Senioritis is real.

I thought being a senior in high school was tough, but being a senior in college is SO much worse. When high school was over I still had college, but now that college is over there's only real life, and real life doesn't have classes and tests and homework. Plus, I have an internship for after graduation so unless I screw something up terribly I'm okay for the next three months.

As I enter my last full week of school ever (EVER) my level of caring and ability to continue doing any school work is declining drastically. I'm pretty proud of myself because I kept up my work ethic for almost the entire semester. It wasn't until my calendar switched into May and I realized how close I actually am to being done with school forever that senioritis really started kicking in.

My senioritis is so bad right now that I'm blogging about it and I'm just going to hope this post is good enough for a passing grade for my blog post this week.

I can buy whatever I want in the grocery store.

Long ago, when I was young (so maybe not that long ago), I used to go to the grocery store with my mom every week. I'd always ask if we could get some sort of candy, chocolate, or anything else unhealthy and the answer was always no. It was so disappointing and my mom was so mean and obviously not looking out for my best interest.

But what I learned as a kid has now followed me into adulthood. When I go grocery shopping I'll walk past chocolate, candy, cookies and all sorts of delicious things and think to myself, "No, I can't buy that."

Well, now that it's Easter time the Cadbury eggs are out. Cadbury eggs are the best and they put them in a special display in the front of the store so you walk past it every time you are going to check out. Plus they are always on 'sale' so it looks like a great deal every time.

The first day the Cadbury eggs were out, I walked past and thought, "Cadbury eggs!!! I want them! No, I can't..." but then it occurred to me that I'm an adult and I can buy whatever I want and no one can stop me or tell me no.

So I bought a whole bunch and continued to buy them every time I went to the store. They were great and worth every penny!

The stomach flu is not the regular flu.

I got the stomach flu awhile ago. It was a great diet but I do not recommend it. In fact, remnants of it came back to haunt me a couple weeks after I 'recovered,' while I was trying to enjoy my vacation to Las Vegas (where I almost got trapped forever and ever). I seem to manage to catch awful diseases a little bit more frequently that I would like.

When I was in the middle of the worst of the illness (stuck in the bathroom), I was glued to my phone, searching WebMD and Google to make sure I wasn't actually dying, because I sure felt like it. I'm actually surprised I lived through it. In my search, I found out that stomach flu isn't actually the flu, it's gastroenteritis. WebMD said:

"No doubt you've heard people complain they have "stomach flu." You may have complained about it yourself after a bout of nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea that seems to come from nowhere. In fact, though, stomach flu is a misnomer. There’s no such thing. The flu, influenza, is a respiratory infection that affects the lungs."

The flu is a virus that mimics a cold, except way worse.

A few of my friends tried to tell me I should have gotten a flu shot, but the flu shot wouldn't have helped. The flu shot protects against the real flu, the respiratory infection, not stomach irritation. Flu shot or not, I would still have been susceptible to the stomach flu (gastroenteritis). The more you know!

If your flight gets canceled, just stay in the airport.

I recently took a trip to Las Vegas, and I almost didn't make it back.

The flight was originally supposed to leave around 6:00 in the evening, but some time in the afternoon we checked the status and found it had been delayed about one hour. More fun time in Vegas, yay!

When we did get to the airport, rumors of cancelled flights started flying around while we were waiting in the bag check line. This was at the same time there was some crazy winter storm in the Northeast, so there were a lot of cancelled and delayed flights. I figured we were probably safe because we were Southwest going Midwest, nowhere near the Northeast. Surely our flight wouldn't be cancelled.

We made it through security and to the gate only to find our flight had been delayed a few more hours. Not a good sign, but we sat patiently awaiting the plane's arrival. Several hours passed and a flight attendant made an announcement that our flight was missing a pilot and we might not take off until midnight. For a minute I honestly thought they were joking. How could a flight be 'missing a pilot??' But they looked pretty distressed and never came back to say, 'Just kidding!'

Well, midnight rolls around and we're all very antsy from sitting around for six hours. The flight attendant moves to make an announcement, and moment of truth: our flight was cancelled. Panic ensued.

After waiting in line forever to talk to the attendants at the gate, we found two flights for the next day and the remaining three for the day after that. Our group would have to split up AND we had to go stay in a hotel we couldn't afford for two more nights.

Another girl and I were supposed to have work the next day so we got the first flights out. We went to the airport the next morning and split up to our respective gates. My flight had a connection and, a few minutes before boarding, I double checked the status. GOOD THING I did, because the connection I needed had been canceled. I waited forever (again) to talk to the gate attendant and she tells me flights are booked until three days from now. I'm in tears now because I'm certain I'm going to be stuck in Vegas forever.

The attendant suggests I get on a wait-list for a flight, so I went all the way across the airport to another gate. The lady working at this one was very nice and she wait-listed me for a flight to Kansas City (where I was trying to get to) and booked me on an evening flight to St. Louis (in the same state, so close enough). I started to feel more optimistic as things were beginning to go my way, and I sat down to wait. And wait and wait and wait.

Finally, the flight arrived and started boarding. Could the stressful journey be coming to an end?! I was on the edge of my seat with all my fingers and toes crossed, hoping that I'd be able to get on the flight and go home. The universe was finally on my side and I got a seat on the flight.

When it took off, there were still about 10 open seats on the flight. Three of my friends were still stuck in Vegas trying to find a flight, and we could have all gotten on this one. What we should have done was just spend the night in the airport the day before and started trying to book a new flight or get on wait-lists first thing in the morning. I bet tons of flights took off with empty seats to where we wanted to go.

It ended up okay in the end, though, as the rest of the group ended up getting a late flight back and we all made it to the correct airport only one day later than expected.

I don't have an addiction to gambling.

I typically find basketball to be pretty boring, so I was usually bored out of my mind at my old job where I had to work at basketball games. I was the director of the video display screen in the gymnasium, which I LOVED, just the games were usually dull. But one day, all of the game day workers (myself included) took bets on the score of the game. No prizes or money involved, just bragging rights.

That game was a a hundred million times more exciting than all the other games because my bragging rights were riding on the outcome. Based on my extremely high level of excitement because of that one small bet, I was slightly worried I would discover a gambling addiction later on in life. I took a trip to Las Vegas for New Years Eve and my potential addiction was put to the test.

It turns out gambling sucks. As soon as my friends and I arrived we hit the casino (obviously)! I was really excited about the slot machines because they have cool sounds and bright lights and look like so much fun. 

No. They are money eaters. You put money in, press a button and lose it all! It takes zero skill, zero thought and 100% luck. Needless to say I didn't win anything.

I did find a unicorn slot machine, though!

We also played a few games of Black Jack and I lost at that too. Black Jack was much more fun, though, because there is a little bit of skill involved. You actually use your brain and think about your next move. We only got to play once because whenever we went back to the casino the minimum bet was $10 (we played at $5 the first time) and that was too high for us. We walked past some tables where the minimum bet was like $500. Who has $500 to just throw away like that?!

Anyway, I was responsible and only spent the money I allotted for gambling and walked out that much poorer. It's not fun if you don't win!

Keep food from drying out by reheating with a wet paper towel.

Not being responsible for feeding other people is awesome because I can make dinner at the beginning of the week and then it lasts me for that whole entire week. 45 minutes spent cooking on Monday means for the rest of the week I can eat my dinner after I microwave it for just two minutes!

This week, I made some delicious BBQ biscuits. They're so good (biscuit+beef+secret sauce+cheese), but after they are refrigerated for a day the biscuit part loses all moisture.

These BBQ biscuits used to be one of about four things that I ever cooked, but I have since broadened my horizons and started cooking all the things on my Pinterest recipes board. Since I used to make them all the time, it turned into a pretty huge problem that I was frequently eating super dry biscuits for days in a row. It was also pretty gross and sad, because these biscuits are normally so good. I put my thinking cap on and came up with a solution!

Just soak a paper towel in water, cover the food and voilà! It comes out of the microwave like it's fresh out of the oven.

Streamers can be made in After Effects.

It's a big year for the University of Missouri! It's MU's 175th birthday and it's the Trulaske College of Business's 100th birthday! Since I work at the Business School, I got to make a fun birthday themed animation.

Step one for any good birthday themed anything is streamers. 3D-looking spirals are actually much harder to make in After Effects than you might think. Lucky for me my boss sent me a link to this tutorial about how to begin, starting with a single skinny line.

I animated this one line, added a cylinder effect for the spiral, and duplicated it to create several different spirals. The only problem is the effect I used doesn't create more than one twist, which can make for some pretty lame streamers.

Those doesn't look like a super exciting centennial AT ALL. So, I duplicated all of them and shifted the time over to make the duplicates into an extension.

Much curlier, longer and overall more fun-and-exciting-birthday-party-looking! Next step was the confetti. That was the easy part, as the confetti is just a rather simple particle effect. I had to adjust all the settings about a million times to get the amount and speed of my confetti just right, but I did it!

The final step was to add a grand entrance for the main happy birthday message! Here's the final product: