Monthly Archives: January 2006

Dollar Challenge

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Here on campus, there’s been a bit of a thing going around, called the “Dollar Challenge.” Although originally inspired by Christie AHD Max Kalchthaler, Villa has overcome the hatred of all things Christie and embraced the Challenge. The other day at dinner, Michael R. was issued a challenge by Jake H., to pour a glass of water on his head, and received the dollar. The dollar Jake paid with was the exact one that he had received for a previous challenge, and thus the “Dollar Challenge Dollar” was born.

If it isn’t clear yet, the Dollar Challenge is essentially a dare, in which the participant gets a dollar upon completion of the event. Friday night at dinner, we were trying to get someone else to accept a challenge, and somehow or other, we all decided that we would pressure Brett T. to accept the next challenge. A number of challenges were proposed at dinner, none accepted. On the way back to Villa, we stopped by Mehling, for Lindsey to get her glasses. Originally, we were just going to continue to Villa and meet Lindsey there, but we ended up deciding to wait for her to come back down. While we were waiting, Jake was talking to the Hall director of Mehling, and a few RAs that were in the hall office. Somewhere in this interval, Matt P. accepted a challenge to roll an apple into the office as if it were a grenade, shout “fire in the hole”, and tackle Jake to the ground. For this, he became the new owner of the Dollar Challenge Dollar.

Somewhere during this time, a new dollar challenge was thought up by the RAs, that Brett would wear a pair of boxers on the outside of his pants and parade around Mehling. We eventually gave up waiting for Lindsey, and returned to Villa, watching Fireflyonly to find that as she was not expecting for us to wait for her, she’d gone out the back way, and was already in Villa. Brett got on some boxers, and we decided to watch the first episode of Firefly–a very good series, but I digress. After it was over, we prepared to head over to Mehling.The entourage.

It was decided that Brett should have an escort, and we all decided to dress in kahaki pants and black shirts. Trying to remove the coatThe group assembled, and we escorted him to Mehling. There was a brief scuffle, and we were unable to convince him to remove his coat, so we decided he could leave it on.

We proceeded to escort him through all the floors, one at a time, and then up the stairwell to the next floor. All eight floors. We protected him from any stray threats in the rooms, as we stood in front of any open doorways until he had passed by. There was a small disturbance on the seventh floor, but we were able to protect him from it. Upon reaching the eighth floor, we descended, again, passing through each floor. The escort.(Mehling has one central hall, and stairwells on either end of the building.) This time, the insurgents on the seventh floor had obtained weapons, and we just barely saved Brett from being hit by a barrage of foam rings. Upon reaching the 2nd floor, we realized that the stairwell at that end of the building connected only to the outdoors, not to the first floor, so we decided that we would have to go back, and ended up detouring via the seventh floor, where we were able to quell the insurgency and got a few photo ops.

The Dollar Challenge DollarUpon reaching the ground floor, Brett tried to escape to Villa, but we were able to catch up with him, and escorted him back to his room, where he collected the Dollar Challenge Dollar from Matt, his roommate. The guards decided to return to Mehling to offer to guard the RAs on their rounds, as we weren’t quite sure they would be safe on the seventh floor. Jake the negotiator.Jake was chosen as negotiator. They felt that they would be safe in Mehling, but suggested that they might not be safe traveling to Wendy’s for frosties. Driving a hard bargain, Jake was able to get them to arrange a dessert date for us, with some Mehling ladies, at Papa Haydns at some date near Valentines day. (It did help that Jake is behind on planning events again.) With that agreement, we proceeded to pile into 2 cars, (By then, we numbered only eight, plus Jake, who stayed with the RAs.) Only the drive thru was open, and the fellow had to verify that Michael wanted to order 10 frosties. They were obtained, and we returned to campus, delivered the frosties, and returned to Villa, and watched another episode of Firefly. All in all, quite a memorable night–and I must say, the best Dollar Challenge Ever.

More pictures from this event can be found on Page 3 of the Sophomore Gallery.

There’s good..

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…in putting on some good music, disconnecting your brain, and playing something like minesweeper from muscle memory

…in meditating on your life, and any issues/events that may be happening.

The danger is in doing both at the same time. I always walk away from one of those sessions feeling as if life is just a big, but trivial, game. Not exactly the best outlook.

Keepin’ Busy?

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I was going to do a year in review post, but I got sidetracked, and never did get it written before the new year got here. I suppose I could still write it, but I never managed to motivate myself, and I’m still not motivated to finish it.

I haven’t really been doing anything this break. I was intending to work at A&J for a few weeks, and the manager had at one point indicated that he was likely to be in need of additional help over the break–but that apparently didn’t come true.So in lieu of working there, I’ve been keeping fairly busy around the house, doing all sorts of stuff. I helped decorate for Christmas, and then this last week, helped un-decorate. You wouldn’t believe the amount of stuff we have that goes up. There’s garland that hangs in both hallways, in the family room, and upstairs, too; about 40 different wall/window hangings (flat, paper things, whether commercially produced, or made by my sister and I in school); several stuffed Christmas characters (Father Christmas (3 sizes), and two dolls, “Merry” and “Chris”) as well as 2 nativity scenes; two Christmas trees (one artificial, one real); about a dozen small stuffed, umm, ornaments that are traditionally spread out through the house, and a whole load of other things that I’ve forgotten. All goes up, and then it all comes back down. Oh yeah, there’s the Christmas lights outside, too. Luckily for me, my dad put the lights up before Thanksgiving, but I got the job of taking them down and packing them away. Have you ever tried to put a string of icicle lights back into the box? Let me tell you, it’s not exactly easy. I’ve actually gotten pretty good, after I paid very close attention to how a new set came out of the box.

SlouchOne of the family mysteries comes up every year when we take down the ornaments from the tree. Everything is boxed up, back into the boxes that we have been using for as many years as I can remember. One of the boxes has the cryptic message “slouch” written on the side. No one knows how it got there, or what it means, but every year someone or other makes a comment about it. Okay, that’s a pretty lame family mystery, but it’s the best I can do.

Gingerbread HouseI also helped with some baking this break, and my sister and I put together this gingerbread house. She had received it as a kit (everything but the icing) from a friend last Christmas, and for some reason, decided to save it until this year. It was “fully edible” according to the box, but after sitting for a year, in a non-airtight container, everything was pretty hard, and I certainly won’t be trying to eat it. I like my teeth as they are.

I upgraded this blog to WordPress 2.0, from 1.5. You won’t notice much change, except in the way images are handled, which allows me (and thus you) to comment on the pictures.

As it is now 1 am, I suppose I ought to be getting off to bed soon. I haven’t exactly been getting to bed early, because I’ve been reading books ever since I got home. And you know how it is when you’re toward the end of a good book–you just don’t get as much sleep. I brought home from the UP library a book by Phillip Pullman, called “The Amber Spyglass.” It’s the third in a 3 part series, so when things finally slowed down it was one of the first things I read.

I’ve also been reading the Narnia series, and have read three of the books. (I also saw the movie a week ago–it was very good.) Our family got the first 2 Harry Potter books for Christmas, and I read those, too. And then this morning, I finished “The Aquitaine Progression” by Robert Ludlum–a very good read. At the beginning, I was expecting it to read rather like a John Grisham book, but it ended up being more like a Tom Clancy–both of whom I like a lot.

And now looking at the clock I must really go.

–Nathan