Tag: travel

  • Preparations

    Tomorrow I fly to Kansas to watch my best friend get married.

    I know I’m only going out of town for 4 days, but I still feel like I have so much to do before leaving. Such as:

    >Shop for shoes to match my bridesmaid dress, a bigger memory card for my camera, and a book
    >Mail off a scholarship application
    >Put together the wedding gift
    >Pack
    >Watch a movie and return it
    >Play an indoor soccer game
    >Work for approximately 6 hours tomorrow

    And sorry to cut this short, but I think I am going to leave class early right now to go start on this list!

  • The Weekend’s Hap-PUN-ings

    Yesterday, for the second year, my roommate Carmen participated in the World Championship Pun Competition in Austin, TX. There were two events. The first was called “Punniest of Show” in which the contestants (32 in all) performed a 90-120 second monologue and were rated on a scale of 1-10 by four judges for a maximum of 40 points. I am proud to say that with a score of 39, I now live under the same roof as the second-place winner!

    Here’s a clip of her presentation:

    You can read the entire transcript here.

    The second event was a tournament in which two punsters went head-to-head. They would receive a topic and go back and forth punning off that topic with only 5 seconds to come up with one. If they took longer than 5 seconds they were out. No word could be punned off of twice, and if they reused a word they got a strike against them and they were out on the third strike.

    Carmen faced last year’s second-place winner in the first round. The topic was “Dancing.” A few excerpts:

    “My paper isn’t good I got a B, but can I plié?”
    “At the big dance your senior year of high school you have to have the right drink. You need promenade.”

    In the second round her topic was “The American Presidency.” This one lasted 17 minutes!

    “I’ll have to put a Nixon that one.”
    “I was editing my web page and I wanted to make sure everything was easily accessible, so I put a Lincoln everything.”
    “Have you ever found one of those pits? They come impeaches.”

    Moving onto the third round, the topic was “Mystery and Crime Fiction.” More snippets of punny goodness:

    “For Halloween I dyed my hair and put it up in a ponytail with a red herring.”
    “There was a costume that was used in the play, but I don’t know who donned it.”

    Finally, she moved onto the final round, facing off against last year’s first and third-place winners. The category was “Fictional Creatures”:

    “I gave her some money because I ogre.”
    “If you’re hurting, I don’t care. Bear it.”
    “I’m so mad, I’m going to lop off your head! Psych! Lops aren’t very nice.”

    Last year’s champion got out on strikes, and Carmen took it to the other guy. But it was soon obvious that he knew many more creatures than she did, as he revealed himself to be a Dungeons & Dragons fan, whereas Carmen is NOT into fantasy or any similar genre. So after a long and hard battle, she conceded and again took second!

    Congratulations Carmen!

    Her fans:

  • Weekend Trip to Lubbock

    Well, it was a quick trip but I’d say it was definitely worth it.

    We left at 6 a.m. on Saturday morning. I was sitting in the back seat. I pretty much slept for the first few hours. I meant to only sleep until it got light enough outside to study, but it’s just very hard for me to stay awake in the car. Eventually I got my textbook out and started to read. Then after a short while of that, I began to have a strange sensation that can only be described as car-sickness. I was in denial at first, but when my mom finally insisted that I take the front seat I did not say no. Shotgun was mine for the rest of the weekend! At one point we were listening to some talk radio. Here is a snippet of a conversation that ensued between us:

    Dad: I know how to take care of those suicide bombers. It’s an excellent idea, but I don’t think they’ll listen to me. Just have everyone walk around in bathing suits. Then if you see someone with a raincoat on, you pretty much know there’s a bomb in there.

    Me: Well not everyone wants to walk around in bathing suits.

    Dad: Not everyone wants to be DEAD, either. I’m telling you, it would work.

    Mom (piping up from the back seat): In a few years you’d see a dramatic rise in the instances of skin cancer.

    Dad: Well you’d just have to teach everyone to use sunscreen. Listen, I KNOW it’s a good idea.

    My parents are pretty great.

    Right outside of Lubbock there is the Llano Estacado Winery, which is the second-oldest in Texas and supposedly one of the best. We stopped there in order for my mom to pick up some of her favorite wine, and we went ahead and took the tour, along with its complementary taste-testing. I tried a bunch of different kinds, and I can still say with certainty that I CANNOT STAND WINE. I’m not even going to pretend. Anyway, Barry and a few of his friends met us there:

    Then we headed to Lin’s Asian Buffet, which also happened to serve Mexican food and steaks. The place was kind of ridiculously over-the-top with its decorations, but in a funny way.

    Mom and Barry at the buffet:

    Dad and me:

    Next stop was to check in at the good ole Rodeway Inn that we always stay at, and then head to Barry’s house. I took some pictures there, but you really don’t want to see them. Most of them I took just to show Boyfriend that his place really isn’t that messy after all.

    Me on the couch:

    Ewok, Barry’s stuffed animal from when he was a kid. I walked into his room, saw him on the bed, and squealed with delight. There are many fond memories of Ewok. I asked Barry if he sleeps with him, and he said, “He’s around.”

    We hung out there until it was time to go to the play. Unfortunately, no pictures of the performance because it would have been illegal to take any, and I am a law-abiding citizen. We went straight back to the motel afterwards, and sleep soon overtook us all.

    The next morning we met Barry at 9 a.m. for our regular meal at Denny’s. I stuffed my little belly because I had an inkling that we wouldn’t be stopping for food on the way home. Here we are:

    The drive home consisted of me, once again, sleeping a lot more than I had planned. It also did involve me studying quite a bit. And I viewed some scenery:

    Yeah it’s not really interesting except those windmills in the background are kind of cool in real life. Anyway, the only thing out of the ordinary that happened on the way home was that we stopped to pick up a couple a little older than my parents who were stranded on the side of the road. We ended up taking them home, about a half hour out of our way, but it was really no big deal. They were nice, and they gave us some frozen meat to thank us.

    So that was my weekend. How was yours?