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!