Merry Christmas!

It’s Study Day…

…and we maaaaaay be losing our minds.

I Am Thankful For Jill

My family traveled to Maryland for Thanksgiving this year, to visit with my Nana and Papa, as well as some other family members.  It was quite fun, and highly amusing at times.  Here are the highlights:

– My Nana goes a little crazy with the cheese whenever she has visitors:
There are 12 varieties shown in this picture, and I’m pretty sure you can’t even see all of it.  Insanity.

– My nana gave my sister a Ukelele.  Angels may play harps in heaven, but I’ve determined that the devil must be constantly learning to play the ukelele in hell, because I can’t really think of a worse instrument to have to listen to someone learn to play.  (sorry sis, but it’s true.)

My feelings for the Uke are summed up pretty perfectly by the following picture:

– On Wednesday night I asked my Nana who was coming over the next day for dinner.  She listed all the usual suspects- aunts, uncles, and cousins- and then added, ‘Oh… and my personal trainer… Jill.’  Wait… WHAT?  My initial thought was “What 82 year old invites their personal trainer to Thanksgiving?” Immediately followed by, “Actually, what 82 year old HAS a personal trainer????”  Yes ladies and gentlemen, my 82 year old Nana’s PERSONAL TRAINER joined us for Thanksgiving dinner.

Here she is enjoying a piece of pie with my Nana (ironic, no?):

But, here’s the thing… Jill jumped right in with the family; she even did the dishes, so she’s A-okay in my book.  Also, she played along with our family game and did not even flinch when I started yelling at her/the rest of our team (our family games get a little intense…)

Oh, and she did a darn good seal impression, which leads me to my last point…

– My sister managed to get our family to make complete fools of ourselves by doing crane and seal impressions as part of her made up game.  Here’s the picture evidence:
(note that Jill is still very much into her impression, even while the rest of us have collapsed into fits of giggles.  CHAMPION RIGHT THERE.)

So yes… there are the highlights of a very interesting Thanksgiving.  Here’s to hoping Jill will join us again next year.  Mostly because I don’t want to do dishes.

Something…

For the past week, MG has been telling me to, ‘Please just write SOMETHING on the blog!’. Well MG, I’ve done it. Okay- well, I suppose I’ll write more than something. This week was a crazy one, and I’m not sure it’s over yet. It was so crazy that I actually couldn’t keep track of what day it was. There were multiple times that I had to consciously repeat the date and time in my head so that I could remember my schedule… and even then, I still managed to forget on a number of occasions. (but I can’t really tell you when, because I’ve forgotten that too) I also had an unfortunate run-in with an ‘Entomology Party’ in the basement of the science building and was pressured into eating a chocolate-covered cricket. I guess it wasn’t really that unfortunate though, because chocolate has the power to overcome most awful things. It can make crickets and even stress palatable. As you can imagine, the stress level of our room has been a little high lately. On one particular evening this week, I was standing at MG’s desk and we were talking about all of the things we had to do. MG was leaning on me while sitting at her desk. Because I’m such a good friend, I abruptly decided to walk away and MG fell out of her desk chair. Feeling a little remorseful, I tried to pull her back up into a sitting position onto her chair from the floor. We were both laughing to the point of tears during the struggle when MG yells, “This isn’t working! My butt is stuck in the chair prongs!!” Chair prongs. Not chair legs. Chair prongs. Of course this didn’t help my effort as I was now laughing without hope of rescuing MG’s butt from the prongs.  Eventually she freed herself and it’s a good thing. Carrying a chair around on your butt isn’t exactly in style. At least not yet.

Joan’s Christmas Makeover

So, if you’ve been in our bathroom at any point since the end of October, you may have met Joan Synenberg.

Basically, I got this woman’s election mailing and thought the picture was mildly creepy and somewhat hilarious… so I wrote all over it and hung it in our bathroom the night before Gretchen’s microbiology exam.

Joan was not re-elected, and Gretchen claims her micro exam could have gone better, but for some reason, we’ve left good ol’ Joan hanging on the wall for a month.  In fact, since I am basically blind without my contacts, and she is sitting right above where I take them out, it’s pretty safe to say Joan is the first and last thing I see clearly every day.  Lucky me…

Anyway, last night this is what I saw before going to bed:

Looks like Joan got a Christmas makeover.  And with that, I have a feeling she’ll be around for quite a while, likely in various get-ups.

I’m Procrastinating. Again.

Hello everyone.  (And by ‘everyone’ I actually mean our parents, sisters, and possibly Connor….aka the only people who check our blog, ha.)  Things have been pretty insane for the occupants of West392a since getting back from break.  We’ve been frantically studying and writing papers as the semester comes to a close.  We’ve also been periodically blowing off steam by laughing to the point of tears over things that aren’t really that funny, planning our Christmas party, and watching Ellen videos on YouTube.  All in an attempt to maintain some sanity.  If you’ve seen or heard from either of us this week, we’ll let you be the judge regarding the effectiveness of our attempts.

Oh, and Gretchen did this, because she’s ridiculous:

If you’re sitting there thinking, ‘…Did Gretchen really make a human karyotype out of sour gummy worms?’ Yes… yes she did.  To quote her, “Chromosomes were never this delicious!  Speaking of… let me get some out.  Of my GENOMIC LIBRARY!”  Oh dear… this is what I live with, people.  The puns never end.

When I get some free time, I do intend to update about the hilarity that ensued at my family Thanksgiving, and I think Gretchen has another post regarding our suitemate’s attempts to resuscitate our fish after we neglected him for 10 days over break.  Hopefully that will all happen soon, but no promises.

All in all, we are surviving, but there hasn’t been much time for blogging.  Stay tuned though… school stress can’t last forever.  I hope.