Student Living

It's a well accepted fact that students are poor. It's well accepted that generally, students have no money ever. Several business's have even been obliging enough to set up discounts for these stress freaks that make no money.
I am the luckiest kind of student because I still live with my parents. I make hardly any money, spend ridiculous amounts on textbooks and the like, yet I still remain solvent because I don't have to buy groceries.
That however, doesn't keep me from cooking. I enjoy cooking, so when I have the time, I make dinner. This very Friday, my friend Kylie and I were going to Sobey's to gather ingredients for such an occasion. It was while we were picking out apples and arguing over the best type of dinner rolls that we noticed the curious little tables set up with various delicacies.
Yes, my friends. Grocery store samples. On the surface they are meant to be a marketing ploy to get people eating new products, but really they are meant to fill the empty bellies of hungry students.
And that's exactly what we did. It was a good day for samples. We had salmon, cereal, a whole slice of pizza each, ice cream, fancy chees and crackers, the works! We ate an entire meal for free from the good will and/or marketing ploys of Sobey's.
So my dear fellow students, if you're hungry, and your cupboards are bare, try walking around the grocery store. You'd be surprised how filling it can be.
NOTE: When Sobey's is hoarding, I recommend Costco.

I AM LEGEND

After perusing several people's facebooks and blogs I keep getting the same message over and over again. "Jessica Melnychuck is finished exams!" "Karen Dick is finished University!" And the endless blogs of "I'm just ging to hang out in my pajamas for the next three weeks because I am done," are starting to get to me. I've come to the conclusion that I am the last student left standing.
It all began on Saturday, at 9 am (when normal people are asleep) and the majority of the people in my program finished the semester off with our comm theory exam. The usual festivities and celebrations took place, which I attended in spite of the fact I have nothing to celebrate yet, and then I looked around and went, "Hey, I'm the only one still buried in a textbook."
Okay that's an exaggeration. I know a few people who are still writing today. But EVERYONE I know finishes before me. I FEEL SO ALONE IN THE WORLD.
So to all my fellow students, I hope you're happy. And know that while you are sleeping/ partying/ hanging out in pajamas and being awesome, I am still trying to keep all the medieval popes straight.
I'M ALL ALONE, THERE'S NO ONE HERE..... BESIDE ME!

The Dorky Girl in the Corner

I'm at school right now. Where else am I ever? Anyway, I'm supposed to be studying for my Children's Lit. final which is at 7 tonight. Yes, my exam schedule is just that lame.
So here I am, on the couch in the Comm Centre (which is basically where I live), and along comes a guy pushing a cart full of cakes. Strange. And to say that anything is strange in the Comm Centre is saying something, cause all kinds of crazy things happen.
But, I mind my own business and get back to Dr. Seuss. It's just Bridge Brand cake anyway. Than people start arriving. Not unusual for the Comm Centre, but instead of pulling out their textbooks, or falling asleep on the couch, or crying in despair at the overwhelming amount of assignments they have (as people often do in the Comm Centre), they're completely relaxed. Walking around, chatting, introducing their boyfriends to people. OUTSIDERS IN THE COMM CENTRE? WHAT IS THE WORLD COMING TO?
It's when one of the instructors starts hooking up a giant set of speakers that I figure out what's going on: the E-Pubs are having a party. Apparently they're starting a magazine. Or something.
By the time the music starts, and the cake is being circulated, I am feeling increasingly dorky. All around me, people are visiting, and being at a party, and I'm reviewing my notes for English. Choosing my only escape. I flee to the Resource and Archive Room.
The only problem with the archive room is it's got glass doors. So it's not a very good hideout. So while I continue to study, E-pubs walk by with their cake and stare at me like a peculiar kind of monkey in the zoo. The nerdiest of monkies: the kind that studies during a party.
You know how at parties there's always that girl sitting in the corner reading a book or flipping through and old magazine because she feels awkward and wants to look occupied, but secretly wishing she was out of sight so people would stop staring at her? Today, that's me.

Communication "Professionals"

I have this mock press conference thingy coming up on Monday. We're meeting with the second year PR students and doing a pretend press meeting.
So anyways, our prof told us that each group would meet with their PR group at various times through the week. My group was told 8:30 AM on Thursday. That was annoying enough in itself because I have no classes on Thursday, but it was made even more annoying by the fact that the PR people didn't show. I'd driven all the way to school on the early side, on a day I ususally hang out in my pajamas all day, for nothing.
It was okay though, I ended up getting a lot done at school as I stayed to make the trip worth my while.
But it gets better. Thursday night, one of our PR's sends us an e-mail asking if we can meet the next day. Only two fo us checked our e-mail in time, so only two of us showed up. What we discovered is that the PR students had not heard about our planned meeting until later that day in class.
Such admirable work by Mount Royal College's Communications Department. Don't you think?

Why is it Always Leo?

I have my history midterm this afternoon, and I'm tryiing to study. It's a lot of remembering names, and events that all have really silly names. My main worry is that I will spell them wrong. I generally know what happens, it's just the stupid names. I know that Henry the III (?) organized a big meeting during the investiture controversy to get rid of the whole 3 popes thing, and he appointed his cousin to be the pope, but I can't remember the things like, the meeting was called the Synod of Sutri, and his cousin's name was Bruno of Toul, but he changed it to Pope Leo IX.
And that's another thing, why do they all have to have the same name? It is hard enough trying to remember which pope did what without worrying about if you got the number right. Everyone is named either Leo, or Henry, or Charles, or William. What was wrong with medeival mothers? Obviously they lacked imagination when naming their kids. Did they not realize how hard they were making it for future students trying not to get the Leo who reformed the church with his own ecclesiaticals mixed up with the one who threw himself at Charlesmagne's feet 200 years earlier mixed up? Geez.

Arrivederci TV Links

I have no channels. And by that I don't mean I have peasant vision. I mean no channels. Period.
We are not just peasants. We are homeless vagebonds in the world of TV.
You see, to have peasant vision, you have to have an antenae, and we don't. So to get one measly, fuzzy channel, you have to do a dance with a piece of tin foil on a chord. And even then , the picture isn't that good. Plus, your likely standing behind the TV with your hands in the air, or in the middle of the room on one foot cause that tin foil thing is so picky about where it has to be to get reception. And it always chooses the oddest places.
So we don't watch TV. Call me crazy but the whole enjoyment is taken away when you have to watch while standing on your tiptoes.
For the longest time, I didn't watch TV shows unless I was at friends houses, and then I didn't really like it cause I was behind the times. So I avoided even that.
Then I discovered shows on DVD. Introduced to me by my sister Jaima with Lost, I began watching previous seasons of shows, and feeling slightly in the TV loop. Plus I figured DVD was the way to watch shows, cause I could watch as mush or as little whenever I wanted.
But I was still behind the times. I'd watch an entire season in a few days, and then be waiting with baited breath for a year until the next season was released on DVD.
Then my sister Janine introduced me to TV Links. FYI- TV Links is a website that has shows available online to watch. I was hooked! How awesome was it that I could watch shows without going to rent them? Or waiting for them to come out on DVD? For the first time in my life, I was regularly following shows every week. I had three that I loved; Heroes, the Office, and How I Met Your Mother.
Then, a trajedy occurred; TV Links was shut down. Apparently something they did was illegal, and they vanished.
Okay, so maybe it was an illegal website, but I was still devastated. My world of TV shows, gone.
So this blog is dedicated in loving memory of TV Links. Yeah, you were illegal, but you were a friend to me in the world of TV.

Millena the Pizza Bomb

Once upon a time there was a frozen pizza named Millena. So named because, well, that was the company that had made her. Mild mannered Millena was one day sitting in her normal place on the top shelf of the deep freeze in the Redd's place of residence when to her astonishment, the freezer opened, and a hand reached toward her, taking her out of her comfortable home and into the discomfort of the room temperature kitchen.
Now Millena was a shy pizza, she rarely associated with the bags of peas and cans of lemonade concentrate that lived next door to her in the deep freeze. But what the Redd's didn't know was that though Millena was quiet and shy, she had a temper like a gas range.
Millena was not impressed at being taken out of her comfortably cold home. She was even less impressed when she was taken out of her pretty cardboard box with her name written on it in red block letters.
But the Redd's did not care for the suffering they caused poor Millena. They wanted lunch, and hungry people are notorious for listening to nothing but their own stomachs. So they did not hear Millena's disgruntled protests. They paid no mind when she wailed as her plastic cover was taken off. They did not care that the pizza pan was too small for her, and she was uncomfrtable on that ugly dish. They just wanted their lunch.
You can imagine Millena's horror and displeasure when she was placed in the oven at 425 degrees to bake for 25 minutes. This was the final straw. She would not stand for this mistreatment.
Her temper got the better of her. In her rage, Millena swelled to an enormous size. Her cheesy goodness turned to brittle black, her lovely thin crusts curved over the edge of the pan and burned. Her delectable pepperoni retained the flavour and texture of cardboard. And while all this was happening. Millena grew. She grew until she was no longer a pizza, but instead, a gaint, dougy bubble ready to explode.
It was a good thing the cook opened the oven at that precise moment. Had she waited a second more, Millena would be decorating the inside of the stove. Once out of the oven, Millena's temper simmered down. She shrunk to almost the correct size and shape again, but her grudge remained. She would never forgive these people for taking her from her home in the deep freeze.
So she remained burnt and bland tasting, and was therefore, not the tastiest of lunches.