Peppermint tea and APDA expense forms...

Well, it's that time of year again... time to wrest our annual American Parliamentary Debate Association dues from the grimy hands of Student Activities. Actually, that time of year was back in November, and APDA has smacked us with a very deserved $30 in late fees. What does this mean? This means that I am in my element -- scrambling to set right what procrastination has set so very, very wrong.

Last night I rearranged my room. You can see not only the floor, not only the surface of the desk, but the surface of my vanity -- all of which have been entirely obscured since late December. You don't believe me? Here, I can prove it.

Here you can see my stability ball, or, as I prefer to call it, my enlightened chair. Yes, I did indeed start the craze that is now sweeping AU... and by sweeping, I mean that Ash and Rachel have them too. Their growing popularity is due in part to their variety of advantages over their more ubiquitous wooden cousins; they can be used as A) dorm soccer balls, B) weapons of mass destruction, and C) awesome things to bounce on.

You can also see my bedspread. There's an interesting story behind that bedspread. From the time of, well, birth, until about third grade, instead of sucking my thumb, I sucked on my left index and middle finger. My parents promised that if I stopped, I could have a fish. Around third grade, I fell off my bike and broke my left arm, and after about two weeks of having me lift increasingly heavy objects to "heal that pulled muscle," my mom admitted that there was something serious wrong and took me to a doctor, who put a cast on my arm. The new lack of mobility made it hard for me to engage in my finger-sucking, and I quit out of necessity.

You'd think that my parents would give me my friggin' fish, but no; they made the cunning argument that "the cat would eat it" and conned me into getting a fish bedspread instead. But I'm not bitter anymore, because the bedspread has lasted a lot longer than the fish would have.

As I headed out the door this morning, I glanced at my bag, thought, "Do I want my cell phone?" and countered it with the consideration, "Do I want my cell phone to ring in the middle of class?" Concluding that I did, in fact, not, I left without picking up my phone. Imagine my surprise, then, when -- in the middle of a class I have to blue card into -- I heard the immortal screech of "STEALTH PEOPLE, BA-DA-DA!" which, if you've never heard it, is a voice recording of Crystal and I screaming into my phone, and serves as her ringer. My rabid scrambling to find the phone -- which, by the way, I'd accidentally left in my bag the night before -- probably amused a few students, but I doubt that my Micro professor was a fan.

On a much less humorous note, I owe it to my female friends to link to this article on the correlation between bras and breast cancer. Speaking as a woman who's likely to carry on the family tradition of contracting the disease, it's worth reading.