Packing, Pictures

Packing really stinks. There. I've said it.

Unpacking is also not fun.

And that's all I've been doing for what feels like the past six months of my life. I went a little crazy this evening and drove down to the South Side to hang out with Pat and go to Jack's to celebrate Alex's birthday, and that was all good fun. But then I had to drive the long, lonely way home and clean and pack some more. Good news: pretty much all of my clothing and toiletries are in suitcases. Now I have to find a scale and make sure that neither exceeds fifty pounds.

My dentist's appointment was today, and I was dreading it because I was afraid that the hygienist was going to be like, "how neglectful you've been! We have a lot of work to do!" and I really didn't want to have to go back like, tomorrow to have anything filled. However, there was nothing the matter with my teeth even after I mentioned to Dr. Sean that I get pains in my second molar back on the top left after I eat chocolate. I almost didn't want to bring it up because I thought he'd look at the x-rays and be all concerned and say it's better to be safe than sorry and that he'd better dig around in there just in case. But he didn't.

Ooh, how about I post some pictures relatively soon after I take them. Here goes...

So there's this spider in the pink bathroom and I am moderately interested in its position because if it's not behind the lamp, that means that it's crawled somewhere else and that somewhere else could be on the toilet seat, for all I know. Anyway, it disappeared this morning and I frantically searched the whole room (it is a smaller bathroom, so it didn't take very long) and finally found it up by the light.

I take precautions because I do not want to end up sitting on this thing in the dark in the middle of the night.





Now, I'm not sure how well this phenomenon can come across digitally, but this was the most fascinating pork roast because there was only one opening in the entire piece of meat so all of the steam was pushed out of it like a teakettle. Unfortunately there were no whistley sounds.

Happy graduation, Per! He had delicious chocolate cake with Swedish flags (I wish they were Swedish fish) stuck all through it. Lauren didn't actually eat any of the cake.








Here's Pat and Lauren together. Pat has Uncle Fester eyes.







This placenta shampoo (or champu de la placenta, as I like to call it) was one of the toiletries that I threw away. I love the nasty idea of putting placenta on your head but a: this was super old, b: it smelled gross, and c: it made my hair feel like straw. So I would rather keep a picture of the shampoo rather than the bottle itself.




On to Penn Statey things. Alex is now crouching next to former president Atherton's grave. Eww.






A silent moment of reflection and reverence.







Now he's standing next Old Coaly's bones. Penn State is freaking morbid. The story goes that Old Coaly was the main mule to help drag the stones to build Old Main back in 1850-whatever. Then, he died, as mules do. Apparently some professor kept his bones in a box and then the box got shuffled around from office to office until much later, when someone was like, "hey, I know! These bones, which obviously belong to Old Coaly, (was the box labeled? How did they know?) should be reassembled and encased prominently in the middle of the student union building.

He sees you. He doesn't like you.











More of the bones. I wish President Atherton was set up like this.









I always feel so fooled by the Diner in the summer. They have 'open 24 hours' painted on their window, so this seems like it should be a permanent thing. However:




It clearly is not. Closing at 10:00 PM? What kind of diner are you?









All of the baby ducklings are grown up.







Papa duck sitting on a rock.








They were all very used to generous Penn Staters feeding them pieces of bagel or whatnot because they came right up to us with their pleading birdy eyes and I wished I had something, anything to offer.



This was the closest that I've ever been the the obelisk.










I love this old-timey mailbox in the middle of the lobby of Willard.







However, it doesn't seem like the most convenient method of postage. They're pretty much grabbing you by the throat and saying "go to the one outside! Go! It'll be checked days before someone gets around to this one!"



Pollock Laptop Library finally got some cool lights.








In the real library there was an exhibit that only featured cartoons done decades ago by then-prominent cartoonists and dedicated to Fred Waring, who has a residence commons and cafeteria named after him. Rube Goldberg was a fan, apparently. A lot of them involved golfing.

Wikipedia informs me that he was nicknamed "The Man Who Taught America How to Sing." You did a great job, Fred. He also had the first electric blender named after him, but they spelled it 'blendor' for some reason. Oh, and I've just told a falsehood - the commons is actually named after his grandfather.

Oh, Bil. You were even more unfunny back in the day. This isn't even a joke. Was he trying to insult Fred?








Anyways, it's now 4:30 AM and I am going to be a grumpy monster tomorrow as it is. More to come.