That's funny.

Bah

I am not a jumpy person, but when CDs have that extra song that plays 5ish minutes after the CD is supposed to be over, it just freaks me right out.

Legs

Glorya just emailed me this picture from our time in Ghana. I'm handing out stickers to the kids at Future Island and I think that this girl's reaction is really sweet.

Alison is fabulous.

I am convinced that I have the coolest friends out there and Alison Roberts is one of them. Many of you may even have met Alison because she is always up for meeting new people. Alison is always asking me to do weird stuff and I always say yes, no matter what it is, because Alison is such an interesting and outgoing individual that everything she does is worth participating in. I'm not even joking. She has probably read more books so far this month than I have read in my entire life and last week she washed all of my dirty dishes, which were taking up our entire sink and all of our counter space. Today she introduced me to an amazing new Greek restaurant and invited me to a showing of a beautiful Japanese film.

Alison is rad and I thought you should know because if I ever happen to say something interesting or intelligent, Alison probably said it first. Did I mention that she started university when she was 16 and also volunteers at Ten Thousand Villages, which happens to be my favorite store?

Mt. Baker is my favorite mountain.

I went snowboarding on Sunday.
Last time at Baker for awhile, I suspect.

The Cheat

I don't want to give away any of my secrets, but let's just say that yesterday I cheated better than I have ever cheated in a game. The game was Pictionary. I am really good at Pictionary to begin with, so I didn't really need to cheat. But it was so fun to trick the other team. It was also incredibly entertaining for me and my teammates. By the way, I had never met any of the people who were on my team. I bet they got a pretty good first impression of my character.

Oh, and if you want to know about Saturday you'll just have to ask me because I'm not going to write about it on here (too much to say). I think I'm going to write a book about it, so you can buy that some day if you really want to know what it was like.

I will not be going to Canada this weekend.

Tomorrow my sister and I will meet the man responsible for our genetically fatty eyebrows and above average torso to leg ratio. His name is Robin Ronnell and he is our dad.

Even though sleep is my best defense against awkward situations, I am going to try to stay awake for the entire visit. Wish me luck.

Who am I?!

Today I made soup. Lentil soup.

FROM SCRATCH!!!

I even made my own vegetable stock to use in it. I don't know what has come over me, but I really like cooking these days.

Next... the dishes. Hm. Maybe I'm not ready for that one yet. Baby steps, you know.

Also, my eyes are currently watering from cutting up the onion. And that was half an hour ago! I was weeping when I was actually cutting. Fierce onion, I tell ya.

The glass is half full. Maybe even three quarters full.

Aside from the tragic death of my car atop Mt. Seymour and the fact that I spent all of Saturday sick (flu?), the weekend was great. I'm not even kidding. I really enjoyed it. Not only did I have an adventurous trip home without my car, I got to have a sleepover with my engaged friend Creepsack. How exciting!

(I don't really remember much of the ski retreat because I was sleeping, so not much to say there. Except that I forgot my sleeping bag and pillow, so the sleep was not that great.)

You Guessed It...

I am off to Canada once again. I'll be heading up to Mt. Seymour tomorrow night for a weekend of ski retreat fun and some (hopefully) great snowboarding. I'll be gone for a couple of days. Not five days, just two. But my roommate is leaving for Idaho tomorrow and she will be gone for two weeks, in case anyone is interested in hacking into her Gmail.

Stupid Tag

Since Sam is mean, here are 5 random things about Ashley Marie Ronnell (that's me).

1. Ashley is the most common name for girls born in 1985 in the United States of America. Coincidentally, I was born in 1985 in the United States of America. Also, I think Marie must be the most common middle name on the planet. Thanks, Mom!

2. I LOVE coffee. I cannot think of anything more enjoyable than having good coffee with a friend. That said, I HATE Starbucks. I started out hating it because it is far too prevalent in my charming city, but now I mostly hate it because I made such a big deal about hating it that I can't really go back. Plus their coffee is not that great and they are being mean to Ethiopia.

3. I once participated in the second largest rowing regatta in the United States. 100,000 spectators is nothing to sneeze at!

4. I have not thrown up since the summer before sixth grade, and that was really more of a chunky cough.

5. I HATE HATE HATE email forwards. Having them in my Inbox just drives me freaking nuts, no matter how thoughtful/inspiring/funny they are. It's sort of like this blog tag thing. If something like this ever comes along again, please don't tag me.

Okay. I don't want to be a hypocrite ('cause they're not hip with it), but I'm going to tag Jordie and Erin anyways. That means you have to share 5 random things about yourself. Sorry for passing along this burden.

(By the way, wouldn't be funny if there really was a game called stupid tag? I wonder how that would go...)

Oh Shame

I just wanted to post something so that last post about the Bears going all the way will move down a little bit. It's kind of like pouting for blogs.

News From Barack

Stupid is the New Smart

Yesterday one of my jobs was to stuff report cards into report card envelopes. You know how sometimes something small can spin your mind into some sort of idea or memory? Well, that is what happened to me. I saw the word "Mathemetics" on the report cards and found myself thinking about a funny day in the life of my fourth grade self.

It was math test day. Long division, to be exact. Mr. Novak, our student teacher, handed out our tests and we began. I was a clever kid, but I knew that I would fail that test. Not because I didn't know the answers or was bad at math, just because I had previously decided that I really wanted to fail a test. I finished the test quickly and confidently, then I went back and changed just one number in every solution. Not only did I achieve my goal of failing, I got a 0%.

Maybe I was going for a good story? But this is my first time ever telling this story, so probably not.

I'm so funny sometimes.

Homesick?

Yesterday I got together for dinner and baking with Chelsey and Glorya (who I went to Ghana with). It was fun to reminisce, especially since I have been missing that crazy country as of late. It's weird to me that I can miss so badly a place I only lived in for four and a half-ish months. So, just because I feel like it, here are a couple of Ghana pictures.

Chelsey, me, and Glorya make our best hippo faces at the hippo sanctuary.

Ambrose and Bart in their ridiculous cowboy hats.

Look how studious I am.

Haha. I can't look at this picture without laughing.
It's so... Ghana.

Okay. I feel better now.