This past week has been ridiculously busy. All of the papers, exams, presentations, and such have combined for a perfect storm. It is a far cry from those simple worksheets that you had to bring home and complete in ten minutes from back in elementary school. Needless to say, I was more than ready to feel like a kid again.  So, I was very glad that Halloween has arrived. I was always a clown for Halloween as a kid. Middle school and high school saw the celebration of Halloween become almost nonexistent for me. However, in college. Halloween is probably the biggest holiday of the year… at least that we celebrate together. Remember this for when you go to college. Halloween is HUGE!!! Everyone comes up with the craziest and funnest costumes and the entire campus celebrates…. for three consecutive nights.

I hadn’t put much thought into my costume, but two of my friends convinced me to join them as contestants on “Legends of the Hidden Temple”, which in case you don’t recall, is a fantastic game show from when I was a kid. We ordered the costume online and it arrived in time. For Halloween night, I threw a dance party for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. It was a pretty great event. I saw Calvin and Hobbes, Jack Sparrow, a Ghostbuster, and so many more. We also decided to do a service project for our campus and hand out free pancakes all night to the partygoers passing by our apartment dance party. We handed out over two hundred pancakes and it was a great success, despite the horrible rain. So, Halloween was a fun break, but now I am back to work with group projects galore and many other meetings and lectures to attend.

Quote of the Week: “It had only one fault. It was kind of lousy.” -James Thurber
YouTube Video of the Week:

A clip from “Legends of the Hidden Temple” 

So, this week has been super busy for me. It was meetings after meetings after meetings upon classes after classes after classes. However, organizations that I’m involved with took up just as much time. So, I don’t have too much to convey to you from this past week except that academics kept me quite busy. As Events Coordinator for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, I just realized I am working on four events occurring within a ten-day span. That’s a lot of planning and work. There was a tailgate, Medallion Hunt, Housekeeper’s Appreciation Brunch, and a Halloween party. So, I haven’t had much free time. In fact, it is now Sunday evening and I have yet to touch my homework since Thursday, which is incredibly rare for me. So, what have I been doing since Thursday?

I put together a tailgate for one of my groups and decided to expand it to several other groups on-campus. We partnered together and had a great time. But, it required days of planning, prepping, cooking, and cleaning before the event was over. The weather was not pleasant almost all weekend, but it held off for our tailgate. Our head chef, whose dad is a tailgating enthusiast and has his own website for tailgating, did a great job. She (yes, I said she), manned those grills like none other while my friend and I (yes, both of us are guys) stood by clueless with the grills. How’s that for breaking stereotypes? Oh yeah, the football team won in the pouring rain later that day to remain undefeated and #1 in the Football Championship Series.

The three planners of the tailgate

Also this weekend was a sorority social that I was invited to. The theme was “Throwdown for Your Hometown”. So, I represented the great state of Wisconsin. I found some overalls, a Wisconsin t-shirt, and cut out some cheese slices. My parents actually shipped a cheesehead from home, but it didn’t arrive in time. It was held at a downtown club called “Element” that we reserved and I think everyone had a great time. I know I did.

Representing our respective hometowns

Quote of the Week: “Pity the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” -Don Marquis
YouTube Video of the Week:

Ouch

At first I didn’t think anything of it. It started as one simple incident that didn’t seem too sinister. But I now look back at it and realize that that one event was the Battle of Fort Sumter for the Civil War, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand for World War I. I began as an innocent bystander, but I have now been forced to enter into the thick of it. For, you see, my suite is at war. Don’t get me wrong, we are great friends and get along quite well, but we are in the midst of a Prank War.

There are four of us who live in the suite, two in each room, and we are connected by a bathroom. One day several weeks ago, an orange traffic cone magically appeared in the middle of my room. My roommate and I laughed about it for a few minutes, realizing that it was our one suitemate who did it, but then another traffic cone appeared in our room the next day. Another strange incident, but nothing too sinister. However, it then escalated quickly. The next day, a friend’s bicycle appeared in the middle of our room. At this point, my roommate and I knew we had to have a laugh ourselves. So, we kindly returned the two traffic cones to our suitemate’s room by hiding them in his bed. Little did we know that this was viewed as retaliation.

So, he responded by hiding the cones in our fridge and our dresser drawers. Several days later, he covered every square inch of our room in newspapers. We responded by taping “Caution Tape” all around his room, which provoked him to stuff our refrigerator with packing peanuts. I had stayed out of it for the most part thus far, but I now had to get involved. So, while he was gone for this weekend, we stuck hundreds of Post-It notes all over his entire room. Now, we must wait to see what his response will be. Below shows the progression of our pranks.

The original cones and the bike.

Newspapers covering the room

Packing peanuts in the fridge

Payback

Quote of the Day: “A wise man can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool can from a mountain top.” -Anonymous
YouTube Video of the Week:

In case you wanted to be educated 

I have returned from an amazing Fall Break. My friends called it an “intervention” for me. I had no Internet, limited cell phone reception, and minimal homework that I brought along. They were determined to wean me from my addiction to schedules, organization, and busyness… at least for one weekend. My friend has a family cabin in the mountains of Pennsylvania and she invited me and some of my other friends from school to come and relax there during our Fall Break. So, we journeyed to Pennsylvania for four full days of relaxing, hiking, games, and fun. We had home-cooked meals every day. There were fifteen of us that went and we were split between two cabins, conveniently located five minutes apart. My cabin became really close by the end… perhaps as a result of no heating or insulation in the cabin. All that we relied upon was a trusty wood stove. So, there were many great memories and several new friends. Through it all, I abandoned my homework for four days, which is a big thing for me, and simply hung out with friends in the middle of glorious nature and autumn colors. I’ll let pictures tell you the rest of the story, but I’ll first mention one fun, little statistic: 7 People, 5 Days, 2 Total Showers for the Entire Group.

The back porch of our cabin. Amazing, I know

Our trusty, little wood stove

Going for a stroll amidst the corn fields and autumn colors

Our cabin group enjoying the fall colors and the creek

Our joint dinner between the two cabins

Venturing into Pennsylvania and Amish country

A hike through a state park

Our collective group on the hike

The beautiful waterfall and us

Enjoying the autumn season

Saying farewell to our cabin and our new friends

Quote of the Week: “Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.” -Albert Camus
YouTube Video of the Week:

Reverse Graffiti

So this past weekend was Parents Weekend. Every year thus far, I have been an orphan for Parents Weekend. However, this year, my mom came to visit, which was the first time anyone from my family had come to visit me during the school year. So, it was a weekend jam-packed with activities. There was an a cappella concert, a production by our Theater Department, a mentalist show, lectures by professors, open houses, an art show around our lake, and so many other things to attend. However, my mom and I made sure that we had plenty of time to simply walk around campus together, meet with my professors and my friends, and visit the city of Richmond.

We went out to eat on numerous occasions, which was great because I had never had the chance to visit many of these restaurants before. We went to a few classic Richmond restaurants, such as Black Sheep, Palani Drive, Angela’s Ristorante, and Strawberry Street Cafe. For one of these, Angela’s Ristorante, I brought along several other friends whose parents didn’t come. We had a great time simply talking and getting to know each other, which was something we hadn’t much time to do yet this year. So, this entire weekend was spent with my mom, from Thursday afternoon until Sunday afternoon. I think it’s safe to say that we both had a really good time and were sad the weekend had to end. She was able to meet a lot of my friends, many of whom said she sounded like Sarah Palin, which was quite entertaining.

Unfortunately, just because it was Parents Weekend did not mean that school work stopped. In fact, midterms and exams are starting to begin in full force. Between this this past week and next week, I have a Marketing midterm, Marketing presentation on the consumer behavior of truck drivers, Business Statistics exam, Theories and Models of Leadership paper, and an Operational Behavior exam.

Meeting my Rhetoric professor and my adviser

Going out to dinner with my mom and my friends

Visiting Maymont Park in downtown Richmond with my mom

Attending an art show around the lake on-campus

YouTube Video of the Week:


A paper transformer. Might be worth showing creating to impress
your younger siblings or if you just want to have some fun yourself

Shout Outs: Brian
Quote of the Week: “I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish that He did not trust me so much.” -Mother Teresa via my Grandma