Another long lapse in chronicling our latest adventures, I realize that. But there's been a lot of exciting occurrences this week, so that's what we've been away doing! So, without further introduction, here it is... hope you hate it!
Monday, we got back into school mode, for the last week of actual school, for the semester! After classes were over, it was time for everyone to, once again, come gather round, at the apartment, for Castle and Muffin Monday. Much to our dismay, however, this week's Castle was a re-run! Instead, in it's place, we played our newly acquired game of Balderdash (Told you we'd get it!). JM ended up beating everyone by a landslide. He reached one of the Double Bluff spaces, scored four points, and ended up moving ahead eight... It was fun, though. We'll have to play it again, when we have more people around. After the board game festivities reached their conclusion, we gathered round for Muffin Monday! We had some apple strudel muffins, minus the strudel... Yeah, whilst making the muffins, I opened the box, saw two packs of what I assumed to be muffin mix, and used one of them. Turns out, I grabbed the muffin mix, and left the strudel part of the the apple strudel. We wondered why they tasted less studely than we had hoped, but just chalked it up to a mediocre new muffin flavor. Needless to say, we'll be adding the strudel to the lemon poppy seed muffins, next Monday. We'll keep you posted on how those turn out.
This week's topic of discussion was "Government Agencies that should exist." The two that we settled on as favorites were 1) A volunteer program, for people who pass a specific IQ test, that allows them to arm themselves with nightsticks and beat people who say and do stupid things. The reason it's a volunteer program is because people like us would jump on that opportunity for free. 2) An agency, who's sole purpose is to constantly experiment, and publish their findings about new ways to have fun. This program will have immunity from the first, aforementioned program...
Tuesday, midway through the day, Chris and I received a call from Matt, wondering if we'd like to meet him in Tampa, for dinner. Deciding that Tampa was way too far away to just go out there for dinner, we told him we'd either have to (regretfully) pass, or meet him halfway, around Lakeland. Thankfully, he agreed! Chris and I, now with our santa hats on, as it was December 1st, set out towards the land-o-lakes. Matt had a $10 gift certificate to Applebee's, so I'll let you figure out where we ended up eating. As it turns out, Matt still has that same gift certificate, still with $10 on it. They wouldn't accept it in Lakeland, turns out... Either way, dinner was still fun. We piled in the car, and since we were in Lakeland, decided to pay a visit to the old Alma Mater. We arrived at Southeastern and found it to be a more desolate place than we remembered. Hardly anyone to be seen anywhere... The mystery was solved as we walked past the athletic center and discovered that there was a basketball game in progress. Now knowing where the majority of the student body was, that was one mystery solved. The next thing on the agenda was to figure out what book it was, that we found a library code for, on a post-it note, on the sidewalk. Most people would have just left it there, but not us... We wandered into the library, and ran into an old friend from the high school days. After catching up for a bit, we never did find the book, so we headed back outside. Before successfully leaving the building, I was stopped by one of the librarians. She kept telling me how I looked so familiar, and finally asked how she might have known me and if I somehow knew Jeremiah. I explained that I was a former student there, and Jeremiah was my old roommate. We talked for awhile, and she gave us some clues as to Jeremiah's whereabouts. It's actually kinda fun running into people who know you, even though you don't know them! As I stepped out the door, I was greeted by another familiar voice; it was my friend Joel. Surprised to see me in the library, he chased me down. We caught up for a little while, which was nice, and then headed out to our next destinations, respectively. Hearing word of Jeremiah, somewhere nearby, on a tractor, we raced in that direction. We finally tracked him down, and made him agree to come visit us, up here, next Wednesday. So we'll be expecting his arrival, on that day. The last item of business was to see who was living in our old Valencia room, A7. We stopped by to pay them a visit, but as it turns out, they weren't there. Perhaps next time.
We made our way home, arriving around 11, and greeted JM and Caitlin at our apartment to set up the Christmas tree. We busted out the lights and decorations, and assembled the tree. Once again, we filled this year's tree with our brand of odd decorations, in lough of the traditional ones that most people use. Unfortunately, we found ourselves, somehow, without a hammer. Therefore, we could not put up the lights, and subsequently decided to save the rest of the decorations and Christmas video, for a later date.
Wednesday appears to be a day forever lost in the sands of time. Asking around the apartment, no one seems to remember what went on. To the best of our knowledge, we all went to class, came home, worked on schoolwork, and Robert finally finished the game, Shining Force II, which he's been trying to beat for roughly ten years. We all feel as though something else, more significant than that, happened; we just can't remember what...
Thursday, I awoke early and headed to my third and final Face to Face meeting of my education class. I presented my Microteach #2 on the Lesser Known Projects of the Cold War. Everyone in my miniature classroom seemed to thoroughly enjoy it; so that's always a good thing! Upon returning home all of us proceeded to work on our last remaining bits of schoolwork for the semester. It was a very nice relief to know that I had finished two of my classes. All that's left now are my exams! Boosh! Unfortunately, the rest of the day was pretty lackluster, well for me anyways. Chris and Caitlin received two free tickets to the, otherwise expensive, Singing Christmas Trees. As far as I can tell, they both really seemed to enjoy it!
Friday was a dreary and rainy day. This, for some reason, inspired Robert to make a stew. Apparently everyone else but me knows that stew and rainy days go hand in hand; Now I know, I guess... Later on, JM and I decided we were tired of being stranded in the apartment, by the rain. We figured we'd head out to the Waterford shopping center and see if there was anything we could amuse ourselves with, there. We stepped into Movie Stop, and I ended up finding a movie I've been looking for, for a really long time, for really cheap. Now joined by "The Life Aquatic", my vast movie collection has grown to a total of 4 movies. Not fining anything else exciting, down that way, we headed back and put in the movie. I had forgotten exactly how much I enjoyed that one. Afterwords, JM had to leave, but so did I, so that worked out pretty well. I headed out to what turned out to be the Winter Formal for the Swing Knights at UCF. It also turned out to be the one week I didn't wear a suit. Awesome... Though under-dressed, I still had a lot of fun, and didn't feel quite as bad, when I noticed that I wasn't the only one, not in fancy attire. That won't stop me from putting up a photo from last week, instead, though... hah
Saturday started with an apartment trip to Target, and just kept getting increasingly more exciting from there. As we made our way to acquire new foodstuffs, we noticed a man wearing an old Victorian era top hat and tailcoat. Then we noticed there was a whole group of people wearing similar apparel. We rushed our shopping through Target, and dashed home. I changed into my tailcoat, pocket-watch, and other fancy clothes, and raced back to join them! Turns out, they were Christmas caroling around the shopping center. Although confused at first, they happily welcomed me to join them! Gladly, I accepted and we proceeded to sing a number of songs, before Chris and Robert decided we should start heading back to the apartment; for, you see, today we would finish putting up the lights and Christmas decorations! Caitlin and JM joined us, once again, and we proceeded to turn the apartment into a winter wonderland, provided your standards for something being called a "winter wonderland" are somewhat flexible. Once finished, we shot this year's installment of the annual Christmas video. Unfortunately, Youtube has a time constraint, so if you would like to view it, you can head over to my Facebook page. Either way, it was quite a bit of fun! We finished out the day with the movie "50 First Dates", then decided to call it a night.
Hei Kona Ra (Apparently goodbye in Maori),
-Nick, Chris, & Robert
