Monday, December 12, 2011

Ice Princess

Did you know . . . that I share my birthday with a NATIONAL holiday? Pretty cool, huh?

I have recently been informed that August 12th is National Middle Child's Day. I mean, you just can't make these things up. Or maybe you can only make these things up? But I am not. This is a real day.

Too bad I wasn't born on August 6th though, National Wiggle Your Toes Day. I mean, that's cause for celebration. Ooo! Or October 14th, National Be Bald and Free Day. Because every other day we subjugate our nation's bald people to ridicule and physical violence. Stupid baldies. Makin' the world a smoother place.

Speaking of birthdays, today is Zara's birthday so we're going as a group into town to celebrate with Christmas-themed birthday festivities! (Also today is National Ding-a-Ling Day. What . . . what does that even mean?) So I'm very excited about that.

Allllso speaking of birthdays, this past Wednesday was my friend Maria's birthday (also National Cotton Candy Day . . . which is ironic because Zara and I made jokes about Cotton Candy while we were there. Because she calls it something different. Obviously. Also, I'm not sure if that's ironic. Honestly, I don't really know what ironic means anymore.)

Anyway, we went with a big group of people into town to celebrate her birthday among all the Christmas festivities. First we went ice skating! Outside! This was my first time ever ice skating outside. I felt like I was in New York. Except maybe 1/8 the size. In fact, this ice "rink" was so little, we started getting dizzy going around and around.

We look a lot colder than we actually were.

Now before I go on, Ice Skating, I have a bone to pick with you. You're great fun, you really are. But like baby carrots and anything by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, there is a limit to my ability to enjoy you.


This is a graph where x is the amount of time I've spent ice skating and y is my overall level of enjoyment. If you look, you'll see when I first begin, the level of enjoyment is increasing proportionally to my skating ability. Pretty soon there's a plateau and a slight dip as the realization that I've been going around in a circle for 30 minutes kicks in, bringing forth an undeniable monotonous existence. But you can see the level of enjoyment does manage to increase yet again, brought on by the creation of reckless ice games, like "whiplash" and "I can do a triple axel" and "push me backwards!" But then, you'll see, there's a distinct point where feelings of "MY FEET ARE ABOUT TO FALL OFFFF" kick in, and I don't care how much fun sliding around on frozen water is, nothing in the world is more important than getting off the ice RIGHT NOW.

But, as with baby carrots and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, I never learn. And I will continue to ice skate in 1 hour intervals until my feet finally do fall off. Starting tonight.

(I did manage to remain vertical the entire night though. Vertical Molly is a much better skater than Horizontal Molly. She also has fewer bruises, warmer hands, and a greater sense of self worth.)

Then after we went skating, a few of us went and got warm drinks from the little German village and hung around until dinner. ( I tried mulled wine for the first time! It's basically just hot wine with lemon in it. And maybe cinnamon. It was very delicious.)

And then we went to dinner at La Favola, the same restaurant where I got that really yummy pizza earlier this semester. I got another really yummy pizza with eggplant on it. Mmmmm . . .

Then I went back to my dorm. And continued working on my archaeology project.

Which brings me to story #2 . . .

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Archaeology. (Which I only recently realized has two "a"s. The French word only has one. But I feel like that second "a" is superfluous really. Maybe "a" just didn't like being one-upped by "o." A's a very jealous vowel. He doesn't like when other vowels get more attention than he does.)

Anyway, my archaeology presentation. I was supposed to give a 25 minute presentation to my classmates on Friday on ethnoarchaeology. This was, how do you saaay, daunting.

While I was presenting, I felt a sense of . . . um . . . insurmountable self consciousness?

Everybody hates me. This project is so boring. That girl who just went, her project was so good! And so interesting! About Egypt! Who doesn't like Egypt! But not ethnoarchaeology. Who doesn't like ethnoarchaeology? All of these people. Wait, where you goin', girl in the front row? I'm not done yet. Oh God, why are you leaving?? This is a disaster. My slides have like 3 words on them. Oh look, that slide's blank. Well, that wasn't supposed to happen. Ah well. Screw this.


But I did it. And by the time I was done, all my classmates' feet were really cold, 'CAUSE I ROCKED THEIR SOCKS RIGHT OFF. Apparently. 


I talked with my teacher after class, and she told me it was really good (?)! At first I thought she was kidding. I thought, "That is not a funny joke. I am too fragile for not funny jokes." But she wasn't joking! I couldn't believe it. I was shocked. And not like "humble" shocked. Like "what are you talking about, I have no idea what I just said" shocked.

I usually like to leave you with some sort of resolution. So, um.
Don't drink contaminated water.

Amitiés :)

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