Confound These Ponies...

Holy crap, guys! It's been a whole week since my last post!

To be honest, I haven't done very much this week, and so don't have much on which to report. I've become reobsessed with My Little Pony in the vacuum left by the end of ECOES. This awesome site, Equestria Daily, has a ton of awesome artwork and fanfics, plus news about the world of bronies. The fic I'm reading through right now is called Better Living Through Science and Ponies, and it's just as amazing as it sounds. Portal/Ponies crossover. In-fucking-credible. So you say MLP is a dumb show for little girls? Well...

Bye, everypony! <3

Last Day...

QUOTES OF THE (last couple) DAY(s):

"Your legs all function as one synchronous unit."
"I was making a video game reference, and you were just being a dork." "There's a difference?"
"This watch detects small seconds, big seconds, and ten seconds."
"I wish I could fly by the seat of my pants. I could just say, 'Seat, fly!'"
"You're never gonna see me again, so please bring me some mac 'n' cheese!"

Well, shit. It's the last night of ECOES. It feels like we've been here forever, but, contradictally (definitely a word), it feels like these two weeks just flew by. Tonight was the dinner cruise, which was awesome. I danced in the dance contest, and people actually cheered for me! Apparently, it was pretty hot. I threw off my glasses and pulled my hair out of my ponytail, and some guys wolf-whistled. Someone took a video; I'll try to get it and post it on here.

I dunno how many times phrases like "Where have you been all my life?" and "How have I not known you for years?" have been said these two weeks. It seriously feels like I've been living with these people for years. I'm totally comfortable around them, and we can have the most inane conversations. Twice in the last few days we've had impromptu YouTube parties. We've played Truth or Dare and done some pretty silly stuff. We pulled a prank on my roommate. Tonight, everyone is sneaking out to hang out with other people. Sadly, my friends are all dorks and are already asleep. :P I wish Deanna was here...miss you, ginger twin! My waffle mug is sitting on my desk drying. I hope we get a chance to share a cup of tea again in the future, mono or no. :)

So, to all my ECOES friends reading this, I hope you continue to follow my blog to stay in touch. Feel free to leave comments and shit, broskis. If any of you start a blog, leave the link in the comments, and I'll totally follow it. I probably won't be able to post every night, but I'll try at least a few times a week. For the last time from the Home of the Ducks, this is Skittles, signing off.

Mischief Managed

LISTENING TO: "My Hero" by Foo Fighters

Finally saw the last Harry Potter movie. It was so good...I don't wanna talk about it too much, because I know at least one person who will read this hasn't seen it yet, but it was awesome. The Battle of Hogwarts could have been more epic, and they didn't need the epilogue, but I loved it so much. I'm such an HP dork, as evidenced below.

Rule 63 Harry Potter, complete with lip-liner scar

A young Sirius, who, for some reason, has a Dark Mark and a Gryffindor tie

In other news, we went to South Side Seaport today to bum around for a while. After some 'splorin', Mike, Chris, Kari, and I went to Johnny Rocket's for lunch. Kari ordered a chocolate peanut butter milkshake to split with Chris. He took a sip and said, "God, that tastes like shit. Someone try this to see if I'm crazy." So I tasted it and quickly realized that it was, in fact, a *spiked* chocolate peanut butter shake, with rum. We probably could have gotten the waitress fired for that, and she didn't even comp it for us. Then she gave me bacon cheesy fries (about half an hour after I ordered plain fries) and charged for them. We ended up leaving a 3% tip, and I did not feel bad about that at all. Afterwards, Hart taught us this super-fun game called Silent Football. It is neither silent nor football. Now you're interested. It's really hard to explain, so look it up if you wanna know. :P As usual, it's already tomorrow, and I'm dead tired. Night, guys.

Mono Buddies!

QUOTES OF THE DAY:

"You look so evil with that bagel."
"That whole building is a TV!"

LISTENING TO: "Night of the Hunter" by 30 Seconds to Mars

Hello again, all. I missed last night because I was just so damn tired and slightly freaked. :P So Deanna nearly fainted in the sun yesterday, and the cops came to bring her to the hospital. I was understandably worried, but I figured she just didn't eat and got dehydrated. That afternoon, she texts me. "Eyyyy. Turns out I have mono. Fun, huh?" I freaked out for her for a bit, then remembered how mono is spread: from sharing drinks and such. Like she had been with me, Mike, Chris, etc. So we're all screwed. xD We'll be alright.

Today, we went to the city for a while. Nick had never been there, so it was hilarous to watch him walk through Times Square and into Toys R' Us. He stopped at all the people in the street giving out stuff and just generally acted like a tourist. In Toys R' Us, though, we all were six years old. We spend about 20 minutes trying to figure out what Nerf guns blasters to get, until we had to go empty-handed just to get to our meet-up place on time. Then we all went to Central Park, where we got on the lawn and practically fell asleep, then had to book it to get to the other side. So much walking...

Back on campus, we watched Harry Potter 7, part 1, again, since we're seeing part 2 tomorrow. I most definitely did *not* start tearing up when Dobby died. Nope. I'm 17. Everyone was practically falling asleep after the movie, so we all just hung out and chilled. Now I'm sitting here in my PJ's trying to keep my eyes open long enough to recall the last two days for you. I hope you're happy. :P No promises on tomorrow's post, since we're going to Harry Potter after another day of city 'splorin'. Night, all.

Random Fireworks (or The End of an Era)

It's here, everyone. In barely over an hour, the final Harry Potter movie will be released on the East Coast. I go to bed a wide-eyed, wonderous child and wake a cynical, jaded adult. *sniff* It's actually kinda sad. I really, really hope they did it justice. We're gonna see it in 3D, which is a bit unfortunate. Oh well. At least it means I'll get to see it for real the first time with my boyfriend. I hate 3D movies...

So I'm actually mad sleepy. I was so tired today that I actually got a coffee drink to stay awake during my second class (Quanitative Finance). I never drink coffee, like, ever. It made me really hyper for a while, but I guess I've crashed by now...nothing really awesome happened today, except the random fireworks. Michael said they're for Bastille Day, but I'd like to think that they were to give Harry Potter a right proper send-off. I'm gonna wear my Gryffindor shirt and tie and a scar when we go to see it. I also need a wand. I plan to wave it during the closing credits and say "Mischief managed." I think that's a decent farewell. Certainly better than this one: night. :P

The Man With Ten Nipples

QUOTES OF THE DAY:

"You have tenacles coming off your face." "...I'm Cthulhu!"
"Sad video slot..."
"Aw, I can be your daddy...stroke-stroke, stroke-stroke..."
"Only four of my nipples lactate. Specifically, these four."
"He euthanized our robot Steve!"
"Look, Jesus is in that tree...it's Treesus!"

LISTENING TO: "Just Watch the Fireworks" by Jimmy Eat World

Perhaps I should explain the nipples first. Today, we had a class about biomedical engineering, and one of the demos was with an ECG machine. The teacher asked for a male volunteer, and my friend Chris got up. She turned to him and said, "I want you to take your shirt off." The counselor (Hart, he's cool) asked Chris, "Is that okay?" and Chris was like, "Hell yeah, man!" and took off his shirt like a Calvin Klein model. :P Then he got a bunch of snap electrodes stuck all over his chest, and they looked like little metal nipples. After the testing, he decided to keep them on, and actually wore them until at least after dinner. He was so proud... Then we played with the pulmonary machine thing to test oxygen-intake/carbon-dioxide-exhalation under certain conditions. Michael got to play the part of an obese person sleeping on his chest. He got to wear a lovely little elastic band around his chest and had his nose plugged up. It was quite amusing.

...Ladies.

Then we got to play with an EOG. Deanna had all these electrodes stuck on her face hooked up to a BioRadio, which sent signals about her eye movements to a computer program. It was actually pretty cool watching how her eyes moved when she was reading. Plus, ya know, she just looked so funny. xD



...Attractive humanoid beings.

Then we got to play with robots. That was awesome! Our robot was Steve. He's a little slow, but we love him (ir)regardless. We taught him what purple looks like, and set him loose to find it in the room. Poor little thing tried his very best, but just couldn't follow the paper. It's okay, Steve. You're in a better place now. *sniff* Dinner was three-quarters of a chocolate-chip pancake and Phish Food at Ben and Jerry's. I'm gonna gain about 20 pounds by the end of this camp. So much great food... I've already caught myself and other people calling the dorm hall "home" by accident. It feels like we've been here for so long... Well, I have another fun-filled day of engineering tomorrow later today. Good night, errybody!

Batman and Robin on Bicycles!

QUOTES OF THE DAY:

"Gilgamesh was kinky!"
"I can kick things other than the up button."
"My group is equally better than yours."
"Only a ginger can call a ginger Ginger."
"I needed something cheesy in my mouth...and you were there like a Cheez Doodle fairy!"

LISTENING TO: "Clap Your Hands" by Pale Young Gentlemen

It made my day: Batman and Robin were riding bikes down Washington Street and whistled at me and Deanna. Sorry guys, you were cute, but I'm not gonna call you. :P

So I realized that, besides nights and early mornings, I've spent the last 54 hours with my red-haired twin. Everyone keeps asking if we knew each other before the camp, and we totally didn't! But! Today we realized that we both were at the Discovery Day for engineering at Rutgers! So weird...we're in all the same groups, and we like and dislike a lot of the same stuff, and it's uncanny how often we say the the same thing or quote at exactly the same time. God, it already feels like I've been here for a month, not less than three days. All we do is eat, go to class, and sit around on the computer or playing cards (or both).

Classes today were kinda boring. Engineering Management was mostly a PowerPoint lecture, but afterwards we had to design an ice cream shop and figure out all the materials and suppliers and everything. Sadly, we didn't win, even though we offered jalepeño & curry twist frozen yogurt to hipsters in LA! It was a fix, I tell ya! Then we had Chemical Biology. Lots of "That's what she said" jokes in the back of the room when the prof. was talking about injecting DNA and only inserting the tip. Good to see we're so mature. The first meeting of my research project group was fun. I'm learning a new programming language: R. I never heard of it before, but it seems convenient. It keeps the variables all in a side panel so you can view them at any time. Isn't that great? ...I'm a dork, aren't I.

Anyway...I really like the band Cake. I'm listening to Comfort Eagle, and it's so nice...it feels like stoner music, but it seems cool. The caffenine-withdrawal headaches are gone, because I got my fix for the night. Deanna and I got huge mugs at CVS, and we made two-bag French Vanilla Chai cups of tea not too long ago. Somehow, all four tea bags ended up in my mug, and I got ultra-strong tea.

Yep, four tea bags. Hard-core.

It was yummy...but got cold really quick. Oh well. We walked past Carlo's Bake Shop (AKA the Cake Boss place), and the line was wrapping around the corner, and inside was wall-to-wall people, most just taking pictures. What's the big deal, everyone? I mean, my cousin got his 2-year-old a Mickey Mouse cake from there for her birthday, and he was totally raving about how great it would be, and it wasn't. It was mostly fondant and crappy not-Rice-Krispies-treat. Plus, they had to cut Mickey's head in half!


Look at this shit. That burning is your childhood dying.

So tomorrow night we're gonna watch a Movie Under the Stars. I think it'll be "The King's Speech." Anyway, I may not get to post tomorrow night. So I bid you all adeiu, adeiu, parting is such sweet sorrow, etc. Peace! 

Free Slurpies!

QUOTES OF THE DAY:

"Packing tape sucks!"
"I want to lick the Atomic Chicken..."
"Don't touch my sword. Don't."

LISTENING TO: "That's What You Get" by Paramore

In case you were wondering, my blog is, in fact, named after a Rise Against song. Kudos to anyone who caught that.

So I'm at an engineering camp at Stevens Institute of Technology for two weeks, and it's awesome. I already have tons of friends with whom I'm willing to share food and drinks, and that's the true mark of a friend. My best friends are Deanna and Michael (Fedora and Mickey, respectively. My nickname's Skittles. xD) We're gonna paint Michael's toenails silver-and-purple zebra-stripes. Hope his girlfriend doesn't mind! There are 24 girls at this camp, out of 97 total kids. It doesn't always suck to be a girl in engineering. ;P (I didn't say that, TJ. <3 (For the rest of you, TJ is my boyfriend.)) Right now, I'm in a friend's room while five people are playing a modified drinking game. No drinks, Mom!

One of the cooler things about this camp is that it's basically college. We get money on our ID cards to use around Hoboken, and we can just walk into town whenever we have free time - admittedly, there isn't much free time at an engineering camp. The best part is that everyone gets my dorky references! Pokemon, Doctor Who, My Little Pony, Firefly, AVPM - you name it, I've heard it today. I met my best friends while talking about Harry Potter pick-up lines! Oh, that's another thing. We're actually going as a group to a showing of HP 7.2 on Sunday! I really, *really* hope they did the Battle of Hogwarts justice...anyway. What was I talking about? Dorks! I'm one of those! xD And I got into the programming research project! Woo!

Anyway...I'm gonna try to update this blog every night I'm here, and probably after the camp ends too. I know probably no one is reading this, but thanks for those of you who are. Night!

First post!

Hey all! This is my first blog, so go easy on me. :P My name's Ashley, and my life is boring. I'm gonna blog about it so it'll seem better. This is just my introductory post, so it won't be too long. Basically, I'm just a regular, middle-class, vaguely punkish teenager. Soooo...I'ma go now. Bai!