Extremes of Life

People often talk about the highs and lows of life, but life is usually pretty high here on the fourth floor in 392A.  This past  week may have been a fantastic example of these ‘extremes of life’. MG and I must say we have had some moments of pride in the past week. We both made some solid plans for our futures and I chose a post-grad school. MG also succeeded in eating an entire bag of jelly beans and I downed a sizeable portion of Valentine’s M&Ms. (The M&Ms have to be finished once they’re out of style… it’s a hard task.)

However, the week had its fair share of lows and embarrassing moments as well. I would share the lows, but we’re sticking to the entertaining points of the week, so please just sit back and enjoy this week’s most embarrassing moment: the t-shirt ‘oops’. To give a little back story, I love designing t-shirts. I’ve done quite a few and spend an obnoxious amount of time on each design. Okay, now for the good part. My most recent design was one of my favorites… The organization leaders loved it as well, so 40 shirts were quickly ordered after the artist at the t-shirt company approved it. Now here’s a disclaimer- at least 5 people saw this design before it was printed. Yet, this is how it turned out:

How does this look to you? Put on your Sherlock brain caps and stare nice and hard at this for a moment. My embarrassment will be slightly eased if you don’t notice it at first… Yes… count those fingers- 1, 2, 3, 4, 5… and 6. What?! May I add that I used my own hand as a model for this. Oh yeah, I’m also a biology major taking Human Physiology. No big deal. It just took me 2 weeks to notice the mistake (and by ‘mistake’ I mean my hidden artistic meaning) and by that time these lovely t-shirts were already being sold across campus. I am thankful for one thing though- I forgot to sign the design. I tried to keep it a secret, but I just couldn’t bear the thought of people 1. thinking that I had couldn’t count and 2. not enjoying my embarrassment with me.  So, there you have it- the t-shirt oops.

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.

Serpentine Saga

Mary Grace has already shared my love of chocolate, but let me tell you that the intense delight I feel walking into a Chocolate Shop is rivaled by the joy of Mary Grace in The Dollar Tree. She loves it. Each time we approach the doors I see a gleam in her eye and I wonder what in the world we will walk back out with. Past trips have included pineapple sunglasses, a bow and arrow set, and (most regrettably) a noise making plastic gun. Granted, I am as cheap as the come, but MG’s dollars are mostly well spent. Last week we told you to stay tuned. Your devotion will be rewarded with an explanation of that odd picture of me standing over our bathtub.

It all began with the purchase of a growing snake that claimed to expand up to 600% its original size in 96 hours. We were skeptical of this claim and decided to try it out.

We knew we needed to document the snake’s growth to prove the claim, so here is Day 1:

Now, you may be wondering, “Why the bathtub?”. Well, we had grand expectations for the growth of the snake and we didn’t want to cramp his style. We were also feeling devious. Here is our attempt at a devious face. (We may need to practice those…)

The bathtub idea was a little concerning for our suitemates, because they now had to share the shower with a snake. This entailed removing the snake, draining his growth medium, and then replacing our growing pet in fresh water. Although the snake had his first 96 hours in the bathroom, his constant removal and replacement hindered his growth. MG’s solution of a plastic bin under her bed turned out to be brilliant: (notice his progress!)

The snake (who remains nameless) stayed under MG’s bed for a good 4 more days, and has certainly succeeded in becoming 6xs his original size! Here MG attempts to show us that the snake is as long as her leg. If you look closely, you can see that she is actually falling in her attempts to stretch out the snake:

Oh yes- the snake is made in Virginia. From now on we will expect great things VA. Keep it up.

MG was sad that the snake was outgrowing his home:

However, the sadness quickly turned into laughter when MG fell into the bathtub. #coordinated

Don’t worry, there’s more. The last day the snake was in the bathtub was a Monday. On Mondays, our bathroom is cleaned by a College employee by the name of Ruthann. Now in our rush to get to the post office that morning, MG and I had forgotten to move our stuff out of the bathroom. Unfortunately for Ruthann, this week our stuff included a snake in the bathtub. When we got back to the room, the snake was thrown on our bathroom shelf and the tub was clean. We both felt pretty bad about this and hoped that we hadn’t accidentally scared her.

This week we made a point to apologize to Ruthann. Thankfully she was cool with it. She said, “I have bath toys too.”  Whew- that was a close one.

P.S. The snake is still under MG’s bed. We have future plans for him…

Oops

Not even a week has passed since we have returned from fall break, so I’m going to tell you a little bit about a lesson I learned while it’s still fresh… As fresh as wet paint. My journey home takes me through a variety of small towns (at least 10). The town names range from ‘Enterprise’ to  ‘Dempsytown’ and past signs for a Rainbow Bowman Club and even a street sign with the name ‘Jesus is the Way’.  It’s always an interesting trip and there is no cell phone service. I feel like Sacagawea every time I begin my journey. Anyways, when approaching ‘Cherry Tree’ (quite an average town) I stopped at the stop sign. Typical. To my chagrin, I found myself waiting, and waiting, and waiting for a construction vehicle with a huge line of cars to pass so that I could turn behind them. When it was finally my time, I whipped behind the last car doing a nice little diagonal across the road. When I’m by myself I tend to drive on the wild side… After falling into line, I glanced up to the scrolling words of large sign on the back of the construction vehicle, “Freshly painted lines. Do not cross the yellow line. Keep away from the center Yellow line. Freshly painted lines. Do not cross the yellow line…” Maybe you’ve seen one of these. Well, glancing in my rearview mirror, I realized I had seen it too late. My CRV had decided to make its own fancy, yellow lines right across the road. “Oops”. My guilt at ruining the fresh paint job kept building as I followed the line of cars at a snail’s pace facing the flashing reminder. At this point, I pulled out my sunglasses to hide my identity, just in case someone in the boonies wanted to judge me.  When the fresh lines ended, I was finally released from the weight of my guilt and transferred it to the gas pedal, making up for lost time. When I pulled into my driveway, I had already forgotten about the incident and just enjoyed being home. Later that evening though, when I told my dad about the little mistake, he voiced his concern that I may have not only decorated the road but also the CRV. Honestly, I have yet to examine it. Silver with Yellow speckles doesn’t sound so bad anyways. At least I didn’t do this:

What To Do When…

…you accidentally spill water on the handwritten card for your suitemate from her boyfriend.

So, this evening Gretchen received a call from Michael, our suitemate Beth’s boyfriend, requesting her presence in North Lobby. Several minutes later she returned to our room with one giant vase of red roses and a handwritten card… which was 12 roses, a vase, and a card more than she left with.  Per Michael’s request she attempted to better arrange the flowers.  FAIL. After deciding she was just making things worse, she decided to just go put the flowers on Beth’s desk.  It was at this moment that she realized she had accidentally dripped water on, and effectively ruined, Michael’s card.

Okay, so maybe ruined is a bit of an exaggeration, but we felt bad about the whole thing.  We tried to put it in the flowers to hide the mark, but that just looked stupid.  It was at this point that we decided fraud was our only option.

So… here’s a step by step break down of how to best cover up a mistake such as this:

1. Gather materials; similar paper (cut to size), red sharpie, desk lamp, medium sized piece of glass

2. Rig up a tracing station:

3. Trace new card:

4. Take picture with both cards, proving striking similarity, and thus your uncanny ability to commit fraud.  Comment that you could probably “make counterfeit money really well” after this experience.

(Notice the missing picture from the wall behind Gretchen… that was the source of the glass.)

5. Place card with flowers on suitemate’s desk and pretend like nothing happened when she gets back:

6. Don’t post entire story on blog that your suitemate will later read.  Sorry Beth!  (Don’t tell Michael…)

And that’s what you do when you accidentally spill water on the handwritten card for your suitemate from her boyfriend. (: