Oh, and before I forget, EJ and Shades dropped into Boston last week. Dylan and I had some time to spare, so why not?

She was belting it:



And the obligatory photo op. Jason would be so proud!

The Happiest of Birthdays for the Danciest of Bagels

HAPPY BIRTHDAY RIDLEY!

Sorry about this

but it's going to be a long one.

I was reading Meri's blog and came across this post.
and I decided that I didn't have anything to do and might as well make my own (it was a long day working the climbing wall.) And I didn't really have anywhere to post it except here (I would use facebook except some friends might recognize themselves in it)

so here goes

50 things I learned in my first term of college

1. A fold up card table has infinite application.

2. How to program computer code

3. How to make mulled cider.

4. How to hang out with a girl and not make her think I am flirting with her.

5. It sucks when she thinks I’m flirting with her anyway.

6. Legend of Zelda=Genius

7. In a choice between hanging out with your girlfriend and getting free food at a friend’s party, go for the food.

8. Malt-o-meal is God’s gift to mankind

9. When you can’t remember what the assignment is for Monday, but you have a vague sense of oppressive doom, don’t just pass it off and spend Sunday night watching a friend play grand theft auto.

10. Time alone is not unattainable—you just have to work harder for it.
    

11. Unrequited love is far more unpleasant for the crushee than the crusher.
    

12. Buying a new set of boxers is an investment.
    

13. There is no better emotion than to get through a day and feel like you actually got something done.
    

14. I am lucky, if for no other reason than the fact that I can leave my dorm door wide open, go to lunch across campus, and return an hour later confidant that nothing has been stolen.
    

15. Being the only sober person in a room is entertaining—but not for very long
    

16. I cherish a secret pride in being a nerd.
    

17. How to ask a girl out over facebook without the entire world knowing.
    

18. Some days, my mood is entirely determined by the contents of my P.O. box
    

19. I write better in the morning.
    

20. Just not the morning of.
    

21. Nobody will look askance at you for waltzing into the lounge in boxers.
    

22. There is a phallic symbol hidden in EVERYTHING.
    

23. It doesn’t matter that you know the dorm oven takes 2 hours to warm a quesadilla. STAY for the two hours and watch it because the instant you turn around to make a cup of tea black smoke and flames will begin to pour out of the oven.
    

24. How to go to a swing dance in Minneapolis where I don’t know a single person and still have a good time.
    

25. It is a bad idea to set your earphones on your computer keyboard and then come back an hour later and use said keyboard as a surface on which to cut fabric.
    

26. How to ingest lutefisk without wanting to hurl my insides over the balcony of the cafeteria.
    

27. Whenever possible, stop on your way to classes and take a pee in the bathrooms of the alumni building. They are guaranteed to be the nicest on campus.
    

28. Finishing a five page essay and then watching the entire five hours of Pride and Prejudice the night before a midterm is a perfectly reasonable evening.
    

29. A roommate who is adept at stealing dishes out of the cafeteria is a valuable commodity.
    

30. An XL shirt makes an excellent wall drape.
    

31. There are few things more frustrating than an internet illiterate professor.
    

32. You are never too old to enjoy a fort built out of couch cushions.
    

33. Never trust anything perishable to the refrigerator.
    

34. Laundry day=good day
    

35. Nobody is ever going to claim the one black thong left in the laundry room.
    

36. Sit in the front of the class. Even if you stay awake while sitting in the back, you will be distracted by the kid in front of you who has his laptop out checking facebook.
    

37. Some people just don’t require sleep. I am not one of them.
    

38. How to get through the cafeteria in 8 minutes flat.
    

39. I will never understand performance art.
    

40. When doing a group project, always volunteer to edit the paper. You will end up rewriting the entire thing, but at least it will sound decent.
    

41. How to dismantle a chair and sneak it into storage.

42. Don’t loft your bed. You may have a little less room with it on the floor, but you will have a place to sit and it won’t bang against the wall and make your neighbors think you are the world’s fastest lover every time you climb up into it.
    

43. 90% of jokes will involve the cafeteria or the sexual assault hotline in some way.
    

44. How to sit and talk with a person I know absolutely nothing about.
    

45. How to carry fifteen pounds of groceries back on the bus.
    

46. It doesn’t matter how many times I hear it or how cheesy it is, Piano Man still makes me want to cry.
    

47. Ditto with American Pie
    

48. It is a good idea to wash out your Nalgene bottle occasionally.
    

49. Coffee is the devil. Six cups of tea a day, however, is a beautiful thing.
    

50. It doesn’t matter how long the line in the cafeteria is. Calzones are worth the wait.

There, I hope you didn't waste too much of your life reading that.

miss you all

-bern

New and improved: the TASPer Music connection

Isaac and I came up with the nice idea of having a central music server so we can actually listen to one another's top five lists, and the server is now sitting in my dorm room. Check your facebook messages if you haven't already, because the instructions and such have been sent to you. Please start dumping whatever good music you have on the server, preferably in .mp3 or .m4a iPod format. Any concerns of "I can't get it working" can go here, but otherwise, enjoy :)

-Charles
PS: Does anyone know how to contact Henrik electronically?

2007: hopefully it will involve less Britney Spears coverage

Hello again, most beloved and increasingly old TASPers!

I can't believe most of us have already finished first semester of freshman year.  CRAZY.  My dad was teasing me about how I'm 1/8 done with my college career.  This is true, but I also thought the same things about high school, and it still took a long time to finish with that.

Winter break has been excellent, if not entirely restful.  I'm heading to New York tomorrow to go see "The Magic Flute" with my dad.  Then I'm going to wander the streets and The Strand on Tuesday and feel cosmopolitan while my dad does business things.

The only thing I'm nervous about it how I smell.  I'm tempted to just leave it at that, but I'll go on.  My mother and I went shopping a couple of days ago.  Aside from an awkward run-in with a girl I hadn't seen since the 8th grade (and therefore didn't recognize until 2 minutes into the small talk) and her mother (who I'm guessing, knowing my middle school and D.C., called out to us because she wanted to know where I'm going to college), it was uneventful.  Except for one thing: we swung by the perfume counter.  MISTAKE.

I sprayed perfume on my wrist and wanted to keep the other one clean so that I'd have more skin to test blush and eye shadow on.  The lady at the counter, trying to make a sale, insisted that I let her spray samples of "young and fresh" perfumes on each pinkie.  I held out my hands, unsuspecting, and she coated them with two spritzes of perfume, point bank.  I walked through the make-up section of Nordstrom, trying to keep my pinkies elevated and away from the rest of my fingers until they dried (It was of course when I was reeking that I ran into my former classmate).  But my pinkies wouldn't dry; there was too much perfume.  I eventually had to wipe them off on a tissue.

When the lady said "young and fresh," what she really meant was "baby prostitute."  Two showers, multiple hand washings, and two days later, I still reek.  My skin and nostrils gently weep.  Let my plight be a warning to you all about trusting women wielding perfume bottles.

I've decided that, for convenience, the day begins at 6 a.m.  It's just too hard to talk about today/tomorrow when you're up at all hours of the night.  I call it Meredith Standard Time, or MeST.  Therefore, even though it's technically Monday, it's still Sunday in my nocturnal-living-accommodating time zone.

Also, I have a big favor to ask of everyone.  I'm hoping to get more readers for my blog, and there's a way you can help in under five minutes:

Go to http://2007.bloggies.com and nominate my blog for one or more suitable categories like Teen, New Blog, Humorous, Underrepresented...  All you need is an email address and a couple other blogs to nominate for other/the same categories.  The deadline's Wednesday at 10 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.

Best wishes for the new year,
Meredith

Top 5 Songs That Make Me Think Less About My Smelly Pinkies:

1. Can I Get Get Get - Junior Senior
2. Mishto! - Gogol Bordello
3. In the Countryside - Benjy Ferree
4. Blackbird - The Beatles
5. Love is Lies - The Buzzcocks

Window in the skies

So, my cousin blue dotted this and overlooking a little bit of silly footage, I think it's fairly clever and says some things about music, which I'm sure we could infinitely analyze, scrutinize, or simply dismiss as obvious. But I still like it, so I suggest you check it out, ja?

And speaking of BlueDot does anyone else like social bookmarking? Because I love it.

Hey, is anyone else going to make it to the gala later this month? Calvin has a short January term, and we have break during that week after the term finishes so I'm looking forward to it, and it'd be awesome if more people could make it too. Ok. bye!

2007

Happy New Year! I hope it's grand.


Um, this is rather unrelated, but do we need to switch to beta?