Staying Awake

Last year, my roommate ,Monika, told me that she had journaled every day without fail for quite a few years. And I used to think that I journaled a lot. When I heard the things that she journaled about it made me laugh. She journals about what she sees and I journal about what I feel. We have decided that our polar writing styles would make for a great book one day. We have one year of the same experiences from our different perspectives, both being runners at UTC and living in the same space. But this year we were on different places on the globe. She spent one semester in Uraguay and I stayed right here in Chattanooga. Our expereinces were completely different and since we are writing a book together, we had to take a little bit of each-other's styles to make 2 stories worth reading. More on the book later. All this to say that I learned a fun writing game from my dear writer friend. She took notes... on the peculiar, on people and thier looks and actions, on the world around her. Anything that her eyes touched and found emotion in, she recorded. So this year I have made an attempt to do the same.



This is what I have come up from the time she spent away until now:
1. Singing at the top of your lungs in your car with the windows rolled down can lead to conversations with strangers who make you smile.
2. Graffiti is a beautiful disaster… in a good way.
3. The MARTA smells, but it is a great cultural experience.
4. Charmin can afford to make their toilet paper thicker because their rolls are about 3 inches narrower than other brands. Clever, huh?
5. My grandfather calls the remote a clicker.
6. According to my 7-year-old sister, t-shirt designs for the fourth of July should be made a year in advance.
7. There is nothing like eating brownie batter at Grandma’s house at 10:40 in the morning.
8. Mimi’s Café has the best hot chocolate ever with frothy whipped cream and cinnamon. It’s worth getting in the summertime.
9. At the Panera in Farragut, TN, they make you melt the cheese on your grilled cheese sandwich in the microwave. If you ask for apple juice, they might ask you to squeeze your own apples.
10. Soemtimes the sunset looks like melted creamsicles and purple popsicles blended together into a summertime skyshake by the author of creation.
11. I was acquainted with the species nocerous-pottumus on John and Kate plus 8.
12. Don’t let 6-year-olds play with nail polish bottles in a nail salon. They will drop one and spill polish all over the floor.
13. According to the lady at Trade Secret, I have mermaid hair.
14. Bath and Body works is expensive but it lasts a long time.
15. Michael Phelps is sub-human…8 gold medals and 8 world records in 8 events…
16. There is a spaceship-like contraption that can measure your exact body temperature to the nearest 10th. I know because I have riden in one.
17. Dr. Wright has way too much time on his hands to fill 50 minutes of class with an hour and a half’s worth of information. It’s like holding his pocket-watch in his hands lets him control its passing.
18. Dr. Wright pronounces salary celery.
19. Rainy days at UTC make me laugh because people wear rainboots that match their outfits and umbrellas.
20. Apparently when one girl tells another she has exciting news, they immediately look at the girl’s left hand.
21. Why does UPD have 2 toilets but no stalls in the girl’s bathroom? We aren’t boys.
22. Bullets taken out of a gun can be put back in. If you want to let someone play with your gun but you don’t want them to fire it, you should probably make the bullets inaccessible.
23. Frogs don’t eat dead crickets.
24. When God wants to make an mushroom he takes 8 minutes but when he wants to make an oak tree he takes 80 years.
25. It is fun to narrarate the ice cream consumption of little kids on the sidewalk by Clumpies. (Josh, Rach, and Bri)
26. Don’t poke your straw through a styrofoam cup of milkshake. It will make a VERY BIG mess. Haha
27. The blue recycling baskets are UTC property and must be returned at the end of the year.
28. If you are going to fall asleep in World Civ class, don’t sit on the front row. And if you must, try not to snore.
29. We learned in Childhood Psychology that “whether we think about it or not, our bodies just want to make babies.” That was a direct quote from a movie, not a life choice or a suggestion.
30 . According to the lady at a beauty salon on Frazier, “If eyes are the window to the soul, then eyebrows are their curtains, and are, therefore, very important.”
31. Southern Star has great Brunswick Stew, almost as good as Sonny’s.
32. It’s not illegal to swim in the Tennessee river at night but you will be arrested for public intoxication.
33. Pancakes is spelled p-a-n-c-a-k-e-s, not p-a-n-c-a-k-s like they painted on the banner in the UC.
34. “If you write it as a rap, it’s a rap. If you write it as a poem, it’s poetry. It’s all in how it’s read.” –Brian “B-$” Strauss-
35. Waffle House almost always makes for a memorable dining experience.
36. You know it’s serious when your pronouns are always “us” and “we.”
37. Some people feel it is necessary to wear a watch on each wrist. Why, you ask? I have no idea. 38. One day in class my biology professor dressed like a farmer.
39. God is not a God of disorder. He has OCD!
40. Raze got me the most points in scrabble to date.
41. On the news one night they announced that an iguana had been found on the side of the road and they were looking for its owner.
42. One day there was a giant machine thingie on campus that was plucking a telephone pole out of the ground as if it were a flower.
43. The mom from the show "little people, big world" came and spoke on our campus and the only thing I remembered from her speech was her telling us that she loved when capris came out because she didn't have to get her pants hemmed anymore.
44. God is a Quaker. He makes the earth quake.
45. Get on the bus, Gus. Make a plan, Stan
46. My world civ teacher wrote on the board "Bad map of the day" and proceeded to draw a terrible representation of Africa.
47. Same teacher-"Keep reading your textbook even though it makes absolutley no sense at all. The puzzle pieces are all over the floor right now. We gotta work on finding all of the edge peices so it can all make sense."
48. Still same teacher: "The dark ages were not too terribly dark."
49. And more: "The Queen of England... yes, she is still alive... she is almost as old as Yoda."
50. I have no idea what he was talking about then he said, "Orlando Bloom shed his elf costume and then..." and after that it all continued to make no sense at all.
51. My stat teacher has 2 moles below his right eye and he answered a girl in our class, "yes sir," and didn't even realize she wasn't a sir.
52. Drawing little pictures of your upcoming dinner during night class helps you to stay awake but it also makes you very hungry.

Hope these amused you as much as they did me.