Welcome to the Dark Side

So I wrote a paper last night. 

It was pretty spectacular, guys. It had a lot to do with murders and murderers because I am a criminal justice major and those are things that we write about. I finished it before dawn this morning, so that was a nice change of pace. Got like five whole hours of sleep. 

It was awesome. 

But, anyway, now my internet history is full of searches for murderers. I downloaded pictures of murderers to use on my powerpoint. I'm really glad that no one is sneaking peeks at my internet history. Not just, like, last night, but like always. 

My internet search history is just so embarrassing. 

And it's not even embarrassing for the usual reasons! It's just...ugh, let me give you an example. My last five searches are like "murderers who were under 18," "which alcohol tastes the least like alcohol?" "are colorblind people allowed to drive buses?" "hairstyles for people with glasses" and "best grad schools for writing, sociology, law, criminal justice..." and that list goes on for a while. 

My internet searches are not internet searches. They are stories. Each one has some weird incident attached. 

There's also, like, time stamps involved so you can see just how much time I spend on certain websites. It's embarrassing to admit that you spend, like, three hours a day on pinterest. Or to realize that you spent four hours last night reading dumb internet comics. 

It's bad, guys. I really hope that no government agencies are looking at my internet history. I bet they'd just look at each other and be, like, "Wow. This person is such a loser, I bet she has no friends." 

Preach it, government agents. Preach. It. 

So I have to give a speech in a little while over that paper I wrote last night. I'm excited. There is a room of people who have to listen to me talk for like twenty minutes. And they are not allowed to leave. 

Hehehehehe. 

It's great because I don't measure the success of my speeches in grade-form. I measure it in the number of times I am able to make a room full of people laugh at me. Or with me, whatever. I'm not really all that picky. 

I don't know why. I doesn't make any sense. I don't talk, like, ever in this class that I'm giving the presentation for, but give me a reason to get up in front of the class and I transform into a stand up comedian. And I'm a girl, so that's no good. 

Women comedians are the opposite of funny. 

I'll let you know how it goes. It might be great. It might be awful. It might be a little of both. I don't know. It's for my ethics class. Ethics are dumb and boring.

Boo ethics. 

Anyway, I'm in class right now. It's boring, hence the blogging. And  there is a random girl in here who just won't stop talking. The class has devolved from a lecture into a dialogue between this one student and the professor. 

The whole class is just sitting here watching the two of them with vaguely bemused expressions.

Some people...they have no self awareness, let me tell you. I am flawed, I am like super flawed, but I'm more or less aware of it. I know that I have issues. I know that I will monologue at a class today and get, like, zero of my points across. I know that about myself. That is a thing I know. 

I could go on. You know how all heroes have a dark side? Harry Potter had the fact that he was a horcrux. Frodo wanted to keep the ring. Batman has dead parents. You know, dark side stuff. 

Well, I too have a dark side. A dark side called Group-Leader-Danielle. Group-Leader-Danielle is everything bad that has ever existed about my personality. GLD (that's the acronym we're going with, okay?) emerges whenever there is a group project. It doesn't matter if it's like semester-long or ten-minutes long. GLD will emerge and do her best to seize control. 

It is so bad. 

I hate group projects. You can't even understand how, just, completely terrible I turn when group projects are on the table. 

This paper I wrote was supposed to be a group project. I went to the professor and asked him very nicely if he would let me do out by myself because I didn't want to subject anyone to the horror that is doing a group project with me. 

The only valid ideas? My ideas. The way we're going to do the powepoint? My way. No one ever tells me to be group leader, I just seize control. I am the Vladimir Putin of group projects. I will use whatever underhanded tactics I deem necessary to get my way. 

I like to think that I've become fairly chill since high school. My temper is manageable now. I barely ever throw foodstuffs at random passerbys in fits of insane and uncontrollable rage nowadays. I've injured, like, only four people in angry slap-fights this year. So...chill. It is a thing I am. 

Group-Leader-Danielle is not chill. GLD is the opposite of chill. GLD is about as chill as Krakatoa. If anything goes wrong, an eruption of hate and name-calling and possible physical pain is going to occur. 

And I can never admit that I might be the one it the wrong. I aggressively argued that there were five ninja turtles, not four, because I made a typo one time. That's a real story. That's, like, an actual thing that happened. 

So its bad. Its one of the reasons that I should never be in charge of anything ever. Like, ever. 

The fact that I'm aware of it changes nothing. I can't stop it. No one can stop it. Group-Leader-Danielle will not be contained. 

Anyway. 

In stir fry news...I will be stirring the fry again next year. I just signed up for my shifts. And because I've worked there for over a full semester now, I get like a five cent pay increase! So now I won't be making minimum wage. I will be making five cents above minimum wage. 

I am moving up in the world. 

But, in order to fulfill my basic needs like summer, like food, rent, power, wifi and netflix...you know, Maslow's hierarchy stuff...I am going to need to find some sort of job. 

Ugh. 

I do not want to get a job other than stir fry. I like doing stir fry. Stir fry is fun. Plus, I only have to work twenty hours a week. I do not want a real-person job where I have to work forty hours a week. 

I might just see if I can live this summer on my leftover money from this year. I might have to cancel my wifi and eat literally nothing but bread and ramen noodles, but I could do it. 

I'm going to go full Walden, guys. Be all isolated. Don't use the internet. Eat ramen and cheese sandwiches. That was Walden, right? The one with the ramen? 

 Sometimes I think that I'm one like or as short of a simile. I'm a metaphor, guys. And no one wants to be a metaphor. 

No one.

Bad Choices are the Best Choies

Guys, I finally understand why people under twenty-one are not allowed to do fun things like drink and gamble.

 I kind of think that adults over twenty-one should not be allowed to do these things either, if I am being entirely honest. 

Let me elaborate. This weekend, I made a lot of bad choices. 

So many that I have decided to declare last Friday night as Danielle's Night of Really Bad Choices! (Note: there is capitalization involved because the choices were Really Bad and I felt like the extra emphasis was necessary.) 

But, no. It was just a night of really bad financial/life choices all around. First, my sister and I went out to expensive dinner and my wallet was sad about it. My stomach was happy because it was steak and I love steak, but that is another matter entirely.

 I also had several fruity girly drinks with dinner because I am an adult and I can drink fruity girly drinks without shame. They were really expensive and did not actually contain all the much alcohol. After like four appletinis (best drink, by the way) and a strawberry margarita, I was slightly buzzed, like, at best. 

I have no excuse for the fact that we went to the casino afterwards. Like, no excuse at all. But, yes, my sister and I went to the casino and I lost all of the money I had in my wallet. 

It wouldn't have been so bad if I would have lost it all, like, straight off the bat. But there was a point where I was legitimately doing a good job and winning money! I started off the night with thirty bucks.

 When you're a poor college student that is actually a lot of money. That is half of a power bill right there. Or a third of a grocery bill, minus the name-brand fruit juice. 

I lost ten of it real quick. There's a machine called the Zodiac Sisters and let me tell you, they are some fickle bitches. I've been to the casino three or four times and half of those times the Zodiac Sisters are like falling over each other to give me all of the money. My dad and I won a hundred bucks one time. It was great. I bought a pizza. 

But, no, other times they are just coldhearted and terrible fake people who take my ten dollars and give me nothing back. That's what happened this weekend. All of my money...poof! Gone! It was like magic,  but not the good kind. Dark magic. Evil magic. 

So, yeah. Ten dollars all gone. Three and a half bottles of name-brand crangrape juice. It was a dark ten minutes for me. 

But, once I got over that and stopped wailing in despair, my sister and I decided to play blackjack. Blackjack is a game that I am terrible at. I panic and do incredibly stupid shit like hit on an 18 or stand on a 12. 

But, no, my sister is super helpful and will usually stand next to me and tell me things like, "no Danielle that's stupid don't do that why are you making these choices no do you hate having money no no stop." So it works out. But, there were only two seats left and they were far away from each other so I had to rely on my own horrible decision making skills for once. 

I didn't lose all of my money right away. I started with twenty, got up to fifty and then refused to stop playing until I was back to zero. 

I know. 

I know. 

I know. 

I am not a functional adult and I do not make good choices. I've got that. I am crystal clear on that fact. So, yes. I left the casino minus thirty bucks which, when you make minimum wage like I do, is equal to about a whole shift of making stir fry. 

But, to celebrate our crushing and complete defeat, my sister and I went and got cigars flavored like tropical fruit. They were terrible, made me gag and I smoked mine anyway dammit. I am an adult I am so allowed to smoke cigars flavored like tropical fruit if I want to. 

After that, we almost got tattoos, wimped out on getting tattoos, went back to my apartment, watched mediocre stand-up comedians on netflix (none of them were women because women are terrible at stand-up) and ate lots of cookie dough ice cream. 

Bad choices! All of the things we did were bad choices! 

It was fun, though. 

But, yeah, the next day the people with the apartment above me made some bad choices of their own. And by the people above me, I actually mean the water-heater above me. It broke, leaked and ruined my bathroom ceiling. I woke up, went in to get a shower and saw hunks of drywall hanging down like flakes of skin hanging off of a gigantic, shedding lizard. 

I don't know.

It was unpleasant, water was still leaking down and I got hit in the head with a piece of ceiling. I called my landlord to fix it, as one does, and the maintenance guy came over, which was good of him. What wasn't good of him was how he went upstairs, stopped the leaking and then just kind of skedaddled without even kind of fixing my ceiling. 

I had to call back later and then they told me that I should be able to handle the whole "slowly crumbling bathroom ceiling" business on my own. Um, no, landlord people. That is not a thing I can do on my own. I do not have a husband or a boyfriend or even a close brofriend who I can force to do it for me. 

Even if I would have decided to date that midget little person dude, this would still be an issue. He couldn't have reached the ceiling. I mean, on a scale of one to Colorado, it is not that high, but still. That midget dude was really short. 

But, no, I can get by on my own usually. 

I can do a lot of things that most girls would have their male significant others do. I fixed a bottle-opener-shaped hole in my wall. I know how to replace fuses. I can grill burgers like a champ. I know how to fly-fish for gods sake, but I cannot fix my holey bathroom ceiling by myself, landlord. 

I was very whiny and persistent and they said he'd come back on Monday. I'm pretty sure they did that to make me stop calling them. The problem was that this was on Saturday. I didn't get to use the shower for like two days. It was horrible and I hated it. 

Anyway, my ceiling is fixed now thanks to my maintenance guy. I gave him a fist bump and told him thanks. I'm pretty sure I weirded him out. 

Whatever. 

Right now, I'm kind of chilling out in the library and avoiding thinking about work. I do not want to go to work. Do not want. 

See, I usually enjoy my job. Making stir fry is the bees knees or some other saying that means cool, but is more relevant socially. Fly? Swag? YOLO?

I don't know. 

But, no, whenever the weather is good, people decide to make the trek out to Elliot, the dining hall where I work. And the weather is really good today, guys. 

Work is going to suck, hardcore. It sucked yesterday too. I worked in the dishroom, so it was already less fun than usual. But we had so many people. Usually, we have like two-hundred and some-odd customers. That's a usual night for us. Last night we had 380, which is just insane. We haven't had that much since thanksgiving dinner last semester. 

I saw dishes in my dreams last night, guys. I'm pretty sure there is still nacho cheese lodged underneath my fingernails. 

Working in dining is so very glamorous. 

Later.