An Oldy But Goodie

I am getting ready to go out to a Halloween party and I can't help thinking back to my last Halloween at UMass. I can't remember whose been told this story but I htink its pretty funny I think it deserves to be posted. So here it goes...

It was my senior year at UMass and I was Mary Catherine Gallagher from SNL (think hands in armpits and superstar) for Halloween. My friend Calen called me up and invited me to a Halloween party out on a farm. So I hopped in the car with my knee highs, plaid skirt, yellow polo shirt, red vest and black rimmed glasses. There was a lot of people at this party and a couple of kegs had already been picked when me and my friends went on the last haunted hay ride of the night. It had been raining for a couple of hours so I ran back to the car to get my jacket. By the time I got to the tractor my friends were up at the front so I just hopped onto the back.

We started moving and right away you can just feel that this tractor is just full, almost too full. We start plodding away into the dark muddy trail. We can hear chainsaws in the distance but we really don't see much of anything.

We start heading up this hill and the tractor stalls. Well I'm the last person on the tractor so as we stop I fall off, heals over my head, skirt up in the air, into the muddy trail. As I am trying to get up, the tractor starts rolling backwards toward me, so yet a again I fall backwards into the mud. Everyone was yelling at the driver, Molly, to stop so she did, and then she started going forward again. This is a multi-acre farm, it's dark and muddy, the last thing I need is to be left in the middle of it. Eventually Molly catches on to what is going and stops and I hop back on.

Thankfully, the only thing that was hurt was my ego, but we still had to get through the rest of the hayride. There was a 40-something man sitting next to me who reeked like a distillery. He puts his arm around me and says in a gruff MA accent "I'm not trying to hit on ya hun, we just can't have you falling off again."

We get done with the ride and I meet back up with my friends and like good friends they handed me a beer and then just laughed at me. I was a pretty sad sight. There was mud caked all over me, and it wasn't like we were leaving any time soon. It also turns out that the players of the haunted hayride were drunk and thought that the rides were over so we never actually did get haunted.

Whenever Melissa, Paul, or Calen introduce me to new people this is the story that is told about me and I'm ok with that. In the words of the 40-something man that sat next to me, "It could have been worse, it could have been cow shit."

Happy Halloween!

Yoga, Fires, and Friends, Oh My!

So Yoga is...interesting. I've gone to two classes so far and I am kind of on the fence about it. It's a lot of breathing and stretching which I knew it would be and I like. What I didn't realize is that there is a lot of chanting. And like any religion or spiritual tenet, there are some things I just don't agree with. My teacher likes to talk about using the law of attraction. For those who don't know there is a self-help book that's been out on the shelves for awhile called "The Secret." I haven't read it but I do know that it deals with the idea of the law attraction. Basically the gist from what I understand is that if you emit positive "attractive" thoughts the things you would like to happen will happen. So if I want to get my masters all I have to do is think about it and imagine the process and poof the diploma will appear, no late night studying or stressing needed. I'm sure there' more to it then my summary but I don't care, it ain't for me. So when I am relaxing during yoga and my instructor starts talking about the laws of attraction I have to bite my tongue to keep from arguing about it. Despite the law of attraction I do enjoy the yoga. I go on Wednesdays and it is a nice way to kind of break the stress of the week up.

I am sure by now everyone has heard about the fires that are ravaging the Southern California area. Luckily the fires are not very close to me. I can smell the fires in the air and there was ash on my car today but other than that I haven't been affected. From talking to other people it turns out that these have been the worst fires in awhile. The conditions are prime for them too, we haven't had substantial rain since I moved here and there has been no humidity, great for my hair, bad for fire season.

It's taken a little while but I have finally started meeting some people. I met some through a flag football get-together. We have since decided that football is overrated and happy hour is way better. Classes are keeping me pretty busy since its about mid-semester and it's nice to be able to get away and just hang with some peeps.

This weekend should prove interesting. I am going to a Halloween Party hosted by one of my co-workers and on Sunday I just might make my first trip to Disneyland which I am wicked excited about. In between all of that fun I am going to find the time to finish up my homework assignments that are due on Monday. The fabulous life of a grad student.