The Road to Roommate

You know that feeling when you finish a fantastic book?
That happened today.

I haven't finished a book that I was so sad to put down in ages. But this morning I got to that point where I would stop to digest a certain line, just to make the last 20 pages last longer. What a great thing. If you haven't read The Road by Cormac Macarthy, do it now. Seriously. Sometimes it's hard to read just because there are a bajillion adjectives and things to think about, but it's honestly one of the greatest books I've read. And I'm an English major, so I get to have a real opinion.

Boom.

OH. And the love of my life, and by that I mean Bethany came to visit today! But actually, she's on campus all week helping with Show Choir Camp, so that's a very winning situation for me. I'm thrilled.

And I'm going to bed.

THEMED THURSDAY: The Avenged

THEMED THURSDAY (for real this time).  Here goes nothing. We're talking Villains this week. Big bad villains who are out to get you and your children. And let me tell you how I met some super villains yesterday.

So it goes like this. I walk into a room, doing what I do. Being who I'm supposed to be, in charge, and this looming figure walks up to me. Now, keep in mind that I'm approximately short. For those of you inclined to exactness, 5 feet and 4.5 inches to my name. My stature by no means confines my personality, or my confidence, however when this crooked, tall, figure strode toward me, I couldn't help but cower just slightly behind my kevlar name tag. And I knew her name. Lady Fickle. And she spoke:

"Hello, Kelsey."
"Hello, Lady Fickle."
"There's just something that I need you to do. I was wondering if you could put together a little slide show movie for the evening."
"I could throw about 50 pictures on a power point for you guys. But it will cost you." (note: this is not considered caving to the enemy. It's called luring them into a trap.)
"Don't worry about a price. It's taken care of. That'd be great. If you could meet us early to test it out later that'd be great." (I knew she was right. It was taken care of, but how else to deter her? Nothing came to mind.)
"I'll be there."

Was it a challenge? Was it going to turn my afternoon in to a throw down of global proportions?

Yes. Yes it was.

But the real question remained. How was I going to make a functional working power point with sound and over 50 slides by this afternoon? I knew this deadline was no joke. I could literally be dead on the line, or flat lining with no one to revive my corpse. This is a tragic scenario indeed. So my teleportation capable shoes carried me back to my studio (1, what hero doesn't have cool gadgets? 2, studio? bat cave? cool place for me to do my nifty work and be undetected by my adoring fans-you get it.) And there I quickly uploaded 700 pictures and as they were converting to a secure drive, I deftly placed them in a newly designed power point presentation. All the while decoding the ideal song to play behind the pictures that would count down the minutes for my escape as well as hopefully distract our super villain.

One hour later, and an attempted foiled plot to slow down my super computer, I walk back into the designated place. If this was West Side Story, it would be under the freeway. If this was Zoolander, it would be the convenient runway in the well known abandoned place down the street. If this was a spaghetti stain, this would be on the go because that's where Tide to go is intended to be: EVERYWHERE.

So I walk to the center of the room. She stands there in front of me with her goons behind her. I've come alone (maybe that was an oversight in my plan?) but here I am anyway. She meets me. I reach out my hand with the flash drive. She knows that one false move will be the end.

"This isn't what I wanted."
"Maybe not. But that. Is what you get."
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO"

And with that, I buzzed my way out of the now shattering floor and destruction that was radiating from the room I had just left. But I was free. No more worries, and now, she was someone else's villain to battle.

I had lived to right another villain another day.

A Pattern Has Formed for the Fridays

Ok. I know it's Thursday. And I know you like your Themes on Thursdays. After all, that makes sense, THemes, THursday-I get it. But here's the skinny. I had a hell of an afternoon, so much so that our dastardly plans for a mastermind of a Themed Thursday had been foiled. Thus, here I sit waiting impatiently for our impromptu Themed THfriday where the true meaning of a blog off will be shown to the WORLD!!!!!

I really tried to give you a lot of clues, but I'm sleepy, and this will keep you on the edge of your seats until the morn.

Dawn smells like......

Early mornings make me think of speech camp. I mean, I'm not an early bird by any stretch of the imagination, but something about walking around campus before 8 am signals speech camp.

Now the real question is, how in the world is my body going to justify getting up that early for over a week? Basically? I have no clue. Something about divine intervention and people yelling. That usually works. So here's to a few more weeks of non predawn alarm clocks.

You've Got Mail: The RomCom Minus the "Rom"

This shall be a blog post entirely dedicated to letter leader board updates! Are you ready?

Inbox this week:
Michelle (I know, seems like I'm always talking to her in some capacity. We Hufflepuffs do that)
Spaulding (2 in a week? Impressive)
Laura
Joe
Hannah
Kate Meade

Needless to say I need to get to writing!

So in total, that leaves:

Spaulding: 3
Michelle: 2
Hannah: 2
Joe: 2
Laura: 1
Ben: 1
Kate: 1

Special shout out to Kate Meade, she has kindly sent me an autographed copy of her book, and I'm stoked to read it. So, weekend task? I think so. I might have to finish my other book first, but I don't think she'll mind too much.

And over all, I feel like I've done pretty well in sending and receiving letters. Out of the 10 people I've sent letters to, I've received letters from 7 (granted, Kate sent the first letter so she was only counted in the received pile).

In addition to all of those things, I should mention that both my mother and my grandmother are good penpals. Grandma has been sending me all kinds of recipes that I have been trying and then posting suitably mouth watering pictures here-blame her not me.

So here's to using up all of my stationary so that I have to buy "interesting" ones from various St. Peter stores. Gonna have to work for it, I've got a lot of it here.

Go Play Outside

Hello there Blogosphere! Today's discussion: Playgrounds. Why? Because they're awesome and you know you want to go to one right this instant because being a 5 year old with no teeth never lasts long enough. I'm right, don't argue.

Mariecus and I took a little stroll through St. Peter on this fine evening and ended up (ok, intentionally walked to) a playground down the hill. There, in this oasis of memories (see what I did there, that was cool) we did all of the things we did during recess about 15 years ago. Mind blown yet? Well, almost all of the things, except for throwing playground pebbles at each other and attending shotgun recess weddings. That being said, we spun around on the carrousel, tried to touch the tops of the trees on the swings, collected static on the slides, played tic tac toe on the little rolley built in tic tac toe board, attempted the oddly wide set monkey bars, and even sat in the tire swing.

Ok, but here's the real deal. The Tire Swing (capitalized for emphasis and importance). This was my jam in elementary school (at least for a year.  I like to be a versatile playground participant). There I would be the master of the Tire Swing and the ride designer.  Everything from how high to push them, to how fast to spin them-custom order welcome.  But here in St. P, there's a problem. This Tire Swing is yellow.

Go ahead, when was the last time you saw a yellow Tire Swing? A hard, plastic, yellow Tire Swing.  It's kind of like sitting in one of those Fisher Price Flintstone cars when you're 15.  So instead of looking like this kid:

Cool, debonaire, getting all the dates.

You look like this kid:

Not quite comfortable but still trying to play it cool

and that turns into:

Just less appealing. 

And what I'm trying to say here is not that I'm got bigger from when I was 7, (which is only partially true. I'm still pretty short) but that there's something far more comfortable at any age about a real Tire Swing instead of the color coded alternative. Needless to say I was not twirling in memory cyclones of Tire Swing revelries.  I had to stick with the regular swings. 

Sunday Sundae Sunday!

Things that are good on Sunday (and also on sundaes):

1) Crepes with Nutella and bananas. It's an obvious delicious decision and I regret nothing.

2) Blueberry muffins fresh out of the oven in heart shapes. It's better for the world.

3) Judging by the last two things, food is good on Sunday. Good to know.

4) Chocolate.