Is that your dog?

It's a glorious day outside and you're sitting on the lawn in front of your house, wondering what there is to do, when two little dogs run past. You have two options: stay where you are, assume they'll get home safe, and continue on with your dull lives...or...get up and follow the dogs, because let's face it, you've got nothing better to do and you REEEAALLY want to play with the cute dogs. :) So, you quickly get up and follow them. You just barely get within reach and they scurry away. If you've dealt with dogs as much as we have, you can tell that the bigger blonde dog is a stray who is not used to people and the little gray poodle is just along for the ride. After spending waaaay too much of a Saturday afternoon chasing dogs around town, the blonde dog disappears but the poodle gets tired and sits down on the ramp leading up to a business and you snatch him right up. The poor little guy is tired so he just lays down in your arms. In walking back to campus, you see a woman on her front porch. You stop and ask if she's seen him before. She hasn't but goes into the house and brings out a Ziploc full of dogfood for him. You get back to the house...now what? You can't take him inside. Your RA will have your head on a platter for that one. So you sit outside for a few hours and enjoy the day and your new friend. It's getting a little late and you realize, you have to give him up. The only thing to do is take him out to the humane society on the other end of town. You get in your car with the passenger holding him on her lap, dog's head out the window. In driving thru town, of course one of the main roads is backed up and you sit waiting for traffic to continue. All of a sudden, the woman in the car to your right rolls down her window and says "Is that your dog?" *confused look on face. "umm...nooo". It just so happens the dog belongs to the sister of the woman in the car next to you. :D You pull off in a parking lot and pass your canine pal off to go home. You're def gonna miss the little guy. Lessons from this: get off your butt and have an adventure! And you never know where you might meet the person you were looking for. Thanks and love!

Stumpy

Just as in high school, college comes with a lot of projects. The variety of the projects ranges depending on your professor. Lindz came back from class one day with an assignment: wear a sock over her hand for 24 hours and write a paper about her experience. In explanation of this, the class was an English class in which they were reading a book about a man who had his hand amputated during the war. KTSue heard of this assignment and decided to keep her company. Can't be that hard, right? Wrong! The littlest things now seemed impossible. We get ready to leave for dinner and both put jackets on (it is October after all). Hold one side of the jacket with one hand and zip it up with the other...oh wait. Lindz and KTSue stand on the front lawn of the house for 5 solid minutes, each using their good hand to help the other zip their jacket up. The jackets did not get unzipped again until after we were safely back at the house after dinner. Homework that night turned into a fiasco. A friend asked us to edit his paper for him, due the next morning. In the process of this, we ended up having to retype the entire paper to help him get it done in time. Have you ever tried properly typing (ya know, the home row thing they mentioned in like junior high? yeah, that) with one hand? Doesn't work out so well. By the time we were a quarter of the way thru the paper, KTSue had ripped the sock off (wasn't her assignment anyway) and halfway thru the paper, Lindz looks at her "stump", yells "That's it Stumpy! Ya ru'ned it! I'm cuttin' ya off!", and follows suit. Lessons from this: some projects are not as simple as they seem, teamwork is key, and having a stump for a hand SUCKS! Thanks and love!

Furniture Fiascos

A dorm room comes with standard furniture: beds, desks, dresser, chairs, maybe a few extra pieces. The key to maximizing the space in your room is arrangement. Some schools are kind enough to leave a booklet of ideas. We weren't so lucky, so we got creative. This involved a lot of heavy lifting, a lot of cursing, and eventually a working room. A few pointers: be sure to have plenty of pins for the furniture before stacking, have a plan before executing, and most importantly...watch the fingers! Once you get everything situated, remember to use it with some intelligence. We had several incidents with the chairs in particular. UF has 2 types of desk chairs: those that can lean back (which we had freshman year) and those that can't lean. More than once, we would be leaning back, but thought we weren't. You can see where this is going...to the floor. One time in particular, a friend was kneeling on the chair with her knees going thru the back and she leaned too far. We had to pry her from the chair before she could get up. As an added note, it was not fun going from those chairs to the ones that don't lean, for the next year. :) Another key piece of advice: tables are not for sitting. Late one night, our RA was sitting on the table with her feet on the chair, sticking thru the back. The chair tips, she falls to the floor with her feet caught, there's a trip to the ER, and she spends the next week or so on crutches with a bruised foot. Needless to say, no one sat on the table after that. Thanks and love! Happy New Year everyone!

Make Technology Your Betch

Computers are a wonderful thing. In college, you must have access to a computer. There's no way around it. There are papers to be typed, powerpoints to be made, and online homework to be completed. Of course, there are other, less academic, uses of computers. You can use them to keep in touch with friends and family and for cheap entertainment. We have a few points to make with this blog. First, if you don't have a facebook, you will get one. They are great for talking to friends from home and staying up-to-date with the breakups and the makeups, the weekend plans and final exams. It's also great for curing boredom. It was for this reason that we created a new pastime: facebook fights. KTSue and Lindz were sitting around late one night with nothing to do, so KTSue wrote on a friend's wall saying that Lindz shouldn't be the only one writing on his wall. Of course Lindz had to rebutle. This started a 20-post fight back and forth until we finally decided that we had riddled his wall with enough yelling. One important thing to remember, when initiating a facebook fight, choose your opponent carefully. It only works if the argument is convincing, but be certain you both know the other is joking the whole time. Another use for computers is to communicate across the room without letting anyone else know what you're saying. Yahoo IM or AIM are great for this purpose. Whether you are 6ft or 6mi apart, you can have an entire conversations without the risk of eavesdropping. Thanks and love!

College mornings

Upon entering college, one thing you generally look forward to is the ability to choose, for the most part, when your classes are. This is more crucial than you might think. This decides your fate for the next several months. The first, and most important, piece of advice to know: avoid 7:40 and 8am classes at all costs! Unless you are one of the select few "morning people", you will spend half of the semester getting to class late because you overslept and the other half sleeping in class. Lindz and KTSue personally discovered this during two different semesters, not by choice. Our first semester at UF, we were both registered for calculus at 7:40am. We had a system that worked for the most part. Both of us had alarms set and whoever was up would make sure the other was awake. We lasted until October before we were both fed up with the class and the prof. Calc the following semester was much better. Our second encounter with the early morning light was the fall semester of our second year. Religion at 8am. We had gotten used to how the mornings go, so that semester went much more smoothly. This brings us to our second point: know the travel times to your classes. We had the morning down to an art: first alarm at 7, second alarm at 7:30, out of bed at 7:35 with enough time to get dressed, brush teeth, and get to class on time. Just remember to take off your slippers BEFORE getting halfway to class (KTSue learned this the hard way :) )*Note: it certainly helps having a small campus such as UF. Thanks and love!

Beggar's night

What is the one night a year kids have permission to stay out after dark, go door-to-door, and demand candy from strangers? Yup, halloween. October 31st. Though, if you've been trick-or-treating lately or know someone how has, you will know that Beggar's night is not, in fact, on Halloween. It's a few days before. We learned this the hard way freshman year. We look out the window and suddenly see small children running from one door to the next. Crap! We soon realized that it was Beggar's night and the only thing we had in the house that we could possibly hand out were peanuts. Although as Alisha said "do you realize how many kids you can please with just one nut?" Needless to say, we weren't pleasing any children with nuts. (Please ignore the pun.) After running quickly to the nearest Walmart and grabbing a bag of candy, we took blankets, the bowl of candy, and music out to the front stoop to wait for the children. In the process of sitting outside for an hour and a half, freezing our toes off, we had a total of...wait for it...4 kids. Woah, dream big! We were eating candy for the rest of the semester. Lesson of the night: find out when Beggar's night is BEFORE that night and a handful of peanuts does not count as a treat. Thanks and love!

Superhalloween

In honor of Halloween this weekend, we will pull from our holiday bank of freshman year. In order to fully appreciate this blog, there is one piece of info you must know. Ktsue is absolutely terrified of horror movies. Point blank. Now, picture this, it's the weekend and you're looking for something to do. Movies are always an option. Superbad was in theaters at the time. So everyone in the house piles in the car and heads to the movies. While standing in line, Steph turns to Ktsue and says "make sure you say 'Halloween' when you get up there". Yea... So, Ktsue was stuck sitting thru Halloween, hands over her eyes for half the movie. The result of this? That night, Ktsue checks her closet before going to bed and makes Lindz sleep on the empty top bunk. To this day, she cannot see his face or hear the music without "having a minor stroke" as Lindz puts it. Thanks and love!

Mattress Surfing

So, you're bored on Friday night and don't feel like getting all gussied up to go out. What do you do? Well, living in a two-story house has its advantages. One of these is what we like to call "mattress surfing". The width of your stairs will determine whether you can actually surf or not. In our case, two mattresses fit end to end snuggly, so it turned into more of a mattress slide. Now, before jumping up and pulling your mattress off your bed, please be sure to check the landing surface at the end of your stairs. At our house, it was the front door. This can result in broken arms and faces. Luckily, no serious injuries were the result of this endeavor. Just pile as many pillows and blankets at the end of your mattresses to cushion the fall. If needed take one blanket to cover the pile and use duct tape to secure it to the wall, so you won't have to repile them every time you slide down. For a faster ride, sit on a blanket or plastic bag and enjoy the wind in your face. Just don't blame us if your face goes thru the wall. The hardest part of this scenario is getting back up the slide. This is how you build up your arm muscles. Place feet firmly at the bottom of the slide and grip handrail with both hands. Use the hand-over-hand method to climb the matresses until you reach the top. Just hope that the handrail is secured into the wall. If needed you can utilize the crack between the matresses as a step. Thanks and love. *Disclaimer: we are not responsible for any damages and/or injuries sustained as a result of this blog.

Paint the walls by number

Dorm rooms: a blank canvas, as far as decorating goes. Generally, your room will have plain eggshell white walls (blech!) Little touches get added here and there thruout the year to make it feel more like home. Of course, in doing this, you're gonna have to find something to stick it to the wall that won't end up in fines later. Cuz, what kind of college kid can afford fines? So you start making a mental list of things you could use. Tape? No. Sticky tack? You try it, and it fails. Command strips? There's an idea. They work all the time on tv, so they've got to work, right? Sure, let's go with that. You hang up your small, not-all-that-heavy whiteboard on the wall and next thing you know, the board's on the floor and there's a huge chip of paint still attached to it. Crap. Well, when you have your RA living with you, it's muy importante that she does not find out. Our method worked pretty well. First, get the paint chip, if you can, and tape it back on the wall. Next, convienently place post-its on this portion of the wall with "things to remember" on them. This is a temporary solution. The final step is to hope your RA is working on a paint-by-numbers in the kitchen. Included in this kit should be an assortment of white, cream, and tan paints. Remove the taped-on paint chip and mix a combo of just enough paint to repaint the spot, but not enough that your RA will notice any paint was used. If you do the job right, your RA won't notice a thing and you'll avoid those pesky fines at the end of the year. Thanks and love.

Snowball fights

So you're sitting in your house/dorm at 1am, tired of studying, but not quite tired enough to go to sleep yet. So what do you do? Well, if you live in Ohio, you'll probably have snow on the ground from about November to March. Our RA came back, slightly tipsy, ran upstairs and insisted we have a snowball fight. Why not? Nothing better to do, right? Not bothering to put shoes on, we ran out into the parking lot behind the house and started the classic snowball fight. About 15min later, fingers and toes about to fall off, we trudged back into the house. No sooner had we warmed up, Cait, in a panic, comes in saying she can't find her ring. So back into the cold we went, flashlights in hand, looking for a small silver ring in a parking lot full of snow. Needless to say, we weren't successful. We gave up after about 15min. Lesson of the day: Snowball fights at 1am barefoot are more fun, but do NOT wear rings. Thanks and love!

Drivethru dilemma

So, we've all had those days when we're sitting in the drivethru waiting for the endless line to proceed to get your food. While you're waiting, you dig thru the seats to find the change to pay for your order. Normally, when paying in change, you hand the worker a random assortment of quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies. If they're lucky, they may get the rare dollar bill. There are the rare occasions, however, that the poor person on the other side of the window gets a handful of only pennies. If you're thinking ahead, like we were on this night, you will look around the house to find something to contain the change. A ziploc works wonders in this situation. In our case, tho, we did not have a single ziploc in the house. So, what do you do in this dilemma? Well, if you're in a chemistry lab that semester, you've got to have disposable gloves laying around the house/dorm. Just grab one and dump your change in it. Not only will you ease the job of the worker trying to catch all the coins, you may make their day. In the words of the person taking our change, "that is the most random thing I've ever seen". Thanks and love.

The Barn

Any UF student in the pre-vet program will be out at the barn for several classes throughout their college career. You will learn quickly that these classes tend to be at the worst time of the day. For most of the students, the class is planned just perfectly that you get back from the barn about 10min before you have to leave for your next class. While fellow pre-vet and equestrian students understand, those not in the program do not appreciate the smell for some reason. They may even wrinkle their nose at you (the nerve!). In response to this, you must come up with a list of quick and easy ways to lessen or neutralize the barn smell. A simple and obvious step is to change clothes. While this gets a lot of the smell out, you'll find it is still on you, especially your hair. Simple math: the longer your hair, the more area the smell has to cling to. Sprays help to lessen the smell to a point, but a lot of the times it only creates an...interesting...mixture. One of the fastest and simplest tips is to pull your hair back. Not only will you personally not have to smell it as much, the confinement of your hair will reduce the wafting of the stench to your neighbor. As far as clothing goes, you WILL get stains on them. It is inevitable. You obviously don't want to wear clothes you ever want to wear in public again. Coveralls or overalls are the best solution. Something you can wear over old clothes and throw in the trunk of your car. (PS- this also helps reduce the smell in your car.) If you must wear other clothing, a standard washer will get a lot of stains out. Blood is a particular hassle. Hydrogen peroxide does a pretty good job getting bloodstains out of clothing, but be sure to test it on an inconspicuous place on the clothing before spraying or dabbing on a large stain. Thanks and love.

Single Stall Showers

If you've seen a single stall shower you may have an idea that they might be a problem, if you've ever showered in a single stall shower you suspect they could be a problem, and if you've ever tried to shave your legs in a single stall shower you KNOW you have a problem!! The thing about single stall showers is...they are everywhere on a campus, in the houses and in the dorms...You can't escape them!! When we lived in our house freshman year we were appalled by the size of the showers...and that there were two in the small bathroom that was on the first floor of the house. They are barley wide enough for you to stand elbows out in and if your claustrophobic...your shit out of luck! The worst thing about these showers is....you have to be a contortionist to properly shave your legs! Ladies you know what i'm talking about, holding your leg up in the air while trying to balance on the other just so you can avoid bending over and pressing your butt against the wall of the shower because let's face it...you just met these girls...lord knows where there butts have been!! So Caitlin, more than all of us, knows the harsh reality of shaving in a tiny shower. That girl either cracked her head on the metal door handle, which cut her forehead open at least once, or sliced her leg open every single time she showered. She had this gnarly looking scab/scar on her knee most of the first semester here! The positive of this...you've been warned...start practicing now before you have to shave in that tiny shower. You can practice "dry shaving" also known as shaving you legs in the sink...yes we did this last year when we had what looked like a kitchen sink in our "private" bathroom...no toilet just a sink! You can also start taking yoga or just coming to the realization that it will take you a few months to get used to the new conditions and you may have to live with spotty legs or slight cuts.

The other thing you need to know about single stall showers is that when you get bored they can become sources of free entertainment and possible records for the Guinness Book. We would know...we got bored and thought it might be a good idea to see how many of us could fit into that tiny shower that had caused us so much pain and suffering. Six, that's how many girls you can fit in a single stall shower. We were crammed in there like sardines, as the girls piled out Caitlin and Lindz were left when Cait accidentally turned on the shower. It was a disaster...Lindz was wet, so was Cait...but it was fun! We suggest you try to squeeze as many people as you can into the smallest thing you've ever seen...it's worth the laugh and you may win some sort of award!!!

Thanks & Love

Box Turtle

In the spirit of Box City tomorrow, we feel it is appropriate to share this one with you. For those of you who don't attend UF, Box City is an event run by Habitat for Humanity Campus Chapter in which teams build houses out of cardboard boxes and sleep in them overnight to get a new appreciation for how difficult it would be to live on the streets. Without even considering the theme, Caitlin suggested we should do a turtle. You'll learn from these posts that in most cases, we don't do anything half-assed. It's all or nothing. This was one of those cases. By the end of the day, the body of the turtle was roughly the size of an above ground circular pool, but only about three feet high, with the head, feet, and tail extending beyond that. One of the regulations of Box City is that no part of your creation can be on the grass. Only once we put the feet on did we notice that we had broken this rule. The three of us, plus three others had to pick up the turtle and move it roughly five feet forward. This was obviously easier said than done, but we did it. Upon completion of Squirt, we grabbed as many blankets from the house as we could. In order to be eligible for the prizes in the morning, two people needed to be in the box at all times, from eleven that night until seven the next morning. When we came back with our supplies, we discovered someone must have tried to break into our home and in doing so sent poor Squirt's head rollin'. Now you have to imagine this turtle's head, if his body was huge so was his head we were able to crawl in and out of...so needless to say Squirt was eating us repeatedly. It was an easy fix though. After the first hour, we found out just how cold and dark it was inside the box turtle. Caitlin and KTSue made a run to WalMart for taplights so that we were able to see what the heck we were doin'. We came back out to the car, only to find that the battery had died. As Lindz and Skylar were in the box at the time, they couldn't leave to come help us. We ended up having to call a friend, who had gone home sick earlier in the evening. We couldn't get the jumper cables to work properly so we left the car in the WalMart parking lot to deal with it in the daylight. Now, when we first settled into our respective places in the large area we were all near each other, but had our own bubbles. Not even 30min after laying there we realized how cold it was, and Caitlin popped up having to pee (go figure). So she went to the building that was supposed to be open ALL NIGHT, but as quickly as she left she was back doing, what, you may ask?...the pee pee dance, because the building was locked, every last one of the doors. So Cait and Lindz proceeded to run all the way back to the house across campus so that Cait could pee, they bundled up and came back. It wasn't till morning that we realized Skylar lived in a dorm closer to where we were (yes, by the time you're doing the pee pee dance, all logical solutions go out the door. All you know is you gotta pee and you gotta do it NOW). As you can imagine, the box was freezing overnight, only moreso. By the time they came to wake us up in the morning, everyone was huddled in a giant pile in the center of the box...spooning and still shivering. Point of this story: after all this turmoil, we didn't even get a freakin' prize! Needless to say, we were a bit disappointed. Scratch that, we were pissed! Thanks and love.

The Wax

Ever use your lamp as a candle warmer? Ever have it tip over and spill wax all over your floor? Well, we did. This may not seem to be a big problem, but when you have your RA living with you, it tends to be an issue of secrecy. KTSue poked her head into Lindz' room to see what was up. During the conversation, an unknown force swept across the room, tipping the light. Before we knew it, candlewax had dumped all over the floor. And it wasn't just a little bit of wax, you know those Yankee Candles? Imagine one of those. Shock turned to panic as Lindz' fav words became "holy shit!". So if you find yourself in the above mentioned situation, first things first...shut the door! You don't want your RA finding out, do ya? (According to Cait, "she'll fine ur ass out the butt!") :) Second, hop on google. In doing so you will discover the best way to remove wax from carpet is: allow to dry, use student i.d. card or another form of i.d. to scrape excess wax off carpet. Next, obtain a brown paper bag or any towel you don't want to ever use again and place over stained carpet. You better hope your mamma packed you that iron cause your gonna need it. Now if you do not have one go to your nearest Wal-Mart, Black & Decker portable iron $20. Iron over top of towel and or bag allowing the wax to be soaked up. Step 3, pray to god your RA doesnt see whats left of that tiny stain. Final step, feel quite confident that you got all but a tiny spot of wax outta the carpet and did not get fined out the ass. P.S. This whole situation could have been avoided if the R.A. would have informed us that we were allowed to have candle warmers in our rooms. Just as a note...ask your R.A. what is and is not allowed....also note if it's not allowed there are ways around it!! Thanks & Love

About us

Hey all,

This is our first attempt at blogging so don't judge! We're a group of three college students who have lived together the entire time we've attended our university. We've gotten quite close and have gone through a lot of crazy things together...which brings us to this blog! It's basically a collection of....interesting...stories that we've accumulated the past three years. We've talked about making a book but decided that that is way too in depth...and we don't know the kinds of people it would take to get us a deal!!! lol So bare with us...we'll start at freshman year and work our way up. If you have any interesting stories please feel free to share with us...we'd love to hear them!!

Thanks & Love