Monday, June 1, 2009

College days- a throw back posting


Ok I am home, bored and waiting by the phone to get my employment situation figured out so I figured I would blog a bit to entertain myself....


It occured to me that I have a new audience that really knows nothing about me prior to this moment in time so I thought I'd throw out some throw back stories as good background info. If you were there you can feel free to skip these next posts....unless you were there and drunk off your ass (Janet and Von) and this might be a good reminder and/or alternate version of events.


Ahhhhh where to begin?


Ok. My best friend in the world is Janet. I'll never forget the day we met. It was at ISU and it was a huge lecture class at 8am. Why in gods green earth they ever schedule morning classes in college I'll never know- and even more astounding is the fact that people sign up for these classes. The class was a psych class called something like Sex and Sexuality. Sounds like something that would keep a group of college students attention right? WRONG- ohmigod it was taught by the worst teacher in the world....this guy was so old and dried up he was crusty and his lectures were all completely monotone. It was brutal sitting there and just in an effort to force myself to stay awake I sat near the front and in the center of the room. Of course this just made it a bit more embarassing when I did nod off....and I did, often but at least I was trying!


So one day in class I noticed this way cute short haired girl walking from the back of the room where she sat and she bounced all the way down to the front of the room. She made a bee line over to me and asked if she could borrow my notes as she had missed some of the class lectures (because she was napping to most likely). She introduced herself and I gave her my notes and we were pretty much inseperable from that moment on and for the next 6 years. I asked her many times why of all the people in that room she picked me (she walked by at least 50 people on her way over to me) and she said she just thought I looked nice. Awwww


Geesh there are so many stories about our life together. In fact we used to joke all the time about how our life should be a sitcom (see, this idea has been rolling around my head for a long time). We both lived off campus and at home and eventually we hooked up with this girl named Wendy who became our third muskateer. What I can tell you looking back about Wendy is- if all the hot mess drama queens in the world ever gathered together in one place they would all fall to their knees in worship when she walked in the room. This girl could make walking across the carpet into a drama filled, bust into tears moment that would need hours of discusssion to get her off the ledge.


One of her first major antics that I was witness to was she had opened her mothers mail (that's bad right?) and took a preapproved credit app and filled it out and got a credit card with a 5k limit which she proceeded to max out in just a few weeks. She bought cd's, stero systems, a tv, perfume (I can still smell it- Tresor), clothes.....and drinks. Lots and lots of drinks. We began hanging out at a bar called Hunky Dory's (hey, I didn't pick the name) and soon became diva-level regulars. Since we knew the manager (Ian) and all the bouncers and bartenders we -never- paid a cover charge and god forbid if there was someone new working the door who didn't know who we were- pfft. Our wrath was swift for such underlings and there was no pity. We even had the DJ's play set list tailor made for us....it was cool.


In fact there was one particular night that Wendy drug us to some random bar in BFE to see this band cuz she was all hot for one of the band members (who, as it turned out wanted nothing to do with her...and he was pretty gross and nasty) so we were "late" in arriving to our bar. No kidding, everyone was so worried about us that the manager of the bar called all our houses to find out where we were and if we were ok. Yes....the manager of a bar called my mother (and mind you I am 22 at this time) to see why her daughter was not already sloppy drunk on his dance floor. Classic.....


So Wendy was slutty and evil but in the history of my life I have to give her credit for it was she who found our Shangri-la, our hideaway....our crib. Ok the reason she found it was cuz her mom found out about the credit card scam and threw her out of the house. We had all been kicking around the idea of getting a place together and this just kinda gave us the shove we needed. I have no idea how she found our place but she called us to come look at it and it was the perfect college crib.


It is super close to all the college bars but yet right on the edge of town where it started to turn into "the country". This is in Ames, IA btw.....we were attending ISU at the time. It was a house that had been converted into apartment. The first floor was 3 one bedroom units and our was one three bedroom unit. Wendy took the master bedroom (which she always kept a total pigsty, this chick was exploding disaster where ever she walked) and Janet and I took the other 2 bedrooms which had an adjoining closet. The kitchen was straight out of the 50's but since we were not so much with the cooking that didn't matter (actually Janet is a very good cook and every so often would suprise me with breakfast- that rocked). We had a huge black bar/island that served as a pantry and what was the half bath/laundry room we turned into the make-up room. I had a vanity that I stuck in there and that was where we got ready....and trust me if you are living with 2 other women you need more than one bathroomto get ready in. Especially Janet who could easily take close to 2 hours to get ready. God knows I sat there and watched her go through her routine often enough but to this day I could still not tell you what took her so long (these days she tells me she is lucky to get out the door with her teeth brushed having 2 kids under the age of 5).


The best part of the house was our huge living room. It was massive and there were huge windows all around. This was great in the summer because we had no air conditioning and we got a great breeze. In fact the first time I ever had air conditioning in a house I lived in was Chicago. In the winter those windows were not our friend....as I mentioned it was an old house and not so much with the insulation. We would nail blankets and plastic over the windows to keep out the drafts and even then we couldn't have lived without my little space heater. We also had huge deep closets in the dining room area. The plus side to this was it was excellent storage for the massive amounts of cans we accumulated from our soda and beer habits. We would fill up the cabinets and then when we couldn't stuff another can in there we would go the mile (seriously) to cash in our cans and buy more beer. We would usually have like $30 worth of cans. One of the issues we had with our landlord later was ummmm, a bit of an ant problem because of years of very sticky closets being great feeding grounds for the ants. oops.....


This was the setting now for a thousand wonderful, weird and just buck wild crazy times....stay tuned and I will roll these stories out when my current life bores me ;)


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