Andrew, ‘14

This may be one of the most relevant titles I’ve ever used.

A couple of things have happened during this past week, so I guess I’ll go through them in order. First of all: remember that post I wrote last week about Quincy Jones?  Well, I was honored to have had it picked up by the Richmond Forum to be used on their website. I’m extremely happy about it, and I’m glad that my work will be available for people to read elsewhere. I can’t remember the last time I’d written anything that was used by a company or website, so I’m floating on cloud nine right now.

Moving right along. I guess I’ll address the whole “Money for Nothing” thing. Grab some popcorn; this might take a while.

I’ve been searching for a specific bumper sticker ever since I was a freshman. It simply says “RVA.” However, I was drawn by how underground and mysterious it was; whenever I’m driving in the city, I’m always seeing these stickers on cars, mailboxes, lamp posts, shop windows, etc. I WANTED IN ON THE ACTION.

I started searching “RVA” on the internet and I came across this site called RVA Creates.  I’m  not really sure what their mission/goal/job is in the community, but the website has this cool image generator that lets you insert a photo with text within an RVA logo. Since I’m a sucker for this kind of gimmick, I grabbed a photo I used for a blog post last year and threw it into the generator.

Yeah, yeah, it’s cool. That’s besides the point, though. The point was that I had found the website that makes the bumper stickers. I started digging deeper and deeper until I finally found a list of locations that sold/gave them away. However, the site said that they may or may not have them because they were in high demand. I emailed my blogging boss (I wish I had a more pleasant title for her…Admissions Superstar? That seems cooler) asking her to let me know if she had heard if anyone had the stickers. Sure enough, she responded that day with the address of a coffee shop called LIFT on Broad Street. I literally ran out of my room, hopped in my car, and sped over there.

Yes, I dropped everything to get a bumper sticker.

Don’t judge me.

I found the place and parked on a nearby side street. The shop itself was extremely cool; there were a ton of hipsters and artsy-fartsy people lingering around the expresso machines, and one guy was painting a portrait of a woman who was sitting outside. I hope he got her permission…

Before I could even ask whether or not they had stickers, a pretty cashier handed me a sample of some kind of bakery pastry, which tasted like a dollop of heaven smothered in happiness and a pile of warm hugs dumped on top. Next thing I knew, I was eating a cupcake and drinking a white chocolate coffee-thingy. Once I remembered why I came, I asked whether or not they had the elusive decals. All she did was point near my shirt. I looked down and there they were: a stack of crisp RVA stickers just waiting for me to grab (they were free). I took three of them and walked out. Mission accomplished.

Well, that’s all for now.  Next week I’ll be–

WAIT A SECOND.

I never finished my story about the whole “Money For Nothing” thing!

Okay. So I was on my way back to campus with my little pile of stickers when I realized my windows were dirtier than the mind of Louis C.K. (I’m not going to put a link to one of his comedy bits on here because I’m sure I’d get in trouble for it).  There was no way I could have slapped one of those things onto the glass. So I did what any logical person would do: I headed to a gas station to get some baby wipes and paper towels.

As I was standing in line with my cleaning agents, I overheard the guy in front of me talking about why he buys lottery tickets. As he grabbed a $5 “Black” scratch-and-win, he said that he stopped smoking cold-turkey a few months ago, and whenever he gets the uncontrollable urge to buy a pack of Marlboros, he buys a lottery ticket instead. I thought this was pretty cool, so I decided to get the last three $5 Virginia Lottery “Black” scratch-and-wins. Why Black?

Mainly because they were so dang pretty. The gloss, the glitter, the matte-black finish…it was a crime to deface it with a quarter. It was worth it, though.

$250! $250! $250! $250! $250! $250! $250! $250! $250! $250! $250! $250! $250! $250!

The first thing I did was I filled in my name and information on the back. There was no way I was going to let some crazy person ruin my day by stealing my scratch-and-win. I then waltzed back into the store with a giant, stupid grin on my face. The cashier could tell I had won something, so he started grinning too.When he rang it up, the cash register made a little “Dun-DUUUUUN!” sound, which made me grin even more.When he started counting up the $20 bills, I was grinning like like an idiot. Keep in mind: all I wanted were some baby wipes.

I walked out of the store, shoved my new stack of wealth into my pocket, ripped open the package of baby wipes, thoroughly cleaned my rear window, slapped the RVA sticker onto my car, drove back to campus, and greatly enjoyed the rest of my day.

The end.

See? That wasn’t so bad.  As a reward for reading all the way to the end, here’s a cat trying to grab a piece of wallpaper.

That’s all for now. I was going to report on the snow we just had yesterday, but I’ll save that for a mini-post full of photos in a few days. For now, I need to figure out how to waste my lottery winnings. I could go buy some Uggs for men…

On second thought, never mind. I’ll just go buy another Beardo.

Now THAT’S money well spent.