Better Writing—A Drinking Game

Fanfiction Writing Drinking Game

A.K.A. How to Write Better

Note: this is intended to be used by authors writing sex scenes.  I wrote this to entertain myself.  If it offends you, you probably suck at writing anyway so I don't care.

Take one sip when

·      your character is drunk

·      you use the word “orbs”, “hues”, or “pools” instead of “eyes”.

·      you refer to someone by the color of their hair

·      you refer to someone by their profession

·      you refer to someone by anything other than their names or their pronouns

·      you use a word other than “said” to signify that a character said something

·      your characters have sex more than once in a chapter

·      you use the word “said” to be fancy

o   ex: Ian pushed everything off the desk than hoisted Sarah onto said desk.

·      one character “widens (character)’s entrance” with their fingers

·      a character “cries out in pain and pleasure”

·      you use “their”, “they’re” and “there” wrong

·      you use “your” and “you’re” wrong

·      you write “minuet” instead of “minute” (a minuet is a type of song)

·      you write “viscous” instead of “vicious” (viscous refers to the density of liquid)

·      you spell “serious” wrong

·      you use a coma-splice, sentence fragment, or run on

Take two sips when

·      your character is drunk when they have sex with someone

·      you explicitly state information that can be assumed

o   ex: the use of a condom

o   ex: the use of lubricant

·      you use the word “member”, “organ”, “manhood”, or “length” to describe a penis

·      your character is aching “with longing for (character)”

·      your character is aching “to be filled by (character)”

·      you write about something you have never done

o   common themes include smoking, drinking, having sex

·      you write phonetically

o   ex: “Iiiiiiian”, Sarah moaned

o   ex: “Aaaaaaaah”, Ian cried

·      your characters don’t have sex on a bed when one is convenient, unless the characters make the conscious decision to avoid one

Down it in one when

·      your story/chapter ends and no one has said “I love you”.

Why I Love Pigeons

Sometimes I bring up random things that I like that I know many other people generally don't like, or are at least indifferent toward.  Like pigeons.  And every time I bring up something like this, like pigeons, I get all kinds of arguments for why I'm wrong.  When my Latin class took a trip to Italy back in February, we visited St. Mark's Square.  If you've never been there before, you should know that it's FILLED with pigeons.  It's kind of overwhelming.  In college towns, the squirrels are generally uninterested in humans, unless they have food for them.  They are certainly not frightened of them, though, like most small wild animals usually are.  That's kind of like how it is with the pigeons in St. Mark's except there are A BILLION of them.  And if you have anything that even closely resembles something edible, they will be your BEST FRIEND.

Check it:

This is totally normal.

Oh, hi there, little buddy. 

JESUS.

So pigeons.  They're kind of crazy.  But just so you know, I never once got pecked, bitten, chewed on, or otherwise abused by any one of them.  It was totally fine.  It was more than fine.  It was actually pretty fun.  After this expedition with the pigeons, we met back up in a big group with the rest of the class, and I told my teacher, Jason, all about the pigeon adventure.  And you know what he said when he saw these pictures?

"Ew".

"Ew?" I said.  Why "ew", I wondered.

"They're dirty.  Pigeons are just rats with wings."

Remember what I said about bats?  I like them because I like hamsters, and bats are just hamsters with wings.  Well...

I like rats, too.  So if pigeons are just rats with wings, doesn't that make them better?  The answer is yes.  If you disagree, you are free to go.  If, however, you, like I, adore pigeons, read on my good friends.  Read on.

1. Pigeons are smart

In crowded cities (like Venice, or like New York or Chicago) you are likely to see pigeons wandering around.  If you add a park bench or two and a couple of old people, and some bird seed to the equation, 

you get pandemonium.  Or at least a flock of pigeons begging for food.  Since moving to the city I've noticed that most people won't feed pigeons in a public area, at least when there are a lot of people around, because many people find it annoying.  But that doesn't stop people from eating in those public areas, and if you eat something particularly crumbly, like bread or chips, the pigeons will flock to you anyway, and pick your scraps off the ground.  They know you've got food, and they know they can eat it.  But that's not the really clever part.

Today after class I bought a scone at the Barnes and Noble Student Center across the street, then sat down on some benches outside.  There were two pigeons that kept hopping up onto the bench next to me and looking at me with their sad, hungry, pigeon eyes, begging me for food.  But I didn't want to bother the people next to me, so I ignored them, and they went away.  But then a third pigeon showed up.  I noticed him because he was hopping around on one foot.

"Oh, poor guy," I thought.  "He's injured."  And with a quick glance to make sure there were no other pigeons around who would notice my generosity, I bent down and placed a little crumb of my scone on the ground, right near my foot, so I could hide it if some stronger, less-injured pigeon decided to take advantage of his injured brother and snatch it up.  And you know what happened?  The injured pigeon put his goddamned foot on the ground and walked over to the scone crumb, held it in his mouth, then picked his foot back up and looked at me, daring me to make him give it back.  That stupid pigeon was faking an injury to get me to give him food.  And it worked.

I could not stop laughing.  Neither could the old guy next to me.  We just laughed and laughed until the pigeon walked calmly away, then picked his foot up again and hobbled over to his next unsuspecting victim.

2.  Pigeons aren't mean

My family takes a vacation to Maine every summer, and invariably, on at least one day of our vacation, some group of teenage girls next to us decides they want to feed the seagulls.  So they throw a handful of chips on the ground and suddenly there are twenty squawking seagulls flapping their wings at each other and pecking the smaller ones and doing everything they can to make sure they are the ONLY ONES who get to eat today.

While I was watching the pigeons today, I noticed that they don't do that.  First of all, they're much quieter on a whole than seagulls are.  It's "coo, coo" as opposed to "RWAA-AA-AA-AA".  Which would you prefer?  The gentle cooing?  Me too.

There was a guy across from me, talking on the phone and eating a sandwich.  A little piece of lettuce fell and the two pigeons I mentioned earlier both went after it.  Where a pair of seagulls in the same situation would peck and squawk at each other until one of them either dropped the lettuce or escaped with his prize, the pigeons just sat there.  The first pigeon picked up the lettuce, took a bite out of it, then let the rest fall back to the ground while he swallowed his bite.  And while he swallowed his bite, the second pigeon picked up the piece of lettuce, took his bite, then dropped the rest to the ground while he swallowed it.  And this went on, back and forth, until the lettuce was gone.  They just stood there, sharing a scrap of lettuce, like brothers.

3.  They're helpless romantics

Just Google "pigeons love" right now.  Just do it.

There is nothing cuter than animals cuddling.  NOTHING.

On Growing Up

So I'm sitting outside in jeans and a sweatshirt with a scarf wrapped around my face, my hands shoved deep in my pockets, and I'm freezing, when yesterday I was in shorts and a tank-top.  I'm thinking typical troll weather, but then I realize that it's not typical, not really, because "typical" should refer to what I've gotten used to, what I've lived with all my life.  Except now I'm not where I've lived all my life.  It's not far away, so I guess this weather is still typical to the general area, but I still had a tiny pang of loneliness when I realized I'm a fish out of water.

So I decide, hey, it's fall, this is my favorite season, I'm going to make the most of it.  There's a Starbuck's down the street, and it's Pumpkin Spice Latte season, so I decide to take a walk.  On my way I keep passing people who are in flimsy t-shirts and all I'm thinking is how are they not freezing, but then my self-consciousness kicks in and I know they're all judging me because I'm the abnormality here; I'm the only one who's cold.  I pull off my hood and lower my scarf so it's not covering my face anymore, and keep walking.

At the crosswalk, there's a huge crowd of people waiting to walk, so when the light changes, I'm struggling through a crowd of people as I make my way to the revolving doors into the supermarket that shares space with Starbuck's.  I get there just behind someone else, so I have to wait a second for the second compartment to come around, but a woman rounds the corner and slips into the open compartment just as it comes around, so I have to wait for her, too.  She's immediately in front of me as I walk in.  She's walking really slowly, but the checkout lines are crowded and blocking my way on my left, and she's pressed far enough to the shelves on the right that I can't get by that way, either.  Finally I squeeze through, only to be thwarted once more by a pair of older men coming out of the aisle just ahead of me.  Once again, I'm behind slow-movers and trapped on either side.  They turn off down another aisle and I'm free.  The line to Starbuck's is right in front of me, but a woman meandering across my path halts me once more, and while she's passing, a pair of gabbing girls get to the line before me.

So the line's already like ten people long and I'm frustrated by the slowness of the rest of the world, but I made it, and I'm super excited for this Pumpkin Spice Latte to clear away my homesick blues.  So I'm standing there, waiting, thinking about what it's going to be like to drink this delicious thing, and I start to notice something funny.  I feel a little jittery, and I've got kind of a headache.  I start thinking maybe I don't really want this latte anymore, but I'm already in line, so I have to.  I'll just get a small.  Even as this thought crosses my mind, though, I know I just can't take the caffeine.  So I give up.  I turn around and head out, getting out of the supermarket and across the street with no mishaps.

I'm walking back to my dorm, thinking about what just happened, and why the prospect of something so delicious was so off-putting to me.  Then it hits me:  It's my boyfriend.

We weren't a perfect match at first.  In fact, I called it off with him twice because I didn't think we meshed well.  But even then, when we were awkwardly dating and only seeing each other at lunch on Tuesdays and Thursdays because he had his college classes and I had play rehearsals on the weekends, I was happy.  I was happy because it was fall, and I was happy because I was in the throes of "new love".  Even if you're not happily in love, you can be happy in love.  Apparently.

But that was almost a year ago now.  Since then we've gotten to know each other better, and now I'm very happily in love, at least as much as I can be at my tender young age.  But I'm not happy in love.  Like I said before, I'm not at home right now.  But he is, still.  He's about five hours away from me, and even though it's not far, it's a hassle—not to mention expensive—to get back home to see him, so I have to suffer with it for now.

So I'm walking through the Quad, wondering why the hell I'm so cold, and why the hell I didn't want that latte, and why the hell I thought I could deal with being away from everyone I love for so long.

You know how sometimes you hear a song that you listened to a whole lot during a certain period of your life, but you haven't heard it at all since then?  And you get this feeling, whether it be sadness, happiness, loneliness, or what-have-you.  You feel nostalgic.

My boyfriend wasn't allowed to come see me on school grounds during lunch because he wasn't a student at my high school, so we had to meet at the coffee shop across the street.  I never sit in any food-service place without purchasing something from them, even if I'm bringing in my own food, too. Especially if I'm bringing in my own food, too.  So every Tuesday and Thursday last fall I would get out of class and walk across the street to see this boy I hardly knew but was always excited to see because of that new love feeling.  I would set my backpack down at whatever table he was already at, kiss him on the cheek, say "be right back", then go up to the counter and buy...what?

A Pumpkin Spice Latte.

It was almost a relief to realize what was happening.  It was set up so perfectly.  The season is right.  The homesickness is making me lonely.  All it took was the idea of a Pumpkin Spice Latte, and my body reacted.  The problem was not that I'm not in the mood for coffee.  The problem was that I miss my boyfriend.  I miss him enough that re-creating the environment I found myself in during those few fleeting weeks of exciting new love sent a shock through my system that rendered me completely helpless.

I've heard people say that being in love can be scary.  Now I get it.  No one ever seems to want to talk about this, so it might be kind of controversial, but I'm going to try to explain it anyway.  The love itself isn't controversial.  The scary part comes from being without.

Now here's the thing: when a guy tells a girl he needs her, he can't live without her, he wants her to promise to never leave him, there's something funny going on there.  Warning bells go off.  The same thing happens when a girl says these things to a guy, though society views her a little differently than they would view him.  The point, though, is the same.  To a lot of people, phrases like this count this as a symptom of an abusive relationship.

What people don't always realize is that it's only a symptom.  Feeling tired is a symptom of the flu, but isn't it also a symptom of, I don't know, being tired?  Human beings have feelings.  I'm not saying it's okay to feel completely worthless when you're not with the person you love, but it is okay to miss them when you're alone.

Remember that part of the second Twilight book when Edward leaves and there are four pages in a row of just the names of the months passing by, because Bella couldn't do anything without Edward?  That's wrong.  But that's obviously not what's going on with me right now, because I didn't go catatonic the moment I got on the train to come back to school after visiting my boyfriend this weekend.

I guess all I'm trying to say, in this post that ended up way longer than I had originally intended, is that I think maybe I'm growing up.  I'm in a long distance relationship with someone, and I miss him dearly, but I'm still alive, aren't I?  I'm strong enough to take a little bit of heartache and make it part of my daily life.  So I won't be drinking Pumpkin Spice Lattes any time soon.  I'll move past this, because I know, somehow, that I can't be the only one who feels like this.

I don't think my boyfriend's too keen on the drink right now, either.

The Nerve

So I'm in college.  This is my first time ever sharing a room with anyone.  This is my first time ever living in any kind of community housing.  The roommate thing is fine.  It's the community living that makes me nervous.  If you knew me at all through elementary or middle school, or you are part of my family, you know how easy it is to agitate me.  (I neglected to list "high school" there not because I grew a longer fuse, but because I stopped being friends with assholes).  If someone is humming under their breath and I can hear it and it's keeping me from concentrating, I will flip out.

Scratch that.  If someone I know well is keeping me from concentrating, or bothering me in any way, I will flip out.  It has to be someone I know well, because I am fairly confident that they will still love me after I'm done being mad at them.  It's not a good way to live, and I'll probably get ulcers soon, but it's how I am.

Here's the weird thing, though.  If I don't know you well and you're pissing me off, I get really depressed.  It's a chain-reaction thing.  I hear something that bothers me.  I start imagining myself getting out of my chair, walking down the hall and saying in a snarky voice, "can you guys please go somewhere else?  It's 11:00 at night and I'm trying to sleep/I'm trying to study/you're ugly".  But once I get that far, my anxiety gets the better of me.  What if I make her mad?  What if she beats me up?  That's unlikely to happen, sure, and if it does I can probably sue her, so I'm pretty safe.  But what if she's sneakier than that?  What if she want to harm me psychologically because I had the audacity to ask her to turn her music down, or stop screaming at her friend who's standing all the way at the other end of the hall?  What if she tells everyone she knows about this horrible, awful person who one time asked her to be quiet please.  What if she tells her sister, and her brother, and her aunt, and her grandfather, and her hot step-cousin-in-law?  What if I then meet that step-cousin-in-law and his favorite band is Green Day and he snowboards and fences and is really smart and loves to read and is a blogger and buys me sour gummy worms and he's perfect, but then he finds out that I'm that girl, the one who asked his precious step-cousin-in-law, Susie, to stop talking so loud one time, and leaves me?

That's what I told my R.A. when she asked me why I couldn't tell the girl down the hall to shut-up on my own.  She said, "that's a stupid argument".  I know, but I can't keep it from going through my head every time I want to ask someone I don't know to stop sucking.  Here's a better argument: what if the offender is a friend of mine, but not one I've known very long?  What if the offender is someone I like pretty well, but haven't known long enough to know if he'll comply or go on a passive-aggressive Facebook rant about me and hate me forever?

What if the offender is this guy:

He's not talking about me in this status.  He lives in a different dorm.  But he is a friend of mine, one I haven't known for very long but one I intend on keeping.  And he acts like this.  This is why I'm scared to knock on someone's door with a perfectly reasonable request for them to be quieter.  This is the kind of person who lives in my subconscious, judging me every time I tell a boy not to leave his backpack in my room or tell a girl I don't like loaning out pens or tell the guy on the street I don't have time to sign his petition.  This is the kind of person who makes me sad about the world.

This arrogant, angry, the-world-owes-me-everything kind of behavior is becoming more and more common, and I'm not strong enough to fight it, because it scares me.  So, miss R.A., that's why I'm asking you to go do your job and tell the girl down the hall that it's Quiet Hours and she needs to stop screaming.  That's why you need to remind the boys down the hall that they're not not the only human beings in the world, that the universe wasn't built to please them.

I'll just be here, sipping my tea.

...We were never friends...

I just finished my senior year of high school.  It was really weird...  For the whole last week people were crying about how they're never going to see anyone again.  Everyone was making promises to stay in touch and telling each other that they're going to go on and do great things.  It's not that I'm not going to miss my friends after I graduate, but I felt this weird sense of disconnect from pretty much the entirety of my class.  I didn't feel like anything was over, and I wasn't scared about the future at all.  I made no promises to stay in touch with anyone, because it doesn't feel like they're going anywhere.

On the last day of school, I had a math final, and I basically spent the entire day thinking "once I take this test I'll be finished with high school", and really looking forward to the end of the day.  After my math class though, everything got really anticlimactic.  There was this Senior Celebration that we had (?) to go to, and it was supposedly going to be really fun.  I was expecting a party in the hallways with cake, soda, yearbook signing, hugging, and crying.  Instead I got an assembly at which the six seniors who decided they were best suited for the task handed out paper-plate awards to the entire class.  I go to a small school, so it's only about a hundred and twenty or so people, but that's still an ambitious task for six people to undertake.

And for the record, some people say, "ambitious" and mean, "I'm really proud of you for thinking you'll be able to accomplish this".  That's not what I mean.  When I say, "ambitious" now, I mean, "you probably should have just stayed home today".

About twenty of the awards given out were really heartfelt and genuinely funny and made me feel like the six kids who made them really liked those people.  The other one hundred, though, were not that at all.

My award, for instance, was "Thespian".  Not even "The Thespian Award", which still is impersonal and lame but at least it still sounds like an award, but just "Thespian".  Like, "This Etsie kid, she acts or something".

Thanks, guys

So when they announced my "award" I stood up, smiled, accepted it, then shoved it into my bag and didn't think about it for the rest of the day.  In fact, way later that night as I was throwing away my un-needed school stuff from the year, I found it again, sitting in my bag.  It wasn't until I was about to throw it in the trash when I noticed they even spelled my name wrong.  "This 'Estie' kid probably has friends somewhere, right?"

So I took a picture of it and made a very angry post on Facebook.  One of the girls who made the paper-plate awards saw my post and commented on it. (Side bar, someone needs to teach me how to keep people who aren't my friends from commenting on my stuff.)  Here's the conversation:

Her: just so you know, we didn't come up with that one, the counselors did because we couldn't think of anything other than "actor".

Me: I just think its an ambitious goal for six people to try to make paper plate awards for a hundred or so people, and some of them didn't turn out very well.

But it almost makes me feel worse that the counselors also don't know me well enough to come up with anything better than "thespian".

Her: totally understandable but i wouldn't read too much into it. making a personal award for 100 people IS an ambitious goal so it's practically impossible to make each of them perfect. to be fair, the counselors had 1 day to do the ones we couldn't think of and we only gave it to them because we couldn't think of anything other than thespian. sorry you didn't get the award you wanted but i wouldn't read too much into it.

I didn't really know what to say to that...  I didn't read into it at all, and it's not the award itself that was bothering me.  I didn't know how to put that into words, so I just said this:

Me: I think you're misunderstanding what I'm saying.

I left it at that, hoping either 1, she would drop it and go away, or 2, by the time she asked me to clarify I would be able to, and I would do so, and THEN she would go away.

In fact, after I made the post, I went to my room to paint my nails and ruminate, and when I did, I realized what I was trying to say.  I had been hoping that on my last day of school I would be filled with this overwhelming sense of camaraderie.  But apparently the six kids don't know me well enough to make me feel appreciated.  Instead of feeling included, like a part of something, this "award" for being "like an actor or something" made me feel alienated and anonymous.

Once I realized what I wanted her to understand, that is, how her impersonal "award" had hurt me, I went back to my computer to try to explain.  After all, no one wants to leave high school feeling like they're known for not being known at all.  I hoped she would understand.  When I got back, though, this is what I saw:

Her: probably. it's fine, let's be friends and graduate.

"Let's be friends and graduate"?  You've already proven to me that we're not friends.  You know nothing about me, and you can't even understand how your knowing nothing about me hurt my feelings.  You frustrate me to know end, yet you think we're friends, you think I'm just going to forget about this and "be friends and graduate".

I'm not even upset about the award anymore.  She insults me by giving me a "personal", in-specific award that could go to about twenty other seniors, too, then she takes it even further by being so presumptuous as to think that, even though she clearly doesn't know me at all, we're still friends.

While I was writing this post, by the way, I was also talking to my friend Brendon.  If you don't have someone in your life who always takes your side, but somehow can manage to talk sense into you and change your mind while agreeing with you, you need to go find one.  While I was at Northwestern, there was this girl who sucked, and I was complaining about her to Brendon.  She refused to kiss a guy for a scene, and I made an offhand comment like, "yeah but you have to, you're an actor".  Then, later, when I told my director that the phrase 'no homo' offends me and asked him if we could change it—and he was FINE with me changing it by the way—this girl said, "oh, you don't want to say 'no homo'? Well I would say it, but that's maybe just me; I'm an actor".  So I told Brendon.

Me: blah blah blah and basically she's the worst person ever.

Brendon: She's just trying to be cool. She's going to kiss him in that scene, but she's making damn well sure right now that everyone knows how much it's going to hurt her to do it. She's going to get to college and seek out other people like her to hang out with. They're called sororities. Those people spend all their time trying to be cool, instead of just doing cool stuff. It's like whenever I unicycle past two frat boys, and one of them goes "that guy's gay". I'm like "You're wearing an upside-down visor. You're standing next to another male, with whom you spend most of your time, yet a one-wheeled vehicle is a sign of a homosexual. It's an interesting theory you have there. One I don't quite understand, admittedly, but interesting. We should get together and discuss it over lunch."

He fixes everything, and just now he even fixed my paper-plate anger.

Me: I just wish they hadn't taken it upon themselves to try and prove that they know anything about me, because if they had asked my permission first I would have said "No, you know nothing about me".

Him: Ohkay so they're biased but they're also snot nosed high schoolers.  You want me to make you a new paper plate?

Me: Not unless it's something like "The only person who knows anything in her whole senior class, PS she's always right".

Him: Oh I like that.

Somehow blogging about this stuff makes me feel way better.  This girl who headed the paper-plate charge is obnoxious, and she's always bugged me, all through high school.  It was disappointing that she ruined my day one last time before I was rid of her for good, but at least now I really am rid of her for good.

I can't wait to go to college and make new enemies...

Blank Space and a Blankie

First, I have to apologize to all five of my followers for not having posted since December. I am very consistent at keeping my journal; I don't know why keeping a blog is so hard. It's so much easier to type out a word than it is to write it neatly. In fact the only reason I'm posting at all has to do with my journals.

I was reading through my old ones and found an entry that I wanted to post about on Facebook. I was going to update my status in like a one sentence story about the entry, but I ended up with, like, three paragraphs. I never finished composing the status update, because I sort of decided that if I really wanted to post it, I should just post it as a note.

And then I remembered that I have a blog!

I'm not ashamed of the fact that I still keep a security blankie from when I was about two. I brought it with my when I spent that month at Northwestern, and I brought it with me to Italy a when I went over winter break.

I remember being nervous about going to Northwestern. In particular I was concerned about my roommate. There was a little bit of "what if we don't get along" mixed in with my concern. But the main thing freaking me out was the very real possibility that she would make fun of me for having a blankie.

Let's take a short tangent. I accidentally left my blankie at the second hotel we stayed at in Italy. I think house keeping might have hidden it under my pillow or something. They did that the first night we were there. I was too tired to need it the night before we left, so I didn't bother looking for it. In the morning, as we were packing up to go, it wasn't in my direct line of sight. Now, it's ALWAYS in bed with me, so if it's not on the bed, it's been packed away. Those were the only two places it could possibly have been. So I left the hotel. It wasn't until that night, at the hotel in Florence, when I realized that it was missing.

First I panicked. Then I kind of almost got my shit together enough to go up to my teacher Jason's room and tell him I had left it and ask him for the number for the last hotel we stayed at. I called them and had to be all "mi scuzzi, Inglesia per favore" which I'm pretty sure isn't even entirely Italian. The guy who picked up the phone spoke English, so he was all "how can I help you?" and I was all "I-left-this-thing-in-room-A1-and-it's-very-important-and—" but then he was all "I can leave a note for the people to check tomorrow morning. No one's here right now. Call back between 10 am and 9 pm. Bye."

So then I cried.

The next morning I called again. They said they had found it and they would mail it back to me. I just had to send them an email with my shipping address. I did that with my friend Sam's iPhone while we were at an Italian night club. Then I spent the rest of the trip completely content and not worried at all because my blankie would be waiting for me when I got home.

It wasn't. What was waiting for me was an email asking for more information, clarifying the shipping address I had given or something. I gave them the information they needed, then sat back to wait again, confident that I would have my blankie by the end of the week. The next day though, I got another email with more questions. Something like "It'll cost €35 to ship it home, is that okay? We'll ship it when you respond" and I was like "YES GODDAMNIT GIVE ME MY BLANKIE BACK."

So finally about a week later we got a call from FedEx that was like "We have a shipment scheduled for delivery before 10:30 am tomorrow. Be home!" and I was like "School" and my parents were like "Work" and my sister was like "DO NOT FEAR SISTER-FRIEND, FOR I WILL SAVE YOUR BLANKIE FROM THE CLUTCHES OF THE EVIL FEDEX MONSTER!" and I was like "rad" and went to sleep.

I texted my sister at lunch time the next day, around 11:30 am, asking if my blankie had showed up yet. She was all "FedEx is holding it hostage. I was in the shower when they tried to deliver it. Oops."

I got home and found the slip of paper they had left on the door. There was an x next to "shipper requires signature". I was all "why?" but signed it anyway and stuck it back on the door so that even if my sister failed me again the next day (which she did--she went grocery shopping before it showed up) they would leave the damn package on the porch because I had released them from all liability with a magical scribble of blue or black ink.

Also I kidnapped my sister's teddy bear, Mr. Fuzzles, so that she would have incentive to not fluck everything up again.

I spent all of today in a panic, like "what if they don't find the note and they can't leave the package and instead they decide to incinerate it" and "what if the hotel shipped the wrong thing" and all kinds of crazy stuff. My friends were all "bro you okay" and I was all "I AM BE CRY" and they were all "YOUR POOR BLANKIE".

That was a really long tangent, I'm so sorry. All I really wanted to say was how completely comfortable I was carrying Mr. Fuzzles around all day. People were always like "aw he's so cute" and I would tell them that he's a hostage because I left my baby blankie in Italy and it's my sister's fault that I don't have it yet, and then they'd be all "your AWFUL sister!"

The point is, I love my school. Remember how scared I was about my roommate finding out about my blankie? I didn't have that feeling for anyone in the school, not even the Analysis student teacher, Chris, who hasn't been at the school long enough to know what's up. I'm glad that I can trust the people at my school with my blankie deal.

By the way I have my blankie back now. I'm going to sleep so well tonight.

Also my roommate was totally cool about my blankie. I'm pretty sure she said it was cute.

I'll just pretend I didn't see that...

So, although hipsters roll their eyes at me when I tell them, I am indeed a member of HT +1, Hot Topic's rewards club. It doesn't really do too much for me, actually. It used to be that whenever you earned 30,000 points you get 15% off your next purchase, but now that purchase has to be made within the next 30 days, or it expires, and I don't shop there often enough for that to be useful. Really the only thing that I get out of it is an email sometimes, notifying me of a sale that only members will have access to for the first two days, or something.

Well, back to that 15% off thing. I just got an email that looked like this:


My first reaction was "wow, cool, they must have given me 15% off for Christmas, or something". Then my phone rang. It was my mom, telling me she was on the way home from the mall.

It didn't take long for me to put two and two together. I know there's a Hot Topic in the mall, and I have a few items from Hot Topic on my Christmas list.

I quickly deleted the email, but now I'm curious.

If I log onto Hot Topic, will it tell me what I bought to earn me the 15% off? Just thinking about that makes me so tempted to check.

Maybe I'll just change my password to ain;fbaev;iua. Then I'll never be able to log in again.

Or at least not until I call customer services (after Christmas) and explain to them the situation. But I'm afraid I'll get laughed at if I do that... I guess I'm just going to have to practice some self-restraint for six days...