No More San Francisco

Last night, I went to see Craig Owens at the Triple Rock Social club in Minneapolis. I had no idea who he was until about two weeks ago when someone suggested I listen to the song "No More San Francisco" (you should all listen to it too!). I loved it. Then I learned that he was in a band called Chiodos. I gave some of their music a listen as well, but it wasn't quite my style. A little too hard core for me. But when someone asked me to go to Craig Owens' acoustic show, I felt that I couldn't say no.

So Ben and I ventured through Cedar-Riverside to get to this place around 6 pm last night. Even though it was only 6, it was super dark out and super sketchy, but we made it there alive. The concert was amazing. And afterwards he said that he wanted to meet everyone there so of course we got in line!! I was freaking out as we got closer and closer. I texted my sister asking her what I should say. This was her response "Casually mention the fact that you're not wearing underwear and then wink". Haha, right... Anyways, it was finally my turn and I couldn't get the right words out!

Me "It's so nice to meet you" *Awkwardly shakes hand. WHY DO I ALWAYS HAVE STRANGE HANDSHAKES??*

Him "Thank you" *At this point my ears have shut off and I'm not really listening to what he's saying"

Me "I really enjoyed your show"

Him "Thank you"

Me "Can we take a picture?"

Him "Of course" *Takes picture* "Be safe tonight!"

Me "Thanks, you too!"

And then I left. I was SO STARSTRUCK. It was so amazing.

Me and the wonderful Craig Owens

And here's the song I was talking about.

No More San Francisco 

Still on cloud nine 12 hours later. Best day of my life.

Why You Should Vote No

So I have a paper due in about two hours. But I feel like this is more important.

Voting "no" doesn't mean that you support gay marriage, it doesn't mean that you're abandoning your religious views. Voting "no" means that you understand that our Constitution is there for a reason and that reason is to protect our rights as American Citizens. It means that you understand that these things are done to protect minorities. Voting "no" isn't going to make gay marriage legal, but it will prevent our rights from being abused.*

Would you vote to make interracial couples illegal? Would you vote to make large age differences in couples illegal? Would you vote to make divorce and remarriage illegal? No. I don't think the majority of you would. The same thing goes for gay marriage. So many times, I've heard people say "If you don't want to marry someone of the same sex, then don't do it" and this is so true. By voting for the marriage amendment, not only are you making something that's already illegal even more illegal, but you're looking down on your peers and telling them that they aren't as good as you because of their sexual orientation.

I've heard a lot of arguments for the amendment based on religious beliefs. In fact, I heard someone say that in a perfect world "government should not be involved at all with marriage, churches would handle it". I'm glad you feel strong enough to voice you opinion on that matter, but America celebrates freedom of religion. Do you feel that atheists can't get married because they don't believe in God? What about Buddhists? I don't think the government should be able to limit marriage rights, but I don't think marriage should be left to the church. That's not what America stands for.

There's also been talk of a biological argument. I find this hilarious because the majority of the people that make this argument are the religious fellows. They say that allowing gay marriage will affect the progress of the human race because they won't be able to reproduce. It sounds to me like they're talking about evolution. Hmmm. Interesting stuff, because the majority of people making this argument are advocates of intelligent design. There are over 1500 species of animals that display homosexual tendencies. They seem to be doing just fine on an evolutionary basis. Also, if you think gay marriage will halt our evolutionary process, have you looked at modern medical technology lately? I feel like that has halted our evolution more so than gay marriage ever would.

That being said, if this amendment fails, it will not legalize gay marriage! If this amendment fails it will show that we, as Minnesotans, care about the rights of our fellow citizens. Don't make this harder than it needs to be. Vote no and show your love and support for your neighbors, coworkers, friends and families. Don't limit the freedom to marry even more than it already is. We will never stop fighting. Everyone deserves the right to marry the person they love.

Please, vote no.



*The first paragraph was pretty much taken from Annie Peckskamp, you worded things so eloquently! Thanks girl!

Growing Up Goes Slow

This post differs from my typical awkwardness. Sorry Ryder, your post is going to have to wait.

Yesterday, I was walking down the sidewalk, and I came across a poem that was stamped into the ground. It read:

Not Like Fire

Nothing flaming
or even
potentially
aflame.
Nothing
caught up
with danger.
Nothing racing to take
control
or possessions or
no prisoners.

No, our love
was never
like that.


Pretty deep, huh? I feel like that fire is something that a lot of people strive for. That passion, which is all consuming, consumes them. The relationships that we make through out our lives can shape the way we think and feel about pretty much anything. They can be the most important things about how we live, they can be the difference between happiness and severe depressions. Sometimes they cause that happiness, but sometimes they can cause that depression as well. I was talking to a friend of mine the other day about religion. I was raised in a very religious family, and I had a decently strong faith, but this friend of mine labeled himself as an agnostic atheist, or at least, that's what I think he said. We talked a lot about what there is to live for is there isn't a God or a place to go after death. He told me that he lives for the relationships that he makes with others. Now that's passion right there. That's the flame we're all searching for. Throughout my time here at the U, I feel like I've made a lot of good friends, but I don't think that any of these relationships have that same fire, that same passion that is all consuming. I want to feel that passion for life. I want to strive to love deeper and feel more, something. I guess just to feel more in general. I think I have a hard time allowing myself to feel that.

Also, trying to accept the fact that I can't make everyone happy. That's been something I've struggled with since day 1. I have no idea where this post is going, but I wish I was back in fourth grade, playing 1, 2, 3, kick up at recess with Matt Eull.

I hope that the memories never fade, I hope that there's never a reason that they have to.

Here's the sidewalk poetry, instagrammed, of course. 

Social Media Purge

Okay, so this post isn't really about anything awkward in my life, I'm just going through social media withdrawal. This past weekend, Ben and I decided that we were going to do a social media cleanse, so basically, no Twitter and no Facebook. I AM GOING CRAZY. We didn't list blogging and instagram as social media sites, even though they are, I feel like that would have been too difficult. Here's a list of things that I've done today instead of going on Twitter:

• Bought a new phone case! (it's from Etsy and it has a giraffe on it!!)
• Checked the tracking information on my latest Victoria's Secret purchase 17 times
• Read every single article on yahoo news
• Watched cat videos on youtube for 45 minutes
• Ate a shit ton of Subway
• Wrote a note
• Shopped for a birthday present for a friend
• Edited some photos
• Reloaded Instagram continuously for awhile (I didn't keep track of the time for this one)
• Drew a picture of a whale
• Looked up tour dates for NeverShoutNever and realized that they were going to be in St. Paul on Black Friday
• Tried to figure out how I can get out of working on Black Friday (so far, I've been unsuccessful with this endeavor) 
• Written this blog post
• Checked my email 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 times
• Drew up a tattoo design
• Texted almost all of my phone contacts

And all this was done in like the last two hours. I swear, I'm going crazy. I SERIOUSLY have a problem so I guess it's a good thing that I'm doing this. Hmmm. Yeah.

Do these jeans make my butt look big?

The other night, when I was waiting in line for my chicken wrap, and fresh cranberry juice, I was approached by a man who looked to be in his late twenties or early thirties. This is a transcript of our conversation:

Creepy Man: "Can I ask you a question? Do you think these pants go with this shirt?"
(he was wearing light blue jeans with a shirt that was almost exactly the same color)

Me: "Um, yeah, it looks fine"

CM: "What about these pants?"
(he pulls a pair of darker jeans out of a shopping bag)

Me: "Yeah, I like those better"

CM: "What kind of shoes would you wear with them?"

Me: "I don't know, maybe nicer dress shoes?"

CM: "So you wouldn't wear like sketchers or something like that?"

Me: "No, I'd wear something nicer, I feel like tennis shoes are too boring"

CM: "What about the shoes I'm wearing right now?"
(we was wearing black tennis shoes)

Me: "No, I would wear brown shoes"

CM: "And what would you say if you were going dancing? What kind of shoes would you wear? More dressy or more casual?"

Me: "I say go big or go home, if you're going out, wear the nice shoes"
(at this point I flashed my engagement ring, hoping that he wasn't about to ask me dancing)

CM: "Alright, well, thank you for your advice!"

And then he walked away. I got my sandwich and went to work.

T-Rex Sighting: And You Thought They Were EXTINCT!

This video needs no explanation. Well... I was trying to do physics. That should explain everything. I do hope the quality is okay. It was taken on a phone.

#TREXSIGHTINGS

Worse Than Nicholas Cage

So, as promised guys, here's the post from Ben. When he emailed this to me, the subject line was "LOLCATS" I hope that gives you an idea of what you're in for. So, from one of my greatest friends, here's a situation that's "Worse Than Nicholas Cage".


"It was mild fall day and I woke up like any other day, dazed and still erect from the fantasy of a dream my mind had construed the prior night. I showered and slapped on the nearest pair of blue jeans my arms could reach, tossed on a questionably clean Hanes t-shirt, and threw on the same pair of smelly Toms I wear every day. For the most part this day seemed like any other day, this seemingly normal day would prove to be one of the most violating experiences in recent memory. I slipped into class several minutes late and to my dismay I was left sitting next to a rather hefty fella and on the other side was a kid that looked as if sleep was his last priority (foreshadowing). Class went on like any other day and as the time passed I noticed the young sleepless gent inhabiting the quarters to my near left start to doze off. Another twenty minutes of class passed by and the carbon, oxygen and hydrogen composition started moving, ever so slowly. The direction in which his unconscious head started moving was towards my shoulder; I quickly noticed this and realized what ghastly act was in my near future. As his head crept closer and closer, I braced myself for impact, it was inevitable…This young man was sleeping on my shoulder, out cold and down for the count. I quickly tried to lunge forward in my chair in hopes that he would awaken, but my feeble attempts were unsuccessful and only seemed to rock him to into a deeper coma; I also tried quietly shouting in his ear, but I didn’t want to risk disrupting lecture and certainly didn’t want to risk the attractive girl in front of me seeing another man sleeping peacefully on my shoulder. This was a horrible dilemma to be caught up in. How would I wake him without humiliating him and more importantly myself?

This is part of the story where you think I came up with something genius and perfect to wake
the sleeping giant from his slumber. If you were thinking the aforementioned, you are horribly mistaken. I did nothing. I let the kid sit there the entire remaining minutes of the lecture and when the hustle and the bustle of the rest of class finally awoke him, he looked at me and all he uttered was, “Sorry, I am very sleepy” I thought to myself, that does not nearly justify the stark and utter horror that had just befallen on me. After several minutes of packing my things up and trying to grasp what had just happened to me, I glanced at my shoulder and immediately my gag reflex was triggered, as I felt the moist patch on my shirt seep through the cloth and trickle onto my beautiful porcelain…It was a drool mark on my fucking shirt. I went home, stripped off my clothes carefully avoiding the soiled sleeve of my shirt and hopped into the shower, I scrubbed and scrubbed hoping that would be the remedy to the parasitic saliva that covered my shoulder, but even after all that, it was still impressed in my mind... This traumatic event has ruined me as a person and ever since the day that this incident happened I have not been the same. My life will never return to its prior unsoiled sleeve glory. Never."

"I Built My Love a Menstrual Hut" a Poem from the Renaissance

Last Friday, I went to the Renaissance Festival with Shane. There's always a myriad of colorful characters there who take joy in saying the most inappropriate things. Halfway through our visit, we made a stop at the mead booth, where poet was reading vulgar poems. If you're wondering how vulgar they were, one of them was titled "I Built My Love A Menstrual Hut". Exactly. So Shane and I sat there drinking our mead and we listened to this beautiful poem. It was all about how a man and built a small house for his lady friend so that when she was on the rag, he could send her to the hut and not have to listen to her "bitching and moaning". Classy, right? Well he had just gotten through the line "to find a quiet place to masterbate" when an older gentleman stood up in the front row. He walked up to the poet, whispered something in his ear, and then turned around to address the crowd. He was wearing oversized jorts with suspenders and two layered t-shirts. The shirts had started riding up so that you could see his belly peeking over the top of his jorts. He grabbed his shirts, pulled them down and tucked them into his pants. And by tucked, I mean he literally stuck his hands halfway down his pants. He then proceded to pull his underwear up OVER his shirts so that they were sticking out of the top of his jorts. Once he had gotten himself all situated, he began to tell us all about a fundraiser that he was helping out with later in this week and how we should all go and that it was a $10 donation. He really stressed that $10 part. I felt so bad for him, but he could not have picked a worse time to interrupt! This went on for about five minutes until someone started the applause to get this man off stage. (I'm not going to admit that that person was me). He slowly ambled off and the entire crowd burst out in laughter. Poor guy. The poet that said "I believe I left off on the word 'masterbate'" and then continued on with his poem.

This is the poet, I wasn't able to get a picture of the man who interrupted. 

I feel like a horrible person for laughing at this man, but it was so incredible awkward and unexpected that I just had to share it with the world! I wasn't able to understand what his charity was, but I'm sure you can find it out there somewhere! If you want to donate $10, DO IT! Haha. Have a nice day everyone!

On a Scale of Awkward to Karin...

Karin is my sister, and if there's anyone who's even close to as awkward as I am, it's her. I love her to death and we have a lot of fun together.

That's us last year at her Speech Tournament

Last week, she came to visit me at the U. (She actually came on a field trip for her CIS class, but I like to pretend that she came all this way just for me). I met up with her after I was done with my nutrition class. We got some lunch and ate it out in the mall. 

When Karin was younger, she would always give people what we called a backwards hug. She would stand up straight, turn so her back was facing you, walk slowly backwards and then just stand there while you hugged her. She would never hug back. Well, she never really got over this. When we were done with lunch, I had to head back to St. Paul and she had to head to Coffman to meet up with her group. I asked her if I could give her a hug before she left (because to her, a hug isn't a natural way to say good bye). Her response was "but there are people here!". Well, I ended up giving her a sideways/backwards/Karin hug. She didn't hug me back. 

Sitting in the grass after our lunch

Us being the Eiffel Tower in Paris!

An example of the backwards hug

Next week, I think my friend Ben is going to write a guest post. We have lots of great awkward moments together but he's got an especially awkward moment to share with the world. Until then!

Vas Deferens, yes it's a penis joke.

So today in my Evolution class, we were talking about Eugenics. For those of you who live under a rock and have never heard of the Holocaust, or Hitler or anything like that, Eugenics is a pretty sad thing.

Taken from Wikipedia:
"Eugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually a human population.^[2][3] The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance, and the theories of August Weismann.^[4]"

So, as you can tell, this isn't really something to laugh about. I've heard a few different figures, but the US used to be a firm believer in forceful sterilizations and evolution through genetics. There were 30 states which had laws that enforced forceful sterilization, California being one of the worst. There even used to be a Eugenics Center at Coffman Union here at the U. (However, once the founder was found to have ties to Hitler, they got rid of it). Anyways, during our discussion, our professor decided to try to lighten the mood. We were looking at clips from a movie depicting the horrors of Eugenics and there was a man getting a vasectomy (forcefully). Our professor than said "That's a lot of doctors for a simple procedure like that. There's a vas deferens between medical technology then and now". Wait, what? Yeah, that's what he said. My professor likes to make awkward jokes like that. It took the class a few seconds to catch on to the joke. But in the end, everyone likes penis jokes.

Hashtag Adventures

Sometimes, actually all the time, I wish I could just be a professional adventurer. I went on a few adventures today. With the Lads. 

The best adventure was to the Stone Arch Bridge. There were so many people taking senior pictures and engagement photos there! We drove down to the Mill City park, or whatever it's called and we decided to walk around for a bit. As we were walking across the bridge, Wyatt looked down and saw some guy fishing on the banks of the Mississippi. We were probably about 75 feet higher than this guy so things got a little weird. This is how their conversation went:

Wyatt : Man, your reel is upside down!

Guy: *spins his fishing pole a few times* Yeah, this is my first time fishing for carp

Wyatt: Don't eat anything from the river, I hear it'll make you grow a few extra arms

Guy: Yeah, I don't plan on doing that.

And then we walked away.

Ben and I

My action shot with Wyatt.

Then later on today, I was hanging out with the Irish Lads. They like to watch the security footage from the front door on their TV. They sent Francis down to wave at the camera and it was the funniest thing I have ever seen. I'll have to figure out how to get the video on here because it was HILARIOUS.

Do you know how much a polar bear weighs?

Enough to break the ice!

Everyone's seen the Zombie Kid "I like turtles" video, right? It starts off with a news woman who is trying to interview a kid about his experience at some park or carnival or something like that. She says something along the lines of "That's an awesome zombie facepaint, what do you think?" and he replies "I like turtles". The news woman obviously doesn't know how to react to that so she says something awkward and moves on with her story. 

Here's the video

I felt like something similar to that would happen yesterday in my Animal Diversity lab. Our TA (who's younger than I am) wanted us to play an ice breaker game. She called it a game, I call it "go around the room and say your name, major, hometown and favorite animal". These types of things always make me nervous and I have no idea why. I did speech in high school so you'd think that telling a class of 17 kids my name and major wouldn't be a big deal. We went around the room and almost everyone was a bio major and the most popular favorite animal was a dog. We finally got to me and I introduced myself, "Hi, my name is Kiersten, I'm from Apple Valley, MN, I'm a bio major and I like giraffes". And then I found $10. Boom. I survived the class and I didn't embarrass myself! 

Okay, so I didn't actually find $10, I just wanted to make my story more interesting.

Turtles. 

The 214

This post is dedicated to the Lads who live in 214.

Awkward thought of the day. My friend Ben, brought this up the other night. He said it's always been a dream of his to buy a bunch of lotion and find a Komodo dragon (like the one above) and just see how much lotion it's body could absorb because they look like their skin is really dry. Like, who thinks of that?

I love hanging out in the 214 because when I'm there, I'm just like one of the guys. I always go down there with the intention of doing homework, but watching fart videos on youtube is just so much more entertaining!

Do The Monkey With Me

Did any of you watch Johnny Bravo when you were younger? Remember how Johnny would always yell out "Do the monkey with me!" and then he would break into this awkward dance where he would bob up and down and move his hands like he was milking a cow? Yeah, well this dance isn't really anything like that, but it's still pretty funny.

On Labor day, my roommates and I took our Irish friends to Minnehaha so we could show them the falls. We walked around on the trails by the bottom of the falls for awhile and then decided to head back up to get some ice cream. To our surprise there was a bluegrass festival going on! When we got back to the pavilion area where the bands were playing we were struck with dancing fever. This video (if I can ever figure out how to post it) is of my friend Francis and I attempting to swing dance. You'll see in the background that my roommate Jess was asked to dance by a cute little old man. I think they were more successful than Francis and I. 

Here's a link to the youtube video

I was able to put the video on youtube! But I still couldn't get it to post here on the page.

I just work here, NBD.

So here's a quick little blurb before I head off to work for the day.

My fiance likes to make fun of me because I say "hello" to everyone that I know whenever I see them, even if I have to go EXTREMELY out of the way to do it. In my opinion, that's less awkward than both of us knowing that the other person is there and not doing anything about it.

Well, yesterday, I was at work at the Mall of America and I had just gotten my Chipotle for lunch. I was headed back to the break-room when I saw one of my friends that works at a nearby restaurant. Of course, I turn and look at her and walk sideways until she notices me, give her a big wave and shout "How's it going?". Almost every single person walking near me turned around and thought I was talking to them because I was so loud. Awkward. Anyways, we have a quick conversation while I'm walking sideways to work. That conversation comes to a halt when I run smack-dab into another person. Now, this guy was walking in a forwards direction, so you'd think he would see me and get out of my sideways way, but I guess life doesn't work like that. At this point, I had almost rounded the corner to a point where I couldn't see my friend anymore, so I'm hoping that she and the other servers didn't see what happened, but with my luck, they probably got it on video.

That was my awkward moment for the day yesterday. It was pretty awesome. Now I'm off to work to have more awkward interactions with customers. I can't wait until I have a big girl job.

Awkward Introductions

As the new semester starts gaining steam, the awkward moments become ever more present. We're just four days into the new year and I've already had two awkward introductions.

The first one was probably the worst. I was sitting in Evolution Lab, and our TA suggested that we introduce ourselves to the people around us. My four years of speech taught me that handshakes are ALWAYS essential for new introductions, so I turned to the girl sitting across the table from me, reached out my hand, and said "Hi, my name is Kiersten!". I was reaching and reaching and reaching, but I couldn't stretch my arm enough to reach hers!! She was doing the same and we managed to touch the tips of our fingers together, but that was it. To make matters worse, I thought it was super funny so I was doing that laugh thing that I do where my face contorts and it's impossible to tell if I'm in pain or crying or something like that. My friend Liz and I kept cracking up through out the rest of the lab. We couldn't look at each other. It was horrible. Haha. Totes awk.

The second one wasn't quite as awkward and it wasn't quite an introduction, but had a few things gone differently, it would have won the prize for most awkward introduction EVER. So I'm taking physics 1302 this semester and that class is full of people who are more awkward than I am (doesn't seem possible right? But it is!) The class is horrible, the professor doesn't speak English very well and the subject matter is impossible to understand, so what do I do? I spend class time on twitter! The third day of class I was perusing the twittersphere, and I came across a tweet that said something like "my physics professor *smart physics talk* since when?". See how great I am at physics? I don't personally know the person who tweeted that tweet, but that smart physics talk sounded an awful lot like what my physics professor said, so naturally, I had to respond.
"Are you taking 1302 right now?"
*favorite*
"Yes!"
And the awkward conversation continued from there, including everything from me asking if we could be "study budys" (I suck at typing on my phone), to him admitting that he'd taken the class before and failed. By this time, class is over and I'm on my way to physics lab. There are a few people gathered outside the class room waiting to go inside, so I take a seat on the floor and wait. A few minutes later this guy shows up, looks at me and then proceeds to sit down on the floor and pull out his phone. Almost immediately I receive another tweet about physics. Hmmmm. Correlation? This guy who's sitting on the floor decided it would be a fine idea to ask everyone in the hallway if they wanted some cantaloupe or honey dew melon. I looked at him and laughed. Then I looked at him again and realized that he looked really familiar. Sure enough, it was the guy I had been tweeting with all morning. I'm pretty sure he recognized me as well. To make a long story short, we both pretended not to know each other to avoid that "Oh so YOU'RE that one guy who I met on twitter" moment and went on to take a really really hard physics pre-test. Afterwards, I tweeted back asking him about the cantaloupe thing and he pretended to realize that I was in his lab. So on and so forth.

On another note, my roommate's fish doesn't like when I eat crackers in front of it. That's also slightly awkward.

Hi, my name is *blurrhhgghhghaslhaf*

#ThatAwkwardMomentWhen My whole life is awkward.

Hi guys, my name is Kiersten and I'm currently struggling through my senior of college at the University of Minnesota. I say "struggling" because I'm one of those socially awkward, smart people. When it comes to explaining positive and negative feedback mechanisms in order to maintain homeostasis, I've got it in the bag. But stick me in a social situation and everything goes to hell.

For example, my freshman year of college, we were required to take a class called Nature of Life. Half of the class was done throughout the semester, and half was done up at Lake Itasca. It was late July when we all met at the U to take a bus up to the research station. We were divided into teams with crazy biology names and we had to come up with a good definition for what these words meant. I couldn't tell you what our word was, but we decided that it was the name of a big fluffy cloud that produced fish offspring. Scientific, right? Well, anyways, the drive up to Itasca is a pretty long one. I think it took us around five hours, but I slept for most of the way. When I woke up, we had about half an hour to go and I was feeling kind of sick. I remember telling myself "we're almost there!!!" "you can do this". My body seemed to think otherwise. A few moments later, the poor kid I was sitting next to was covered in vomit. That's totes-awk. I felt so embarrassed. "Oh, hi. Welcome to college. These are the people you'll be spending the next four years with!" *puke* I just couldn't hold it in! The worst part was, I had only brought one pair of pants, so I had to freeze my butt off for the rest of the week in shorts.  When we all came back to the U for the beginning of the semester, I met quite a few people who had been in different sessions for NOL. They had all heard about "some girl who threw up on the bus" and had been told that if anyone started to feel sick, they should let someone know! I couldn't believe that people were STILL talking about it.

Well, a little over two years have gone by since it happened and the buzz has pretty much gone away. I still get embarrassed if someone happens to bring it up though. I see the kid that I threw up on walking around campus a lot. I wonder if he still thinks about it... I'm sorry Peter!!!!!

Haha, yeah. Well, I'm off to have more awkward encounters. It is the first week of the semester and all. Lots of awkward introductions to be made. Until next time.

This is our whole NOL group. Session 2 I think?

This was before we left and before I embarrassed the crap out of myself!!

Studying for our big exam! I'm at the head of the table there.