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.