Brownie Thief

I come home from college. I eat dinner with my family. I decide that we should have some dessert, so I make brownies. When they come out of the oven they are hot, so I set them on the counter to let them cool. I go into the living room to watch some of abc's 25 days of Christmas. My Mom calls from the kitchen asking if she can have a brownie. I say yes. She seems to be in the kitchen for a while so I walk in and witness something like this....

I think to myself, "Why is my Mom acting all suspicious getting a brownie?"

She rushes away without saying anything so I walk over to find this.

Cool Mom. Real cool.

It's nice to be home.

Donkeys After Midnight

I think my college dorm might be haunted. Not in a bad way, but in a weird way. You see, on most nights when I go to bed at around 11 or 12, I am like this....

But for some reason if my roommate, Caryn, or I go to bed after 12 we end up like this....

Weird things happen after midnight. Well, not really things, more like weird conversations. I don’t know what it is, but if we go to bed after 12, we are bound to have some weird stuff happen. Let me take you through a typical after 12 night for Caryn and I.

Usually Caryn is in bed first so I am the one to turn off the lights. You know how as soon as you turn off the lights its pitch black because your eyes haven’t adjusted? Well, that usually happens to me…. Unless it’s after midnight. Tonight, as I turn off the lights, I see what looks like a light above me and I tell Caryn I see God’s light. We giggle, and then I climb into bed. And then we both see a flashing green light. It freaks us out, so I frantically shine my phone light at it only to discover that it’s just the smoke detector flashing. Neither of us have noticed it until now. We giggle some more. I roll over in my bed and yell because something hits my face. It’s just my silly little teddy bear. I throw him at Caryn even though I can’t see her. We giggle more and she throws him back.

After we calm down from all the giggling (sorry suitemates), the weird conversations start. We talk about random stuff like class systems within IV, maybodys and nobodys, alcohol consumption, cranberry juice, and how bad words originate. I never really know how the conversations start, but they are always pretty intense. It usually goes something like this....

And then we proceed to have an in depth conversation about the history of a "donkey".

When we are done, we laugh about the conversation, and then we go to bed. Like I said earlier: weird things happen after midnight.

Nontraditional Carrot Cake

(I know it’s a little late for a thanksgiving post, but I’ve finally had enough time to sit down and write one so you’re just going to have to deal with it.)

Thanksgiving break this year was pretty good. Thanksgiving day? Not so much. Let me start at the beginning. For the past two years, my aunt has been able to get all of us cousins to go to this 5K Turkey Trot. It’s a lot of fun, but it requires us to get up at 6am on thanksgiving morning and run 3 miles. Most of us are in college now. We value sleep. So when my aunt brought up the turkey trot this year, we all looked away. The thing is, my aunt doesn’t give up easily. That can be a good thing…. Just not in this case. She kept trying to make the turkey trot sound like it was this awesome once in a lifetime thing that we were going to miss and regret our whole lives. But, trying to get us to come to the turkey trot was like trying to sell us carrot cake. No matter how you dress it up, its still carrot cake. Plain. Old. Carrot cake. No one wanted it. And no one ate it. This was the first year that no one went to the turkey trot on thanksgiving morning…. except for my aunt and my uncle. Snaps to them!

I would really like to skip my rant about my thanksgiving meal that day. My most of my aunts thought it would be funny to have a nontraditional thanksgiving dinner this year. Nontraditional as in NO mashed potatoes, NO cranberry sauce, NO green beans, and NO stuffing. I was not happy about that. NOT happy. Another downer about that day was that my Dad burned his hand really bad. He was holding those little sparklers you can run around with and draw your name in the air and stuff, and when he went to light them, they all caught fire and basically burst into flame instead of becoming all sparklerey. He got second-degree burns and had to go to the emergency room. He’s better now, don’t worry:)

Aside from the turkey trot, and the nontraditional thanksgiving dinner, the rest of my break was pretty good. I got to go to D.C with my cousins and see EVERY. SINGLE. MONUMENT. EVER. BUILT. No joke. That’s what you have to expect when you go to any sort of museum or historical place with my cousin Tim. I honestly only learned 3 new things. 1) There’s a misspelled word in the Lincoln Memorial (Freedom is spelled Ereedom), 2) If you stand in front of the Einstein statue and look him in the eyes and talk, your voice will be amplified, and 3) That the Boy Scout monument looks really weird with the half naked adults standing behind a little boy scout. Again. Really. Weird.

On black Friday we did what everyone else does, we went ice-skating:) It was a lot of fun, and I’m pretty sure if my cousin’s Tim and Melissa were given lessons, I’d be watching them in the Olympics. They are that good. Funny thing though, if you remember my post from last thanksgiving (This is our Family) you should remember when I wrote about how my cousin, Cecylia, got a number from a staff member. Well, hehehehe, guess who was working at the rink on black Friday this year? Yup! The staff member. Nick, to be exact. And the funny thing was, he remembered her from a year ago! Crazy. It’s probably because my cousins and I are a huge group that always gets into trouble because we start train lines, and speed skate, and knock over little kids. Yeeeeaaaah, now that I think about it, that’s probably why he remembered her.

To sum it up, this year I got to spend time with 40 family members packed into houses that were meant for families of 5. We went to D.C, played trivia games, ice-skated, hung out with my grandma, played a made up game called “The Block Game”, ate pizza, had sleepovers, and giggled about things like farts;) Aside from real cake and a real thanksgiving dinner, what more could I ask for?

Alison vs. Squirrel

So there I was today just minding my own business walking to class, when an evil squirrel decided to stand right in front of the stairs I was planning to walk down. If you know me, you know that I hate squirrels. I think they are disgusting, and creepy, and slightly frightening. Well, I wasn't just about to keep walking right past the squirrel, so I just stopped and stared at it.... willing it to run away. It stopped what it was eating and just sorta stared back. It went something like this.

Then he ran away, and I proceeded walking to class, convinced that I could telepathically communicate with that squirrel. Life is pretty awesome.

Why I Hate the Wind

Why I hate the wind....

Why JMU groundskeepers hate the wind....

Screw you, wind and your blowyness.

3 Days of Halloween. Day 3: Costumes

Over the years, I’ve had some pretty good costumes, and I owe a many thanks to my mom for making most of them. I’ll try to recall some of them here and include picture when I can, but honestly, I don’t have very many pictures. I asked my parents to send me some, but instead they sent me a bunch of pictures from a camp that we went to where we had to dress up…. Not Halloween. But I’ll do my best.

The first costume I can remember was a bat and I was probably in like first grade. I wore all black, and my mom had sewn on wings to my shirt. Pretty simple. Pretty classic. Only that was the year I had discovered cheap drugstore make-up. I gross myself out to think of how much I wore that night. The lipstick that was so red it would burn your eyes out, and bright blue eyeshadow. I don’t even know how that would go with the whole bat thing I had going but I was young. I also thought eyeshadow was supposed to go on your eyebrows…. Lets just say that I’m glad I don’t have a picture of that year.

The next one I can think of was second grade and it was the first year Kathryn and I had done a costume together. Everyone had always told us that we looked like twins so we had decided to dress up as Mary-Kate (Kathryn) and Ashley (Me). Only Kathryn’s feet started to hurt her halfway through trick-or-treating so she had to be pulled in a wagon and go slowly with all the parents. I decided to go ahead because I wanted to stay with all the other little kids…. a bad idea. When I got to the door, the people would ask me, “Oh hi! What are you dressed up as?” And I would say, “I’m Ashley!” And then they would say, “Hi Ashley, what are you dressed up as?” Probably the worst costume ever.

The next few years Kathryn and I did all of our costumes together. We did stuff like a pair of dice, raisins, a pair of blue genes, and my favorite, a two-headed monster. We did that one for 2 consecutive years because we loved it so much. Here’s a picture

Sorry about the horrible quality, but there we are on the upper right in green. My little brother is in front of us with the big red box around him. Don't know what that was supposed to be.... and hey look! It looks like Lady Gaga got her style from the kid in the center with the blonde wig!

Only sometimes people didn’t get what we were. We got asked of we were a cow, or a goat. I don’t see where they got that idea from. We also got asked if we were the headless horseman. Pretty close guess seeing as we have 2 HEADS!

I also don’t really want to mention this one because eits so embarrassing, but my friend Lanie, and I dressed up as trees with a clothesline one year. Like I said, embarrassing.

In high school some friends form my cross country team and I dressed up as the Wizard of Oz. I was Glinda, my friend Lanie was Elphaba/The Wicked witch of the west (of you haven’t seen Wicked), Kathryn was the cowardly Lion, my friend Morgan was The scarecrow, my friend Jessie was Dorthey, and my friend Oshin was the Wizard. The person who was supposed to be the Tin man got sick:(

Last year, I was Lady Gaga. That was definitely my most favorite costume. I had random people coming up to me asking for a picture with me. It was so fun

This is was the actual dress she wore for the people who don't know what I'm talking about

And finally, this year I was Avril Lavigne one night, and the Taylor Swift song “You belong With Me” another night. So fun!

Avril Lavigne

"She wears short skirts, I wear T-Shirts, She's cheer captain, and I'm on the Bleachers" Get it?

I hoped you enjoyed my 3 days of Halloween:) Happy Halloween!

3 Days of Halloween. Day 2: The Art of Trick-or-Treating

Trick-or-treating was really intense in our neighborhood. As kids, we would always have races to see who would be the first one to ring the doorbell. For some odd reason, it was awesome if you were the first one to ring the doorbell. Kathryn and I got really good at it. We would win a lot of the races, even if our legs were tied together. (We had the costume one year that required us to have 3 legs, and even then, we would still beat the other kids to the door.) Like I said, we were intense. Maybe that’s why we became runners. None of the other groups of kids would ever race to the doorbell though, and I think I know why. They had probably been terrorized by my Dad. One year, my dad dressed up like a scarecrow. A really good scarecrow. He wore a mask to cover his face, stuffed stuffing into his body suit to make him look lumpy, and stuck bits of straw around any openings in his costume. The he sat in a lawn chair outside our house, put the bucket of candy and a “take one” sign on his lap, then he went limp. It looked so good. Kids weren’t sure if he was real or not so they would approach very cautiously. I wish I had been there the time my Dad scared two boys. They were probably around 15 years old or so and they were dressed as jock football players. A perfect target. They were nervous to approach, but one of the boys finally got enough courage to go up and poke my dad. He didn’t move. The boy was relieved because he was assured that my Dad was just a stuffed scarecrow. The other boy then approached and they both started to take candy. That’s when my Dad sprung up shouting, “AAAAARRRRGGGGGHHHHH!” According to my Dad, those boys screamed like little girls all the way to the end of my driveway…. And I have a long driveway. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had peed their pants on their flight away.

Our group of kids got really good at trick-or-treating though. There’s an art to it. Over the years, you learn which houses to avoid and which houses to definitely go to, even of it is -30 degrees outside. We would always skip the houses that gave out the diet granola bars. (This was actually a “candy” one year). There was also one lady that only let you take 1 small piece of candy even though she had a giant bucket full. There aren’t that many kids in our neighborhood so what are you gonna do lady, eat it all by yourself? One year she had candy and balloons and she told us that we could pick one or the other. One little girl didn’t hear her so she took a piece of candy and a balloon. The lady was faster than lightening. She snatched the balloon back yelling, “Give me my balloon back!” And that was the last year we went to her house. But regardless of how many houses we would skip, we still got a shit ton of candy. Screw the little pumpkin buckets, we used pillowcases…. And we filled them up. The amount of candy we got could last us over a year. It was ridiculous. I’m surprised I don’t have more cavities. And the houses that just left the candy bucket out with a sign that read, “Take one”…. Well, we totally would take more than one. One time we got caught too. It was funny. We went up to this house that left their candy out with the sign, only they had really good candy. Like Nerds, and chocolate, and these marshmallow pumpkins, and candy eyeball lollipops. I mean cool stuff! So, when we went up to the house, we started to take one of each type of candy, giggling really loudly the whole time, which is probably why we got caught. The people were actually home, and they opened the door just as we were each taking a handful of candy and shoving it in our pillowcase. We just kind of stared at them for a while…. Then we ran. We booked it outta there. It probably made us look worse but whatever, we got awesome candy from them.

As time went on, we trick-or-treated less and less and started instead doing these court parties. Our whole court would get together and have a nighttime BBQ. We’d have games like bobbing for apples, and “eat the donut without using your hands”, and tag. They were actually really fun. It was a great time to socialize and have fun for Halloween. Maybe that why I love Halloween so much. I’ve always had a great time. It’s never really been a boring holiday for me. I do kinda miss those times now I’m at college, but I’ll make the best out of Halloween this year:)

3 Days of Halloween. Day 1: A Very (not so) Scary Story

One of the things that I enjoy about the Halloween season is the terror that comes with it. For example, when I was really little we used to go to tons of haunted houses. I hated and loved them at the same time. The only one I didn’t actually like in any way was this really crappy one my family went to that was in the middle of nowhere. What made it so bad was that you could see the fake monster puppet thing before it popped out at you, thus making it not very scary. I mean, you couldn’t sink a little more money into this attraction to make it a little scarier? The only thing about that haunted house that made it slightly scary was the fact that the tour guide had a razor knife that he pulled on us. Haha, now that I think of it, he totally could have slit our throats and killed us because it was definitely a real knife. I mean it would be easy to hide the bodies because we were in the middle of nowhere. Anyway, that wasn’t the scariest, not scary haunted house I’ve been to. There was this one haunted house ride I went on that freaked me out way more. It wasn’t even that scary, or so I am told. I wasn’t able to really experience the ride because I freaked out too early and missed most of the actual “haunted” part. Let me explain. It was a cart ride, one where you sit in a cart and it takes you through the house and you see scary things that jump out at you and there is this scary music playing in the background to enhance the mood of scariness. I went on the ride with my younger cousin and her Dad. To get into the haunted house, the cart had to pass under these streamers that were meant to block out the light from outside. Well, I thought the streamers were part of the ride, and I thought that they were supposed to be snakes hanging from the ceiling. If you know how much I hate snakes, you wouldn’t be surprised how I reacted. I freaked out and wanted to get away from the “snakes”, so I managed to wiggle out of the safety bar, curl up in a little ball at the bottom of the cart, and close my eyes for the rest of the ride. I was like 7…. Give me a break. I think I scared the operators of the ride because the cart emerged from the haunted house with only 2 visible riders when it went in with 3. They probably thought I was running around the inside of the house lost and alone getting attacked by the evil spirits. Once they found out that I was just curled up at the bottom, I think they were more confused as to how I even got out of the safety bar in the first place. Lets just say that even though I like haunted houses, I usually freak out a little more than the average person. And that’s why I consider this was a very (not so) scary story!

I do have an actual scary story though. Well, more like creepy and hilarious and innocent and maybe a little bit scary. Have you ever heard of, or been to one of those things where you reach your hand into something and you feel spaghetti and they tell you it’s hair? Or peeled grapes are the eyes? You usually see these things at Halloween parties and stuff. Well, when I was still a Girl Scout, our Girl Scout troop hosted one of those things for some younger girl scouts. My best friend, Kathryn, and I were mad scientists and we had one of those “reach-in-and-feel” board things…. Only we got too into it. We had the normal peeled grapes for eyes, and spaghetti for hair, and frozen corn for teeth, but we also had a lot of other stuff. One of the holes that the girls had to reach into was labeled “Heart”. The girls would reach in and feel what felt like an actual heart and when they pulled their hand out, it would usually have a little bit of what looked like blood. It was blood, but they didn’t know that. You see, when they asked us, “Ewwww. What is that?” we would respond by saying, “A Heart”. Then, they would say, “No, I know what it’s supposed to be, but what is it really? It feels so real!” and we would respond, “It really is a heart. It’s a cow heart. And that is actually left over cow blood, so you should probably wash your hands when you’re done.” Then they would freak out a little because they weren’t sure if we were just really into our roles, or if we had actually made them feel a cow heart. I’ll let you in on a little secret. It was actually a cow heart. We had gone to the butchers the day before and bought a cow heart to put in the hole. The little innocent girls had actually felt a cow heart! Haha! Isn’t that disgusting, yet hilarious? I mean, what else were we supposed to use? We also had a cow’s liver for liver, and a sheep’s brain for brain. Gross, I know. But it made for probably the most intense and awesome “reach-in-and-feel” board ever! We may have made a few girls cry when they found out that we weren’t joking, but hey, it’ll be a great story for them to tell in the future!

The Statistics of Stat 220

Time professor spends....

How do I make it through this awesome 8 am class, you ask? Well my friends, this is My Secret :) Seriously.... try it. I would also like to add that my professor looks like Santa Claus.... with a shorter beard.

Bubble Popping

Have you ever noticed how in a classroom, no one sits next to each other unless they know the person, or if they have no other choice. It seems like everyone leaves at least one seat between themselves and the other person. I think people are afraid to pop the other person’s bubble and get to know them. We tend to sit in a room like checkers.

I know I do this. I try not to, but it’s comfortable sometimes to just sit one chair away. I didn’t used to be like this. I used to be way more outgoing. I was a bubble popper with no regrets. That’s how I met my current best friend, Kathryn!

It was the first day of Kindergarten, and my family (and hers) were both new to the neighborhood, so naturally I didn’t know anybody else in my neighborhood. We were waiting at the bus stop and I saw her standing by her mom. I really just wanted friends so I walked right up to her and probably said something like, “HI! I’M ALISON! I JUST MOVED HERE! DID YOU JUST MOVE HERE? WHAT’S YOUR NAME?”…. I was kind of obnoxious. Now, the thing about my friend, was that she was almost mute when it came to meeting new people (She isn’t now, don’t worry) so meeting someone like me was probably a little overwhelming. She just kind of stared at me and didn’t say anything. Clearly we weren’t meant to be friends so it was time for me to move on…. wrong! Kindergarten Alison did not let that stop her. Instead of noticing that Kathryn didn’t want to talk to anybody and that’s why she was sitting alone on the bus as close to the window as possible just staring out the window, I decided I would still try to befriend her. I sat right next to her. And I probably talked the entire rest of the way to school. If I remember correctly, it was probably something like this….

I’m glad I popped her bubble, because now we are bestest friends!

I challenge you to try to defy the norm. Sit right next to someone even if there is an open seat one spot away. Introduce yourself to a stranger in your class. Go ahead…. Pop a bubble!

My Summer Summed Up

Well, its that time of year again. Summer is coming to a close almost as fast as my family goes through alfredo sauce. It’s a little sad. I feel like I’m not really ready to go back to all the hard work and tests. I’m excited for being back at JMU, but dreading all the hard work and studying. It’s like that feeling you get when you find that one open parking space and you’re all excited and ready to pull in, only to realize that there’s a mini cooper hidden there. Needless to say, I had a pretty decent summer. I had fun, and I learned a few things too, one of which being that my phone has a small light sensor on it. This is so it can adjust the backlight depending on the outside light conditions to make the screen easier to see. You know, I just noticed this awesome high-tech feature a few days ago? And I’ve had my phone for two-and-a-half years now. Huh. Anyway, London was definitely the highlight of my summer, but there were some other fun things thrown in the mix!

My Grandma turned 90! Twice! Apparently she has 2 legal birthdays. Something to do with her records being destroyed in a fire and the people writing her two sets of new ones. They gave her two birthdays, but no middle name. And for some reason, my grandma won’t tell anyone her middle name. It’s soooo annoying. If you ask her about it she either pretends she doesn’t hear you, or she laughs and changes the subjects. After all these years of asking, the only thing I’ve gotten out of her is that her middle name may have something to do with the fact that she was born in a pickle patch. (I know it’s technically a cucumber patch, but she always says pickle). She won’t say anything else, so I’ve decided her middle name must be pickle. Frances Pickle Orzechowski. Grandma Pickle for short. It has a nice ring:) But seriously, my grandma is pretty cool. She may be physically old, but she is young at heart. She’s one of those old ladies that will make these harsh comments like, “I can’t believe your mother let you out of the house wearing that!” and then chuckle to herself quietly. She’s also super competitive. She lives in an assisted living home, and they always have competitions like Bingo. Do not mess with Frances Pickle when she plays Bingo!!!! A lot of times we visit her and my mom will help the other old ladies by making sure they hear the number that was called out, or put the chip on the right spot. This results in evil glances and mumbles from Grandma. I don’t think my mom is a part of the will anymore…. Haha! Kidding!

Another fun thing. My cousin, Melissa, came down from Michigan to visit with me for a week. We had loads of fun singing to “Last Friday Night” and figuring out what “ménage a trios” meant, getting so lost that we ended up at the airport, and running red lights (only sorta kidding;) We also got to experience one of my Mom’s work softball team’s game. It was pitiful. The score was 16-0 in the fifth inning… my mom’s team was the “0”. What makes it worse was that the pitcher on the other team threw a perfect game. That means not a single person on my Mom’s team even got a hit, or a chance to get to first base. Pretty sad, I know. It got to the point where one guy on her team named Jim went up to base, hit the ball, and walked back to the dugout. Haha! He didn’t even attempt to run to first base because he knew he was going to be out on a fly ball. I guess no one ever taught Jim to “never give up!”

We had a couple of rainstorms at home, one of which my dog, Dakota, freaked out. (If you know me, you know that I think rainstorms in the spring are awesome because I like to go outside and just get wet and dance around). Anyway, Dakota was trembling like crazy and following me everywhere because she was afraid to be alone when it was thundering. So now I will add thunder to Dakota’s list of fears. (Other things she’s afraid of include, almost anything you shake at her, water, people who ring our doorbell, my phone, cameras, our two small birds, our neighbor, and deer.) It’s comforting to know that my dog is a bit of a coward.

I know this isn’t a lot of stuff, but I don’t really feel like writing every little thing I did over summer. I got to go to London, go to the beach, and visit with friends and family…. What could be better? The only thing that would be cooler than all that would be an earthquake…. Oh wait…. We had one of those today. Well then, I guess my life is complete:)

The State of My Car's AC

Without AC on...

With AC on the lowest possible setting...

With AC on anything higher than the lowest possible setting....

Basically it's a lose-lose situation.

Surviving the Fourth of July

Yes, I know it’s not the fourth of July anymore, but I’ve been pretty busy so I haven’t had the time to sit down and write another blog for a while. This one will be dedicated to the fourth of July I guess.

I must admit, this fourth of July was much better than last years. Let me tell you. Last year I almost died. (not really, but kinda) Last year, my neighborhood got together and went up to one of my neighbors’ house and watched fireworks in their yard. Sounds good, right? Very wrong. You see, there are some Virginia firework laws that don’t allow fireworks that shoot over 12 feet. (so basically the only thing you can have are fountain fireworks which are okay, but when that’s all you have, it gets boring.) Because of this, my neighbors (I’ll call them Ron and Peter to protect their names) decided to put all the fireworks on top of this ladder so they would be high enough for everyone to see the fountain fireworks. It actually worked pretty well……. For the fountain fireworks. There’s something about men that makes them get illegal fireworks regardless of the law, which is fine by me since I can’t get in trouble. (I know that sounds bad, but if you think about it, no one ever gets caught of the fourth of July unless they’re really, really drunk and shooting fireworks into large buildings. Plus, I’m convinced that cops either do one of 2 things on the fourth of July. They either sit around at the police station and pretend they don’t hear all the loud bangs that are obviously illegal fireworks, OR they confiscate some of the really cool big ones and bring them back to the station and shoot them off while laughing at the sucker they confiscated them from. I’m onto you cops.)

Anyway, back to my story, my neighbors decided to put this big firework that shot off the fireworks that explode in the sky (illegal in VA) on the ladder. Well, Ron lit the firework and ran away. The first shot fired up into the sky, but it was so powerful that it caused the ladder to fall. The firework started to rapid-fire into the crowd of kids sitting in front, myself amongst them. Fight-or-flight mode* (you don’t think fight is an option? Just wait.) I flighted so fast outta there so I wouldn’t get hit by any exploding fireworks. There was bangs and light all around me, and moms were screaming. The firework was a monster. No one could stop it. We just had to wait until it stopped. Not gonna lie, but I did feel a little like a cool B.A dude with sunglasses and a leather jacket and a motorcycle when I was running from the explosions. I felt like this….

Even though I probably looked like this….

Once all the exploding stopped, I looked around to see that almost everyone, including me, had hidden behind something that probably wouldn’t have stopped the firework anyway, like a thin bush.

ALMOST everyone. One teenage boy was still sitting where he had been before the firework went nuts. He obviously had chosen to "fight". He was all like “Whooooaaa duuuuude! That was soooo cool.” His shirt sleeve was black and singed off. He had actually gotten hit by one of the firework beams. People were asking him stuff like “Why didn’t you run!?!” to which he would reply, “I wanted to see the firework! It was like 3-D maaann! I felt like I was really in it!” – I think he might have been on something. Thank goodness he was okay, but he did get burned pretty bad. He was trying to play it cool but you could tell he was hurting. The thing that bothered me most was that he had been sitting right next to me. It was cool though. It definitely made the grand finale way more exciting!

So now you know why this years fourth of July was better than lasts. You don’t even have to know what I did to know that anything beats getting shot at by fireworks. This year was good. I went up to my Aunt’s and Uncle’s and we went to the pool, played put-put golf in the rain, had dinner, and then we shot off fireworks while playing “Firework” by Katy Perry…. We seriously did this. It. Was. Awesome. I now know what she means when she sings, “Just own the night like the fourth of July” The night was owned!

If you are reading this, I hope your fourth of July was just as exciting!

* If you aren’t familiar with “fight-or-flight” look it up on some psychology website…. Or Wikipedia. It basically says that when faced with danger, you will either fight it, or run away (flight) from it. See my very first blog post to see how I normally respond when faced with danger.

Ello London!

The first thing my brother asked me about London was "Do they talk funny there? And are you getting a British accent?" I'm sorry to disappoint anyone who might have the same first question, but no. They do not talk funny in London. Yes, they have an accent, but it sounds beautiful and I am convinced that it either makes a person sound smarter, or look hotter.... or both. As for picking up a British accent, I'm sorry to say that 2 weeks did not change how I speak. It did however change how I think. For a while, I thought in a British accent. Sadly, it's worn off now. And I do miss hearing a British accent everywhere I go. I prefer "Bloody Hell!" to "What the f***!" Everything in England is more polite, including the signs. You know how we have signs that say "Yield"? Well, in England they have signs that mean the same thing, but look like this....

Doesn't that seem more polite? People in London also prefer to say "Mind yourself" instead of "Watch it!", "Rubbish!" instead of "S***!" and they also like to say "Love" a lot.  Isn't that right, love? I guess the only exception would be when we drove by a sign that said....

It was 100% legit.

Now I'll tell you right now, this post isn't going to be 100% about what I did, or what I saw. That would take me years. I can sum it up really fast right now. Going to London was a typical touristy vacation, Hawaiian shirts and camera around neck not included, but on steroids. My friends and I saw basically every major attraction you can see in London. So, if you think of something, we probably saw it. You can look at my photos on facebook and read the captions under them to see the names of all the big things I saw, since I won't include all of those pictures here. There's not really much to say about the big things except, "Bloody hell! That's amazing!" *in a British accent. Everything was spectacular and beautiful and thats really all you can say. If thats all you wanted to know about my trip, then you can stop reading now. BUT, If you keep reading, I will be writing about all the cooler things that happened in London like; Street performers, Enormous knocks, Henry VIII- "It's so hard", a marriage proposal, Harry Potter, the drinking age, and then some random extras.

Street performers
You wouldn't believe the range of street performers London has. There's really cool ones like this guy....

He was awesome because while riding the unicycle and juggling the knives, he cut the apple and ate it. He was so much cooler than the lady who stood there dressed as Catwoman. Not kidding. Thats all she did. There were also street painters who were very good. And of course, who could forget the creepy statue guys. They would stand there dressed as a statue. Almost as bad as Catwoman.

The silver guy on the right was horrible because he would keep talking to everyone who would walk by. I'm pretty sure statues aren't supposed to talk. The gold guy on the left was pretty creepy too. You see those long arms? They were really his arms. No, totally kidding, but I bet you can guess what he did with those arms. He would reach out and touch anyone who wasn't paying attention to how creepy he was. He scared my friend, so I guess he did his job well.

Enormous knocks
If you've ever seen "Who's Line Is It Anyway", then you'd probably think was funny. It's like the British version of that show. In this particular video, the guys do a voice over of footage of the royal family. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjCU2VNQFNo Oh British humor!

Henry VIII- "It's so hard"
Do you see it? (It's about at his waist... hard to miss)

It's soooo hard! Hard not to look at it that is. Get your mind out of the gutter! I guess it was the style to show your stuff.

A marriage proposal
The guy in red said to my friend, Becca (the one on his left, holding his arm) "Would you meet me in the kitchen later? I would like to marry you!" A little bold don't you think?

Harry Potter
As you know, Harry Potter takes place in England so of course there were tons of Harry Potter things to see, and of course we saw them all:)

The millennium bridge is where they filmed this scene; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mo-U5iOinM8

This is Diagon Alley... without all the decorations and special effects of course:)

Some of Harry Potter was filmed in London (above) and some was filmed in Oxford (below)

Recognize these steps? They were where little Harry first met little Malfoy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adudScuvZVA

And just up the steps is the entrance to the Great Hall. It looks a lot smaller in this picture, but with some special effects and filming techniques, voila! You've got Harry Potter Great Hall!

The drinking age... is 18!
No, we didn't go crazy, but we did try different things London had to offer. We tried "Shanys" (Lemonade and beer), "Strongbow" (Cider and beer), wine, a French wine mixed drink, and Gin, Tequila, and Vodka (which are all disgusting). My favorite was Strongbow.

The "Bueno" bars below are the best candy in the world. It's like candy Nutella! SOOOO GOOD!

Other Random Stuff
In this section I'll include a picture of London as a reward for reading this far down my blog post.

So that doesn't even come close to summing up all the cool stuff we did in England because if I did that, you'd be here 'till 2012. If you have any other burning questions to ask me besides, "Do people really drive on the other side of the road there?" (to which the answer is yes) then ask me the next time you see me! Until then, goodbye Love!