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.

Adventure 25 - The Fellowship of the Geek

Because the only parties worth going to are geek parties.

Then again, that's the only party I've been invited to.

At any rate, after getting lost in a neighboring high school's campus while picking up a friend and his brother from their fencing meet and having the two of them make fun of my car (hey, it's a craptastic car but it's my craptastic car), I went to a geek party that their mom had invited me to, and it was so much fun. All the food was from any one of the traditional geeky franchises, like Star Wars or LOTR or whatever (I had some lamb stew that was really good), plus all sorts of picky stuff like veggies and jelly beans and Star Wars cookies.

Apparently, what usually goes on at these parties is that there are an assortment of activities for everyone, from games to movies and the like. They had a game of Munchkin going on, which I got for Christmas after a college friend introduced it to me, but I didn't see it until they had already started, plus I'm still a little rusty at the game, so I decided not to join. Besides, there were rumors of lightsaber fights, and I was in for a buck.

Of course, this wasn't going to be a legit fight. For starters, I can't swordfight to save my life, so between that and the fact that the two guys I came with both fence, I knew I was in for an ass-kicking. But the lightsabers were also not real lightsabers (duh) but PVC pipe wrapped in pool noodles and duct taped/Sharpied to look somewhat like real lightsabers, so what ended up happening is we just beat the crap out of each other with these giant foam swords and it was awesome.

(In related news, I hope I can find somewhere around here that sells pool noodles in January...)

We watched the trailer to The Hobbit (which I still need to read, but it comes out in December so I have time) and other YouTube nonsense, and I made the mistake of saying I had never seen The Fellowship of the Ring so even though my friend's mom and brother were leaving, my friend made me stay so I could at least watch part of it before I had to get home. Again, I've never read the book, so I was a little lost, but I'd like to watch it in full sometime, as well as read the book.

I couldn't stay to watch the whole movie 'cause I had to bring my friend back to his house, get all the fencing crap out of my trunk, fish around for a lost sneaker that had fallen out of the bag, and then get myself home. All in all, it was so much fun and I'm glad I went.

Adventure 24 - We're Doomed

Can someone explain to me the point of the primaries? I get that they're supposed to figure out which candidate is going to run for the party, but this one instead seems to be determining everyone's weaknesses rather than their strengths. Granted, it's a process of weeding out the bad candidates, but this entire Republican race has been one big idiocy-fest, between the mudslinging and everyone just sounding silly on pretty much every subject that's brought up. I don't know about you, but it disturbs me to know that these people believe they are fit for running an entire country, yet they can't count to 3, don't know what was going on in Libya or think that Gardasil causes mental retardation. (Of course, two of those aforementioned people already dropped out of the races, so perhaps the primaries are actually doing their job...)

I stayed up to watch the ball drop on New Year's (not sure why, I do it every year and every year it's as anticlimactic as the last), and once 2012 hit, a bunch of statuses appeared on Facebook from friends saying how they can't wait to get a Republican president into office. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and I'm not much into politics, but if these candidates are serious, we are screwed if any of them are elected. Sure, not everything has been hunky-dory this past term, but nothing has ever been completely hunky-dory at any point in... well, ever, so no one can say this term especially sucked, because all of them do in some way, shape or form. No president or administration can make everyone happy, and that's what we're forgetting. What I can say, however, is that I would rather have the misplays from this term than be denied basic reproductive health coverage or have anyone in the LGBT, etc. community be denied the right to marry who they want.

I'm not going to hope for "change" in the upcoming term because I don't know who will win and depending on who does, I might not want that change. So I'm going for "choice."