That Girl is Home!

I know I let this thing go, but it wasn't intentional. Really, I do love you... all of my nonexistent readers. Woohoo!

So, About halfway through second semester (a month and a half after I last posted), I somehow got myself a single room, which meant no more dealing with Hippie Roommate and Party Roommate. This was awesome, especially the night after I moved out, when they had a party in the room and didn't invite me even though my new room was two doors away from theirs, and they were quite loud and Campus Police (CamPo, from now on) showed up and kicked everyone out because it was a fucking tuesday night, and then saw the beer and searched the room and found Party Roommate's bong and confiscated it and they got in trouble and I may or may not have convinced the RA to call CamPo.

Oh, and there was that time that I almost died. Really.

It was before I'd moved out, and both of my roommates were away for the weekend. I remember waking up and being very disoriented, and seeing on my alarm clock that it was 3:12AM. I realized after about 45 seconds that I had been woken up by the fire alarm outside my door, but by the time I got my coat, it had stopped. I looked into the hallway and didn't see anyone else, so I figured it was safe to go back to bed.

The next morning, I go to my anthropology class and find out that the alarm had gone off at around 3AM and went off for over 15 minutes because there was a microwave fire on the first floor. I was astonished-- I'd slept through over 15 minutes of fire alarm? I later discovered that it was no ordinary microwave fire. Someone had taken a fire extinguisher, wedged it into the microwave, and set the time at something like 20 minutes.

Let's think about this for a minute. Someone, at 3AM on a thursday night, took a fire extinguisher and thought, "gee, wouldn't it be a great idea to microwave this?"

It obviously started a fire, and CamPo barely put it out in time-- had they waited for the fire department to come, there would likely have been an explosion that would have taken out a fair amount of the building. The first floor kitchen is directly below the second floor kitchen, which is right next to the room in which I was asleep.

I also found out that the alarm had gone off at 2:55, and stopped at 3:14, according to the school clock. I slept through almost twenty minutes of a fire alarm ringing right outside my door. I slept, while below me a fire burned that nearly caused an explosion that would have taken out the room in which I slept.

The funniest part is that my dad called the school to find out what the hell actually went down (they were calling it arson), and CamPo now has me on their list of people who need to be checked for in an emergency, because I am a very sound sleeper. My dad called it the 'arousally challenged' list, and I really hope that's what it's actually called, because I think that's absolutely hilarious.

So, I'm lucky to still be able to breathe, let alone blog.

But the semester is over and I'm home for the summer. I start my internship tomorrow morning. Awesome.

That Girl is back, bitches.

That Girl and the Boys Across the Hall

So, I live across the hall from these two guys.

Not just any two guys, mind you. These two, and their assorted friends, are some of the most incredible douchebags I've ever had the pleasure of meeting, and I love them to death for it.

The two guys have the same first name, which leads to incredible confusion when I'm telling stories about them to other people, so I'm not going to carry that bit over into their blog-verse nicknames. One of them, whom I will call Keystone because that is pretty much all he drinks, introduced himself one day by showing up to my room and saying that he noticed that I listed Tucker Max's I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell on my list of favorite books on facebook.

I didn't take the fact that he had been stalking my facebook as a warning signal, and ended up spending time hanging out in his room, drinking free beer and eating his poptarts, while he blasted rap music at an uncomfortable volume. This was either a very bad decision, as now I spend time with someone who constantly makes me shake my head disapprovingly, or a very good decision, as I get free alcohol and some pretty ridiculous conversations.

The other guy is significantly less of a douchebag-- I still haven't figured out why the hell he hangs out with the rest of them. He's the one who consistently looks and acts the most sober, so he ends up apologizing to the rest of the human race whenever something stupid is done. Whenever I'm around, he'll catch my eye and give this little "I know, I know, they're retards" grin, which I at some point interpreted as "I want your body, you sexy, sexy woman," which led to me sleeping with him, not that I'm complaining.

I've been neglecting posting about these guys, but the other day something happened that I need to share with the world. I'm used to loud, obnoxious rap music blasting from across the hall, so much so that I hardly notice it anymore. This night, however, something caught my attention. It was a much brighter sound, and... there was a melody? I knew I'd heard it before, but I couldn't place it.

Then the chorus started.

It was this.



Yes, ladies and gentlemen. They were listening to Miley Cyrus's song. The girl is barely fifteen, and the target audience for her music is the same as that of High School Musical. My roommate, on the swim team, has told me that this is the team's pump-up song in the locker room.

And yet, I walked in on two guys, ages 19 and 21, rocking out to Miley Cyrus.

Sometimes, life is really fucking weird.

That Girl is appalled.

I hate rude people.

I don't just mean people who say or do outrageously rude things-- everyone hates that. I mean people with no sense of manners, etiquette, or decorum.

I'm also a college student. This poses a bit of a problem.

It's mostly evident in relation to food and the dining hall-- from the very second I enter, and people either let doors slam in my face or don't let people exit before they enter. This is Not Acceptable. It's common courtesy-- it takes no extra effort to hold the door for a second, nor is it going to kill you to step back while two people leave, thus creating space inside the vestibule for you to stand without being uncomfortably close to everyone else.

Then, you have to wait in the atrium for your friends to show up. If you call me and tell me that we're eating at six, I'm going to be waiting for you at six (actually I'll be there at 5:55, but I don't expect you to be there until six). Showing up at 6:15 and not apologizing for being a quarter of an hour late is Not Acceptable. This goes double for anything where we're on a schedule-- lunch before class, catching a bus to go downtown, club meetings, and so on. Is everyone my age incapable of showing up on time to anything? I don't mean five minutes-- that's okay. People stroll into classes twenty minutes or half an hour late, and don't so much as apologize to the professor. My friend Jodie is the absolute worst-- she's probably about ten minutes behind on life in general-- to the point that I call her when I'm leaving for class (ten minutes before it begins), and she's STILL at least ten minutes late. I actually lie about what time things are just so that she gets there on time.

Back on topic, once we get into the dining hall, we have to find a table and mark it as ours, usually with coats, scarves, backpacks, and other such "students in a cold climate" paraphernalia. This is relatively uneventful.

Actually getting food, however, is a totally different story. It seems to be impossible for people to use serving utensils, then place them back in the tray in such a way that the next person doesn't get sauce all over their hands or have to go digging through the pad thai to serve themselves. Even worse is when there isn't a utensil for something at the fruit salad bar (peaches, for example), and rather than getting another fork to use, they take the spoon from something like the yogurt and shovel peaches onto their plate, thus absolutely sullying them for those of us who DON'T. LIKE. YOGURT! If you borrow the spoon from the grapes, I can deal. Even the syrupy fruit cocktail is on the gross side of okay, but the yogurt? NO.

After I've had a fit over this, I have to go and eat with my friends, none of whom have any idea how to hold a knife and fork and use them to eat correctly. This isn't just rude, it's really gross. It's not hard to put your fork in your left hand, knife in your right, nor is it difficult to cut your meat into pieces before you eat it.

Except it seems that it is.

I'm really losing steam on this entry (the yogurt-y peaches took a lot out of me), but there's more. Far more.

I really just want to put up signs all over campus with Miss Manners quotes on them. They'd probably get ripped down by drunken philistines soon enough, but for the brief, brief moment? Glorious!

Fuck you, Apple.

So, Apple's just told the world about the new MacBook Air, AKA the tiniest fucking laptop ever. It's still got a 13.3 inch screen, but it's thin enough to fit in one of those inter-departmental envelopes.



Seriously. How fucking awesome is that? It's a fraction of the size of most of my textbooks! It's all tapered and rounded and pretty!

Gee, I wonder how they fit everything in there?

Oh! They've made everything on the inside smaller-- ports, battery, all the little things that I can't tell apart. That's so awesome! I think something's missing, though... something that I use all the time on my computer... I wonder what it is...

Oh. Right. An optical drive.

There is nowhere on this beautiful little laptop to insert a CD or a DVD. It's not that it requires you to buy special software on special (tiny little) CDs-- it's that you can't use ANY discs. At all. This might well be the stupidest move ever made in the history of technology.

I mean, I'm a self-proclaimed Mac whore. I've used the computers all of my life, I nearly passed out when the iPod was introduced, and I would probably fellate a geoduck if it would buy me an iPhone. This no-optical-drive debacle is awful-- it's like Apple and I were having sex, and it was going great, and then Apple came, rolled over, and went to sleep, leaving me shocked and unsatisfied.

So, fuck you, Apple. Fuck you and your stupid MacBook Air, and fuck you for reminding me how awful my ex boyfriend was in bed.

That Girl is 19!

I've been away for the past several days, on vacation in St. Thomas. I'll probably rant about that at some point this week. Today is my nineteenth birthday.

What a random fucking age.

Happy birthday to me.

That Girl finds people she understands.

I was at a new years party the other night, hosted by the parents of one of my closest friends from college—Jodie. She and I were the youngest people there, by ten years… and the average age was at least mid-50s.

I have never had so much fun before in my life.

Jodie’s parents are theater producers in New York City, so all of the guests are very involved in the theater scene, in all aspects. The woman who had been playing Mrs. Potts in Beauty and the Beast before it closed was there, as well as the guy who plays the grandfather in the Cheerios commercial with the joke about “studying for a test.”

Although the night is a little fuzzy as a result of the six-plus glasses of champagne, I’m pretty sure that I can give a fairly accurate account of the evening. It started at dinner, where I spent the time trading obscure facts with a sixty-five year old ex-professor, and actually stumped him on at least one. Then we got back to Jodie’s apartment, where we were possibly the most normal we’ve ever been, trying to figure out what in the nine hells to wear.

The party started with champagne and gossip about theater people, some of whom I’d heard of and some of whom I just smiled and nodded about. I learned that Nathan Lane is a total douchebag in person. I met an absolutely adorable fifty-something gay man who told me that I had divine eyes that could melt people. I discovered that the whipped cream on the strawberries had port in it. I played with a very spiffy champagne opener that you just twist to pop off the cork. All in all, I was quite tipsy and having a blast talking with everyone about the minutiae of the most obscure plays and performances.

Midnight came and went, with much toasting and kisses all around.

And then… the games started. The first one was something like charades, but with props, and my team positively kicked ass—apparently, lots of champagne makes me more creative and perceptive, as I was able to understand really vague motions as symbolic of “tie-dye” and “chair lift” when they really looked like “twisting your hands around and making frustrated noises.” This seems to be a skill that few adults have, and so I was heralded as some kind of word-game genius.

Not that I’m complaining.

All I want to know is this: why the fuck is it that when I find people who like me, and with whom who I can have an intelligent conversation about something I’m really into, they’re at least ten years older than me, and usually at least twenty? Sure, I look a few years older than I really am—people tend to guess early twenties—but that’s not enough of a reason for me to consistently gravitate towards older people.

I always have—even when I was quite young, I couldn’t stand people my own age. I’d talk to babysitters, teachers, and adult friends instead of peers. I was a lot smarter than anyone else then, and no one could resist a child with pigtails and a lisp who could hold conversations on the level of a preteen in kindergarten.

I think it’s just that people my own age are total fucking retards—no matter what “my age” is, the average person might as well be a goddamn pigeon. It also might have something to do with the fact that I like being the center of attention (most likely due to being used to being the adorable precocious child), and when I’m significantly younger and contributing to the conversation, people pay more attention to me.

Whatever the reason is, I’m not going to stop doing it, especially because at this point most people my age are aware of the fact that I think they’ve got the intellect and common sense of a root vegetable, and as such don’t like me very much.

I'm not dead yet!

I know, I should really save that particular Python reference for when I disappear for longer than a week, but still. My computer has been at the Apple store for a week getting repaired-- part of the charger had broken off inside the computer, and they needed to replace it.

Of course, I wouldn't have had to have it replaced at all if my dorm room had been better designed. There are only outlets on one half of the room, and we're technically not allowed to have extension cords. As a result, my laptop charger has to be stretched all the way across the room so that I can charge it while I work on my bed.

It fits, but barely-- the cord runs along the ground, but it's pretty taut. Usually, people just step over it-- hell, even standing on top of it's not going to break the damn thing. Unfortunately, coordination and common sense are inversely related to alcohol consumption, as can be seen in the following graph:
It's a little fuzzy, but you should get the idea.

As a result, Party Roommate and her posse, when they stumble in at various times in various states of inebriation manage to trip over the cord and pull it out of my computer. Over time, people have done this so often that the tip of the charger snapped off and was lodged inside, so that I couldn't charge the battery, and thus could not use my computer.

However, I have my baby back now... and I'm bringing an extension cord back with me after break.