The best time of year is Mizzou homecoming. We started the homecoming tradition 101 years ago and have been celebrating ever since! My friend and I decided that the occasion made this football game great to get painted up for.
In order to get painted up, you have to be one of the first 60 people in line for Tiger's Lair (the super awesome student cheering section). Often, being in the first 60 requires camping out and securing your place in line hours and hours and hours and hours before the game actually starts. Last year, this same friend and I camped out for nearly 20 hours to get painted for the 100th homecoming game.
Homecoming 2011 camp out
Painted up for homecoming 2011
So this year, we packed up our tent, blankets and snacks around 10 p.m. and headed to the stadium to wait in line all night. The only problem was the temperature outside was somewhere around 32 degrees. There was no one else there. Last year by that time, we had been waiting for about five hours and there were at least 25 other people in line.
I was looking for a textbook on Amazon for my online class one day and found it for only $1.99!!!!! I was amazed at this awesome deal and then I went a little bit crazy with shopping. I got a phone case for only $3.48 (the shipping was more than the actual item) and started looking for curtains because my kitchen window was looking pretty bare.
I found this nice looking curtain for only $9.99, which I thought was a steal because everything else was way more. The description said the measurements were 60Wx84L, and my thoughts were pretty much, "Well, that seems big enough," and I bought it!
When it came in the mail, it turns out it was only one panel and it didn't seem long enough to cover the whole window. I didn't have a curtain rod yet so it wasn't really an issue. I gave myself the benefit of the doubt because my arm span is less than the window length and curtain length, so I couldn't tell for sure if it wouldn't fit.
I finally went out to get a curtain rod, and this time I actually measured the length of the window. Turns out it's about 76 inches across. Anyway, I found a nice curtain rod for half off! I snatched that right up, brought it home, hung it up, and the moment of truth:
But really, I'm fixing it. I went back to Amazon and ordered curtains and this time I made sure the description said 'set of two' and the best part is it was only $9.14!
I had a test to be studying for, so I was watching TV. Since I am in my second decade of life I watch really high-end, intellectual shows like SpongeBob SquarePants. This really great episode was on, called The Krabby Kronicle. It basically summed up everything I learned in my semester long Principles of American Journalism class (comparable to my History of American Journalism class) in an 11 minute, 49 second entertaining cartoon.
Mr. Krabs bought an ad in a newspaper to try to bring in more customers, but he soon realizes that the paper he's advertising in isn't selling because "it's all full of boring charts and facts." But the other newspaper, with headlines like 'Fishboy Strikes Again' is selling like crazy. Mr. Krabs asks, "aren't these stories a little less than truthful?" and the answer from the guy reading it is, "I don't know, but they're selling!" This whole scene reflects the fact that sensationalized tabloids, while unethical, are where the money is at.
I will be the first one to tell you that I am definitely not an outdoorsy nature person. It's my fear of bugs that turns me off from most of nature. But I have this friend who loves nature and I agreed to go on this 8.5 mile hike with her.
We woke up super early on a Saturday morning and headed over to the Gans Creek Recreation Area, which is across the street from Rock Bridge State Park (where we usually go, because Devil's Ice Box is there). It was so pretty!
We stopped at a rock/cliff thing overlooking the forest (pictured above) to eat our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch. After we finished we decided to go off-trail and climbed down the rock/cliff, which was way steeper than it looked, and we followed the creek.
I received my very first parking ticket ever the second semester of my freshman year of college, just a few weeks after I brought my car to school. I parked in a yellow zone too close to a fire hydrant, but I didn't even realize I was in a yellow zone or that I wasn't even supposed to park in it. So I learned not to do that pretty fast, but the parking situation only went downhill from there.
I only found out last year that if you park at a metered spot on the street on campus, it's actually considered part of the city and follows city rules. So parking is not free on Saturdays and it's not free until after 6 p.m. (unlike almost everywhere else, where it's free after 5). It took me several tickets to learn that one.
My friend and I decided we wanted to make duct tape dresses to wear to the first football game of the season. It ended up raining and I had to work, so we just pushed it back to the second game of the season (but our first conference game!) against Georgia.
They looked great, but all I have to say about it is never again.
We made the dresses a few days before the game and neither of us had ever done it before. Turns out we did it wrong.
If I wasn't going into journalism, I would be an astronaut, so imagine my excitement when I found out TWO former astronauts teach at Mizzou!!!!!
Naturally, I did what any good journalist would do and went to work setting up an interview. I can now say I've spoken to and shaken hands with someone who has been to outer space.
Steven Nagel is currently an instructor and retention specialist with MU's engineering department and was formerly a NASA astronaut. He retired from NASA in July of last year and headed to Mizzou with his wife (also a former astronaut), who got a job with MU's physics department.
Nagel's story isn't one where he was dreaming of being an astronaut since he was just a little kid because when he was "real small there weren't astronauts." NASA's astronaut program didn't begin until he was in junior high (the late 1950s).
"I started thinking about it since at least high school days," Nagel said, adding that his passion for being an astronaut waxed and waned as his career went on.
But the path to becoming an astronaut is not an easy one. You have to be selected by NASA and go through a bunch of training, but even then you're still only just a candidate.
After years of training the big moment came for Nagel to blast off into space.
"The launch is very impressive," Nagel said. "It's about eight and a half minutes, if you want to count that as take off, where the engines are running if you want to get up to almost orbital speed."
All that is pretty AWESOME, but I have already passed the point in my life where I decided to go into journalism rather than astronomy/engineering/physics. I now have to settle for living my dreams vicariously through others, so the big question was, 'What's it like in space?'
"It's a big adventure," Nagel said. "Your whole living surroundings become totally different."
Nagel has been up in space four times for a grand total of about 30 days. His shortest mission was six days and his longest was 10. He said his trips were pretty short, but astronauts that go up to the space station are there for months at a time.
"I was on two science flights where we carried laboratory on each of
those flights," Nagel said. "One flight we deployed satellites, communication
satellites, and another flight we deployed a scientific observatory,
the gamma ray observatory, which is the second in line after the
Hubble."
Nagel said although he has been to space several times, he's never been out of the shuttle. All astronauts receive training to go outside of the shuttle, though, in case of problems.
"I didn't really want to hope for a problem to go outside," Nagel said. "You kind of do, but you don't. You don't want problems."
Once the mission is complete, it's time to come back home.
My dreams of going into space will be a reality one day though! Nagel said commercial space flights will be a reality some day soon.
