This past weekend was Spring Fest, which is a time of year when Friday classes are canceled so everyone can "relax" (aka "get drunk") before finals. There were a lot of events on campus going on between Thursday and Saturday, and on Thursday night, there was a free magic show put on by a magician from Chicago, Illinois. Peter and I went, of course. It was a lot of fun. Some of his tricks weren't all that impressive and I knew a bunch of them already, but he had a couple really good ones, and he was a good enough comedian that the show was fantastic anyway.
I called my mom up Friday afternoon to see if she had a good recipe for garlic chicken pizza (I promised Peter I'd cook him dinner and asked what he wanted and that was his request), but she was busy cooking dinner, so I had a nice long conversation with my dad. Dad loves magic, so I told him about the magician from the previous evening and told him a few of the tricks the guy had done, including one where he made a ring disappear from a girl's finger and appear attached to a keychain inside a zippered pouch in his wallet. Dad was in the room with Mom while I talked to Dad about the trick. She could hear only one side of the conversation: she knew it was me on the phone, and then she heard Dad talking about a ring, and she flipped out because she thought I had gotten engaged. Already.
Silly Mommy. Getting engaged two weeks after meeting someone is the sort of thing Mormons do, not Lint Monkeys. But it's fun messing with her head anyway.
Friday, we were going to make the garlic chicken pizza, but we didn't because just before we started to make it, we found out there was a free barbecue on campus, and what kind of college student turns down free food? Well, in Fairbanks, most of them, actually. There are about 8600 students at UAF, to my knowledge, and of those 8600, there were about a dozen people at this barbecue. Free food! What the heck, man? Burgers, hot dogs, chicken, potato salad, chips, soft drinks, all free to any student on campus! And it was in the parking lot of the student dorms, so all they had to do was walk out their back door and get it!
Perfect illustration of how nobody in Fairbanks ever wants to do ANYTHING. Unless beer is involved. You can usually get a little more participation if there's beer involved. Not much, though.
Incidentally, Friday was also the day for voting for positions in the student government for next year. Peter and I both voted, and apparently, 30% more students voted this year than last year. Want to know what percent of students voted? 6.1%! Seriously, man... even I voted, and I usually have nothing to do with politics (although I prefer them on a very small level over a national level). Six percent? Why does no one here care? There was no competition at all for senate seats. In fact, of the 20-ish student senate seats, I think about five of them are still empty.
I also question the way the votes are counted. I don't think student votes are actually counted the way they should be. In editing the newspaper articles about the election, I read that the final question, "Should we tack on ANOTHER $20 fee to all students per semester?" passed almost unanimously, which is interesting because everyone I know who actually voted said they voted against it. In addition, the article said that no votes had been counted for either of the two people running for the Concert Board and so they would have to have a senate meeting to determine how they would handle that. Interesting again, since I know for sure that at least two people did vote for someone for that position.
Not that much of anyone on campus would care much even if it were proven that the student senate threw out all the votes on campus except one or two of the people who "really mattered." Would anyone on campus protest or do anything about it? You might have a small handful of people who decided to get all up in arms... but this is Fairbanks. Nobody cares. About anything. It's depressing.
Oh well. That aside, time for a funny story. My professor for Ice Box (the lady in charge of the student journal I edit for), Cindy, is really close friends with Peter. In fact, so is my English professor from last semester, Mike, who lives with Cindy. I spent Friday morning with Peter, and then he dropped me off at class with Cindy. I leaned over to kiss him good-bye, and when I turned around, there was Cindy, waving at us through the window. It was hilarious--we kind of felt like we'd been caught making out by our parents or something. He hopped out of the car and gave her a hug and we talked for a bit, then Peter left and Cindy and I continued on to class, and she spent a fair portion of class talking about how wonderful Peter was and how she sort of adopted him and how nice a guy he is and how he sometimes helps her train her horses. Then she said we were welcome to come over and help with the horses the next day if we would like. Heck YES! Anything to do with horses and I'm there!!!
So Peter and I drove out to Cindy's place Saturday afternoon. The snow is starting to melt, so we spent almost all our time there shoveling the manure (they called it "biomass") that was showing up as the snow melted.
Cindy has two horses, Sam and Mattie. Both of them were mistreated, so she's trying to train them to like people again. She's very good with them, but they get ornery. Well, Sam gets ornery. Mattie gets mean. At one point, as Peter was pushing a wheelbarrow of "biomass" through Mattie's side of the pen, Mattie shoved him and then tried to bite him. He managed to get out of the way enough that she only got his shirt (she made a decent-sized hole in it where she bit it, too).
I didn't get too close to Mattie. We were working mostly on Sam's side of the pen. I did get to pat Mattie once and give her treats (Cindy said we say "ears up," and only give her treats when she has her ears up and doesn't look angry) and she seemed to like me okay, considering I was new. Sam seemed to like me too, mainly because he liked to push me around. I kept trying to pet his nose because most of the horses I've gotten to pet seemed to like that. But apparently, Sam has some kind of dominance issues, because he kept picking on me, shoving my hand out of the way and pushing me around. He didn't seem to like being pet so much. According to Cindy, Sam isn't mean the way Mattie can be, but he gets very ornery, and he likes pushing the line to see how much he can get away with. After I gave Sam some treats and decided to go back to shoveling poo--I mean, biomass--I turned to say something to Peter, and Sam decided to head-butt me in the back. That punk! Rawr! (He didn't butt me hard--just enough to say, "Haha, I can push you around!")
I had a blast, even though Peter and Cindy kept apologizing because all we were doing was shoveling. I love manual labor like that, and I love anything to do with horses, even if it is just shoveling their manure. It was a wonderful break from schoolwork.
Cindy has a big poodle named Jeeter as well. It doesn't have the typical poodle haircut, and it's the fluffiest-looking animal I've ever seen. He's enormous, and he's still just a puppy, so he's a big fluffy ball of energy.
After that, we went home, washed the horse muck off ourselves, and started making garlic chicken pizza. My roommate Amy thought it was so cool when I spun the pizza dough around in the air like they do in movies. But I spread it out on the pizza tray before I remembered "Oh yeah, we were supposed to let it rise." So we spread it out on the tray and then covered it and let it rise there, and instead of punching it down, we just put the toppings on it without patting it down or anything and ate it. On the second pizza, we did it right, letting it rise, punching it down, and then spreading it out. Interestingly enough, we decided the first one tasted better because the dough was light and fluffy, where the second one tasted a little too thick and bready.
Hmmm, what else? Oh yes, we also dyed the Lint Monkey's hair again. The color is supposedly "ultraviolet," but it looks royal blue. In fact, when Peter wore his royal blue University Equestrian Network sweatshirt to Cindy's place and it matched my hair, she asked if we had done that intentionally. Silly Cindy. What do we look like, nerds?
....Oh yeah.
5 comments:
What did you do for the garlic chicken pizza then? And I didn't FREAK OUT!
We used ranch dressing instead of pizza sauce and heaped on roma tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, garlic, cheddar, mozzarella, pepper jack, chicken (which we heated on the stove with black pepper, cayenne pepper, and steak seasoning first), and Italian seasoning.
In Antwerp, the pizza place had something they called "barbecue pizza". It had lots of bacon, ham, sausage, barbecue sauce, cheese, and pineapple. Last night I was working late, and walked over to the student dining hall, and they were celebrating the winners of the "new recipe" contest, and the winner was something called "Yi Huang Ke" Pizza, and it was a pizza with ... lots of bacon, ham, sausage, barbecue sauce, cheese, and loads of pineapple. An exact duplicate of the Antwerp pizza. The main difference? In Antwerp, it was 8 euro. Here it was $3.95. Of course, in Antwerp it comes with a tiny bottle of lukewarm Coke, but here it came with a tiny plastic cup for ice water (my choice). But it was yummy. Your pizza sounds yummy too. How do you make your dough? (no pun intended)
Just a fair word of warning - you're hair's going to stop liking you very soon if it isn't left alone for a bit. I killed mine about a year ago with multiple dye jobs in a short span of time. Dying it all sorts of neat colors is fun, but your hair's not invincible, and dyes are very abusive. And I hope you're using lots of conditioner.
That dog looks like a stuffed toy lol
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