On Becoming a Person

Oh, there can always be more reminiscing.  John could probably write like Ode to Akron I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII and maybe even VIII just from his own stories before my time, but I thought I would include a few more things that continue to make me smile, even to this day.

#1) This was before my time, but John and a few of his friends took their turn painting the campus rock that fraternities and sororities are notorious for painting with their Greek letters.  Under the cloak of darkness, they painted “Anti-Frat” on it, and then—oh funny of funnies—Paul’s name in huge letters.  If you know Paul, you know why this is awesome.

#2) More destruction ensued at Andrea’s small group Christmas party where we decided to get all Office-Space like and smash an old printer in the street.  We took a sledge hammer to it and everything.  This is the first time random drunken Akronites walking the street have ever looked at me like I was doing something cool.

#3) The night of this mullet wig…

Was also the night of this amazingly hideous costume of Sarah’s…

And Lauren’s infamous last-minute “white trash” outfit (oh, the joys of creative improvising!)…

I think this was the same night that we (me, Andrea, Sarah, and Lauren) went joyriding in the costumes and were hollering at random guys on the streets.  I don’t think any of them were interested though, despite our insane attractiveness.  Shame.

#4) And this beauty, oh, it speaks for itself.

#5) The very night John and I met, I was over at 319 Spicer newspaper fighting with Adam and some of the other guys there.  Paul was video taping, so we have the very moment John became interested in me caught on film, quite literally.  That’s him in the red shirt in the background.  I had bruises from the newspaper hits on my legs for like days after this fight, but in the end, clearly it was worth it :).

#6) The “joint” birthday party of Lauren and Charlotte was one of the first parties that John and I ever attended together (save for the western shirt party, maybe).  Despite this, everyone knows how little it takes to have a good time!

#7) This past summer when I went to visit Sarah in Columbus, she, her brother, and I went bowling.  Unfortunately, neither her brother nor I had worn socks down for the visit, so we all ended up borrowing socks from Sarah.  Quite a riot.  At the bowling alley, it was league afternoon for the seniors, and we discovered that her brother is quite adept at taking pictures of unsuspecting victims without their knowledge.  We ended up with a few WINNING sideways shots of the 80-year old couple bowling at the lane next to us.

In addition, this amazing sign was in the locker room.  Read it closely, very closely, and you might cry like I did.

#8) Trying on clothes with Sarah in a disgusting vintage store dressing room in Columbus.  Yeah, that is a mysterious dried white substance cascading down the mirror.

There are probably many, many more things I could share, but likely do not have cool pictures for, so I think I might stop here.  I will leave you with the inspiration that started it all: my brother Andrew, me, and Zippy (P.S.—I love Zippy; she is my hero; do not even try to debate with me on this because you will surely lose).

So my awesome little brother Andrew is coming to Akron as a freshmen in the fall, and I am so excited.  John and I visited him at work at Applebee’s tonight and spent some time with him and one of his other friends who is currently at Akron.  Naturally, lots and lots of undergraduate University of Akron stories ensued during this conversation.  For the sake of the times, I figure I should post some of my/our favorite and/or most outrageous Akron memories, in no particular order.  Enjoy!!

#1) My freshman year, living in Bulger residence hall, a few of my friends and I thought it would be a great idea to put a couch in the elevator, bring in some snacks, and just chill out and ride the thing up and down.  It was awesome because we basically got two reactions from students entering the elevator: “What the f---?!  I’ll get the next one,” or “Oh, awesome.  I’ve got some pop in my room, let me grab it and I’ll join you.”

#2) Putting on the Visions play with the Mosaic ministry was completely awesome.  I don’t have many words to describe it given that this one is kind of sentimental… but I have to post it first in order for #3 to make much sense.

#3) The very first night I ever saw John was actually half a year before we technically met.  It was the after-party for the Visions production.  Some of the folks in Mosaic were John’s roommates, so he lived at the house where we held the party.  That night his previous girlfriend Sarah had just broken up with him, so when some of us arrived for the party, it was terrible timing because he was sitting on the living room couch devastated.  I actually did not remember this until he shared it with me later and I was like, “I was at that party!” and he was like, “You were?!”  Hilarious.

#4) My freshman year we also decided it would be fun to play hide and seek in some of the classroom buildings on campus.  The best one by far was Crouse Hall.  Once you were found, you had to be tagged before it counted.  I found the most amazing hiding place ever in the auditorium room.  I climbed up a ladder that went to the ceiling, and at the top of the ladder was a trap door, and I pushed open the trap door and it led right out to the roof.  Nobody found me.

  <—Here is the roof of the building!

#5) One night after church, John and I found a Bud Light van parked in the Chapel parking lot.  We thought this was hilariously ironic given that everybody in ministry at the Chapel has to sign a no-drinking contract, so naturally we had to take pictures with it and expose the scandal.

#6) One late night at Steak n’ Shake there was this homeless guy just kind of hanging out in there.  My friend Emily started talking to him (after he had told her that he thought she was beautiful), so eventually we convinced him to take a picture with us.  The results was, in my opinion, quite sexy.

#7) Freshmen year in Robertson Dining Hall was amazing.  My friends and I would always meet at 5pm to eat dinner together in this little wing of the hall that we affectionately dubbed “The Loge.”  The ceiling panels were like those styrofoamy kind, so somebody started a trend of throwing silverware at the ceiling to see how much we could get stuck in there.  By the end of the year, there was quite an assortment.  Amazingly, spoons stuck the best.  Later, the Loge was eventually closed during dinner and nobody was allowed to sit there.  Likely because of us.  Shaaaame.  That guy in the front is Alex.  He later became famous by getting a picture of him and his friends at a UA football game painted on the side of a campus van.

#8) At Fusion Awards, John played a song with his band, and I wore a dress made entirely out of duct tape.  There really isn’t anything else to say about that because the picture will speak for itself.  Afterwards we went straight out to eat and I continued to wear the dress.  I have never gotten that many strange looks in my entire life, even in Akron.

That same night, Adam and his twin brother Aaron wore kilts.  That was also amazing.

#9) I will never, ever forget the night that I was traumatized by walking in on my freshman dorm roommate and her boyfriend having sex.  Adam was there, so after I ran screaming from the room he walked in, flicked on the light, walked over to their bed and said, “I see you’re having sex, eh?  And you’re naked too.” Then he walked to the door, said, “Have a nice night,” flicked the light off, and left.

#10) That one winter when we had the massive ice storm (also freshmen year), the fire alarm in my door went off at night and everyone had to file outside.  When I stepped out, the ground was so icy that I promptly slipped and landed flat on my back.  I laid there for a few minutes before I decided to get up.  Adam and Sean came over to meet me, and we decided to make a night of it by sledding down all the staircases on campus on deflated cardboard boxes.

<—This is where it went down, literally

#11) At another Fusion Awards my senior year, Sarah wore this amazing costume, complete with afro wig, and roller blades.  I LOVE THIS GIRL.  We have also gone rollerblading through downtown Akron.  Equally amazing.

#12) Of course, there was also me and Sarah that one time with a statue of Ronald McDonald…

#13) One of the first times I came home from college to see my family, Andrew and I stuffed ourselves with leaves instead of actually raking the back yard.  It is more fun to be chubby and pregnant looking than it is to do real work.

#14) Bill’s wedding… Bill’s wedding… when James and his girlfriend wanted to stay at the cheapest motel in the DC area that they could find, and they ended up at The Royal Inn, complete with a liquor store and a porn store almost on the property, as well an endless supply of drug dealers floating in and out of the parking lot.  They even had the exact same fake hunting dog painting hanging on two different walls in the room.  This was so classic, Tim, Nicki, John and I stuck around a little longer just to experience the sheer joy of a place more ghetto than Akron.

       (This is what you do, I guess… move the room furniture to the sidewalk outside the motel.  It’s like a patio.  Waaaay classy.)

#15) I must not forget the nights when Joe Tucker, Alex and I used to go running around downtown Akron and we would sing Eye of the Tiger at the top of our lungs.  This proved to be somewhat difficult given that none of us knew all of the words to the song, so we would often have to improvise. Duh duh duh duh, duh duh duh, duh duh duhmmmmm….

Me and Alex at a party                                         Joe Tucker

--Peace, y’all... Part II soon to come!!

It was kind of a shock to look at the headline news on my homepage this evening and see that Michael Jackson has passed away.  While I wasn’t a huge fan of his music, I do think that he had some good songs.  So I just spent like an hour watching news footage online (since we don’t get any TV channels) that was mostly documentaries about MJ’s life.  Lots of sad stuff there.  It kind of irks me how the media plays up Jackson’s “strangeness” so much.  I mean, I know we have all done weird things at different points in our lives and there are plenty of eccentric people out there, but it seems like if you are already a star and you do eccentric things, that makes you like 500% weirder than anyone else doing the same stuff.

I will always like that Free Willy song, no matter how retarded it actually is.  I think I owe that to my 7-year-old self.

My masters’ thesis project needs to be completed by August and then I will get my M.A.!  That is completely exciting and awesome, but the only problem is that I am pretty far behind on finishing it.  Right now I am working on cleaning and preparing my data to be analyzed; I still have to run the 13 confirmatory factor analyses and some correlations, and then write up the results section and make some pretty figures and tables and write up the discussion and then submit it to my readers and then sit before the committee and defend it.

The thesis itself is looking at client expectations about counseling, and I am using archival data from our psychology department counseling clinic that has been collected from clients who have come to our clinic over the past 10 years.  Yeah.  There’s a ton of data.  I am looking at three separate measures—the EAC, the PDS, and the demographics questionnaire—and all of it was on paper, so I had to enter every single item from like 800 client files into the computer by hand.

Needless to say, I did not want to undertake this enormous task myself, so I had some undergraduates seeking research experience for their vitas help me out and in return, I gave them a nice paragraph they could use in graduate school interviews or essays.  Not too shabby of a gig, considering the lack of time I have had this past semester to enter the data myself.

But here is the fun.  I was going through the clients who skipped questions on the PDS (aka have “missing data” for those items), and for several of them, I noticed that what the data file said was missing did not match up with what was on the original paper PDS from the client.  Lo and behold, I scour my electronic dataset and find out that in one place an ID number was skipped, and so the data in the file stopped matching up with what was in the paper.  So I ended up with a giant stack of these to go back and re-enter:

Which, of course, puts me even more behind… not too bad though because I can get it all done today and then breathe a huge sigh of relief whenever I go to sleep tonight… if that even happens, haha.

I LOVE DATA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Can you sense the sarcasm here?!)

Let it be known that I am an Arby’s junkie.  A regular roast beef sandwich and curly fries and an iced tea can cure just about any ill for me. Ah, yes.  Now mind you, graduate school has been the cause of a lot of ills in the past two years.  That means—you guessed it—a lot of Arby’s.  Also, let it be known that the Arby’s in North Canton (I’m not sure if it is other locations too or just this one) gives away free stuff every Wednesday.  Once a month they will give you a free roast beef sandwich just for buying a drink.  That day is actually tomorrow.  I can never pass it up.

So, given that background, it probably comes as no surprise that the lady at Arby’s not only recognizes me, but now she knows my order by heart.  I was in there for lunch the other day, and I had hardly even approached the register when she said, “A #1 with curly fries, right?” and smiled.  “Yup,” I said, and smiled back.

I think she is absolutely one of the kindest and most hard-working women ever, but I can’t help but be a little bit mortified that I come in that restaurant so often.  I won’t stop though.  I love my combo meals, and no amount of embarrassment can tear me from them!

The family who lived in our apartment before us dug a small garden around the back patio.  This spring the garden was quite amusing for me because all these different bulb flowers that were planted by the folks before us kept blossoming.  That was a surprise.  But now that it is summer, the garden has become fairly annoying.  It is always full of weeds, and there is this one enormous overgrown bush taking over the patio that I sort of despise.  The renters before us must have planted the bush as well, because none of the other back patios are landscaped.  I think the bush is ridiculous.  Surely they planted it to create a barrier to block their view of the Fischer’s Foods parking lot across the way.  Perhaps this worked at one time, but by now the bush is so large that it engulfs half of the patio and drops little seedlings all over the place.  And honestly, bush or no bush, I can still tell that there is an unsightly grocery store trash compactor next door.  Who are you fooling?

Anyway, this afternoon when I got home from school I decided it was finally time to go outside and weed the garden.  You would not believe it, but it took me about an hour and I filled three bags with the weeds I pulled.  Some of the weeds were stubborn and I had to dig them out with a shovel, but after I was finished it looked pretty good.

Fast forward to dinner.  John asks me what I did today, and I proudly tell him that I weeded the garden when I got home and now it looks a lot better.  I remind him too that there was nothing I could do to improve the awful bush, and that it should just be chopped down.  After dinner, I start on the mountain of dishes (spaghetti night will do that, and they had already been piling up from the day before) and John is puttering around collecting assorted items.  He heads for the back door, the one that goes out to the patio, and I look up from the sink and say, “What are you doing?”  He gives me his most innocent smile and says, “Playing.”  In retrospect, I think I should have been more concerned.  Way more concerned.

So like ten minutes later, I am working through the dishes when I hear a knock on the sliding glass door.  John is in the window, motioning frantically.  “What?!” I yell.  He opens the glass door.  “Come see this!  Quick!”  I hold up a rubber glove.  “Just a minute,” I say, but the door is already sliding shut.  I rinse the dishes in the sink and take off the gloves, find my flip flops and stomp outside.

The first thing I saw was a hastily erected fire pit in the grass in our yard.  The second thing I saw was that the fire pit was made out of the rock borders lining our garden—the same borders that I had reset and straightened after my weeding only an hour or so ago.  The third thing I saw was that the lawn inside the fire pit was blackened and on fire.  And the fourth thing I saw was John making the flames bigger and bigger.

Like I said, I should have been more concerned.

“Watch this,” he says, and sprays the fire pit with an aerosol can of Camp Dry, waterproofing spray for hiking equipment.  The flames shoot up in the direction of the spray and dance across the yard.  He does this like three or four more times before I can bring myself to say anything.  I will admit, the flames themselves floating in midair were very cool.  I will also admit that nothing else about this spectacle seemed cool in the moment. 

Finally I catch my breath and I say, “What are you doing?!  You can’t just build a fire anywhere you want to!”  John smiles at me with that innocent look again and says, “Look who you are talking to, dear.”  I grimace.  “You’re burning the grass.”  He says, “So?  It’s just a little patch.”  I throw my arm in the direction of the garden rocks lining his fire pit.  “Those are for our garden!  I just finished putting them all back up!”  Again, he says, “So?  It’s all right.”  I throw up my hands.  “You’re turning them all black!”  He dumps another round of Camp Dry on the fire and the flames shoot up again.  “I can’t believe what you are doing here,” I say.  “It’s fun,” he says.  “You are wasting all the Camp Dry!” I say in frustration.  “It’s all right,” he says again, “It’s the only thing we have that was flammable.”  I am almost beyond words at this point.   There really isn’t anything more to say, anyhow.  The damage has already been done.  I turn around and go back inside the house to finish my dishes.

When John does come in, he throws the now-empty bottle of Camp Dry in the trash.  “Is the fire out?” I ask.  He nods.  “Go throw some water on it,” I say, “Just in case.”  He looks at me.  ‘The fire is already out.”  I throw another dirty dish into the sink.  “Do it anyway, just to humor me.  Please.”  He does this.  When he returns, he says he will chop down the bush that I hate.  A peace offering.

I continue with the dishes.  John disappears to the garage for a time, and then a few minutes later I hear loud hacking noises coming from outside.  I try to ignore the noise because I know it means the bush is dying and I feel kind of guilty, but eventually my curiosity gets the best of me.  I remove my rubber gloves once again and go outside. 

John is hacking the bush’s branches off with a machete.  Literally.  “I thought you said we had shears,” I say.  “We do,” he says, “But this is easier.” Riiiight.

The bush is gone now.  John tied the gigantic bundle of branches up with twine and dragged them across the parking lot to the dumpster and tossed them in.  That pretty much filled the entire thing.  I have a clear view of the Fischer’s parking lot and the trash compactor, and now my patio can once again see the sunlight.  Between the remains of hacked-off branches and the charred circle of grass, I guess we are doing pretty well.

Well, I decided to jump back on the blogging bandwagon after being off of it for a couple of years.  Let's see how this works out.  Wish me luck!