that time i beat martha stewart to the punch.

Martha Stewart's Gumdrop Pops project, published in the December 2008 issue of her magazine:

Please note, specifically, the Christmas tree:

The Christmas/Hanukkah Gingerbread Fortress, constructed by the members of the Residence Hall Association executive board '07-'08, in December 2007:

Please note, specifically, the gumdrop Christmas tree with sprinkle accents (my personal brain child):

Commence freak-out at the fact that I totally came up with this idea before Martha Stewart (or at least thought of it before she ever published it somewhere... which might then suggest that we share a brain).

To further prove my point, these are the Snowman Guards of our fortress that my friend constructed compared to Martha's:

It is, however, completely clear that I trumped Martha Stewart on gumdrop figurines with regards to fortress-moat-inhabiting alligators.

Boo-freaking-YAH.

is it summer yet?

I've come to the conclusion that back-of-the-legs sunburn is one of the worst kinds, if not the worst. Never mind the fact that sunburn is one of the worst things in life just in general.

Not only is it a sauna on the third (and top) floor of this townhouse, but my legs feel exceptionally hot, and it took me quite a while to fall asleep last night. I'm pretty sure that in class today, I went back and forth crossing one leg over the other basically a hundred times, because after about five minutes, the pain on the back of my knees was distractingly irritating. Of course I get sunburn on the only part of your body that you don't realize moves all the time. Apparently, I bend and stretch my legs quite often, considering every time I move, I'm in pain.

**

Finals and moving out of your dorm should be way, way more spaced out. Right now I'm juggling an end-of-the-semester project, four finals to study for.. and an undying urge to pack everything up right now and get out of here. It's very distracting for a borderline-OCD person like myself, because going through all my crap and packing away as much of it as I can is SO much more appealing than studying or working on my project.

**

Lion's Fest was a huge success, and the best one I've seen of the three years I've been here. We had a ton of rides, an extreme amount of food, and a lot of turnout. It can't hurt that it was a beautiful 75-degree day.

The day of the event is both the best and worst day of our semester. In the morning we're filled with energy - we hop out of bed at 8am, having no problem whatsoever. Throughout the day, we're happy and hyper, with moments of panic about problems that come up. At the end of the day, the grins are still on our faces because we know it was a success. The next day, we're relieved to be done with the stressful planning of it all.

At the same time, it is a major physical challenge to be one of the organizers. We're out there at 9am lugging tables and chairs around, carrying large quantities of breakfast foods, bottled water, and frozen meat for the BBQ. Nobody sits the entire day - we're either standing or walking, or running when there's a problem. There's also the inflatables - climbing through the obstacle course or knocking each other down on the joust. By the end of the day, we break down the tables and carry them all back to "headquarters." Then we have to canvas the entire area and do garbage duty.

By the time we return to our rooms, we notice the blisters on our feet and the sunburn all over. Showers are a must. After all the sunlight, running around, hot sunburn on our faces and bodies, the warm showers and putting on slippers and sweatpants.. most of us could probably sleep for days. It's one of those very few times where I actually cannot lie down without falling asleep immediately. I made this mistake after I ate leftover BBQ food - I woke up and found that Natalie had turned out my light and put a blanket on me.

I'm gonna miss it when I go into The Real World.

i hate mondays

Today was a sucky day.

First, I started the day with a grand total of three hours of sleep. Yes, three. After spending five hours on an Excel problem that I thought would take about an hour.

I got a response to an e-mail I sent to my Accounting Information Systems professor, which borderline-angrily accused her of giving out points for an assignment based on attendance. Of course, I sent that e-mail at around 4am, after the guys told me what I'd missed on Thursday, and before actually thinking about what they really meant. So basically, the response was uber confrontational and slightly bitchy, and it made me upset. Mainly because I dislike confrontation, but also because I felt bad about the wording of the e-mail in the first place.

My e-mail seemed to hate me today, because I also got one from the recruiter I e-mailed about a summer internship, asking for my GPA. Great. Better just cross that one off the list. It was just a big slap in the face about how hard it's going to be to get an internship with the terrible grades I have.

Additionally, I went way over budget for Lion's Fest stuff, and I failed to keep everything on separate receipts. Meaning, I'm only getting about $50 in cash for my supplies, and I spent close to $100. In both cases, I bought other things for my own personal use, so I can't submit those receipts. Good job, self.

But, at the end of the day, I went out and bought new black sneakers (which I'd been wanting for a while now), a pair of cute brown sandals, and a yoga DVD. Yay, shopping.

beauty blog

I have a style complaint: gladiator sandals. Apologies to those who own a pair or want to own a pair, but I personally think they look hideous. As a nearly five-foot-seven girl, I have thoroughly enjoyed the trend of ballet flats and cute flip flops, because shoes with heels turn in me into a monster, at least height-wise. However. I do not approve of gladiator sandals. At all. And I don't think I ever will. I tried really, really hard to like them because I thought "Ou! A new style of flats! Perfect." But I couldn't bring myself to like them even the littlest bit.

So recently, I've been noticing my affinity for low-cut tops. I went to a private, Catholic high school, so we wore uniforms with dress shirts buttoned up to our eyeballs. It's taken two years in college for me to realize that, hey look! everyone is showing The Cleavage. Until recently, I felt weird and uncomfortable wearing low-cut shirts, because I felt like I was too uncovered and that everyone was staring. Plus, I've never been particularly well-endowed, so I sometimes forget that I actually do have boobs. (I think that in my mind, I'm perpetually flat-chested. What a trip I'll be in for when I have kids.) Anyway, it's quite liberating to show The Cleavage. That's shallow, but I'm not going to lie about it. It makes me feel awesome, like I've suddenly become part of the Girls with Boobs club.

**

This morning, at the ungodly hour of 3:30am, I decided to paint my nails. What I failed to realize was that my nail polish collection is probably completely expired, considering the contents of nearly every bottle had separated. I tried to remember why I had even acquired any of these bottles because, um, I've been biting my nails since age eight. I think some of them came with those massive make up kits you get when you're in middle school because you want so desperately to bulk up your make up collection, even if it means sacrificing quality for quantity. Others were purchased in fits of confidence, when I truly believed that THIS TIME I WOULD REALLY STOP. FORREALS. The rest were bought during moments of complete acceptance, when I knew their sole purpose would be for painting my toenails.

Still, I can't remember the last nail polish I purchased, which means it's definitely been a couple of years. I'm pretty sure the shelf life is somewhere between one and two years. That frustrates me, because I hate throwing out things I've never even used. It makes me feel incredibly wasteful. But I just checked out this website, and with the exception of a few of my beauty products, it suggests I need to throw out almost everything I have. At the same time, though, I've been meaning to go through my make up because I don't even use most of it anymore. I just keep holding on to stuff, like bizarre-colored eye shadow, "just in case."

**

I just realized the actual amount of things I have to do to prep for Wednesday. I don't know if I've fully explained what Lion's Fest is, but basically, it's a campus-wide carnival that my organization puts on at our school. Anyway, we've decided to provide breakfast to everyone who's participating, and I'm in charge. That means I have to buy orange juice, butter, cream cheese, and an insane amount of bagels. I'm also writing out thank-yous and making little favors for all the participating clubs, so add to my shopping list baggies and candy. I can pretty much buy all of that ahead of time, except for the bagels, so right now I'm having that internal battle of whether I should go out now or wait until Tuesday afternoon. I'm leaning towards going now because not only do I want to procrastinate, but I'm using that backwards logic of how I've already wasted so much of the day, so why stop now? Right.

So I guess that's what's happening right now - I'm going food shopping for Wednesday. Um. Bye?

ever-growing to-do list

I really shouldn't be blogging right now, considering it's way past Bedtime. Around midnight I started feeling groggy after reading more about XML and XBRL than I ever wanted to know (and that was just the first seventeen pages!). Despite being determined about going to bed, I proceeded to waste a ton of time talking to my roommates. And now it's an hour and a half later.

**

More progress is being made in my quest to stop biting my nails. I'm at the stage where they seem really long to me, but when I show them to others, they look at me and question my sanity. I also realized that usually this is my make-it-or-break-it point. The reason? They look abnormal to me, like they've grown too long and that it's time to bite them back down to size. So, I'm trying not to think about it that way and hopefully grow them to a normal length.

**

My feet look like they've lost the third world war against my shoe collection. First I made the mistake of wearing my cute adult-sized Jellies when I was showing my cousin around campus, which led the profuse bleeding from the back of my heels. Then today, it was warm enough for flip flops, but I unfortunately had to rush across campus for a meeting I was nearly late for only to leave there twenty minutes later and rush to another meeting. Bad idea, because now I have cuts on the front of my feet, too. But! I cheered myself up about the situation by buying Hello Kitty kids Band-Aids, which are super prosh.

**

Today's RHA (Residence Hall Association) meeting resulted in more projects for me to organize, because I definitely didn't have enough to do already. There's buying bagels and juice for next week's carnival, planning a pasta dinner for our 'Night Out,' and coming up with awards for everyone for our last meeting (which is in two weeks). Right. This gets added to the list I already have, which includes studying hardcore for my accounting final and, oh yeah, starting and completing my EconStat project. And getting an internship. Good.

**

Now that I've wasted another twenty minutes, which could've gone towards sleeping, I'm off to bed.