take THAT! huskers
Oh happy day. Last night's game was (in the voice of Tony the Tiger) "Grrrrrrrreat!" Smith and Outlaw's game of backyard catch and Sonny Riccio's field goal fake-out were like practical jokes deservedly played on Nebraska. Hi-larious. After the game, the voice-activation on my phone didn't work because I was hoarse. Not that I would have been able to get through to anyone; all of Sprint's services were jammed with the ecstatic phone calls of fellow Tiger fans calling friends/family/alums. It took me nearly 45 minutes to get in touch with Sarah to figure out where we were going to meet up and celebrate. The lucky few with whom I was able to connect and share in the game's euphoria at some time during the evening: my sister (although, her response when I asked her if she was watching the game was "Game? What game?"), Tim, Pat, J-Dub, Scott, my dad. (Many apologies to Scott for waking him up for the second night in a row. What a wacked-out work schedule, dude.)

funny moment of the night
Seeing new acquaintance Jay (Jeff? Josh? Jason?) drop Megan M.'s phone in his beer. Oops! Gives a new meaning to the term "drunk dial" as Megan will be sniffing beer for the next week every time she puts the phone to her ear.

movin' out
Despite Erin's generous offer to let me continue rooming with her when she goes to London next semester, I found a place to live so I can move out of Alpha Chi. Former flatmate Megan C. is graduating in December so I'm going to finish out her lease. It's going to be so nice to have my own space again! I went over last night to see the place (in Pear Tree), and Meg and I spent some quality time looking at pictures and wishing we were back in England. sigh...

*c*o*f*f*e*e*
I had coffee twice today. Actually, I lie. I had coffee with May-gun Crowley before classes and then decided to forgo the coffee and just have a lemon poppyseed muffin with E. Tut. between classes. (I love lemon poppyseed muffins, but I'm still digging the seeds out from between my teeth.) It was so good to catch up with each of them. I hadn't seen May-gun practically since I lived with her this summer...and she skipped out in mid-July to go to camp. We talked about the realities of being a senior; the efforts of trying to hang out with and spend quality time with the great friends we've made in the past three+ years conflicting with the pressures we feel to make new friends with incoming members of our respective "groups." Hers: Crusade. Mine: AX. As shown by challenge it's been to get together with both Erin and May-gun, the efforts to make new friends seems almost pointless. I'm going to be gone in just a few months. I want to spend my time with the people I really care about.

funny incident of the day
Seeing a bird relieve itself of Tuttle's leg. Yummy.

oh my goodness oh my goodness
Luke has posted.

query
Do self-flushing toilets freak anyone else out?

what is in a name?
I met Sarah and Ruth my freshman year. They were friends with fellow FARCer friend Will. The two were always together so they were always Sarah and Ruth. For the past two and a half years, however, I've only seen one of them. And I see her all the time. Which one is she, though? I was always really good at calling Sarah and Ruth by name, but now I can't think of her as anyone other than SarahandRuth. It's like the twins in Lord of the Flies. They become Samneric, one unified individual in two bodies. Instead, this mystery girl is one body that is two individuals. surreal, dood.

is this what they mean by letting missourians carry concealed weapons?

what makes going home good:
-Three loads of laundry -- free!
-Going outside during an ad break during the K-State-Texas game and knowing when to run inside to return to the game because I can hear the neighbor's reactions to Roberson's fumbles coming from all directions.
-Steak and fresh vegetables for dinner.
-The drive. I love the peace of driving long distance in Charlie, my trusty '88 Honda Accord.

of note
On the way home from church with the fam on Sunday, we ran over a screw and got a flat tire. Wrestling the spare into its place, we then realized that the spare was flat as well. As Dan would say, wah wah.

home sweet home
I went home for my sister's initiation into Alpha Chi at K-State this weekend. She had no idea that I was coming, so it was a fun surprise. On the way to Manhattan, I stopped in Lawrence to see Cecilia. It was a fun, albeit brief, coffee break. We rehashed some fun memories (our less-classy moments caught on video...yikes) and bemoaned the downward spiral of the quality of our high school yearbook. Cecilia: "I took one look and the first thing I saw was trapped captions. Trapped captions! I thought, there's no way in hell Erica would have let me get away with that!" Clearly they miss us at the good ol' Blue M.

score!
I talked with Tuttle tonight.

who has webbed feet?
And who is Oscar, Ian, Tim and Terry? (see: comments)

what is not going on the cover of the vox "water issue" this week:
A very phallic-looking water droplet.

heartless? maybe. funny? hell yeah
Last night, in the only free hour of my day, I had to run all over town trying to get stuff done before my Missourian shift. You might say I was a bit stressed. It was great comic relief, then, when I saw not one, but two separate instances of grown men fall off their bikes. Each time, the guy was just riding along and then all of a sudden, the bike seemed to crumple beneath him and -BAM!- he was biting pavement. Maybe I have some kind of bike-possessing super powers. Or maybe, it's karmic justice for the four bikers that nearly ran me over in one day last week. I swear that Thursday I had a target on me somewhere because the bicyclists kept popping out of nowhere, heading for a straight-on collision with yours truly.

the week (and a half) of reunions
Last week it seemed like I kept running into people (not literally, I save that for the cyclists) I haven't seen in forever:
*Beth, from Manhattan, at church
*Craig, also from Manhattan and a fellow Wika School of Journalism grad, outside the J-school
*Mark, on the quad
*Ben, who stopped by the house and I was actually here for once
*Jill, for a movie date (Under the Tuscan Sun, fabulous girly movie)
*Andy, outside the education library
And talked with people I haven't spoken with in a while:
*May-gun, summer roommate-turned permanent out of towner
*Elizabeth, my Nice trip buddy from London
*Liam, from Manhattan
And tomorrow (today by this clock) is another London reunion with the program directors who are in town, interviewing next semester's interns. (My roommate and Pat being among that group.)
However, in spite of all the fun people I've seen in the past week...

i think i'm being ignored
Here's my public plea to try to get Tuttle to return my phone calls. Where are you?

speaking of tuttle
It's time for Blogger to add to its collection of blog templates. Too many of my friends have the same ones! I check blogs before I go to bed, often half asleep. I have to remind myself whether I'm reading Tuttle's blog or Tim's, Kate's or Scott's, J-Dub's or Natalie's. I'm tired of trying to figure out why Holly is talking about Seattle baseball, Katie's discussing her Sweedish roommate and treks through Hollywood, and Courtney's conversing with Tom via blog. Get a bit creative, Blogger and help out your patrons.

the commercial
Let me know if you can get it to show on your computer. We seem to be having bad luck with it at the office. Quality MU technology at work.

MU v. KSU
Mizzou takes on K-State the first Saturday of Thanksgiving break in Manhattan. Anybody interested in attending with me? You'd have a place to crash (we have plenty of floor space) and there'd of course be a tailgate. Tickets are $40, but I'm going to see what we can do about a group rate. Right now, though, I need to know who might be interested. Any takers?

sometimes i'm a bit behind the times
Last Friday was the University's big fundraising kickoff and I forgot to post a link here so you all can see one of my summer projects. I selected the still photographs for the "For All We Call Mizzou" "music video." I'm expecting Carson Daly's phone call asking me to personally introduce the video on TRL any day now.

When they finally supply it, I'll include a link for the commercial I helped out with this summer. If you're in the KC or St. Louis area, keep your eyes peeled for an MU commercial about "Billy" and his family with Brad Smith in it. Those props you see...all under my control...

made for struttin'
I feel exhilaratingly confident when I wear my knee-high London boots.

advertise this
Have you ever paid attention to the ads at the top of Blogger pages? I wonder how Blogger matches them up. There has to be some kind of system. After my olfactory post, I have ads about removing "that rotten egg smell" and citrus oils that eliminate odors "naturally." Other blog ads of note:

Natalie's (who is getting married in January): all about honeymoons
Dan's (with a near-enough confirmation of the Pat Healy-Jayson Blair rumor - see eversoE post from 9/15): all about the New Yorker
Meh-gen's: "Know God" and a "Haunting song" about heaven
Holly's (who hasn't written much since her Twilight Festival post): Columbia Missouri Hotels
Courtney's (who trains horses out in LA): Horesback Riding Vacation
Tim's (who has just added a photolog to his links): all about photo sharing and prints
Erin's (who recently blogged about National Talk Like a Pirate Day, which was last Friday for those of you who missed it): "Get the latest translators for 100s of languages!"

The most amusing:
What are all the hangover ads supposed to say about Fiscus?

If you were design your own banner ad, what would it say?

i think i'm the fourth to post about this conversation
Erin asked me the other night why I still post to this blog. I guess in a way, I'm a bit of an egomaniac. I want to think that people are interested in what I do and say and at least with my blog I can think that the world is reading my musings. Then I met the world, or at least a piece of the world, and my postings for at least the next semester or so are confirmed. Saturday night, out with Fiscus et. al, I met Maureen, who promptly confessed to both me and Sarah that she is an avid reader of our blogs. Repeat: I met Maureen - meaning that her readership existed before any personal contact between the two of us. So apparently people in the world are reading this site.

In the effort to keep from sounding too egomaniacal, if you take a look to the right, you'll see a list of my "friends," half of whom are in places other than here. Reciprocal Blogging has been a good way to keep in touch...even to make friends.

additionally...
Today I'm wearing perfume from a sample I got in London (Ralph Lauren's Romance) and it's almost like I got ready next to the bay window in Flat 1, the BBC giving me my morning news as I sipped my cup of Twinnings tea and ate a crumpet. I'm almost out of samples but can't justify the $40 for a new bottle of Romance. sigh...

furthermore
I met with Jill McWretched this week and found out that I only need 10 credits next semester to graduate in May: two journalism classes and two gen eds...which I can take pass/fail. ! The end is reachable.

now that my olfactory senses have returned to normal...
I think I'm getting over my cold and now I'm noticing smells again. Have you ever thought about powerful a smell can be? I don't mean in the Ace Ventura "Whew! Do NOT go in there" kind of power. I mean powerful in the way a scent can take you back to things/people/places in your memory. The hallway connecting the Artisan to the building's bathrooms smells exactly like my dance studio growing up. Every time I go out there, I forget that I'm not wearing a leotard, tights and pointe shoes and have to keep myself from doing combinations across the tiled floor.

Instance no. 2.
I passed a girl in the halls of Lee Hills caught a whiff of the perfume that Gracy wore our freshman year when we were roommates. Wow. All of a sudden, images of 311 McDavid hall rushed back. The Christmas lights we had up all year in a desperate attempt to avoid using the horrid overhead fluorescent light; my pathetic black and white pictures from high school photo projects overshadowed by her fabulous photography; the two of us going out on photo shoots of our own around campus; trying soy peanut butter on raisin bread...and liking it; talking about mix tapes and what it means if a boy makes you one.

The final evidence that scent is powerful.
The summer after freshman year, I met (and crushed on) a guy who always wore a certain cologne. A semester and a half later, I sat next to a random guy in my child psychology class who happened to be wearing that cologne. It was the biggest struggle to pay attention to the lecture because I wanted to do nothing but take deep breaths of the guy sitting next to me. Talk about distracting.

Any smelly stories you'd like to share?

*sniff sniff* *cough cough*
Have you ever held your hand against a balloon as it's being blown up and felt the pressure of the plastic expanding? That's how my sinuses feel. Just thought I'd share.

mmmm...digestives...
Mary Pat's British beau got into town this weekend for his three-week visit. He brought with him four packs of McV's chocolate caramel digestives and MP brought one pack with her to class today. She'd better be careful; Sarah and I are going to begin to expect no less than two cookies a class for the next few weeks.

can anyone confirm this?
Rumor has it that J-School boy wonder P@tr!ck HeAly has taken Jayson Blair's desk at the New York Times. Can anyone corroborate this story?