Today is my brother's birthday!

So today is my brother's bday! We've had some hard times, some interesting times, but most of all: AWESOME TIMES! The older I get, the more I realize how ridiculously awesome he is and how alike we are. Put the two of us together and it evens out to the maturity of a prepubescent boy.

Knowing this kid for the entirety of his life makes for some great stories. We were really close growing up before puberty destroyed our childhoods and if you would've seen a picture of him then, you wouldn't believe that the gigantic man-beast of today came from such humble beginnings.

During high school I think we had our biggest falling out..I can remember entire months where the only time we would see each other was during band class. It was a pretty interesting time for both of us I think because we both had a lot of growing up to do on our own. Even though I graduated a year earlier and we go to separate schools now, college is actually the time where we started getting closer. I can honestly say, I have the most bad-ass brother anyone could ask for and I am so proud of him. He is growing up to be a great man.

With that said..that doesn't necessarily mean that I'm letting him off the hook for all the shit he did when we were kids. So Nick, here is a little trip down memory lane dedicated to you and all of our shenanigans:

Story #1

THE SPIDEY UNDERWEAR.

When we moved up to the Northwest after years of being in Hawaii, this notion of the 'great outdoors' was foreign to us. Camping, fishing, hiking..it was all so new! So we naturally didn't realize that nature doesn't exactly supply one with toilets and private bathrooms, at least Nick didn't.

One particular fishing trip we took was a very long drive and the lake was pretty secluded from any kind of road or any semblance of a bathroom. It had been a long day and we had been out on the lake since early in the morning around 6am (which is like death to a child).

A couple hours in Nick asked dad if he could have the keys to our expedition. If you don't know what a Ford Expedition is or have never been in one, then you can't possibly imagine the amazing stashing capabilities of this car. It's pretty much the Marry Poppins of sports utility vehicles. Or if Mary Poppins was a transformer..

So Nick went to the car..and stayed there...

When he came back he was pretty quiet for the rest of the day and kept to himself.

During the ride home the car smelled like fish..and shit. I figured it was probably the combination of fish, and people who had spent an entire day in a car/ at a lake.

We got home we cleaned out the car, unloaded our fishy booty from our trip, and all that good stuff. One thing was still wrong, we still couldn't figure out where that smell was coming from.

About a week or two later the pungent odor de feces STILL remained in the car. That was it so Dad decided to clean out the car and try to figure out where that mysterious shit smell was coming from.

Finally, we found the culprit of the stench:

Nick's dirty, shitty spidey undies that were balled up and shoved underneath one of the folding seats.

He had shit his pants and, too embarrassed to say anything, hid them under one of the folding seats and hoped that nobody would find out. Well...we did.

Of COURSE he tried to blame it on me. But the fact remains that 1. I have never owned boys super-hero undies, and 2. I was still wearing mine at the end of the trip.

To this day he still denies it. Just give it up Nick. You can't hide from this one as well as you hid the undies.

Story #2 Is EPIC. And deserves more time than my half dead/tired/just gave blood brain can handle right now. So hold onto your panaloons fellas. This one's in the works!

HAPPY 19TH NICK!

Much love from your older brother wanna-beee :D

_______________________________________________________________

UPDATE!!!!!

Story #2

THE INDIAN CAVES.

Prologue

A couple summers ago the entire family decided to take a small trip over to our local amusement park: Enchanted Forest! It's pretty much what it sounds like. A B list home-made, sketchy theme park designed for toddlers and young families. It is super creepy too because all of the animatronics were designed in and haven't been updated since the 1970's. Ever. There is also an Alice in Wonderland themed area where you can crawl through a long, dark tunnel on your hands and knees where babies have thrown up and bums have probably had raunchy, drugged up sex in.

It was awesome.

There are several fantasy related segments to the park for example: Pinnochio, Fairy Land, Western Frontier (that has its own 'take a pic with Lincoln!' set up), and Humpty Dumpty/Crooked House/Old Woman Who lived in a Shoe, ect.

My dad is also the self-proclaimed "Grill Master" in the family.

(He kinda looks like a grillin Mr. T is this depiction..)

During the summer he loves to grill everything that I DON'T EAT! Which usually ends up with me grinding down carrot sticks while I watch my family scarf entire steaks dripping with tasty.

On this day the meat choice was hot dogs.

Nick was really involved with Sports in high school and because of it, had many sports-related aches and pains. Needless to say, his stomach was a pit of fast food, ibuprofen, and sports drinks. So, it's no wonder why hot dogs (the most mysterious of all meaty concoctions up there with turducken!) didn't sit right with him, and that is where we begin:

We pulled up to the theme park after a short car ride, which was when Nick first started complaining of stomach pain. He usually had pretty bad gas after dad's cooking so it wasn't anything alarming and we went about our day as planned..

We climbed through the dirty tunnel of hypodermic needles, wandered though the creepy witch-face with a huge, warty nose:

All in all, it was a blast! Until we got to Frontier Land...and the Indian Caves.

My family is very open about gas. So open, it can almost be counted as a cruelty. My dad will often fart while he is driving, lock the windows before anyone knows, and wait in sinister enjoyment for the first sniff of agony. Once we realize the stench it's too late! We are already trapped in and our screams only cause him to laugh harder.

So when we made it to the Indian caves (which are these twisty underground tunnels with shitty ventilation), Nick let out the most horrible, awful, disgusting thing to have ever secreted its way out of an anus...and disappeared.

So there I was. Lost and confused, bleeding from my eyes from the stench, and wandering around in a dimly lit underground maze of death. And Nick was nowhere to be seen.

By the time I found my way out of the tunnels the rest of the family had bought us all tickets to Nick's favorite ride: Ice Mountain! (I have no idea why the fuck it's in Frontier Land either..) It's the shittiest, ricketiest, most low-budget ride to have ever been built in some guy's back yard 40 years ago! And we loved it.

The line was always really long and Nick gets pretty annoyed at having to wait so he usually tries to get there first..so when he wasn't the first one to grab a ticket and race to the line, I was a little worried.

So we waited...

and waited..........

AND WAITED!

Finally, after 30 minutes or so, the fam decided to spread out and start a search.

We looked through the Pinocchio area, through the Indian Tunnels again, through the gift shops...but he was nowhere to be found.

This is the moment that it hit me: Ten bucks says he sharted himself.

When I came to that realization I hurried down over to the nearest bathroom I could find and giggled a little before I lifted my hand triumphantly to knock...

Knocking lightly, I called out Nick's name to see if he was, in fact, in the bathroom. I WAS RIGHT! He answered with the most feeble "Whaaaaattt" I have ever heard in my life which was followed by a ,"Patti...I just destroyed my underpants."

With that fart he dealt me in the caves, he had blown out the contents of his uneasy intestines into his lucky underwears. (No. Really. They were his lucky undies. Shamrocks and everything.)

When he finally emerged from the bathroom he was so pale that we all decided it would be best to head home. We had gone through the entire park already anyways so it was time to go.

But, like all theme parks, Enchanted Forest was smart and put the entrance and exit right in the back of the gift shop. So whatever hapless young family tried to leave without having to give every last penny would be squeezed shamelessly by their bratty children balling over the ridiculous plastic wand with the Enchanted Forest logo printed on it.

Touche, Enchanted Forest, touche.

As we were heading through the gift shop hell I happened to pass by the counter, which had a radio device for the employees. The radio device lit up and a woman stated clearly "Pshhh Uhhmmm pshhh. We're gonna need some help over here in the men's floor level bathroom. PShhh There seems to be some fluids on the toilet seat. Pshh"

blaaaaah.

So. I know I've been writing blogs at least twice a week since my Ass Potatoes blog..but all this creativity is getting me kinda tired. If anyone has ANY ideas on posts then feel as free as an american to give me them..wait..nevermind..just tryyy and feel free..

Anyways,

I have a couple ideas brewing but I'm pretty tired/busy/stressed. So help a brotha out.

Tschüß.

1/2 Blog.

Eating in public/ Cute animals' plot to kill us.

You think that, after 2 years of college, I would've already figured out that putting papers off till the very LAST minute possible is a terrible thing to do.

To a normal person, that makes sense. But all my life I have been allergic to logic and reason so no, I STILL put things off until I get so nervous I check my facebook on my laptop..then my phone..then my laptop..and then forget what time it is. And then I get up to make coffee, realize the stove is dirty and needs to be cleaned AT THAT VERY MOMENT OTHERWISE THE EARTH'S GRAVITY WILL CEASE TO EXIST AND WE WILL ALL GET PULLED INTO SPACE LIKE HAMSTERS SUCKED INTO A VACUUM!

And then I realize that it's aready 1 am and the only thing I've done is open up a new Word document and put my name up in the top left hand corner...and clean the entire stove top.

This (not the hamster thing) happened to me Sunday night. I had to write a 400 word paper for my German class. Easy, right? NO. If you know any German, then you know how much Germans LOVE to smash multiple words together to create one giant frankenstein word. When writing an essay that depends on the number of words used, that is the least helpful thing. EVER. Germans also love to use words that describe entire ideas or a spectrum of variable meaning that depend entirely on the person's own personal interpretation of the word. Needless to say, German is one crazy language and it kicks my ass daily.

Whenever I stay up past 1am and have to wake up before 10 I look/feel like this:

So in my state of tired and stressed I ended up finally finishing my paper this morning and getting it in on time..but I still had the rest of my day to survive. I zombied through my German class, had coffee with a friend, and then had to quickly shove food into my face (thank you Vangie for the analogy :D) and hurry to my next appointment. The most perfect on-the-go food for the mentally unstable college student: The burrito. Perfect combination of tasty and satisfying wrapped in an easy to handle bundle just right for scarfing.

While racing down the street enjoying said burrito without any care in the world (basically shoving as much burrito in my mouth as humanly possible) I didn't notice 2 of the, in my opinion, hottest people at the school approaching me.

Before I noticed them I had taken the biggest bite yet out of this delectable burrito so when they waved hi to me the only answer I could muffle out sounded something like a mixture between a whale call and a walrus.

Too embarrassed to stick around and too tired/stressed to explain, I bolted..probably making me look even more mentally challenged.

Cute Animals.

I went back to my parent's house this past weekend and upon seeing my cat, all responsibilities were instantly forgotten. It's like when I'm in the middle of a conversation and I see a squirrel: I immediately forget anything I was talking about.

I was getting up to get ready for a breakfast I had to attend around 8am Sunday morning. The problem was that I had to be THERE AT 8am. I hurriedly headed upstairs to shower but the second I reached the top step I was completely sidetracked by the most adorable cat in the entire world.

I have FINALLY figured out why this is so. They plan to distract us completely from our responsibilities and take us into the cruelest form of mind control possible: cuteness.

It is late...so mayyyyyyybe I MIGHT come back and add some to this but I'm too tired to think straight ANNND I have class tomorrow.

So, in conclusion: I will NEVER become a neurosurgeon because the second I see or think of a cute animal I will be instantaneously distracted.

END.

Bicycle Assholes.

At the UO, and many other universities, there is a large bike culture. Almost everyone rides or has a bike and most of that crowd rides a bike as their main mode of transportation. The main problem with that is mass bicycle traffic (along with massive amounts of foot traffic throughout campus) and overcrowding of the scheiss poor amount of bike racks available.

Because there are too many bikes and not enough spaces to park them, many people like to be creative and find other ways of keeping their bike from getting stolen/hogging every space possible. Including but not limited to:

Handle-raum.

The Do-it-yourself

Then there is also:

The Directionally Challenged

Able-ist Bike Asshole

And I will personally take a spiked, poison hammer to the next person I see doing this:

The joiner

The Double Bagger

And lastly, I will curse all of the children born to this person with nubs:

To all of you out there guilty of doing these things: You should be ashamed of yourselves. You are a bike asshole.

END.

Midterms make kids mentally unstable.

So this past weekend was a mix of terrible, awesome, fun, sick, and meh. I managed to accidentally drink myself nearly to an alcoholic coma on Friday night, worked all day Saturday through the worst hangover of my life, and had a concert on Sunday (which shenanigans around the event ensued). This weekend also included getting a flat tire, needing to pay for fixed tire and forgetting wallet at home, Pumpkin carving, stabbing myself in the hand, doing makeup, throwing up my entire insides, watching marching bands, being extremely hungover and getting free coffee from the lady at the bakery, and studying for my music history midterm. All in all, I'm not dead and I am completely medically okay..I think..hope.

The result of all these shenanigans is what happened yesterday morning which should've started like this:


But it went like this instead:

Which led to me doing this:
Try at making coffee #1

So after about 5 minutes of trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with my machine I realized that it wasn't plugged in and I had also left the water in the pot. Easy fix, right? In the state of hungover/tired I was in, no.

Try #2:
So I plugged it in and put the water in the thingy thinking that it would solve all my problems. Wrong, again. After another 5 minutes when I went back and saw that all that was in the pot was hot water I realized that I had forgotten to put the actual coffee in the strainer.

Try #3
So with coffee in the strainer, water in the machine, and the machine plugged in I tried to start this again.

What I failed to realize was that, even though there was now coffee in the strainer, in my frustration I had forgotten to put the strainer BACK into the coffee machine.

Lets try this one more time..

Take #4

By this time I was so pissed and frustrated that when I went to put the basket back, I dumped coffee grinds all over the inside of the machine and the counter.

Take #5

Because I had spilled grinds all over the inside of the coffeemaker, I had to rinse it out before I could actually make the coffee. In doing so, I had to dump out all the water inside.

As you can guess..I forgot to refill the water thing. So I turned on the machine and walked away thinking I had FINALLY gotten everything right..umm, no. I left the kitchen and just barely made it across the living room when I heard these loud, angry, whirring sounds coming from the coffee pot.
Take #6

I FINALLY had the machine plugged in, full of water, coffee in the strainer IN the machine..and could make some sweet, sweet, magical coffee.

The END.