It's talent week at the Glenwood!

So far life in my apartment has been great. There are a few downsides (the top drawer in the bathroom falls out if you open it too far, the kitchen table and chairs are wobbly, and our hallway slopes), but the positives far outweigh the negatives. There is one weird thing that I can't quite decide if it's a bad thing or a good thing though
Starting Sunday night Natalie (my roommate) and I kept hearing different things coming from another apartment near our bedroom. This is how it went down.

Sunday: Harp music
Monday: Guitar
Tuesday: Singing
Wednesday: Singing AND Guitar
Thursday: This one was the weirdest. We couldn't decide if it was open mic poetry night or someone reciting Shakespeare. Either way someone would speak dramatically, and then people would clap afterward.

Since then we haven't heard things as consistently as we did the first week. Sometimes I still get to go to sleep to harp music though, which is nice. My only question is who on earth brings a harp to college?

Here's your change sir.

It's been almost two weeks since school started. College is so completely different from high school. One of my favorite differences is that there are so many things and people to watch. Sometimes weird, sometimes hilarious. This happened today:
A guy was at the vending machine getting a soda right next to the table where I was reading. He paid with a $10. He got his soda and waited for his change. All of a sudden the vending machine started spitting out nickels. The fact that he got roughly $8 in quarters is funny by itself. But the best part was that instead of pouring the change into the compartment at the bottom of the machine the coins came flying out of it and landing on the ground all around the vending machine. It was all I could do to not laugh out loud. Either way, it completely made my day.

Exhausting!

If you’re under the age of twelve and your parents are crazy enough to let you go on an airplane by yourself you are granted the luxury of a chaperone. They usher you through security, get you to the right gate, sit next to you during the flight, and deposit you into the hands of your guardian waiting outside the gate. If you’re lucky enough you even get a neat airline pin that in reality is to classify you as child traveling alone, but in your eyes it’s a symbol of status.
Fast forward a few years. Most of the teenage population is just as inept as a twelve year old at navigating the airport, yet they don’t get babysitters. Sure being eighteen years old I don’t think I would like being watched by someone I don’t know, but I need as much help as I can get to get through the airport.
First, you print your tickets at a handy touch screen kiosk, not. If your parents pity your ineptitude enough they’ll make your reservations for you. It makes things easier, but once you get the the airport it may or may not turn out that you don’t have the information the kiosk wants. Wait in line, talk to the baggage check woman who is nice enough, but wants your information quicker than you can physically give it. But then you have a ticket and everything is fine. “Well, that wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected” you think to yourself. “All that’s left to get through is security” which everyone knows is a nightmare.
Everyone knows, that in theory that security is expected to be a very tedious and VERY long process of waiting in line, emptying your bag of electronics and metal, taking off your shoes, getting prodded by a metal detecting stick, and after you’ve done all that trying to get all your things together while other people’s cartons full of electronics, shoes, and bags keep piling on top of yours. Everything about that process is true, except for one. Getting through security is a whirlwind. Imagine that whole list in fast forward. Efficiency is fantastic don‘t get me wrong, but if I hadn‘t had flip flops, the extra step of tying my shoes may have caused me to have a break down.
Comparatively the process of getting on the plane is relatively simple, almost relaxing. Once you’re past all the metal detectors the rest of the airport seems quiet and calm. You plop down on a chair with metal arm rests (in my opinion the dumbest idea ever, especially during a long lay over), partake of the free wi-fi and spend the next hour watching you tube or Hulu, writing a blog, or checking the news feed on Facebook. The boarding call is made over the intercom and you shuffle into the line, walk onto the plane and enjoy the next few hours of your life reading sky mall and looking at cloud formations that are so close it feels like you can touch them. The plane touches down and you walk out of the airport ready to enjoy that well deserved vacation. Enjoy it, because five days from now you get to go through that wonderful process all over again.

Simple Pleasures

Today as I was pacing through my house trying to find something to occupy my time I found myself complaining in my head about how cold it was inside. Meanwhile I looked out the window and saw that it looked like a beautiful evening. I went outside and found the temperature was perfect so I sat myself down with my favorite book, turned on my favorite Pandora station, and enjoyed the next few hours in complete bliss. As I was reading I started thinking of how, with all the millions of things to do in life my list of favorite things ever doesn't include skydiving, paragliding, partying, traveling, or watching the Superbowl. Sure, I do enjoy doing some of those things and others are on my bucket list, but when it comes down to it my favorite things are those that are sweet and simple. These are a few of my favorite simple pleasures.
1. driving down the road with all the windows down and the radio blasting
2. reading a book/taking a nap/chatting on the trampoline on a perfect summer evening
3. swinging on a swings at a playground
4. drawing/doodling with sharpies
5. driving for no reason with your best friend
6. finding your favorite colors in a package of pens and finding any and every excuse to use them
7. running through the sprinklers
8. watching the clouds
9. sleeping
10. watching home movies and looking at old photographs.
11. watching lightning
12. playing in the rain.

Tree house on steroids

Today I saw this headline on Yahoo news.
Treehotel--a cluster of six 12' x 12' hotel suite cubes suspended in the air in the middle of a forest of Sweden. Not only are they individual hanging hotel rooms but they're also invisible. Somehow (i'm not sure how because the article wasn't terrible specific) images are reflected on each of the six walls so it just looks like the rest of the forest including the wildlife. Next to hanging in the air and being invisible, they are also extremely eco-friendly. All the material is recycled and it's solar powered and basically there's just a lot of green stuff going on. The craziest part is the toilets. Instead of flushing they incinerate the contents (I'm not sure how I feel about it because it just seems like so many things could go wrong.) Since the hotel is in the middle of a forest near the arctic circle the recreation in the area (as if observing the surrounding forest and marveling over the fact that you're in an extremely classy hotel hanging 18 feet in the air isn't enough) you can take guided tours and go hiking all over the Swedish wilderness. How cool is that!
I have no idea how to reserve a spot, and no doubt since there are six rooms the waiting list must be 3 years long, not to mention it must cost an arm and a let, and possible a hip and a kidney or two, I would still LOVE to go there someday. Maybe I'll put it on my bucket list or something... which would imply I actually HAVE a bucket list-which I don't.

Prank

This is the best prank I have ever seen. Can you even imagine what you would do if you were in this situation?

It's like the first day of Kindergarten...

From age five to fifteen I used to always be excited for school to start. When August came around I would start combing the ads in the newspaper looking for school supply advertisements. As soon as I saw the first one I would start begging my mom to go school shopping. Eventually my mom would deem it time to go shopping and I would get new binders, crayons, pencils and everything else I needed to fill my backpack. I also loved getting new clothes. They're so bright and perfect looking and they also smell amazing. Some kinds of clothes have a nicer smell than others. My personal favorite smell as a child was the smell of brand new... Underwear. No, I'm not joking. In elementary school that was probably in my top five favorite smells. Unfortunately my mom always washed my underwear before I was allowed to wear it. Weird right? So after we did all our shopping my mom would make me tuck the clothes in the back of the closet and store my school supplies in my backpack until school started. So I would eagerly anticipate the start of school so I could use all my cool new things.

So finally after a month of anticipation, the night before school started would finally come. I had been packing and repacking my school box and backpack. I asked everyone's advice on what to wear on the first day, enlisted my sister to do my hair, and placed my outfit carefully on a hanger and went to bed as early as possible so I would be able to wake up on time the next morning. Before I would go to bed I would ask sister if she wanted me to wake her up the next morning. She would tell me that I was weird for liking school so much, and I would just smile and fall asleep.

The first day of school was finally here, I woke up to my three alarms at least 2 1/2 hours before I had to leave for school. I would meticulously get ready and prepare everything a final time. If I had spare time I would usually attempt to make a special breakfast celebrating the first day of school (it was never very special because for most of my life I only knew how to make scrambled eggs) and eagerly waited for the time when I got to go pick up my good friend Lyndsie, let her mom snap a few (hundred) photos and go off to school.

This is how things went until about sophomore year. After that I dreaded school and was always wishing summer could go on for a few more months. This year though, by the end of June I was so ready to go back to school. I want to go get school supplies and pack my backpack already and school doesn't start until the end of August. College is going to be so hard and chances are that by the end of the second week I'll be begging for summer, but right now I just can't wait for school to start. So this year it's going to be just as fun as it was my first day of kindergarten (maybe). Not to mention I'll have a few more perks than before, a new laptop and an apartment for example.

Best Show EVER!!!!

So I realized the other day that I complain on this blog ALL the time. So I decided to write a positive blog for once. And maybe if it's fun I'll do it more often.

So anyway I have this friend at work who watches a lot of TV and one day we were talking about shows that have been around for forever and have started to get stupid (Heroes, Law and Order, ER, etc.) . Naturally Lost came up because that show has been around for ages and I told him I thought six seasons was too long to be stuck on an island (not to mention I heard that somehow aliens or something weird like that are involved in the show and that's just weird). It turns out that he loves Lost and one day he brought season one for me to watch. It is easily the best show ever. (as far as dramatic series go-Chuck and the Office are the best shows ever). It's super intense and every episode is a cliffhanger. The nice thing about having TV shows on dvd is no commercials and you don't have to wait a week to see the next episode. The down side is that you can crank through 4 or 5 episodes and not even notice--this only happened once, but I was so confused when all of a sudden it was three in the morning.

So far I'm 75% done with season two and it just keeps getting better and better. I keep trying to get people to answer questions I have but usually they won't because it would lower the suspense but I don't think it would. I just want to know if Jack and Kate ever get together because obviously they're meant for each other.