Damage Report: cones up, power out, pants down

I am at Starbucks. Yeah, I know. I never go to Starbucks. They are overrated, overpriced, and don't even make very good coffee in my opinion. And apparently EVERY parent on the north shore takes their kids here in the morning... huh?? But the Go-Co has no power today, and thus all networks are down. Even here I can't get my email. And my battery still has 63% to go before it's fully charged, which it has to be before I go back because there is no electricity at Go-Co. Well... I guess there's the new science building in a pinch.

I happened to be hyped up on coffee when shit (and trees) went down last night and thus was compelled to run around campus playing private eye. I'm not sure when the adrenaline replaced the caffeine. It seemed like a sweet deal last night, but both have worn off now and Miss Rex is ready for naptime. But before I pass out, here's the scoop:

“It was a dark and stormy night” doesn’t even begin to cover it. 40-50-mile-per-hour winds lashed rain against the windows; students sitting nearby kept wary eyes on the glass. Here in the Fishbowl, Taz and I closed the blinds for protection after watching the glass bow inwards like mere canvas. Then, around 11PM, a tree fell near the chapel, taking out some wires and cutting off electricity across campus.

“We’ll definitely be without power until at least the morning,” Go-Po Officer Cherry said at about 1:00 this morning. “National Grid hasn’t even responded because it looks like a bomb went off in the next town.” Other officials estimate that we could be without power until Friday afternoon. Authorities decided to cancel classes for Friday, February 25.

Because of the fallen tree, the main exit from campus was blocked off with cones and traffic was redirected through what, under normal circumstances, is an entrance only.


Newer residence halls, such as Chase and the buildings on the hill, were fully lit by generators, but the HUD dorms were completely dark. Students living in road halls were re-located.

“We want to make sure all the dorms have heat and fire alarms,” said Cherry.

In addition to the tree by the chapel, a second tree fell on the Emery side of Jenks, breaking a fourth floor window and gouging the bricks. Some of the trunk has been cleared, but the ground is still littered with debris and one branch settled on the roof. Another tree fell in front of Frost. Three more went down beside the road that goes past Drew Hall.


The wind ripped the front right door off the chapel, exposing live wires that officials have since shut off. But most mysteriously of all, a chunk of the public safety building now lies in the middle of the school’s main entrance. No trees fell in the vicinity. “It’s like the wind just ripped a chunk of stone off the building and hurled it into the street,” said one officer.


The blackout brought out the best and worst of students. Some halls used it as an excuse to bond: students in Ferrin had homework parties in the generator-lit hallways and played games in the first floor lobby. Others went puddle jumping and streaking. One account even said that students were looting the dining hall, although this has not been confirmed. Apparently Go-Co students can get away with anything in a crisis, and those of us who are smart realized this and took full advantage. I'm not one of the smart ones.


This guy I befriended during my sleuthing adventure summed it up as poetically as he was able at 2:30AM, after a night that most of Go-Co will find hard to forget: “The wind came through, the trees came down, the cones went up, and the pants went down.”

Now I am going back to sleep, since I got about four hours before rushing out to the only place I could think of with WiFi to break the story to the school paper. In retrospect my mad dash here was pointless because no one on campus has the Internet to read the story anyway and most of the damage is pretty self-evident. It was also poorly thought out because Panera would have been open by now and their wireless doesn't cost money...

Sandy Claws

Wouldn't it be nice if there was a summertime equivalent of Santa Claus? You could send the jolly man in red (that's sunburn red) your wish list, and just like magic, you'd wake up one morning to find that everything was amazing! Maybe I'm just let down because the sky went and dumped a foot of snow on us yesterday when the grass was finally starting to show; now all I can think about is how much the suck-o-meter will go down once the temperature goes up.

Fabulous summer Santa, if you're out there somewhere, snowed in and bored with nothing to do until June, maybe you could get a head start on my wish list. Here are the top ten things I can't wait to do:

10. Buy new flats.
9. Rock the heart shaped sunglasses. (I'll admit I've already done this in spite of winter's dominating presence. You might call it a sun ritual... or denial.)
8. Drive with the windows down and the music loud. (All right, maybe I've cheated on this one a little, too. Spaz can testify.)
7. Go stargazing on the roof.
6. Get lost in the woods.
5. Eat ice creemz at Captain Dusty's.
4. Walk to classes barefoot.
3. Play ultimate frisbee on the quad... barefoot.
2. Take a nap in the sun.
1. Go skinny dipping in Gull Pond.

What's on your summer wish list?

Dinner with Dasher and Dancer

I was perusing my recent posts and noticed it's been too long since I posted anything not titled "Excavations of Claymore: bla bla bla" or "Scatterday." The reason for this was a little thing we call school - more specifically, finals. The fact I posted anything at all over the past month and a half is a small miracle. The great thing about having scheduled posts is that it forces you to write something. Anything. When school's got you down and you can think of a million better things to do, knowing you've got some semblance of a schedule to keep on your blog at least creates a little consistency, don't you think?

But now it's time for a little fun! I miss the normal blogging thing, to be honest. So even though I have two jobs right now that I should be doing instead of blogging, I'm gonna take a minute and share one of my favorite Christmas memories. I've had a hard time getting into the Christmas spirit this year in spite of the foot of snow we got this weekend, but I can't help smiling at this memory.

I must have been about nine or ten. Though it was one of the last years I believed in Santa, for the time I believed whole-heartedly; I defended the jolly toymaker to my classmates and took baking his cookies very seriously. The week of Christmas, my dad came home from work with little plastic bags of reindeer food (i.e. dry oatmeal with glitter mixed in) that my sister and I were to leave out for the reindeer to munch while Santa was unloading our loot.

Of course we couldn't get the food up to the roof where the reindeer would logically be, but lucky for us my dad had just finished building a patio out back. Cleared of the summer furniture, it was a wide, flat space that made a perfect landing strip for a flying sleigh. That was where we would leave the reindeer food.

On Christmas eve, there was a thin layer of snow on the ground. My sister and I put on our winter coats and boots over our pajamas and crunched through the snow, sprinkling oats all around the patio. We added a few carrots for good measure (and good eyesight; if anyone needs to see where they're going, it's a team of flying reindeer) and turned in for the night.

In bed, I lay on my back. It was not comfortable, but I wanted both of my ears free to hear when Santa landed. I lay with my head close to the window so I could peek out and see him when I heard the bells, but I was asleep before Saint Nick could make a sound.

My sister was the first one awake. I was quick to follow. We hurried downstairs to find the living room transformed into a maze of presents (more presents than any kid should ever receive at any time of year). But the thing I wanted to see the most was the patio. Had the reindeer eaten their food, or would we find the snow still sprinkled with glitter and marred only by our own frenzied footprints from the night before?

I pressed my nose to the glass slider. The reindeer had been there all right. There were sleigh tracks and everything!

I have no memory of what was in all those boxes under the tree, but I'll remember those sleigh tracks forever. What about you? What Christmas memory will stick with you forever?

Can Barack Obama save Christmas?

Time flies like an arrow (but fruit flies like a banana). I can't believe it's been a week and a half since I posted anything. It's that time of year: deadlines are crouching tigers/hidden dragons licking their chops at the prospect of a nice juicy comm arts major, the quad is a minefield of goose poop, and free time is harder to come by than a holographic Charizard card.

And it's getting cold.

Not THAT cold, mind you; most native New Englanders are gushing over how mild it's been. But I'm loading up on quilts; I can't make it through the day without oatmeal for breakfast, soup for lunch and Claymore Drink of the Week for dinner. I am positively dreading winter and it hasn't even snowed yet. It hasn't even been close to cold enough to snow. I'm usually not this miserable until February.

I wish I could say looking forward to Christmas is making things better, but I'm already sick of Christmas. I started finding holiday decor in stores well over a month ago while searching for my Cruella De Vil costume, and they've been playing the music in stores way too much for my liking.

Me getting sick of Christmas shouldn't be possible, period - especially not before Thanksgiving even gets here. It is my favorite season. You know I get all gaga over the lights and I become this uber-cheery version of my already-cheerful self and do nice things just because it's nice to be nice, and I throw on some Deck the Halls, Bruise Your Hand (Relient K) in the car so I can sing along or just laugh because Relient K is oh so silly.

It's just so wrong that we must celebrate this holiday for two whole months. It diminishes the magic of December to stock the shelves with red and green lights in the middle of October.

America should have a mass screening of Elmo Saves Christmas. Never seen it? Elmo loves Christmas so much that he wishes every day could be Christmas, but when his wish comes true, he sees that the holiday is nothing special when it happens every day.

THIS IS WHAT'S HAPPENING TO AMERICA, PEOPLE. Our demand for instant gratification has gotten so bad we can't even wait 365 days for a holiday to happen again. THIS IS WHY OUR COUNTRY IS GOING DOWN THE TUBES. There needs to be a law against this insanity. You hear me, Barack? You can do it, yes you can.

If you don't........

...........the magic of Christmas will be lost forever!

Kicks and Giggles

The third installment of my Life At College series. A bit belated, I know, but let's all enjoy reliving the memories, shall we? We're far enough removed to laugh about it now....



Installment four to be completed in the (semi) near future (i.e. hopefully before installment five starts up in August!)

In like a lion, out like a freaking T-rex.

http://files.sharenator.com/letterstogod-s399x7673-942-580.jpg

I might not complain - well, no, I would still complain, but maybe less - if it weren't so durn cold out there. I wanna walk around in jeans and a t-shirt. I wanna wear pretty dresses with sandals. I've got this picture in my head - I don't know if I saw it somewhere or if I invented it - of a vintage-style dress in sort of a rosy/pale salmon color with a v-neck and maybe a couple little frilly things. So out of character for me, I know. But I want it.

Okay, okay, I'll stop dreaming about dresses and go study astronomy like a good girl. -_-

The snow is falling and friends are calling yoo hoo.

New Year's Resolution #1: Suffer for my Art

Got up at 7 this morning and went out to take pictures in the Gordon woods. Okay, saying I got up at 7 is sort of a lie, but that was the time I set my alarm for and it was only quarter to eight when I made it out the door with my digital camera (sadly I didn't have any film for the other one) and a double dose of hot green tea with honey to keep me from turning into a walking igloo. I was wading through snow as high as my knees at times. That hasn't happened since I was about five. Doubleplusawesomexcore.











By the time I got to these wacky trees, I'd walked quite some distance and had long since drained my supply of green tea, so I plopped down in the snow and took a little nap. I know that sounds crazy, but I swear it was the most comfortable nap I've taken in ages. The snow formed perfectly to the shape of my body and I was hardly even cold. It was just... peaceful. Unlike my second-floor hall of Ferrin on the east side.









After wandering the woods for two hours and eating a carbtastic breakfast to cancel out all that good exercise, I got invited to go sledding with Schneckleface and Hacks, so I re-bundled up and we went to dig out Hacks's car. This was an adventure unto itself, as apparently it had snowed about a foot in the less-than-24-hours since she'd parked it. Then we packed up the ol' storage bins (i.e. makeshift sleds with a bit more to them than Lane trays... even the fiberglass ones ^_^) and drove to Marblehead, where Schneckleface teaches and knew of a good hill.






Amber thought we were crazy for using storage bins instead of going out to buy cheap $5 sleds at the store. But none of us had five dollars. We didn't even have five collective dollars. Plus, being inventive is far more entertaining and makes for much better stories (and photos) in the end.

On top of fun times in the snow, I'm happy because my sister's been talking to me. Of course I'm not going to spew the details of her life across the internet (I only inflict that sort of abuse upon myself XD), but I'll say that she was telling me about a certain boy she's got a sort of date with this weekend. Apparently they texted back and forth just shy of 70 times within the span of four hours last night. I have a boyfriend and we don't talk that much. Good grief. But I'm happy for her, and I'm happy she's telling me about her life like I'm her friend or something. That's all I've ever wanted to be for her.

First day of winter... Third day of non-stop snow

"Right now things are perfect; I don't deserve this." I'm in the middle of reminding myself how amazing Kiros is. I can't decide which song to post. I want to share "Speak Softly" because it feels sort of thematic right now and its sound fits the snowy mood. But "Beautiful" is probably the most amazing song on "A Single Strand." Okay, that's it; you're getting both. And you'd better LISTEN to both. XD

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Ebby does the white window test. Yep, it's sticking, all right. A lot.






My little Derry, dwarfed by the pile of snow from shoveling the driveway like 12 times.

Sweetbitter

An overwhelming number of my favorite people bundled into a single track:

"Bittersweet" sort of embodies how I'm feeling about a few things right now. Snow. My family. Life... and its lack of talking animals and epic clashes of good vs. evil. The usual.

It snowed so bad today that it took us at least half an hour to make it home from Marshall's (it should've been half that), and when we got to the road that my street branches off of, there were some guys pushing cars up the little slope because none of them could make it up. So far at least eight inches of cold, white fairy dust have collected on the tree branches and wrought iron furniture outside.

I am starting to see some of the reasons adults dislike snow. Aside from the perilous roads, there's the issue of shoveling. I don't think I'd mind so much except we have a long, gravel driveway and, oh yeah, I have spaghetti for arm muscles. There's nothing like manual labor to make you resent one of nature's most beautiful mood swings.

For now, though, I'm hunkering down in my chilly little cave of a bedroom after watching two of my favorite movies with two of my favorite people. Horton Hears a Who, if you haven't seen it, is SO not "just for kids." It's got drugs - I mean, fuzzy dandelions - and emo kids in it. Really, with those factors, you can't go wrong.

After that we watched Prince Caspian. I adore fantasy movies like that, but I felt really bad for my sister because she couldn't understand why a little girl coming back to a magical world where trees and animals used to be her friends would try to talk to a bear. I said she just needed to read more fantasy books and use her imagination a little, which for some reason made her kind of mad at me.

Then, when the movie ended, I got all melancholy as I always do at the end of fantasy movies and said to my mom, "I always hate when the adventure has to end and everything has to go back to normal." She looked at me the way she used to when she wanted to talk me out of believing in fairies in sixth grade and said, "Fantasy isn't real, darling."

Well, yeah, but are you saying you don't get sucked into the story? Are you saying you don't suspend your disbelief and start to believe lions really talk? How can you not want that to be real? Le sigh. Apparently I am the only one in this household with a taste for high fantasy. Tragic.

But I am trying to highlight the sweet. Snow is magical. I can't wait to go walking in the fresh, clean, black and white world tomorrow. I should buy film and take pictures. We have storytellers to make up for the things that are impossible in real life, and hey, real life isn't so bad, anyway. In fact, right now it's kind of...

Sweet.

Snowy with a high of 32

"It's funny how you find you enjoy your life when you're happy to be alive."

Reasons I am happy to be alive:

- I had a fantastic time on my date last night. For the record, though, Twilight is a pretty awful movie. Awful acting, plus some of the camera work really aggravated me/made me dizzy. And as Not-Yet-Boyfriend pointed out, the special effects left a lot to be desired. Anyway, let's get back to reasons I'm happy.

- Driving around, all the houses have Christmas lights twinkling on the trees. And I'm sure that I've not seen the Christmas lights this bright before.

- I woke up this morning and the skylight was blanketed with snow! I call it the white window test. It's how I know the snow is sticking. It's always nice to look out the window and see those very first few flakes of snow. Later on, we can go outside and create the impression of an angel that just fell from the sky.

- The bare trees don't look so naked now in their robes of white.

- Now that it's snowed and we have a beautiful evergreen sparkling in our living room, I feel that it is totally acceptable for me to blast my holiday playlist in the car.

- The only thing that makes me happier than Relient K's old-skool punk-rock Christmas album, "Deck the Halls, Bruise Your Hand," is their cover of "Sleigh Ride." When Megs and I saw them last year, they played that song and some random guys we'd befriended and started a mosh pit with insisted that we "slow mosh" to it. Soooo imagine a slow-motion mosh pit to this:


- I also feel that it is totally acceptable for me to laugh my head off listening to "Sleigh Ride" alone in my car while all the drivers around me wonder if I'm completely nuts. The answer is yes; yes I am.

And you know what?

I am okay with that. ^_^