How college students make decisions

I tend to go through phases of obsessions. One week I'll be all about politics, the next I'll be all about Xena (all six season are available on Netfix!! How could anyone resist?). My current obsession seems to be for finding the perfect graduate school. Every other night I'll spend hours researching different programs at various institutions, but never seem to make any progress to speak of. Tonight, however, I think I finally hit a milestone.

My friend Kristin and I met through the anthropology program. While both of us are graduating in April with an emphasis in archaeology, neither of us want to continue in that particular field. Kristin hopes to pursue a master's in psychological anthropology while I am interested in biological/physical anthropology. While musing over life post graduation, we decided that it would amazing if we went to the same graduate school, that way we could be roommates.

Reality constantly seems to get in the way, however. The first six or so schools we looked at didn't have the necessary programs to accommodate both of us. But then, the heavens smiled upon us and we found the holy grail of Anthropology schools. UC San Diego. Here is the gist of our subsequent conversation:

Kristin: "San Diego! We'd be by the beach."
Karma: "And it would be warm. You mentioned before how you hate the cold"
Kristin: "And it's only a couple hours away from my family."
Karma: "And isn't Comic-Con held in San Diego?"
*long pause*
Both: "!!!COMIC-CON!!!"

"May I see your identification?"

The Players
Leanna
Karma
Ben (Leanna’s Boyfriend)
Ryan (Leanna’s Brother)
Junior (Ben’s Brother)
NOTE: Ben, Ryan, and Junior live together in an apartment in Orem.

So, the other night (I believe it was Thursday) Leanna called me around eleven pm asking me if I wanted to run with her to the grocery store. While at the local Albertsons (it’s one of the few things open that late at night), Leanna noticed a stand of Valentine’s Day merchandise and decided that she wanted to get Ben something, so she picked out this little red teddy bear.

Well, Thursday nights are the unofficial “boy’s night out,” so Leanna thought it would be best if we left the bear outside Ben’s window as a surprise so we wouldn’t interrupt them. Upon arriving at the apartment complex, Leann found a nearby parking spot and shut off the car while I took the bear and, being as sneaky as possible (which is hard to do when the ground is covered with very crunchy snow), went up and placed the bear by what Leanna told me was Ben’s bedroom window and ran like a girl back to the car. Not having the patience to wait and wanting to see Ben’s reaction upon discovering the bear, Leanna promptly texted Ben telling him to look out his window. Ten minutes and ten texts later, the bear was still sitting outside. Apparently, Ben was having trouble figuring out what was supposedly outside his window because 1) he was looking for Leanna thinking she had shown up as a surprise, and 2) because the bear had been placed outside of Ben’s kitchen window, not his bedroom window. So, I once again ventured out into the snow and once again sneaked up to the apartment, moving the bear so that it was outside of the correct window.

While running back to the car like a giddy girl, I noticed that there was a police car on the other end of the parking lot. Apparently, something was going down. Well, we began to discuss the possible reasons behind why a police officer would be in the parking lot at this time of night (it was a little after midnight at this point) when the police car starting driving towards us. This didn’t cause too much alarm…until the car pulled into the free parking spot next to us. But wait, it gets better. A second police car pulled around the corner and stopped (you guessed it) right behind Leanna’s car, blocking us in. Next thing we know, one of the officers is shining a flash light into the car and knocking on the driver-side window. As Leanna rolls down her window, we hear the most frightening words imaginable. “May I see your identification?” Apparently, Leanna and I weren’t nearly as sneaky as we thought. One of Ben’s neighbors had seen us and reported us to the security office for “suspicious behavior”. But wait, it gets better. All of the commotion and police lights had attracted the attention of Ben and his roommates. Next thing we know, Ryan, Ben, and Junior are all outside and trying to explain the situation to the officers between fits of hysteria. Yeah, because that’s really going to help the situation. Luckily the officer was really nice and understanding. He gave us back our id’s and told us, for future reference, to either have our fun at a more reasonable hour of the night or to be less obvious while doing it.

I just can’t get over how ridiculous the entire situation was. Plus, it seems kind of ironic that the first time (in my life!) a police officer asks for my identification was over an aborable Valentine's Day teddy bear.

Karma's Got A Gun

This weekend Garett drove down from Idaho to spend the extended weekend with his sister, DeLana, in Lehi. I was the one who benefited from his trip, however, since Garett invited me to spend Saturday at his sister's house. The day's activities consisted of shooting and Guitar Hero (I know, it's pretty much the perfect day). Not to sound morbid, but shooting was by far my favorite part of the day. I had never fired a gun before (ever), but had always wanted to so I jumped at the chance. I don't remember the official caliber size and names of the three guns I got to use, so bear with me. The first gun I fired was the shotgun. You're never fully prepared for the reaction of actually firing off a gun until you experience it. Although the kickback wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be, it still startled me a bit. I didn't hit any of the targets until my second round with the shotgun and (not to toot my own horn) one of the bottles that I hit literally popped twenty feet into the air. It was pretty awesome. Then we started goofing off and firing at clay pigeons that were only about ten yards in front of us. That left a lot of pretty black gun powder marks in the snow.

The second gun was a hand pistol. I had assumed that the kickback would be considerably less than the shotgun (smaller gun, less power right?), so I was extremely surprised when, after firing, my arm went flying back causing me to nearly hit myself in the face (I hadn't locked my elbow. The result of my first shot is why you can see Garett's arm steadying me in the above picture.). The hand pistol was harder to aim with, but I got the hang of it and was able to hit a few targets.

Last was the semi-automatic. This gun was the easiest to aim with by far, so I had a lot more success with hitting the targets. However, by this point my arms were pretty tired (those guns are heavy!) so that affected my accuracy a bit. Anyways, by that point people were thoroughly numb and it was getting dark, so we packed it up.

Since Steve, DeLana's husband, was kind enough to let us play with his guns, we all pitched in with the cleaning process. I was given the job of reloading the magazines (apparently that's what they're called) for the semi-automatic while Garett and Elaina (Garett's friend from Idaho) helped Steve clean the guns. After finishing up with the magazines, I offered my limited cooking skills to DeLana by helping her make dinner. After a dinner of homemade pizza, we all played Guitar Hero on their projector in the living room for a few hours. Good times.

Corn-ophobia

Friday night Danielle and I decided to jump into the Halloween festivities a week early by going down to the corn maze at Thanksgiving Point. The attraction reminded me a lot of the Puyallup Fair actually. There were games (mainly tether ball-it's really not as much fun when you can actually reach the top of the pole), food, and three different mazes.

Right by the entrance was the 'Jack-O-Lantern Tree.' The pumpkin carvings were extremely intricate and very beautiful. If you look closely, you will see Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, the statue of liberty, the liberty bell, and Albert Einstein (just to name a few) immortalized in various pumpkins.

The first maze that Danielle and I went to was called 'The Creature' which was an inflatable beast that you would walk into through the mouth and then attempt to navigate to the end (which was near the tail, ironically) in complete darkness while employees dressed as half-digested monsters jumped out at you from various corners. On our first attempt, Danielle and I didn't even make it around the first corner. We were the only people walking through the maze and while I pride myself as being someone not easily scared by 'spooky mazes,' having your friend scream, dig her fingernails into your neck, and push you in front of her with all her might around a dark corner into the unknown is a little unnerving. We ended up running back to the entrance and waited there until a large group came and politely let them go in before us.

There were two corn mazes at Thanksgiving Point. One was "haunted" and cleverly named 'Cornophobia.' It wasn't so much a maze, but rather a long trail with chainsaw wielding Leatherface wannabes sneaking up behind you (sorry, no pictures of that...oh darn).

The main corn maze covered twelve acres and was shaped...wait for it...after the image of "Utah's very own idol," David Archuleta (you know, the sixteen-year-old Mormon kid who lost American Idol). The maze was actually a lot of fun, very confusing and slightly frustrating, but fun. It got even more interesting when Danielle decided she would try to be funny ('try' being the operative word) and run around the corner, get behind me, and scare me. However, she didn't realize that the corner she thought went in a circle and would therefore spit her back out behind me actually didn't meet back up with the main trail at all. She and I soon became hopelessly separated. It gets better...she wanted to leave her purse in the car, so I was carrying both of our cell phones and the car keys. Yeah. We were able to find each other about an hour later.