Awkward Moment

I'm in a bit of a rush today, guys, but I wanted to share the Awkward Moment of the Day. I was at Clemson's Language and International Trade conference because my Italian teacher asked us to go listen to two speakers instead of coming to class today. The speakers were a little boring and there were sound problems, but that's not what I want to focus on. Nope, I want to talk about the girl I sat next to. Let's call her Jessica.

Jessica and I are in the same Italian class, and while we aren't really friends (Facebook or Real Life) we do know each other. She sits diagonal to me, we are partnered up in groups sometimes, we have chatted, etc. So it wasn't weird or awkward sitting next to her. No, the awkwardness came at lunch.

We broke for lunch, and Jessica and I got in line together and were talking and as we finished dishing up our plates I said something like, "You're the only one I recognize here, so I'm just gonna follow you, okay?"

And she's all like, "Yeah, cool."

So we walk downstairs to the tables and she's looking around and then turns to me with this grossed out look on her face and says, "You didn't want me to eat with you, did you?"

What. The. Hell.

No, I didn't, Jessica. I just wanted to follow you down here so I could ignore all the comfy chairs upstairs and sit down at a table by myself. Thanks.

I don't know what it is about me that repulsed her so much she couldn't offer to let me sit with her and her friends. I don't smell today. I'm dressed extra nicely for the conference. I smile--I'm nice to people. I have no history of random acts of violence and I don't rudely dominate conversations. What is it? Why?

So, yeah. That was awkward. See if I help her on group projects again, bitch.

Harry Potter World

So, this is a bit late. But only by a week! That's hardly anything, when you think about the whole scope of things. Really, how long is a week compared to the months I waited for each of the Harry Potter books to come out? Really?....It won't happen again. If only because I missed it.

The last you heard from me I was frolicking in Florida with my roommate, Julia. I have bunches to catch you up on, so here is a bulleted list of the major points that are going on in my life before the actual blog-content. I know, you're on pins and needles.

• Julia's family eats a ton. They go out to eat almost every day, and when they aren't eating out, her mom cooks amazing meals that could easily feed 10 people. I must have gained ten pounds in that little week I was there--I have no clue how Julia stayed skinny for the first 18 years of her life!
• I'm finally caught up on Once Upon a Time and WOW! Without any spoilers, I'll just say that there is so much going on and I can't wait until Sunday! On a side note, Julia knows the girl who plays young Snow White. How cool is that?
• I got sunburnt on my first day in Florida (I have very pale skin that resists sunscreen no matter how many times it's applied. It's like my superpower.) and spent the rest of the week under an umbrella with a towel draped over my legs while Julia had fun in the sun. Sadness.
• I GOT AN INTERNSHIP FOR THE SUMMER AND IT PAYS REAL MONEY
• I finally got my application for Italy, so now I just have to fill it out...I'll get right on that, I swear!
• I went to Harry Potter World!

It is this last bullet that I would like to expound upon. This was my first experience with Universal Studios ever. I'm a huge Disney World fan, so when I'm in Orlando I generally stay at Disney and don't move around much. But Julia and I (the huge potterheads we are) just had to see HP World, so we made the trip. It felt really weird to be in Orlando and see signs for Disney but not pull off, but I am glad I went--and both parks would have been too expensive for us broke college students.

Harry Potter World was amazing. We didn't even bother with the rest of the park at first, just headed straight for the castle and didn't look back until we'd done everything that we wanted to. 

We started with the castle ride because it had the longest wait and we knew it was a must see. We waited 90 minutes, and I'm not gonna lie, the outside portion of the line is brutal. However, it does move pretty regularly without long periods of standing still, which helps. I'd heard a lot about how the inside portion of the line was great, and for the most part it was. I really liked seeing the Mirror of Erised and Dumbledore's office and our little convo with the Golden Trio. My only problem was a plain door marked 'Kitchens'. Everyone knows that the entrance to the kitchens is behind the painting of a bowl of fruit, which would have been a great detail to add that wouldn't have been too hard. I also really would have liked to get a picture of me tickling the pear!

The ride itself was great! I would compare it to a combination of Soarin' and Dinosaur in Disney World, because it is intense and simulation-y, but not a roller coaster. It's been a while, so I'll admit to not remembering every detail about the ride, but I remember specifically thinking that they did an excellent job blending simulation and video with real life...if that makes any sense to you.

From there I got my wand. I didn't wait in line for the show at Ollivander's because we had to leave by 4 and didn't arrive in Universal until 11ish, so we were in a bit of a hurry to get everything done. Instead I just went in through Dervish and Bangs. I ended up choosing Hermione's, and I'm really happy with it. I originally wanted Draco's, then I got in line with Luna's, then I got out of line and picked up Lucius', and then I finally decided on Hermione. I like to think that it was calling to me :)

Next was lunch at the Three Broomsticks where I got the shepherd's pie and Julia got fish and chips and we both tried butterbeer. Frozen is better than non-frozen, by the way. Lunch was a bit expensive, but what do you expect in a theme park, I guess. I do think it was more expensive than Disney though.

We did the Tri-Wizard Tournament ride twice so we could experience both sides. I prefer the red side and Julia liked the blue. The wait for this ride was really short, the first time being 25 minutes and the second only 10 minutes.

After that we headed over to the Hulk, which had a very short wait, and was awesome! I lovvee roller coasters, and that really satisfied my fix. The Hulk was probably the biggest roller coaster I have been on to date, but it wasn't that bad. I keep telling people that so they will agree to go back with me.

As amazing as I thought Harry Potter World was, Universal itself didn't impress me much. Parking was very unorganized, the staff nowhere near as friendly as in Disney, there wasn't a lot for littler children to do (even the carousal was intense), and I felt like the copied a lot from Disney, without any of the magic.

As fun as it was to go on the more 'grown up' rides at Universal, my heart remains with Disney.

Start of Spring Break

I'm currently on vacation in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. I'm having a lot of fun (my roommate and her family are extraordinarily generous and pleasant) but because of this I don't have much time to blog. So, until next week, you'll have to make due with extremely short posts. I did update my writing tab (finally) though, so feel free to peruse that. The nonfiction piece I posted (Heat) was for a class assignment, and I'm not a huge fan of it, but I wanted to post something today. So there you go.

For anyone who is interested, I am extremely sunburned.

The Graveyard Book

Let me start off by saying that Neil Gaiman is awesome! He does pretty much everything, he's written novels for children and for adults, graphic novels, and I want to say an episode of Dr. Who. He has such a unique mind and is able to create all these surreal worlds and people while still making them absolutely believable. So far I have only read The Graveyard Book and Neverwhere, but they were both beautifully dark books and I would completely recommend them. 

The Graveyard Book is the story of Nobody 'Bod' Owens, a real-life boy who grows up in an old graveyard, raised by ghosts. A mysterious man, Jack, murdered Bod's family when he was just a-year-and-a-half old. Luckily, the friendly ghosts from the graveyard up the hill protect Bod and take him in as one of their own. Growing up in a graveyard is, as you can imagine, quite different then growing up in the real world. Bod meets deceased people from times long ago, learns the ghostly arts of Fading and Dreamwalking from his tutor, has an encounter with the unknowable Sleer, and is almost killed by ghouls. The Graveyard Book follows Bod on all these adventures, watching him grow up and (as cliche as it sounds) find himself.

A bit of a disclaimer, the book is dark. It starts out--literally--with a knife, with murder. As adult readers, we often expect children's books to be happy and light, but that is underestimating a child's ability to understand the darker aspects of life. Neil Gaiman doesn't baby the children, I guess you could say, which I really like. Madeleine L'Engle spoke of children's great ability to grasp concepts that we don't give them enough credit for when she said, "You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children." The Graveyard Book is a book that is written well, and written for children.

**SPOILERS**

Sorry for the spoilers, but I don't think there's a way to talk about this book effectively without giving something away. I found this book incredibly sad--in a good way, definitely, but sad all the same. Bod, like his guardian, Silas, is an in-between person. He is neither fully living or fully dead. It is a coming of age story (bildungsroman) so by definition the protagonist is in-between, but the isolation of being in between the living and the dead is much different then being between childhood and adulthood. Even Bod's name, Nobody Owens. Nobody owns him, nobody can claim him as their own, he has no kin. And then at the end of the book, as Bod is becoming more and more invested in the corporeal world he is no longer able to see his ghostly friends and family. It is incredibly poignantly sad that he is being thrust out into the world with no connections and friends, leaving behind everything and everyone he knows. But there is hope. There is the hope of real life and all the experiences Bod is aching for and there is also the hope that when his time comes, Death will return Bod to his home in the graveyard. It's just...it's so good.

Just on a side note, I found Neil Gaiman's descriptions of the inverted cemetery wall in the ghouls world and the way the ghouls moved to be amazing.

**END SPOILERS**

A book club I'm in here at Clemson just did The Graveyard Book, and there is honestly just so much to talk about that I don't quite know where to stop. I feel like everything could be its own post, but I'm not really into doing a series so I think we'll just leave it as it is. But if you want, you could think about how the protagonists of children's books are so often orphans, or what really makes a person 'Alive', or why growing up stopped Bod from being able to see the ghosts or some other question that you think might be relevant. I don't know, just go with it.

All in all, I wholeheartedly recommend The Graveyard Book and Neil Gaiman as a whole. I need to get my hands on some more Gaiman! If you want to find him, go here. He writes a lovely little blog that I follow as well.

I am listening to Washed by the Water by Needtobreathe

Survival of the Fittest

I've had several pets in my lifetime, though few have survived. I don't know what it is about my family, but we just don't seem to deal well with pets. It all started out before I was born, so I know that I'm not the one to blame--obviously it's my parents' curse. We had a dalmatian named Ashley, with one blue eye and one brown one. I have very few memories of her: she was scared of thunderstorms, she refused to play fetch, preferring to look at the ball disdainfully, she loved green beans but not peas, and she had one leg that didn't work.

The accident that cost Ashley the use of her leg happened before I was born. Dad wanted to show her (like in those creepy dog shows) and was training her at the horse tracks where she liked to jump over the hurdles. After doing a few laps, he took her up to his friend's office on the fourth floor. Ashley took one look around, spotted the open window, and jumped through it just like a hurdle. She lived, but only thanks to a stranger across the street who called animal services when he saw a dog, legs flailing, plummet the four stories to the ground. What I wouldn't give to see the expression on that guy's face! So she broke her leg to the point where it never fully straightened again. She got the hang of it eventually, even was able to run, but for a few months my dad had to carry her to the bathroom. That's dedication.

The next animal was my hamster, Snowball. I should have known things would turn out badly the moment I looked into his beady red eyes at the pet store and he bit my finger til it bled. Snowball and I did not get on well. I, admittedly, wasn't the best pet owner. I often forgot to feed him or give him water, and I refused to clean his cage point-blank. It came as no surprise when my mother and I went to go feed little Snowball one day only to find that he'd chewed his way through his plastic cage. We looked for him everyone--under the bed, behind the couch, in the closets, under the sink, everywhere. We looked until we expected to find only a tiny hamster skeleton. I wasn't too choked up about the loss.

 2 months later we found Snowball, resiliently and unbelievably alive. Behind the washing machine. He'd been living off Ashley's dog food.

So, we got a new cage and stuck him back in it. A few months later, he'd chewed his way out again. This time we didn't bother looking too hard, knowing he'd turn up eventually. Quite a while later, Mom was clearing out the back of her closet and found a tiny, chewed hole through the baseboard of the house...Snowball. Mom screamed, and I never saw my oh so beloved hamster again. He ran away; chewed straight through the house just to get away from me. I like to think that there is a herd of snow-white hamsters living in the woods behind my house, they're monstrous red eyes and talons terrorizing the neighborhood.

My next encounter with pets was birds. In my defense, they weren't my birds and it wasn't my fault. I was babysitting my friend's two birds (Sonny and Sandy, colored blue and green respectively) while she went to visit family in Texas over Christmas vacation. My dad, the jokester that he is, decided it would be super funny to let the birds out of their cage so they could fly around the house and annoy Mom. He probably should have turned the fan off first.

That's right. I walk in the room just in time to see a little blur of green get smacked by the ceiling fan and thrown into the wall, little tufts of feathers floating down in its wake. I don't know how, but the thing survived. I almost felt guilty taking my friends 'thank you' present...almost.

Then there was the cat. Nothing dramatic has happened to Shadow, but she's annoying as hell. Every morning, between 1 and 3am, Shadow decides to make some noise. I don't know why, I've never asked. She climbs into my bookshelves, and begins knocking my books onto the ground one by one. Thud. Thud. Thud....THUD! This is immediately followed by me forcibly removing her from the room. Occasionally I 'accidentally' throw her into the wall at the other end of the hallway, but she always lands on her feet.

After Shadow we got fish. A LOT of fish. My dad likes to do spontaneous things while Mom and I are on vacation. We go to grandma and grandpa's while he has to work? He buys a big screen tv. Mom goes to work and gets home late? He buys a boat. No lie, he legit bought a boat. We go to Spain for a pilgrimage? He buys a 50 gallon fish tank. It's just what he does.

So, if you have a 50 gallon fish tank you obviously need fish. We had fish of every kind (and several different batches as they all died out, but let's focus on the first). We had blind albino frogs, sucker fish, elephant fish, pretty fish, ugly puffy fish, guppies, baby shark looking things, green fish, beta fish, and tiger fish. I had one fish that I grew quite attached to, Tiger. He had a little tiger-striped tail that was adorable and he could out-swim most of the predators in the tank. It became evident pretty early on that the fish were being eaten, but rather than fix the problem and save the fish my dad decided it was 'survival of the fittest'. Tiger was one of the last to go, and I mourned him for weeks. 

The most interesting fish in our tank were the frogs. They were white with red eyes (just like Snowball) and were blind. This was particularly entertaining at feeding time, because they couldnt' see the food or the other fish, so they just swam around blindly and ran into everything. Including the sides of the tank. It was hilarious!

Our next pet was Abby, another spontaneous purchase by my father. She is a black lab-golden retriever mix that we rescued. She and her siblings were trapped in a storm drain and she was the only one who survived. She is lovable and friendly and we haven't managed to kill her yet so that's a plus. But that's not to say we haven't come close.

Dad bought an electric fence for her so that we wouldn't have to walk her anymore. We were all ecstatic. Dad and I worked together to get it all set up, adjust the perimeter and power level of the collar, and then stuck the thing on her. We were heading out to walk her around and train her to know where the fence was. We'd just gotten to the door when her collar started beeping.

 ME: "That's weird."

DAD: "Yeah." 

We ignored it and kept going. Abby got two feet before the collar shocked her...at the highest level. We had gotten the levels mixed up; we meant to put it on the highest perimeter and the lowest shock-level, but did the opposite instead. I know, we're smarties. Abby paid the price for it though. I'll never forget her little black body leaping into the air, her howls echoing down the road. We haven't used the fence since.

The next pet is my turtle, Grady Bubba. My best friend from home and I each got a turtle; hers is named Brady. They are little red-eared sliders, I believe, and don't require much maintenance or money, which makes them the perfect college pet! Grady just sits on my desk, never complaining or knocking books off. I only have to clean his tank once a week and feed him, like, twice. His low-maintenance attitude hasn't been all good, however. I kind of forgot him over Thanksgiving break...but he's still alive! Alive and well, and now my roommates remind me to feed him and take him home with me, so it all worked out.

My family also has an iguana now. His name is Marley and he lives in the empty 50 gallon fish tank. My dad bought him for my brothers 15th birthday. You could say it was an unusual present, as Richard had never expressed any interest in iguanas, but that's the kinda bloke Dad is. An unusual one. Marley is alive and normal as far as I know. He doesn't like it when you get close to his tank, but other than that he never moves. Seriously, he is the most boring present ever.

And those are my family's pets: two dogs, a cat, a hamster, countless fish, a turtle, and an iguana. I vote we go for a goat next.

Dance Marathon

Dance Marathon was an interesting experience. There was definitely a lot that could be improved upon and that was worse than last year, but there was some good parts too. I'll focus on the bad first so we can end on a high note, shall I?

The most major problem this year was the lack of advertising. If you weren't already a part of Dance Marathon, or if your sorority or fraternity didn't already have a team, you didn't know anything about it. NOBODY knew it was happening, and thus the turnout sucked. As a consequence of this, we raised less money, had a ton of leftover t-shirts, and had only 5 non-staff dancers stay the whole night. FIVE!

I'm not counting the pledges. There was a fraternity that required their pledges to stay the whole night, but they snuck off and slept and ended up sitting down, so I don't count them. They didn't participate (except for when we played dodgeball) and had surly attitudes that made me want to shove cancerous children in their faces til they'd cried so much they were dehydrated.

Because nobody stayed the whole night, our Schedule of Activities kind of disintegrated by 3 a.m. We just gave up on the games and teaching that god-awful morale dance and let everybody chill, which was okay, except you got really bored and really tired really fast. But our schedule was pretty much shit anyway. We didn't start until an hour later than we were supposed to, so everybody had a lot of bored-down time when they arrived--not a good way to start a 16 hour dance marathon.

One of my fellow morale team members had a lot of good suggestions for what to do next year, and she's planning on joining the exec team to get her voice heard. Some of her more stellar ideas were: a bouncy castle, mood lighting (bright lights does not promote dancing), better advertising, not having it form 5 p.m.-9 a.m., but from 12 p.m.-4 a.m. or something, NOT making it longer, a simpler morale dance, vegetarian/Catholic during Lent food options, not allowed to leave, and tons of others that made a lot of sense to me at 5 in the morning that I'm having trouble remembering right now.

So that was the bad, but what about the good? There were some definite improvements from last year. First of all, I didn't have to pay extra for the morale tank top, and I got to get a t-shirt of every color since we had so many left-over. The morale dance was a full two mintues shorter than last year, although I still think it's a little too complicated for the masses to learn and memorize at 4 in the morning.

The entertainment this year was also a lot of fun. We had TigerRoar and Take Note (Clemson's premier a cappella groups) come and sing to us, which was fabulous! Clemson's gospel choir came, the dance team, Tigerstrut, a yoga instructor, a relaxation instructor, a breakdancing teacher, an isolations teacher, a jazzer-size instructor, a zumba instructor, and a belly-dancing teacher. We also had a lot of fun games that worked well this year (or at least better than last year). The most successful games we had were a fun partner game that I think is called Monkey-in-a-Tree, Human Knot (*cough*my idea*cough*) , Hula Hoop Pass, and Dodgeball (*cough*my idea*cough*). So there was a lot going on and plenty to keep you entertained...in the beginning. I don't know why but from the hours between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. we had NO entertainment. I understand people might not want to come out and teach a jazzer-size class that late, but really? Those are the toughest hours! That's when we need all the distraction from our aching feet and drooping eyes that we can get!

I will say that I was a heck of a lot less sore this year than last year. I don't know if it's just because I knew what to expect or what, but I felt fine...well, not completely fine. My feet hurt like crazy and my sleep schedule is all out of whack, but it wasn't as dramatic as last year.

I know that overall this has been a pretty bitchy post, but I don't want to discourage you from participating in Dance Marathon at all. This is Clemson's third year doing DM, and we obviously still have a lot of bugs to work out, but it is totally worth it! Because the tiredness and aching feet and piss-poor four-in-the-morning attitude is all FTK, For The Kids. And that's what it's all about.

If you want to learn more about Dance Marthon, go here. I encourage you to do it!

While this year's Dance Marathon might not have been everything I was hoping it would be, I still think it falls under the category of 'do something'. So that's another step towards my goal :) It's the bright side, bitches, the bright side!

Hold That Door!

Dance Marathon is TONIGHT!! Can you believe it? The Morale Team and I have been preparing for months and it's finally here! Excitement!

As excited as I am, I'm not going to talk about Dance Marathon just yet. I want to go, experience the fun, and come back to tell you all how it went down in great detail. You know you're stoked. But what I want to talk about today was inspired by Dance Marathon.

My team within the Morale Team is running a 3 hour segment of the show (3-6am YES!). This means that for those three hours, we are in charge of entertainment, music selection, games, etc. One of the games we chose to play is a Clemson version of Family Feud. Cute, right?

So, if you're familiar with Family Feud at all, you know that they survey 100 people, take their answers to random/weird questions, and make the contestants try to guess the top answers. So we surveyed--mostly science lectures--with our random questions and tallied up their answers. What do people wear everyday besides clothes? Jewelry. What are Clemson professor's pet peeves? Tardiness. What tells the time in your house besides a clock? Sundial.... yeah, sundial was the legit top response. I don't know what people were thinking. We also had one Einstein write 'bird'. If any of you can tell the time with a bird, I'd be interested to learn.

But the answer that I found most interesting was to the question: Something a picky girl finds wrong with her date?

Top Answer: Doesn't hold the door open for her.

This surprised me. Don't get me wrong, door-holding is important. It shows manners and courtesy and just makes me feel ladylike. But the top answer? Over clothes and hair? Really? I guess I just never realized how much emphasis we put on holding the door open.

We do need to take into account that this is the South. I've heard all the jokes, read the discussion boards, and as much as Northerners will try to deny it, the consensus seems to be that we Southerners are in general a politer bunch. Less straightforward, sure, and a heck of a lot more gossipy, but we've got ready-for-grandma manners out the wazoo.

So the fact that I go to a southern school chock-full of never-seen-snow-confederate-grandbabies probably affected the answer. But it did make me think about how much it means to me whether or not a man holds the door (or anybody, really. If you're walking in front of me and you let the door swing in my face, you are immediately on my shit-list). I went to camp my junior year of high school, where one of the counselors told us young ladies something we should live our lives by: If a man doesn't hold the door open for you, automatically check him off the 'possible husband' list. I found it a little extreme at the time, but I do find myself muttering 'jackass' under my breath and glaring at anybody who doesn't hold the door open. It's not hard! And it's just polite. At least, I thought it was polite until I found this little gem while researching:

Still, whether they're checking out our asses or not, it is apparently very important to women that their date holds the door open for them. So, gentlemen, if you want to impress your gal, here is a website that goes in depth into the intricacies of holding the door open. Enjoy, and don't let her know you're looking at her booty!

In other news, I have met a boy who holds the door...and buys me sandwiches and cookies without me asking...and says I have beautiful eyes...I pretty much want to scream into a pillow--and not the angry kind of screaming. The good kind. I'm not going to read too much into it though. I'm not. He seems like a bit of a flirt, so he probably doesn't mean anything by it. But it's always nice to hear you have beautiful eyes :)

For those of you keeping score at home, this isn't K, or should I say, Creepy K. This is...Rockstar. Let's call him Rockstar.

I am listening to Everybody Loves Me by OneRepublic.