WARNING: LONG CHOPPY POST AHEAD
Since I have been neglecting my faithful readers so much lately, I will now provide you with a summary of what the past few weeks have been like for Bennett.
Because Chronological order is lame and paragraph form is boring, I will tend to the needs of the attention deficit in this post by once again listing all these things ALPHABETICALLY–the fun way. This is effective because everyone loves alphabetizing their bookshelf from time to time, alternating between author name and title. Or if you are like me you will sometimes sort based on color, type, or size. But this way you don’t feel obligated to read/skim/ignore a huge entry full of text, but instead you can look and pick out and just read about the things that look interesting to you. I call it “itemizing.” ;)
I tried providing an interesting thing for each letter, but it was hard to come up with 26 different things. So four of the things below did not actually happen. See if you can guess which four are not true! I will reveal the answers in a comment, revealed later in the week (this my way of getting you to keep checking my blog EVERY DAY).
A – Aged. My grandparents are aged. Mom, Dad, and I took a trip to visit them for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. It was a tough day. Grandpa isn’t doing too well. I feel it brought our family closer together anyhow.
B – Baking. Did a little bit of baking over the break. My mom and I baked a couple of pizzas, which turned out well. The only problem was one of them was too close to the bottom or something and its crust got burnt.
C – Cell Phone. Because of technology like my cell phone and the internet, I was able to keep in touch with special college friends via text message, phone call, and facebook. I was trying to imagine what being a college student during Christmas break would have been like before all of this technology. I can’t imagine it…
D – District of Columbia. I spent almost a week with my aunt and uncle who live outside of Washington, D.C. (our nation’s capital) and spent some time in downtown D.C. and visiting with family members. It was great. I’ve been there several times before, but this time I got to see the World War II monument, the botanical gardens, and the National Cathedral. I also got to see the White House’s giant Christmas tree and Menorah, as well as little Christmas trees with ornaments from every state and territory. Here’s some photograph evidence:
E – Eating. Usually when I go home from break I eat too much, especially during holidays when everyone likes to give you things made out of chocolate and sugar and artificial flavors. And then I gain weight. So at the beginning of this break I weighed myself on our bathroom scale. I weighed approximately 214 pounds. So I made my goal to be down to 204 pounds by the end of break. Right now I have two days left of break and I am down to 217.6 pounds. My new goal: 214 pounds.
F – Finals. Finals week was like an epic adventure, taking notes on hundreds and hundreds of pages of multiple books, typing long papers, and writing so much for essays my hand started cramping. It was fun. I think Junior year has been the most challenging so far, but it is good because it was never more than I could handle. I did the calculations and I read about 2,119 pages of books (something I could not have done without the reading training help of the academic support office at MVNU freshman year). And the great thing is that I learned so much by doing all of that reading. I feel smarter because of it. And I like learning now. It’s weird.
G – Geico Commercials. Because I am at home, I am watching considerably more television than I do while living on campus. And I am noticing that Geico commercials air an average of twice per commercial break. But I like a couple of the newest ones (namely, the Charlie Daniels and the Waltons one). They make me LOL out loud. I tried to find good quality video of them online for you, but I couldn’t find them. Here’s a link to a page with several of their commercials though: http://www.geico.com/about/commercials/
H - Haircut. I got my cut by my hometown barber, Mr. Bunting. He’s friendly. He still remembers my name even though I haven’t been there in a while. Here is a picture of my awesome haircut:
I - Itemizing. Itemizing is something you do instead of standard deductions on your taxes. I did not do my taxes during break, but I like the word “itemizing.” NOTE: This does not count as one of the four invalid entries.
J – Jesse. Jesse is the name of my older brother. He came for a visit. During his visit we played games, watched movies, and went to stores. We also saw Sherlock Holmes. I liked the music and the Londony feeling I walked away with.
K – Kisses. No, not the sloppy wet kinds, but the Hershey kinds. My mom gave me a bag full of Candy Cane flavored Kisses for Christmas, which are one of my favorite kinds. I like them because they are made of white chocolate. My mom and other friends say this is “fake chocolate.” I say it is “the best chocolate.”
L – Licking. Now even though I love candy cane kisses, I’m not a huge fan of candy canes. Peppermint isn’t my favorite thing to taste and sucking on an awkward curved sticky cane made out of peppermint that–unless you chew on it–forms a razor sharp needle that pokes wholes in your tongues does not sound like a good time to me on most days. But every year at Christmas time, these canes present me with this challenge: “Consume me in my entirety without chewing or breaking me.” And each year I say, “I will do it!” and carefully lick it. But each time the same thing happens! I either impulsively and involuntarily break off a piece with my teeth due to a distraction, or it breaks. This puts me through an agony more painful than that which that the abrasions in my mouth from the jagged point give me.
M – McChickens. I know, I write about these things all the time. But it is beneficial for me to write about them for two reasons:
1) They are awesome.
2) I did some research on my blog stats, and several people find my blog because they search for “McChickens” or “McDonald’s” in the WordPress search query. Does this make me a sell-out? Probably.
So during this break I ate at McChickens five different times, in four different states. Here are each of the times:
1) I ate three at a McDonald’s for lunch on my way to DC driving on Route 50. This McDonalds was in Romney, West Virginia. These three did not taste as good as usual, kinda weird.
2) I ate three for lunch in Washington DC. This McDonald’s was underground nearby a Metro Station, on Connecticut Avenue. These were the best tasting McChickens I had all break, and the service was excellent.
3) I ate three for lunch on the way home from DC off the interstate in Maryland.
4) I ate one near midnight in Marietta, OH, on a night when I was doing some shopping for stocking stuffers for my parents (see O-Onions below). I was supposed to eat at Tim Horton’s that night with a friend, but he ended up not being able to, so I satisfied my accumulated hunger by grabbing a quick snack.
5) Our family at a McDonald’s on the way to my Grandparents on Christmas Eve. This was a fancy McDonald’s. Because it was a special day, I ate 4. And split Holiday pies with my mom.
N – New Year. I like New Year’s Eve. I’m a sentimental person, so I like to spend time reminiscing and looking forward to an exciting new year with optimism. I always ask myself, “Look at where I was a year ago. How many people do I know now that I didn’t know? Who I am I now that I wasn’t? And look at a year from now. Will I be any different? Will life be more exciting? Will my future be more clear? Will I have had any big heartaches? Will I have met that special someone? Will I know that special someone is that special someone?” Questions like that–at that point in time anyway–do not drive me crazy, rather they make me feel fuzzy inside.
O – Onions. I asked Santa’s permission to fill my parents’ stockings this year. I didn’t want to get them candy, but something more healthy-like. So I bought one of my dad’s favorite foods: Onions.
I filled their stockings with an assortment of onions, shallots, elephant garlic, and a banana holder. I felt they were the best stockings ever. We have enjoyed them in our salads, on our pizzas, and in our breaths.
P – Puzzle. There is a family game store in our mall. It had a 50% off sale. I used to love doing puzzles all the time, and I found this amazing one that is actually a globe. It’s great because it is round, antique-ish looking, and sepia tinted! It’s also kinda like a real-life wikipedia.org homepage globe.
Q – Quadractor. This was my best Christmas present by far. It’s a small tractor/logging skidder that weighs between 500 and 900 pounds, uses a 8hp Briggs motor, has four wheel drive, four wheel steering, and 31 inch ground clearance. I use it for skidding trees out of the woods. Here is a picture of me sitting in the seat:
R – Route 50. For kicks I drove most of the way to my Aunt and Uncle’s house using Route 50. It was amazing. The mountains and curves were so much fun to drive on. Someday I want to drive completely across the nation just on Route 50 (it goes the whole way) and perhaps stop at every McDonald’s and rate their McChicken sandwich. I could not return back from D.C. on Route 50 because of the threat of…
S – Snow. It snowed several times during break. Because of an invevitable snow storm I had to leave from D.C. a whole day early. It also provided a fun drive back from my Grandmother’s house.
T – Teeth. I have teeth. And so I periodically go to the dentist. I went to the dentist during this break to fix a chipped filling. It’s neat because in his offices pinned to ceiling are these inspirational posters with all these motivational quotes about lemons and lemonade, etc.
Speaking of teeth, I also found a great deal on soft-bristled toothbrushes at my local Dollar General Store. They had packs of six for a dollar! I bought 3 packs.
U – Urdu. Since I had so much extra time during break, I decided I would learn a new language. So I began learning the Central Indo-Aryan language called “urdu,” spoken in India and Pakistan. Since roughly 350,000 people speak this language in the USA, I thought it might come in handy. The most difficult part was learning the 38 letters in their alphabet that doesn’t look anything like our alphabet. I will now teach you a phrase in this language:
When I (or anyone else) approaches you speaking Urdu, simply respond with this phrase:
میں اردو نہیں بولتا (pronounced mai urdū nahī boltā)
This means “I do not speak Urdu.”
V – V-Necks. One of my Christmas gifts was an Old Navy gift-card. So I went to Old Navy and bought socks, white t-shirts, and a few other things. Among these few other things were TWO v-necks–a brown one and a blue one. They are sweet.
W – Wall E. This is probably the most AWESOME thing ever. My brother found this in a Goodwill in Michigan for 99 cents:
A life-size Wall-E.
X – X-box. I do not have an X-box. So I did not play an X-box. And I have not played on an X-box in a long time. And I feel great.
Y - Yoghurt. This break, I did a lot of baking, but I also made something called yoghurt. This is a lot like Yogurt, except it is spelled differently. This is a dairy product produced by bacterial fermentation of milk. Fermented lactose brings about lactic acid, acting on milk protein to give the yoghurt its texture and tangy taste. I made my yoghurt by taking a culture of Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus and Streptococcus salivarius subsp. thermophilus bacteria and adding it to heated milk. Then I let it cool. Delicious!
Z – Ziggurat. Because of all the snow we received during the break, I decided it would be a good idea to build something with it. Snowmen, snow forts, and even snow igloos seem so passé. So I decided to build a lifesize snow ziggurat. You know what a ziggurat is? They were large pyramid-like monuments built in the ancient Mesopotamian valley as well as the western Iranian plateau. Here is a picture of my snow ziggurat:
