I've discovered a new Netflix show. Although it didn't need much discovery, considering everybody knows It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia. Now that my television is set up in my room, I can lie in bed and watch netflix using my chrome cast. I spend most of my free time simultaneously streaming netflix and grading all of the computer programs I'm responsible for. Fan on, pants off. One leg out, on top of the covers. Charlie Day's whiney voice making crude jokes in the background, lines and lines of amateur java code light up the screen and make my eyes sting. I'm not sure why I write the blog anymore, but I'll keep it anyway, because each post kills about an hour of my time.
Thursday night I went to trivia for the first time. Nitro texted me around 7pm about bars and trivia. me stella dot nitro and face went. I realize that their frisbee names are weird. We went to Sotto's first, saw nobody there, and were like nawwwww, then we went to Molly's instead. Lots of bars do trivia on Thursdays. After we bombed at our first trivia, we went to MacGrady's (my favorite bar at school). They have a shuffleboard table and it's shitty and magical all at the same time. Ran into some familiar faces, had a good time, then went to Sottos for pizza, and finally walked myself home. woke up naked. Guess that's what I get for having my own bedroom.
Friday I wandered over to Meade Street to help Tony paint his bedroom. We managed to tape most of the pattern up, and start the cutting job by the time we were exhausted and decided to call it quits. Hungout at Alec's house afterwards per usual.
there was much more than that, but I'm really terrible at taking pictures. Note to Self: take more photos when doing fun things, while simultaneously not looking like an asshole in real life, taking photos every time I do something.
Saturday afternoon we drove to the Delaware River Gap to swim and play frisbee and hike way too far barefoot just to float down the river for a while.
Saturday night the Great American Challenge happened. Unfortunately I can't detail this for you, but team Sharks won, and I slept on Alec's couch. Fortunately for me, I fell asleep in the clothes I was wearing, so I could wake up and proceed to wear them all day Sunday.
Emily had a movie showing that night at her work and invited Alec and I to go watch. Her boss told her to "bring your friends". We had nooooooooo idea what we were in for. Turns out it was totally classy and business-y with a lot of important people and fancy french finger food. naturally first thing we do is grab a beer and "business mingle" according to alec. Talked to cute boy with a mustache from Emily's work. Watched video on education reform. focused on High Tech High, a progressive high school in California that isn't involved in a school district. It's takes the framework of the education system that has been in place for over 100 years and just shatters it. Shatters it harder than a wooden chair being roof tested off a frat house. They do hands on, collaborative, student run projects throughout the semester, starting freshmen year. No tests, no grades, just an exhibition at the end of the year to show off the projects. The film focused on one freshmen class and their project was a history class on the rise and fall of civilizations, and a woodworking, engineering class with gears and computers and laser cutting machines. Their end project was very impressive. After the film, we moved into this big, unfinished room with a few tables and a bunch of chairs, and we grabbed another beer and were allowed to eat and mingle more for a bit. We ended up at a table, and we watched as a panel of five men from the community got asked a bunch of questions by other important members of the community. Being the youngest people in the room, we were quite timid to ask any questions. The questions were supposed to be based on the movie we just watched, and for the most part they were. A lot of the answers were focused mainly on Building 21, some new high school in Allentown that's supposed to be similar to this "High Tech High". One of the men was the superintendent of Allentown, another was Bethlehem School District's superintendent, another man said himself that his wife was better qualified to be on that panel than he was, the man on the far right was a professor at Lehigh whom I've never met, and the last man I don't remember. Notice how the entire panel was a panel of men. Not one woman was invited to be on the panel. Since it didn't have high school education as the main focus, I refrained from addressing the lack of women on the panel. Also fun fact, the only people in the room sake for ONE soul were middle-aged to old white people. All the men on the panel? Old white men. Some of the questions the ladies in the crowd had were actually blasting these men. One addressed the fact that some of the kids in their schools can't even read. Another asked about how these progressive schools are beneficial to kids with common learning disorders such as dyslexia. (also who the hell picked the spelling for dyslexia? I never remember how to spell it and I don't have a lingual disability). Another woman actually said how they HAD progressive project-based programs in their school, in the ARTS department of their school, but had to cut them due to government budget cuts. The men on the panel had very nice, generic and vague responses to most, if not all, of the questions. Nonetheless, I learned a lot from this movie and discussion. Some about educational reforms, and some about how racism and sexism are subtle and real and everybody is so numb to it that they're comfortable with it.
Sunday night we wanted to do something ridiculous. Trespassing and swimming naked in the Lehigh river sound good? yep! Pretty sure that's how you become better friends with the friends you already have; get naked and do illegal things. It was dark and I had a flashlight and we were in the middle of the woods and the river was cold and it was frightening and amazing and I loved every second of it.
I woke up Monday morning and pretended to be productive. But I really just sat in my room until 2pm and then went to Alec's house. It's basically a second home. I walked in and he was in the midst of rewiring his entire house speaker system while his landlord pretended to be an electrician. Turns out, neither Alec nor his landlord are electricians. Once Tim, the landlord, left, Alec and I did some major home improvement on his house. Including but not limited to: vacuuming his entire basement ceiling to get rid of the cobwebs, fixing his pool table, and tying cables to straightened out coat hangers and shoving them through holes in the basement roof and up through the living room hole floor. I told Alec he ruined a perfectly good hanger and he proceeded to tell me "naw it's all good we can still use it for abortions". Blatantly kidding, so don't get crazy. It was funny. We picked up Emily and went to the beer supply store. Alec brews beer, and we got to help. It starts out with boiling three gallons of water, then adding some hops, and more hops, and some malt barley and some wheat, aaaaaaand some yeast? I dunno. But it takes about 3 hours. and there's some stirring, and a pretty intense cooling process with water in the sink or something. Then, you put the pot in a cool place and let it ferment for two weeks. I think this batch is gonna be called "the pursuit of hoppiness" according to alec. He's so punny. We played some cards, and I learned how to play hearts. USA women's soccer team won their first game, go America. Alec, Brad, Emily and I played ruit (Lehigh talk for beer pong) in the basement, best 2 of 3, except it was strip-ruit. Each time you lost, you had to take an article of clothing off. Won't tell you who took off what, but I will tell you that it was girls against boys, and we lost twice.
Tuesday was Taco Tuesday, per usual. Woke up at 12pm, did some financial aid things with momma via Facetime, and had a battle with Wells Fargo. I actually hate Wells Fargo. They locked me out of my account, wouldn't let me change my password, and their phone service is ridiculously useless. I almost went cliff jumping today at Peace Rock in Hamburg, but then plans fell through because all of my friends work until 5pm every day, and that's pretty much when daytime activities happen, like river swimming and cliff jumping. Somehow I rallied everybody at my house for Taco Tuesday. So the 8 of us made tacos and margaritas and probably thoroughly scared my new housemate, because together I think we are a loud crew. We cause a ruckus, often, most places we go. I like having friends.
And now it's almost midnight and I'm binge watching It's Always Sunny, typing up a blog for you good people. If you're reading this right now, you're awesome, and I love you. thanks for reading.
Now I get to fall asleep and dream up some more awesome things to do tomorrow. Friends welcome, texts appreciated, snapchats preferred.
