Yet another Halloween passes at USNA...

Halloween is a big deal here. And when I say a big deal, I mean a HUGE deal. Midshipmen really go all out, and normally the most popular costumes involve wearing A LOT of spandex and not a lot of anything else. I went as Tinkerbell this year, and I think it turned out pretty well. Right now, as I write, I'm sucking on a jolly rancher lollipop (green apple). For some reason, I've been craving fruity candy tonight, and unfortunately, most of the plebes handed out chocolate. Oh well, I'm sure I'll be in the mood for that soon! As of now, my favorite Halloween candy this year is the new SOUR Starbursts....so yummy!!!

I know I've been a tad bit picture-crazy lately, but really the only way to give anywhere close to a true portrait of what Halloween is like here, I have to show you:



Ford, Me, Nick, and John. Ford's costume took 12 hours to make. He constructed it completely of coat hangars! Nick's Big Bird costume was great too!!! I never knew something made of a laundry bag, cardboard, and paint could turn out so well!!! 


A few random Sesame Street characters... 


Burke and I make pretty fairies, don't we? 


Me, Grant, and Ben 


Jon was a women's soccer player. I do NOT know what he is trying to do with my head!!! 


Me and a REALLY fat guy (err...Matt, I mean) 


Some hot tennis chicas! 


Me and Tammy, yet another tennis goddess 


A full view of my costume...thank you to my mother for making it! 

Lisa, Matthew, and I at Leah's wedding in June 

Props to Grace

Wow, I never even noticed the connection between that picture of me, Lisa, and Matt at the game and my cousins Lisa and Matthew until Grace pointed it out in her comment on my last post. Yes, I do have 2 cousins named Lisa and Matthew, and they are the two out of my grandparents' twenty-one grandchildren that just happen to be exactly my age! The three of us have been joined at the hip since we were young, and we are still very close.

Lisa lived in PBG for about 4 years, and we were in the same 2nd grade class together. It was the first year for both of us at St. Clare School, and we definitely took it by storm! I snatched up the "Student of the Month" award in September, and she took it in October. We spent tons of time together playing Barbies and "hotel." We always played Barbies at her house though because she had the Barbie house and Barbie car, plus, my aunt and uncle bought her a Ken doll, which my parents would never buy us. I never figured out why that was, but playing Baribies was much more fun with Ken. Lisa and I also went through the major 2nd grade milestones together, like 1st confession and 1st communion. Being the competitive brat that I am, I can remember being happy about being the shortest one in the class, which meant that I was first in line to get my first communion, ahead of everyone, including Lisa. Ha! I was horrible. I actually don't think I've ever told anyone that before. Anyway, One of my favorite pictures was taken that day. It was of me, Lisa, and Grandpa, who gave us both first communion since he was a permanent deacon. It was the cutest picture ever! Two little girls in white dresses standing with their grandpa. If I get my hands on it, I will put it up. The tag-team duo was only to last one year, however. I left St. Clare for snobby Rosarian Acadmey in third grade. Lisa and I still hung out all the time, but she moved back to Ocala in 5th grade. I was very sad, but we still saw and continue to see each other at the frequent family reunions that our crazy Polish family has.

Now on to Matthew. Wow... I think I should stop now before this post becomes as long as one of Grace's. I'll write more about him later, but right now I'll just say that Matthew is one of the greatest pals I've had over the years, and we've remained close mostly due to the wonders of instant messaging. We'd spend summers at each other's houses and on the beach in Ft. Pierce with all the rest of the cousins. I call on him whenever I'm having problems with my computer or cell phone, and he ALWAYS knows how to fix it. Also, I always say that he'll be the greatest husband to the girl he marries because he absolutely LOVES to clean! He's what you'd call a white tornado.

So here's to you, Matthew and Lisa. I guess we are what they'd call the 3 Musketeers or something like that... #'s 10, 11, and 12 in the long line of grandchildren, and the coolest ones too if I do say so myself!

Here we go again...

Once again, due to the chastisement of my sister (and Earnest too, for that matter, who told Grace to remind me that I still have a blog), I am back posting again. As much as she may disagree, my life is very busy AND not very interesting, which isn't a very good combination for a blog writer. I'm sorry that I'm not a 6th grade art teacher and I don't have time to write a novel about the perfect guy and the perfect date and the perfect "more than an open mouth kiss." (Which, to agree with everyone else, was a completely weird and disgusting way to refer to that.) If you don't understand what I just mentioned, go back to my post where I gave a plug for Grace's blog and get to reading. But I must give a fair warning...it will take a while!

Haha...enough of my meanness! I really do love reading Grace's posts, and I'm sorry I haven't had time to write. But since a picture is worth a thousand words as they say, I've added three pictures that I took at the Navy/Notre Dame game last weekend in attempts to try to catch up to Grace, although I don't think 3000 words even holds a candle to what she's written. So anyway, even though the game didn't turn out well, I have some neato pictures of my friends and me. I didn't take any pictures at the "party" after the game that Grace referred to. And no, I was not drunk; I was just sleepy, and I fell asleep at about 9:30 that night on my friend's family room floor while all the boys in my company were watching baseball. Waking up at 2:30 AM does that to you.

So anyway, enjoy the pictures!

Lisa, Matt, and I before the game...see, we're still smiling 

Lisa and I in the endless abyss that is New Jersey 

Joe, Jon, me, and Matt at the game. Is Jon's angry face because of the terrible score or because he partied a little to hard the night before??? (I just rhymed...hehe) 

You know it's a good day when...

I didn't have time to write yesterday or the past few days because the schoolwork here has been pretty rough lately. However, I just have to comment about what made yesterday such a great day. I took a nap after school since I didn't have to go to march-on practice (yesssss), and I accidentally forgot to set my alarm. I woke up at 6:20, only 10 minutes before I had to be at Alumni Hall for glee club practice. Not only that, I was starving and needed some dinner. So I threw on my blue and gold jogging suit and headed for a quick stop at Dahlgren to grab my usual slice of pizza and cookie. Dahlgren is a frequent haunt of mine, and like the Hart room, one of the major money guzzlers on the yard. However, it's often one of the most convenient place to go because of my glee club and tennis schedule. So anyway, I went to the pizza line (like always---I never go to the sandwich line...I don't have enough patience to wait for those ladies) and asked for a slice. Like most take-out places, pizza pies aren't always cut with precision and some pieces are definitely bigger than others. Since I only order one slice, I normally determine the kind of pizza I get by the size of the free slices on each of the pies. This doesn't guarantee that I'll get the big slice though. I've actually had one of the Dahlgren ladies pull a slice apart from the rest of the pizza just so she could give me the small slice. Boy does that burn my cookies! Last night was different though. For the first time, the guy working behind the counter actually searched for the largest slice in the pie and pulled it out from between a bunch of slices!! Talk about a major pick-me-up!! That really made my day! Maybe the Dahlgren workers do have hearts inside of them. After I got my pizza, I grabbed on of my favorite cookies and a soda, settled down in a booth, scarffed down my dinner, hurried off to glee club, and only made it there 10 minutes late. Oh, the little things that make me happy!!!

Where are my darn sunglasses?!

Having PRK surgery was wonderful overall...having 20/20 vision is great! However, it has also succeeded in exposing some of my character flaws. For example, I never realized how much of a scatter brain I am until after the surgery. I now have to wear sunglasses all the time when I am outside. Wearing sunglasses is not like wearing normal glasses though, because obviously, I have to take them off when I go indoors, which creates something else I have to keep track of. And so far, I have failed miserably at keeping track of them. In the week and a half since I bought my new Oakley's, I have left them in King Hall, the rental van we took to Catholic University for a tennis match on Thursday, and the movie theater. I have recovered them each time, but I if I keep on losing them like this, I know I will not always be so lucky. Sunglasses and I just do not get along!

It just HAD to happen...

Well, here it is, the start of yet another weekend. Not a long weekend for us, but a weekend nevertheless. People here take weekends here very seriously, especially ones like this when there is not a football game to eat up our entire Saturday. I didn't make any huge plans for this weekend though, partly because I'm Ruthie and I'm not good at making big plans and I'm not the hugest party animal, but mostly, it was because I was supposed to have tennis matches on both Saturday and Sunday. I had actually really wanted to sign up for the Catholic Midshipman Club retreat, which I ALWAYS go on each semester, but I decided that tennis had to be my priority, and I was completely okay with it. So anyway, a week or two ago, the team we were supposed to play on Sunday cancelled on us, which was fine...I figured I still had the match on Saturday to look forward to. Boy was I wrong! The other team called at 5:45 last night to cancel for today! Agh! Just my luck. I actually had a sneaky feeling that this team would cancel. We've had them on our schedule every year since I've been here, and every year they've cancelled. My plebe year it was because the sniper was out and about, and their school said they weren't allowed to drive here, but still, they've never made it. But no matter how good my psychic skills were, they still cancelled, and I'm now left with a weekend with nothing to do. I just keep telling myself that there was nothing I could have really done, and that there must be a reason God made it so I didn't go on the CMC retreat. Hopefully that reason becomes apparent, and VERY SOON!!! Oh well, there are still things to fill the weekend with...like homework, going to the coffee shop, or maybe even another movie alone.

In response to those complaints...

For getamac and Grace, who are hanging by a thread waiting for my review of Garden State...

Yes, I did go to see it, actually probably the weekend after Grace told me it was the GREATEST movie ever and I had to go see it. I knew it must be good since she told me that she went to see it two days in a row AND bought the soundtrack. I asked a few people I knew if they had seen the movie, and the ones who had gave it rave reviews. So that weekend, I was telling my roommate and my boyfriend about it, and they very kindly agreed to take me to the theater and see the movie with me. I was extremely grateful for the kindness they showed me, but I was a little bit sad about being the 3rd wheel, once again. So I went to the movie with them, and I loved it! I mean, I like Zach Braff just like Grace does...I even watched Scrubs religiously during its 1st season. Since I've gone to college, it's one of the TV shows I miss watching. So anyway, I loved the movie, but unfortunately, my roommate and her boyfriend did not like it at all. I felt really bad that they didn't like when I was the one who recommended it, and I felt like even more of an outsider. Oh well, what can I say...riding a tricylce is no fun.

Woah!

I was going to write a big long anecdote about everything that’s happened over the past four days, but it was getting WAY too long. I’ve decided to limit myself to a top 10 list:

1. The pain of PRK surgery has a funny way of uniting 13 relative strangers.

2. Navy’s victory over Air Force was still sweet even though the way I “watched” the game consisted of me laying down on a couch in the dark wardroom with my sunglasses on and a T-shirt over my head. I could kind of hear the announcers on TV, but the way I mostly gauged how the team was doing was by listening to the cheers/curses of the people watching in the wardroom with me.

3. I knew the eye pain was at its worst when I couldn’t see or read well enough to write my name on the sign-in sheet for the shuttle for my post-op check-up Friday morning. I asked the plebe girl next to me to write my name for me, but I was so blind that I didn’t even recognize her as being from my company, my platoon even! I even told her my last name and spelled it out for her like she didn’t know who I was!

4. The surgeon told me that I was the best at “fixating” my eyeball on the laser. No one else held a candle to my fixating, he said. Woowoo….something else I can add to my short list of “skills.” I don’t know if being a good fixator will really get me very far in life, but I’m proud of it. I guess that means I’m pretty good at staring people down. Just like using numchucks is one of Napoleon Dynamite’s “skills,” fixating can be one of mine!

5. I’ve told this one to a few people already, and it is SOO true. With each dollar I spent at the mall on Saturday, the less pain I felt. Talk about retail therapy at its best! I walked into the mall being sensitive to the light but after I had bought a movie ticket, a jean skirt from Nordstrom’s, 5 shirts from the Gap (on sale!), and a CD, a book, and a magazine from Border’s, I didn’t even need my sunglasses anymore! Woo!

6. I took Getamac's advice and went to see "First Daughter (went alone again-- dah)." I can't decide if I liked it or "Wimbledon" better; both were equally cheesy and unrealistic, which makes them all the more appealing! One thing is for sure though. Forget Katie Holmes! The main dude in "First Daughter" definitely wins the hotness points compared to the dude from "Wimbledon."

7. Being able to wear normal clothes and having an AWESOME floor seat at a concert dramatically increases its entertainment value. (and boy did I look hot!)

8. Julie Roberts, Chris Cagle, and Rascal Flatts were SUPER!

9. I got hot guy from Rascal Flatt’s autograph…yeah, you know the one. He was good looking, but I have to say the one major turnoff was the large amount of “product” he had in his hair. Metrosexuals…blah.

10. Eye surgery, a shopping spree, and a cool country concert all in one weekend is exhausting!