...And Had a Really, Really, Really Good Time.

"And we danced,
And we cried,
And we laughed,
And had a really, really, really good time."
--Macklemore

Let us all take a moment of silence and acknowledge just how amazing the Macklemore and Ryan Lewis concert was last weekend.

Cue cricket noises.

AHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

This concert was AMAZING.  I'm telling you, my words will not do it justice.  Totally worth the difficulties I went through to get the tickets, as I laid out for you all in this post.

So here's how it all went down:

Brooke, Annie, Anna, and I all decided to go to dinner at Ford before the concert.  Christian and Stephanie were going to meet us there later.  So we all headed to dinner looking pretty snazzy in our matching black shirts and jeans.  Let me tell you, we were ready to go.

So we ate and headed over to Elliot at about 7:30 when the doors were opening.  We found our seats, met up with the other two members of our group, took a couple bathroom breaks, prepared our glow stick bracelets, and scoped out the endless number of fur coats and various mismatched outfits people wore, all in the name of thrift-shopping.

During our seemingly endless wait, we encountered several interesting occurrences, including but not limited to people smoking weed and someone getting taken out in hand cuffs with vomit plastered on the front of their shirt because they had had a little bit too much fun before the concert started. 

The concert was supposed to begin at 8:00, but the opener, Allen Stone, didn't come out until 8:30.  Halfway through his set, my fellow Purdue students began getting antsy and began shouting for the main event to come onstage.  Mr. Stone was finally done after about half an hour.  Yes, we all thought.  Macklemore will be out any minute.

Wrong, said Purdue.

Macklemore did not grace us with his presence until 45 minutes after Allen Stone left.  Rumor has it that one of the band members had travel issues, but we were not aware of that at the time, and I watched as the energy and hype that had been present in anticipation for Macklemore to arrive onstage diminish to nothing.  Everyone ended up in their seats and on their phones.  Typical.

But finally, he came on, and it was absolutely mind-blowing.  The show itself had such a minimalist approach: there were no props, there were only 4 people max onstage at a time, and there were no costume changes (that is, not until the encore).  Yet it was incredible.  Macklemore was so enthusiastic and genuine and people couldn't help but stay out of their seats and sing along.

He sang a multitude of songs, but the 3 that need to be elaborated upon are as follows:

1. Thrift Shop: the song that he is known for.  Before starting the song, he asked for one of the audience member's fur coats and began to put it on, all the while making up some ridiculous story about the "Indiana Brown Bear" from which the fur came.  He then proceeded to walk off the stage saying he had always wanted an Indiana Brown Bear fur coat, so bye.  But then he came back on and went into the song and it was just crazy and fun.

2. Can't Hold Us: Probably my favorite Macklemore song.  I don't know if I've ever screamed so loud in my life!  The song came on and there was so much energy in the room and everyone was jumping up and down and dancing and screaming and oh my gosh I wish I could relive that moment.

3. And We Danced: This was one of the encore performance songs Macklemore performed.  It started with an extremely strange recorded monologue about something that nobody understood, with references to Usher and Lady Gaga and such.  Everyone looked at each other and had no idea what to think until suddenly "Macklemore" jumped onto stage clothed in a cape and blonde wig, his "alter ego."  It was weird, but so fun!

The whole show was just amazing and Macklemore was very involved with the audience.  He also made some extremely provocative comments, such as thanking Purdue for letting him "dry hump our women" and making references to how his trumpet player may or may stick a body part in his trumpet daily.  Yeah.  Extremely bizzare, but so funny!

Before the concert

The group

Macklemore and Ryan Lewis!

Brooke

Annie

Christian

**I came home this weekend for Easter.  Again, always nice to be home and be surrounded by family!

Yayyy family!

**I'm not sure if I mentioned, but Christian is taking Kourtney to prom in a few weeks!  The "asking" is going to happen tomorrow; I'll give more details and such later!

**Our DeVito class field trips are over :((( Here are some pictures from the past semester:

New Community School

Little Star

Celery Bog

Celery Bog again (and that awkward moment when your adviser pulls out some HUGE binoculars in a purse-like carrying case and makes you in charge of them)

Puppet show at Celery Bog!

**I'm going to have to ask for some patience in the next few weeks from my loyal blog readers.  The next few weeks are going to be extremely hectic for me (not to mention uneventful as far as interesting things happening), so it may be difficult to be consistent with posts.  I'll do my best, but in the meantime, stay awesome :)

Leave It To Gliege.

It was only a matter of time before my senior year journalism teacher, Mr. Gliege, chastised me for my absence from blogging via Facebook.

I believe his exact words were, "UHHHH........BLOG?"

Yes, those were in fact his exact words, because I copied them straight from the post on my timeline.  An interesting (how should I say this nicely?) primitive post, coming from a high school English teacher.  Last time I checked, "Uhhhh" was not in the dictionary, a double ellipse plus two periods does not mean anything, and a single noun with a question mark does not a sentence make.

Nahh, I'm just kidding, Gliegs ;)

Actually, I appreciate these reminders I get from him on various occasions.  Not only do they keep me on track with regularity in posting, but they also remind me to be appreciative of the fact that people actually care about what is going on in my life and enjoy the updates.  So to you, dear "Joe Sanders," thank you.

Now, enough with the thank you speeches.  Let's get to the good stuff.

I suppose I should update you on how my Spring Break went, and since I don't exactly feel like typing out every last detail, I think I'll write some haiku poems to give you the gist.

Friday, March 8th

My mom picked me up,
I drove the two hours back home,
We ate Panera.

Nice conversation,
"Let's go see a movie now!"
What should we go see?

Go to theater,
Saw Twenty-One and Over,
Inappropriate. 

Saturday, March 9th

Rise and shine early,
Drive an hour to Champaign,
Visiting Katie!

I missed her a lot,
She showed me around campus,
We talked to catch up.

Mexican dinner,
Warm Bodies movie was bad,
Night night, U of I.

Sunday March 10th.

Seeya soon, Katie.
Drive back home for an hour,
Don't remember more.

Monday March 11th.

A lazy Monday,
Do some of my homework, ugh,
Not much to report.

Tuesday March 12th.

Happy Birthday, me!
Go shopping with my grandma,
Hooray for new clothes!

Dinner with the fam,
Bandana's barbecue, yum.
Open presents now.

Hooray for new books!
Hooray for Breaking Dawn 2!
Hooray for new scarf!

Why is it that Lent
Must always fall during my
Birthday, please tell me.

The better question:
"Why do I give up desserts?"
No cake for me, wahh.

Wednesday March 13th.

Lunch with Kelsey O.
FlatTop, oh how I missed you.
Time to gain a pound.

Work at Mrs. Fields
That night with my friend Courtney.
I missed her; she's great.

Thursday March 14th.

Went to the dentist,
Got to get my teeth cleaned now,
No cavities, yay!

Nothing much to say,
My Spring Break was kinda lame,
I like being home.

Friday March 15th.

Dinner at Chili's
With Katie, her mom, and mine,
It was so much fun.

Chloe and Nat are
Now home so the girls and I
Hung out together.

We ate cheesy bread
And talked and laughed like before
We went to college.

Saturday March 16th.

We all went to lunch
At Avanti's, which was good.
I missed gondolas. 

We then went to a
Thrift Shop to go "Thrift Shopping"
As Macklemore says.

I love my girlies
And I miss them like crazy,
Breaks aren't long enough.

Sunday March 17th.

Time to go back to
Purdue, even though I thought
Spring Break was too short.

Good bye Mama and
Dad and sister and Smokey
And Garfie. Love you!

I will see you all
When I come home for Easter
In only two weeks.

Phew.

That was a lot of poorly written haikus.  Hopefully you didn't smack your head on the table repeatedly.  I would hate to be the source of your concussion. 

As far as this past week, it was not one of the best.

I was extremely busy, what with projects and homework and meetings.

I registered for classes for next semester, and they're finally more education-related...yes!  I signed up for summer classes too...Honduras is a GO and I'm also taking an online class to get it out of the way so it doesn't take up room in my schedule later.  Plus I'll be studying out of a book this summer to try to test out of my final semester of math, because I REALLY  don't want to take Geometry for Elementary School Teachers.  Crossing my fingers that I'll be able to teach it to myself and be able to test out.

Only one more field trip with the DeVito class!  It's so sad: I love that class so much, and I'm going to miss seeing them all together each week.

We had a BGR TL social on Tuesday where we played Apples to Apples with our buddy group.  It was a blast and I can't wait for August!

I get to babysit for the family I babysat last summer this summer, along with their neighbors.  I'm really excited!

Had a debate on Friday.  I was on the opposition side of "The Green Revolution was a failure."  And by the way, the Green Revolution is NOT a revolution in which we should use environmentally friendly technologies or anything like that.  Hah.

Now, time for some bad news.

Do you remember Christian?  I'm sure you do...(as much as I write about him in my posts, you probably know him better than I do!)

Well, I'm sure you know that he's one of my best friends here.  Unfortunately, he talked to me this week and told me that he would not be returning to Purdue next year.

He's really not happy here, which I have known and talked to him about it many a time.  But finally, he and his mom decided on a course of action that should hopefully make him happy.  He's going to take a gap year and the plan is that he will go abroad to either Costa Rica or Spain to work and take some classes, then return to Colorado University-Boulder to finish his schooling.  He isn't completely sure what he wants to do with his life right now, so he wants to take some time off to figure it out.  He's always wanted to travel and he loves Spanish (could be because of his Paraguayan descent), so he wants to become fluent in it.  Also, he said he'd feel more comfortable at CU-Boulder because that's where he's from and when he visited his friends there during spring break, he said it just felt more comfortable for him.

Now that's all fine and dandy, but how did I take it?

If anybody really knows me, you know that I'm not the type to withhold my emotions.  Naturally, I cried.  Even sitting here now, I have to consciously fight back tears when I think about it.

I can't imagine going to school without him.  I can't believe I won't be able to just text him and ask him to hang out next year whenever I feel like.  No more dinners, baking sessions, late nights watching stupid scary movies.  No more late night talks, dance parties, music sharing, smoothie making, snacking.  No more laughing until our sides hurt from making fun of each other.

I'm happy for him, honest.  I know he's not happy here.  He doesn't feel as if he's made a lot of friends here and just isn't passionate about the school.  I know he'll enjoy the change of scenery when he goes abroad, because that has been one of his dreams.  I'd do anything for him to be happy with where he's at.  And since he's not happy here, I have to let him go.

I sucks.  I was thinking about how tough it was going to be for the 3 months of the summer when I wasn't going to see him.  Unfortunately, now that time is going to be extended indefinitely.

I'm not nervous that we will fall out of touch.  No, we both explicitly stated that we would talk and text and Skype all the time.  Best friends don't just give that up.  But it's not the same, you know?  It doesn't feel right not knowing when you'll see one of your best friends again.  I'm hoping, and keeping my fingers crossed, that I will be able to visit him in Colorado this summer for a few days.  But who knows?  What if, after this semester, I won't see him for a year or two?  That's heartbreaking to me.  I don't like losing people in my life.

You've seen all these pictures before, but I had to put them up again!!

But enough of my sob story.  I'm a big girl and it will all work out.

On a lighter note, THE MACKLEMORE CONCERT IS TONIGHT! Yayyyyy!!! Can't wait!  Pictures and updates on that later.

Oh, and apologies for this novel of a post.

Tray Sledding Like Champs.

What did I tell you?

At the end of my last post, which I posted a mere 6 hours ago, I said I'd go sledding with the trays we stole from the dining court.

Well I went to dinner with Matt and Christian tonight, and we went to a dining court specifically with trays.  And I sat and watched (and laughed) as I watched Christian try to shove the trays up his jacket without it looking too obvious.  Somehow he managed for it to work, even though he looked incredibly misshapen.

The three of us just got back about half an hour ago, and it was absolutely fantastic!  Even though some of the snow had already melted, what was left was hard and icy: perfect sledding snow.  We tried to go as individuals at first, but as soon as we "chained up" (that one's for you, dad), we started speeding like crazy.  We went so fast that it was hard to stop at the end, so we had to fall off ourselves lest we get cut up by the sidewalk at the bottom of Slayter Hill.

There were several close encounters with trees and lots of snow up our coats, but it was totally awesome. 

There was even a point where we found this black plastic ring, so Christian got inside and we rolled him down the hill.  It was quite fantastic.

Need I say it?  

I LOVE COLLEGE!!!

The Tale of the Cook, the Thief, & the Crazy College Kid, Who all Happen to be the Same Person.

"No, I'm not being immature.  I'm having fun.  You should try it." --Anonymous

Once upon a time, there was a girl named Kasey living in the magical kingdom of Purdue University.  She was your average, run-of-the-mill college kid with hopes and dreams and fears about her here and now and her future.  She didn't know where she was going to end up in a few years.  She wasn't even 19 yet!  (Except she will be in 5 days...)  But despite not being psychic and knowing where she would be in the near future, she did know that she was having the time of her life in the magical kingdom of college.  Below is a compilation of some of her most recent adventures:

The Tale of Cooking for Forty: The Biggest Pot of Macaroni & Cheese Ever.

You all know by now that I'm a Life Guide at St. Tom's and teach Sunday School to 5th graders every week.  Well, all the Life Guides meet every Tuesday to plan our lesson for the next week and to bond and all that good stuff.  Oh, and also to eat food.

The problem is, we don't meet at a dinning court.  We don't meet at a restaurant.  No, we meet at church.  Church does not have it's own stockpile of food and people to make it for us at our beck and call.  Instead, we have to take turns each week making dinner for everyone.  And everyone=40 people.

So last Monday, me and 3 of my friends, Katie, Jess, and Rose, took a magic carriage ride to Super Target to obtain the necessary materials to satiate the hunger of 40 college kids after a long day of classes.  On a budget of only $50, we were in a crunch.  Tacos will be easy, we thought.  Target said, "No, guys, my meat is so expensive that you'll spend all your money on that.  Pick something else."

Thanks, Target.  So we decided on a childhood favorite: pigs in a blanket, macaroni and cheese, and chocolate chip cookies.  Then Tuesday night, we set off on an adventure, trying to figure out how to boil 20 boxes of macaroni at once while simultaneously rolling 50 hot dogs in 50 croissants and cooking them, while also baking chocolate chip cookies and making a huge vat of lemonade.  It was quite an adventure.  The end.

Food for dayzzzz.

 

  The Tale of the Fancy Ball, aka Shreve Semi-formal.

It's 8 on a Saturday morning.  The sun is rising and everything is quiet and still on Purdue's campus. Nobody is stirring.  It's a weekend on a college campus for goodness sake.

Oh, yeah, except for the 30-some suckers from Shreve Club, myself included, who are loading boxes and boxes of decorations and speaker equipment into various campus vehicles to take to the Ross Ade press box to set up for semi-formal.  Happy Saturday.

So there we were, caravaning to Ross Ade, only to find out that the doors were locked.

Breakfast time! we decided.

Carson, the how should we say it?, tense Shreve Club president, grudgingly obliged.  Ford dining court! we said.  It's closed! we figured out.  Wiley! we said.  Drive! we did.  10 minutes to eat! Carson said.  Yeah right! we all thought.  But we managed to fuel up on various food items and then we went back into action when we returned to the scene of the dance.  The press box was HUGE. We had 2 floors worth of space to decorate with various decorations we had been making for weeks.  This included lights and wall hangings and streamers and ceiling decorations and balloons and beads and vases and peacock feathers and masks and more, all in the theme of Mardi Gras Masquerade.  It all went without a hitch.  Until the Christmas lights blew a fuse.  And the Command hooks that held them up began ripping the paint off the walls.  And the helium tank for the balloons broke.

Thankfully, we got it all fixed.  But not without a couple near-breakdowns from our Pres.

We were able to leave around 12:30 to get some lunch and rest a tad before set-up round 2.  So I worked on some homework and then curled my hair and got into the purple dress that Annie let me borrow for the occasion.  At 5:30 I was back, helping blow up balloons and tying them and putting ribbon on them and curling the ribbon and letting them float to the ceiling.  And also getting trained on how to run the front desk check-in.

Finally 8:00 pm arrived and people started showing up in a variety of dresses and masks and such.  The DJ was pretty awesome, including their light show.  People played cards and learned how to Salsa and Swing dance and watched performances by the 2 improv groups on campus, Ship of Fools and Crazy Monkeys.  I danced around with a bunch of people, ran the front desk for awhile, ate some food and drank some drinks, and even participated in the Shreve Semi-Formal Harlem Shake with the Shrever Beaver as the first dancer.

At midnight, the magical ball ended and reality sunk in.  That is, the reality that we weren't princesses and we were actually servants of Shreve Club instructed to tear down everything we had so meticulously put up hours before.  Everyone was absolutely wiped.  

At 2:00 am, I finally fell into my bed after a long day.  The End.

4th floor ladies.

Laura and Breana!

Danaaaa.

Brooke and Lauren, who came up for the weekend!

Mike and I

Cassidy and Maura

Dana and Julia

Shreve Club girls

The Tale of the TL Retreat, aka A Bunch of Idiots Dressed up in Costumes.

You'd think after a long day of hard work and fun on Saturday, I would have earned a reprieve from waking up early on Sunday.  How wrong you are.

Instead, I had to wake up early again in the name of being a Boiler Gold Rush Team Leader. (See previous blog entry)

I met up with one of the other TLs in my group, who happens to live on the 4th floor guys side, and we walked to Einstein's Bagels at 10 in the morning to meet our BGR Supervisor (Super), Liz, and our buddy Super, Brad, and all the TLs in the group.  We ate and chatted a little bit about what was going to happen that day, and then we headed onto campus to begin our retreat.  Oh, and did I mention that we all had to dress up in Space Jam costumes?  (I was Sylvester the cat.  Secret: I've never seen Space Jam).  Other groups had on a variety of animal garb, including but not limited to pandas, zebras, giraffes, penguins, fish, etc. etc. etc.

We played some traditional BGR ice breaker games before the retreat officially began.  We then played some various team building games and learned about the philosophies and our responsibilities for being a TL.  We ate lots of food, and then had to make up a skit with our groups that included a bunch of different words and phrases, including, "Aca-awkward" from Pitch Perfect and, "You go, Glen Coco!" from Mean Girls.  Each group had to perform for everyone else, aka an entire lecture hall full of future TLs.  Classic.

It was another long day, but again, lots of fun.  I'm so excited for BGR 2013!

The End.

TLs and our buddies!

Ballin'

During our skit

The Tale of the Epic Battle, aka Freezing Our Butts Off.

It's Tuesday.  I go to my Physics lab at 2:00.  It's bright and sunny and beautiful outside.  I came out at 4:30 to find the ground blanketed in snow along with a downpour of snow.  Cool.  So I ate a hasty dinner with Breana, we walked back onto academic campus to take our math exam, came back, I studied for my Physics exam on Wednesday, and then Annie, Jess and I went outside to have our own mini snowball fight at 11 pm. We went out to the band practice field and went crazy.  We also ran around in the 5 inches of snow we had gotten and drew faces and hearts in the snow on peoples' cars.  Hey, it was better than some of the obscene things we saw that other people had drawn...

We tried to build a snowman, but unfortunately, the snow didn't pack, so we built a snow mound instead and then kicked it down for fun.  We tried throwing snowballs at various windows at Shreve to get the attention of our 4th floor floormates, and unfortunately missed several times, only to get glares out the windows from 3rd floor residents.  When it got too cold, we came back in and went to bed.  The End.  Great story, I know.

Snow time!

The Tale of the Thief, aka Being a Traditional College Kid.

A major snowfall means one thing: a decrease in the number of food trays in the dining courts.  Why?  Food trays = sleds for sledding on the giant hill on campus, Slayter Hill.  It's not like the dining courts are just going to hand out their trays to students.  Oh no.  We have to get clever and creative to obtain these precious commodities.  

So last night at floor dinner, Alexandra, Breana, and I all grabbed an extra tray and contrived a variety of ways we could possibly get them out the front door, incognito.  It's difficult, you see, because there is always a door-watcher in the dining court, making sure you don't steal more food than the allotted piece of fruit, or, in the winter, trays.

It was a challenge considering we left our backpacks behind and our coats were a tad to form-fitting to allow for the bulk of the trays.  Luckily, Breana brought her bag, so 2 trays went inside and were covered by her scarf.  Alexandra managed to fit the tray up her coat so it just looked as if her back was extremely flat and misshapen.  We were able to escape the dining court without a second glance from the door watcher.  Thieves for the win.  Guess who's (probably) going sledding tonight?

The Ten Commandments say "Thou Shalt Not Steal."  But if you really think about it, I'm sure my meal plan cost allots for a tray.

The End.

Oh, by the way, I GET TO GO HOME TOMORROW!!!

Spring Break with snow on the ground.  Classic.

Oh yeah, by the way.  I changed my blog layout again.  Hope you enjoy it!