The 12 Days of Christmas

Day 12: Something You Can't Leave Your House Without

For me, this one is really obvious. It can't be anything other than my glasses.

Without them, I can't see hardly at all, especially at night. I am effectively a useless object.

I'm on spring break though so that's all you get. It's kind of hard to elaborate more than that, anyway.

A Long and Difficult Journey

This is how the last two days of my life were: I had to stay in the back part of a box truck for several hours, which was freezing. Then I went to a film shoot where I was specifically told to "not touch anything" and to "just stay out of the way". That was immediately followed by another several hour truck ride (freezing compartment, again) where at pretty much the crack of dawn Presto, Ian, Daniel and I unloaded a bunch of filming gear for someone I don't know.

Get back in the truck. Still freezing. Drive to the place where Presto works over the summer to exchange the truck for his car. Get to meet someone he knows and hang out at their house for about an hour.

Get back into the car behind the drivers seat- feel incredibly cramped. Resign yourself to this fate since all of the other seats are filled with either peoples stuff, Ian, or Presto. Realize that both of the cars other occupants like driving with the windows down and the sun roof open.

Remain cold for the next 13 hours. Try to complain as little as possible about it. Change positions every 20 minutes or so because you're beginning to realize that no matter which way you sit, it doesn't work. You could be upside down in the car and you will still not fit in the space you have.

Arrive at Jordan's house in North Carolina at about 2:45 in the morning, technically day 3 of your trip. Almost fall out of the car. Get unpacked, brush your teeth, and get ready for bed in a room where both the air conditioning and the fan is running.

Fail to discern how to turn either off. Begin to resent all things with temperatures below 75 degrees. Decide that you're going to do Day Eleven because you're a terrible slacker.

Day 11: Favorite TV shows

I honestly don't have very many shows that I like. I just don't watch a whole lot of tv, that's just how I grew up.

That having been said,

I was introduced to Top Gear by the swim team here. It's essentially a show about cars, done by the three people in the image.

No one really knows who the Stig is. It's pointless trying to figure it out, the producers just lie in the credits anyway.

Some things I have learned from watching Top Gear:

1. America is good for almost nothing. We are also depressingly stupid in the eyes of British people.

2. Albania is also useless- in their case, however, they're also evil.

3. Reliant Robins are both hilarious and totally unreliable.

4. The Bugatti Veyron is, essentially, the best car ever made.

5. The way that Jeremy Clarkson says things are the best or worst "in the world" is excellent.

...and the list goes on.

I guess it's not much of a girl show, so most females should steer clear of it because they don't know how to really appreciate what the show is trying to do. If you're a guy, though, go for it- I recommend it highly.

Decaphobia

Day 10: Something You're Afraid Of

Apparently I'm afraid of deadlines. Clearly this is not actually day 10, that was like a week and a half ago. Check out the new poll, by the way.

Something I'm afraid of though? Hmm.

Oh, here's a good one: I'm afraid of cars sometimes.

I even know where the fear came from, it was my parents. They always taught me, perhaps a little bit more than absolutely necessary, that I should never get into the car with strangers. You know, kidnappers and rapists and all that.

See, they were right, it's important to not do that- but problems arose when I started to assume that every car I didn't immediately recognize was filled with murderous child-snatchers.

I managed to keep this whole mental ordeal under control, but even now if a car pulls up next to me on the sidewalk- even if it's parking, and even if it looks like this:

my mind will try to convince me that I'm actually seeing this-and I'm not kidding, I seriously do get tense and ready to fight anyone who comes out of the car if they start coming for me. It's an automatic response. I mean it when I say it could even be my parents in the car and until I see it's them I'm in standby/attack mode.

So there you have it. If you want to play sick mind games with me, pull up next to me in cars I don't recognize. It'll set me on edge.

Although I doubt it would be worth the trouble.

I'm going to take a break from this

I have done more posts in fewer days than ever before, and my brain is taxed. Writers block for me accumulates, and it's like a gigantic wall of frustration and rage right now, so...

Sorry. Check back in a couple of days, I'll keep going with the 30 + 1 day challenge then.

Yeah, I know, I'm slacking

But I have a pretty good reason to.

See, I have to write about another guy to complete my favorite persons thing, but there are legitimately several people I could choose. So I'm going to take the wussy way out and have you decide for me! :)

Meaning that there's another one of those polls stuck to the side of my blog, with a list of names. Pick who you want to hear about the most.

Now I digress, to the other half of the post (that I should have done a few days ago):

THE LADIES

First and foremost, there is this girl:

Everyone should have their "go-to" person, who they can talk to about everything, do anything with, and sometimes make a horrific fool of yourself around. Cali is my go-to girl.

Have I done an official bio of her? I don't think so.

Obviously if I know her and she's not from Needham, that means she's a swimmer. She's technically a distance swimmer since she swam the 1000, the 1650, the 500 and relays all year, but secretly she really wants to be a sprinter- meaning she'd swim both the 100 and the 1000 free, which is rather unusual (Also, by "secretly" I mean she has been openly plotting to re-train herself for a while now).

Swimmer jargon, sorry.

She's really hard to describe in writing, for some reason... at least in terms of her personality. I could certainly make a whole slew of short person jokes (she's the second shortest swimmer Asbury has, at about 5'4"- meaning she barely comes up to my chin), but that normally means I'd get a fist buried in my stomach for being "mean".

That all having been said, she is my first and best college friend.

I mean, yeah we have our disagreements about certain things, and I'm almost sure she thinks I'm a raging idiot, but somehow she tolerates me enough to hang out. I'm pretty grateful for that.

A couple of facts about her:

She is very similar to a cat in that she is easily distracted by moving lights, like a laser pointer. This will also work, as well as this. If you find one she hasn't seen before, it's a guaranteed 10-20 minutes of no productivity for her.

She is quite possibly more addicted to coffee than Andy. For those of you who knew that Andy was on a first name basis with every employee in Needhams Starbucks, I know that might be a little hard to accept, but I stand by my observation. The girl is a coffee monster.

There's a whole lot more to her that I just don't have the time or space to get into, but since she gave me a pretty glowing review on her own page, I'm going to close the bit about her by saying she is really something else. If you don't know her, you're missing out on something really incredible. She's both passionate about and terrific at the things she does, and she is a genuine and caring person.

Who to talk about now is the problem...

You know what, I'll just do a person a day. Two is too many, and it's past midnight and I'm tired.