The Unwanted Snap

I personally don’t use Snapchat; I have an account, I just don’t see the appeal and the app sucks the life out of my phone before you can blink. Now, Claire and I have a mutual friend; for the sake of of saving face, I’ve decided to give our mutual friend an alias- we’ll call her Jasmine. Jasmine has a Snapchat.

Now, seeing as I’m horribly out of the loop when it comes to snapping and chatting, I’m not sure how this happened, but happen it did. On one unassuming night, Jasmine received a fairly graphic and, quite frankly, plain ugly snap. This is where this post gets somewhat not safe for work.

Snap, Crackle, and Pop…at 3AM

Life in Kerr is never boring. But, while other dorms bond over mean professors and cute boys, our dorm bonds over the stupidest of people living here.

I had taken some Benadryl, so I was fast asleep. Until the sound of, what I thought, was two metal pans banging together, woke me, Mickey, and the whole floor up. Now, most of the people got out of bed to investigate the noise, but we just decided to try to fall back asleep. Except there was a problem, people were talking.

Now, in other dorms, you might not be able to hear the sounds outside your room unless it’s shouting. But the walls here are so thin you can hear your neighbor watching Seinfeld because you hear that bass opening. So a bunch of people talking outside in the hall was loud and obnoxious, and it kept me awake.

I never really did go back asleep. With the GroupMe going off and the wandering thoughts I had of what just happened, I just stared at the ceiling and pondered.

When I decided to finally check my phone I got the full story: some jackass set off a fire cracker. A FIRECRACKER! AT 3 OCLOCK IN THE MORNING!

If there is any logical reason to set off a firecracker at 3 o’clock in the morning, I would very much like to know it. Or, I will settle for the name and room number of the person who did this. And I will beat them down…with my words….and maybe my feet.

Correction from Mickey: I did go out into the hall to investigate.

The Burnt Churro Incident

I was innocently watching Netflix when Mickey announced that today was the day that we would try Oreo Churros.

The problem was that the churros instructions specifically said to be cooked in an oven or a fry pan, which we had neither. So, logically, we decided to just stick one in the microwave and cook it until it looked right.

LESSON OF THE DAY: following directions is smart, especially if you are in an enclosed space with permanently locked windows.

In the corner of my eye smoke rose to the low ceiling and Mickey and I cursed our way to our fans, turning them onto high-speed.

“Mickey, the lights red.” I noted as she grabbed the smoky churro with a paper towel. Not two seconds later, the high-pitched alarm sounded.

That led to the mission of trying to find our RA. She wasn’t in the building so I went to the other hall’s RA, who also was not there. I calmed people down as I quickly walked back to my room. When I got there a RA from a separate floor was there, taking our alarm off.

“What caused this?” The RA asked.

“Popcorn.” Mickey answered. “We burnt popcorn.”

And that is what we went with, when I asked her why we didn’t just say Oreo Churros she responded with, “its less embarrassing”. And to that I could not disagree.

Santa Ruined Barnes and Noble

For the past two months I’ve been studying at the Starbucks cafe shop inside Barnes and Noble. It’s usually quiet and smells nice. Also, they have free samples of a lot of stuff that I like, like coffee, and cookies.

But all that ended on November 19th.

The day Santa arrived.

Now, Santa is somewhere else in the mall. But I was under the impression that it would be only a weekend thing.

UH, NO IT ISN’T

It’s until Christmas Eve. So, when I came in prepared to learn about some human evolution I was surrounded by children.

I like kids, I think they’re adorable. And I’m not the type of person who gets mad at children for crying. I’m not mad at the kids.

I’m mad at Santa.

These poor parents, they NEED coffee if they’re going to stand in a long ass line to wait for their kids to sit on some strange mans knees whose asks them if they’ve been good this year, and we all know even if those kids are spoiled brats who’ve never said please or thank you in their life they’re gonna say “i was real good, Santa”. Cuz’ they want that bike, or puppy, or iPhone. Whatever they want.

But Starbucks, which is usually peaceful, if not empty in the afternoon is now filled with tired parents and scared/too excited little kids.

And all these kids want is the giant brownie and their mother says “no”, so then they cry, and then the mother says “if you cry then we can’t see Santa”. Then the kids cry more, and ugh. Curse you, Santa.

Which means I will have to find a new place to study. And you’re probably saying “isn’t there a library on campus”? Yes, but it’s filled with too many people. And I need to talk to myself and from what I’ve learned people start getting concerned when they hear a college kid talking about the differences in monkey mandibles and their locomotor patterns.

Or…perhaps this is just what I need to get my spot back. Maybe, if i just keep going word will spread amongst the moms and they’ll say “stay away from Starbucks from 2-5, this creepy girl talks about bones.”

 

Zombie Apocalypse

Mickey, I, and one of our suite mates, Esme, decided to take on Kerr Hall’s Zombie Apocalypse. It didn’t go as planned.

In the back of my mind, I knew that there would probably be running. I mean, if there is a zombie apocalypse you’re going to have to run at some point or another. I expected running. I did not expect a 26K marathon.

The back story of this zombie apocalypse was we were put in a group of about 10 people. We were put in a room where we were told that we were a part of the few survivors and that if we wanted to be safe we would have to head to the CDC, which was held at the building across the street from the dorm hall.

I thought that it would be one quick burst of running to get across the street and into the building and then they had converted the building into a haunted house, which I was down for.

That’s not what happened.

What happened is that they expected to run around literally half of the campus. They wanted us to run… so far. This is when I knew I was going to die.

I started off pretty strong, I wasn’t the last person to get to the first check point, but I haven’t been going to the gym lately so my heart was pounding pretty fast. I got into the idea that this was the actual zombie apocalypse, the make up was amazing and they were really into it.

There wasn’t much of a break before we had to run to the second stop, keep in mind there was 8 in total. Mickey and Esme stopped after the first one, they got too dizzy. But I carried on, until I got to 4. At stop number four I tasted cooper in my mouth and my head was pounding like someone was hitting it with a sledge-hammer.

So, I had Mickey call me and I pretended that she need me to come pick her up from somewhere. I tapped out. I was pretty impressed how far I ran, I had never run that far in my life… ever. Even during our middle schools annual Turkey Trot, I walked 75% of that.

Afterwards, Mickey and I collapsed in our room, and listened to the screams of people being chased by zombies. It’s pretty funny when it’s not happening to you.

The moral of the story is: if you want kids to run, scare them.

Claire vs The Mattress

My mattress has been messed up for about a month. The squishy thingy that makes it so i feel like I’m sleeping on a cloud had been gradually moving to my left, falling off the bed bit by bit.

Today, I decided it was time to fix it. So at 5:50, i announced to the world via snapchat that I, Claire, was going to fix her mattress. This is important because this means I couldn’t give up, I told my friends I was going to fix this mattress and dammit I was going to stick to my word.

I start by clearing my bed of all pillows, blankets, pandas, and elephants. I then, with many grunts, pulled my mattress off the spring-board.

That is when I realized…mattress are heavy.

Like….heavy. Too heavy for me.

So, after fixing the sheets, smoothing out the wrinkles and stuff like that, I prop the mattress up at an angle to make it up the 7 foot journey to the spring-board again.

Except there was one problem…

THERE WAS A F*CKING CEILING IN THE WAY!

Every time I lifted from my knees to push the mattress onto the bed, it wouldn’t go horizontal like I willed it too in my brain. It went up, into the ceiling. I hate that ceiling….I strongly dislike that ceiling.

I flip the mattress over and try to lift it over my head and kind of…place it on the spring-board. That idea was quickly scratched when I could get it past my knees.

The mattress seemed to really not want to go back up on the spring-board. Maybe it had a fear of height??

I debated just leaving it on the floor that night and have my parents do it when I came back.

But then I realized…that would be quitting and I don’t quit. I don’t give up, I don’t lay on the floor and wait for someone to fix it…I mean this metaphorically, because this has literally happened once or twice.

I couldn’t lift it.

I couldn’t force it.

I couldn’t magic the shiz nit out of it.

I was left with only one option…

Engineer this sh*t.

In each of our dorm rooms there are two horrible, uncomfortable, gross looking chairs that rock back and forth a bit. I put the chair against the door leading into the bathroom, the mattress was on the floor in front of it.

I pulled the front end of the mattress up and twisted it so the edge would rest on the chair.

I then used ALL, and I mean all, my strength to lift the mattress up into the air, until it was a few inches away from the ceiling.

Kicking the chair sideways really hurt, because I was shoeless, but I did it anyway until the chair was parallel to the spring-board. I then slowly scooted the chair forward until the mattress was at an angle. One end on the chair and the other on the edge of the spring-board.

I got behind the chair, which was a very tight fit by the way, and pushed the mattress at an angle, not just up, until it fell gracefully onto the spring-board.

If Mickey wasn’t asleep I would have done a victory scream.

The rest was pretty easy, putting the sheets back on and throwing my pillows and panda back up where they belong.

I finished this task at 6:20. It took me half an hour to put my mattress back on the bed. And this is the best thing I’ve done all week!

And Mickey did not wake up, so I label this under the folder: Success.

Dreaming of a White Squirrel

So here at our college, there’s this whole thing with an albino squirrel. Legend has it, if you see the squirrel, you’ll do well on your exams.

Now, I had two exams this week—Monday and Tuesday—that I think I did pretty well on (maybe not 100% but certainly at least 80%). Honestly, I don’t get worried enough to desperately want to see the squirrel, but I’m intrigued by it nonetheless. I don’t know about you, dear readers, but I’ve never seen a white squirrel with mine own eyes before. As Claire and I are walking to our lab, something happens…

No, we didn’t see the squirrel. Claire tells me that some other people saw the squirrel around campus about an hour earlier, which is pretty cool.

I’m a big fan of fuzzy creatures like squirrels, so the legacy of the white squirrel is pretty fascinating to me. Someone told me it’s been around since sometime in the 20^th century, which made me fairly skeptical of its existence, but I’ve since learned that it’s been around since 2000, which makes it a lot more plausible. (The squirrel’s existence is only made more plausible by the fact that there’s actually photographic evidence of its existence. There isn’t any question of its existence, I was just a fool.)

I didn’t really have any interesting factoids or personable stories to tell in this post, I just figured I should post something seeing as I’m the Cinnamon in Cinnamon Pandas.

Fun fact: The last squirrel was killed by a hawk right in front of students. RIP.

My Weird Ass Dreams – Part 1

Ever since I started sleeping in my dorm room I have had some weird ass dreams. And I have weird dreams to begin with. But these…are just plain strange.

I’ll give two examples, because they are the most recent ones.

Last night I have a dream that I was at a field trip with my old high school classmates. The only person I vividly remember being there was my friend Kelsey. We were there for a “senior trip” sort of thing. There was this ride, that seated four people at a time and it swiveled up and down and side to side. It would go up in a swirling pattern then shoot down to the ground like those drop rollercoasters.

So I sit next to Kelsey and once we get on the ride we suddenly become aware that there is a tornado heading towards us. Instead of getting off the ride we think we’re safer on it, since we are strapped in.

While the tornado drops beside us, the ride starts moving up and down, moving out of its place. Like that trippy part in Mary Poppins, where the carousel starts detaching from itself. Our seats are swept up into the tornado individually and then placed back down.

That’s all I can remember, so, if anyone is a dream analyst, what does this mean?

Next dream:

I was taking a nap today, like I usually do. This dream I was walking over to a friend’s house that I knew somehow, even though I was new to this neighborhood. I got a text from my mother saying that I should be careful because people had been getting robbed before being murdered.

My friend and I started baking and then a knock came at the door. We started freaking out and grabbing weapons. I had a rolling-pin, she had a gun. We opened the door and there was a girl scout girl holding cookies.

We decided then to go out and go to a neighborhood picnic. There, I met my old theater teacher, V; she had four kids who were all covered in dirt, for some reason.

One of the kids came up to me and said, “you’re too pretty” then spread mud on my face.

That is when I woke up. What I am most disappointed about is that my dreams never have a conclusion. I have so many questions for my dream: Did I get off the rollercoaster? What happened to the murderer? Why are the neighborhood picnics?

Let’s call this part 1 of my weird ass dreams, ‘cuz there is going to be more.

Ghosts or No Ghosts?

In our dorm hall it is common to hear voices; the walls are thinner than the pages in a bible.

But…sometimes, we hear soft conversations. Or someone watching Seinfeld…at 3 o’clock in the morning.

There was this time…Mickey and I were napping and we woke up to the sound of what sounded like a couple arguing.

I was paying more close attention and caught some of the dialogue exchanged between the two.

“Babe, you’re such a dick.”

“What? Why?”

“Because you’re stupid. Just go.”

“Fine. Then I’ll leave.”

“Babe, wait, don’t leave.”

…what? What even is this? So, then later Mickey and I hear loud yelling. “Stop, stop, stop, stop.” So we yell at our suite mate, asking if she’s okay. She doesn’t answer and after we say that everything goes quiet and there was no trace that there was any boy in her room.

So, that means one of two things:

1. the air vents travel a lot farther than we thought
2. ghosts

And you might think that it would be our neighbors, well, trust me, they don’t have girlfriends. The only other girls are on the other side of the hall.

In conclusion, Mickey and I live with ghosts. I want to name them, but I want to get a feel more for their personalities.

I Want a Bunny

I have wanted a lot of animals in my lifetime. When I was a little girl I wanted a dolphin, recently I have been telling my parents I would one day own a panda, when I visited Scotland I was determined to own a sheep, now here I am looking up bunnies on shelter websites.

Mickey and I don’t know where we’re going to live next year but it FOR SURE is not going to be a dorm, especially Kerr.

There is a beautiful poodle waiting for me back home with my parents and I had always planned to bring to up to college with me once I got an apartment, but here’s the thing…my dad takes WAY better care for her than I would. Not that i wouldn’t feed her or anything, but Dad warms up the food in the morning, put some bits of hotdog in there, very fancy, very nice, and Lacey has gotten use to this treatment.

But I understand, I shouldn’t make plans when I am emotionally unstable (stress from school) so I will be contempt with looking at pictures of fluffy rabbits and thinking of great names for them.

I have found that I am partial to Lion head bunnies, you should look them up, they’re super cute.

Let me repeat that I KNOW I can’t have a bunny right now, even if I begged my RA, I would have nowhere to keep her. Also, apparently there are tarantulas lurking about so I wouldn’t want my bunny  unprotected. This would lead to me bringing my bunny to class with me, which would be a distraction for everyone.

That doesn’t mean I still don’t want a bunny.

I want a bunny.