The Final Countdown

Last Week was a whirlwind of insanity, in what I was calling ThanksgivBatMitzvaggedon, because it felt like everything in my life was going on in this exact same weekend. But, out of some sort of miracle, everything actually worked out really well, and was actually fun. Granted it's not a shocker that I spent hours and hours worrying about things that actually turned out really well. So this blog post is basically a greatest hits album of pictures from the past week.

Monday: Shenanigans. My friend Mark is the RA of the eighth floor, and he accidentally left his door open, and then his residents stole his bed from his room and brought it down to my floor. So this is me and Becky sitting on Mark's bed in my room.

Oh man, he was livid. Hilarious! Big Win.

Tuesday: Mirror Lake Night AKA the night when campus turns into a pseudo military operation and the RA's prepare for battle like Aurors in the Order of the Phoenix versus Voldemort in the Battle for the soul of OSU.

Here is a picture of Becky and I being bad asses.

We made those security badges ourselves out of duck tape. Who could possibly disrespect that?

Thursday: Thanksgiving day. 1/3 of the day was spent with Andy's family, 1/3 with mine eating dinner at the Lakes Golf and Country Club at their absolutely delicious buffet, and 1/3 working in Taylor Tower.

Here is my dad as King Henry VIII. Minus 5 wives. And for the record, my mom is definitely Catherine Parr, minus 3 husbands.

It was a pretty great weekend. My cousin Libby had her Bat Mitzvah, and we partied like it was 1999. She did an amazing job on the bima, and I would like to personally with her a Mazel Tov on one of my favorite Bat Mitzvah speeches to date. Throw in a trouncing of Michigan by the Ohio State Buckeyes (7th victory in a row) and all in all, it was a pretty freaking great weekend.

And just as a personal note, Jim Tressel now has more Big Ten wins in the Big House than Dick Rod. Which rules.

And now I just need to officially start the countdown until winter break:

75 Door Decorations to finish

50 Happy Winter Break cards to fill out

13 Days until I'm allowed to go home

6 Classes left

2 Papers

2 Finals

1 Poetry Portfolio

0 Days until the Finale of the front 9 of Glee.

So Close to Vacation.......

My Favorite Thing: A Food Coma

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope that everyone reading this, and everyone on earth, is having a wonderful Thanksgiving with friends, family, and is laying horizontally right now just barely awake because they are in the midst of a glorious food coma.

I myself am writing this horizontal, in pajamas, on my bed while watching Community. And before I drift into food coma induced slumber, I wanted to take a second to address what I'm thankful for.

First of all, I'm thankful for my family. I love them and their various dysfunctions, and I'm especially thankful for all of the source material they bring me, because even my incredibly active imagination can't write such golden snippets of awesome. Thanks Family, I love you.

Secondly, I'm thankful for my friends, and by friends, I mean my true friends, the ones who read the blog. Friends are the family you choose for yourself, and I owe just as much thanks to them for keeping the blog entertaining as I do to anything else. Thanks Friends, I owe you, always.

Third, I'm thankful for Television. Always.

Fourth, I'm thankful for how absolutely fortunate I have been in my life to always have food in my mouth, a roof over my head, and clothes on my back. And while I hate to get serious and sentimental, so many people don't have those opportunities, and it is important to always remember how very fortunate we are.

And finally, I'm thankful for you, blog reader. Because nothing means more to me than feeling like people care about what I write, or even just want to read what I write. And I hope that if you are reading this, this post didn't get too sentimental for you, but seriously, you rule.

But now, I'm gonna go get some rest, because I ate A LOT of food today, and I need my strength for some serious online shopping tomorrow. Sweet Dreams of leftover's everyone!!

My Three Vices: Shopping, Coffee and Blogging

I'm beginning to think I have retail therapy issues. Actually, that's a lie. I've been thinking I have retail therapy issues for years, except I sort of thought it was a joke, but now I'm sure it's real. Which isn't really a bad thing because if one is going to need therapy, it is a lot cheaper in the long run to go treat themselves to coffee or a new pair of boots when they feel overwhelmed by school work than it is to spend 30 bucks an hour laying on a couch being asked how everything makes them feel.

For the record, I mean no disrespect towards anyone who is in therapy, has ever been in therapy or works as a therapist. Just not for me right now. Granted, after this upcoming week who knows if I'll need therapy or not, but I'm not gonna worry about that until a week from now.

But anyways: Retail Therapy. I'm pretty sure if this was a condition on WebMD I could self diagnose myself with it. Characterized by being stressed out by school work or impending busy-ness and solved by a trip to the mall or the use of debit card. My condition became most obvious to me this past Friday, because I was feeling stressed out by the amount of school work I had to do, and then I went to the mall with my mom and bought new clothes, and then I felt immediately better. Until I woke up this morning and realized that my trip to the mall meant I hadn't done any homework this entire weekend, so I felt stressed out again, and then I drove to the Caribou Coffee on Lane Avenue and treated myself to a Hazelnut Iced Latte while I usurped their free internet and now I feel loads better.

This could possibly by overlapping my caffeine addiction issues as well, but they are sort of linked in that I spend money on coffee, I feel better, I drink coffee, I feel better, and everyone in this situation (namely me) wins.

Also, I have discovered what the principle problem of writing in coffee shops is. Drinking coffee makes you have to go to the toilet. But when you write in coffee shops, you have your computer with you. So then you don’t want to use the toilet because you have to leave your computer in a room full of strangers, and lets be serious, it could be gone in less than 30 seconds because it is a laptop, and they are the most un-theft proof of all electronics, but you don’t want to have to pack up everything you have with you and take it to the bathroom because it’s a hassle and because someone else could steal your spot and then you’d have to set up again in a completely new spot or leave. Writing in coffee shops is a freaking Catch 22.

I can't wait for this quarter to be over. I only have three weeks left now, which is so close, and yet so far. This upcoming weekend should be a nice break, I'll just have to get through the week first. I'm working every single night until Friday, and on Tuesday there are going to be about 500 crazy drunks in my building who I will be charged with making sure don't die of hypothermia or alcohol poisoning AKA Mirror Lake Night.

For anyone who doesn't know about Mirror Lake Night, it is this awesome night of the year for everyone in the world who isn't a Resident Advisor on Ohio State's Campus, where students jump in to Mirror Lake during Beat M!ch!g@n Week to awaken the spirit of Woody Hayes so that we will be victorious over M!ch!g@n in the Saturday football game. I jumped as a freshman and it was one of the most awesome and memorable experiences of that whole year, and will probably be in my top 5 college experiences total. Just to put things in perspective, last year, approximately 12,000 people went to the Mirror Lake Jump between the hours of 8 pm and 1 am, either as jumpers or spectators. It is unreal.

Mirror Lake Jump Video From Last Year

Except that when you are the RA, you are the person actually in charge of making sure hundreds of freshman who don't know any better don't drink themselves into a blacked out stupor and then try to swim in the lake because they will catch hypothermia and die, and it is never fun to have to call an ambulance for freshman, because it is usually for stupid reasons.

But as a bonus, I won't have any classes the following Wednesday, so even though I'll be stressed out all day/night/until 4 am when I'm allowed to sleep on Tuesday, I can spend all of Wednesday at the mall, drinking coffee and shopping so that my sanity returns to me.

I hope the government never bans caffeine.

The Only Cure for Writer's Block...

MORE WRITING!!

I'm supposed to be writing poetry right now, but I have a wicked case of writer's block, so I'm hoping a new blog entry will inspire me to poetic genius.

I took a trip to the Wexner Center today, which was really cool. They have a brand new art installation called "Six Solos" featuring six different artists, with very different mediums. We went for my poetry class because we are doing an exercise in Ekphrastic Poetry, which is poetry written inspired by art. Which seems like an awesome idea, and don't get me wrong, I love art and I love looking at art and I would love attempting to be inspired by art if most art didn't just totally confuse me. What was cool was that I wrote down some really amazing words and phrases from our gallery visit to put in a poem, so now I'm just gonna copy the best ones here.

Chrome, Nickel, Pickle, Syrup Bottle, Green Acryllic, Bullet Teeth, Reflections, Trapezoids, Brains, Honeycomb, Mothballs, Floors that Absorb, Night Visions of Sunflowers, Underwater Dragons, Take Me to Barbados, Closeness, Pages from Aristocats and Arthurian Legend, Whispy Rose-Colored Clouds, Vantage Point. Happiness.

I'm probably either going to write the most bizarre and incongruent poem ever, or I'm going to have to chose a different piece of art. More on this story as it unfolds.

On Monday I declared a second major so that I won't end up graduating a year early as was completely unplanned. So now I am officially an English and Film Studies Major with a Minor in Creative Writing. And yes, I know that I'm probably never going to get a job. I'm looking forward to unemployment actually. It just sounds like a lot less work than my life right now.

Somewhere towards the beginning of this school year, I (being the generally unproductive person that I am) decided to waste somewhere between an hour and a half and two hours scrolling through the entirety of the Netflix catalogue of television seasons available on Instant Play in alphabetical order so that I could create a comprehensive list of all the seasons of TV I wanted to watch and then be able to check them off when I'm done. Now you may be reading this and thinking "Jaclyn, aren't you just wasting time writing down shows to watch that will then become even more time wasted when you watch them?"

Anyways, the current list is up at my desk in my dorm room and it includes 19 series (including a few seasons of TV on DVD that I either bought or was lent by my friend Sean who lives down the hall). And I am pleased to announce, that I have officially crossed off my first series: Pushing Daisies. 1 down, 18 to go.

I absolutely recommend Pushing Daisies to anyone who has ever loved anyone or anything in their entire life. I'm pretty sure the only people who couldn't enjoy this fabulous but short-lived show (only two seasons) would have to be heartless scrooges. Also, since watching it, I've had the most ridiculous cravings for pie (central plot point/character). So, if you like television, pie or anyone or anything, I recommend you watch this show. And as an added bonus, the Pie-maker might just be the most adorable male lead in a TV show ever. And Cheno is in it. And she sings. A lot.

Next up on the list is going to be watching Weeds season 5, because then I'll have watched all the seasons currently available. But these are only 22 minute episodes, so it probably won't take me more than a week, maybe two. After that it's a toss up between Bones, Lost or Monk in what I'm calling "The Battle of the One Word Shows for Jaclyn's Immediate Attention." Honestly don't know which one I'm picking, but all bets are off. People interested in the outcome of this scuffle can place bets with their nearest bookie, and for the record, I will be accepting bribes.

Well, that about covers everything exciting in my life. Although I do feel inclined to let everyone who doesn't know there was a bomb threat on OSU's Campus yesterday. I'm fine, everyone I know is fine, and no bombs went off. And as a bonus it did get one of my classes cancelled, but on the other hand, it didn't get my morning class cancelled, so I was unfortunately already awake, and then just not in class. I'd say more about it, but the FBI might monitor my blog, and I don't want to get myself into too much trouble.

I think I'll try to write some ekphrastic poetry now. Best of luck to myself.

Why do German Films Always Keep Me from Sleeping?

Happy November Readers! It's cold outside, the leaves are brown and crunchy and I can finally wear jeans, cardigans and waist-length peacoats without having to strip down to a t-shirt halfway through the day because the weather changes 30 degrees from 9am to Noon (Thanks Ohio Weather).

I've been pretty frantic these last couple of weeks, which is why the blog posts are so slow coming. But, I made myself a promise at the start of this quarter, saying that I would never blog when I had a paper to write. So on that note, for entertainment's sake, I'm going to note that as I am typing this sentence it is 10:34pm and now I'm going to go write a paper. When I finish said paper, I will return, as blogging has now become incentive to get my homework done (and yes, you can call me a nerd for that sentence, I can recognize most facts).

(2 hours later)

It is now 1:34am. I've been writing a film paper on the movie M by Fritz Lang, which stars Peter Lorre as Hans Beckert, the protagonist/serial killer of children. It has been two hours, and I am approximately 67% finished with this paper, which by the way only has to be between 2 and 3 pages long, and after reading about the film and re-watching parts of the film, I am beginning to whistle the theme "In the Hall of the Mountain King" by Grieg, which just happens to be the same theme the murderer whistles as he is in the process of attempting to abduct children.

I'm really hoping I'm not turning into a serial killer. Or worse, Peter Lorre.

(Approximately half an hour later)

OK, I finished my paper. Which is great because I can cross it off the to-do list for this week, which is pretty extensive.

Also, German films are weird. This one was particularly disturbing, and the last time I watched a German film for film class (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) it made me afraid to fall asleep because I was worried I'd be murdered by a somnambulist as part of an elaborate ruse to help a fortune teller keep up appearances.

This is probably as good of time as any to bring up that I'm considering double majoring in Film Studies and English with a minor in Creative Writing, just because English major on it's own wasn't quite a ridiculous enough of thing to throw away one's education on. If I'm going to go through 4+ more years of schooling to end up jobless living in my parent's house, I want to really study as much worthless material as I can. That being said, I'm really excited about this, because 1. Film Studies is awesome, and 2. This extra major will keep me from graduating a year earlier than normal, which is great.

Complete subject change: I went as Rachel Berry from Glee for Halloween this year. Here's a picture of me with Princess Peach (AKA Sammy). And even though you can't see them in this picture, I want it known that my costume came complete with gold stars and many signature Rachel Berry phrases, including among others: "There is nothing ironic about Show Choir"

I should probably reread some sections of Macbeth for Shakespeare class tomorrow, but I think I'll just go to sleep. I mean that worked out so well for Lady Macbeth right?? (haha, just kidding) If you don't understand the reference, GET OFF YOUR ASS AND GO GET SOME CULTURE!!