Valentine's Day (Put Chocolate on Things)

I was busy for pretty much all of Valentine's day so I wasn't planning on doing anything with Josh. We had both bought each other things so it really wasn't a big deal. We can go on a date anytime so it wasn't important to have one on February 14. Suzannah had the idea that we should put chocolate on things. Everyone agreed and that became the plan.

We all brought things we wanted to put chocolate on and we used Suzannah's personal crockpot to heat up the chocolate. It worked really well. We had pretzels, chips, fruit, cheese, french fries, and popcorn chicken. We watched the movie Pitch Perfect and it was a fun night. 

Valentine's Day spread. 

Suzannah made cards for everyone that were themed for their preferences. I got a Doctor Who one. Jess got a Daily Grace one Josh got one with no relation to Valentine's (because he doesn't like Valentine's Day). 

Daleks will exterminate you.
No matter how much you love them.

Blizzard

It started out as an average Minnesota snowfall. Everyone on facebook was freaking out and saying school should get cancelled for Monday and this is all I saw outside the window of my apartment.

Outside my apartment at 8:34 am.

 We did get more snow as the day wore on and I was not super thrilled about having to go to work.

Outside my apartment at 11:07 am. 

Outside my apartment at 1:33 pm.

 I went to work like a good employee. I even made it home on my lunch break even though I should have just stayed there. But coming home at 11:30 at night was a different story. I took the highway like I always do but was unable to make the turn off it. I figured I could keep going and take the next turn, no such luck. I fished-tailed for quite a bit before spinning into the ditch.

Stuck in the ditch at 11:36 pm.

I had the snow shovel with me and tried to dig the car out but it was too far in the ditch, and as we've seen before Josh's car is not a fan of the snow. So I called him and Chris to come help me but we couldn't get it out. So we just left it there for the night. 

I then paid $120 to get it towed out this morning. Next time I'm just going to pay a bunch of my friends to get it out. If I paid ten of my friends $10 it would still be cheaper and we would definitely be able to get it out. 

Yep, That's My Face

I don't wear makeup very often. My mother never wore makeup and so I never learned. I'm slowly figuring it out. But I came to a conclusion yesterday. I'm really only ever willing to wear makeup if my hair looks nice. If my hair doesn't look nice then what's the point? So yeah. My hair looked nice so I put some makeup on. Not that you can tell in the pictures I took in my kitchen under a fluorescent light with my iPod but that's okay.

Winter Weather Selfie

This is my winter look. I have scarves to match my sweatshirts.

Obligatory Christmas Post That Is Posted Far Later Than it Should Have Been

So, Christmas happened. We had plenty of snow... unlike last year. I spent Christmas Eve with Josh's Dad's family. Then Christmas Day with his Mom's family. It was a pretty good time. It was Christmas, there was awkward tension, his cousin sledding off the porch into a tree, snow, presents, more food than I could eat, a puppy, some cats, air mattresses, cable TV and probably some other stuff that is equally important but I can't think of right now.

I don't have pictures of any of that.. I wish I did. Oh well.

I bought a Christmas tree for our apartment. A fake one of course. It took Jess and I forever to put together and it made me question which was more work, a real tree or a fake one. I bought one package of blue round ornaments. I figured we could make some and call it good.

Christmas tree 2012

Our angel at the top of the tree.

Jess' Tardis Ornament

Jack Daniels bottle ornament.

Jess and Chris made some ornaments. Like the Tardis ornament, there were some Pokemon (a Bulbasaur and a Pikachu), some weird dolls, and whatever else we could find laying around the apartment, which means there were a few tiny booze bottles hanging as well. It was cute.

It was a while before we had Christmas lights because the only ones you can buy anymore are the LED ones and I didn't want to pay $12 for a string of lights. Jess found some in a box in her room so she saved the day.

Josh and I decided to exchange gifts on Christmas Eve before we went to the family Christmases. We already knew what we were getting so it was just an excuse for me to rip the wrapping paper off of something. Also to play a trick on Josh.

He bought me a hand mixer.

My fancy new hand mixer to replace my Goodwill one. 

I gave him the Bestiary 3 (a book for Pathfinder which is like Dungeons and Dragons).

Bestiary 3... or is it. 

 This picture is misleading. The book is a small homemade version of the Bestiary 3. He knew I was getting it for him so I had to do something funny. I had my friends draw pages for me (because I'm not as good at art as I wish I was) and then put it all together.

Here's a few of my favorite pages.

The Batman
Like the hero, only half bat and no daddy issues.

Convenient Plot Device
Incorporeal, invisible, invulnerable, and capable of killing
anyone anywhere for any reason.
"It's only weakness is logic!" - Victim

The Dandilion
Eats people with swag for breakfast and poops class.

Rainbow Lions
Double rainbow all across the sky.

Snowstorm

It's snowed more in the last couple days than it did all last winter.

I shoveled Josh's car out to take it to work today. Made it out of the parking lot and barely past the stop sign before sliding into a snowbank. Some nice guys tried to push me out but we couldn't move it. Tried more shoveling before calling Josh to come rescue me. Another guy stopped to see if I needed help. I called into work while I waited.

Josh, Jess, and Chris helped me get out with the help of the rugs from our kitchen. So now I'm home thinking about making some fleece things to sell on Etsy.

Also here's a picture of Louis.

Louis in the snow.

Election 2012

I voted! I stuck the sticker to my computer.

Josh voted too. He wasn't feeling well so as soon as he was handed the sticker he stuck it to his face.

Yep, I voted. I feel like such an American. Also because I watched the election results come in. So I spent 4 hours staring at my computer screen watching the updates. It was more exciting than it probably should have been. But I got all of my roommates interested in it too. 

I'm also proud of Minnesota for voting against a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. That means in the future we can try to legalize it. (If the vote had passed we would have had to go through the trouble of getting rid of the amendment before it could be legalized.) Hopefully we will soon be following in the footsteps of Maine and Maryland who legalized gay marriage. 

151 Jello Shots

For homecoming weekend I made 151 Jello shots (because there are 151 Pokemon). So my fridge was full of Jello. It was awesome. I found most of the recipes online and since they turned out amazing I decided to share them here as well.

Sex on the Beach

Orange Jello

½ cup vodka

½ cup peach schnapps

½ cup cranberry juice

½ cup water

Dreamsicle

Orange Jello

½ cup whipped cream vodka

½ cup triple sec

1 cup water

Blue Firecracker

Berry Blue Jello

½ cup vodka

½ cup peach schnapps

1 cup water

Tropic Thunder

Berry Blue Jello

½ cup lemon vodka

½ cup blue curacao

1 cup water

Strawberry Lemonaide

Strawberry Jello

½ cup lemon vodka

½ cup triple sec

1 cup water

Bombpop

Cherry Jello

½ cup lemon vodka

½ cup blue curacao

1 cup water

Rootbeer Barrels

Plain Jello

1 cup rootbeer

1 cup rootbeer schnapps

Jolly Rancher

Watermelon Jello

½ cup vodka

¼ cup apple pucker

¼ cup lemon vodka

1 cup water

Grapetini

Grape Jello

½ cup lemon vodka

½ triple sec

1 cup water

Cosmopolitan

Cranberry Jello

½ cup vodka

½ cup triple sec

½ cup cranberry juice

splash of lime

½ cup water

Lemondrop

Lemon Jello

½ cup lemon vodka

½ cup triple sec

1 cup water

Rum and Coke

Cherry Jello

1 1/2 cups coke

1/2 cup rum

First Day of the Semester

Success!! My first day was awesome. I got up, made waffles for my roommates and I, and went to class promptly at 1:30 in the afternoon. It was wonderful. Today I had British Literature and Poetry Workshop. Both are classes I have previously withdrawn from. So this is do or die. I need to do well in both of these classes to graduate.

It is nice to know that I have a lot of friends in both classes so it isn't so intimidating. It seems like it's going to be a really good semester. Also both classes are only held on Monday and Wednesday leaving my Fridays wide open for work at Walmart. Isn't that sweet?

Then at 9 pm I had the anime club officer meeting where we talked about this stuff. The meeting lasted an hour and we got a lot of things discussed, much more than is in the blog post. We also talked about how the local Applebees is closed for renovations and listened to some silly puns from Michael Paulson. I'm impressed that we managed to stay on topic for most of the meeting.

Now I'm getting ready to go to Walmart to buy a copy of Madden 13 for my boyfriend. Because he absolutely has to have it right now. I'm paying because I get a Walmart discount, but it evens out because then I don't have to pay my cell phone bill which he is in charge of. So it's all good.

The New Pokemon Drinking Game

My friend Chris found this online a while back (I guess there's been several versions so this many not be the exact one). Anyway, he decided to make his own.

Chris' version of the Pokemon drinking game.

My boyfriend decided he wanted to make a new version of the game based on one of the other Pokemon games. I don't know which one because I never played any of them. But he wants to do things differently than Chris did.

So, on the spur of the moment we bought some tag board while grocery shopping went home, watched some tv and later I gridded it out in pencil, then we mapped out the outline and went over the smaller lines in pen. Then He decided where he wanted all of the characters and zones to be and Jess and I colored them in. Then she wrote all of the names on because she has prettier handwriting than me and that's as far as we got last night.

Jess coloring. Josh was trying to be dramatic.

The finished map and colored places.

We decided to take a break for the night after we wrote the names in.

Sick Refrigerator

Today is day 4 of living with my boyfriend Josh and my friend Jess. Previously Josh lived with this guy Chris and before Josh moved in Chris lived with a different guy. So Jess and I are moving into bachelor pad territory. It's kind of scary but overall not to bad because Chris is secretly a 50's housewife (drinking while doing housework).

Today I took it upon myself to clean out the fridge. Partially because it was awkwardly arranged and partly because I'm sure it hasn't been actually cleaned in years. Then again there were periods of time when Chris lived here that it was only filled with booze and condiments.

So I scrubbed down all of the shelves and surprisingly there were no mystery containers of food. Looks like Chris and Josh got rid of all of them when Chris moved out. So I was happy about that and there was a lot more room than I expected. Though if we took out all the bottles of pop we'd really have a lot of room. But whatever. If it becomes a space issue out they'll go.

Anyway, I get down to the bottom of the fridge and there are two crisper drawers (or whatever, I don't know how real fridges work). I pull them out and find a puddle of water. Which doesn't really surprise me because there was some water dripping from the freezer area into the fridge and it does leak on the floor sometimes. But it's not just water. There's something else there that's about the consistency of snot and it's disgusting. I have no idea what it is or how it got there but it almost made me throw up while cleaning it out. Super gross. But it's gone now and hopefully that will keep the fridge from leaking and hopefully it won't come back.

Get better soon fridge. We love and need you.

Oh, and for kicks here is a picture of the inside door which has the condiments and everything else.We have 4 types of mustard!! But in all fairness Josh uses some of them as dipping sauces. Also most of these are mostly empty. Weird.

Lots of condiments.

Bookshelves, Beds, and Marshall... Oh My!

So I'm super excited to be back in Marshall. I got all of my stuff moved in today, built an awesome book shelf, moved in a bed, table, and chairs. So it was very productive. Hung out with my roommates Josh and Jess and we had a really good time. Then Suzannah and some of our guy friends came over. They played video games while us girls went on a walk. It all ended up good though. But do you see this bookshelf? It's amazing. Josh is kind of freaking out that I made his room so girly. It's really not that bad.

Amazing bookshelf I put together today.

May She Rest In Peace

My Saturn died a very unfortunate death a couple months ago. I was driving to Walmart when something popped and oil went everywhere causing the car to start smoking. After carefully driving it back to campus and parking it for a few weeks Josh bugged me enough to get it towed and looked at. The verdict? Something cracked in the engine that would cost approximately $1,200 to replace. Considering I got the car for free and put $700 worth of parts in it that wasn't going to happen. 

I call the tow truck company (Southwest Towing, they're great people) to take it to the salvage yard across town. Mom said I could probably get $100 bucks for it. The same guy who towed me to the shop was the one who answered when I needed it towed again. He drove over and offered me $175 to buy it right then. It was $10 over what he figured I would get from the junkyard and I wouldn't need to pay to tow it there. He saves the cars till winter when steel prices are higher and not many people can bring cars in. So he got the title, I got a check. Everything was good. 

Sadly I left my car angel in the car but they've always been together so I guess it's fitting. 

So no more Saturn, which is unfortunate. But we had a good couple years together. I took my driver's test in that car. It died in the middle of an intersection immediately after taking that test on our way to the courthouse. That summer Indy and I stole books from a dumpster with it. Indy got hit by a deer while driving it. It lost a tire while mom drove it. It took Indy and I to the renaissance faire the first summer I owned it. It took me to Marshall for school and ran until the weather got too cold for it. Took it home, parked it in the weeds until I needed it for school again. Which you can see in the above link. I taught Steph and Kristin how to drive in it and I let Mariah get some practice in it as well. We took multiple trips to Walmart in it, packing in several people. This last school year it faithfully got me to work every weekend until the alternator belt broke. Got that fixed, then the battery was dead. Replaced that and then the engine cracked. 

I love you car. May you rest in peace. 

First Day of the Semester

Some of you might hate me for this but I only had one class today... and it was at 1:30pm. It's my writer's workshop class which is full of freshman, Dan, who has been in every workshop with me so far, and a senior who is an amazing writer looking for a different perspective. Most of these people have never been in a workshop before.

It's a 200 level class and it's with a professor I've never had before. I'm not entirely sure what I think about him. He's a little unpredictable and it makes me nervous. Eventually I'll figure him out and the class will be better.

My mom sent me back to school with a turkey that wouldn't fit in my freezer so I've been thawing it over the weekend and I'm cooking it right now to share with my friends later. Hopefully it turns out good. The last one I made was fine but it might have been a fluke.

Pennies, Lasagna, Sherlock Holmes, and Christmas Lights...

The header pretty much sums up my birthday yesterday.

Marshall, MN still doesn't have any snow and it was really sunny and warm outside. Josh took me to the park and we threw pennies off the bridge onto the frozen pond. Then we spent a while throwing rocks out onto the ice. I've decided I am willing to spend $2 to dump 200 pennies onto the ice to make a really cool picture. Especially because the ice is neat because there hasn't been any snow layers.

Later that night we made lasagna, it was the first time for both of us and we were just hoping it would turn out right. We pieced together my mom's ingredients for the cheese mixture and Josh's knowledge of how to cook the meat for his side (I'm only in it for the ricotta cheese). Then we looked up oven temp and cooking time on the internet. It turned out amazing. I was so proud of us. We ate it off the new plates my mommy bought me and we drank a lot of sparkling grape juice (I wanted to drink something classy with my lasagna and I don't like wine) out of the glasses my sister bought me.

Then we went to watch the new Sherlock Holmes movie. It was pretty fun. I was a  little unsure of why things were happening but the humor kept me into it. I am a little disappointed by the Sherlock Holmes movies because they make it look like he can predict the future instead of just being super observant. Ah well, that's hollywood for you.

After that Josh surprised me by taking me around town to look at Christmas lights. We stumbled upon the intersection of Indiana Jones and Travis and ended up on the other side of town. Luckily Josh knew where we were. I would have felt so silly if we had to use his GPS to find our way back to campus.

We went back to my apartment to eat some cake and invited my friend Suzannah over to finish off the night. Pink cake with blue swirls and dinosaur sprinkles in it and on top of it. It was delicious.

Tent Fort

I got bored and made a tent fort in my living room. My mommy was nice and sent me home with a whole bunch of sheets. If I had more sheets it would have been bigger.

End of Summer- Beginning of School Update

Soooo, it's been a while. Well I took a trip all over Iowa last week with my boyfriend. We went to visit his grandparents and in the process saw a whole bunch of his relatives and it was a really good time. We went and saw a high school football game because a cousin of his is the coach and they happened to share colors and team name with my football team from high school so that was pretty exciting. It was a really slow game though. The team we were cheering for was not having a good night and lost badly. :( But I still got to meet Josh's cousin and that was fun.

I'm back at school now and I've been super busy. I'm living in one of the campus apartments with 3 of my friends. Paris, Kristin, and Stephanie. It seems to be working pretty well so far. I don't have a meal plan so I have to buy and make all of my own food (although if I buy Kristin ingredients she'll cook for me). That's pretty sweet, mainly because she's a really awesome cook and then she gets to feed herself as well. So it's sort of a win-win situation. There have been a few minor differences that are starting to surface but I'm sure we'll get through them... or we'll all just stop being friends. I'm really hoping for the first one.

Classes have been busy for me. I've almost got all of my books and I get to start reading them... tonight. Yep, tonight I need to read some chapters for my journalism class tomorrow morning. It's really exciting though because the prof wants us to start by using a blog to get our writing out there and develop a style. I was one of about three people in the class who actually regularly uses a blog... well, I don't know about regularly. But I still have one and I still have people who actually read it. It was really fun seeing how many people at school have been following the progress of my car.

You should also be happy to know that now that I am back at school I have pretty much constant internet access and considering one of my classes makes me blog I have no excuse for not posting. Feel free to yell at me in the comments if I forget.

Without You

Without You
You there, the outgoing blonde, the city kid
Without you I would have never experienced my first heartbreak
But I also would have never experienced the best friendship

You there, the awkward brunette, you share the name of a friend back home
Without you I never would have met "The Table" and my life would have never changed
I would probably still be in my room doing math homework

You there, the outspoken mixed race girl, you terrified me
Without you I would be so much more sheltered
And there are so many things I wouldn't know how to appreciate

You there, the big guy with the propeller hat, the loud one
Without you I would have never experienced so much emotional pain
But I also never would have gone on some of the best adventures

You there, the football player turned nerd, the writer
Without you... I don't know where I'd be, probably nowhere near as happy
I'd probably still be wandering through life, waiting for you to come along

© Chloe VanDuinen 2011

Rain

So we had the first major thunderstorm of the year yesterday. It was amazing... except for the fact that I had to walk back from Applebees in it. And that was only bad because my shoes got soaked and I probably won't be able to wear them for a few days which makes me sad. But it was still really awesome and the snow is much closer to being gone now. The grass is also much greener than it was yesterday. Yay, Spring. My favorite season ever. It will also be Josh and my one year anniversary at the end of the month. This year seems to have gone so fast.

Turtles

This is the whiteboard on Josh and Vogie's door. This is what it looked like last night and then today someone wrote an addition. Funny.