It was the boys’ turn to make dinner this week, so they did the next best thing: breakfast. A little scary at the start (would you like some egg with those eggshells?). But they surprised us all and pulled through.
Get excited for a future post about my only slightly less successful breakfast-for-dinner attempt - a giant blueberry pancake made on a George Foreman grill.
But I’m not sure this is the best way to live. Not only does a permanent residence carry a lot of baggage (affectionately called junk. Sidenote: it's taken me five months to finally get settled into my new house), it makes a person easier to track.
Suppose you’ve just committed a nasty crime, like triple homicide (you claim it was in self-defense - they were threatening to starve you of your nightly ice cream sundae!). You’re on the run, and you obviously can’t go home because the police will find you there. You're torn between the proverbial rock (going back but getting caught at your home) and the hard place (needing to clean out the evidence that would undoubtedly lead the police to learn everything about you, including your hiding place). Sorry dude, it's over.
As a nomad, you would have none of those problems. The po would have no address to search and no clues as to where your hideout may be. They probably wouldn't even know you existed (don't get emo on me, that's supposed to be a good thing).
In my perfect world, I would be a hunter-gatherer (you can call me Pocahontas), following the bison as they roam and chasing the seasons as the berries ripen around the world. Maybe I threw my sharpest spear at a fellow hunter, but how will you ever find me? I sleep in a different cave every night.
But a cookie is a cookie, and in the end, it's always good. There was a chocolate chip overload (in the best way possible). And ButterGirl makes cookies in the shape of the alphabet so you can send a sweet and edible message to your boo, or to me :)
I confess that until yesterday, I thought it was called “hardcore.” I mean, it makes a lot more sense – hardcore is hardcore, what is “parkour”? I’ll let Michael, Andy, and Dwight explain it to you, in honor of The Office premiere tomorrow night.
It’s all about location. A giant soccer field wouldn’t quite make the cut. I’m thinking I’ll set a final goal of parkour along the top of the Golden Gate Bridge. Until then, I’m going to perfect scaling walls and climbing fences with grace (that means not ripping a hole in my pants in an inconvenient location or getting a gash in my head that needs stitches).
Answer to last time’s Name That Movie: Noah Calhoun in The Notebook.
They’re called the birdmen. Don’t you worry, feminists, because after I’m done with them, it’ll be called the birdwomen, if not the birdAudrey, or maybe just birdrey. It gets better - when I get the birdsuit, I'm going to double as a flying squirrel this Halloween.
Fast forward to the good stuff at 1:30.
Kudos to Charissa and her fam for discovering my new #1 freefall.
We’ll conclude with a little game called Name That Movie.
“If you’re a bird, I’m a bird.”
I’ll give you a hint. I’ve basically only ever seen 7 movies (on average, 12 times each) in my life. That’s counting each of the Twilights and High School Musicals as separate movies. Tune in next time for the answer!
According to Wikipedia, the ice hotels in Sweden and Quebec are a big deal. Apparently, ice hotels are only temporary – they’re rebuilt every winter.
In addition to the coolness factor (haha, get it?), this is probably the closest I’ll ever get to jolly old St. Nick. Oh Santa, all I want for Christmas is 3 parkas, some toe warmers, and earmuffs. Okay, I'll take the pony too.
If you’ve ever heard me do Taylor Swift a capella, you might wonder why I haven’t been recruited by American Idol yet. Okay, so maybe I’m not that good (I’d say I fall somewhere between a whine and a yodel), but T-Swizz wasn’t that good at the VMA’s either. At least I wear shoes.
Anyway, I want to sing the national anthem, in front of an audience. Not just in the shower, but at a public event, preferably in a sold-out stadium. Why should my housemates be the only ones allowed to enjoy the purity of my voice? :)
Hundreds of years later, El Camino is still kicking (knock out “Real” in the name for bonus local points). I’m sure the priests would be happy to know that today their King’s Highway is full of avid believers… of McDonalds, In n Out, and Carl’s Jr.
I would probably compare it to Mass Ave in Boston, except that it is way, way longer. Maybe even as long as the train tracks out here :).
So the plan is to drive through the whole thing. No real point here, besides bragging rights. Not a whole lot to brag about either, unless I manage to make it into the Guinness Records for eating the most chicken fingers and French fries in a single road trip. I knew I’d be famous one day.
You can’t judge a book by its cover, but you can definitely judge a cookie by its looks-like-homemade-ness. Who wants to eat a cookie that looks like it came straight out of a box? (Single exception: Girl Scout cookies.)
After examining its beautiful asymmetrical shape comes the bend-and-squish test. Crunchy on the edges and soft in the middle. Paradise cookie, I give you an A+.
Finally, it’s delicious. And there’s so many different kinds! Peanut butter, white chocolate chip macadamia nut, and something mysterious with everything on it that has no name. Coconut chocolate chip is my personal favorite – just add milk, and you’ve got yourself a little taste of heaven.
And that’s the way the cookie crumbles.
I managed to whip up my first homemade meal of the year. And considering that I made enough to feed all the freshmen on campus, this could easily be the only meal I need to make this year.
On the menu tonight was a shrimp pasta diavolo with a side of zucchini par moi, and a hearty steak and potatoes whipped up by my housemate, Mary. And don't forget our ultimate taste tester/food critic/hungry man Chris.
What’s better is that it was all done in under 25 minutes. Food Network, here I come!
Check out this video (kudos to my friend Rob again) of a few of his friends DWS-ing out at Lake Champlain, in New York. If I have ever experienced love at first sight, then this is it:
I realized that I’ve technically tried DWS-ing a few years ago in Maui, Hawaii, but I am declaring it null because it was nowhere tall enough and not nearly cool enough. If you are in the area though, go to the beaches at Ka’anapali and look for the big black rock.
Black Rock, Maui, Hawaii
You’ll see a bunch of people climbing – a few locals showing off their backflips and many more tourists belly-flopping onto their already sunburned chests. Watching the dives and hearing the screams from the beach can be almost as entertaining, though personally I'd just want to climb up and show 'em how it's done.
Rob's rockin' the skydiving suit. What a natural.
First things first - we watched a 30-minute video listing the possible dangers of skydiving (as if my roommate hadn’t already engrained them in my head already) and fill out paperwork where you signed your life away, promising that your family wouldn’t sue Pepperell when you fell and died.
With nothing left to do but wait our turn, everything seemed like a typical Sunday afternoon. Rob and I spent a few minutes studying for our upcoming Chinese test (as if that’s what matters when you’re about to jump out of a plane) and the next hour or so just killing time.
We met our best friends for the next (or possibly last) 14 minutes of our lives – our instructors. They made a few cheesy jokes, then some scary ones, and finally took us up to the sky. That’s when I realized that my fear of heights was, in fact, still very much alive. It definitely didn’t help when we were almost 11,000 feet in the air, and they opened the plane door. I half-expected a giant yellow emergency exit slide to pop out and bring me back to the ground, but I saw nothing but little green specks that used to be several-acre farms.
I went first. Rob told me later that watching me drop out of the plane and disappear was what freaked him out the most. I started screaming way before I was pushed out the door (I’ve got a video I’m going to try to put up soon, it’s great).
The first 3 seconds were freefall, and then I was just flying for a few minutes after that. Pretty indescribable; I’m no English major, so I won’t even try (is indescribable even a word?). I could see the ground getting closer, but I’d compare the feeling to lying facedown, starfish style, on top of a giant fan on its highest setting.
A few minutes of flying, and my instructor pulled the parachute… The suspense is killer, right? Well, I’m alive now, so something must have gone right. About ten minutes of easy sailing later, my instructor and I landed safely on a giant green field, where I watched in horror as Rob fell parachute-less to the ground. I’m kidding of course, I could never watch that happen. That’s just morbid.
So skydiving was pretty incredible. I was convinced for a while to become a professional skydiver. But then I found out that J.Crew was hiring. Oh well, maybe in another life.
*Except I “accidentally forgot” to tell my parents. I figured I’d save them a few worry wrinkles.
