Pretty standard night.
Normalcy is relative, after all.
Thanksgiving magic must be starting early (yesss thanksgiving magic, the precursor to Christmas/Chrismukkah miracles) because about 80% of the things I had to do today got cancelled.
I came home at 2 after wandering over to the Econ department to get signed into a course restricted to fourth years only (it's amazing what "I'm an Echols and Jefferson scholar" does to people) and watched like seven episodes of Laguna with Hannah Banana while we ate shrimp fried rice and gossipped. Ahhhhhh. Worked out with Michelle. Went to an intimidatingly competitive RA interest meeting with Brendan, and saw half of the club there (we are so effing dedicated to giving back to the University. I think we feel guilty). And came back to study/gossipfest with Pat Casey for the rest of the night. So chill.
What gets me every other week, though, is that even when my Mondays are hell, it's usually Thursday before I have a chance to breathe and therefore to notice that time is in fact passing. And by the time it's Thursday, I have another advisor meeting at 2 30, class at 3 30, dinner at 5, class at 6, and the Wash Society until about 1 Friday morning. and classes Friday are over before I know it. Time doesn't seem to slow down until the weekends. How is it almost Thanksgiving? So crazy. I don't want Christmas to come because that means I'm 1/8 done with my college career, and I'm NOT! Don't make me leave. don't EVER make me leave.
Hanging out with a fourth year this weekend he definitely said that same thing. Why do we have to leave? he wants to know. Why ever leave this place?
Why not indeed, when you can have weekends like ... oh just listen.
So our game on Saturday was vs. Georgia Tech at 1530. Jess left me for a swim meet for the weekend, so I head out to breakfast with Hannah at like 1100, realize that I can't work out because the AFC is converted into WAHOO FAN FEST OMG OMG COULD THERE BE ANY MORE BLUE AND ORANGE ANYWHERE EVER on game days, and then get like eighteen emails about different tailgates. Pick one, get there at about 1230. Immediately start playing pong with, well, we call him Captain Morgan, and his suitemates. Several hours later, they've all left us to go to the game and we've missed most of the first half. Giggling the whole way over there, we stiffen up to get past the police as we swipe our student IDs and proceed to stand on the hill, a GREAT idea since STANDING is hard, and hills suck. Captain Morgan tries to find the rest of the Wash Society, but belligerently refuses to follow my big's directions other than attempting to vault the barrier between the hill and the student section. It is at this point that we begin to talk to loooots of event staff. As a side note, I believe that the salute to the veterans was going on, but we noticed not. So, we're chatting with event staff and all the people on all sides of us, who are alternately yelling at and laughing at us for swaying and making out, and cuddling and we're just generally tooo cute. We win, of course, because we kick ass at home (I honestly do not think they take the whole football team when they travel, or any part of the team at all). We go to dinner. I attempt to order in Spanish. I do not speak Spanish, so this fails. On the way back, I hit a tree and create a 3 inch gash in my hand. This is a problem. Captain Morgan reminds me the next day how that happened. We take a nap and wake up at 2200 and are mystified as to how so much time has passed. Wasn't it noon like fifteen minutes ago? But it is now night and therefore we must find another party. We do - and we play games of kings with punch, and everyone EVERYONE shares tooooo much information and I know all of Captain Morgan at this party, and the three crazy ass people we brought with us. We stop at swings at a church on 14th street on our way home and play at 330 in the morning. It quickly becomes clear that swings are really slippery. Falling ensues. Monkey bars are a viable alternative. We make friends with people walking by. By yelling that we took too much blood with our bread, and it was Jesus's fault. Rather, I was just listening. We jump fences instead of walking around. One of the girls gets hung up on top. We skip past all the cops on the corner. I insist that the Captain and I look at the river from the Rotunda, which involves lying down backwards, and the sky becomes water and it's amazing. We have difficulty seeing it. Our fields of vision are shaky. It is, nevertheless, magical. Some other people on the steps start singing "Don't Stop Believing" and we join in. Hey, more friends! We destroy bulletin boards. We walk something like three miles. We pass a gaggle of girls on the ground outside the stadium and one of them says "Joy? Wait, that can't be Joy. I thought I made out with you earlier tonight. Did I make out with you? Wait, you, did I make out with you? How did you get here so fast?" and we laugh at the general atrocity of college and go back to play more pong, as this is definitely the best idea at this point in time. I make a fantabulous shot. TallMatt has salty honey-roasted nuts, and though this is like the oldest joke ever, it suddenly has new life. There are more rules to this game than I can remember. I begin batting all the balls out of the air. This is wrong. My suitemates call me at 7, as several of them have lost their IDs and they want to get in the room. I can't help, and I don't answer, and I growl at being woken up. At 9, my alarm goes off. I sit up and fall out of bed. My scrapes are explained to me. I somehow transform myself from The Living Undead to Goddess in under fifteen minutes, prep for my debate, study for my interview, and am off in business casual for an interview for Alternative Spring Break, my provie debate for the Wash, lunch with the provie chairs, the pinning ceremony for Alpha Phi Omega, dinner with the frat, and the library. Juxtapose that.
Don't make me leave. Don't ever make me leave.
I create the most randomly difficult situations for myself, btw. I love it. I'm an effing wind-up mouse toy, says Holly. She's so right. Run, spin, run, spin, run ... I'm spinning right now. I'm torn between exciting and adventurous, and responsible and safe and a good fit. If I don't decide soon I probably will no longer have either option. It's funny how that works.
It's amazing. I've never understood why people would join sororities, to buy their friends or whatever. But like, I've been a pledge to a co-ed service frat for, what, since the ceremony on Sunday? and I'm already intoxicated with it. There are 120 brothers who want to get to know me. There are 22 pledges who are my family. I will have three bigs, at least. They will take care of me because they have to and they want to because they have to. This is effing nuts. I so love it. Strongest 24-hour-old bond of my life. I'm so excited to see where this goes for me. I really think it could be wonderful.
I'm just so crazy about everything. Everything that happens is the most fun thing ever, the best weekend ever, the most hilarious thing I've ever seen. I live a life of excess. I hate it for every last one of you who isn't having the time of their life in college. Anyone who's waiting for Thanksgiving for life to be good again ... you need to try harder. Or transfer here.
Quam fluctus diversi quam mare conjuncti.
"I shouted out, who killed the Kennedys? when after all it was you and me."
This is by far the most incredible college campus I have ever stepped foot on.
There is so much school spirit that we burst into the Good Ol Song anywhere from First Year Council elections to on a late night bus on Halloween, sitting on top of people you don't know and belting your little heart out. The thing is, no matter who starts the song, and how inconvenient the occasion is, everyone else will start singing too.
I went home for a weekend a bit ago, because life had gotten too crazy and I prefer to pass my classes and I needed some sanity and home-cooked food in my life. By home, I of course mean home-away-from-home-away-from-home, which is Vienna where my aunt and uncle and ADORABLE cousin Chris live. And I painfully missed this school. I was gone perhaps 48 hours and I was really enjoying myself and I could not understand why my 115 closest friends were not right outside my door. I craved Hooville. I wanted thousands of a capella fliers in my face, and stir fry, and people banging on the suite door to be let in to play DDR at all hours of day or night, and to never be left alone. I've become addicted to people and noise and the most beautiful color of orange I've ever seen, and to using the word HOO in place of the word who.
Isn't it incredible that these people you meet in college, they're going to be the ones in your wedding, the ones you go into business with, perhaps the ones you marry? I didn't believe it before I left. Three months later, I can't imagine the rest of my life without these people, especially the Club. We are so lucky.
I'm in the process of putting up about a million pictures that should explain better than I can why I never want to graduate, never.
ALSO. GO COLTS. GO PEYTON. AMAZING. 40-21, oh so sweet. In the clash of the IT boys and the defending champs, you showed that you have it in you to play with the big guns. Just don't let it go.
I love footbawl. Wut?
Tequila and desperation is not a good color on anyone.
