My first major accomplishment in October was watching ‘Robin Hood: Men in Tights’ with my roommate. Alisha had a Netflix account, so occasionally she convinced me to watch a movie with her, and every single time it was a really weird one. What this says about my taste in movies is neither here nor there. What it says in her taste in roommates is that she is weird. Obviously. I think it’s important to watch all the movies that I’ve quoted all my life. Unfortunately with random quotes firmly entrenched in my vernacular, I often forget that I don’t know the source. So far I’ve tracked down three major sources of quotes that I stole off my brothers, but there are so many sayings that we share I don’t know if I’ll ever find all of them. I also learned that the Tomahawk Chop is not unique to Kamiakin. It was in the movie, and a few other sources from what I’ve heard. I respect Kamiakin cheerleaders even less now. I didn’t know it was possible, but there you go.

I also spent time playing Heroes of Might and Magic with the boy whose hand I shook in September. Playing videogames with someone non-family is very different. Less violent. Less likely to end in tears. Not necessarily better.

October is also the candy month. Not eating sweet things in October is practically blaspheme, so obviously I had to bake a lot. I made brownies and cakes and other various delicacies during the middle of the month, practicing decorating skills and experimenting with spices. My roommates started to like me more after I let them eat my baking. Witchcraft on my part, I assure you.

Delicious, Delicious Witchcraft

I also had a great time in my honors writing class. Though we were reading Shakespeare, which is super old, the discussions were relevant and stimulating, covering psychology and choices of leaders. I enjoyed /talking/ about Shakespeare far more than I ever enjoyed reading it. I still hold that plays are not meant to be read. That much dialog is exhausting. People shouldn’t talk so much.

One of my favorite assignments was the “Essence” project. We had to make a presentation capturing the essence of Macbeth without words. To do this, we used eggs. How did this work you may ask? Well I shall tell you! First, I soaked an egg in vinegar that had quite a bit of red food dye. This destroyed the shell and turned the egg a nasty looking veiny red. When we presented it, we hid the destroyed egg inside a cauldron and made a show of lowering a clean good egg into the pot, then pouring red vinegar over it. When we pulled out the nasty jellified egg out in its place, the effect was quite satisfying. We then laid the vinegar egg in a pile of baking soda and allowed the vinegar to turn the clean white mass into a burbling red mess. Finally, we took some napkins labeled ‘MacDuff’ and cleaned the whole thing up. It’s all very symbolic, I’ll let you sort out the meanings for yourself.

My favorite non-school activity was, of course, Halloween. Because of my childish love of dress-up, Halloween has become my favorite holiday after opportunities for the game became paucity. I had been planning my costume for quite some time, I didn’t have extra money for a very cool costume, so I reused my Queen Elizabeth dress to be the Red Queen from Tim Burton’s Alice and Wonderland. Then two girls in my ward overheard me quoting A Very Potter Musical and invited me to dress up with them for the Freshmen Dance. It was the day after the Quark Halloween Party, so I decided to have two costumes! Obviously, this was the only solution. Since they had already taken the two best characters (Draco and Hermione) I decided to be Ginny. Yes, I find her annoying, but at least she has some songs, so I could sing as I died of embarrassment. Since both characters I was playing have freakishly red hair, I did the only sensible thing. I dyed my hair fire engine red.

I had less fun than I would have wished at the Quark Halloween Social, because my broadcasting class required me to film a story and I decided to do double duty and film the social. This was when I decided that I really don’t like broadcasting. For one thing, I hate being behind the camera, I was meant to be part of the action! Or at least, not creepily staring at the action! More on that later.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLxIKcRKRdo (watch at your own risk)

The next night was the Dance, and it was pretty great, even if I didn’t dance with very many sexy men. I did get killed twice by a really hot Draco and Blaize. (not from AVPM) They kept sending terrible spells at me, but I was rescued by Hades from Disney’s Hercules. He said I wasn’t meant to die yet, so he and Jareth from the Labyrinth brought me back to life.

The best pick up line of the dance? From a Dementor: Are you a criminal? Cause I’d like to kiss you!

October was definitely… interesting.

September 2010

September is one of my favorite months. Not only is the weather generally quite lovely, but it is also the month when school starts. I know admiring this is nerdy, but I absolutely adore school, and starting new classes is my favorite! Fall semester I took Broadcasting 240, Communications 101, Honors Writing 150, ASL 101, and Religion 121 (Book of Mormon) with the intent in pursuing a degree in broadcast communications. I was in a freshman mentoring bundle, but all that really meant was being involved in a three day New Student Orientation. Through this, I got a free t-shirt, a sunburn, a desire to never take a class in the RB (Gym), free pizza and a sprained ankle.

The Ankle Story (tm) is rather dramatic and reminiscent of Little Women now that I look back on it. The NSO had a dance/concert where a big band group was performing. Being the little show off that I occasionally am, I convinced Nick Meng to dance with me. Unfortunately, I didn't have the right shoes for swing dancing, so I decided to take them off and forgot the fact that Nick Meng is quite a violent dancer. After being set down a bit too hard, I had to limp out of that activity. Thankfully, I met a new friend and only had to be on crutches for three days.

Over the first few weeks of school, I enjoyed all of my classes immensely! I love learning so much! I also had the opportunity to go to involvapalooza. This is a fancy name for 'Club Fair.' There are tons of really neat clubs at BYU, including a medieval club, "Democrats" club (pretty sure none of the members are actually Democrats, but I won't spoil their fun!), Footlights (a club for aspiring indie bands), and Quark. I signed up to get more info on a lot of clubs, but since my ASL class went from 7-9 on Tuesday nights and that is when most clubs meet, I ended up exclusively in Quark. More on that later.

There is also a Fall Fest every year and being the newly social being that I was pretending to be at that point, I obviously needed to go. Mainly I went for the free pizza and cover bands. There were quite a few that were really very good! After sitting by myself and listening to remakes of the Beetles and other various classics, there was a 70's costume contest for no apparent reason and then a moustache contest. One of the things I've learned at BYU is that all mustaches are inherently creepy. Because there is a rule that no one at BYU may have a beard (we don't discriminate against hairy ladies here) many decide to have a moustache instead. Because of this disturbing trend, BYU appears to have a high concentration of hipsters, though I’m sure many of them aren’t actually bad people.

Mine didn't win, unfortunately.

My pretty blonde roommate was a bit of a shock to my system, because the first few weeks I’m sure I never saw her sleep. She would be out until 3 in the morning playing night games with boys, and up early in the mornings to go participate in service on the weekends. She also dated a LOT. I was sure she wasn’t going to make it until the end of the year either from dropping dead through lack of sleep, or by being married off to some guy in search of a child bride. During this time I seriously dated myself. I had made it a goal to be social and participate in all the plethora of activities college has to offer a young, attractive single girl, but was simultaneously too shy to invite others to go to activities with me. Thus I sampled from the various Friday night date activities by myself. I went to several foreign films in the International Cinema (free) saw the ‘World of Dance’ (free) went to ‘Tuesday’s with Morrie’ (free and very sad) and saw a Documentary for extra credit in my broadcasting class (free!). So, I was glad that I was able to feel cultured without spending any money or talking to any people.

The Quark club (Science Fiction and Fantasy) held their opening social in September, and I was determined to go and maybe talk to fellow nerds. I determined that this would be a place where I wouldn’t feel awkward, since I had already stalked the website (quarksff.org) for several weeks and determined that the people were pretty cool. I planned to meet another girl who I’d met when wandering around the club fair, so I found the building, sat on a bench, avoided eye contact with the random passerbys and stared intently at my cellphone, willing her to text me. I was twenty minutes early for the social, since I always show up far too early for things that I’m nervous about, but waiting for someone to walk in with me made me thirty minutes late. Yes, I realize that my social phobia forced me to sit on a bench for almost an hour instead of having fun. I try not to do that anymore.

The girl I was waiting for.

When I finally found the courage to go in, I found the people surprisingly friendly, and a lot less glamorous than I had pictured them in my head. I found and latched onto the only other girl who appeared to have done her hair, and we acted slightly psychotic while plotting world domination… or something.

The hair! It be crazy!

Later, I was able to feel slightly more confidant posting things on the website, and started attending the weekly Sci Fi film forums. There I had actual human interaction once a week, and since they were set up to have a discussion at the end, I actually talked to people! Novel, I know. After one such successful social enterprises, I made contact with a girl who was from my building. Well, when I say “made contact” I mean she said “Hey! You’re in my building!” and I walked home with her, despite not recognizing her at all.

Thankfully, she actually did live in my building and wasn’t a serial killer (that I know of…) and I enjoyed chatting with her and the two boys she had dragged along with her. One of them had noticed during the movie that I had the same cell phone as him, and we waxed poetic on how durable and nice that particular Motorola slider was. The other boy ended up coming to quite a few of the film forums and keeping me out late to talk to me afterwards. Once I even got locked out of the building because we were chatting about writing novels until past 12 when all the buildings are locked, and I apparently lack the capability to consistently carry a key with me.

This led to calling up the one roommate whose number I had obtained, and giving the boy an awkward handshake that was summarily made fun of by all of my roommates. This led to a terribly awkward conversation wherein it was determined that my roommates’ yearlong goal was for me to lose the status of VL or virgin lips. Why they want me to risk some nasty disease of the mouth by touching my soft and supple lips to some dirty boy, I don’t know, but it was decided without my input.

September was a crazy month.