...Living Communally

Before this summer my only real experience in living in a group of people has involved dorm life. Don't get me wrong, I am absolutely in love with my friends and extended family at Mount Holyoke. I love having late night hall hang-outs where we talk for hours about nothing. I love being able to walk into the Abbey-Buck dining hall at two in the morning and finding at least half-a-dozen of my friends there. But this summer, this living experience, has brought it all to a whole new level.

I have found that there is a secret formula to communal living. It involves some combination of a lack of homework, an abundance of kitchens, and access to a large number of ridiculous free activities. This secret formula, if used correctly, can lead to a life of potlucks, camping trips, sporcle, blues shows, and more!

What we will focus on today is the potlucks. I wish I had taken more pictures, but unfortunately (for you) at all of our potluck dinners I have been too busy eating delicious food to snap off some photos. And yes, I did say *all* of our potluck dinners. As in, we have had more than one. As in, we have a potluck every Thursday night.

If you were to walk onto the second floor of my apartment building around 8 on any given Thursday, you would find three or four tv stands stacked next to each other in the hall. They would be surrounded by twelve-ish bar stools and covered in a motley crew of food.

At first we thought that we should put themes on each week. Of course, this was until we realized that it was so much more fun to see what people came up with on their own. I doubt that I can remember all of the food that we have eaten, but the general rundown of a potluck might look something like this:

• Fruit salad
• Chicken curry
• Lentil soup
• Garlic cheese grits
• Stuffed cucumbers
• Upside-down cake
• Pasta salad
• Baked mac n' cheese
• Pie

We've had potlucks that included an array of foods from Mediterranian to Indian to Southern. I've made Kentucky Derby pie, grasshopper pie, garlic cheese grits, sweet potato casserole, and red beans and rice so far.

Every week after the potluck we all sit around in food comas for a while. I wish I could say I was exaggerating, I really do. But I'm serious when I say that for approximately half an hour after the food stops coming, we just sit there. We sit there, we giggle, and we usually come precariously close to falling off of our stools. Well, at least I do. After that... things go one of two directions. Of course, if you throw a bunch of 19-22 year olds together in a small amount of space, there will be gin buckets. Gin buckets and everclear jello shots. Luckily, last night was not a night where we realized the collected potential of all of our college-age stupidity.

Last night, instead of drunken shenanigans, we participated in a Sporcle marathon. Oh? You don't know about sporcle? What a shame. Sporcle.com is a website that has saved me on many a boring work day. It is a website filled with trivia quizzes that cover topics ranging from the "Winningest managers of NFL teams" to "The 200 most mentioned characters in the Harry Potter Book series." Needless to say, I did much better on the latter of those quizzes.

Sporcle is a great way to get a bunch of overly-smart kids into a room, all shouting at the same time at one flustered person who is furiously trying to type as fast as us yellers can think. You'd be amazed at how good we are at forgetting all of the countries in the world that start with the letter 'c'. Of course, when one of us finally emerges from our flood of over-thinking, the line "Canada! Canada is a country" is shouted, and we all fall over in laughter.

After we had exhausted our communal knowledge bases for the night, we went our separate ways for a few hours before bed. Some went on a long walk. Some went to stargaze. Some became incredibly domestic, and spent the night embroidering and watching Lie to Me on Netflix (yeahhhh that would be me and Lisa, how did you know?).

Thus ended my Thursday night and began my Friday morning.

Today was the last day for me to work with Sam, my undergrad lab partner. It was sad to watch him leave. To go on to bigger and better things (Law School at UTexas? Whaaaaa?) And now I have to do all of my work by myself. Should be interesting.

The good news, however, is that I was able to get water printing onto a thin film of our liquid crystal. We have been trying to deposit tiny glass beads onto the thin film using water... and finally we have been able to get them on there. The problem now is just that the film usually breaks after a second or two of having the glass beads on its surface. One must try and try again.

Three posts in approximately three days. Y'all best be giving me a long distance pat on the back... this is a huge new record for me. And now I must leave you, for I should be working and not blogging. But I promise that I love you all, and miss you terribly.

Sending loads of inappropriate love your way,
Plunk!