Shopping carts are incredibly efficient for moving.

I moved out of my apartment and just across the complex to a new building. It's about a 15 second drive, so it seemed kind of excessive to take all my stuff from my apartment, walk to my car, put it in my car, drive my car to the new building, take all my stuff from my car and carry it into my new apartment.

My parents suggested using a shopping cart, so that way I could take my stuff directly from my apartment and bring it straight to my new one (almost, since it was on the second floor). At first I thought it was completely ridiculous.

But it was totally genius. By using a shopping cart, I wouldn't have to put all my stuff in boxes to carry to my car and then carry right back inside again. I could just pile a bunch of stuff into this shopping cart. Easy! Plus I save gas, the environment AND get exercise! Efficient! 

So I walked over to the grocery store that's right across the street and borrowed a shopping cart. (Thanks, HyVee!) It was super awkward taking it home with me. Probably one of the most uncomfortable experiences of my life. I had to cross over a busy street just pushing a shopping cart by myself and I think everyone was judging and/or laughing at me. But it was totally worth it.

Once moving day arrived, I loaded up my shopping cart and pushed it over. Other people were moving in too, and I got a few funny looks until people realized that this was actually pure genius. While they had to keep going back and forth from their car to their apartment, and when you're carrying a bunch of stuff the walk from the parking lot to the door is kind of long, I wheeled my cart right up to the stairs. I even got some compliments!

I successfully got everything from point A to point B in just three easy trips (plus two trips in my car for the really big boxes that wouldn't fit in the cart). Which is awesome because I seem to have somehow accumulated an excess of things.

I avoided the awkward walk back to the grocery store to return the cart because two of my friends that helped me move agreed to go with me. Things are always less weird when you're not alone. The shopping cart idea even made unpacking easier since most things were not taken apart or thrown into a box and mixed with a bunch of other random things.

I guess my parents do have good ideas sometimes.

Always, always, always verify information.

Twitter is very powerful. So powerful that it has the ability to kill people.

Former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno died on Saturday according to Twitter, and on Sunday in reality. AP reports that the source of this misinformation was Penn State's student newspaper. The publication tweeted Paterno died, and then everyone picked up on it: CBS, People.com, The Huffington Post.

But then someone put their thinking cap on and went out to verify this information. I think they only set out to double check because Paterno's sons took to Twitter to announce that no, he was still alive. The first tweet I saw about it was CNN:

"CNN's @susancandiotti just spoke to Paterno spokesman and says Paterno is NOT dead. 'Not true. Not true. Not True.'"

All the news organizations came out and apologized and accurately reported when Paterno died for real on Sunday morning. The common theme for everyone tweeting the misinformation seems to be the pressure to break the story first. So I guess congratulations to them, they broke the story before it even happened!

In all my journalism classes the professor always drills into our heads to verify everything. Even a reliable source like CBS can report false information, only driving the point home even more: everything always needs to be verified.

You can't use liquid dish soap in the dishwasher.

Oops.

I had just moved out of the dorms and into my very first apartment, so I was lacking a lot of things normal people have in their homes. Like dishes and dishwasher soap. In fact, I went through the whole summer and majority of fall semester with only one plate (that one orange one in the dishwasher). Luckily the apartments I moved into had inhabitants already so I was able to use their dishes until I inherited my own.

Anyway, the dishwasher was getting full and I was almost out of dishes to use so I had to run it. While living in the dorms I had a meal plan so I usually ate in the dinning hall. When I did have dishes to wash, I just did them by hand in the bathroom sink. In fact, I believe this experience was the first time I had ever used a dishwasher without parental supervision. I had dawn liquid dish soap from my dishwashing days in the dorms, but nothing else, and so I was like, 'Okay, dish soap! I hope this works!'

It didn't. The mess got even worse and I ended up having to mop the whole floor with it. Which wasn't working out very well for me because I didn't have a real mop so I was using a Swifter. So after this I went out to the dollar store and picked up some real dishwasher detergent.

Lesson learned.

I'm really fortunate to have a house.

Seriously. Earlier this week I reported on a story about a family whose house burned down. It was completely burned to the ground and the family lost everything. They didn't have insurance, either. Three of the family members were also firefighters, so the fire department started a fund to help raise money for them.