Halloween Fergus

German beer girl (way to go, Halloween clearance sale at Target!)

AhhhhhGunsnRosesAhhhhhh

Which one of these is not like the other ones?

NPH isn't one for getting all gussied up

Also, giant shout-out to Roomie Rachael who is apparently scrubbing the apartment clean this morning while I “look for jobs” (Facebook?) in the living room, waiting for Roomie Lauren to wake up who I will then assault until it’s pumpkin pie shake time. Don’t let me down today, Hamburg Inn.

“Well, we’ve lost ourselves a puppy,” NPH announced when he looked up from his GRE studying. Indeed, Fergus has finally passed out after entertaining himself with his various chew toys from Auntie Lo (her moniker, not mine) for far longer than you’d expect something of that size could keep going. The most adorable part was watching him make his bed (a Spongebob blanket of mine that now solely belongs to him) before settling in for what will likely be hours. Bryce just walked through with a basket of laundry and declared “Fergus Jackson is the most well-rested dog in all of Iowa!” He does sleep a lot.

Fear not, this blog will definitely not turn into Fergus Has Something to Say, and I certainly won’t become one of those dog people who starts buying him outfits and creating him a Facebook and wearing basset hound charm bracelets. I will clue you in some more, however– the dog belongs to both Neil and I, but he lives at 713. We are not “parents,” Fergus Jackson is not our “child”. Sweet Lord in Heaven I do not call myself “Mommy” to him or tell Fergus to “go play with Daddy!” when he needs to hang with NPH. My roommates have deemed themselves aunts and Natalie has called dibs on godmother status, which is all fine. But this is in no way a trial run for future children (if anything, this only reinforces the fact that I will never have them) and Fergus is much more cared for by the boys of 713 who have really stepped up, whereas I get to go home to a dog-less, squeaky toy-less apartment whenever I please. …but that’s usually pretty hard because he’s SO CUTE.

In non-furry news, t-minus only two full days before DC– pretty crazy since I’ll be going non-stop until then and be hitting the ground running immediately upon my return. The weekend after, I’ll be returning to Des Moines to help out with an event at the zoo, and the weekend after that is Halloween. No word on a costume yet– I definitely won’t be putting in as much time and thought as last year, although I do still have the costume and might just use it again since there isn’t any photographic evidence of me ever wearing it.

My hair is reallllly really red.  Think Lucille Ball.  Or Daphne from Scooby-Doo.  I probably won’t dye it back because this will come out in a certain number of washes anyway and I dont’ care enough to do anything about it until then. 

Our group for the Halloween bar crawl looked amazing.  There was a matador, his bull, Robin Hood, the entire cast of the Office, Ned Flanders, a surgeon, Hannah Montana, etc.  One bar was having it’s Halloween party a night early so it was wall-to-wall with some really great costumes; I saw the most spot-on Bret Michaels and kind of wanted my picture taken with him.  Kind of.

6:30 am Saturday came all too soon, but Daphne made it out of bed, grabbed a bunch of Halloween cupcakes and hit up kegs n eggs which was super fun.  Also, while I thought the cupcakes were a tad dry, it apparently doesn’t take too much to appease a houseful of college guys.  “This is the best cupcake I’ve ever had, I may have fallen just a little in love with you.”  I’m sure the fact that they were stone cold sober helped as well.

Bestie and I watched the game at his house– I managed to flip an entire DiGiornio pizza over in the oven onto the burner, rendering it inedible.  That game was a nail-biter, but somehow the Hawkeyes pulled their heads out of their asses in time to win by the largest margin than they have since the ISU game.  9-0!!

Work was fairly entertaining with customers all costumed-up until I got a MASSIVE tension headache thingy from sleeping all wrong on my neck.  The last couple hours were completely miserable– I had to bitch out on going out on actual Halloween and was in bed by 8:15.  I would wake up every couple hours because of the pain, but it appears to be gone after twelve hours of sleep.  So the good news is I’ve been up for quite some time and have nothing to do today but some homework and cleeeeeean.

Today is the first of the month– rent is due, 7 months until my birthday, 2 months and 5 days until I fly to GERMANY!!  Papa K’s got the tickets all nailed down, I’m pretty psyched that we get a meal from Chicago to Frankfurt.  I’ll be hauling out some boxes soon and packing up my room– since I have to go home so often between now and Christmas (three weekends in a row in November…) I’ll take small loads each time.  Oh and hey, if you know someone who needs to sublease an apt for second semester, I’m your girl.

In conclusion, I would like some ice cream.  I need to do laundry today.  I had a black bean patty from Which Wich for breakfast– it was bombtastic, even though I made it last night.  Ooh peanuts and candy corn would be good, too.   Roomie is sick, if she gets me sick, I will murder her then drive all night to Mexico.  Bed is calling again… at 9:30 am.

56 days til Christmas…

Halloween is probably my least favorite holiday (Valetine’s Day for some reason has always ranked #1) but this year I am inexplicably already a CHRISTMAS nutcase.

Example one: I have been listening to holiday music on Pandora for the past week.  My co-workers are quite concerned for my already questionable mental health.

Example two: I really, really wish it were possible to get all my work done in the next month and spend the entire month of December at my grandmother’s house, the most decked-out Christmas wonderland of a place that you cannot even wrap your mind around.  She’s got the tunes pumping through the house 24/7, soooo many presents, I LOVE WRAPPING PRESENTS, baking cookies, checking my stocking on the hour.  She has a tree in every room of the house (every.room.  Bathrooms, hallways, etc.)

Example three: It is currently raining.  I actually wished it were snow today.  WHAT?!  I hate the cold.  Every year I swear it gets colder and I turn into an 80-year-old curmudgeon and check on condo prices in Florida.  Bestie is often perplexed by my constant state of freezing, “You’ve lived in Iowa your entire life.  Get over it.”  My freshman year here we had TWO snow days (I still made it to work and was rewarded with fresh-baked cookies and getting off early since if there’s one thing psych patients don’t put up with– which is actually quite a long list– it’s blizzard-like conditions.)

Example four:  I am kicking myself for not stealing the giant bag of Christmas cookie cutters my mother has stored away in the basement.  I saw them when digging for possible Halloween costumes (WHERE were the pumpkin cookie cutters, mother? ARE YOU HOLDING OUT ON ME!??!)  Thankfully, Roomie is more than supportive of my holiday frenzy and I’m having grand visions of us dancing about in the kitchen, a cloud of powdered sugar rising as we dance to Bing Crosby.  Seriously, I may need a CAT scan.

I have a few theories as to why I’ve been bitten by the jolly holiday bug so early, besides my obvious love of getting gifts and eating food.

1.  Christmas last year, no offense to anyone I spent it with, sucked the big one.  Mid-November through New Year’s Eve was just one giant shitstorm of suck.  These were due to personal circumstances and my inability to maturely deal with grown-up situations, so I mostly pouted a lot and was a giant bitch to everyone.  Christmas Maniac Brittney of ‘09 promises to sing a different tune.

2.  For some reason, being off at college and all, sometimes I like… miss my family.  Que horror!  I’m getting all nostalgic about Christmas (laaaaame sauce, Brittney) and superflippinexcited to be thrust in the whirlwind of crazies-on-crazies (I say this now, but know that when there I will have sporadic urges to hurl myself off the roof.  Ahhh, family.)  Also, with my trip to ze fatherland looming two months away, I’ll have to milk my time with these people for all it’s worth.

3.  CMT has been playing Christmas Vacation, the absolute best Christmas movie of all time– no discussion, please, I am right– for no reason at all.  I don’t know that I have ever watched CMT in my life, but it was on a couple weeks ago and thankfully Bestie also has a health Clark Griswold appreciation so we WATCHED IT and it was AMAZING and he was not at all freaked out that I can do every single line from the movie VERBATIM.  And they’ve kept playing it. I even looked up CMT.com *shudder* and there was nothing on their Web site to acknowledge that playing Christmas movies in the October was anything out of the ordinary.  At least somebody there knows what’s up.

In closing… I am now going to class even though it’s pouring and even though I don’t want to go, don’t try and talk me out of it.  Boo.  BOO.  <– ooooh see, I’m still kinda in the Halloween spirit.

Costume shopping was a success and I am going as…

Daphne from Scooby-Doo! 

It was between her, Velma, or one of the wives from the Flintstones (character costumes were way cheaper at Second Act and I had no motivation or ideas to making something from scratch.)  Bestie was the ultimate decider with his much-appreciated input: “You’d get to have cool hair with Daphne.  You will get hot in Velma’s sweater.”   Betty and Wilma had weird foam hairpieces anyway, not that the giant BRIGHT ORANGE monstrosity that looks nothing like the above picture is much better, but I have til Friday to tame it.  He is going as Mr. Rogers, or as he put it “Me but with a sweater vest.”  Ahh, also so much more practical and economical that one.

I kind of want to see the Michael Jackson documentary. 

I’m making Halloween themed cupcakes and sugar cookies for Saturday morning tailgating and am so excited.

Friday will be a busy day of touring Eastern Iowa companies, learning about PR and marketing and networking and eating free lunch and taking notes and asking compelling questions and lots of smiling and awkward introductions and being really uncomfortable in dress clothes.

Roomie just came out to show me her Twister board costume.  She looks very cute in it (p.s. I HATE, hate, hate, loathe when people call me “cute”, but it’s okay for girls to say it of their peers.) 

In conclusion, I have stayed up too late yet again, have failed to do laundry yet again (I have officially run out of towels, at this point it’s now become a necessity) but helped in the once-every-three-months trash overhaul at 713 and watched a documentary on morbidly obese pregnant women with Bestie.  Chalk today up as a W.

First off, why my mother is better than yours: for breakfast I had toast made with homemade multigrain bread she made and topped with homemade grape jelly she canned.  For dinner I toasted up two slices of that bread again & made bruschetta with some of the homemade sundried tomatoes she gave me.  Those babies tasted like a restaurant dish– lots of garlic and… other stuff that you put in sundried tomatoes.  Way to go, T-Bone!

I did a bit of Halloween costume browsing today– luckily my friends calmly explained that $60 for a German beer girl costume was one of the more ridiculous ideas I’ve had in a while, so I checked out The Second Act and HOLY SMOKES am I glad I did.  SOOOOO many costumes, you could never imagine them all.  A bunch for rent, too– bestie and I are going after class on Wednesday because browsing those racks requires a bit of a time commitment.  We. Will. Look. Awesome. come Friday & Saturday nights.

And now, for an interesting op-ed featured in today’s DI: http://www.dailyiowan.com/2009/10/26/Opinions/13877.html.  This professor proposes that if a UI student is charged with an alcohol-related offense, that student should be forced to leave the university.  OH OKAY.  I will now try to calmly and rationally explain why I think this man is a moron in the wrong…

Mr. Poe is complaining that the university can’t do anything about our illegal off-campus activities because of the code of conduct.  Oh wait, what was that?  Off-campus, you say?  I guess that was the whole point

He acknowledges that the “UI already has a bad national reputation” because of its lax stance on underage drinking.  I’m sure that’s the only reason anyone would be hesitant to send their child here– it certainly couldn’ t be because of the current budget clusterfuck and the piss-poor leadership for which the students will have to pay out-of-pocket.

“They — and I specifically mean students who violate the law while under the influence — are not hard to identify. The DI gets a list of them from the police every day. You’d think the university could do the same. Once identified, they could be dropped from the roles and told to go away until they are mature enough to be members of our community.”

Why should the university give two shits about what we’re doing in our free time?  It’s not their job to haul someone from the police blotter into an office Monday morning and say, “Well, Timmy, I see you used your brother’s i.d. at Brother’s Friday night.  You are clearly an alcoholic asshole who has no redeeming value, so we’re gonna have to ask you to pack your bags.”  What sort of gross stereotypes is this guy implying?!  Yes, people who get drunk and commit crimes should be punished– by the proper channels of the law, not by the dean of their college. 

The proximity of downtown and campus is usually seen as a good thing, but people need to remember that they are separate.  Not everyone downtown goes to the university, many UI students have never set foot in a bar downtown.  This guy is living in such a warped reality if he believes that one drunken mistake  is grounds for expulsion.  Never mind that this student could, for example, be a straight A student, on student government, scholarship recipient (fill in the blanks, really) and was out celebrating her 21st birthday– heck, this scenario could even be the first time she ever got drunk.  She stumbles on the walk home, police notice and give her a public intox ticket.  THROW HER OUT!!  GOD FORBID Mr. Poe was ever a young adult or ever had a lapse in judgment.  While that hypothetical situation is few and far between, it illustrates the absurdity of his grand idea.

It is not the university’s business what I do outside of my time on campus.  As long as they are receiving my tuition checks, they do not care if I attend class, take notes, turn in assignments, study for finals, or was dancing topless on a bar last night.   Just because I happened to be a stone’s throw away from the Pentacrest, my actions downtown are not at all correlated with my job as a student.  I realize many people let their weekend (and more often than not, weeknight) activites get in the way of their academic success, and that is 100% their choice.  The whole point of “going to college” and “becoming an adult” is that one day you’re going to wake up with a pounding headache, having skipped a really important class and have that “Holy shit, I need to get my act toether” moment.  It’s part of growing up and it sucks, but the university nor any of it’s crack-pot professors can force that moment on us.  If we were to be expelled everytime we made a mistake, not only would people really, really resent this place, but it wouldn’t have any students.

He’s targeting alcohol because yes, Iowa City = drunk students, if we had to put it simply.  And yes, being drunk makes people do some dumb, regrettable things.  According to the opinion piece, however, alcohol is the only thing that keeps us from acting as “fortunate students.”  Nevermind drugs, then– if there’s something in the police blotter for possession or intention to sell, I guess those kids can stay.  Driving with a suspended license?  Ehh that’s fine.  Assault, abuse, jaywalking?!  All petty crimes compared to that drunk kid taking a leak in the alley!  You realize I’m exaggerating, but come on, Sir– what did you really hope to gain by writing this piece???

In conclusion, I’m hoppin’ mad from re-reading all of it.   His opinion forces such gross generalizations on a very wide population of people and when it comes down to it, makes no sense.  Don’t spend your time in class trying to find the kids cheating on tests, become a slave to the police blotter and kick my Dean’s List ass out of your institution for having a little too much fun with my friends Saturday night OFF CAMPUS. You’re an idiot.

Pita chips for dinner= totally acceptable and completely awesome.

I am beyond exhausted– the wedding was beautiful, the raspberry/almond cake was outta this world, my waffle at Waffle House this morning was one of the best I’ve ever had.  I also had two scrambled eggs which were beyond yum– scrambled eggs are one of my top five favorite foods, did you know that?!?!

Also, I’ve officially decided that when that day comes for myself, I will be married in Vegas.  Not necessarily in some blacked out state at 3 am by an Elvis impersonator, but definitely in Vegas, definitely In-n-Out Burger as the reception food.  Feed each other french fries and a shake instead of cake, that kinda thing.

I just KNOW you’re wondering “But how was the rehearsal dinner barbecue, Brittney?!”  so I’ll TELL YOU.  Amazing.  Holy ribs and BBQ sauce.  My uncle can smoke some meeeeean ribs.  Also, Jack Stack’s  in KC makes some of the best baked beans I’ve ever had the privilege of inhaling– there’s pieces of brisket in the beans. 

The dryer was broken at home so the two baskets of dirty laundry I lugged home got lugged back untouched.  Thanks for the quarters though, Ma– now I just have to find the motivation to actually get ‘em in the washer. 

My friend finally got a headstone after only, oh.. eleven months– it’s really nice and its got a picture of him and says “Boner” on it and it made me very sad. 

Goodwill and Second Act were both closed by the time I got back, so I stopped at the specialty Halloween shop just to see what I could find.  SIXTY DOLLARS for a Halloween costume?!  No, thank you– I have booze groceries to buy.  Bestie and I are going to scrounge around for something to wear, anything… anything at all.  I brought home some dress-up clothes from home, but I’m not sure what we can make out of two pairs of suspenders, five pairs of ladies’ gloves and a can of temporary blonde hair color.

Oh, and in case you hadn’t heard… 8-0, FIRST TIME IN SCHOOL HISTORY.  Me being the Negative Nancy I am, thought we had zero chance at winning, and we barely did, but WAYTOGO Stanzi for those final two seconds.  I was getting minute-by-minute texts updating me on the score during the reception, and we’d all written us off until I got the “hawks win” text and I went be-serk.  The home game this weekend should be beyond insane.

I have now come to a crossroads in my life: 1.) take a nap, possibly (ohmygoodnes it’d be so amazing) just sleep til class tomorrow or 2.) do homework.  This homework will not be hard, I am in no way going to put in even what could remotely be mistaken for effort, yet it needs to get done.  I was following someone today with an license plate frame that said Alumni and I actually had a thought along the lines of “they did their time…” and then realized I was equating college to prison.  College is no way a prison– well, the classes are, they are absolutely mind-numbingly not awesome at all, so in some ways I absolutely do feel like I’m just biding my time til my four years are up.  The extracurriculars though (and not so much the leadership experience one puts on their resume) make me never, never wanna leave.

Hate: the dishwasher.  Dear dishwasher, you are supposed to clean the dishes.  Not leave weird pieces of food congealed on said dishes.  I tried to unload you today, but physically had to remove myself from the situation lest I kick you and something bad happens (i.e. I have to do my dishes by hand pff).  <– that is one of the many numeous reasons I will never have children.  I will either a.) punt kick them in moments of frustration or b.) walk off in order to calm myself from said frustration only to come back and find they’re gone.  I feel this is generally frowned upon, especially in large public places.

Love: paper towels (apparently another hate: the environment?)

Hate: I quit my job (the one I adore) yesterday due to me only working weekends and needing basically every weekend from now til study abroad off.  While I am deeply saddened, they said they’d probably take me back upon my return.  And yes, most of the “hate” about this one is the void free sandwiches will be leaving in my life.

Love: Pumpkin Spice lotion from Bath & Body Works. 

Hate: there were MUSHROOMS in my bag of frozen stir-fry veggies yesterday.  G.R.O.S.S.  Luckily I was able to pick out the vile poison before I choked to death and died.

Love: how FREAKIN AWESOMELY CLEAN our kitchen is.  Way to go, Roomie!!  Paired with my room which I cleaned yesterday, my living situation is for the first time in a while, actually liveable!

Hate: my left knee hurts.  Pretty much only when I go up or down stairs which is, you know, the majority of my day.  Also, I’m getting a stye in my eye.  Not like I’m going to a wedding this weekend where I’ll be a bunch of photos… oh wait a minute, yes, yes I am.

Love: bestie and I are going to find Halloween costumes at Goodwill tomorrow and have apple brats from Haight’s Hawkeye Meat Market.   I’ve missed him and that house of hooligans after a week of separation– how I long to live there one day (and by “one day” I mean next year– whaddya think, Pops??)

Hate: the ladies in my office apparently think that because it comes in limited edition Halloween colors, they need to buy ALL OF THE CANDY IN THE STORE and bring it to work.  If you haven’t realized by now, self-control isn’t one of my strong suits.  Thankfully I only work a few hours a day or I wouldn’t be able to fit through the door by Christmas.

In conclusion: the first half of my week is over.  It’s not all downhill from here, but whether I bomb my presentation tomorrow or if I only have one source for my article due Thursday or if I just stay in bed til Friday morning (that’s my pick, but hey, apparently my grades are dependent on “going to class”) I WILL be chowin’ on BBQ in KC come Friday night.  Be jealous.

It’s snowing.  F this noise.

With no pertinent deadlines or work to be done, my day will consist of a couch, the new issue of Glamour, perhaps some Spongebob Squarepants, and most certainly a nap.  Oh, and Bestie and I are going to the meat market today so PRETTY PSYCHED ABOUT THAT.

My friend Scott, a possible candidate for Most Awesome Person I’ve Ever Met, is going as Johnny Bravo for Halloween.  Do the monkey with me!