My Weekend

Several weeks ago, Lauren '10 sent an e-mail to the floor inviting us all to Race for the Cure. She created a team for our floor and a bunch of us decided to join and do the race. I used to be a really avid runner but stopped when I got to college. This was a great chance for me to get out and go for a nice 5k with some friends and support breast cancer research so I went for it.

We ordered our shirts and I signed on as a runner. There were several option other than running, a couple of which I found rather amusing. My favorite was "Sleep in for the cure." For $25.00 you don't have to run and you could just stay in bed. As tempting as that sounded, I think I'd have felt a bit guilty not running.

Saturday I spent all day working on painting an 8-bit Mario mural in the hallway and towards the end of the day I was exhausted. Why? Here's a glimpse into Boston weather. . . yesterday was 85 degrees with 100% humidity. Basically, it was so hot that I was peeling white wall paint off when I tried to remove blue tape. I figured, after a while, that if it was hot enough to melt the paint on walls, it was probably too hot to be painting said walls. I stopped and cleaned up a bit, then I hung out with some people and showed them awesome YouTube videos. I had one of my first realizations of the evening during this moment. Spore, the game that's been in development FOREVER and I'd been waiting for FOREVER was going to be coming out in a few short hours! This caused an outburst and turned some heads.

It was actually quite funny, I'd forget for an hour and then randomly remember again, burst out, startle, and then return to YouTube. Midnight came, I checked, and was devastated to see that instead of releasing at midnight, Spore would be coming out at 2 PM! NOOOO! There was general mourning by the part of the present parties and we proceeded to watch more YouTube videos. I looked to my right and saw Dan '11's giant inflatable penguin who had been outfitted with my Race for the Cure shirt (which, presently, is so stretched from being worn by a massive penguin that it no longer fits). This reminded me of a shirt that I had seen somebody wearing around campus last year that he had purchased to support breast cancer research. It, in a nutshell, said "I *pink ribbon* Boobs." A slightly tacky but well-meaning mix of NYC and Web2.0-esque humor. I realized, after the race today, that I would have fit in PERFECTLY wearing it because I was surrounded by breast cancer survivors sporting shirts saying "I'm in it for the ta-tas" and "Boobs, who needs them?" Anywho, back from my tangent, everybody in the room was hot, sweaty, sticky, tired, and knew that they were going to have to wake up at 7:15AM to go running so we decided to go to bed.

Dan and I hopped into bed, laid there, and then started complaining.

"I hate this weather."
"This is terrible! There's not even a breeze!"
"You know, the conference room has an air conditioner."
"We should just sleep there."
"We should."
"I'm not kidding."
"Neither am I."

Boom, out of bed, grabbing pillows and cushions, we started towards the conference room when we were intercepted by Dorothy '12 and Sara '12.

"Where are you guys going?"
"Conference room."
"Why?"
"To sleep. It's air conditioned."
"Oh my gosh, wait for me."

Soon there was a party of four with sleeping bags, pillows, cushions, and exhaustion, all settled into the conference room with the AC set for 60 degrees. It was beautiful.

At 4:30AM I heard something.

"Hey, you guys can't be here, leave."

Huh, what, what's going on? Somehow, and for some reason, the dorm security guard opened the door to the conference room and found the four of us asleep, not hurting anybody, and made us move back to our rooms. By now, Tropical Storm Hannah was in full force and rain was coming down in sheets outside, with gusts upwards of a bazillion miles an hour, so our room had cooled a bit, but it wasn't nearly as nice as air-conditioning.

3 hours later we were up, dressed, and ready for a race. We hopped the Red Line and rode it to JFK/UMass, caught a shuttle, and arrived at the race. There were about 5,000 runners and a lot of pink. We joined the mob and began our race for the cure. After some running, walking, exciting talk about the GIRs and Sophomore Exploratory, Sara and I finished, grabbed some yogurt (not whipped) and met Adalaide, Rick, and Sauza. We headed back to campus and I turned right back around to help deliver ElectroPlushies to a museum exhibit in Lowell Mass. At 3 o'clock I got back and headed into the dorm.

SPORE! OMG, it's out!

A decryption (legal decryption, I bought this game) and installation later I was sporing! A crowd of 6 or 7 people quickly realized that the microbe/water stage of Spore is the Most Entertaining Game Ever. It can be pretty well summed up with "Om Nom Nom Nom Om Nom Nom OMGOMGOMG!!! WE'RE GOING TO DIE! SWIM SWIM SWIM! SWIM FASTER! AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!! Om."

Now we've taken a break from Spore, I'm blogging, and then I'm going to get back to Spore. All in all, I'd say it was a good weekend. I started a mural, fought breast cancer, and got Spore. What else could I want? How about no 2.005 PSET? Yeah, that'd be nice . . .