Terror

I have an irration fear of Somara, the girl from The Ring.

And by irrational I actually mean completely rational, because have you seen what she does to people? It is reasonable to be afraid of her.

Last night, I came home from somewhere and my roommate Marissa promptly dropped a bag of doritos on the floor in the hallway that leads to our bedrooms.

"Bethan," Marissa said, "I have dropped a bag of doritos. Can you grab the vaccum?"

Wondering vaguely why Marissa was carrying an open bag of doritos through the apartment, I went to get the vaccum. I opened the closet door.

For a second time froze as all my worst nightmares came true at once.

Somara was in the closet.

Somewhere in the depths of my diminishing sanity I knew it was my roommate with undead makeup on and black paint in her hair, but nonetheless I had a terror induced blackout and came to outside in my socks.

So I guess that solves the fight or flight dilemma.

Spoonful of Cinnamon

Some of my roommates and I took the spoonful of cinnamon challenge this week. For those who don't know, the rules of the challenge are these:

1) Eat a whole spoonful of cinnamon.

Seems easy, yes?
This is false.
First the cinnamon sort of sucks all the moisture out of your mouth, and then it catches on fire.

I did not complete the challenge.

Embarrassing

Me: "My family moved to Boise, but I don't tell people that because it's my secret shame."

Ian: "Yeah, that's incredibly embarrassing."

Me: "Hah. Thanks for the sarcasm Ian, I guess it's not that bad--"

Ian: "..No, I wasn't being sarcastic."

The Drinking Game

My cousin has this grand tradition called "Breakfast and a Movie," where on Saturdays he and his roommates invite people over to make pancakes or whatever and watch a comedy.

I mentioned this to a guy in my apartment complex and it quickly became a date. We went out for waffles and came back to watch the Bourne Identity. Meanwhile, I had a brilliant idea. We have a huge jug of white grapefruit juice in our apartment. It was a gift from someone when Emily was sick--supposedly it's supposed to cure all disease--and the stuff is so nasty that no one has touched it since then. Actually, no one touched it even then.

I grabbed the grapefruit juice and proposed the Early Morning Mormon Drinking Game. Play it yourselves at home! The rules will change depending on what movie you watch. Ours were as follows:

1) Drink whenever Jason Bourne kills someone
2) Drink whenever Jason Bourne humiliates someone
3) Drink whenever Jason Bourne says "I DON'T KNOW!"

Grapefruit juice is ideal for this kind of thing because it tastes awful and burns your insides, just like alcohol. We took our shots out of some tiny measuring cups that he had in his apartment, and I think I must have consumed the equivalent of ten grapefruits. The inside of my mouth was completely puckered. It was a good time.

Drink grapefruit juice wisely.

Not a Real Vegetarian

Ian came over the other night. He looked me straight in the eye and said, "So you're not a real vegetarian, right?"

I blinked. "Yeah, I guess not technically. I eat meat if I think it comes from a good source."

"Right. So, not real."

"Yeah, okay," I said, slightly saddened by not being real.

"It's a good thing!" He reassured me. "Because REAL vegetarians have something not right in their brains. They're like...half-evil."

Shocked by this bit of news, I asked for more detail.

"No," he said, shaking his head very seriously, "No. Just believe me, I've talked to some of them, and I know."

He refused to tell me any more.

The Emperor Loves Mushrooms

Eventually, my dinner group found out that I don't eat meat. I will explain that later. With that fact in mind, here is another story for you.

On Sunday night, I got a text from a boy in my dinner group asking how I felt about mushrooms. Our text conversation went as follows.

ME: Favorite fungus!
HIM: So you like them?
ME: Yeah!
HIM: Gooooooooood.
ME: Are you on mushrooms currently? Nobody gets this excited about regular mushrooms.
HIM: I was quoting the emperor from Star Wars.
ME: Missed that one.
HIM: Yeah, but the emperor never actually said anything about mushrooms, so you're okay.

Keep in mind this was completely out of the blue. I was highly confused.
The next day at dinner group, this fine young person was distributing chicken to everyone. When I got up to the stove, he handed me a stuffed portabello.

"This is why I was asking you about mushrooms last night," he said.
"My own mother doesn't do stuff like this for me!!" I exclaimed, tearing up slightly.

My mom actually does do stuff like that, because she's great. And I didn't actually tear up. But the fact remains, that shroom made my whole entire week. THE NICEST GUY.

Tandem Bicycling

I think I have more tandem bicycling stories than most people, on account of my friend Ian.

One fine night, I was panicking slightly because I had postponed my stargazing project for astronomy. Yes yes, okay, it's an easy assignment but I had to get somewhere outside the city limits to do it and nobody wanted to drive me out into the middle of nowhere on a school night with 15 minutes of notice. Just then, Ian appeared.

"Hello," he said.
"Hello," I replied, "Are you interested in driving out into the middle of nowhere tonight?"

Ian thought about this.

"Well, I want to ride the tandem," he told me.

So we rode that thing out to Rock Canyon Park, and I stargazed my heart out. On the way back, Ian suddenly steered us towards a really steep, grassy hill. Pedaling quickly became much harder.

"Aaaaaah!" I shouted. "We're gonna faaaaaall!"
"No we aren't!" Ian retorted incredulously.
"Okay!" I said, relieved.
We immediately fell over.

A brief explanation of our exchange student

This weekend I met up with the fam, including our exchange student from Mexico. I had just introduced him to my cousin or something, and he was being very quiet, so I said "He's a pretty serious dude."
Just then he goes "No, I am a heeelthy vampiiiire," and it suddenly became apparent that the reason he hadn't been talking was because he was busy wedging two giant celery sticks into his teeth.

Veggie Protein Slices

They're exactly what they sound like.

A girl from my apartment complex asked if I wanted a ride to the grocery, and it ended up being a super hippie healthy grocery store! So I bought these things called veggie protein slices that are marketed as fake sandwich meat. But I never call them that. I call them veggie protein slices for the descriptive and humerous qualities.
They are supposed to taste like turkey, but they are a very mysterious dark brown color.

When outside of a sandwich, they taste sort of grainy and salty and terrible.
When inside a sandwich, they taste like sandwich meat.

Normally that wouldn't be much of a compliment, but the makers of veggie protein slices set low goals for themselves.