10 Students You See in the Library During Finals

1. The student who clearly has had way too much coffee

2. The territorial animal. This student may glare at you as you pass. And it's not just any old glare. It's a "I want to burn your insides, and destroy all the happy thoughts you've ever had... and I also hate puppies" glare. If you look at this student for too long, they may growl at you. They also probably chew on the tables with their pointy little teeth. I've never actually observed this, but I'm 99.99% sure it happens. And 60% of the time, I'm right all the time. #anchorman

Carrier Cave Student

3. The mega-super-overstressed student. Sometimes they get lost behind their stack of books, and sometimes they pull out their own hair, or the hair of others around them. I wouldn't recommend sitting next to them... or interacting with them.
You: "Are you oka--"
Them: "DON'T TOUCH ME!!!"

4. The wannabe library hipster. This student just wants to be in the library during finals week because everyone else is. They're not really that stressed out, they don't really have very many finals, they are on facebook 90% of the time they are there, and they take up one more spot in the already packed library. They are just pretending to be stressed out, but they aren't really. I hate these people


5. The student who hasn't seen the outside world in a week... or maybe a month... or a year... or wait... what does the word "outside" mean again?

Carrier Cave Student

6. The overnighter. This student carries around their computer, their books, and their toothbrush. They also pay rent to the library. "200 year old books make great pillows!"


7. The statue

5 HOURS LATER

8. The possibly dead student. Either poke them with a stick to see if they're still alive, or keep walking.

9. The rag doll. This person is usually found sprawled out across a desk or chair in an inhuman position that can't possibly be comfortable.

10. The student who doesn't even go here

"Hi there! I'm not really sure where I am, but I just like mingling!"

(Yes, I've seen this. Why you would want to spend time in the library during finals week out of free will, I have no idea)

It is very possibly to be more than one of these at the same time.

The Dentist II

Every time I go to the dentist.

In my defense, their walls are a putrid yellow color soooo....

The original Dentist post

The Usual Checklist

Every time I come home from college, there is a checklist of "usual" things that happen. The first night home is always the best because I love the usual checklist.

#1: My dog, Dakota, pees in the driveway when I pull up because she's so excited to see me. I spend a solid 10 minutes provoking her into running in pointless circles around the yard. I've gotten over the fact that my neighbors probably think this is a weird interaction between person and dog. That's probably why they have cats.

#2: I immediately do some chores because that's how everyone is greeted upon arriving home.... right?

#3: I pick up my brother, Matt, from whatever sports practice he is at, and I'm reminded why I'm so glad to be done with high school. Oakton looks like a jail for misfit vampires. As we drive home, my brother and I catch up. We have deep conversations like, "Sup?" and "Cool." Does this make me a "Bro"? Crap. We actually catch up later though.

#4: I get back home and Dakota repeats #1 because her memory span is short. She is what some scholars would call "unintelligent".

#5: I sit like a potato on the couch and absorb the fact that I'm home.

#6: I wait for my youngest brother, David, to get home, and hide from him. It's a tradition for me to hide and make him search for me before he can give me a welcome home hug. But this time is different. He arrives home earlier than I expect. I am still sitting on the couch out in the open. But David is so excited that he runs past me, heading straight for my room. I sit in disbelief that he didn't even notice me on the couch. He eventually realizes it.

#7: Everyone is productive. My parents make the welcome home steak dinner. David unloads the dishwasher and sets the table. I am productive too! I chase Dakota around the kitchen, creating chaos and making her bark. I bark back causing her to bark more because she doesn't understand why I am barking at her. I know my family enjoys this because my dad is always like, "OKAY!!! That's enough!!!" aaaahh.... productivity.

#8: As dinner is ending, Dad and I make bets on if Dakota will eat a piece of broccoli if it's dipped on leftover steak juices. I say no. He says yes. We watch Dakota and treat it like a football game, cheering for her. She is confused and spits out the broccoli after licking off all the steak juice. I win. My Dad yells, "Nooooo!!!" and I yell, "Yeahhhh!". My Mom rolls her eyes. 

#9: David and I play wii for a little while. David gets serious about what game we're playing. I don't. I sing an annoying top 40 song throughout the entire game just to annoy him.

#10: I wind down for the night. Maybe I'll have dessert, maybe I'll visit my friend across the street, or maybe I'll hunt for flying pigs. Who knows? I'm home from college. Anything can happen.

Things I Love and Not Love About My iPhone 4s

LOVE- Siri. There are not enough words to be said about Siri. She is great. I can have an entire text conversation with someone without having to look at my phone. She can tell painfully dry jokes, she can sing with no tune at all, she can tweet for you, she can launch any app, she can tell you that the Redskins are getting crushed by every other football team in existence, and she can even bake you a freaking cake! Maybe I’m getting a little too excited about Siri. She can’t bake you a cake, but she can look up a picture of a cake! You can also change the language of Siri. There’s even a British Siri but “she” has a man voice so it gets kind of weird….

NOT LOVE- The phone is too big for your pockets (unless you're a guy and have mary-poppins’-never-ending-bag-pockets) so you have to carry it around in your hand like an awkward manchild.

LOVE- You can fast forward when listening to voicemail. Goodbye long rambling voicemails about ping-pong balls and morbidly obese chicken turtles.

NOT LOVE- The snooze time on the alarm is 9 minutes and you can’t change it. 9 freaking minutes! Whose idea was that?! Better yet, whose idea was it to make it so you can’t change it? I feel your pain OCD perfectionists. I feel your pain.

LOVE- You can make your ringtone or text alert just about anything. If you haven’t heard mine already, it’s Borat’s voice shouting, “You have new text message!!! Hi-five!!!” It’s the definition of annoying, but it’s more like an awesome annoying.

NOT LOVE- My phone automatically makes all my facebook friends my phone contacts so I have like a thousand phone numbers. If you’re reading this, I probably have your number…. Because my phone is creepy. I apologize for my phone being creepy.

LOVE- When you’re texting, all you have to do to put in a period is double space  It’s really nice because you don’t have to change the keyboard just to put in punctuation  However, I get too used to this and I start forgetting that you can’t just double space for everything so I end up writing sentences like this

NOT LOVE- If you’re typing something in google search and misspell a word, you have to delete everything just to fix the one word. 

LOVE- My calendar automatically adds everyone’s birthday so I don’t have to do it manually. It makes me look like I have a lot of friends.

NOT LOVE- The camera angle is awful when you’re trying to skype or make a facetime call. Seriously, no one looks good from this angle.

I hope you appreciate the extremely unflattering picture of me. You're welcome.

Why I Don't Do Haunted Houses

When it comes to haunted houses, I am the biggest coward you will ever meet. There is nothing you could do to convince me to go through a haunted house. “Thankfully, I’m always surrounded with a wall of muscular guys that will protect me”, said no one ever. Ryan Gosling would literally have to carry me though a haunted house and I would be in his arms, eyes closed, and probably crying…. And groping his sculpted abs.

Why am I so afraid of haunted houses, you ask? I don’t really know. I like to pin it on this one house I went through when I was in California 3 summers ago….

I was staying with my friend, Erica, and we decided to spend a day at Universal Studios. I don’t know why we thought it would be fun to go through the Universal Studios haunted house, but we did. Well sort of. We never made it through the entire house.

You see, the first thing the house staff told us was, “The scary people might try to split you up, so good luck finding your way through the house together.” Ummm… Like shit you’ll split us up. There’s no way that’s happening. That’s like the cardinal rule in scary movies: always stay together. Nothing good ever comes out of splitting up. Ever. Plus, I have this thing called a death grip, which translates to “you will need a diamond crow bar to pry my hands off of whoever’s shirt I am desperately grasping in front of me.” Last year in the UREC “haunted walk”, my lucky victim was a guy wearing a skeleton sweatshirt who called himself Skeletor. My grip was so tight that I wrinkled his sweatshirt and probably cut off blood flow to his brain. Poor Skeletor.

Anyway, Erica and I were both clutching eachother’s arms as we were forced through this sick joke they called an “attraction”. After we had the shit scared out of us in Alfred Hitchcock themed room, we asked the guy guarding the emergency exit if we could just turn around and go back. Actually, we pleaded with him. I was not above getting on my knees and begging, but he was all like, “hahahahahahahaha… no.” You know that feeling you get when you settle for a parking spot really far away after spending forever looking for one, and then as you are walking through the parking lot, you see someone drive up and find an empty spot in the first row? That loathing you feel for that person? That’s how I felt about that guard, and as much as I’d like to say we suckapunched his throat and walked out the exit anyway, we didn’t. Instead, we pitifully shuffled into the next room.

The second room was “Chucky” themed. If you are unaware of who, or what Chucky is, here is a picture.

Need I say more? Both of us were done. We were not about to have a life-sized Chucky jump out at us. Erica asked if I wanted to just leave out the next unguarded door we could find, and I remember mumbling a practically incoherent yes. We saw a door at the other side of the room and began to make our way towards it, careful to stay away from anything that looked like it could be a real person. We were about halfway there when someone else jumped out. I like to call her white Frankenstein lady because she was wearing all white, had white hair in the same style as Marge Simpson, and was butt ugly. A real life Tim Burton creation.

Did white Frankenstein lady leave us alone after she jumped out? Nope. She screamed at Erica and I, and we ran. Erica was booking it to the nearest exit and dragging me behind her. We had both lost it and were screaming, but you know who else was screaming? White Frankenstein lady. As I was being dragged, I looked to my right to see white Frankenstein lady running beside me and still screaming at me. Out of instinct I was yelling, “STOP IT! I HATE YOU! STOP! PLEASE!” even though I know the scary people never actually listen to you. Shit no one says scary people don’t say, “Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. Shame on me.”

I don’t know how Erica managed to finally make it to the door, but next thing I knew, we were standing in the sunlight somewhere backstage of the haunted house, and white Frankenstein lady was no where to be seen. My guess is that she either stayed in the house, or got vaporized by the sunlight. Most likely she was vaporized. We were both glad to be out of that house and swore never to go in again, unless Zac Efron (who I had literally bumped into earlier that day) would be in our group.

I haven’t made it more than 6 feet inside a haunted house since. Please don’t ever try to convince me to go into one because I will probably cry more than a girl watching a Nicholas Sparks film.

As an extra, here's how Erica and I acted in the haunted house. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1VAC5bFN-E

The Life Truck

What it feels like to be sick when you still have a s*** ton of homework to do....

I call it, getting hit by the life truck.... and it sucks.

S*** Olympic Commentators Say

I think one of my favorite things about the Olympics is listening to all the stupid things the commentators say. If you really pay attention, you can catch some weird ramblings. In their attempts to fill what would be awkward silences, they usually just say something that makes it more awkward. Sometimes I think they don't even know what they're saying and are just rambling like my mom does when she paints, or works on a puzzle. What they hoped would just slide by undetected, I kept track of and have now posted below. I call it, 'All the s*** Olympic commentators say plus a bonus section of s*** Olympic athletes say' Enjoy!

Shit Olympic Commentators Say

"Richard Folkers is throwing up in the bullpen" Thanks for letting us know

"Destinee Hooker... unloaded" Did I hear that name right?

"Sure there have been injuries in boxing, even deaths, but none of them serious" What do you consider serious then?

"Time to power it up with green mustache plant shakes!"

"I call Oscar (the double-amputee runner) a freak of nature as a compliment" And I'm sure he appreciates that

"Her entire life is training, eating, and sleeping. She doesn’t even have a boyfriend"

"And there's France. I’m surprised they’re not better"

"Michael Phelps has done it! He has won Gold!" x18... Big surprise there

"Her knees knock together like going down a slide head first"

"What was your plan to give Michael Phelps a big lead?"

Athlete's response: "Uhh... to give him a big lead."

"He looks like a defeated man. He looks like someone just kicked his dog"

"There's his a-mom. Also known as his adoptive mom" ... to the rest of the normal world

Commentator 1: "He looks tense."

Commentator 2: "No I don't think he looks very tense. The opposite really. He looks relaxed."

"His strength is really strong right now" I can see that

"He’s talking to the cross bar. Believe me, that thing has a mind of its own. Don’t make it mad!"

"Like I said, theres a lot of swagger out there" He was talking about Volleyball

"So many friendships have been made crossing country borders and political lines. And in some cases, with all these young people, maybe even more than friendships"

"Her high school friends called her chicken legs" And now so does the rest of the world

"Confidence is that little voice in your head that tells you, you belong" Awww! Trying to be inspirational

"She needs to land the vault on her feet in order to get a medal. The problem is, most of the time she doesn’t"

"He’s a tried and true bulldog"

"That’s a personal best for her. I think that’s the best she’s ever run!" No Shit!

Shit Olympic Athletes Say

"I owe it to my parents, especially my mother and father" Oh, I thought you meant your other parents. Thanks for clearing that up for us

"I'm still the best. I'm always going to be the best no matter what" 

"To me it's all about winning. I don't even look at the time. I just want to win" And that kids, is the true meaning of sportsmanship

"If Michael Phelps never races again, I'll eat my fins" 

"I've always wanted to dive with great white sharks" Because every retired olympic athlete wants to do that

"The flag is probably trying to hug me because it's so happy"

"If I had shaved my eyebrows, I would've won" - The guy who lost to Michael Phelps by .01 second in Beijing. It's good to see that after 4 years, he has finally let that go.... oh wait.

The MP3 Experiment 9

Some of you may be aware that one of the top things on my bucket list is to be a part of a flash mob. Well, on Sunday, July 15th, I actually got to check that off! On Sunday, I went down to Manhattan, New York and caught a ferry over to Governor's Island to take part in the famous "MP3 Experiment" by Improv Everywhere. If you're not familiar with Improv Everywhere, just look at a few of their videos on their site (I recommend Grand Central Station Freeze).

It started with a 5 hour bus ride from D.C to New York. We were supposed to arrive in New York at 12:30, but instead we got there at 1:30 because our bus driver drove like a turtle (a Walmart 18-wheeler passed us.... that's how slow we were going). And what would New York be without a little traffic? Not gonna lie, but my first impression of New York was very stereotypical. People were literally honking car horns every 10 seconds! There wouldn't even be anything happening and someone would by laying on their horn and shouting obscenities out their window. Colleen said she even saw a guy get hit by a car because he was in the crosswalk when another car wanted to go. The intersections were kind of a free for all even though there were traffic lights, and I'm pretty sure the NYPD doesn't even bother ticketing drivers anymore. You really have to be born and raised in New York to drive there without getting killed.

When we finally got to New York and found the ferry to Governor's Island, we waited in line for over an hour just to get on the ferry. Thousands of people participate in the annual MP3 Experiment, but only a couple hundred fit on the ferry that comes every 30 minutes. I felt bad for the ferry staff. There was only one guy doing bag check, and the look on his face when someone told him there were 1,000 more people in line, was priceless. It got to the point where he wasn't even looking in the bags. He was just kind of letting people walk by him with their bags semi-opened. After all, every bag probably contained the same props; A white sheet, a soft toy, a hard flat object, a shower cap, a musical instrument, and a water gun. You know, normal stuff you'd bring on Governor's Island. Thankfully, we made it on the 3:00 ferry, and even though the flash mob started at 3, the ferry ride was short, so we only missed the first 10 minutes of it.

Now if you've never heard of the MP3 Experiment, I'll explain it here. Improv Everywhere is a NYC centralized group that puts on flash mobs all over New York. The MP3 experiment happens every summer in Manhattan. If you are part of their group, you get an email with the flash mob information like date, time, place, etc. As the date draws near, they post an 45 minute long MP3 on their website that you are supposed to download, but not listen to. Before the flash mob, you gather any necessary props they tell you to gather, and wear what they tell you to wear. On the day of, you gather in the said location, and at the set time everyone who knows about the flash mob and has the MP3 downloaded, presses play. The preceding 45 minutes are filled with crazy directions from the voice of "Omnipotent Steve".

I can't recreate the entire MP3, but I can tell you some of the crazy stuff we had to do. The MP3 usually  begins with the same stuff every year; Clap your hands, follow a stranger, give a stranger a high-five, have a dance party, fall on the ground and pretend to sleep. After all the "normal" directions, the fun with the props starts. The theme this year was Olympics (duh!) and every prop was associated with a different Olympic event.... for the most part. At one point we were running around with sheets on our heads and shoulders pretending to be ghosts and superheroes.

We were supposed to fly/float to the field in the center of the island to begin the olympic games. The first event was trampoline. We got into groups of 4 and took one sheet and held it tight. We then put our soft objects and put them on the "trampoline" and made them fly in the sky. Following that, we took our hard flat objects and built towers. I know this is a little scattered, but thats exactly how the MP3 was. We then had to put everything away and split into 2 groups. On one side of the field was the "color" nation (everyone who was wearing a colored shirt) and on the other side was the "monochrome" nation (everyone who was wearing black and white). 

I was on the color nation, and monochrome nation is on the far side.

We then took out our musical instruments and played our nation's national anthem, or as Omnipotent Steve said, "Whatever you can play that sounds like a nation anthem". We then proceeded to take part in the final event, the water gun fight! Omnipotent Steve made us all put on our shower caps so our headphones wouldn't get wet.

He then told us to raise our water guns and give our best battle cry, but before he told us to start the water gun fight, chaos broke loose. People were way too excited and were already squirting eachother. By the time Steve said go, most people had run out of water. It was still fun though!

At the end of the flash mob, we managed to run into Charlie Todd, the creator of Improv Everywhere, so we got a picture with him! He's basically a flash mob celebrity:)

All in all it was totally worth the turtle bus ride there, and the even worse bus ride back. I'm planning on doing it again next year, so if you're ever interested in joining me, let me know!

*Here's some pictures some Improv Everywhere people took. Enjoy!

Ms. Animal Teacher Lady

That's what I was known as to a bunch or 3-5 year olds at camp last week. Alison has too many syllables I guess, so they just go with Ms. Animal Teacher Lady. I'm cool with it though. It makes me happy to think that by telling them yes, spiders have 8 legs, I'm seen as a genius in their eyes and I must know everything about animals. Not only did they assume I knew the easy questions, but they also assumed I knew the answer to questions like, "What would happen if you fed a wolf that was on top of your house a whole pig, and then your house exploded?" I had to get creative.

So now, for all of you who have been asking, that is what I do at my job. I answer very, very, VERY hypothetical questions. I also hold snakes, touch spiders, and feed squirrels from my hand.* I am conquering my fears at last! If I can do all that, I think I can manage any thing else this job throws at me.

No, but in all reality I've been helping with things around the park like taking care of the animals, working with visitors, organizing papers, and making "pretty" fliers (since apparently guys can't make fliers "pretty").  Whenever work is slow, I make random sentences with the refrigerator magnets. One day of work consisted of kayaking, shooting arrows at a target, and running a transit of Venus program. Fun stuff! When the summer really gets rolling, I'll be doing more camps. One camp I'm doing is basically a chaotic week of helping 7 year olds make spears and bows and arrows out of anything they can find in the woods. The adult supervision besides me and the other intern? A man who wears deer skin and tells the children it's okay to eat bee larva. Character alert! I'm super excited for that week, though! I kinda love chaos, and so far, every staff member I've met has been beyond awesome. I already feel like a small part of their family, and I've only been working for 3 weeks. This will be a good summer, I can already tell:)

*Disclaimer: All of the animals at Riverbend are very friendly, so just because I am feeding squirrels doesn't mean I'm about to go befriend all the squirrels at JMU. Those squirrels throw acorns at you. Riverbend's do not. Big difference.

Carrier Cave People

If I had to compare college finals to something, it would probably be something along the lines of ‘Finals are like wearing a meat dress and being chased by a hungry lion.’ I don’t know why I chose that comparison. That’s just how it is. Three things happen to the students during finals week....

1) Students turn into cave people and become territorial over library spaces.

I think I’ve been spending more time in the library than I have in my dorm room this week. A typical finals day for me goes like this; wake up, go to Carrier, turn into a cave person while studying, eat, go back to dorm, sleep, repeat. Carrier library kinda looks like a cave, so it’s no surprise that students who enter Carrier turn into cave people like me. What is a Carrier cave person you ask? Well, let me explain

Normal student

Carrier cave student

The students begin to act like cave people too. They get all territorial over ‘their spot’ in the library. They either constantly leave their stuff around so no one will sit there, or they growl at you as you walk by to assert their dominance.

(Exaggeration)

2) Normal activities and thoughts are overtaken by what you’re studying.

Enough said.

3) You begin to lose all of your social communication skills.

Let's just say I'm ready for this week to be over.

Good Guys vs. Bad Guys

I don't know why I randomly had this idea to write this post. Probably because I was sick all weekend and had too much time on my hands. Or because I've totally had real conversations about this kind of thing before. Whatever the case, here goes. If I were to conquer/fight the world, I would want to have a few people to help me. I've made some Top 5 lists detailing who I would want on my team if I was fighting evil, and who I would want on my team if I was the evil.


Good Guys Team


5. Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather (Sleeping Beauty)

They can turn arrows into flowers. That would probably come in handy. And Merryweather reminds me of Megan from Bridesmaids, and I love that movie.







4. Edmund Pevensie (Chronicles of Narnia)

Who else do you know can fight that well with 2 swords? And he's not bad on the eyes either....










3. Hermione Granger (Harry Potter)

She's smart and magical. She may be pushy at times, but at least I wouldn’t have to constantly stress about whether she’s about to go sneaking off into the dark forest to face Voldemort alone. 








2. Spock (Star Trek)

Three words: Vulcan nerve pinch. 











1. Indiana Jones (Indiana Jones)

He always manages to get out of trouble using only his whip, and he’s pretty freaking awesome in general. Come to think of it, Han Solo was pretty awesome too. Heck! I’ll just take Harrison Ford. With him, I would easily have the best theme music ever! And we both share a hatred of snakes. How fitting.

Now on to the "evil team". I know bad guys always lose because they have some tragic flaw, but pretending they weren’t overcome by that flaw, this is who I would want on my "evil team".

Bad Guys Team

5. Regina (Once Upon a Time)

She always seems to win, and she's really good at covering her tracks.

4. Yzma (Emperor's New Groove)

She has such wonderful ideas about how to get rid of people…. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Cx7jzq2Bx4

3. Rasputin (Anastasia)

He’s already dead so you can’t kill him. If his arm falls off, he just pops it back in. That sounds pretty indestructible to me! And besides, every group needs some comic relief. I would make a few rules though. Like maybe cut your nails?

2. The White Witch (Chronicles of Narnia)

She’s the only bad guy I know who doesn’t wait to strike. "Oh, you want me to wait while you say your last words? FALSE! Wack!" She's also pretty good with 2 swords. I wonder what they teach them over there in Narnia....

  

1. Lord Voldemort (Harry Potter)

The fact that people are afraid to say his name should already tell you that he's an awesome bad guy. When people talk about Darth Vader, they just say "Oh, Darth Vader? Me and him, man, we go way back." You can't do that with ole' Voldy, or he'll probably kill you or something. He can do anything with or without his wand; Turn into a black smoke cloud, go inside your soul just to say "Dah!" (HP movie 5 reference), breathe fire snakes. He has an awesome laugh, and he kind of resembles a snake. Plus there's like 7 of him.








And a side note that I thought was worth mentioning....
People that would never be considered for any of my teams


1. Rose (Titanic)

I think we’re all still bitter about the whole “hogging the driftwood” thing.







2. Gilligan (Gilligan's Island)

He ruins every plan (90’s kids who watched the same T.V as their parents would understand)







3. Robin (Batman)

I found this little passage that sums up why Robin is kind of lame.
“It seems the person portraying Robin isn’t particularly important. Batman has had several different people in the Robin uniform including a female. But, you have to wonder at the true role Batman had in mind for Robin. The question comes to mind: Why has he has made Robin such an inviting target, brightly colored in red and yellow, while he struts around in dark blue, gray and black. I can almost hear Batman saying to Robin when approaching a dark alley, 'Looks dangerous, you go first!' and then silently to himself, 'I can always find more of you.'” Poor Robin. Just look at his face in this picture compared to Batman's. No thank you.


*All images came from Google. I do not own anything. The passage about Robin came from  http://www.toptenz.net/top-ten-sidekicks.php