Reality < kinda > Bites

So, this past weekend was Labor Day weekend, which meant a 3-day weekend, which even better meant...one extra day of pLaY, one less day of work! Who doesn't enjoy that?! :P


Anyway, my husband Josh & I headed North to Minnesota to go boating with friends. When you've been married for 4 years (+ 2 years of dating) & you have a 3 hour drive, you don't have a whole lot of new & interesting topics to talk about, so your mind begins to w a n d e r ...

Josh was nice & allowed me to listen to my new Hairspray soundtrack, which got me talking about one of the actors in that movie - Zach Efron. Sidenote: Go see that movie - it RoCkEd my hair off! ...so entertaining & funny! Anyway, back to wandering thoughts & Zach Efron...I mentioned to Josh that Zach was gonna be the new Kevin Bacon in a remake of the 80's flick Footloose (another FIVE star movie). I thought about that & about juMPed outta my buckle...you know you're getting old when they start creating re-makes of movies you remember being made the 1st time!! :P Another recent thing that flashed me back into reality was seeing the birthdates of my new students applying to Simpson - 1990 & 1991?!?! Holy schneikies Batman! In '90 & '91 I already new how to read, write, add, subtract, multiply, divide & ride a bike! And, Michael Jackson was cool...

These Tiffany Epiphanies made me realize how fast life really does fly by, not to mention some of the best years of your life - college.

I continued my roadtrip pondering some of the funny stories & good times I had as a Simpson student back in the day. I was sad, though, that it actually was hard to remember a lot of it...it has been 5 years since I graduated. I wish I would have written more stories down, but thankfully I have always kept my planners as mini-journals, even if it only had a few words on each date. Students now also have the luxury of digital cameras, so pictures are much easier, cheaper & more convenient to take & download. All my college pics are from old 35mm film, which now have to be scanned to get 'em on the computer. :( I thought I'd share with you some of those memorable times I can recall (& for some of you, just a bit of what you can look forward to during college life!):

• My best friend & roommate, Stacy, was a VERY sound sleeper - one who would never wake up during volcanic-eruption-decibel fire drills some stupid person kept pulling in Kresge. Anyway, one late night our phone rang & she got outta bed to answer it, only to mistake a saline solution bottle for a phone - LOL! She opened the cap, put the bottle to her ear & said, "hello" as I sat up & started laughing so hard!

• My sophomore year when Stacy & I were R.A.'s, she was on duty when one of the fraternities streaked through Kresge...she was asked by Security to go identify them - Ha!
• Skateboarding up & down the halls in Buxton
• Pranking our neighbor guys in Buxton - filling their entire shower with balloons
• Being an amateur rollerblader hitting a crack & flying into a complete 360 only to crash in the middle of campus
• Playing Four Square in the Kresge courtyard at midnight
• Having a day of 1st semester finals cancelled because of a blizzard & playing snow football outside with the guys
• Having the fraternities bring out their sofas & a drum to cheer on the Storm soccer games (back when they played on a different field than the stadium)
• Having an intramural volleyball team called the "Fighting Wombats"
• Dealing with hauntings in Kresge Hall
• Watching the guys filet fish in the middle of the night after they got back from a fishing trip at Lake Ahquabi south of campus...so, I like fishing, but prefer not to take part in any butchering of anything formerly alive...
  
• Winning an intramural Spoons tournament
  
• Winning $100 @ Survival BINGO!
• Traveling to Washington D.C. in a van FULL over Spring Break with Habitat for Humanity, only to be hit by a snow storm & getting to play with the neighborhhood kids instead
• Having my senior roommate "surprise" me with a baby squirrel she "captured" from outside...um, yeah...baby animals, cool...baby animal crawling all over your head at night, not cool...
  
• Being on the t.v. news & in the Des Moines Register when Al Gore came to speak during the 2000 Presidental Campaign - as well as meeting & getting my picture taken with Alec Baldwin, who came along
• Running into a light pole while walking with my art class in downtown Des Moines...in front of classmates and heavy traffic!
• Being SO tired during one class, that I went to a bathroom stall to take a quick nap
• Having to stop a 7th grade student chasing a classmate with an Exacto Knife during one of my education practicums in Des Moines
• Finding cheetah print underwear along the road during my Liberal Arts Seminar class's community service activity of cleaning up Hwy 65/69
• Going up & down the halls asking for a spare quarter to finish that last load of laundry
• Walking to Hy-Vee (where it used to be - the current campus Physical Plant) my freshman year for bakery cookies or pints of ice cream
• ...

Hopefully I'll continue to remember more & I will revisit my May Terms & other incredible Simpson experiences in later blogs. For now, I'm preparing myself for this fall's travel - my first college fair is this next Sunday, September 9th in Norfolk, Nebraska...BRING IT ON! :)

Did You Know?
The Simpsonian, Simpson's weekly campus newspaper, is the longest continuously student-run newspaper.

"There's a big world out there. Bigger than prom, bigger than high school, and it won't matter if you were the prom queen or the quarterback of the football team or the biggest nerd. Find out who you are and try not to be afraid of it." - Unknown