Happy Halloween

I celebrated Halloween by watching The Birds. Because I think wild animals are about the scariest thing EVER, second only to 3D movies. And if you think that's stupid, well then let's just ask the girl who got rammed into by a deer on campus today. Yes. ON CAMPUS.

But what I am really posting this for is to tell you that I posted some MUMB formal pictures for you on my other page, my photo page. I know you're thinking, "What? You still use that thing? Because for like three months you didn't put anything on there, and I was under the impression that you had forgotten about it."

Well I didn't.

Update:
And here's what I wish my pumpkin looked like (it's so terrible I'm not going to let you see it). Eventually I'll get to go home and witness the splendor that is my family's pumpkin carving skills.

Good thing he was quite the sprinter

Last night, Miami University attempted to win some dining hall award by spending something like $4,000 on three different dining halls to host a Hogwarts Feast. So there were like, steak to eat and "Butterbeer" and house flags and a sorting hat and Harry Potter movies playing on the tv. At the dining hall I went to, they even had the tables moved into--you guessed it--four long rows.

There was this guy dressed up like Hagrid, which was a little scary, and this guy we call Harry Potter (because he looks JUST LIKE HIM) was dressed up as (duh) Harry, and all the staff were wearing witch hats. So I'm thinking they better win this award.

So anyway, this dinner was a big deal. And there were a LOT of people there. We had to wait in line for like 15 minutes to get in, and it was packed. Which makes the story I am about to tell much more embarrassing (but for a change, it's not embarrassing to ME!)

We're sitting there, eating our Portkey Pumpkin Soup and Bertie Bott's Beans and other faux-Hogwarts fare when suddenly this kid who just got his food trips, dropping a tray FULL of food. Everyone got quiet but the kid didn't get up for a few seconds, giving everyone a chance to stop and look. And then he jumps up, pulls his hood over his head, and bolts out the door.

It was one of those things you always wish you could do in that situation, but know probably isn't going to work out like you'd hope.

So THEN, this kid looking out the window says, "He's still running!" And he was! All the way across the quad! Till we couldn't see him anymore!

And the funniest thing is, I wouldn't have written this post if he hadn't tried to avoid embarrassment. And really, does it get much more embarrassing than being on the internet? Oh the irony, I JUST LOVE THE IRONY.

So I shouldn't be kicking myself for making bad decisions.

Last year started off with this great idea to try lots of new things. The new haircut and new clubs were not bad ideas. But then I started getting more brave. Italian? Oh, sure! Sounds great. I have to do an instruction writing project? Yeah, I'll learn Dreamweaver so I can write instructions on it. Because it will be cool to learn something I've never even heard about.

And then I got sick and stuff and that wasn't so much fun, the learning while being sick.

However. The Dreamweaver has definitely paid off, because I designed this website, and Christina's, and I'm working on another one. And now I don't have to pay attention in IMS, and my website project for English is going to be fun.

So now I'm just waiting for the Italian payoff.

Remember, this is Miami and we're mostly Republican

Dear Botany 171 professor,
If you want me to continue to show up at your class, please refrain from referring to Colorado as the home of Coors Light, a "right wing, fascist" beer.

I happen to enjoy Colorado, Coors Light, and right wing thinking.

kisses,
Loren

Wondering

how it came to be that I am so good at avoiding the things I don't want to deal with instead of just getting them over with.

Because it really just makes me hate myself.

It was one of my only nicknames, and it's a shame it never caught on

I used to have this shirt that said BRILLIANT across the front. I thought it was sort of egotistical but in the name of trendiness I wore it (this was post-Europe trip). And I happened to have a rather terrible day the first time I wore it, so my pre-calc teacher made fun of me and from then on called me Brilliant because, you know, the irony. I guess if I had to have a nickname it wasn't so bad because it could be far, far worse.

At any rate, some days I think about that shirt and how sometimes I feel like I should TOTALLY be wearing it and how sometimes I feel like it should have never even graced my closet.

But doesn't everyone feel like that every once in a while?

Not to rub it in but Miami did beat Akron

It was a wonderful weekend with my family, my Colorado family, and one of my best friends from home. And Jimmy and I showed off our mad band geek skills.

Language Barrier?

Okay, okay, so there are only a few people who will think this is funny (myself and Christina) and a few who will find it interesting (myself and my mother).

I was reading this Midwestgrrl entry, and evidently boughten IS a word. Who knew. So then I was sort of afraid that gaven (instead of given) was actually a word too, and I thought that perhaps all the jokes I've made about that word would suddenly be nullified. But luckily for me, it is NOT a word.

So you can have a boughten dress, but you cannot have gaven me a present. And I cannot have gaven you anything, either.

I'd be mad at all of you, but then, What Not To Wear didn't exist back then

At the end of my freshman year of high school, I went to Europe with my high school's foreign language club. I hadn't seen the pictures my dad and I took for a long, long time so this weekend while I was at home, I looked through them.

And I was really just expecting to see some pretty shots of churches and statues and fountains and that sort of thing, but what I saw was horrifying.

I was a fashion victim from HELL. It was so bad, in fact, that I am not willing to let you see them. But I will leave you with the picture above (of Assisi, Italy) and these words of wisdom I wish I'd heard five and a half years ago:

• Loren, Loren. Those tall socks? They are not flattering. I have nothing to say, I'm just going to stand here and shake my head.
• Sundresses=good. Sundresses+button-down shirt=not good.
• Your hair actually looks ten times better on the days you didn't have the opportunity to assault it with a curling iron.
• OH THE HUMANITY. Get rid of those khakis. FLARED at the ankle, please. FLARED.

Quote of the Day

"Mom, you CAN'T just go out with someone BECAUSE YOU KNOW THEM!"

What goes around comes around, unless you're Erin

When I left for school my freshman year, my brother and sister started using my bedroom as dumping grounds for anything they didn't want. Old poster? Loren's room. A pair of ugly socks? Oh, those aren't mine, but I'll put them in Loren's room. Broken mini Simon game we used to play in the car? Maybe Loren wants that. I'll toss it in her room. At the end of the year, they moved me out of my room and into my sister's much smaller room, and consequently there as been a lot of stuff-switching gone on between us over the past two and a half years. But since I have the disadvantage (it's hard to toss stuff in her room from 200 miles away), I've been losing a lot lately.

This is the first time I've been home this year, and when I got home Jimmy wasn't back from school yet. We were cleaning up for people to stay at our house this weekend, and I found a cd player and a shoebox on my bed. And I had to blame Erin, because she's the only one of us left at home.

"This isn't my cd player."

"Well I don't want it."

"Neither do I, it's not mine."

"Just put it in Jimmy's room."

And I have to admit, rather guiltily, that I did go ahead and put it in my brother's room. But isn't Erin lucky? Now she has two rooms to choose from when deciding what to do with the stuff she doesn't want.

But it isn't really Heaven, which makes it even BETTER

I haven't been home for three months and when I got home last night I was so excited to be here that I almost CRIED, partly because I was excited to just be home and partly because I finally get to go to the Loudonville Fair (although that is a story for another time). But anyway here are all the reasons why I thought maybe I had gone to Heaven last night:

1. Central! Air! Is! Amazing! Even in October. Humidity=evil.
2. There's a disposal in the sink.
3. There's a dishwasher that is NOT my hands.
4. There are pets here, pets that are mine and that like to be cuddled by me.
5. All the stuff I forgot is here.
6. Although I do have this at school, there is wireless internet.
7. There's, like, food. All we have in our apartment are fla-vor-ices, tortillas, some cookie dough and a bottle of tequila.
8. This is a given, but I haven't seen my family in a while so that was pretty exciting.
9. Sex and the City, Fat Actress, and The Comeback ON DEMAND. My life is complete.
10. Do you remember the Got Milk? commercial where the guy thinks he's in Heaven because of the huge cookies everywhere, but then he goes to the fridge to get some milk and all the cartons are empty, and he suddenly realizes he's in Hell? Okay so minus the no milk part (There are 2 whole gallons! Skim AND 1%!), that's what it's like here because there are Hershey Kisses all over the place. Huge bowls of them. I'm not even kidding.
11. We have mirrors on perpendicular walls in the bathroom that I can use to see the back of my hair while I'm blowdrying it. And that mirror is telling me what I've been missing for the past three months, which is, it's time for a haircut, Loren.

I've never enjoyed being home this much.

Flashback: May 2005

Whenever one of my friends gets a sore throat, they sort of do this thing where I can tell they think I gave them mono. It's not something they come right out and say, but I can see it in their eyes. So then the exchange goes something like this:

"Oh my throat hurts so bad."

"Is it the worst sore throat you've ever had in your entire life?"

"Yes."

"I mean like the WORST."

"Yes."

"Well sorry you drank out of my glass last week."

However none of them have had mono and I can always kind of tell that they do not have the WORST sore throat they have ever had in their entire life because I HAVE FELT THAT PAIN, AND YOU CANNOT EVEN SAY YES WHEN YOU ARE IN THAT PAIN.

I think I scare the people closest to me who are most likely to contract a disease from me (not that I have any other than mono, actually) because I tell them I wouldn't wish what I was feeling on my worst enemy. Christina has been sick the past few days and I keep telling her little horror stories, like how my neck was so swollen my ears hurt and how it hurt so badly to swallow that if I wanted to swallow my spit I had to drink ice water and it still made my eyes water anyway. Or how I was taking like 15 pills a day. And sleeping about 15 hours.

So anyway the moral of this story is, don't get mono.

A piece of advice:

If two boys ask you to go to Wal-Mart, and then ask you to go to the toy department, it is okay. Unless, of course, one of those boys has a problem with NOT TOUCHING ALL THE DAMN TOYS. Because then, when he squeezes a blue-dyed-water-and-glitter-filled squishy ball thing, you will end up looking like this:

And you will have to leave the store feeling quite embarrassed, blue, and sparkly. Not to mention soaking wet.

Of course, I used to be unable to find the ketchup at the store I've gone to my entire life.

I had to run to the grocery store today to get some popsicles for Doug. In the past three weeks he's gone through at LEAST 50 Fla-Vor-Ices, and I was getting scared he'd stop coming around if I didn't get some more. And I'm okay with that, because they're cheap, and if that's all I have to do to keep a guy around, well, could I ask for anything more? I DON'T THINK SO.

So. I'm at the grocery store, and I decide I'd like to talk to my brother while I'm walking around. And we're talking, and finally I realize that I've gone through the entire store and still haven't found the popsicles. I mean, obviously they aren't kept with the regular, always-frozen popsicles. So where could they be? I bought them from a display at the front of the store last time, so I didn't even have that to go on. So I ask Jimmy. And he says, well, sometimes they make those to be popsicles or drinks, so maybe they're with the juice boxes.

And you know what? He was right.

And my apologies Jimmy...but the fact that he could find the popsicles, the popsicles in the grocery store he's NEVER EVEN SEEN, well, that makes me question every sort of rationale I've ever used. And I don't know what to do about that.