Birthdays

I love Birthdays, even if it's not mine. I like getting and giving presents and the cake, and I love going out to eat, which seems to be common for birthdays with my friends and family. I don't usually go out to sit down restaurants unless it's an occasion.

Some of my friends get a pinata at their house whenever it was someone's birthday. That is always exciting. Sometimes the candy would be chocolates or it would be sweet stuff, like sweethearts and suckers. It was so exciting!

Birthdays are just so happy. I'm talking about this because it's my friends birthday tomorrow and she's turning 21 so of course we have to go out tonight at midnight. She's lucky too because her parents live near Madison and so are taking her out to dinner tonight, then we're going out with friends, and tomorrow on her actual birthday, she gets to go out with friends again for dinner. And her boyfriend took her out to lunch today, too. I don't know, I guess it's fun because I don't eat out much. I'm going to have to make her cake somewhere tomorrow, too, because she's going to be home whenever I am tomorrow, unless I can get her out of the house right before dinner so she can't smell it beforehand. Our place is small, she would know. Have to be sneaky.

On the Loose

Yesterday, my roommate's sister was over and we were all just chilling in the living room and watching tv. She decides to get up and walk around the couch to the kitchen. As she proceeds, she trips over the playstation cord, and somehow falls dramatically into this little marble top table, held up by a wooden elephant. Her face hits the marble, the fish tank falls off, the lamp crashes to the floor, and the flower pot spills all it's dirt to the floor, mixing in with the water from the fish tank. Now, the table is broken in half, there is dirt and water everywhere, and the frogs in the tank are bouncing, hopefully, somewhere on the floor. She turns to look at us, her eyes wide open and her top lip bleeding down her face.
We scramble to find the frogs first, which are the size of a fingernail. My roommate refills the tank with the water we had set out to clean the tank.

No luck. It's been about five minutes.
Finally, I see something out of the corner of my eye, a hop. There is one of the little frogs, all the way across the living room, hopping towards under the lazy boy. I yell out that I found one and in a blink of an eye, my roommate's sister lunges toward it and scoops it up in her hands, and tosses it into the tank.
Just one more.
Another few minutes passes by. My roommate is freaking out because she doesn't know how long they can be out of the water and survive. Mid-sentence, she screams out pointing, there is the last frog, hopping straight for her sister. Again, she scoops up the frog as fast as possible and dumps it into the tank. After we got both back in, we were so relieved. One, we didn't want our frogs to die, and two, we didn't want to find our frogs dead somewhere.
After we set the tank back up, I screwed the table back together while the other two started to pick up all the dirt and clean up the white carpet. The carpet is still wet this morning, our fan does nothing.

Cleaning my Room

When I came home from break, I just dumped my bag of clothes on the floor of my room. The clothes are still laying there right now. I always tell myself I am going to clean my room but I never do. For some reason, I don't seem to mind. My roommate and I always clean our kitchen and living room and stuff, but I never make it to my room. It's not that it's dirty, just full of stuff. The weird thing is, too, is that I always know where everything is. I can lift up a sweatshirt knowing that my pants are right under it. Hopefully, this week I will have motivation to put everything away and wash my heaping mound of dirty laundry. At least I have my clean and dirty clothes separated.

Moose Mountain

My Step-Dad, Richard, owns land on Moose Mountain up the North Shore in Minnesota and my family and friends and I snowmobile there a lot. This past break, four of my friends and I went up there for a day. It was a beautiful and unexpectedly warm day and not to be cliche, but the sun was shining and the lake was the a fantastic clear blue. Somtimes near turqouise.

On this particular Saturday, we went out to the land. Right away we got the snowmobile out and hooked up the toboggan. We took off flying, 2 of us on the sled and 3 on the toboggon. And not surprisingly, right off the bat, we got the sled stuck. It took quite a while to get the snowmobile out of the wet snow. We finally got out and not much longer after bailing before hitting a few trees and such, the right chain that the rope was attached to completly snapped. We Mcguivered the sled back together, and it happened again on the left side. After a second repair, we needed to ride up the hill, but there was too much weight on the toboggon with all three of us and the snowmobile couldn't get up the hill. So we got off the slide and then my friend drove off and left us in the woods. We started walking back to the shack but the snow was too deep in the woods so we all laid down



and played HAHA in the middle of the woods.

Blogging

When I write my blogs, I think about what happened that was interesting to me this past week that I would want to share. The first thing that pops into my head is what I write about.
I like blogging actually. I didn't think I was going to at first, but I do. I used to write in a journal every night before I went to bed. I wrote about what I did or what I was feeling. I haven't written in one really for three years, since I came to college, just every now and then when I see my book. When I blog, it's sort of the same thing I'd write in my journal. Random things I was thinking about. Although, my journal was way less structured and stories weren't complete. Sometimes I'd change topic in mid-story line. One plus to blogging is that it is typed, which is obviously faster than writing, and you can decorate the page or change colors or what not.
I'd say it has been a positive experience so far.

Tip Cup

I was at a friend's house on Saturday and there was about fifteen of us there just playing games and what not. I had never been there before because she lives pretty far down off of East Wash. We had just started to play tip cup and this old man just walks down the basement stairs towards us just smiling. He had to have been at least around seventy. The girl that lives there gives him a beer from the keg and he starts chillin. His name is Larry and he lives next door. He decides he wants to learn how to play flip cup. So, someone explained it to him, which took awhile, and we started playing, Larry going last in line. When it gets to be his turn, he chugs like a half a cup of beer and puts the cup the wrong way on the edge of the table and starts flipping. We are all screaming because the last person on the other team is drinking their beer and catching up. Larry realizes the cup is upside down and fixes it. Then, he goes to flip it, and gets it on his first try. We win. It took him at least three more games to get the cup the right way when you flip it, but he still always got the right flip the first time, and we won the game every time with him on our side. I have to say it was pretty amusing to watch him play. He was so serious when it was his turn. I've of course drank with older people before, but they have never played tip cup.

Salvia

Some of my friends this weekend smoked salvia and then videotaped their reactions. When I went over there later that day, I watched the recordings, and they were hilarious.

You could instantly tell when the person started to feel the effects because their faces would instantly change and they would look around like what is going on.

One of them tried to pull the cushion of the couch off.
Another couldn't stop laughing and layed on the floor to try to put their feet on the ceiling, which was about two to three stories high in this room.
Another one was laughing and then all of a sudden their face looked terrified and they got extremely scared and were saying, "I want it to stop," and started crying.
The last one, had a completely expressionless face and would get up, look around, and then sit down, or once, lay down on the middle of floor. Instantly, after lying down, they got up, stopped, and then ran to one of the back rooms.

I can hardly describe what these people looked like and how they reacted, because I honestly have never seen anything like that except for in the movies. The best part was just being able to see the change in expression when it hit them. It was like in The Matrix when Cypher was killing the people in the matrix at the end of the movie, and when he pulled Switch's plug, her face had the same switch of expression, even though she was dying.

The stories they told about what they were seeing made no sense at all and the only one I kind of understood was that they were in a room that was completely made out of the ceiling tiles in the room, and were trying to grab things that they couldn't reach, because obviously they weren't there.

If you ever try it, or have and haven't videotaped it, I highly recommend it because it was really amusing. So, also, if you don't remember what you did, then you will know.

Bambi II Characters Can Rap Too

Ok, I just had to put this video on because I think it is hilarious. I know there are a lot of Soulja Boy videos out there and I've seen some of them, but this one still prevails. It almost actually looks as if this is what the animals are saying, and when there are faster words, the mouths still keep up with the movements. Obviously, it's not perfect, but I still think the person that made this video did a really good job picking out scenes and characters. Too bad they couldn't have actually made the animals do the signature dance!

The Cold

So, I had to walk home this morning from my friends house, and it was freezing. I didn't have a hat or mittens and I wasn't dressed warm at all. The only thing I had that I was sort of glad for was a scarf. I have four piercings on my ear and so the metal just made my ears colder. I tried tying my scarf around my head to keep my ears warm but that didn't end up helping, plus I looked like a dork. I got to Taco Bell on state street to eat with a friend, and my right ear seriously started to burn. After it got warm, it stopped hurting thankfully. I ended up taking a cab the rest of the way instead of walking another fifteen minutes. Later on at home, my ear started to burn again. Now, it's bright red, swollen, and still burns. It's that same feeling you get when you burn your hand on the stove or an iron or something. It's driving me CRAZY. Frostbite is awful. At least it hasn't turned white, and I hope it doesn't get that far. The weird thing though, is that it's only on one ear, not that I want it on both.

Camping Adventure

A long time ago, my three sisters, brother, and mom were trekking through the woods at Pictured Rocks, Michigan in order to reach a secluded campsite. This began the longest day of my life.

We each loaded up with our own bags, sleeping bags, and the tents since the site was about fifteen minutes away.

This wasn't everything we needed, but because we were all very young, we couldn't carry very much.

So, we start walking along the trails.

And walking.

And walking.

Finally, my younger sister asks how much farther it was.

According to the directions my mom got, we were still on track and shouldn't be too much longer. We proceeded to walk on, eventually coming up to Lake Superior.

By now, the sun was at its hottest, and we were all sweating and hungry.

We ended up changing into our swim suits and walking down to the beach to go swimming.

This was the highlight of the day.

The water was refreshing and the waves were exciting.

We dry off a little and continue to walk along the path that borders the lake.

Only a moment after we began, the flies came.

We were attacked.

The flies would almost instantly bite us on contact, even through our t-shirts.

It was unbearable.

We were all complaining and trying to move as fast as we could.

My mom urged us on.

We were unable to swat away the flies and carry all our bags, so we ended up hiding everything we couldn't carry on our backs under some ferns in order to have our hands free.

Now, all we had with us was wet clothes and one of the tents.

This walk was horrible.

Our legs were tired from walking in the sand, we had bites all over us, we were hot, and we were hungry.

We walked until about mid-afternoon, not seeing any other person or sign of one the whole time. The entire time we all complained, my youngest sister was crying, and my mom was confused.

It seemed like the agony would never end.

Then, all of a sudden, we saw a campsite number.

It was ours.

We were so relieved we all collapsed down to the ground.

I don't know how long the walk actually was, or what I would think of it if I did that walk today, but when I was ten years old, that walk seemed like an eternity of torture.

My mom set up the only tent we had with us, her two-person tent.

She gave us a flashlight and said she was going to walk back and get more things we needed and food, and that she would canoe back so it would be less than half the time if she were to walk.

So, we all just sat there and talked since we had nothing else to do and were exhausted.

Soon, it starts to get dark.

We get inside the tent, all five of us squished together with one flashlight, realizing it had been a really long time since mom had left.

After waiting a while with no return of mom, the oldest, my brother, says it would be a good idea if we go wait on the beach for her so she will know where our campsite is.

Everyone agrees, and we walk down the hill to the cliff.

We find a log to sit against and all sit down in a row.

And we wait, starving.

By this time, there were so many noises behind us in the woods and the crashings of the waves, we all were scared.

At one point I turned around and saw a dark figure where the path was leading into the woods. To this day, I swear it was a bear or something.

No one agrees.

Then, as if things couldn't get any worse, our flashlights gets dim.

Then dies.

Now, we are stuck alone on some beach, with no food, no water, no warm clothes, one sleeping bag, and the only light we have is from the stars.

After another amount of time slowly passes by, we decide to go back to the tent.

Two of us were already sleeping.

We walk hand in hand.

Staying close to each other, my brother slowly leads us up the hill and into the woods.

After a lot of tripping and startling, he finds the tent.

We all get in, laying perpendicular to whats the norm so that we all can fit to sleep.

Then we continue to wait.

Soon, we hear rustling.

Then voices.

Lastly, we hear my mom shrieking with relief.

We all get out and hug her.

Two park rangers hung apples on a pole so the animals wouldn't get them.

I could only think of how I wanted one right then, not in the morning.

We learned later that the rangers saw my mom putting the canoe with all our supplies in the water and wouldn't let her go because the waves were too dangerous at night.

They wanted to keep her at the station over night then let her canoe or walk alone, but with her desperation and hysteric crying, they decided to walk her back to our campsite, bringing only apples.

My mom said she has never been more relieved as when she saw all the indents from our heads poking out of the sides of the tent.

If this same thing happened today, my experience would obviously be very different.

However, this was what I remember from that day, and I don't think I'll ever forget the feelings I had that never-ending day.

The next day, we found the shorter path, our dad came (he had to stay back a day for work), we ate, and it ended up being the best camping trip we have ever taken.