The Written Version

Some stories are lived, some stories are written, some stories are read, and some stories are seen. This is a synopsis of a year-long story about a girl who went back to college for her sophomore year...the written version.
My original purpose in compiling this was to give a visual aid to the places and people that had the most impact on me this last year, but I think this blog is just as much a benefit to me as it is to anyone else. I miss all this and it's great to relive so many of these memories.
So enjoy!

Old friends and Gorecki (dining center) booths. Why does everyone love the booths so much! They're constricting, and difficult to get out of. This year I learned to like....tolerate  them because it's what all the kids are doing these days. Booths, beets, battlestar galactica.
But anywho...this is Katie. Katie Renier. She likes to smile, and in doing so, she inadvertently makes me smile! Often. She didn't want this picture taken. O.o

These are the high tables. And this is Dan, of course. First of all, he chose his eating spot well. It's so much less constricting and it's a better vantage point. Secondly, having a really old friend in school with me this semester was super nice. Don't tell him, but I brag about him to all my other friends. I say he's super cool and he's a micro-prodigy, which he is.





Let's see....

Ahh...a view that has become oh so familiar. Speaking of vantage points, there's no better place to get some quality creeping done than in the library, especially from behind the front desk. Mmhhmm...
Also, fun chairs to spin in.

My favorite sight every day. Granted, she might have been a little off guard at the time of this picture, and she might be opposed to it being on the internet, but two years of rooming with this girl helped shape the best two years of my life. I hope that comment makes up for this post.

Where to begin?
<---This is Brian. He likes computers, cameras, Ross Hodapp, and not smiling in pictures. He used to be a skater boi way back in the day, but...old habits die hard. You can often find him with a sundrop (or beer) in his hand, in his car, or on an adventure.






^ This is Ross. One of the few humans I know who's fluent in both English and Lolcat. If you
don't know what Lolcat is, do as Ross would do and Google it. He likes computers too,
and really loud music...and kittehs. Beware entering his room without
warning because he feels most comfortable in his natural state - boxers.

And this is where they live! Vincent 80...some crazy funny stuff happens here. Very few kitchen appliances, but the futon is pretty comfortable. I feel like half of my time was spent here and out of habit I may walk through the front door next year and happen upon some unsuspecting strangers.

"God gave us music so that we might pray without words"

I can't even begin to count how many hours were spent in front of the piano...hours of simply releasing emotions onto a willing (not to mention inanimate) object and making music out of it. God gave me the gift of music because he knew I needed therapy.
I also thought it was fitting how the practice rooms resembled white padded cells.
This happens to be my favorite piano. It's a Yamaha :)

The infamous Quadrangle. The deathly stairs. Two times a day, every single day of the week. This isn't the end of it, Quad....I'll be back next year and you won't beat me so easily next time.

And I think I'm gonna end on a good-looking note. At such a small school, you start seeing the same faces every day and you get used to seeing those faces. You might not even know the person behind the face, but when school ends and you no longer see those faces, you miss those people. In a strange, creepy way.
And then there are faces that belong to people you do  know and that you see so often you begin to take them for granted. This is Katie, and like many of my good friends at school and everywhere else, I can't get enough of seeing her face. It's times like now when I know I won't see it for a long time, that I begin to realize how much that person means to me.
       I miss all my faces!

That's all for now. All this blogging is exhausting, and the fact that I'm putting this much effort into something that one, maybe two people will read, just crossed my mind.
On that note...

MandyPies

Mulch Me!

I love how life unfolds slowly, piece by piece, so that you're never able to predict what's next. Things never happen the way you expect them to and while uncertainty is something we all try to avoid, uncertainty is often what gives us the curiosity to keep trying.
That said, I occasionally love it when I don't have a plan because it leaves open so much room for adventure.

-->Adventure: a bold, usually risky undertaking; a hazardous action of uncertain outcome.

               Disclaimer: I do not condone doing stupid or dangerous things.

So yesterday I spent a few (meaning 6) hours at my friend's house editing pictures on her fabulous computer. If you've met my computer before, you'd be able to understand how ecstatic I was to be able to use a Mac AND Photoshop. I was more lost than a teenage boy in a bra store, but just about as excited.

That's not the point of the story. I went to pick Joe up from work and he suggested we stay in town and see the next movie, which happened to be 2 hours from then. Given two hours to waste in Cloquet, there's not much you can do without spending a good chunk of money, but lucky for us, we had been assigned to pick up a bag of mulch from Walmart.

It sounds pretty straightforward, I know.

And it would have been but Walmart has organizational problems. We ran to the lawn and garden section and scoured the area for mulch (assuming it came in bags and would be in the lawn and garden section). Upon finding none, we resorted to trying to find a store worker, which seems like it would have been a good Step 1, but Joe and I both have an aversion to talking to strangers. Anyways I walked up behind this one guy working at a counter and said, "Excuse me....EXCUSE ME!..." He didn't move. I'm assuming the guy was completely deaf (and works at a cash register?!), so we hustled out of there, having attracted the attention of every other customer within a fifty yard radius and successfully made fools of ourselves.
I forgot to preface this story with the fact that you're supposed to pay for the mulch before you go get it, and by this time we had already paid $13.65 or something for two bags of 'RBRMULCH'. So, having been tipped off by another cashier, we went outside to the parking lot where this dang mulch was supposedly located and we found piles of bags of stuff covered in tarps in an empty parking lot. Walmart workers are like car keys...you can find them everywhere until you actually need them. I saw movement behind a couple potted trees out in the parking lot and told Joe to go see if it was a person and then ask them to get us our mulch. It was in fact a person, but we kinda gathered he didn't know much about mulch when he croaked, "I'm maintenance!"
So back inside. There was absolutely no way we were going back to the lawn and garden section to try to speak with the deaf cashier, so we went up to the front and spotted an authoritative-looking cashier who saw she had been spotted and croaked, "This register is closed!" (I'm starting to see a pattern in how the workers there speak). At this point, Joe, my timid little brother, finally found a voice and said "Excuse me lady, I'm just trying to find my dang mulch and no one in this God-forsaken building will help us, now get me my mulch before I tweak!" (or something to that effect). Whatever he said it worked...she didn't know anything about mulch, but she had the sense to call someone who did. Tom, the Walmart worker that stole my heart and saved the day. Apparently, someone in Walmart had sold us a type of (very expensive) mulch that didn't exist and then sent us out on a wild goose chase to go find it.
AH HA! UR EVIL PLANS WUZ FOILED! TOM SAVZ US!
Sorry.

Anyways, an adventure was had and mulch was retrieved. Embrace uncertainty!...and apply this to the bigger picture. Sometimes you don't know what the heck you're doing and neither does anyone else, but just keep going! It might feel like you're running around in circles, but sooner or later you'll find what you're looking for.

Mandy-Pies

Summer?

I haven't had time to blog for a very long time, and now that I do, I'm not sure I can conjure up something relevant to say.
The school year has wound to a close and the second half of my life has begun. Once school is out, I generally have to reconfigure my habits and hobbies and stuff. That switch between lives generally requires that I do a complete changeabout and put my school self in the closet for three months, packed away with all the used-up notebooks, ramen noodles, and single bed sheets. It sounds shallow and flighty that I have these two selves that I swap out like a purse to fit the season, but if you think about it, there's a difference between spending most of your time in your room instead of in the library or campus cafe, between having your parents as roommates and living surrounded by teenage girls, and between having everything in walking distance and having nothing in walking distance aside from the barn.
Anyways, I'm ready for something constant. I'm considering finding a job in the St. Cloud area next summer and trying to find living accomodations. As much as I love my family and love coming home, I feel like it's time for me to start de-attaching myself from my pink, polka-dotted bedroom. Even if it was a 13-hour paint job. Barnum might just be getting a little crowded.

Oh, the life of a bus-goer...

Learning how to properly take the bus should be a class in itself.

You have to know when to get to the bus stop. If you get there too early, you have nothing to do, so you have to pull out your phone and pretend to be popular or pull out your iPod and pretend to be hip. If you get there too late, you are faced with the decision of whether to risk running down the street screaming like a lunatic in hopes the bus driver will stop, or waiting another half an hour. In which case, see above.

You also have to get there early enough to position yourself somewhere near the beginning of the line, because everyone knows if you're in the back, you'll probably have to stand for the entire 15 minutes. When grumpy old men drive buses, you know they don't care if you have nothing to hold on to before they take that corner at 50 mph. If you're not standing, you will probably have to sit next to a stranger, which isn't bad unless that person has spider legs and giant knees or chooses to spend the entire bus ride yelling to his/her friend three seats down.

You also have to find a good spot on the bus! What looks like a promising seat three rows back is actually taken up by the bus wheel. Congratulations, you get to ride the rest of the way with your knees touching your chin. And you thought that seat was just miraculously open.

Oh yeah, and don't sit too far back if you have to get off early either, because the rest of the people that have to get off to let you out will burn your face into their memories and mentally condemn you into one of Dante's inner circles of hell.

Oh the bus. Just make sure you have someone to stand in line with you as you wait in the frigid cold.

It helps if said person is particularly witty.