The past three weekends have actually been pretty eventful. All of them fun, but in their own way. And of course mixed in with some of the fun is misery, but such is life. Buckle in, this is a longish one (sorry Jessica).
Weekend One (April 23rd & 24th)
Saturday evening, Perri and I attended one of Grinnell's annual events, Titular Head, a student film festival. The films are generally pretty short, or else they get booed, and are generally humorous, though occasionally pretty vulgar and sometimes disturbing. The people in charge also have to show any film that is submitted. I had heard that people usually yell, cheer and boo at Tithead pretty loudly, but I was not aware that most people come very drunk as well. I should have guessed though because dinner at the dining hall was insane. People were having fake dance/slap fights and forming human pyramids. We saw one guy on his phone trying to become the bottom of one pyramid. Ben joked about what the guy's phone conversation must be like: "Oh sorry, I can't talk anymore, I'm joining a human pyramid."
Later, at Tit Head, Perri and I ended up seated next to a very annoying drunk pair that could yell louder than should be possible. The best video of the night was a clay-mation film about Zombie's attacking Grinnell and the ever watchful Stephen Briscoe and our fearless President RKO fighting them off. The worst... Well, first some background. Several weeks ago a first year student made a very stupid stupid mistake. Darwin the first year thought it would be a good idea to try to jump onto a moving train. Unfortunately, the train didn't like that plan so it bucked him off, severely injuring his leg in the process. There was talk of amputation, but luckily it didn't come to that. I must admit my sympathy for Darwin was very small. I think the first thing I learned, ever, was not to jump on moving trains. But, he decided to make another (well two more) mistakes during Tit Head. Like many first years, Darwin didn't really understand the concept of Grinnell's Film Festival: films should be short, sweet and funny. Instead he decided to make an eight minute video about his experience tying his existence to God's greater creations. Of course I have nothing against Christianity, but dude, know your audience. He also unpleasantly showed us said leg that has twists in it legs should not have. Later Darwin had another video of bloopers that were not funny...at all. I may be taking out some aggression on Darwin because of another misfortune of the night. I attended Tit-Head to see a video my friends submitted...and they failed to show it. Apparently the powers that be had forgotten to add it to the Festival playlist. Ah well.
Weekend Two (May 1st)
Every year Perri, Aki, and when she was here (Emily), and I attend the fall/winter market in Des Moines, which is held in a mall. But this year I went to my first spring out door famers market in Des Moines with Jessica, Elyse, Sara, Ben, and Leah. New friends-new tradition, well if they weren't graduating in two weeks. I admit when Jessica said we must leave at 7:30 in the morning I was skeptical that we would really need that much time in the market, after all the winter market takes up two floors in a pretty tiny mall. However, the spring market was quite impressive, spanning about five blocks in several directions. There was food (bread, fruit, meat etc), soaps, food stands, and arts and crafts...and food. The event was a mixed success for me as I accomplished one goal and completely failed at another. I did succeed in stuffing my face with food from various food stands. I started off with a nice breakfast peanut butter & chocolate cupcake (the 2nd best pb&c cupcake of my life), then a couple crab ragoons from a chinese stand, some of Ben's baguette, and a couple bites of samosa from an Indian stand. I massively failed in buying the food items requested by Perri. Hey, it's harder than it sounds. When you go to a market that spans many blocks, you don't want to buy from the first bread, or jam, or cheese stand you see because then you have to carry around your spoils the entire time. But then its time to go home and you find you've waited too long and missed all the best stands and completely failed your friend. That was probably more detail than you cared to read, but it's all about strategy. Alas, I only came home with a bag of kettle corn and probably the worst loaf of bread from the entire market.
When we got back to Grinnell it was time for fun! Well, actually it was time to immediately fall asleep on my bed because I woke up at fricken 6am. But then it was literally time for a day of fun. In honor of the retirement of our fearless leader RKO, Grinnell College organized a sort of fun fair on Mac field. Complete with petting zoo! American Gladiator-esque games! A (evil) bouncy slide! Live out door entertainment! And more! First, Perri, Ginny, and went to the petting zoo, which was surprisingly not disappointing. (Sara had feared that the very over-hyped and promised day of fun would consist of a single goat and maybe a sheep). There was two lamas, ducks! (which I succeeded in touching! My personal goal for the petting zoo), big bunnies, goats (including a very nibbley one) and a funny chicken with a big puff on its head. Next, I reconnected with the group and watched my senior friends pair off and challenge each other on various bouncy surfaces. First, they took part in a contest that involved going into a bouncy castle, wearing unnaturally huge padded boxing gloves, and trying to knock each other down. It looked like fun, but also a lot of work, so I abstained from this challenge. However, the highlight of watching came from seeing Jessica and Ben fight each other. The were the only two people who managed to argue with their words instead of fighting with their fists. Jessica could not remain standing on the bouncy surface and Ben was mad she would not fight back. Jessica and Ben bicker a lot. The next challenge, involved two people standing on two platforms, holding long sticks with padded "puffs" on either side, and trying to knock each other off their platform (best out of three wins). After watching my friends compete in this challenge I finally got into the joining and fighting spirit. I couldn't convince Perri to get into the mood, so I was paired against Sara. It was hilarious. I knocked down Sara once, but she won overall. As the fight went on Sara and I got progressively more exhausted (from a mix of hitting each other and laughing so hard). The second round Sara kept hitting me relentlessly in the same place over and over again, wearing me down, while I tried to push her legs. Sara's center of gravity is amazing. In the last round, Sara was trying to push my legs out from under me, but she was so tired she couldn't push very hard and I was so tired I could barely hit her at all. As a result we ended in a hilarious stalemate until Sara finally won. After that, since I was finally in the fun festival mood I decided to go on the very tall blowup bouncy slide. There was a little board of warnings about the slide that included "cuts and abrasions may occur" and "You will have fun!" I joked about the ridiculous set of symptoms with Sara, but I really should have been reading the warnings carefully. Because I was going very fast down the slide, I absentmindedly put my elbow down by my side-I guess to slow myself. I failed at the slowing, but I succeeded in scraping/rug-burning off a layer of skin on my elbow. Let's just say that quickly took me out of the fun mood. I called my day of fun, a day, and nursed my wound (which ended up taking a ridiculously long amount of time to heal).
Before I had gone on the slide Perri and I had this little exchange (a nice little foreshadowing, though Perri thinks I'm overreacting).
Perri: You're never too old to have fun.
Me: You're never to young to die.
Weekend Three (May 7-9)
The week leading up to this past weekend was my pseudo-hell week. I only say pseudo because this week is what Grinnellians call hellweek (the week before finals). However, for me, hell came early. I had one long research paper due on Thursday and a Bio lab write up on Friday. I don't know if I actually got bad grades, but I'm disappointed in how I handled these assignments. My time management was none so good. I'm going to take this as a learning experience and try not to make the same mistakes next semester. In addition to the heavy work load I became sick...again! I have been sick and off since my London trip. Therefore, I smartly went to the doctors office in town and was prescribed antibiotics...useless useless antibiotics. It was one of my worst colds. Just image me as a faucet. The sickenss would not have been as bad (who am I kidding it was really annoying) if it had not also coincided with my Community Chorus concert. Or I guess I should say it coincided with the three 2.5 hour long rehearsals I had to attend for the concert on Thursday, Friday night and Saturday morning. However, in between the misery of congestion and fatigue was spring waltz!
Saturday evening I had dinner with Perri and the group at a Russian department function: A Russian coffee house, complete with Russian food and Russian songs (which some of my friends helped sing). It was very pleasant and the food was delicious. It would have been more pleasant, however, without massive the tissue use and one side of my face being completely clogged. . After the food and song, we all got prettied up for waltz. Just as last semester was my first winter waltz, this semester was my first spring waltz (and my last waltz with the group *Sigh!*). Spring waltz is held in Darby Gym, which can be prettied up very nicely when it wants to be. There was even a punch fountain! Also, to enter waltz people had to walk down a long set of stairs. I imagined a fancy announcer announcing each couple coming down the stairs. (ex-"Here enters Brittney Snow accompanied by the son of the Hathworths etc etc). The fanciness of the evening was only diminished by the immature exchange between me and Leah, performed with tiny colored stones that were decorating the table. I was making stone pyramids and Leah started doing it too, so I made some sort of sarcastic comment about her copying me. A little later I looked at Leah's side of the table and saw she had written something with the stone. "Abby rocks?" Nope "ABBY SUCKS". I responded with "LEAH SMELLS". She rejoined with "ABBY IS A BUTT". She also included an illustration. Then Zach very pleasantly turned it into "ABBY IS A BUTTERFLY" and the illustration didn't even have to change! I danced, I laughed, I had fun. It was a good night, minus the sneezing and sniffling. To end my weekend I had my community chorus concert of Schubert's Mass in E Major on Sunday afternoon. I refused not to sing after all the rehearsing, so I decided to destroy my voice instead. It was a good concert though, I didn't have to sit down once!
And there ends my super triweekend blog post. I swear one day I will complete an entire post without complaining at all! I might even not complain in the next one if I stop getting sick, stop having lots of work to do, and the weather gets nicer and...Ok you might have to wait on the post-sans-complaining. Oh well.
And to spring waltz you wore your ....?
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