Fat Kids Club

Guh. I haven't put up a new post in almost 3 months. Pathetic. Worst blogger ever. I'm sorry.

But let's all agree it's not me, it's you, and move on.

Let's talk about Fat Kids Club.

 I don't have an official badge or anything but I'm positive I'm a high ranking member. Back in college we quickly accumulated notches on the fat kids belt and haven't looked back since. I'd like to share some on my favorite examples of why I'm a true fat kid at heart.

Eating pants

Senior year of college my roomies and I regularly made dinner together. We all agreed that jeans are so annoying - they don't have a lot of give and don't allow you the freedom to really stuff your face. It quickly became tradition to yell “EATING PANTS” when dinner was almost ready and we'd all rush to our rooms to throw on something with an elastic waistband. I cannot recommend this strategy enough.

Bringing snacks to the bar

This one is pretty self explanatory but I have been known to carry a baggy of Cheeze-Its or Goldfish to the bar. Not all bars are awesome enough to have peanuts or pretzel sticks and you never know when a snack attack is going to hit.

Finishing off a box of cookies because there aren't enough to justify saving

You're eating cookies and milk (which I do pretty much every night) when you and your bloated belly have hit your cookie limit. You're about to pack up the cookies but then you notice there are only 2 cookies left. You're really going to close up the box for 2 cookies? That's not going to be even close to satisfying tomorrow. So instead you take a deep breath and just finish off the box. There was no other option.

Fat kid breathing

I can't take credit for this one as it's Olivia's classic Fat Kids Club move. It's basically when you've gorged yourself so quickly and so much that it actually changes your breathing pattern. It's loud, short breaths. You know you've heard it, or maybe have experienced it yourself. Olivia has on many occasions declared she has entered fat kid breathing mode (like we didn't hear for ourselves) and needs to be taken for a walk.

V.P. Treats

I lived in a house with 4 other girls in grad school and we all had important roles in the house. I was elected V.P. Treats as I was always eating treats and was also responsible for providing treats to the other housemates. I am quite honored to be V.P. Treats, it's a great gig. I put it on my resume.

Post-bar food

I know a lot of people like to grab some drunk food after the bar but I don't think many are as passionate about it as I am. Most of my nights out end with me screaming “cheese fries!” or “burrito!” I spend a lot of my time out thinking about what restaurants nearby are still open. I've gone about a mile out of my way on the walk home so I could “swing by” Weiner Circle. The guys at the burrito place near my house know my order when I walk in the door.

My supply of frozen drunk food

I have a very well stocked freezer ...of frozen items that go in the oven at 425 degrees for 12 minutes. When I don't go out for food after the bar I have to make sure I have plenty of delicious choices at home. Here's what my freezer currently looks like:

Starting at the top left going clockwise: Mini tacos, pizza rolls, frozen pizza, cauliflower in cheese sauce (it does the trick if I get desperate), and mini corn dogs. The current selection is actually pretty weak since I haven't been grocery shopping in a couple weeks. Other regulars include cheese stuffed pretzel bites, taquitos, potato skins, and jalapeno poppers. Impressive, I know.

If I haven't convinced you by now that I'm a certified member of the Fat Kids Club, I don't know what will. And just to clear, I'm eating chocolate chip cookie brownies as I write this.

Culinary Extravaganza 2012

The end of February and beginning of March have revolved around me stuffing my face.  Between Chicago Restaurant Week and birthday celebrations, I have done a lot of eating. Here I’ll review my recent feasts.  

Ai

Restaurant Week 2012 began with the River North Japanese restaurant Ai. I was really looking forward to it but it turned out to be one of the most disappointing meals I've ever had. The only redeeming quality is that the atmosphere and décor are fairly nice. 

My friend was very late meeting me, which I admit is rude and annoying for me and the restaurant. Had they actually been busy I wouldn’t have been surprised if they gave our table away but while I waited and during our entire meal the place was no more than 1/10^th full. They wouldn't seat me until he got there so I sat awkwardly in a little waiting area by the hostess stand. The hostess and a server then proceeded to complain about how we were late for our reservation within earshot of me. I am a very punctual person and I understand it's frustrating when people are late, but either just tell me that you’re not going to continue to hold the table or suck it up, be quiet and smile, and seat us when he gets there.

We started with martinis which were tasty but  very small for $10. We had some edamame to start which was completely average. We then ordered a few rolls: Orange, Dragon, and Spicy Tuna. This had to be the blandest sushi I've ever had. And so skimpy - the pieces of fish were tiny and the rolls in general were really small. For an average of $14 per roll this is not what I was expecting. My friend that I was with put it best: "this tastes like grocery store sushi." The rice was hard and there was absolutely no flavor. It was extremely disappointing.

Our bill was about $80 which is obscene for such poor quality, not to mention we were expecting decent sized rolls for the price so we left still hungry. There are so many better sushi places out there, with tastier rolls and much fresher fish. There is absolutely no reason to ever go here. So don't.

Naha

I LOVED this place. The only tiny negative was that the first table that they tried to seat us at was in this little section right by the door that wasn’t really part of the restaurant. I asked the hostess if we could just wait for the next open table and she said “yeah, I didn’t really think you’d want to sit there.” So we were seated about ½ hour after our reservation but we chose to wait and they were very friendly about it so I didn’t have a problem with it.

While we waited, we ordered a drink from the bar. The bartender was Serious (yes, with a capital ‘S’) about making drinks. Each cocktail was crafted with a lot of bartender love and care. It was hands down the best Manhattan I’ve ever had.

We picked different items for each course so that we could try more. Here’s what we had:

First Course

L: Coddled hen’s egg, foraged and cultivated mushrooms, garden grits, crisp kale, and cheddar cheese popcorn

C: Heirloom squash soup with bacon drippings, pumpkin seeds, and spaghetti squash

Main Course

L: Pork belly with risotto, swiss chard and red kuri squash

C: Wagyu brisket, carmelized carrots and turnips, crisp parsnips, buttered wheatberries

Dessert

L: Chocolate and almond daxquoise, Door County cheeries, bourbon and vanilla

C: Sampling of Midwestern crafted artisan cheese

Every single thing we ordered was delicious and my mouth is watering as I relive this right now. I find myself still regularly daydreaming of that amazing cheese plate.

Geja’s

I mean really how can you go wrong with dipping a bunch of stuff in melted cheese? The first course was various fruits and breads to dip into delicious glorious cheese. After we finished the cheese, Carson was astonished that the server removed the fondue setting with his bare hands. <<Gasp>> Don’t  worry, Carson later actually asked him how he accomplished that feat and we got to hear the full details of the difference between the cheese fondue set up and the meat fondue set up and how the sides of the cheese one don’t really get that hot. Thank goodness I have all that information in my brain now.  For the 2^nd course of meats I chose steak and shrimp and Carson chose steak and scallops. Both came with veggies and were very generous portions. The last course was melted chocolate with orange liqueur. YUM. It was served flaming so that the marshmallows could be toasted! In addition there were various fruits, pound cake, and rice crispy treats.  It was an obscene amount of food for 2 people but we managed to consume most of it. Would I typically pay that much for fondue? No. But for a special treat during Restaurant Week it was very delicious.

Chicago Cut

Amber decided that her birthday gift to Chuck and I was dinner at Chicago Cut. It is always packed so Amber even had to call in a favor to a partner to get us a table on Friday night. We arrived a little early so we had a seat at the bar while we waited for our table. Their wine and cocktail lists are on iPads and by the time the server found the cocktail list (we think she must have been new) our table was ready so we didn’t order anything from the bar. When we were seated Amber and I ordered martinis and Chuck had a Manhattan. Chuck’s drink was really heavy on the rocks but our martinis were generous and tasty. Everything on the menu sounded delicious. The server described the specials which included tuna that sounded amazing ...until she said it was $70. Um, no. Since we were going out to celebrate right after dinner none of us wanted to be super full so we each had 6 oz. filets. THE BEST STEAKS IN CHICAGO. Not kidding. If you love steak, you have to go here. For sides we had fresh shucked corn and shitake mushrooms, both were scrumptious. Chicago Cut definitely lived up to the hype and I’m pretty sure I didn't stop (drunkenly) talking about it throughout my entire birthday party. Thanks Amber!

The last few weeks have been a culinary delight (with one culinary disappointment). And now it’s time to pick up running again since I have eaten ALL the foods in Chicago. Oh and thanks to my loving friends I also have a cookie cake and chocolate chip cookie dough dip waiting for me at home. Mmmmm.

“I am not a glutton – I am an explorer of food.”  – Erma Bombeck

ZMas 2011

How do I describe what Zmas is? It is a marvelous celebration combining a love of zombies, the Christmas spirit, preparation for the Zombie Apocalypse (which I have trademarked the Zompocalypse™), games, prizes, and of course bacon. Drew, Olivia, and Carson started this tradition in 2010 but made the decision to expand the celebration to masses in 2011. Per email invitation from Drew, here is a description of what was in store:

“This year we excitedly announce the next phase of Zmas. We would like you to join us for a zombie themed evening of fun, games, and zombie defense training. We ask that each guest bring a wrapped weapon that could be used to dispatch encroaching zombie hoards to include in a "white elephant" style gift exchange. In addition to the gift exchange there will be prizes awarded for winners of our zombie themed games!
Do not put too much thought into the gift exchange purchases. Simply walk around Home Depot until you find something that appears to have some killing potential. Past weapons have included outwardly benign items such as a cast iron skillet and a crowbar. Any item capable of delivering blunt force trauma to a zombie’s skull is perfect.”

The Zmas story really starts with my weapon preparation. Fortunately I live a block away from Tenebuam Harware. Normally I love their costumer service and abundant attention but seeing as I was looking for items to build a zombie killing weapon I wanted as few questions as possible. I didn’t really know what I was looking for so I just walked the aisles politely declining any assistance. I finally decided on combining the traditional ‘2x4 with large nails sticking out of it’ with a small $10 metal shovel. The wood planks (excuse my lack of handyman technical term knowledge) were very cheap but way too long so I asked a guy there if he could cut it for me. So of course he asked what I was working on and the first not completely weird thing I could think to say was, “oh it’s for an art project for school.” Then when I was trying to find the right size nails in a boxed quantity of less than 5,000 he asked how many I needed and proceeded to open a box, take 3 out, and tell me to just put them in my pocket.  Olivia fiercely models my ZomKiller 3000 below:

Zmas was held on December 10^th this year and was an unforgettable event. As all successful parties require there was a plethora of delicious food and drinks including event themed Zombies (the cocktail) and Rogue Dead Guy Ale and my first attempt at bacon wrapped dates (they were so delicious and have been made several times since).

As well, the sorority girl in me insisted that I make a shirt themed for this special occasion:

Zmas consisted of several events in which the winner received the traditional Zmas gift of a machete. Yes, Drew ordered machetes as prizes. First event was Zombie Trivia in which I slaughtered the competition (no surprise from anyone) and was awarded the first machete. Here’s me looking extremely uncomfortable holding a machete.

Next up was zombie weapon trivia which mainly consisted of knowing a lot of types of guns. Markus took the crown machete on that one. Here he is in his zombie attacked outfit getting way too friendly with his prize:

Then it was time for the zombie weapon white elephant exchange. All homemade weapons were wrapped so that we didn’t know what was inside.

We drew numbers for gift selection order and the process of choosing, stealing, trading, punching, and whining was underway. I was in awe of the time, effort, and creativity of most of the weapons. Once we had all opened our gifts we voted on best weapon. The honor went to Olivia whose weapon was basically a plunger filled with cement with very large nails protruding. A close second (and the gift I ended up with and thought was the most hilarious) was Arthur’s weapon which was a hammer dipped in glue and rolled in shards of glass. As I opened the gift, Arthur warned me to be very careful as the glue had not fully dried and pieces of glass were haphazardly falling off it. Some shots of the Best Weapon winner and runner-up and the whole gang with their Zmas weapons:

The final Zmas event was the Zombie killing contest which involved shooting a BB gun inside Drew and Olivia’s aparment. Drew found these awesome shooting targets where the BB would make the target turn green if you shot the zombie in the head, yellow if you shot the zombie anywhere else, and red if you shot a victim. It’s the first time I’ve shot a BB gun and I was terrible at it but it was so much fun. The winner was the person who had the best shots (3 shots total) in 10 seconds. I took almost a full minute to get off three shots and only hit the target twice. Eric was the proud winner of the zombie killing contest.

Then Arthur suggested one last Zmas event: to end the night watching the critically acclaimed Zombie Strippers. For any of you who want to check out this masterpiece starring America’s sweetheart, Jenna Jameson, here’s the IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0960890/.  Fair warning, once you see a zombie stripper shoot pool balls out her hooha, you can never unsee it.

With bellies full of delicious food and drink, minds full of zombie trivia, hands full of homemade weapons and machetes, and hearts full of Zmas magic, we were satisfied to call Zmas 2011 a total success.

Book vs. Movie

A couple days ago I unfortunately watched Rules of Attraction starring none-other than James Freakin’ Van Der Beek. I only watched it because I read the book about a month ago and found it very entertaining so I was curious if the movie was decent. I was especially interested because Bret Easton Ellis also wrote American Psycho which is one of my favorite movies. Whomever he sold Rules of Attraction to did not do the book any justice. They took a very dark, disturbing, funny book and turned it into a superficial quasi-RomCom starring Dawson. 

I understand that many movies differ from the book, but this movie was missing major plot points and then just completely changed others (e.g. the female lead is super slutty in the book yet in the movie they make her a virgin, or the two male leads have a romantic relationship while in the movie they barely say 5 words to each other). At times I realized that if I had never read the book I would have no idea what was even going on in the movie or what they meant to imply. For example, Paul and Mitch are making small talk over a keg and Mitch blurts out, “I warned you, don’t say I didn’t warn you” and walks away. End scene. The viewer has no idea what on earth Mitch warned Paul about. In the book when this happens, it’s in reference to the two of them having a prior sexual relationship and Mitch warning Paul that he’s not for real gay and so Paul shouldn’t have been surprised when he ended things to get with a girl. In the movie nothing else is said, it’s never referenced again or ever explained. Anyway the movie is awful but it got me thinking about other books vs. movies.  I think it’s generally agreed upon that the book is always better, but some movies out there put up a good fight.

The Movie Blows:

-          Rules of Attraction Already discussed above. Boom. Roasted.

-          Choke  One of my favorite books ever but the movie was pretty worthless other than Sam Rockwell is awesome. As with Rules of Attraction, it’s hard to get all the complexity of the book into the movie so while I could appreciate some clever dialogue, etc. I would imagine it would be lost on someone who hasn’t read the book and doesn’t have the appropriate background info.

-          The Da Vinci Code  Not really one of my favorite books either but a good poolside read. It’s hard to enjoy the movie because it’s pretty much impossible to get past Tom Hanks’ hair.  

-          Something Borrowed  Not my typical kind of book but it was very enjoyable for a plane ride. And I’m cheating because I haven’t even seen the movie -- but I can absolutely guarantee it’s terrible. And this review I came across really made me laugh “The film seems to think that we will find something entertaining about Darcy just because she's played by Kate Hudson. It's hard to imagine a worse miscalculation.”  (Snider, Eric. Review from Film.com)

The Movie Is Decent

-          The Road  The first Cormac McCarthy book I read and I couldn't put it down. Viggo Mortensen was great but overall the movie was just ok. It’s hard to capture McCarthy’s amazingly disturbing imagery and the movie didn’t quite get there.

-          Where the Wild Things Are  I know a lot of people who loved the movie but I just wasn’t feeling it that much. Visually it was beautiful but overall I found it pretty boring. For most of the movie the people and beasts took turns getting their feelings hurt, beating the crap out of each other, and then everyone just loved each other again without really learning any lessons (which I feel should happen considering it’s based on a children’s book).

-          Marley & Me  Chosen as Walker Family Christmas Day Movie '08. Both the book and movie were cute but nothing life-changing. I didn’t think I was that in to either one until the end of both when I was bawling and realized I really cared about that damn dog. Can’t go wrong with a good dog story J

Both the Book and Movie Are Awesome

-          No Country for Old Men  I actually am in the middle of reading this book but it’s fantastic so far. This is one of the rare occasions where I’ve seen the movie first. Usually I hate this because then you already have a picture of the characters and don’t get to use your imagination but I think the movie did such a stellar casting job that I don’t mind. I highly recommend both the book and the movie.

-          The Shining  The first Stephen King book I ever read and obviously after that I was hooked. I think I saw the movie in like 6^th or 7^th grade and was terrified! The blood flowing from the elevator and the creepy twin girls were captured really well and for sure gave me nightmares. If you can stand looking at Shelley Duval’s droop-face for 2 hours, you can really appreciate Jack Nicholson’s unparalleled brand of crazy.

-          Fight Club  Not my favorite Palahniuk book but definitely a unique, dark, and hysterical read (in typical Palahniuk fashion). I was so impressed with how well the movie was done. Brad Pitt and Edward Norton made a great team. The movie managed to stay really true to the book and I loved how many word for word dialogues took place in the movie. Crap, I forgot that the first rule of fight club is you don’t talk about fight club.

There are so many more examples but these are the ones I could think of off the top of my head. I read a lot but I don’t really watch that many movies so, even though my opinions are correct and awesome, I’m probably not the best person to be writing on this topic. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the books you’ve read versus their movie adaptation!

T-Rex Layaway

A few Friday’s ago, a group of friends decided to get together to watch Jurassic Park for Movie Night 2.0: Raptors & Wine. The first movie night (featuring American Psycho and me drinking WAY too much wine) was such a success that we had to do it again. We met up first at Bin 36 for some wine flights and dinner. Over dinner the boys started reminiscing about the Jurassic Park toys they had when they were younger. Before my ears knew what was happening, I was pulled into one of the best stories I’ve ever heard. Eric explained that he had desperately wanted the T-Rex toy from Jurassic Park, but $32 seemed unattainable to the young Eric. He only received $2 per week for allowance. 

I'm not even sure if this is the right toy, but I really like his "thrashing action"

As luck would have it, the store that housed Eric's desired T-Rex had layaway. Eric’s parents thought this could serve as a fantastic learning experience of patience and devotion. After hearing the whole story, I insisted that Eric and/or his parents write a guest blogpost to capture this amazing tale of parenting. Ken Bill (Eric’s dad) rose to the challenge. Here is his account of how it all went down:


It starts at Hills Department Store in Lafayette, IN 1991. Each time we visited the store, Eric would run to the Dinosaur aisle and stare at the T-Rex and ask “when can I get it?” After many trips it occurred to us that this could serve as a useful teaching moment. Layaway! If he really wanted it, he would be willing to invest in it. And, with patience (not a strength for E, I might add), earn it and acquire it over time. We placed it in layaway. On return trips to the store, instead of going to the Dinosaur aisle where there were several T-Rexes like the one in layaway, E wanted to "visit" his. We had to ask the salesperson if they would retrieve it from the back so that E could see he it was still there. E wanted to hold it. (Editor’s note: That is my favorite part! After contributing his $2 each week, he made the Salesperson bring out his T-Rex to visit! Love it.) After what seemed like an eternity, he would hand it over and say "I'll be back, T".  We didn't make him wait as long as we planned, and finally the day came to rescue T-Rex from the chains of layaway. The look on E's face as the salesperson handed T over for the final time is forever etched in my mind. The good news - now all these years later, E can go to Walmart where they are celebrating the return of layaway!

A JOURNEY (see what I did there?) of Epic Proportions

I don’t want you guys to think I’m all emo or something -- even though I do wear a lot of black eyeliner and frequently sweep my bangs out of my eyes. And feelings, I have so many of them. So to counteract the last post about the worst days of my life, I wanted to post about one of the best weekends of all time in the history of the universe.

On July 30, 2011, I attended an event that was the perfect storm of friends, beer, magic, Honda Pilots,  unicorns, rainbows, and bands from the 70s culminating in the most glorious night. This event was the Journey/Foreigner concert. What follows is one of the most epic tales ever told.

The whole Journey/Foreigner gang

The day started by congregating at Olivia and Drew’s apartment. Olivia whipped up some delicious alcoholic smoothies providing us with the essential nutrients and vitamins needed for the adventure ahead. It was soon time to pile into the Honda Pilot that Carson borrowed from his mom so that we could all drive to Tinley Park together. Yes, we were riding in style. I had prepared an All Foreigner/Journey iPod mix for the road trip that quickly got us pumped for what lie ahead.

As we neared the venue, we decided to grab a bite to eat. I quickly shot down White Castle (seriously, who eats White Castle sober??) and we pulled into Culvers. Actually we pulled into the "exit only" lane of Culvers because Mike's excitement for the concert resulted in a complete disregard for the rules of the road. Maybe it was the energy I gained from my butter burger, maybe it’s because I had heard Hot Blooded no less than 80 times that week, but it was in the Culver’s parking lot that I bestowed to everyone what would become our anthem for the evening: The Honda Pilot Song. You really can’t capture the magic of this song by typing it out (I’d be happy to sing it to you in person!) but basically it goes to Foreigner’s Hot Blooded and you just throw in the words “Honda Pilot” as many times as possible.

We arrived at First Midwest Bank Amphitheatre, and cracked open the cooler of delicious Coors Light. Considering beers are $11 a piece inside, we wanted to have a few under our belts before heading in. We were soon informed by the 17 year old security guards that we were not allowed to tailgate. However, they apparently had no problem with us sitting inside the car and drinking. Fine by us, the interior of the Honda Pilot is luxurious. Vicki provided us with a delightful game of Liquor Grab Bag where we all got to pull an airplane bottle of liquor from a bag and drink whatever we pulled. A little after 6pm we were feeling good and it was time to venture into the venue.

We headed to the lawn area and claimed a great spot to throw down our blankets. As we waited for the show to begin, we realized we had entered the greatest people watching experience of our lives. Between the scantily clad cougars, security guard with an extraordinary ponytail, tannest women who ever lived, and the ultimate headbanger, it was endless entertainment.

That hair looked amazing as he headbanged throughout the night.

And then it was time to rock! Night Ranger kicked things off with a song we surprisingly kind of knew other than Sister Christian. Night Ranger did have a challenge filling their 15 minute time slot and had to resort to playing a Damn Yankees song to take up some time. Of course they ended things with a bang and just absolutely nailed Sister Christian.  ¯ ...MOTORIN’... ¯ 

Now it was time to get our game faces on. We had been waiting with great anticipation since the tickets were purchased in April.  We were about to see Foreigner and Journey live!!  I can’t say enough good things about Foreigner. I’m a bigger Journey fan, but I’ll admit that Foreigner rocked slightly harder. They listened to our request to play the Honda Pilot song which brought a lot of joy to us.  They ended with an unbelievable, life changing performance of Juke Box Hero that rocked our faces off.

Rocking so hard.

Journey mistakenly played a couple songs from their new album, but overall the set was phenomenal and I’m surprised that any of us had a voice left after screaming lyrics to song after song. Of course I love me some Steve Perry, but Pineda did not disappoint -- that adorable little Filipino killed it. We had thoroughly rocked and the lights went down. But was that the end? No! As Carson put it, “Journey rocked so hard they exploded into a supernova at the end of the set... Then came back as humans and played an encore.”  Journey ended with the upbeat crowd-pleaser Any Way You Want It, and it was exactly the way we wanted it.

Journey explosion.

 The concert was everything I had hoped for and more. We piled back into the Honda Pilot and started our trek back to Olivia and Drew’s. Carson had previously set ground rules for the person who sat shotgun and Drew did not let us down managing to moon multiple limos on the way home. Upon getting home, Olivia, being the amazing hostess that she is, provided us with hummus, pizza rolls, and perogies. It was a delicious feast of drunk treats that was a perfect end to the evening.

Because this was one of the best weekends of all time, the awesomeness didn’t end Saturday night. I’ll admit we were all a little worried about what Sunday would bring. Where did we go from here? What was there to look forward to anymore? But our concerns were quickly put to rest. There was reason to go on!  We all awoke to the majestic scene of a blond angel (aka Carson) bequeathing unto us Dunkin Donuts Coffee, donut holes, eggs, and an extremely excessive amount of bacon. The weekend is definitely going down as one of the best ever.

Don’t stop believin’.

Honda Pilot 4 life.

Worst Days of My Life

Today I’m going to share with you the worst days of my entire life. Actually a majority of that statement was false. First, these are “funny” worst days of my life, let’s not get into anything too serious here on ATIACF (Yay abbreves! Can’t believe that’s the first time I’ve used that). Second, I can’t say these are from my “entire life.” My memory is really bad so it’s more like whatever random stuff I can think of from the past few years.

1.  Taking the GRE

Taking the GRE will make you feel really dumb. I don't like feeling dumb because I am always right. When I decided I wanted to go to grad school, I quickly realized I was going to have to take the GRE. I wasn’t worried about the writing or verbal reasoning sections, those were painless. But the other portion of the test is Quantitative Reasoning (arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and data analysis). I had to take one stats class in undergrad, other than that I hadn’t worried about math since high school. Luckily I had this video to help me prepare:

Everyone knows that I am a worrier, so it’s no surprise that on test day I was unbelievably anxious even though I had studied really hard. The math portion of the test is adaptive – so if you keep getting questions right the questions get harder, if you answer wrong then questions get easier.  So I didn’t feel too confident when I saw the question 2 + 2 = ? come up. Just kidding, but the math portion did make me very uncomfortable and I probably have never been more nervous in my life. All in all not a fun day. But the story has a happy ending because I got into my first choice grad school and am now a Master of Everything ...or of Interpersonal Communication.

2.  AΔφ Canoe Trip 2003

While I was excited for friends, drinking, canoeing, and fun, I already had a fairly pessimistic attitude for the weekend given that I hate camping.  I tend to get crabby if I have to spend time outdoors while the weather is anything outside of the range 68-78 degrees.  I also despise peeing outside.  The trip started off on a high note: as we drove to the campsite, we passed poor Bambi lying mangled and dead in road.  Don’t worry, CT told me the cute little deer was just taking a nap. For the second year in a row it rained all night and our tent definitely did not keep all the water out so that’s pretty miserable. Then we awoke to find that all the food and beer we had purchased for the weekend was stolen out of the cooler we left right outside the tent. LAME. As usual, me and camping just do not get along.

3.  Spider. Bed. Eeek.

My parents' house is notorious for spiders. My parents live on a lake and the spider population is rampant. Usually they stick to the basement and leave other parts of the house alone. Usually they are of normal size and I can kill them no problem. But sometimes they are gigantic and have nasty super thick legs and are so gross I want to die.  One Summer night I came home after a night out with friends. I got ready for bed, pulled back the sheets, AND THERE WAS THE BIGGEST SPIDER I’VE EVER SEEN WAITING FOR ME. A huge spider. In my bed. Waiting for me.  I stacked up about 184 tissues cause there’s no way I wanted to feel any of the nasty creature when I grabbed it and smushed it. I never took my eyes off the thing because I knew if it scurried away and I couldn’t find it, I’d never be able to sleep in my room again. I stood there staring down the spider for at least 10 minutes, trying to work up the courage to grab it. I kept being like “Ok. One ...two ...three... go!” But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It was way too scary. My dad was very pleased to be woken up at 2am to go kill a spider.

4. Easter Morning 2011

The Saturday night before Easter, I went out. Hard. Having a roomie that works at a bar can be trouble. Rooms says she can tell how drunk I am when I come to visit her by how high my voice gets. According to her, that night I sounded something like this:

Needless to say, I paid for it the next day. On Easter, I’m always in charge of dying eggs. I hard boiled them the previous day but I didn’t have to be out to my parent’s house until the afternoon (and I was anxious to meet friends out) so I figured I would just dye them Sunday morning. Big mistake. Because I wanted to die Sunday morning.  It was a “I’m never ever drinking again” kind of morning. I finally forced myself out of bed around 11am because I didn’t have a choice - I had to take care of the eggs and get ready to go out to the burbs. Dying eggs was a challenge and quite inefficient as I had to stop every few minutes to run to the bathroom and barf. I managed to get the eggs dyed and throw myself together right before my brother and sister-in-law picked me up. But then things went from bad to worse. I had planned to just nap in the backseat and try to feel a little better. However, Chuck and Amber had decided to give Eli a bath that morning and he wasn’t dry yet. Guess what doesn’t make a hungover person feel better? Wet dog smell. But wait, there’s more. The other dog, Kagan, doesn’t do well on car trips and he spent a good portion of the trip throwing up. Guess what makes a hungover person feel the worst ever? Wet dog smell + thrown up dog food smell. It was the most excruciating car ride of my life.

There you have it. You should probably feel pretty good about yourself right now since these things didn't happen to you.