animal lover

I'm not a huge fan of animals.

I think they're cute when I'm looking at them, and I love holding them, but once they come home with me, and they grow to adult animals, we stop being friends.
I don't like the smell of animals, I don't love animal hair, and I just don't feel the need to own them.
Them=common everyday domestic animals.

Then, I see animals that very few people own, and I become obsessed.
Take, for instance, the teacup pigphoto courtesy of
Look at its sweet little self. I love it so much.

Another example, the baby pygmy hippo. It is probably the sweetest thing I've ever seen.


photo courtesy of
Look at it take a bath! And eat lettuce! And sit there looking all cute!

Lastly, the slow loris is my new obsession. I want one really, really bad. Just keep watching until it makes its incredibly pathetic face. It is going to make you laugh and cry at the same time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLdQ3UhLoD4

moo

Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I have my family finance class.
It is in a BIG classroom in a building that is often used, therefore, when I'm going in, people are coming out, and when I'm coming out, people are going in (actual random question: what purpose does the "o" serve in the word "people?" Wouldn't "peeple" make more sense?).
The hallway and staircase leading to this room are small, not adequately equipped for 400 people to be milling around in.
Whenever I'm entering or exiting this class, the students around me remind me of herds of cattle.
Slow moving, but complaining that the person in front of them isn't moving.
I can just imagine how real it would seem if we moo'd instead of talking.photo courtesy of

random question

I hate it when people misuse commonly used phrases.

Like, I could care less. The correct phrase is "I couldn't care less." If you could care less, well, then you care.

I had a teacher in high school who loved the phrase "needless to say."
"Yesterday I was walking and I saw a girl trip and fall. Needless to say, she was a student of mine."
What? If it was needless to say, we should have known it before you said it. We didn't know it, so it wasn't needless to say.

This is my new favorite: In my family finance class, there's a girl who likes to ask "random questions."
Like: "Random question, how do I budget when I'm living off loans?"
That's not a random question. We're in a finance class. Learning about budgeting. It is a completely relevant question. She asked at least 3 "random questions" in one class period.

we're just glad Carrie comes.

I've been having foot pain for the past few days.
I've been trying to figure out what to write about.
I could write about how I would like crutches so people could call me Crutchy and I could talk about what I did to Mr. Snyder's sauerkraut.

I was thinking of how to describe my pain. I can really only compare it to shin splints. In my foot.
Foot splints.

And that lead me to write about track.
I ran track and cross country all throughout high school.
I didn't do it because I was amazing, but because I wanted to. Kathleen and I did it together, and we had a lot of fun.(I'm the super white one with no eyes. Kathleen is the one in yellow who looks like she's in pain. Please remember that, while I am freakishly tall, I was a freshman. That's why my hair looks like that)

However, it wasn't all fun and games. We did have to run. We also had to deal with the coaches. Let's call them Male Coach and Female Coach, to protect their identities.

Like I said, I wasn't amazing at track or cross country. In fact, you might say that I was the worst on the team. This caused much distress to Male Coach. He didn't like imperfection. Because I was the definition of imperfection in running, he didn't like me too much. One of the things about me that caused Male Coach to be the most distressed was the fact that I walked occasionally.

Before you judge me and think that I was one of those slacker kids who only ran during meets when their coaches were nearby, I'd like to squelch that thought right there. One of the things I'm most proud of is that I never walked during a meet.

However, when you run in Oklahoma at 3:00 in the afternoon in August, (it's approximately 105 degrees with 90% humidity at that time) it get's difficult to run 5 miles and not take a break.

My walking angered Male Coach. He couldn't kick me off the team because it was public school, and I had really good grades, meaning I helped with the team's collective GPA. But, I didn't follow his requests to the letter, causing him anger.

Let me illustrate a picture of Angry Male Coach with my words.
It starts with the chin. Anger causes Male Coach's head to recede back to his neck until he has virtually no chin. It's basically just neck and face. Then his right eye begins to twitch, causing his head to tilt towards the right. While he's yelling at you, his neck/chin combination jiggles, making what used to be a completely normal looking person look like an angry jiggling purple turtle. The problem is that laughing at Male Coach only caused him to be more angry. It was an ongoing vicious cycle of laughing and jiggling.

Female Coach was more passive aggressive with her disappointment with me. Female Coach would hint at how frustrated she was that I'd been on the team for four years and they had yet to see a HUGE improvement. She would say things like "we're just glad Carrie comes" and "Carrie is talented in other ways." Like they'd given up on me, not expecting improvement, just felt obligated to acknowledge the fact that I tried. She would tell me that it was okay if I didn't do well at practice, because I wasn't built to be a runner. I was built to be a shot putter, but just didn't have the upper body strength. That might not sound bad to you guys, but it basically means she thought I wasn't thin enough to be a runner, and I was weak.

I did try though. That's the thing. there were several times that I tried very hard and did well. There were other times that I tried very hard and failed. I look back on it now and am astonished at my ability to wipe off embarrassment. Like in this occassion:

When I was a freshmen, I was running the 400 meter dash in meets (because they had nothing else for me to do), but didn't qualify for regionals. This was not shocking. As I said, i was slow.
However, I also had really good grades. At that point, my GPA was a 4.0. In order for the team to win the "smart kids" award (I'm not sure if that's what it's really called, but that's what we're going to call it) they needed me to compete.

They couldn't have me run the 400, I was too slow. They couldn't have me run anything.
I couldn't throw a shot put ball to save my life, and hurdles and high jump still scare the willies out of me. I couldn't pole vault, that takes a lot of training. But, there was one thing they hadn't tried before: long jump.

To their surprise, when they took me over and told me to jump, I didn't fail miserably. I made the minimum requirement to compete (making it into the sandpit). So, two days before the regional meet, they took me over and gave me a crash course in long jump.

The problem: two days wasn't long enough. I knew this as soon as we showed up for the meet. I took one look at the sand pit and went to talk to Female Coach.
"Female Coach," (I'm pretty sure I actually used her real name) "their sandpit is a few feet farther from the spring board than ours is. I don't think I can make the sandpit," I told her in my most worried and shaky voice.
"Carrie, don't be silly," she said. "It's no farther away than ours."

We both knew she was lying to me. She didn't want me to freak out, but it was much farther away. I spent the next few hours of the meet alternating between praying to not embarrass myself and having entire-body convulsions.

By the time it was my turn to compete, the prayers worked. I was no longer scared of being embarrassed. I had accepted my fate, I was going to die. I watched the other long jumpers on the team compete, and probably place (they actually had skill and had been doing it for longer than two days).

When it was my turn, I stepped up to the starting line, ran down the strip of track, jumped off the spring board, and went as far as I could. Sadly, as far as I could was (as I'd predicted to Female Coach) not as far as the sandpit.

I repeated this action 3 times. After I finished, I left the few feet of track in front of the sandpit, walked over to Kathleen, and said "I'm hungry, want a granola bar?"

Kathleen was shocked. I'd pretty much just made a fool of myself in front of the entire region's track and field athletes, but it didn't bother me. Yes, I could hear their disdainful comments and snorts of disapproval, but I was used to it. I ran track for fun, not for glory.

Plus, I was hungry, and there were granola bars in my track bag.

Earthquake! Earthquake!

Today, I was sitting in my bed, and it began to shake.
I thought maybe I was just moving my legs too much.
Then I realized it wasn't just the mattress that was moving.
It wasn't just the frame that was moving.
MY WHOLE ROOM WAS MOVING.
I got extremely afraid.
I didn't grow up on a fault.
There are no earthquakes in Oklahoma.
Unlike all of these West Coast kids, I didn't grow up doing earthquake drills.
Do I get under my desk? Do I stand in the door frame? Is it better to be outside or inside?
I grew up doing tornado drills. I know to go to a central room with no windows.
Get into the fetal position in the bathtub.
If you're outside, you get in the fetal position in a ditch.
None of those things help during an earthquake. Especially when you're on the third story.
I was petrified.
Then I realized. It wasn't an earthquake.
They're doing construction in the creepy lot next to my apartment.
They're just shakin' things up a little bit.

aaawkwaaaaaard... (read that in a high pitched squeaky voice)

I'm sitting at a computer in the library. The computer across from me is occupied. Every time I stretched my legs out I kicked his feet (or so I thought). I didn't understand why he didn't move his feet. Come on man, if someone were repeatedly kicking me, I'd at least flinch. If only to get rid of the awkwardness. This is not a hard concept. But no. He just sat there with his freakishly long legs stretched out into my space making me incredibly uncomfortable.

Finally, I got fed up. I looked down underneath the table to give his feet the withering stare I was too chicken to give his face. To my surprise, my prize winning withering stare was directed not at his lower appendages, but at my own computer's chords. Because they're inanimate objects, they couldn't move to protect themselves from my incessant kicking. Sorry chords, I'll stop now.

the staircase debaucle that derailed my life plans.

I found a blog. It's pretty darn funny, and the girl who writes it draws pictures to go with her posts.

I decided to try it. So, this post will involve pictures. And a very embarrassing moment.

I'm studying advertising. In the advertising major, you have two options. You can do the management track or the creative track. You have to apply to the creative track. Last winter, that was my plan.
I was getting ready to turn in my portfolio after working on it for a semester, but I needed to find out the specifics (what information to put on it, what size, when. those specifics). So, I went to the professor who is in charge of the creatives' office (from now on, we'll just call him Professor), and picked up the paper that gave all of the instructions. I was hoping that Professor would be in, that I would get to talk to him, impress him, and show him how awesome I am. I would get into the track and i would WIN advertising! (well, you can't really win advertising, but I would.)

However, to my disappointment, Professor was not in his office. I picked up the sheet of paper, put it in my bag and started to walk down the stairs. As I was walking, who should be walking up the stairs but Professor.
A light bulb pinged inside my head. THIS IS THE PERFECT MOMENT TO TELL HIM WHO I AM! I was really excited.

Professor and I were in a small staircase, me walking down, him up. we did that awkward little dance where you both try to go the same way at the same time.

Now, remember. Professor doesn't know who I am. To him, I could be just another freshman who's gotten lost in the Brimhall. I could be a PR major, or a journalism major. He had no idea that he held what was then the dream of my future in his hands.

So, as Professor and I danced our awkward little dance, my brain did this:



It was a brilliant plan. He would be so impressed.

Then I started to fulfill what my brain told me to do, only halfway through, I saw a glitch. After saying "HI!" enthusiastically, I got this face from Professor:

But the words were already coming out, I had no way of stopping them, just inhibiting them a tiny bit.


So I mumbled "ahmcurrieahdell" quickly and quietly. I got a tiny glimpse of his unimpressed and confused face as I scurried down the stairs.

Three weeks later, I turned in my portfolio and waited for acceptance or denial. The result was the latter. I was upset, but I somewhat expected it.

Obviously, I'm creative (I drew all of these pictures) and I'm a hard worker. The only explanation could be that, upon seeing my portfolio, Professor remembered our awkward incident and thought that I had a mental condition and was therefore not fit to be in such a rigorous program.

Moral of the story:
Never try to introduce yourself to someone who controls your future while standing in a stairway. It does not work out well.