Fruit from the Garden

I was walking by the garden this morning and I remembered that dad mentioned the peach trees were getting pretty ripe so I stopped and picked about 1/16th of them... I also got a couple strawberries and raspberries.

Cabaret

Some highlights of Katie's play at MIT:

Moving to New York

I am not quite ready to be serious yet so my life plan is starting with a roadtrip. I decided to drive up to my dad and stepmom's house in upstate New York for an undetermined amount of time... it could be for one month or it could be for two years (until I am ready to go to graduate school) - I'm sure there will be many factors that go into making this decision, but all I know right now is that I am not going to worry about it because all of my options are good ones ;) I boxed up about 90% of my clothes and mailed them to New York - the rest of my belongings were stuffed into my car, leaving just enough room for a cooler and Laura (who volunteered to drive up with me). We left on Thursday afternoon after Laura got out of class (Kacy wanted to come too but it was her mom's birthday so she already had plans) and made it to somewhere in North Carolina where we stopped for the night. Before leaving Gainesville we stopped by AAA to plot our course, the lady who helped us didn't seem to realize that we were not going to New York City so all of the maps she gave us put us right through it on our way upstate. We unfortunately arrived in the city right around rush hour on Friday which left us time to count out change while we sat in line to pay tolls - this doesn't sound too unusual until you realize that we are not talking about $1.50, we are talking about $5 - $10. For example, we videoed the transaction at the toll booth before the George Washington bridge where I paid with 60 dimes. We got to dad and Julie's around 7pm, just in time for a quick tour for Laura (she hasn't been here since spring break of our freshman year) and dinner complete with vegetables from the garden. Saturday morning we woke up and got back in the car to drive up to Boston and see Katie/Katherine perform in a play at school - she did a great job and we were all very proud! Sunday we dropped Laura off at the airport on the way back to New York so that she could get back to Gainesville in time for class on Monday (her life plan is a bit better formed than mine right now).

Wild Child

After I got back from Cape May last week, I had two days to pack up my room at Kacy's house in Gainesville and to say my goodbyes (which included stopping by Kappa Delta to get that video of council breakin it down). Kacy, Laura, Patti, Elaine, Marcus, Scotty, Eason and Hooks came over to say goodbye and have dinner on Tuesday night. On Wednesday, I went to On The Border with Anna and Jillian (my Kappa Delta family) to see Jess one last time since she had to work all night and couldn't take part in my last night out... it was on the way to the bars that I captured Kacy's hidden talent on film: shot-gunning beer very poorly. Who knew?

Recruitment is Tight

This is a song I wrote last year for council to perform for the rest of the chapter to get them excited about Spirit Week/Recruitment (which is actually quite tedious and boring unitl it gets to the later rounds and then it is just stressful). We used to do something a little less G-rated but it almost cost us our pledge class two years ago so I was trying to tone it down a bit. We never got around to performing the song last year, so this year's council stepped up to the plate. No one knew it was coming and it was a big enough hit that I got congratulations for my lyrics even though I have graduated to alumni status :(

Battlestar Galactica

Laugh if you must but I am now officially a fan.

First is the worst, Second is the best

Apparently The Cup can be defeated. We got worked tonight, 10-1... ouch. I think they beat us in record time too, whatever, it was still fun and we got a taste of the glory last night! I can handle second place seeing as this was only my 6th game ever ;)

The Cup

I have never played Ultimate Frisbee before so when Mallory asked me to play on her co-ed team this summer I almost turned her down but then I figured "its frisbee, how hard can it be?" Oh man... I had no idea. The first couple games we just went out and messed around, sweated alot and won. Everyone on our team is pretty athletic so that was more because we were out-running the other teams than because we were out-playing them. Then two weeks ago we went up against a team that had a strategy, they were calling plays and yelling things like 'they have no flick!' - we got killed and realized that we needed a plan. So last week we had a bye (before playoffs began) and Mallory went online and downloaded a team strategy for us. It seemed simple enough and it even came with a diagram (which I have uploaded for your viewing pleasure). We chose a zone defense called 'The Cup'. This strategy revolves around a group of defenders that will follow the disk to every thrower (known collectively as 'The Cup'). The website described it as "These need to be people who can run hard and are in good shape" guess who got stuck in the cup... Anyways the general idea seemed easy enough but we were not holding out any hope of added success in our next game seeing as we got paired with the top seed in the first round. The other team (the top seed) showed up with about 30 people (you only have 7 people on the field at a time) and three team coolers one of which said "NO MERCY" across the front - not a good sign. They won the toss so they got to receive first meaning that we would be defending first - it was time for The Cup. Not less than 30 seconds into the game (about the time it took for us to get to their end of the field and start defending) their handler (the guy with the frisbee) yelled out "Oh shit, it is The Cup!" Are you kidding me? I can't explain it but The Cup was magic. We won in overtime 11-8 and advanced to the next round (which was an hour later), those two back-to-back games required more physical effort than I have used in the past six months combined. We were basically running flat-out for an hour at a time (remember we also played overtime in the first game), but the Cup prevailed again and we are heading into the playoff game tonight at 9pm. Here is a picture of one of my battle wounds that I received while making a diving catch in the endzone - I landed on the line and now I have a blue-tinged scab (from the blue line paint). Yes I am wearing my Gator helmet because it is awesome.

Scalloping

study time well spent...

Cooking Woes

Laura was making dinner tonight when she called me in to hear a song that came on the radio, as I rounded the corner into the kitchen Laura reached over to take the top off of a pot on the stove with a dishrag, the dishrag caught fire on the flames of an adjacent burner and she threw it on the ground and started stepping on it - it was the highlight of my cooking experiences so far. No one was hurt, the flames were extinguished and now we have one slightly singed (but still perfectly good) dishrag. After dinner Laura decided she was in the mood for some brownies so she mixed up the batter and started pouring it in the pan at which point she realized she forgot to grease the pan so she poured the batter back into the bowl and started to clean the pan. During the cleaning process we got into a discussion about weather or not it was dangerous to eat the raw batter or if that was just something your mom told you to stop you from eating the batter. As I sat there eating the raw batter (danger is my middle name) Laura finished cleaning and drying the pan and started to pour the batter in again only to stop about half-way through realizing that she had been distracted by the conversation and started pouring the batter into a STILL ungreased pan. She had to repeat the whole process, it really was not a good night for her in the kitchen.

Crisis Averted

I have two final exams next week, one on Monday and one on Wednesday but Anna called Thursday and asked me if I wanted to go scalloping with her on Saturday. I did not have the will power to turn this offer down so I decided I would study ALL DAY today and drive up early tomorrow morning. I was doing pretty good all morning when all of the sudden I heard a big boom and the power went out (in the middle of me typing up my review and in the middle of a sunshine filled afternoon - not a cloud in sight). Not good. Over the next half hour it became apparent that the power was out for the entire block, also during that half hour a big summer thunderstorm blew up. So now I am sitting in my dark house while it is storming outside trying to decide if I should get dressed and go to the library when someone starts pounding on our front door. It turns out that a branch had fallen on the powerlines IN OUR BACKYARD! Oops... I figured this was probably the cause of the 'big boom' I had hard earlier and walked out there with them expecting to see some giant branch that needed to be chainsawed-up, only to find them using this huge yellow pole to knock the tinest branch you have ever seen off of the lines - it was about the width of my pinky finger! Apparently it hit the lines in just the correct way to cause them to short circut. After the branch fell down all they had to do was replace the fuse in the transformer (or something like that) and the power was back on in about five minutes. Crisis averted, they are my heros :) Here is the offending branch, charred and all:

Hook

Another childhood classic that Kacy had never seen... don't worry, we watched it last night.

Be Jealous

The 'Water' video was a big hit in my community nursing class, the only suggestion was that the girls should have had helmets on in the scooter scene... this is the second time someone has told us that we should get helmets for the scooter so I have been keeping my eye out and I came across this little beauty at WalMart yesterday. Be jealous.

Payback

Last night I asked Laura if I could borrow her hole-punch and she said "Yeah, but be careful so you don't spill those little things everywhere." So I promptly retreated to my room and poured all the 'little things' in my hand and then put them in a pile on her desk when I returned the hole-punch. Ha-ha I am so funny right? Well this morning I woke up and noticed a couple 'little things' in my bed:

Then I looked under my pillow and found these:


Ohhh Laura, you are so clever. So when Laura left for class this afternoon I returned the 'little things' to various locations in her room including (but not limited to) her M&M jar:


her shoes:


and the rim of her toilet seat: