grass during my hour break. I found a tranquil little shady spot up the hill from the campus “Duck Pond” and proceeded to eat my granola bar while pretending to retain some of my accounting chapter I still haven’t gotten through completely. After relaxing in peace for all of five minutes, I couldn’t help but notice three ducks approaching me at a rather alarming pace. Not wanting to make a big deal and embarrass myself, I pretended to find it cute and entertaining that these three animals were coming to join me for my lunch. Not only were they basically running at me, but they were yelling during the entire journey in duck-tongue.

   I had two options: a) gather up all of my stuff and run out of there (this is what the majority of my brain was telling me to do) or b) act like it was no biggy and admire the lil’ munchkins as they yelled at me and nipped at my toes.

   Because I was surrounded by peers and didn’t really want to look like some duck-fearing fool, I decided to sit it out. I figured they’d go away once I shoved the rest of my granola bar in my mouth and ignored them. But they didn’t. It was awkward sitting there with three ducks squawking at my face at a mere distance of seven inches. To relieve the awkwardness, I decided to pull out my phone and act like I was enjoying my one-on-one time with nature. I smiled and took pictures of them to make it seem like we were coexisting in peace.

"Haha...so much fun! Ha...ha...." - me

   FINALLY they meandered down the hill toward another defenseless lunch-goer and I breathed a sigh of relief.

   THEN SUDDENLY! They came tearing back up the hill toward me, screaming louder than ever! Some new guy duck was chasing the girl duck (perv) and for some unknown reason, I was the “safety zone” because the she-duck came and sat right next to me. Squawking. Loudly. The three remaining guy dicks, I mean ducks, proceeded to circle me- one trying to get at the female, and the other two trying to guard her. SO AWKWARD. I just sat there while people walking on campus stared at me as some creepy duck love triangle got all Jerry Springer on me when I was just trying to ENJOY MY LUNCH GOSH DANGIT.

   To say the least, I’m going to find a new location. Also, ducks are gross. 

*UPDATED*: Two ducks flew into my car as I was driving home the next day. WHAT IS GOING ON. I'm being targeted. 

“IT’S NOT THAT FAR”, they said.

   In the spirit of the crummy, rainy April weather we’ve been having here lately, I figured I could write about something both warm and happy.

   It was my freshman year of college and my boyfriend’s parents surprised us with a trip to Cancun for Spring Break. I was SO. EXCITED. because a) I had never been outside of the U.S. before and b) I was actually doing something for Spring Break! I had dreamed about this moment: a College Spring Break Experience.

   I’d like to go on and on about all the fantastically wonderful things we did and saw while on the trip, but I’d hate to bore you or, heaven forbid, make you jealous. Instead I’ll divulge one of the most embarrassing moments of my life, sound fair?

   It was the last day of the trip and the four of us had to figure out a way to get both of the motorized scooters as well as the golf cart we’d rented back to the rental shop while also transporting our luggage and bodies to the ferry port. Eventually it was decided that my boyfriend and I would each ride one of the scooters back into town and they’d take the golf cart or something like that. I’m actually not 100% sure how it all worked out, but I do know that I got stuck with driving some scary contraption on two wheels.

   Just to make things clear and save myself from looking like some sheltered wimp-woman, I have ridden a two-wheeled vehicle before. Just not driven one. Ever. Not even for like 7 seconds.

   After practicing in the hotel parking lot for not nearly enough time, we had to hit the road or risk missing our ride from Isla Mujeres back to Cancun. I was nervous beyond all get out but my boyfriend kept reassuring me, saying “it wasn’t that far” and “everything would be ok”.

   So I donned my too-large red chipped helmet and prepared myself for a journey of a life time. Two miles into town, one right turn, one left turn. Got it. I can do this.

   I rode behind my boyfriend and kept a fairly good pace. It was actually fun once I got used to things. I mentally said farewell to the beautiful island and its folk. The wind was in my hair, the sun was on my shoulders, it was a glorious ride.

   Until we approached the first corner and I realized one important factor: he hadn’t taught me how to turn. My heart fell into my stomach and my whole body tensed up because I knew I was rapidly approaching a 90 degree angle and I had to do something about it or risk reenacting the whole bug-on-windshield effect against the looming building. My instinct was to put my right foot on the ground to, I don’t know, pivot myself and the scooter to the right instead of actually turning the handlebars. Surprisingly that was more painful than helpful so I resorted to relaxing my cement-arms just enough to barely constitute a turn at all. But I made it! That was a rough 3 seconds.

   Now that we were in town, the next corner came quickly. It was a lefty this time which stunk because I had just mastered the whole right-turn thing and now this. Almost ironically there was a giant black Escalade parked right at the corner. Someone had a sense of humor. And someone doesn’t care about their Escalade because it was about to become not so pretty.

   My heart dropped again and my arms returned to their tense state but, once again, I knew something had to be done here. I tried the left foot pivot thing because I’m not smart and it hurt. I was approaching the corner way faster than I would have liked to and saw the shiny black side of the Escalade coming closer and closer AND CLOSER and I panicked! I whipped the handle bars to the left while at the same time keeping my left foot on the ground and WHAM, on the ground. Me, the bike, everything. We skidded about three feet and I heard the crunch of glass and plastic. I was still somehow straddling it but wasn’t in much pain. I slid my left leg out from under it and checked for blood. Just a little scrape on the knee, no biggy.

   BUT MY PRIDE!

   I sheepishly looked up and saw probably 50 pairs of eyes staring at me, wide with astonishment. I looked ahead and saw my boyfriend running to my aid. I also saw I was literally twenty steps away from the rental shop. The owner came out and started yelling something in Spanish, flinging his hands into the air as he looked at me like I had just smacked his wife.

   As soon as the bike was removed from anywhere near me, I ran around the corner to hide. I was so embarrassed and all I could do was cry and feel sorry for myself as I stood in the middle of the sidewalk on some island in Mexico. My new bracelet was bent, my shorts were dirty, my makeup was streaked, and my knee was bleeding.

   “IT’S NOT THAT FAR”, they said. “EVERYTHING WILL BE OK”, they said!

   My boyfriend found me cowering around the corner and told me I’d have to come inside to pay for the damage. Well first he hugged me and told me it was ok, I guess I should include that so he doesn’t sound heartless. So I made my way to the shop with my head hung low, avoiding the eyes that were still staring. The man that was yelling before had apparently calmed down and seemed more like he was trying not to laugh. One of his helpers translated my sentence and I was to pay $40 for repairs to the scooter. Not so bad! I gave him $50 because I thought the extra $10 would make up for my stupidity. Then we left! We walked the four blocks to the ferry port and never said a word about the incident.

   So that was my last day in Mexico! I hope you feel better about yourself than you did before reading this. Because I slightly feel worse.

you make this difficult.

   I knew I was going to have to make some sacrifices when I made the leap to go to college. I knew my eating habits would get pretty bad, I expected to lose precious sleep, I even anticipated that my hygiene would suffer. But never did I expect this:

Nothing but class.

   In the beginning, I thought I’d be all hippie-like and not need a TV at all. That was short lived. I've come to realize I need that half hour every day to completely shut my brain off and watch something that requires absolutely no intelligence to understand. Like The Bachelor. I coerced my dad into letting me take our enormous prehistoric TV to school and was excited to set things up.

   Until I realized you don’t turn on a tv and channels just magically appear. In fact, the only thing that magically appears is a blue screen. Obviously upset, I decided to trek to Walmart while cursing adulthood under my breath. Twenty dollars later, I escaped that deathtrap with some sort of channel-creating-contraption. So close to relaxation!

   Luckily for me, it was easy to set up. I plugged things in, fixed the settings, and voila! It told me to do a channel scan to see how many were available for my area with my antenna.

   Eleven. Eleven channels. Twenty dollars bought me less than a dozen channels. Actually, ten, because one of them is some weird Montana Currency Trading station or something that only ever plays elevator music and shows really tired looking people discussing things in a room with no windows.

   I've made due with my lack of entertainment for the past two years. In fact, I’ve memorized the schedule for when shows are on that I actually enjoy. I’ve learned that The Price Is Right is actually kind of amusing, that The King Of Queens makes me laugh, and that SouthPark is not very fun to fall asleep to. Nonetheless, I’ve provided myself with the half hour of brain-shut-off-time that I so desperately wanted.

   But there is a definite downside. Whenever my upstairs neighbor walks through the right side of her living room, signal cuts out. Whenever a large truck of some sort drives by our house, signal goes out. Whenever you walk in front of the tv, signal goes out. When the wind blows too hard, THE SIGNAL GOES OUT. Sometimes it just goes out because it wants to and I spend fifteen minutes trying to figure out why. Then suddenly it comes back on like nothing happened. F U antenna, if you were a person I would not be your friend.

   Last night, for instance, I was trying to watch American Idol (yeah yeah, I know) while writing a paper and things were going great for the first half! I even took a second to thank my antenna for cooperating despite the absurd number of cars passing and a slight breeze. Then wham-o. Signal lost. Determined, I fiddled with the “bunny ears”, putting them in all sorts of positions. Pointing up, crossed, crossed to the side, pointing down, crossed to the other side, touching the wall, one up – one down, crossed again. NOPE! I admit to knocking it on the ground once, “patting” it a little, then maybe saying an unladylike word or two when deciding to give up. But then an idea struck me to put it on the ground! It worked. I’m a genius.

   Note: Spellcheck just had to correct the word “genius” for me…shucks.

Presenting: Things That Twist My Panties in a Knot

Group Projects.

   Someone please tell me when, in the “real world”, I will ever have to sit down with three people that are not remotely interested in the subject assigned and crank out a paper about accounting regulations. Oh, never? That’s what I thought, too. Then why do I have to do it every other week? What could I have possibly done to disturb the Group Assigning Gods so violently that they continually curse me with such horrible group mates? Do I have a giant sign on my back saying “PICK ME TO WORK WITH THE SLACKERS! PLEASE OH PLEASE OH PLEASE!”?

People who get way too excited about a 5 degree increase in temperature.

   Ok ladies, I realize you’ve been dying to bust out your crop shorts and figure-forming tanks but I just would like to point out that it’s 60 degrees out in the sun with a wind chill. I don’t know if you’ve picked up on the fact that it has snowed two out of the last five days, but that’s probably a sign that you should be wearing substantially more clothing. I get it! The semester is a-winding down and we can see the light at the end of the tunnel, the “light” being a glorious, warmth-filled summer. But it’s April in Montana and sundresses just aren’t going to cut it. Plus I can totally tell you used more tanning lotion on your right leg than your left.

People that are oblivious to the fact that we can hear their music through their headphones.

  Hey there, feel free to sit down next to me in this quiet computer lab at 9:00am! I see you’re working on some homework as well. Nice iPhone! Man, I wish I could remember to bring my iPod to school so I could listen to music while I work on stuff, too…Oh wow, your music is really loud. Five Finger Death Punch, huh? Classic. Oh yeah, you go right on ahead and turn that up a little more as if it’s not loud enough. Oh nooo I don’t mind the noise! I mean, I wholly hoped there would be an annoying distraction when I came to the lab to work on this! THANK YOU FOR ALLOWING ME THE PRIVILEGE OF LISTENING TO YOUR MUSIC WITH YOU! Make sure you keep tapping your foot and clicking your pen, too!

People who plan what they’re going to say back to you and completely ignore 

what you’re saying

Conversations usually go something like this:

   Me: “Hey! I’d really like to buy a bike. I’m not sure if I’m a medium or small frame though. Could you help me?”

   Bike Guy: “Sure! Do you feel squished when you’re on the small frame?”

   Me: “Yeah, kinda. I feel like my back is really rounded and my legs look like they’re about to hit my elbows-“

   Bike Guy: “Well I have like five of these bikes and the 29” wheels are really nice, you can like take them on trails and even ride them in town.”

   Me: “Um…that’s cool. So anyway, do you think that’s normal that my knees are so close to my arms?”

   Bike Guy: “Well how do you feel on the medium frame?”

   Me: “Stretched out more, but I don’t know if I should be that extended.”

   Bike Guy: “Sometimes you might need to come in and get your bike tuned up because after you’ve ridden it for a while, the cords and all that nonsense get all stretched out and it won’t respond the way you want it to.”

   Me: “Right. Well I’m gonna just go with the medium then…”

      Thanks for your help not.

made it!

   Well it finally happened. The day has come and gone. The 24 hour period I have awaited for nearly 1548 days came and went faster than I could have ever imagined.

   And it was AWESOME!

   When I found out my boyfriend had to work his typical 13 ½ hour Tuesday shift, I was pretty bummed. I told myself it’d work out, though, because it’d give me some time to finish my online homework and talk to my family on the phone. I was scheduled to work until 5:00 anyway, and his shift gets done at 7:30, so it wasn’t going to be too horrible.

   UNTIL I was surprised with the news that he also had an intramural volleyball game starting at 8:00 and if he won that one, there’d be another one right after that wouldn’t be over until 10:30.

   Um….excuse me, but isn’t everyone aware that it’s my 21^st BIRTHDAY?! I personally don’t give a flying raccoon if it’s “the finals” for intramural volleyball. I was so irritated. As disappointed as I was, I knew he didn’t plan all of that intentionally. He couldn’t exactly ask for his shift off because they’re short-staffed for his position, and he couldn’t just bail on his team. It didn’t help that his team consisted of mutual friends of ours, otherwise I probably would’ve recommended he grow a pair and ditch them.

   The night before my birthday, I was feeling pretty down. I explained to him how I felt about it and I could tell he felt bad. We ended up going to a late showing of The Hunger Games which I’d wanted to see all weekend, so it kind of lessened my self-pity. (It was awesome, by the way.)

   

   Tuesday morning I woke up to a sunny day and got to cross off the last day of my “Days ‘til 21” countdown. Woot! Unfortunately I had to go to class…all three of them. But my wonderful roommate offered to take me to my favorite coffee shop for my favorite coffee beverage, so it wasn’t so bad heading to school. (If you have never had the pleasure of enjoying a skinny hazelnut white mocha, you ain’t lived). Before we left the house, she also presented me with a beautiful red rose with a little piece of paper attached to it that said “Call (this number) at 3:00”. I was extremely surprised and excited!

   School was…school. It’s so weird having a birthday during the week in college, no one really cares. But 2:00 finally rolled around and I was free! I basically skipped to my car, enjoying the sun and thinking about the rose and its instructions. Unfortunately I am a Grade A Procrastinator and waited literally until the last minute to renew my driver’s license, so I had to go sit at the DMV for basically an hour and a half. Good times! Met a girl who I could’ve sworn was 13 until she told me she has a 4 year old son, overheard an elderly couple discuss President Bush (?), and listened to an overly-clothed woman behind me mouth-breathe. On the bright side, my license is 185% better than my old one!

   It was past 3:00 when I finally got out of there but I called the mystery number anyway. It turned out to be my roommate! (Not much of a surprise…I have her number memorized and recognized it when I saw it) But I played along and she told me to rush home for the next clue!

   I was presented with another beautiful rose with another little note and phone number. This one led me to my roommate’s boyfriend who lived a couple blocks away. I hopped in my car after grabbing a handful of Goldfish crackers and was off on an adventure!

   I literally drove all around town that day, every possible direction then back again. Each phone number led to a good friend of mine and it was so great to get to see all of them on my birthday! It amazed me how many people were involved. I think the final count was 8 roses! I felt like royalty or a celebrity or something as I drove around with the windows down, blasting my favorite tunes, with a pile of gorgeous roses on the seat next to me.

   The last rose had a slightly different message: “meet at Old Chicago at 5:30”. It was about 5:00 already so I rushed home to change into something a little more party-esque. My roommate and I rode there together and I was surprised to find a few of my closest friends awaiting me! And my boyfriend! He’d somehow managed to get off work a few hours early and had organized the entire scavenger hunt for me. I was so happy I could have cried!

   I ordered my first alcoholic beverage (draft Blue Moon with an orange wedge!) and enjoyed it thoroughly. I was peer pressured into getting up on the bar to do a shot while the whole restaurant sang Happy Birthday to me, it was hilarious! Oh, Montana…

   

   The boyfriend still had to play in his volleyball game so we went back to my house where we enjoyed a piece (or two) of the delicious peanut butter cup cheesecake my roommate MADE FROM SCRATCH for me before he headed to his game. Seriously the most delicious thing I have ever put into my mouth.

   After his game(s), it was off to “the bars”! It was pretty late already, (almost 11:00), so we didn’t make much of a run. But it was still a blast! Got a few free shots, a free hat, and had a darn good time! There were a few other groups out celebrating 21^sts as well so the atmosphere was pretty entertaining.

   All in all, my birthday ended up being more memorable than I could’ve ever imagined. I was so touched that so many people were willing to participate in the scavenger hunt to make my day extra-special! And especially impressed that my boyfriend managed to go through all of that trouble just for me. Now I can’t wait to go enjoy a tasty beverage with them all!