Update on my Relationship

If you are a faithful reader of my blog, you will recall that recently I received a comment on my Nablopomo (National Blog Posting Month, for the unenlightened) profile:

Hello,
My name is mary, i got you from nablopomo.com and i want to have a
good relationship with you, please i need your cooperation,
am yours mary

I was, of course, quite excited to find out that I was in a relationship. Mary is a wonderful person. At least, I’m pretty sure she is. I haven’t actually talked to her. I can, however, speculate about what she is like based on the content of her message. I’m sure that I’m qualified to do that kind of evaluation because my roommate is a psychology major.

Hello,

As you can see, she is a very friendly and polite person. She doesn’t just plunge into a soliloquy without a formal greeting.

My name is mary,

Always begin with an introduction! This is an especially good idea when you intend on having a relationship with someone. Also notice how she breaks conventional rules of capitalization. While some finicky English-imbibing fascists would say that is due to ignorance, I know that it means she is expressing her individuality in a conformist world. Arbitrary grammatical rules don’t tie her down.

i got you from nablopomo.com

This expression, “I got”, is also used in cases where people buy  things; for example, “I got this pink-and-orange double-decker bus for half the original price”. As you can see, Mary values me at least as much as she would a pink-and-orange double-decker bus. And those buses are expensive even at half price.

and i want to have a good relationship with you

Not just a relationship, a good relationship. I think I’ve emphasized this already. A surprising percentage of relationships that spring from random internet comments are not successful, probably because the comments do not include this phrase.

please i need your cooperation

Any good relationship requires cooperation. Mary obviously knows this.

am yours mary

<3

As you can see, she’s quite a nice person. She also included an email address by which I can contact her, but I think it’s best if we keep our relationship as objective as possible right now, and I think that if I spoke to her it would make it subjective (or something like that). Actually, I forgot the email address entirely, and don’t feel like going and looking it up again, but I think that I can reconstruct it so accurately that it will tell us even more about her. I’m guessing that her email is something like  penguinluvr@bananayodel.edu.

This means that she loves penguins! A great match; I love penguins too! Also note that she goes to the prestigious Bancroft Anabaptist University of Yorklyn, Delaware. I’m pretty sure she’s a physics student. Bancroft only offers programs in physics and English.

I’ll post further relationship updates, of course. I’d say something about my Anatomy and Physiology lab that I had today except nothing really happened. We just killed some onions, sliced them up, and probed them under microscopes.

Poor onions.

The Lollipop Incident, and Other Drama

Food Science is a really cool class. We get to cook! Today, our teacher said that our topic was sugar, which meant that we would be making candy and ice cream. I immediately went into hyperactive mode and started scribbling all over my class handout.

Canada shout-out! Yes, it looks like a tulip. Be grateful for what you get.

 Also, one that wouldn't fit in a picture: "Splenda: It's made from sugar, so it kills you like sugar! :D"

No, I have no idea why I, on the same page, denounced sugar and declared candy an essential part of the diet. I was too busy looking forward to making ice cream.

BUT, before I could eat ice cream, my lab partner and I had to make chocolate fudge. Fudge sounds kind of daunting, but it can't be that hard, right? WRONG. Fudge requires years of practice (although some say that fudge skills are solely hereditary) in a small French chocolaterie in Lozère. No matter what your cookbook says, you cannot just follow the simple directions and actually expect to end up with fudge.

We mixed the ingredients in a saucepan and stirred it while it came to a boil. So good, so far. Then once it was boiling we waited for it to reach the proper temperature. Then we took it off the burner, added the butter and vanilla extract, and waited for it to cool to the proper temperature. Then we stirred it and... wait, no we didn't. It was hard as a rock. I stood there stabbing the chocolate rock with a spoon while my partner went to talk to the teacher. For a moment I had a vision of failing the lab and being sent home in shame. Fortunately, the teacher just told us to reheat it until it melted and then put it in the pan to cool. Of course, it didn't turn into fudge (once it crystallizes, you never have another chance to fudgify it), but everyone liked it, and we didn't fail. Which was good, since my partner had been cooking for 30 years and who knows what would have happened if she had failed; her family would probably never let her cook again, just in case everything she made turned into invincible lumps. So, it ended all right (labs are notorious for going wrong anyway, right?).

The lollipop incident was the second emergency of the class. While we had been making "fudge", other groups had been making other candies and ice creams, including lollipops, mints, caramels, and fondant (which didn't turn out quite right either...). We had to try one of each of the different projects and write a haiku about it on our lab sheet (at least, I assume we were supposed to write haikus and not couplets or something). I innocently picked up an orange-colored lollipop that tasted like watermelon.

 

 My teeth! My poor teeth! I was probably going to have the incredibly sticky lollipop surgically removed or something. After calming down and half-convincing myself that I would survive, I went off to a corner and tried to remove the sticky mass from my mouth using my fingers, trying not to break any teeth. Oh, and trying not to embarrass myself (well, we can't win everything, can we?). I eventually freed my mouth and tried to retain my sense of dignity.

At least the lollipop tasted good.

Why I am Going to Turn into a Beaver

Sadly, it is true. Any minute now I am going to turn into a beaver. I forget exactly why, but it made perfect sense at 2:00 this morning, so I will not question it.

Last night was “Almost Anything Goes” at Andrews University, which is where each class comes in color coordinated shirts, shouts and cheers, and plays random games against the other classes. It was quite exciting. So exciting, sadly, that I left before it was over because it was really wearing me out. And I only participated in one game. That’s how exciting it was.

When I came back it was after 11:00, so I decided to call my sister, since she was off work. We ended up talking until almost 1:00. It was fun. :D 1:00 is the curfew on Saturday night, so I decided, why not stay up until the RA comes around for check-in? Every night, one of the RAs goes to each room to make sure nobody has escaped or been eaten by a tiger or something. Usually that is at 11:00, except on Saturday nights, as I mentioned earlier. So, for reference on my sleeping patterns, I have only been awake three times in the last month at 11:00. I go to sleep fairly early. So staying up until 1:00 was like walking to the moon: a gargantuan feat.

It took the RA at least half an hour after 1:00 to come to our room. I was expecting him to faint or call 911 or something (“TRAVIS! YOU’RE AWAKE!” *goes permanently insane*), but he was just like, “Oh, hi. Did you guys enjoy Almost Anything Goes?”

“Excuse me, I just stayed awake for four hours past my normal bedtime just to freak you out. I DEMAND surprise, shock, and/or temporary loss of consciousness!” (I did not really say this, although I felt like it. Keep in mind that while I would not normally wish anyone to lose consciousness unless they were pointing a gun down my throat or trying to make me dance on stage, this is 1:30 a.m.)

It took me until after 2:00 to finally calm down enough to get to sleep, after going through the stages of “HAHA I’M AWAKE”, “I’m. Going. To. Die.”, “Haha, I’m still awake! Llama!”, and “SHUT UP AND LET ME GO TO SLEEP BEFORE I THROW YOU TO THE BEARS.”

And I slept until nearly 11:00 a.m.

And that is why I’m going to turn into a beaver.

 

Off-topic!

I got a message this morning! I think I’m in a relationship now:

“Hello,
My name is mary, i got you from nablopomo.com and i want to have a
good relationship with you, please i need your cooperation,
am yours mary”

See, she doesn’t just want a relationship, she wasn’t a good relationship. I still haven’t decided on a wedding date, but I’ll keep you all posted, of course.

Where am I? Who am I?

This morning I awoke to an astonishing realization. This was not the realization that I am at college hundreds of miles from home and my entire life is different henceforth; I figured that out last week. No, this realization was far more earth-shattering: I don’t trust myself enough to figure out what day it is, let alone what my plans are for the next ninety-six years. I was fine until I was on my way to church (yay for being a two-minute walk away from church!) and, not seeing very many other people, suddenly wondered what day it was. Was it Friday? Wasn’t yesterday Friday? What if I slept through Saturday? Wait, Boris (my roommate; pseudonymed, of course) thought it was Saturday too! But what if we both slept through the entire day? What if someone snuck sleeping pills into our water bottles or something?

It was at this point that I saw people dressed up for church, so I decided to stop worrying about what day it was and start worrying about why all of these people were walking around outside instead of being in church. What time was it? Was my watch correct? It looked like it said 10:05. Was I reading it wrong? Had I lost my ability to read anything correctly? Would this affect my grades?

Oh, yes. These people are leaving early church. It’s easy to tell because nearly everyone who goes to early church is, shall we say, “experienced”. The second service is where all the college students go (either because the music is better or because they get to sleep in; maybe both).

So, in summary, I seem to have some sort of condition in the morning that dissociates me from reality. This explains why I like my 8:30 Anatomy and Physiology class so much. Go figure!

(Haha! I bet you thought this post was going to be philosophical or something.)

General Conference

I went to the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists from Wednesday through yesterday. The GC session happens every five years and this time it was in Altanta, Georgia. Unfortunately, my mom couldn’t come, so dad and I had to go by ourselves.

We left Wednesday morning and arrived that afternoon after meeting my sister, Linda, for lunch on the way.

Here is our hotel. It had two beds, a bathroom, and a TV. And that was pretty much it. Not even an alarm clock or refrigerator.

That’s our hotel sign. It has a pineapple. That’s kind of random. Kind of like the wireless internet, which had a very bad signal in our room, hence why I could only get on the internet at the exhibition hall (more on that to come).

We took MARTA, the mass transit system, from a station near our hotel to the area where the Georgia Dome and Georgia World Congress Center.

Here’s the Georgia Dome, where the meetings were held, Wednesday afternoon when we showed up there. The area in the center, where the stage is, was for delegates (representatives chosen from each division), their families, and retired denominational workers.

When we got there, they were just wrapping up a business session (which most people except delegates don’t go to), and we got to watch a screening of The Adventists, a documentary about the Adventist health care system.

Here’s the Wednesday night meeting! There were probably a dozen musical performances at each meeting, with one or two between practically every speaker and such. But those of us who like music don’t mind. :)

 

Each night (except Friday and Saturday) there were videos from the divisions about what they had been doing over the last five years, with two or three divisions showing their videos every night. My favorite video was probably the Trans-European Division’s, which is (obviously) not the one in this picture.

Thursday morning we went to the exhibition hall, where all the booths from ministries all over the world were. Right at the entrance was the North American Division ministries section. They had an NAD Live stage where presentations were done. This one is an actor portraying Ellen White preaching a sermon that she gave at a pulpit that had been made especially for Ellen because she was so short.

Andrews University, where I will be going next year, had a really good booth. This is a replica of the globe that’s at the entrance of the real college (it’s so good that when I saw it on TV at the beginning of GC I thought they were actually at Andrews!).

Here’s the Adventist Heritage Ministry booth. I’m related to someone in this picture.

Here’s the ADRA booth! I was supposed to meet some online friends here on Thursday night, so they never showed. Oh well. I liked the booth, anyway. And they had stickers!

Here’s Hopey, the Hope Channel mascot!

ADRA started a petition called enditnow to protest violence against women. They had this banner that people could sign. I signed my name. Here’s what my dad signed:

Um… yeah.

Here’s the Adventist World radio’s wall that people could sign. I didn’t, because it was full by the time I got there.

Anyway, for reference, here’s Wednesday night’s meeting:

And here’s church on Sabbath:

Wow.

I have a lot more pictures, which I should have labeled and uploaded by tomorrow. Meanwhile, I’ll tell you all about the FREE STUFF I got at the exhibition hall (where pretty much everyone was handing things out for free).

Here’s the booth of the lovely Sanitarium health food company from Australia. They gave our free food every day. One day I got granola with soy milk, and another I got rice pudding. All delicious!

‘

This is all the free stuff I got. In case you can’t tell from the picture, it’s five bags full of stuff. Most of which is not duplicates. Overall, I got at least 6 writing utensils, three pins, two buttons, a fossilized shark tooth, 16 CDs and DVDs, a bottle of hand sanitizer and a first aid kit, a Russian flag, a bunch of stickers, a fan, volcanic ash, and a whole lot of brochures. And a few free books.

I also got some other things that I had to pay for but at a great discount.

This is a two-book set, each book of which originally cost about $20, but at the ABC sale, both books, together, were $5! I also got an awesome t-shirt at the Spectrum Magazine booth for $6 off the original price:

 

:)

 

Here are some pieces of ash I got for free from the Trans-European Division booth! They came from Eyjafjallajokull, the volcano that erupted recently.

I’ll have some more pictures up later, but that’s enough for now. I need to catch up on the rest of my interwebs!

Later,

Siv