Adventure 32 - Atypical

Not much of a surprise, since I never do anything normally, but spring break is just an example. Rather than going to someplace warm and party-hartying (or staying in New England and party-hartying for St. Patrick's Day...), I went home for what has been a chaotic week. As with any break, I'm balancing seeing everyone while I'm home, plus taking advantage of the full kitchen. This week has included more tie-dye cupcakes, maple french toast cupcakes (that turned out more like muffins), and a St. Patrick's Day dinner including Guinness-braised short ribs, black and tan mac & cheese, boxty, Baileys mousse pie, Irish soda bread. I've also met up with friends and family, and I went to two concerts with my boyfriend, the Dropkick Murphys on Saturday and Enter the Haggis on Thursday.

After which he dumped me.

To be fair, we had a good run, but it had to happen eventually. Things had been going down the tank for a while (you know, since July when the polyamory bullshit started), and I had considered it myself but didn't want to deal with the pain. And obviously breakups/dumpings suck regardless, but he was very polite about it. He did it right before I dropped him off on Thursday because he wanted to do it in person and that was probably the last time we'd see each other before we went back, plus we still got to enjoy the concert (which I'll talk about next week after my Gaelic Storm concert, might as well do them all at the same time).

Am I happy about it? No, not really. This means that the other one gets what she wants yet again, which really pisses me off 'cause she gets life handed to her on a silver platter and never has to do a damn thing. This also means a major shot to my self esteem because I'm extremely self-conscious and the fact that he's not romantically interested anymore (or however he put it) means that clearly I screwed up somewhere. But more importantly, this means that even if we do stay friends, which is a stretch, it'll never be the same, and that really sucks.

On the plus side, I finally got to unfriend the other one as soon as I got home because I had only stayed "friends" out of respect for him, so now I don't have to deal with her shit anymore. I also had an excuse to text my friends at obscene hours of the morning (I didn't get home til 1) because I wanted them to hear it from me and not Facebook, and they've been texting to make sure I'm doing ok, which is really sweet. And when I get back to school, I get a singles' appreciation dinner/freedom festival/bitchfest with one of my guy friends who is also single (yeah, that one, but don't get any ideas).

So it's not perfect, but I'll live.

Adventure 31 - Quick Adjustments

Because a week is kindof a short time to go from hair dyed with fading henna to hair dyed blue to no hair at all.

To explain, I have to go back to right before freshman year of high school when I donated my hair the first time. I think it was 14", from elbow-length to a bob. Skipping ahead to Halloween senior year, I was supposed to be Penny from Dr. Horrible but hennaed my hair a nice strawberry blond rather than the correct dark red. Right before I went to college, I lopped it off again to donate, about 13", and hennaed the remainder a nice bright natural red. Last Saturday, I elected to dye my hair because I decided that a week later, I was going to shave my head.

No, this was not a hipster "natural hair is too mainstream" moment, but I had seen ads on campus and stuff for a St. Baldrick's head-shaving event to raise money for kids with cancer. Having donated my hair twice to Locks of Love, I figured, "Eh, why not? It'll grow back, and it's for a good cause." The blue came because I knew that if I ever dyed my hair blue normally, I'd probably have to shave it off to get back to the normal color anyway, so if I was only going to have hair for another week and get it shaved off anyway, might as well go for broke.

I only ended up raising $75 for the event, $25 of that being from me, but the event raised over $3500, including $1000+ from one girl who also donated her ridiculously long ponytail to Locks of Love before shaving her head. It was crazy and awesome. There were quite a few people who participated, and everyone was super nice.

It was kinda strange 'cause I ran into a bunch of people in the dining hall (normally I'll see one or two people I know if I'm lucky), and everyone's all like "OMG you shaved your head! Oh, you're so brave, that's so awesome," and I got 26 likes on my bald photo on Facebook which really shouldn't mean much to me but it felt really cool.

So far, I've only run into a few problems with not having hair. The first is the one where people come up to me and go all "You shaved your head!" on me, like I didn't know or something... The second is with my hats, because my prickly scalp likes to adhere to fleece and other hat materials, plus I now have to wear a hat when I go outside because I don't have hair to keep my head warm. And finally, a lot of people, myself included, have developed a tactile fascination with my head. It's fuzzy. And the president of the group that sponsored the shaving said that he does it ever year and it's super fuzzy for the first two months or so.

Oh, and now I notice when my hair isn't the same length :P

Adventure 30 - Let the Badassery Commence

I suppose I can't really say that the badassery has commenced just yet since I've only been to 6 practices, but it's hard not to feel at least a little badass when you're wielding a sword.

Even when you lose every part of your body during sparring. Or when you can't feel your feet after you stomp for the thrust cut (I know the name, I just don't know how to spell it). Or when, as a new person, you're doing cuts at about 2/3-speed compared to everyone else and then the guy in charge singles you out for doing them correctly (god, that was embarrassing).

Anyway. Joining sword team was definitely a good idea, because even though I still kinda look like an idiot (I am a white belt, after all) and it keeps me up late (practice ends at 11pm), it's been a lot of fun and I definitely want to continue it.

(And no, before you ask, joining the team had nothing to do with getting my ass kicked with the foam lightsabers over break :) )

Adventure 29 - All Over the Place

This is obviously overdue, but I had a 4-page paper and a 2-page article due this week, so this is the best you're going to get.

I made another trip up to Boston for the weekend. I even *le gasp!* skipped class on Friday to go, but I front-loaded my week, so I only missed one class and it wasn't really a big deal. Naturally, the weather gods decided to mess me up yet again, and my 4:35 flight to Newark didn't leave til 6, but the ticketing people gave me a ticket for the 8 o'clock flight to Boston so I wouldn't miss my connection, which was nice. I swear, I can't travel by myself without something going wrong, but compared to last time (and when I flew back home from Washington through Minneapolis right after the bridge collapse 4 years ago...), this was nothing.

The trip went way too quickly, though it doesn't help that I slept in 'til 10 most mornings. We had sushi and stir fry and waffles and egg sandwiches from Bruegger's and pasta in the North End, and I got to walk through Harvard and Somerville and up to Prospect Hill, which I had never been to.

I also took a few pictures, though 4 out of the 13 were of the Citgo sign. Come on, it was right there and I had to.

I didn't run into too many problems while I was there. The main one I had was the sleep deprivation; my boyfriend had a project to do so I helped him out, but that meant staying up til 2am doing research on the MBTA commuter rail lines, plus I toss and turn when I sleep, so sharing a twin bed with someone else who also tosses and turns in their sleep is not conducive to sleeping.

The other one was ... well, technically it was an accident, but he bought tickets to bring the other one to go see Emilie Autumn on Sunday, and my flight didn't leave until 8:45 when the concert was at 6. So it was really awkward having him get all gussied up beforehand, but I was good and brought him to the T station so he could get to Back Bay to pick her up.

The good part that came out of this is that even though my boyfriend felt shitty for doing this to me, his roommate was really mad at him, so instead of having me sit in Qdoba and mope until my flight, he and a few of the other guys on the floor took me to Chipotle to make up for it. It was awesome, both because I have the best boyfriend's roommate ever, and because I had never been to Chipotle before and it was delicious.

Adventure 28 - Obligatory Bitching Day

Also known as Singles' Awareness Day or, my personal favorite, Unimaginative, Consumer-Oriented, and Entirely Arbitrary, Manipulative and Shallow Interpretation of Romance Day.

Idk, I don't get the point. It's a horribly commercialized holiday that centers around something that shouldn't require a special day to celebrate (as demonstrated here). The only good thing that comes out of it is the insane amount of chocolate, but my freezer is already full so I'm kinda SOL on that front.

Also the bag of Conversation Hearts my mom sent me. In an attempt to not sound racist, the pigmented conversation hearts taste weird in my opinion, so she went through a bag or a few boxes or something and sent me a sandwich bag of only the white ones (which taste like mint).

Also also the condom roses our school VOX chapter is selling this week. I have no use for one, but they are fantastic.

Adventure 27 - Proof of Importance

Super Bowl Sunday. Pats vs. Giants. Pretty big deal, both here and back home, because the overlapping territory, plus it's standard New York/Boston sports hatred.

As a non-fan, I still don't see the point of the Super Bowl, but now I have proof as to why I shouldn't care. The Dropkick Murphys, being the voice of Boston, have a song about the Red Sox ("Tessie") and the Bruins ("Time to Go"). No song about the Patriots, therefore they are not important.

Besides, I think it is much more worth it to get together for a Super Bowl party that involves soup and The Big Bang Theory. And I can still call it a Super Bowl party, because we are eating soup ("S[o]uper") and we eat soup in bowls ("Bowl"). Thus, S(o)uper Bowl party.

And yes, I do realize that was probably the worst pun in the history of ever. (No worse than the name of my car, Carmine, because she's red, she's a car and she's mine...)

The only problems we've run into are the fact that I was a dumbass and forgot to buy chocolate chips for the chocolate chip bacon cookies (I mean, we could still have bacon cookies and I'm sure they would taste delicious, but I think we need the chocolate chips), and the fact that we ordered food for 3 people and one of them might not be there so now we'll have way too much food. I don't see a problem in the actual having of too much food, but splitting something two ways that was supposed to be three will be a little rough, especially on a college budget that includes not getting paid this past week.

Oh, and the fact that the basement kids aren't letting us use the lounge with the DVD player. Watching movies on a computer is ok with one person, a little problematic with more than that.

Adventure 26 - Getting Down to Business

Not to defeat the Huns, though I (mis)quoted that in my journalism research class the other day and now everyone in there probably thinks I'm insane. (Well, between that, my buffalo hat and my decision to want to learn Irish in my spare time.)

Anyway. Since I have been distracted by the first week of the new semester, I figured I'd check in and say hey to prove that I haven't fallen off the face of the earth. Classes are good, though my first day was scary in terms of homework because my honors professor, who was dull as all get-up, assigned 4-5 pages of writing and 70+ pages of reading the first night. I think it was his ploy to get people out of the class who weren't gonna take it seriously, and it seems to have worked, considering how many people dropped. Luckily, the homework load and his personality improved, so that's all I care about.

Though on the subject of things falling, I made the most gorgeous shortbread cookie today. It was perfectly round and smooth and lightly golden brown and pretty damn awesome. And then this happened.

So pissed.

I had to balance it on one hand to get the door open, and as soon as I stepped into my room, down went the cookie. So if anyone in the building around 8:10 or so heard someone yell "FUCK!", that was me dropping my beautiful cookie. On the plus side, my room smells like shortbread now.

I was also a big girl and went to a concert at a bar last night. Music was good and so were the post-concert cookies I got with my honors "big", but the most exciting part was probably the pizza elevator.

It's that columny thing in the middle with the slots.

Yes, a pizza elevator. Horizontal space is hard to come by in certain parts of the city, so the kitchen is upstairs, and instead of using the stairs (and potentially pulling a me and dumping the food all over the place), they chose to entertain simple-minded people such as myself with a pizza elevator.

'Tis all for now. More updates as something interesting comes along.