#58: Experience Drag Bingo

              Four years ago I guarantee you I didn’t know what drag was, and I don’t think I knew any openly gay men. However, college was a definite culture shock in experiencing all of the different orientations of people out there. Unfortunately, the past few weeks have been very tragic for the LGBT (Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender) community due to at least five suicides from September and October resulting from bullying of several teens over their sexual orientation. I felt this was a very appropriate time for me to show my support for the gay community and to get my taste of UVA’s openly whatever and experience DRAG BINGO for the first time!

            I actually came in with no expectations whatsoever except that the people I had been in contact with about arranging tickets were very friendly (when I had stopped by on Thursday to purchase my tickets and the office was closed, I emailed the coordinator and she very kindly let me purchase tickets the day of at the same price!). Heather had agreed to go with me earlier because she said the performances were a riot, and my new work friend Maggie was interested in going as well! So I spent the Friday night of Halloween weekend psyching myself up for all that is glamorous and drag. I wasn’t disappointed.

            Heather, Maggie, her friend Macy, and I snagged a table near the front and filled out our BINGO cards. There were skittles on the table to use as the markers, and people dressed normally and in drag started showing up. It turns out that this event is more of a drag “show” interspersed with rounds of BINGO, and it was fun to watch the performances--mostly dancing and lip syncing to music although one guy who was wearing an extremely hole-y almost dominatrix costume who had his mouth taped shut composed a song on the piano. My favorite performance was a guy and a girl dressed in drag re-interpreting Eminem and Rhianna’s “Love the Way You Lie”. They were SO into it, and the guy was actually amazing at portraying Rhianna’s pain, but in a very entertaining way! It wasn’t until the end of the show that I realized he is one of the guys I swipe into the AFC every Wednesday! And one of the emcees was a guy Heather works with at Mem! I loved knowing someone up there and was all the more entertained as a result! Although we didn’t win any of the prizes or even really get BINGO (because after the first round we had to do blackout or boxes or cross shapes etc) I had so much fun and was super glad to have experienced the event! ...Oh, and for future reference, there is basically a big hoopla everytime O-69 is drawn... totally saw that coming :D

“I want to be so famous that drag queens will dress like me in parades when I'm dead.” -- Laura Kightlinger

#12: Visit Starbucks at the South Lawn

             For as long as I have been at the University, construction and planning have been materializing for the two new buildings of the South Lawn Project: Nau and Gibson. Over $105 million have been invested in the project, and after planting beautiful trees to line the walk over the bridge on Oct. 22 for the dedication ceremony, I consider the project complete and a success!

            The building is very modern- sterile almost – very different from the typical UVA building with its enormous windows and wrapping staircases lined with circular walls. There are many little study nooks where the sound echoing off the open floors actually doesn’t travel too much.

            I had the pleasure of first visiting this South Lawn masterpiece with Laura!!! Laura and I go back to San Sal 2009, and she is sunshine in human form and I wish I got to see her more, but being able to catch up at the new Starbucks here was just wonderful! I used my free Starbucks birthday card (love them- a real give away that you don’t have to use within the first week of your birthday haha) and got a Java Chip Frappuccino. Laura and I then found our nook and did a total grownup girl get-together catching up on our lives, school, friends, family, post-grad anxieties…I had a blast! We ended up having to cut our conversation short after 2 hours because we had lost track of time! The Starbucks itself is relatively small... they have the standard two comfy chairs that are always taken, so you pretty much have to take your drinks to go. But the plus side is that I think you can use your Plus Dollars here! I'm not sure I woul dhave ever gotten over to the Starbucks if it had not been on the list, but I’m so glad I got to see this magnificent building.

“Good communication is just as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.” – Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Thou Shalt Study

            One of the greatest things I’ve learned here is that the opportunities I’ve actively sought out for myself that have proven to be the most rewarding, valuable, and edifying. Along those same lines, it wasn’t sitting in a lecture hall where I learned my vocation or developed my strengths as a student. I am both impressed and grateful that the List makes mention of studying on four separate occasions. At the very least, they expected me to study once a year, and I daresay I have dabbled in stress and studying a thousand times more than this prescription in my duration at the University.  Well excellent, I feel more accomplished in my reading procrastination that is currently going on already!

            I also find it ironic that the four “studying” occasions on the List are all grouped together near the beginning. Obviously these are menial tasks we are meant to get out of the way, or perhaps it is a foreshadowing of the nonacademic nature that I am scheming to turn my eighth and final semester into. Regardless, today is the day that I have officially studied in all of the locations that the list denotes.

            #27: Study in the Dome Room: At some point in my second year my curiosity peaked as I searched for the ultimate place in which to crank out biology reading. I had heard tell that the Rotunda was actually open to the public, so I decided to take my $600, twelve-pound textbook with me and read from the sacred space, all the while looking out over the brilliant scenery of the Lawn. I hesitantly made my way up the winding staircase to the silent Dome Room and made my way to an empty carrel. The bookshelves protruding from the walls that separated the carrels around the room were lined with Frankenstein paraphernalia from comic books to early 1900s figurines to memorabilia from Mary Shelley herself in order to commemorate the book’s ninetieth anniversary. I loved being surrounded by the sublime Gothic décor and the feeling of being in the center of the core of the University’s foundation, but several tour groups passed through during my stay there and I found it wasn’t a very productive refuge for me.

            #19: Study in the Fine Arts Café: Doing so might propel you in the right direction for an A- grade on an exam, but it comes with several side affects including but not limited to: large volumes of students passing through in conversation, few tables to choose from, extremely loud pop music of the B.O.B. persuasion blaring from loud speakers wherever you move, a strange and remarkably identifiable smell of organic-ness, waiting at least half an hour for an overpriced $8 grilled chicken sandwich with no sides, being dangerously close to the Lambeth fox and thus out of the way for most College students that are not taking an Art History course. Study at your own risk.

            #18: Study in the Music Library: I ventured here today! It’s quaint: a very white room in the very basement of Old Cabell Hall that is actually more easily accessed via the South Lawn or the second floor of Cabell itself. There’s a roundness to the ceiling near where the help desk is which is slightly Burrow-esque in its Hobbitlike reminiscence. The AC was blasting down there to keep me awake, but I was able to hide in a comfy chair behind a column. However, these chairs are superior to all other comfy chairs. These chairs come with a revolving paisley shaped desktop which you can use or push away! It’s pretty much awesome. I didn’t explore the library fully, but there were several computers down there, tables for studying, and chairs abound; this library is a little gem and I will most definitely be back if only before and after choir practice!

            #26: Read in the McGregor Room: Like almost anyone who has been in here, it is probably my favorite room at the University- probably anywhere. It has rows of lengthy tables with those picturesque green library lamps on them, fireplaces, grand rugs, and the most old fashioned and worn comfy chairs that hug you and reassure you and whisper to you that what you are doing has been done a thousand times before: not to worry, everything will work out. There are adjoining rooms and old portraits of great men, and those breathtaking bookshelves with Beauty and the Beast sliding ladders. God, I enjoy a beautiful bookshelf. And they have the oldest books in them under delicate lock and key so fragile you might crush it if you touched it, but no one does; it contains all the magic of Hogwarts stifled into one room; it makes you want to take a tea and lemon cake, curl up with no shoes on, and read until you go blind.

"I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led" - Thomas Jefferson

#33: Take a Historical Tour of UVA

     The week of Halloween my brain pretty much shuts down and reverts to spirit mode (pun possibly intended) where all I want to do is watch scary movies, relish in decorations, and enthrall myself in harvest activities. As much as I love them, the holiday has never been about the costumes or the candy for me. I actually enjoy being reminded that there is a dark side which contrasts the light; as disturbing as it might sound, I think there's some little bit of evil out there which gives purpose to the good. At the same time, I delight in the totality of the horror genre because it is (however small)  a challenge to my own lack of faith in actual evil, ghosts, what have you...that "haunt" the living. 

            The U-Guides really captured my attention by hosting a GHOST TOUR this evening complete with complimentary apple cider! After summoning some interest from a few V-Dubs (Chelsea, Hannah, Golda, and Jillian) we gathered on the front steps of the Rotunda in the darkening twilight. The Chapel tolled seven chimes and then two U-Guides bearing orange-glowing candles approached from a distance. An actual hush fell over the crowd and a strong wind snuffed their lights as they began to speak - it was all extremely theatrical, almost as if there was another presence performing for us!

(Thus I have also re-accomplished task #29: Visit Edgar Allan Poe's Room)

    

The first stop was Edgar Allan Poe's room on the West Range where Poe had studied for some time (literature being his favorite, of course) and later dropped out. In this room he had eerily carved into the base of his window:

                                                 

O Thou timid one, do not let thy

Form slumber within these

Unhallowed walls,

For herein lies

The ghost of an awful crime.

.

While he saw his lack of continued education at the University (due to lack of funds that were supposed to have been produced by his adopted father figure) as the "crime", the suspense Poe produces even in this simple statement is up for the reader's interpretation.

(Check out the orb on the right as I was walking back alone toward the Lawn. In the previous picture which was darker it had been farther away but was definitely still in the shot. Maybe it was the ghost of Gaffy, the hero of one of Poe's stories which was ridiculed by his peers and led him to throw his manuscript into the fire!)

   

The tour was brilliantly enlightening in its historical rendering of the darker subjects of the University's past. I learned about the Anatomical Theater that was the only original plan of Jefferson's not incorporated on Grounds today; this building had been erected in front of what is today Alderman Library and served as a rounded theater for the study of cadavers. These cadavers even showed up in the Corks and Curls yearbook in several secret society photographs! Overall, the tour was a lot of fun, and while we regretfully had to leave early (after hearing about the Civil War soldiers that were likely murdered in every Lawn room and hid things in the floorboards) to get to choir practice, I couldn't be happier with another historical tour topic!

"The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?" - Edgar Allan Poe

#79: Watch the sunrise from Humpback Rock

     It's 2 am and my phone alarm starts going off. I jump out of bed. I am SO ready for this. After talking to one drunken Jon Gordon for about a minute I finally wake up and realize that this was not my alarm.

It's 4:45am and my phone alarm goes off. I jump out of bed, slightly less ready for this. Make myself a blueberry jam blueberry bagel, trip over my chair in my dark room thus getting blueberry jam all over myself, but it's ok. Heather picked me up from JPA and we drove in the dark to meet my favorite girls Molly, Lauren, Jade, and Megan for the trip of the month!

       I fell asleep on the twisty turning roads that led up to Humpback Rock (about a half hour drive west from Charlottesville), a well known hiking expedition that I have conquered with Heather before actually. Two years ago we went in the springtime to watch the sun set on that cold mountain. I thank God that we are spared the symbolic irony of seeing the sun set on Charlottesville now that we are older.

      Our two cars pulled up to the bottom of the mountain a little before 6 am and we decided after getting out into the very breezy 30 degree weather that we should wait in the cars until 6:15. Lauren definitely was anxious to get going every minute we were in there. Some creepy car pulled around and stared at us and then drove away...and then we bundled up and got psyched to go!

   

  I'm not going to lie...the hike up was a lot harder than I remembered it. I was definitely huffing and puffing up there, shedding layers even though the temperature remained the same (although the trees thankfully provided a lot of protection from the wind). At the midpoint we decided to take the longer, "easier" (yeah...right.) route up, being extra cautious to avoid the slippery, disintegrating leaves blanketing the ground.

    

And what a triumph it was reaching the top of the mountain: six great friends alone with the sleepy world below, a curtain of stars overhead, and a brilliant full moon behind us. We were later joined by two other groups of people, but we had been the first, and I was thrilled about that! Sunrise revealed herself very quickly, casting a beautiful sheen over the autumn leaves on the ridges below us. Humpback prompted Heather and me specifically to think about getting older and how the moon and sun greet each other in the transitions of the day :) All of us watched in silence, pondered, snuggled, took pictures, and grew too cold to remain up there much longer. We said goodbye to the mountain and sought refuge in warm cars, warm Bodos Bagels (at the unvisited one on Preston!), and ultimately warm beds. It was a fantastic day and I felt super accomplished to have done so much and have already headed back to bed by 9:30 am!

 "You're off to Great Places! Today is your day! Your Mountain is waiting. So... get on your way!" - Dr. Seuss

#2: Pick fruit at Carter Mountain

    This task was never going to be a problem for me because more than I love the taste of a fresh Golden Delicious, I love every activity that evokes the spirit of fall. Carter's Mountain is actually very special to me because every year for my birthday weekend (up until high school) my family would drive up to Charlottesville to go hiking up here and enjoy the Apple Festivals that go on. Churning apple butter, corn mazes, pumpkins, sticks of flavored honey...definitely a trip down memory lane for me...Carter's Mountain was one of the first places I ever tried to drive with my learner's permit. That was when we had the giant red minivan hugging the winding path up the mountain for dear life -- but I digress.

                                           

 Joe had never been to pick apples before! So on our whirlwind tour of VA Beach and Richmond for Fall Break, I made sure to squeeze some Carter Mountain into our activities! On Tuesday Oct. 12 we packed light lunches and headed slightly east. When we got there we found a lot of the apples were picked over already, but he was really excited to get the giant apple picker to reach the highest apples! We got a bunch of freshly picked Granny Smith's in the hopes of making a pie eventually! After picking (on this unseasonably hot day) we rested in the shade with some cold apple cider and those heavenly apple cinnamon doughnuts. Joe got to take his picture in "the apple" (a tourist 'must' that has been around probably since I was born) and then we headed off to enjoy a drive through West Charlottesville in search of the beauty of nature in disguise of fluvial landscapes I needed to capture for my Geomorphology project.

“Women are like apples on trees, the best ones are on the top of the tree. The men don't want to reach for the good ones because they are afraid of falling and don't want to get hurt. Instead, they just get the rotten apples from the ground that aren't so good but easy. So, the apples at the top think something is wrong with them, when in reality they are amazing. They just have to wait for the right man to come along, the one who's brave enough to climb all the way to the top because they value quality.”



the looming volcano

     This past weekend was Homecoming at UVA, full of delicious food and old friends returning in a jovial time reminiscent of Christmas (…unfortunately the feast was tainted as a fresh slaughter of Cavaliers was served to UNC). But this is the last season that I can actually call beautiful Charlottesville autumn my home. Don't get me wrong, I love feeling at home here, and I can't even imagine what my life would have been like had I been anywhere else over the past four years. But while I definitely LOVE my school, I recognize that I am one of the only college kids who is sort of ready to move on... I am looking forward and am ready for change (believe me, a rarity in my life).

       So Saturday night my favorites got together to rock it like a hurricane at Three for 80s night, per usual. We found it absolutely packed with “old people” trying to live up their glory days again and left a little bruised and a little wary—begging that those desperate women on the dance floor wearing clothes they shouldn’t won’t be us in X years.

       I am kind of thrilled to see what becomes of all of us-- the men and women we are already turning into. And I am determined to live every day to the fullest while I am here, that I will be ready to thrive post-grad with no regrets. What better way than to complete the Class of 2011 List of 111 Things to Do Before Graduation, you say? Answer: BLOG ABOUT IT. I vow to do my very best to check one thing off my list every week until May (where lets face it, I’ll be scrambling because I refuse to leave here without completing these tasks…it’s on my ultimate lifelist!)

   

       I got the title for my blog based on the following quote by Dave Eggers – a fantastic artist in his literary works. We are all headed toward the volcano…the precipice of graduation and the real world. The way he sees it we have two options: jump in or be overwhelmed by it, so it’s best for us to just be ready. I hope you will take an interest in completing these tasks with me (it's always better together) and thank you for reading!

"And we will be ready, at the end of every day will be ready, will not say no to anything, will try to stay awake while everyone is sleeping, will not sleep, will make the shoes with the elves, will breathe deeply all the time, breathe in all the air full of glass and nails and blood, will breathe it and drink it, so rich, so when it comes we will not be angry, will be content, tired enough to go, gratefully, will shake hands with everyone, bye, bye, and then pack a bag, some snacks, and go to the volcano." — Dave Eggers