Reblogged from: Voices - Wesleyan Student Blogs. (Go to the original post…)
Well. I’ve realized recently that my readership contains mostly my extended family (hi Aunt Kathy) and they would probably like me to grow up and swear a little less so I will make a conscious effort although I believe in the beauty of a well placed exclamatory statement every once and a while!
This post is covering what I realize it three weeks!!! That’s mostly because of all the midterms/presentations/tests/short papers I had the third week, i.e. last Tues/Wed/Thrs and this Monday and Wednesday…
But that will mean an extra long fun post because I am FINALLY on break!! I wish it were a little bit longer…
I am currently typing this up while The Hobbit is on in the background (my boyfriend’s roomate is watching it). That really low song that Thorin sings is so good; my brother has an incredible voice and he can do it just as well if not better. Definitely making him sing me that when I get home. And carve pumpkins with me. And watch Halloween movies. I wish my sister could be home!!
Thorin’s Song
So here we go! I will start off with a silly story from about three weeks ago…
Before all the weddings (I am about to take you through two weekends worth of weddings after this in which many interesting things occurred..), I was staying at Eric’s house (the last time I had time to visit him in West Hartford until now!! Crazy).
He gets up for work around 6:30am, and I’m always really groggy. If his roommates aren’t home, I take his keys so that I can lock up after I leave, and then I either drop them at work or he’ll visit me at school after work and get them back. While I was half asleep, Eric told me he was leaving me the keys in “the boot.” I asked him if he meant my fry boots, and he gave me this sheepish look and refused to specify, but I was so sleepy, I just assumed like, yes, my boots, okay.
When I woke up, I looked in my boot, but there was no key. I dumped them out, put them on, tried everything, but I couldn’t find them. I began overturning the house, looking in every boot that existed, testing eric furiously…
finally I came downstairs… (look after the break)
It was so cute I couldn’t even be mad.
Wait… I’m confused.. maybe this is almost four weeks.. was the Wes football game on a Thursday? and god damn it where does my anniversary fall into all of this… I have the pictures but I can’t sort it all out in my head!!! Oh well, I will just explain.
Eric and I had our one year anniversary weekend the weekend before our first wedding.. okay yes so I am back four weeks.. WOW.
It was so nice out that we decided to go apple picking instead of getting massages ahah which was Eric’s idea and we really need to do because we both have horrible knots. It was technically the first day of fall, and everyone was all excited about apple picking, so it was pretty crowded. We decided to buy a jug of apple cider and ferment it to make hard cider. We warmed it on the stove for 45 minutes to get out all the bacteria, and then we put it in a sanitized bucket and threw in yeast. The only problem is, we forgot that we needed an air lock…. A week later I went and got a balloon and a straw, but I think by then it may have been too late– I think our cider is fairly carbon-y… but I might try and drink it anyway… or get another jug and go rouge and just throw the yeast right in like a pro.
DIRECTIONS: if you are feeling brew-y
I also got the desire to bake a pie and apple crisp, which ended up taking alll day (sorry Eric)
It came out really beautiful though and we also got extra thick vanilla ice cream and it was delicious. Some time around this I also went rock climbing at Eric’s rock climbing gym for the first time ever. It was so fun. I really wish I had a steady income so that I could become a monthly member, but I did manage to find a groupon for 2 climbs for 30 (it’s usually around 30 each time, so this was an awesome find). Hopefully I can join for the month of January when we are off from school so I can get super good. In the meantime I’ve gotta do pushups!! It’s so fun watching people who are really good at it- they seems to just hop effortlessly up the wall, especially when bouldering. Hopefully next semester I will have fewer night classes/ night Sinners sessions and I can get a job- right now my schedule is pretty packed with 5 classes.. oy.
Central Rock Gym- check it out if you are in CT
ANYWAY! Wes also had it’s first night game against Tufts. It was actually incredibly fun even though I don’t know too much about football. No one else really seemed to either- there was a kid holding a giant poster that said “SPORTS” on it. My friends wrote things like “beta” and “dke!” on their checks and “wesleyan is okay” (very ironic humor at wes). It was hysterical. We cheered our team on though, even when we didn’t get it
Roxy pondering football
Eliza and Miranda get sporty
I pretended to be in pep band with Jack and Olivia for a decent portion of the game.. they let me play the snare drum which was great because I was absolutely terrible.
In wes-fashion, there was also a student-worker coalition protest, which was actually probably well timed because most of the school was out for the game. They are responding to the occasionally disgusting, extremely inconsiderate behavior of students who just leave their crap around and think that they are entitled to be gross while Wesleyan janitorial staff and other staff members clean up after our entitled spoiled assess. I understand and think it’s gross, but I think it need to be solved by Wes implementing standards in which, for example, every dorm hall takes out its own trash and has a sweep/clean every Sunday, etc. – we did this once and it felt so shitty because it was supposed to be this big worker appreciation day thing, but really it was like wow we should be doing this ourselves all the time.. or at least being more respectful..
Anyway, it’s a weird issue, and as a soc major I could analyze that kind of thing for hours, but i’ll spare you..
Also, I visited Rhode Island at some point before that and my plants had exploded!!! I made the last harvest of the season, and got some AMAZING salsa out of it which I ate all day with a spoon
ANYWAY!
The last weekend in September was the first wedding weekend… It was in Roxbury, NY, which is in the Catskills and has no cell service. Eric and I camped out each night (before wedding and after-wedding) somewhere on the property, and it was really so fun. It was gorgeous and fall-y up there, and we had so much fun walking around the farm before the wedding,
Visitng the horses and petting the billy goat. Eric got really angry because the cows wouldn’t come over to play with him, and he spent a realllly long time yelling at them and having a standoff… The reception was in a barn with giant haystacks and Christmas lights and dancing. I was a dancing fool. I loved every second.
eric also found walter white ^^^^ aged 15 years
()
They looked so similar..
On Sunday, we left at about 12pm to begin home… and Eric’s car promptly died. Actually dead, no way to jump it. A piston blew, and it was bleeding and leaking oil everywhere all over the place. We were in a no service dead zone, so we had no choice but to start walking until we found… um.. ‘civilization’.. which turned out to be an old broken down repair shop with a man of about 80 who at first seemed creepy.. we asked if we could borrow his phone and when we walked into this house he had a Guinea pig and a hole in the wall plugged up with a shirt..
But he ended up being the nicest man in the world who gave me his entire life story of his three wives- one who died very young, one who didn’t talk about, and the third who ended up being gay and just recently re-married. He had a gazillion children, and came from a huge family of 15. He self-described himself as a hillbilly. I liked him.
We called triple A and waited on the side of the road for them
We looked super awesome and people kept stopping by to ask if we needed help.. which we probably should have accepted because when triple a showed up (aka a towing guy certified by them because we were in the middle of nowhere) he asked, so, what’s the plan..??
And we had no freakin clue.. they could only tow us 5 miles and after that it was 4.50 a mile… so we had the guy take us to a place that sort of had cell phone service and a place we could drop the car.. and then we spent hours calling people we knew to see who could get us…
Eric’s cousin Morgan and her boyfriend Pat saved our assess and picked us up. It must have taken us 11 hours to get home. Definitely an adventure…..
That week I spent a lot of time sleeping and doing my homework and eating free cookies
Hehe… sometimes my roomates and I leave goodies for each other on the kitchen table… it’s a great system
That Friday morning, my Aunt Kathy and Uncle Lynn visited me and brought me an amazing fall-y gift basket and also departed some great life advice (work and life in equal measures! Since then I have been actively thinking about this, and it helps me get less anxious when I’m very stressed out).
It was so nice to see them and the chocolate chip pumpkin bread they gave me did not even last the whole day it was so good. fa la la yummy. I head out after making an entire 60 page study guide for environmental law- I picked up eric and we head for NY with Eric, near Roxbury again but this time Saugerties, where cell phone service exists.
My dad lives on the weekend on an old garlic farm- the woman who used to live there was called the goddess of garlic, and she started the annual garlic festival. We posed a lot with her cardboard cutout…
I also saved a lot of froggies from the pool that were too small to hop out; there’s only one bullfrog that goes in, swims, and can get back out (it’s a salt water pool)
It was really beautiful and didn’t rain (my dad was freaking out for weeks and weeks and obsessively checking the weather.. typical) and there was a band there from a place in NYC that was really really good and a lot of fun. Again, I was a dancing fool. It was really nice to see my cousins on my dad’s side too- I don’t see them quite as much and they are a lot of fun! Will see them Thanksgiving too.
(Eric and I pretend to be fancy people)
The next morning we went on a hike at Kaaterskill Falls and Eric insisted on standing under the falls in front of all the tourists taking pictures
We got garlic as wedding favors and I immediately used it when I got home to make garlic sweet potatoes out of the yams that katie got from the local food co-op. Katie hates orange things that remind her of pumpkin so.. more for me!!
Also it was fally at Wes when I returned and I picked up this beautiful leaf
When I got back, I had two midterms to study for, an essay to write, and a lot of stressiness. But I worked my butt of and got through it, and I think that will be my trickiest week (until finals when I have a cajilion papers). Once it was all over, I got to breathe a little and have a fun weekend…
and soooo!
Friday night last week, Sinners sang at German House, which was sort of random, for Octoberfest. There were a lot of people eating sausages and drinking apple cider staring at us sing under a tree. It was really fun though, and good practice for Sat’s concert. Also, afterwards we had taco night at Sign House where Caroline lives, and wine+ food+ sinners= singing while eating pretty much all night. Afterwards, we ate all the apple crisp made by Hannah, who is a glorious baker and made the most delicious crisp to apple ratio.
On Saturday night, we had our concert with the Haverford S-Chords, who were giant goons but also talented. At first I was wary because, well, look at their outfits.
But they ended up to be unbelievably fun, and we had a great afterparty with them– they had some great lion king medleys and they also taught us the art of the reverse selfie (go behind someone you don’t know, put the camera on selfie mode, and attack!) I tried it out….
On Sunday morning, I head to RI for the end of Columbus Day weekend celebrations!
I got to see all my nuggets and hang out on the beach. Monday was beautiful and I skipped class heehe but just my first one.. I had a test in the second class. I was so frustrated because by the time I realized I could take the test later, at 7 pm with the other section instead of at 4pm, I was halfway back to wes! I asked a little to0 late on that one.Oh well. I somehow swung a 95. (they let you bring notes to the test though.. but still… I don’t think I really even used them… )
Yesterday I used my first groupon to rock climb, and now it is today!! I need a serious break from driving around and weddings and parties– need to detox and get back in the swing of normalcy- it’s been a fun but crazy three weeks! My wrist is also in lots of pain from all the typing and writing I’ve been doing– I need to put a brace on it fo show. The beginning of the school year is always like this, I feel. Once we get around Thanksgiving, things start to calm down. Uhoh. Halloween is coming up! That’s bound to be somewhat crazy. But fun. We are being the elements… I need a good water costume.
Also, Katie helped clean the shower drain after I did the sink and it was so funny.