Hit the Road Jack

I recently embarked on quite a great adventure: A two day drive from the east coast to my home in the midwest.

It kinda felt like one of those coming of age movies about a teenager set to find themselves, adventure, and romance on the open road.  Except I'm not a teenager anymore, there was limited adventure, and definitely no romance.  And all these things are fine by me.

I've made a summary of my trip into a list of pros and cons...

PROS                                                           CONS
-saw a high speed car chase                         -the person being pursued in the car chase cut me off
-didn't get into any accidents                        -saw a duck be hit by a car
-made friends with a trucker                         -said trucker honked at me and gave me a heart attack
-only had to fill up my tank twice                 -lost all the money I saved to tolls

Why I Can't Play Video Games (or the curse of empathy)

I decided that I was going to become really skilled at computer games this summer since I spend a lot of time on the computer (and am trying to become an ultimate nerd).  Most of that time is spent waiting for the program I am trying to write (that will perform lots of complicated math and physics things!) to run (and mock me by taking 9 years just to tell me there's an error).  It's awesomely frustrating...

But anyway so back to computer games.  I was trying to complete my quest towards becoming an ultimate nerd, but I just can't play computer games.  It's not just because I'm really unskilled (which I am) but it's because any game in which my character can plunge to its death stresses me out too much.

I'm terribly afraid of heights, and apparently that translates to computer games too.  Even when the entire game is two dimensional, thus has no depth perspective, and my character is a flat, pixelated cartoon.  When the character in the game falls (which happens a lot because like I said before I'm really awful) I get that stomach feeling like on a roller coaster.  My heart rate speeds up, I get light-headed, I feel so nervous that I want to vom, and I get really sweaty.  It's pretty disgusting.

I blame this all on the fact that I am a wonderfully empathetic person who is just too-kind hearted to ignore the pain of even a two-dimensional being.  (JUST KIDDING)

But really empathy is a curse.  Clearly the human race would be much stronger if we didn't tried to put ourselves in someone else's position and were entirely selfish...(wait, is this hitting too close to the state of the world...yikes wouldn't want to get political)  And then we'd all kill each other off...the end.

And here's where you're probably waiting for some moral cliche conclusion like
1. Why can't we all just get a long
2. Make love not war
3. Peace and harmony man

Instead I'm going to leave you with these wise words instead...

if you're ever sitting by me when I'm playing a computer game, watch out, I'll probably vom on you

Heads Will Roll

Unlike the Yeah Yeah Yeahs song, heads were not rolling on the floor...more like in the sink...and I really don't think the mice danced until they were dead...

Let me explain.

It all started when I headed into the lab for research.  Not only is the hallway leading into my lab creepy because you can't see who's coming, but it is also a spider den.  When you enter their den, these spiders aren't messing around.  They are huge and always looming above your head, threatening to drop should you take too long to pass through.  Not to mention they always build their webs right in front of the entrance to the actual lab.

Luckily for me, the boys in the physics lab connected to mine can be bribed, with treats, to take care of the spiders for me.  The usual method for taking care of the spiders is to capture them in a cup and then put them down the sink.  (it would definitely be nicer if we released them, but I can't really make demands since I'm not taking care of them myself)

On this day they had collected a cup full of spiders and went to the sink to dump them out.  Unfortunately there was something blocking the drain, two things actually...DEAD MICE!  (INCLUDING ONE HEADLESS MOUSE AND THE OTHER WITH A RUPTURED STOMACH!!!!!)

At first it seemed like some kind of threat or something.  It was like the mice had been put there as a warning.  Then I thought about it...CLEARLY IT WAS THE STUPID BABY THAT WAS HAUNTING ME!  IT WAS EVIL AND HAD RIPPED THE HEAD OFF THE MOUSE LIKE SOME KIDS DO WITH BARBIE DOLLS


For days this is what I thought had happened.  I was definitely on edge.

The truth is a lot less exciting, but still just as gruesome.  Over the weekend they sprayed the building with mouse poison.  The poison is slow-acting and just makes the mice really thirsty at first.  The logic behind it is the mice will run outside to get water and die out there.

Unfortunately they didn't take into consideration sinks.  The mice just ran right into the sink and got trapped.  So you may still be wondering what happened to the one's head.  Well mice are apparently cannibalistic when starving...I'll let you fill in the blanks.

NOT YOUR BABY

I'M BACK!

Yes, I know it's been a long time, and maybe it seemed like I had actually died, but I didn't.  I was spending some time in a magical land of fairies, castles, and haggis!  And I dipped my face (for seven seconds exactly) in this magic fairy river that keeps you youthful (and healthy!) so I managed to not be dying for at least a little bit.

But unlike souvenirs, the magic must stay in Scotland.  Unfortunately I seem to have brought something else back from Scotland...a baby.

Just before your mind jumps to any conclusions, let me just say that I didn't go to Scotland to secretly have a baby at cloister, so that no one would even know that I had been preggo.  The baby that I'm referring to is a ghost baby that has decided to haunt me.

I was unaware of its presence until recently.  I was in the lab in the creepy physics basement by myself.  I was waiting from my professor to arrive so I could ask her some questions.  There is a creepy hallway leading up to my lab (usually filled with spiders) that prevents the person in the lab from seeing who is entering the lab.  From that hallway I heard a small child crying.

At first I thought my professor had brought her small son into work, and she was coming into the lab to see how things were going.  But after waiting a few minutes and having no one enter the lab I went into the hallway.  There was no one there, and the crying stopped.

So I went upstairs to see if she was in her office.  There was no one upstairs.  So I started to freak out a bit.  But I just went back to the lab and continued as per usual.

By the end of the day I had completely forgotten about it.

Later that night, however, my friends and I were watching a scary movie and I looked down at my shirt. There appeared to be a coffee stain on it.  But this was not just any coffee stain, IT WAS IN THE SHAPE OF A BABY'S FOOTPRINT.  It literally looked like a baby with a dirty foot had walked up my side.

Now you  might think that it was just my imagination over-reacting.  BUT when I asked my friends what it looked like, they also said it looked like a baby's footprint!

Since then the baby has caused a little mischief around the house.  He turns the emergency lights on and off, but only when I'm downstairs by myself.  Things will fall off the counter in the kitchen.  Weird sounds, like knocking, happen and cannot be explained.

so far it hasn't been anything malicious, but as I've learned from my extensive knowledge of scary movies, small children ghosts/demons are the absolute worst!