A spur-of-the moment trip to UNI to visit primary bestie was in order yesterday afternoon– I took her to a very belated birthday dinner (…at Applebee’s) and we saw Couple’s Retreat.  I thought it was cute and funny and I really wanted to be married afterward (my movie companion said this was quite possibly the dumbest thing I’ve ever uttered which is saying something) and my other friend told me that you don’t need to be married to visit a resort.  WHATEVER.  It wasn’t like drop-what-you’re-doing-and-go-see-this-movie-good, it could definitely be a rental, especially if you get irritated at Vince Vaughn playing quick-talking wise guy character in all of his movies.

Upon my return, I picked up a copy of the Daily Iowan and was briefed on:

1. Dr. Ponseti died (sad– he’s the one who’s foundation we did the 5K for on Friday)

2. If you did not know by now that the Hawkeyes are 7-0 you are just the DUMBEST person on the planet because IS YOUR TEAM RANKED #6 IN THE BCS POLL!?!?  Facebook has become equally unbearable.  Maybe it’s because I was raised quite anti-Hawkeye, but I have yet to jump on the undefeatable bandwagon.  Don’t get me wrong– it’s amazing when we win & I hope we go to infinity and beyond, but the inner-pessimist in me is saying Stop being like this, entire rest of campus– when we lose, your Stanzi is the Manzi face tattoo will seem a bit ridiculous.

3. After a few weeks of relative quiet, some jackasses decided we needed some real fist-to-mouth, trips-to-the-hospital assaults.  Nothing like a girl walking home from downtown and getting jacked in the face by a guy to remind her she’s in Hawkeye country.  You can read about the two downtown assaults here: http://www.dailyiowan.com/2009/10/19/Metro/13733.html

4. The east-side dorms were also not a peach of a place to find yourself if you had to pee at 3 a.m.: http://www.dailyiowan.com/2009/10/19/Metro/13727.html .  Now, I AM NOT CONDONING THE ACTIONS OF THE MALES IN THIS SITUATION, but as a college female who lived in the dorms, I read this and had kind of a “Umm, duh?” moment.  This girl was probably staying with her boyfriend and didn’t want to have to go to a girls’ floor to use the bathroom.  She may have also been from a different school altogether & didn’t have a key to a girl’s bathroom– whatever, lots of possible scenarios.  I can see both sides of this– at 3 a.m. she’s thinking– what guy is going to be in there?  I’ll go fast, even though it’s against the rules, no one will notice.  Note: there are unlocked bathrooms for both sexes on the first floor of all dorms.  It had to be truly terrifying for the lights to go out and all of that to go down, but all I’m saying is: think.  I know the thought of this ever happening never crossed her mind, as it probably wouldn’t mine either, but Iowa City is not the safest place to be.  Regardless if you’re “safe” in a dorm or school building, you can’t control the actions of your (most likely inebriated) peers. 

In closing, I just ran about three miles and am feeling fantastico.  Perhaps I’ll work on some homework… in advance?..so I can enjoy bestie apple brats on Wednesday & family time this weekend?  What a strange concept– we’ll see how it goes…

WHYYYYYY, Cruel World, did I wake up at 6:15 this morning?!?!  It’s certainly not that I went to bed at any decent hour (second 21st bday celebration of the week was a success…)

An example of the power of Twitter: last night at work I was about to pass out with tiredness, so tweeted from my phone “Someone bring me coffee at work, I’m fading fast.”  Not too long after, @codyhromidko brought me a double vanilla latte from his place of employment.  I love him.  You should love him.

Roomie’s alarm just went off at 8 am.  On a Sunday.  Roomie, you are crazy.

After the game yesterday, some Web site said something about the Hawkeyes having a chance at the “Rose Bowl and beyond.”  What is beyond the Rose Bowl??  And I will eat my hat, nay, I will eat ten hats LITERALLY PUT TEN HATS IN MY MOUTH, CHEW & SWALLOW THEM if the Iowa Hawkeyes make it to the Rose Bowl this year.  It just ain’t happenin’.

I think my eyes are bleeding.  Sleep needs to return to me like now.  On one hand, I’ve never done a Powerpoint presentation before 7 am before, but I can check that one off my bucket list.  On the other hand, the amount of extreme bitchiness that I will rise to before this day is over if I don’t get more sleep is quite dangerous.

THERE ARE PEOPLE SHOUTING OUTSIDE RIGHT NOW.  Children… squealing.  This is my nightmare.

Update: Engaged & Underaged is on.  Suddenly being awake is so worth it.  There’s nothing I love more than watching my peers ruin their lives on situational reality television.

Roomie & I are watching the game– I’m feeling oddly optimistic about it, so we’ll probably lose.

Yesterday I ran my first 5K.  To clarify, when I went to said race, I had no idea I’d be running it.  That would explain why I was wearing jeans.  A group of friends had decided we were going to walk it, supporting kids with club foot and our campus PR firm who did the advertising for it.  Once we started though (we all started jogging as to not get trampled by the hardcore racers) I just kept going, not wanting to walk in the cold for almost an hour.  The jeans became kind of uncomfy at about the halfway point, and I did walk up a hill for maybe 1/4 of a mile. 

I finished in 34 minutes which I’m pretty happy with, all things considered.  I was definitely the only person who had my cell phone in my pocket, so towards the end, I called up Bestie while running, and was all “Guess what I’m doing?!  Running a 5K in jeans!”  He was quite bewildered.  The most intense physical activity he’s ever seen me do is go up the stairs when someone is using the downstairs bathroom.  Ohh that’s not true– one time I chased one of his roommates around the perimeter of his house barefoot and tried to tackle him.

My back of all things is the most sore– I figured my knees would kill– I had deplorable form.  While running, I was thinking about how I could never, never, never run a marathon.  KUDOS to the people who do, but I have no desire to run for 26.2 miles.  WHY would you?!  It’s all about the mental thing, and to be honest, I’m not that mentally tough.  A girl from my high school just completed the Chicago Marathon and qualified for Boston.  She has now said she is “addicted to marathons.”  I would rather be addicted to meth.  (<– that was kind of a joke.  Kind of.)

You know how Cheez-Its have holes in the middle?  Perfect to put a string through.  Screw candy necklaces– I will now be making millions off of my Cheez-It necklace idea.

Where will I be one week from today??

HOME!!

Who’da thunk I could get so excited to return to a place I was once counting down the days, hours, minutes until I could leave?  Ahh, maturation.  I’m headed back to the mothership so my family & I can roll on down to KC for my cousin’s wedding, something I’m oddly really excited for.  Perhaps it’s because of the BARBECUE REHEARSAL DINNER, you read that right: Bar.Be.Cue.  I might try to sneak the bestie down as well so we can have a taste-off (pretty much our only marketable skill is our combined extensive knowledge of a wide assortment of BBQ sauces– we’ll probably write a book.)  At my other cousin’s wedding I cried– wtf– so let’s hope there’s not a repeat performance, but something about weddings & graduations make me weepy?  Lame.

You should be insanely jealous of how my apt smells right now because yellow cupcakes were just pulled outta the oven.  Holy yum sauce.  They’ll get some chocolate frosting later and then get taken to another friend’s 21st birthday party (this is supposed to be like a classy ladies-only get together… weird) and I was commissioned for the cake. 

Someone take me to a movie.  I do not want to see Where the Wild Things Are.  Unlike apparently the rest of the world, I was not a large fan of the book growing up.  All I remember of it was its hellacious length.  If they made If you Give a Mouse a Cookie into a movie, now THERE’S some great cinema.

Happy anniversary to Slash & Perla <– luckiest woman alive…

Let’s not talk about the kid and the balloon and his parents who clearly need a psychotic evaluation.  Let’s instead look at some other happenings around the country today and ask ourselves WHY little Falcon and his Wife Swapping famewhore mom and dad were the largest story of the day when an interracial couple was denied a marriage license in Louisiana (it is still 2009, right?  I didn’t get the whole regressing 50 years/ pre Civil Rights era memo…)

I am a journalism major.  I hate journalism.  I am realizing this a bit too late, however, and am close enough to just getting the degree that I’ll never change my major.  The past two years I have met some awesome super interesting people in the field who absolutely love what they do.  These people have more passion for the truth and reporting and sensational story-writing than I’ve probably ever had for anything yet in my 20 years.  That’s not me, though– I’m not naturally inquisitive, I find the media at times to be absolutely repulsive– I’m even becoming jaded on the PR aspect due to me realizing it’s all about money.  I KNOW– it’s America, capitalism, what else did I think it was about??  Maybe I’m just being a Debbie Downer, but I can’t imagine myself enjoying a life where I wake up to go to work every day to promote a company and/or product with the sole image of increasing sales/saving face.  Even non-profits, the field I’ve been leaning towards, are about donations, donations, donations.  I’m not good at asking for money– I think it’s tacky and I don’t handle rejection well.

As I’ve mentioned, my dream job is to bake for people.  Obviously the proper channels to actually pursuing this would be to take some business classes and get really good at baking.  It’ll happen one day,  but now is not the time.  I know I shouldn’t give up on the whole writing thing– as much as I hate journalism, I still hold out hope.  The smell of the New York Times  makes me really excited, and I am able to get satisfcation out of writing a kick-ass lede or getting a really great interview.  Maybe I hate it because college is the first place I wasn’t spoon-fed compliments just for making an effort.  I’ve pretty much accepted that either route I go, mega millionaire dollar signs are probably not in my future (which kinda blows since my only official life goal is to have enough money and no kids so I can fly to Vegas whenever I want…)

Also, how great is Taco Bell?!  The bestie and I went this evening– I’ve only been a handful of times in my life– and I am continually surprised by the dirt-cheap prices yet amazing food.  Blackjack taco box? I never knew that I needed two tacos, a burrito, and crispy CinnaSticks with a soda as big as my thigh all at one time!  (For the record, neither of us ordered this, but we saw it and were both in awe and excited for having found ground zero of America’s obesity epidemic…)

We also watched an episode of Gone Too Far, DJ AM’s documentary about helping addicts (which is ummm EXACTLY the same as Intervention only with a C-list celebrity instead of actual credibility.)  Does anyone else think that show has lost any sort of effectiveness it may have had on the addicts/audience due to the hypocrisy of the situation?!  Right before, MTV had just aired the documentary about Steve-O’s drug addicted past, so as one of my friends pointed out, the channel has basically become a giant how-to on getting high.

…is a hilarious movie.  And also how I might sum up my day if I had to give it a name.

Apparently next semester is an excellent time to be going abroad– the school needs to cut only a cool $24.7 million dollars from its budget in the next two weeks, no big deal or anything.  Every day staying in Germany indefinitely looks better and better (they have the world’s oldest universal healthcare system, just fyi.)

Grease is on TV.  John Travolta was like… hot.

My freelance professor told me today that my writing is full of cliches and rife with “small, uninteresting verbs.”

Next week is the actual halfway point of the semester.  College is not actually that hard.  It’s what I imagine running a marathon would be like– 95% mental. 

I had sweet potato fries at lunch.

Today is one of my best friends’ 21st birthdays. 

And when I say ‘best friend’ I mean this kid is for real-io’s the person I’ve been friends longest with in college (which is WEIRD to sit down and chart out, if you have the time.) 

I distinctly remember our first meeting– an eventual mutual friend introduced us in the doorway of his room and I remember thinking “Oh, he’s cute– too bad he’ sgay,”  because of his nice features and extreme enthusiasm about the espresso machine he’d made room for in his dorm (I have long since found out that he is indeed quite straight.)

Freshman year he and I were two members of a four-person “gang”, as we called ourselves, who were pretty inseperable.  I believe our gang name was “SpiderHornyGuitarGirl” (he was the horny part… this post has really taken a tawdry turn, I apologize.)  We even came up with a gang symbol that we thought about getting tattooed, but thankfully, though our moments of common sense are few and far between, we took to randomly Sharpie-ing it on ourselves during times of boredom instead. 

Over two years later, it seems that he and I are the only ones left standing in our epic quad-some (not that I don’t love the other two, but one is my former co-worker who I don’t see often enough, and the other is my ex who won”t acknowledge my presence in a room unless I jump and down in front of him like a goddamn chimpanzee..)  He is one of the few people I’d answer a phone call or text for during the wee hours of the morning– and I did, when he got hit by a taxi van while drunk; I stayed at the emergency room trying to relay the information to his family while calling our friends that he would, in fact, be okay.  He and I also know more about each other than your average bear, which we don’t hold over each other’s heads, but can be called as a Trump card in times of need.

Often I find myself not caring much what others think or if I’ve offended them, but he is an exception– I respect his opinions and seek him out for advice (okay, sometimes…)  I’ve had the conscious thought “What would he do” or think of this situation I’m in right now, and I’ve actually altered my action accordingly.  He and I are quite similar, if anything, he’s an older brother to me– someone who tells me to stop talking when I’m being annoying, or asks who/what/when/where/why when I get even remotely close to a boy of interest.

Not to say that it’s all been rainbows and unicorns– once I made him cupcakes & then dropped a bunch on my friend’s carpet, but I gave them to him anyway & he was polite enough to not mention the cat hair until after he ate them haha.   Sometimes he tells me he wants to punch me but won’t because I’m a girl and I’m all DOOO IT!!! but he wouldn’t actually hit a girl so then I punch him and I feel bad.  One time I sprayed him with a toxic amount of antibacterial cleaner because he puked all over his room and his roommate thought I should be the one called in to deal with it (we are so even for the cat hair, Mister.)

So happy 21st, buddy–you’re the life of every party, you’re smart and hilarious and awesome… please don’t die tonight/ this weekend.

Today I shall share with you my opinions on where Hancher/Voxman/Clapp should be relocated to because I have a blog and I CAN.  Prepare to have your feathers ruffled.

You can read the article in today’s DI about the forum last night for some background:  http://dailyiowan.com/2009/10/13/Metro/13582.html

Do not bring the arts campus downtown.  Do not pretend that this university has even close to the funds to buy new property (where is this elusive “south of Burlington” anyway? Can someone give me a map? “South of Burlington” is either waaaay south, where there’s been a lot of gang-related violence, or kinda south, in which case all that property should be used as residential area because I’ve recently been in some of those new apartments and they are nice haha.)

Music students, Iowa doesn’t really want you there.  They want your money there.  Not that this decision will affect any current music students I know or myself at all, because by the time a decision gets made & the building actually goes up, wherever they put it, we will hopefully be long out of here.  But the article even says: downtown site = improved business.  If they keep Voxman on the west side, students might have to like, bring their lunches to class or eat out of vending machines or not be able to walk by Express between classes and pick up something to wear downtown that weekend.  THE HORROR.

Even if this institution wasn’t looking at this situation purely through dollar-sign tinted glasses (and I realize that’s how they look at everything, even though I was just told last week that its “primary job was to get you kids a job.” HA) remember, my musically-inclined peers, the summer before last.  I seem to recall a lot of water.  And I seem to recall you completely getting the shaft.  This is not an arts-centered institution.  If you want to sing your heart out and have some actually care, go to Simpson or Luther.  The arts students were an afterthought during the flood of ‘08– I’m not even sure music performance should be a real major, yet my blood boils everytime I see photos of Voxman neck-deep in the Iowa River.

Speaking of real majors, let’s put the economic factors of moving the music facilities aside.  Perhaps I am a realist, maybe it’s how I was raised, but music as a profession is completely impractical to me.  I’m not talking about music educators or even music therapy, but students coming here for the sole purpose of one day making a real living off of playing their instrument live in a fantasy world.   If you’re that good, like major metropolis chamber orchestra good, travel ’round the world selling out concert halls good, get Julliard on the phone.  I am coming from the completely biased position of not being a huge music person– maybe some people’s only talent is to play an instrument or sing.  If that’s the case, why are you here? Especially after the flood, I should think there are many, many others places you could go to hone your craft who could serve you much better.   

I’ve thought about this music major thing before because I used to date one (AHA! you say– her true motives are coming through.  Simmer down, I’d like to think I have a valid point, regardless.)  It was actually alleged post-break up that I didn’t “have faith” in him.  DO NOT GET ME WRONG: I wish nothing but the best for these people– I am friends with many music majors, I would never wish anyone to spend thousands of dollars and four years of their life to fail, but to me, the risk is not worth it.  The world says most of these students will graduate with a degree they may never use and toil at cubicle desk jobs by day, crying into their masterful cello-playing at night.  Journalism is certainly not giving me concrete job opportunities when I graduate, but I have learned the skills to land some slimy beat at even the most podunk of small-town newspapers should I need it.

So… uhh, in conclusion– the music building should stay where it belongs.  Not just because the university doesn’t have the funds to move it, but because the music department is not fully a part of the college.  There– I said it.

*Steps off soap box.

If I had seen Mother Nature walking down the street day, I would have taken a cheap punch to her kidneys.  I’d never realized how much my mood is directly correlated to the weather until today (perhaps the waking up at FOUR-THIRTY AM for no reason having trouble getting back to sleep had something to do with it– I don’t know, I’m no scientist.)

I did little today.  It was awesome.  I’m not going to do much for the rest of the week– I look forward to that being equally as awesome.

Two of my best friends turn 21 this week.  So really, it’s kind of like I turn 21 this week.

Occasionally I wonder if that when I’m a real adult I’ll still drink directly from the milk jug.  I don’t see this practice ending any time soon, and in case I meet someone worthy of my awesomeness, he’ll obviously have to be someone who can’t be bothered with trivial things like wasting  a clean glass just for milk either.  Hopefully we won’t have a lot of house guests or breakfast will be kind of awkward.

How ’bout them Hawkeyes?! I thought we were going to lose.  Mostly because I think we’re going to lose everytime.  I’m most definitely a glass half-empty type person.  This is not such a bad thing however because then when we win I can drink more honestly say I didn’t see it coming.

I just made pumpkin muffins.  Do not ask why I was up at 9 am on a Sunday after Homecoming– I don’t know either.  I realllllly wanted some Hamburg/Lou Henri’s/Perkin’s (okay, not really because the Iowa City location totally blows) but the amount of alumni mixed with sheer lack of funds & motivation to leave the apartment left me to fend for myself.  Shout out to T-Bone for bringing me PUMPKIN PANCAKE/MUFFIN MIX on my parents’ epic & not-oft’ traversed journey east.  I’m quite certain I put in way more mix than needed so it was kind of like eating flour rocks, but Sophie had pumpkin butter which made.them.awesome.  You could put pumpkin butter on anything & I’d eat it– QUOTE ME.

Apparently it’s midterm week.  Apparently I didn’t get the memo (MILEY!!!!!!!!!).  In retrospect, I have a laughably easy semester.  Only one of my classes gives us tests.  One of my classes is over in three weeks.  While this may sound like a fast-track to good grades this semester, nay nay.  Maybe it’s the whole pessimism thing, but in about two weeks I am certain to have some sort of mild to moderate freak out where I am just SURE I am failing all of my classes and I am just SURE I should drop out of college because why would they let in someone who can’t probably measure 2 cups of mix to make her freakin’ pumpkin muffins.  Hopefully this will pass with minimal psychological damage.  It always has & I usually make pretty nice grades (save for second semester freshman year when SOMEONE discovered that she could use her friends’ 19-year-olds i.d.’s downtown even though she was still only 18– shaaaaaaame.)

In closing, I really need to brush my teeth.  And go back to bed.  If I’m still feeling domestic, I might even put on my flannel sheets (and by “put on” I mean “lay over the mattress and hope I don’t kick around too much in the night since I don’t actually have sheets that properly fit my mattress”) because it’s approximately 18 degrees in our apartment.

BUT HOW FREAKIN’ EXCITED ARE YOU FOR CHRISTMAS?!?!?! Perhaps I’ll start a countdown.  2 months & 14 days.  Exactly 2 months til Hanukkah.  Apparently that’s on time.  I have no idea what that means.  But you should probably stop by our apartment when it comes because we are going to have one odd mish-mash of holiday decor!