(no subject)
Oh man, it's so hard to get out of vacation mode... it's getting harder to balance my conscious decisions to be social with the need to study/work
12/19, Friday: Insane wandering around lol. First, went to the Jardine apartment complex because we were told that there was a farewell party at Randy's place (for the Taiwanese aborigines Randy, Pei-pei, and the other girl whose name I can never remember) and that young-Scott would be there, but it turns out it's a completely random party at someone else's apartment that Randy and the others and their white friend Zach (who is learning Mandarin and hopes to travel/work in various Asian countries in the future) went to and didn't know all that many people... so they headed out to collect someone else and go karaoke, and we headed out to meet up with Albert's lot and follow them to karaoke. Young-Scott was still packing, with Cassie and her boyfriend Jacob to help, so we figured he could come meet up whenever he finished... (spoilers, he never did, lol). So Albert's lot was Christine (Korean), Alexya (half-Korean half-Hispanic), Ann (Chinese), Eric (Christine's boyfriend, Taiwanese), and Andy (Korean). We then went to Randy and Ann's friend's place where Randy and the rest were - oh yeah, Randy had a KSU flag that he was collecting signatures and well-wishes on XD so they were busy doing that when we came in. There was Jacqueline (Chinese) and two other Chinese girls and one Chinese guy along with the aborigines and Zach. And then all of us went to Aggieville to Tasty China House, where after-hours apparently they run a karaoke in the back... the Korean contingent couldn't understand any of the songs though, and we couldn't order English songs for some reason, so we left them singing. I went home to sleep; Albert stayed and went to bars with them.
12/20, Saturday: In the morning, we went to young-Scott's place (well, Albert's set just calls him Scott since they're not familiar with old-Scott from the TSA) intending to see him off, only to find that there was still a lot of unpacked and un-gotten-rid-of shit all over XD So we ended up helping him on his last-minute desperate stretch of packing, pretty much all the way up until the shuttle-taxis came for him and his friends (the aborigines and his across-the-hall neighbor). Ann and Zach also came to see him off too, and then oh yeah earlier this week Jaime (the 1st year vet student) had asked me if Albert and I wanted to maybe go explore the prairie with her and Michelle and a couple of their classmates this particular weekend because it was the weekend right after their finals, just before winter break when everyone was going home. So we were like, okay, Albert and I will get lunch with Ann and Zach, and then we all meet up somewhere and head to the prairie because none of us (except Zach, once, a long time ago) had been to the prairie before but Michelle had directions and anyway Google Maps tries to direct you to the wrong place so lets follow her directions right? Except she missed the correct turn - which Google Maps had told us, because Albert and I were following along with our tablet, and as we got further and further away we started calling being like "are you *sure* we're going in the right direction?" and anyway long story short she led us on a merry wild-goose-chase for 2 hours till we literally went *around* the entire patch of prairie (it's surprisingly small). But in the end we managed to get to a trail and walk the shortest one (because Zach's knee was somewhat busted) and it was very pretty and windy and there was still a bit of snow around to throw at each other and we took pictures. And then we happened to end around dinnertime so we all got dinner together at Smashburger, and then we scattered. (Zach led us to a carwash to wash the incredible amounts of mud that caked our cars after our 1-hour jaunt through dirt and gravel roads...)
12/21 Sunday: Baking with the Taiwanese grad students! We went to Chandra's apartment, and Rebecca and Chao-Feng and Wanling and Willie were there too. Baked cocoa snickerdoodles and gingerbread cookies based on Chandra's recipe, and I brought fixings for oatmeal craisin cookies - turns out Rebecca really, really likes craisins lol. The gingerbread took time to... rise? set? IDK, but it had to sit in the fridge for like an hour so we baked the other cookies in the meantime (and gorged ourselves silly on them too), and then we rolled out the gingerbread and cut shapes, and stuck seven gingerbread men together holding hands to represent the seveon of us lol. And then we decorated them with lemon icing (literally just lemon juice and confectioner's sugar, as it dries it turns opaque white)... Rebecca apparently doesn't like eating gingerbread men because it's akin to cannibalism for her lol. And then we took the excess home with us.
I had work from 12/22 to 12/24 (though I, like many others, skived off early on Christmas Eve)... and then 12/25 we had a potluck at Wanling and Willie's place, with Rebecca and Chao-Feng and this dude who'd just come over from Taiwan to do a Ph.D. And played Settlers of Catan (which Albert and I had recently bought yay) - Wanling and Willie had played before, amazingly enough, so we only had to explain the rules to the other 3.
And then 12/26 (Friday) I had off, yay, so Albert and I picked up Ann and met Christine and Eric at Kansas City where we had dim sum for lunch (Ann was ecstatic, the taste of home etc.) and then went to Oak Park mall which is apparently the only mall in Kansas City and it's not even actually in Kansas City proper but the southern outskirts in Overland Park... anyway, grabbed some after-Christmas sales, then went to Legends outlet also in Overland Park for more sales and also there was a dinosaur-themed restaurant and a Dave and Buster's. So after a bit more shopping and selfie-ing around the central fountain where a huge Christmas tree like thing was still up, we went to the dinosaur place intending to get dinner... it was expensive and the menu was very unimpressive, so we made up some excuse and scrammed XD And went to Dave and Busters instead, for a much more superior dining experience. Didn't get to play at the arcade though because Christine had to get back to Junction City for work at 11 pm, but we figured out that Christine's birthday is one day before mine, and so maybe we should have a birthday party for us at Dave and Buster's lol. And so Christine and Eric went back to Junction City, and Albert dropped me off at home before driving himself and Ann to the bar where Christine works (her family owns it o_o;;) and partying there lol.
Saturday 12/27 I was on necropsy duty that morning, and then later that evening we sat for an hour at this Thai Noodle restaurant thing waiting for Ann and the Junction City contingent to arrive (flaaaaaaaaaaakes) and from then on Albert finally started listening to me about not being so goddamn earnest and on-time for stuff with these people when they're going to leave us hanging for hours, instead have them GET HERE FIRST and *then* let us know to go over there and meet them because there is NOWHERE in this town we can't get to within 5-10 minutes and so having them wait for 5-10 minutes for us is NOT GOING TO KILL THEM =_________________= But yeah, so Christine and Alexya and their high school classmates (an Indian pharmacy student (Reema?) who apparently didn't think of herself as all that smart which was somewhat boggling and concerning but I mean, Alexya was apparently "the smart one" of their high school personalities which, like, rrrrrrrrrrgh I guess she would've been clever/smart for a high schooler in a dinky place like Junction City but now she's just a frog in the well y'know??? And there was also an Asian guy who I think is now in the Army but different from Eric, I don't quite remember...) And then Eric and Mitch showed up later, and the other two high school people split and the rest of us went back to my+Albert's place to play Christine's new Monopoly game that she'd bought at the Oak Park Mall for half off - it was Pokemon-themed, gotta catch 'em all and all that XD Christine, Alexya, Eric, Eric's coworker Mitch (who's super competitive and too clever for his own good and also too aware of that fact for his own good), Ann, and me and Albert - Eric was DD and thus was bartender and banker for us, and then the game kind of devolved into all of us ganging up against Mitch, and by the time we gave up on playing Mitch was up on us all in terms of money anyway. And then we started playing Cards against Humanity... after a while I went to our bedroom to sleep while the rest of them kept playing till like 3 AM, and then I emerged at like 6 AM to find Albert still awake and futzing with the TV =_=;;
I don't think we did anything that Sunday... Monday to Wednesday again was work, we even had work on New Year's Eve lol. And then after work Ann brought her new (very underage at 17yo) roommate with her over to our place, and Ann and Albert cooked various noodle dishes for dinner, and then Christine and Eric came and helped us eat it... and the latter two had gotten a party hotel room halfway between our house and Aggieville (all of 3 blocks away from our house lol, but we really did not have the space to have like 8-9 people sleeping in our apartment) and so we hauled booze and games over there and just drank and played and heckled the TV broadcasts of New Years' ball drops and etc. till it was time for the "Little Apple" ball drop in Aggieville. (Taught Eric how to play Set, and he was very quick to pick it up despite constantly disavowing his own intelligence... *sigh*) Also, Mitch arrived later with another of their army coworkers, and then all of us headed down to Aggieville where there was a giant friggin crowd of people in front of Varney's, the store with the mini apple drop on their rooftop. And then fireworks! And we also ran into Cassie and Jacob and one of their friends, but they went off on their own afterward. We wandered down the street thinking about going into a bar, but all of them were overflowing with people (literally, like, crowds all outside the door hoping to get in) so we decided to go back to our hotel room and have our own fun there. Mitch stayed to get into a bar (and/or pick up chicks) though. And so we went back to the hotel room and drank some more and whatnot, and then Eric and the army coworker dude had to go out on an expedition to find Mitch and extricate him from whatever trouble he'd gotten into (apparently he was being beaten up by two guys) - another army dude had found Mitch for them and so the two of them came back to the hotel room, super drunk, obviously needing to crash there, and so that would've made 9 people on 2 beds and I was like screw it, I'm walking home so I can sleep in my own goddamn bed without 4 other people's mutually flailing limbs in my face. And Eric was so concerned and apologetic lol, he's basically like a 30-year-old babysitter for all these ~18-year-old army kids so he was in nanny mode so he kept offering to walk me home and I was like dude, we live all of THREE BLOCKS away, and I've walked *from Aggieville* to home late at night, and also by the way I'm 26 friggin years old. XD It was sweet of him though.
And then work on Friday, and then Saturday (yesterday) we had dinner with Ann and Christine and Alexya and their pharmacy student high school friend at Green Tea Sushi, and we were going to hang out at Ann's afterward but it had started snowing decently good, so the Junction City contingent were worried about getting home and Reema's parents kept calling Christine being extremely overprotective Indian parents, so they left and we dropped Ann back off at her place and went home and played video games lol.
And today was just catching up on work, cooking stuff, playing video games... I never get as much work done as I intend to, mostly because I stay on the couchbed where I can huddle under the blankets and also be near Albert, instead of going to the office where I would have to sit and concentrate >_>;;;;; but it's coooooooooold and so much less comfy.......
12/19, Friday: Insane wandering around lol. First, went to the Jardine apartment complex because we were told that there was a farewell party at Randy's place (for the Taiwanese aborigines Randy, Pei-pei, and the other girl whose name I can never remember) and that young-Scott would be there, but it turns out it's a completely random party at someone else's apartment that Randy and the others and their white friend Zach (who is learning Mandarin and hopes to travel/work in various Asian countries in the future) went to and didn't know all that many people... so they headed out to collect someone else and go karaoke, and we headed out to meet up with Albert's lot and follow them to karaoke. Young-Scott was still packing, with Cassie and her boyfriend Jacob to help, so we figured he could come meet up whenever he finished... (spoilers, he never did, lol). So Albert's lot was Christine (Korean), Alexya (half-Korean half-Hispanic), Ann (Chinese), Eric (Christine's boyfriend, Taiwanese), and Andy (Korean). We then went to Randy and Ann's friend's place where Randy and the rest were - oh yeah, Randy had a KSU flag that he was collecting signatures and well-wishes on XD so they were busy doing that when we came in. There was Jacqueline (Chinese) and two other Chinese girls and one Chinese guy along with the aborigines and Zach. And then all of us went to Aggieville to Tasty China House, where after-hours apparently they run a karaoke in the back... the Korean contingent couldn't understand any of the songs though, and we couldn't order English songs for some reason, so we left them singing. I went home to sleep; Albert stayed and went to bars with them.
12/20, Saturday: In the morning, we went to young-Scott's place (well, Albert's set just calls him Scott since they're not familiar with old-Scott from the TSA) intending to see him off, only to find that there was still a lot of unpacked and un-gotten-rid-of shit all over XD So we ended up helping him on his last-minute desperate stretch of packing, pretty much all the way up until the shuttle-taxis came for him and his friends (the aborigines and his across-the-hall neighbor). Ann and Zach also came to see him off too, and then oh yeah earlier this week Jaime (the 1st year vet student) had asked me if Albert and I wanted to maybe go explore the prairie with her and Michelle and a couple of their classmates this particular weekend because it was the weekend right after their finals, just before winter break when everyone was going home. So we were like, okay, Albert and I will get lunch with Ann and Zach, and then we all meet up somewhere and head to the prairie because none of us (except Zach, once, a long time ago) had been to the prairie before but Michelle had directions and anyway Google Maps tries to direct you to the wrong place so lets follow her directions right? Except she missed the correct turn - which Google Maps had told us, because Albert and I were following along with our tablet, and as we got further and further away we started calling being like "are you *sure* we're going in the right direction?" and anyway long story short she led us on a merry wild-goose-chase for 2 hours till we literally went *around* the entire patch of prairie (it's surprisingly small). But in the end we managed to get to a trail and walk the shortest one (because Zach's knee was somewhat busted) and it was very pretty and windy and there was still a bit of snow around to throw at each other and we took pictures. And then we happened to end around dinnertime so we all got dinner together at Smashburger, and then we scattered. (Zach led us to a carwash to wash the incredible amounts of mud that caked our cars after our 1-hour jaunt through dirt and gravel roads...)
12/21 Sunday: Baking with the Taiwanese grad students! We went to Chandra's apartment, and Rebecca and Chao-Feng and Wanling and Willie were there too. Baked cocoa snickerdoodles and gingerbread cookies based on Chandra's recipe, and I brought fixings for oatmeal craisin cookies - turns out Rebecca really, really likes craisins lol. The gingerbread took time to... rise? set? IDK, but it had to sit in the fridge for like an hour so we baked the other cookies in the meantime (and gorged ourselves silly on them too), and then we rolled out the gingerbread and cut shapes, and stuck seven gingerbread men together holding hands to represent the seveon of us lol. And then we decorated them with lemon icing (literally just lemon juice and confectioner's sugar, as it dries it turns opaque white)... Rebecca apparently doesn't like eating gingerbread men because it's akin to cannibalism for her lol. And then we took the excess home with us.
I had work from 12/22 to 12/24 (though I, like many others, skived off early on Christmas Eve)... and then 12/25 we had a potluck at Wanling and Willie's place, with Rebecca and Chao-Feng and this dude who'd just come over from Taiwan to do a Ph.D. And played Settlers of Catan (which Albert and I had recently bought yay) - Wanling and Willie had played before, amazingly enough, so we only had to explain the rules to the other 3.
And then 12/26 (Friday) I had off, yay, so Albert and I picked up Ann and met Christine and Eric at Kansas City where we had dim sum for lunch (Ann was ecstatic, the taste of home etc.) and then went to Oak Park mall which is apparently the only mall in Kansas City and it's not even actually in Kansas City proper but the southern outskirts in Overland Park... anyway, grabbed some after-Christmas sales, then went to Legends outlet also in Overland Park for more sales and also there was a dinosaur-themed restaurant and a Dave and Buster's. So after a bit more shopping and selfie-ing around the central fountain where a huge Christmas tree like thing was still up, we went to the dinosaur place intending to get dinner... it was expensive and the menu was very unimpressive, so we made up some excuse and scrammed XD And went to Dave and Busters instead, for a much more superior dining experience. Didn't get to play at the arcade though because Christine had to get back to Junction City for work at 11 pm, but we figured out that Christine's birthday is one day before mine, and so maybe we should have a birthday party for us at Dave and Buster's lol. And so Christine and Eric went back to Junction City, and Albert dropped me off at home before driving himself and Ann to the bar where Christine works (her family owns it o_o;;) and partying there lol.
Saturday 12/27 I was on necropsy duty that morning, and then later that evening we sat for an hour at this Thai Noodle restaurant thing waiting for Ann and the Junction City contingent to arrive (flaaaaaaaaaaakes) and from then on Albert finally started listening to me about not being so goddamn earnest and on-time for stuff with these people when they're going to leave us hanging for hours, instead have them GET HERE FIRST and *then* let us know to go over there and meet them because there is NOWHERE in this town we can't get to within 5-10 minutes and so having them wait for 5-10 minutes for us is NOT GOING TO KILL THEM =_________________= But yeah, so Christine and Alexya and their high school classmates (an Indian pharmacy student (Reema?) who apparently didn't think of herself as all that smart which was somewhat boggling and concerning but I mean, Alexya was apparently "the smart one" of their high school personalities which, like, rrrrrrrrrrgh I guess she would've been clever/smart for a high schooler in a dinky place like Junction City but now she's just a frog in the well y'know??? And there was also an Asian guy who I think is now in the Army but different from Eric, I don't quite remember...) And then Eric and Mitch showed up later, and the other two high school people split and the rest of us went back to my+Albert's place to play Christine's new Monopoly game that she'd bought at the Oak Park Mall for half off - it was Pokemon-themed, gotta catch 'em all and all that XD Christine, Alexya, Eric, Eric's coworker Mitch (who's super competitive and too clever for his own good and also too aware of that fact for his own good), Ann, and me and Albert - Eric was DD and thus was bartender and banker for us, and then the game kind of devolved into all of us ganging up against Mitch, and by the time we gave up on playing Mitch was up on us all in terms of money anyway. And then we started playing Cards against Humanity... after a while I went to our bedroom to sleep while the rest of them kept playing till like 3 AM, and then I emerged at like 6 AM to find Albert still awake and futzing with the TV =_=;;
I don't think we did anything that Sunday... Monday to Wednesday again was work, we even had work on New Year's Eve lol. And then after work Ann brought her new (very underage at 17yo) roommate with her over to our place, and Ann and Albert cooked various noodle dishes for dinner, and then Christine and Eric came and helped us eat it... and the latter two had gotten a party hotel room halfway between our house and Aggieville (all of 3 blocks away from our house lol, but we really did not have the space to have like 8-9 people sleeping in our apartment) and so we hauled booze and games over there and just drank and played and heckled the TV broadcasts of New Years' ball drops and etc. till it was time for the "Little Apple" ball drop in Aggieville. (Taught Eric how to play Set, and he was very quick to pick it up despite constantly disavowing his own intelligence... *sigh*) Also, Mitch arrived later with another of their army coworkers, and then all of us headed down to Aggieville where there was a giant friggin crowd of people in front of Varney's, the store with the mini apple drop on their rooftop. And then fireworks! And we also ran into Cassie and Jacob and one of their friends, but they went off on their own afterward. We wandered down the street thinking about going into a bar, but all of them were overflowing with people (literally, like, crowds all outside the door hoping to get in) so we decided to go back to our hotel room and have our own fun there. Mitch stayed to get into a bar (and/or pick up chicks) though. And so we went back to the hotel room and drank some more and whatnot, and then Eric and the army coworker dude had to go out on an expedition to find Mitch and extricate him from whatever trouble he'd gotten into (apparently he was being beaten up by two guys) - another army dude had found Mitch for them and so the two of them came back to the hotel room, super drunk, obviously needing to crash there, and so that would've made 9 people on 2 beds and I was like screw it, I'm walking home so I can sleep in my own goddamn bed without 4 other people's mutually flailing limbs in my face. And Eric was so concerned and apologetic lol, he's basically like a 30-year-old babysitter for all these ~18-year-old army kids so he was in nanny mode so he kept offering to walk me home and I was like dude, we live all of THREE BLOCKS away, and I've walked *from Aggieville* to home late at night, and also by the way I'm 26 friggin years old. XD It was sweet of him though.
And then work on Friday, and then Saturday (yesterday) we had dinner with Ann and Christine and Alexya and their pharmacy student high school friend at Green Tea Sushi, and we were going to hang out at Ann's afterward but it had started snowing decently good, so the Junction City contingent were worried about getting home and Reema's parents kept calling Christine being extremely overprotective Indian parents, so they left and we dropped Ann back off at her place and went home and played video games lol.
And today was just catching up on work, cooking stuff, playing video games... I never get as much work done as I intend to, mostly because I stay on the couchbed where I can huddle under the blankets and also be near Albert, instead of going to the office where I would have to sit and concentrate >_>;;;;; but it's coooooooooold and so much less comfy.......