Coincidentally this also happened to be the same day I found out Rite Aid had chocolat bars on sale and thus I decided to buy one of every type I’ve never had before.

Really, how did I make it through being an American kid in the 90s without ever having a Whatchamacallit? Something was wrong with me. I’m pretty sure I was just eating too many Reese’s to care.

For the record, the cashier at Rite Aid totally judged me for buying all this chocolate at once. I only ate a bite or so of each¹, okay! It’s not like I ate all seven last night. Granted, one of the only reasons I didn’t eat all seven last night is because I no longer have the iron stomach of a 10 year old and would probably hurl. >_>

I just fucking like Kit-Kats, okay.

Heath: How the hell have I never had a Heath bar before, but I’ve had Heath bar ice cream? Something is wrong with this picture. ANYWHO. NOM. The only annoying thing about toffee is the part where it gets stuck in your teeth. (6/10)

Skor: So I just discovered that Skor bars are basically the same thing as a Heath bar only slightly more delicious. THE MORE YOU KNOW. (7/10)

5th Avenue: Oh my god, it’s like a crunchy Reese’s cup in a bar. It’s like a Butterfinger with a better peanut butter to chocolate ratio. And with actual chocolate rather than a chocolate-like mystery substance. And it actually tastes pretty good. WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL MY LIFE? (8/10)

Whatchamacallit: Anything with chocolate and peanut butter is already amazing by default, but then you go and add rice crispies and caramel and it’s basically a party in your mouth. (6/10)

Snickers Peanut Butter Squared: These are apparently a thing that exists in the world. It’s exactly like a Snickers only better because it has peanut butter. (7/10)

Hershey’s Air Delight: To get this bar you basically have to pay Hershey’s to give you a bar half the size of a normal bar, replace even more of that chocolate with air, and then charge you more money for it. It’s all around a bad deal, especially the part where it tastes awful² and chalky. (3/10)

And then I proceeded to spend the rest of the night flying high as a damn kite on a sugar rush.

What candies/chocolates did you love growing up? What are your favorite cheap chocolate/sweet things available in your country?

1. Except the Kit-Kat because I fucking already know what Kit-Kats taste like at this point in my life.
2. As a sidenote, I saw someone misspell ‘awful’ as ‘offal’ yesterday. It made me want to put my face through a wall.

…but the other part of me loves how quiet it is when it snows here. Not to mention the impromptu extended MLK holiday it gave me. Clearly the best part.

It snowed all over western Washington while I was in Seattle visiting my parents and my doggies for the MLK weekend. It had largely melted in Seattle when I left on my train around 7 PM on Monday night. However, not as such in the Ham. Lucky for me, my dad looked at my canvas shoes, then my gigantic backpack stuffed with many ridiculously heavy textbooks and huge suitcase, and realized I was totally not going to be able to walk a mile home from the bus stop in a foot of snow, and that my bus might not even show up due to snow. Then he gave me 20 bucks for a cab so I didn’t die walking home when a car slid off the road into my face or something. The best.

These are most definitely not snow shoes.

I was all worried I wouldn’t get home in time to get to bed and get enough sleep before my 8 AM French class¹ which turned out to be both justified and unjustified at once. Yellow Cab forgot to send me the cab I asked for so I didn’t get one until about two hours after my train had arrived at 9:30 PM.

I also rediscovered that college does not make you smart. Driving by the WWU campus reminded me because students who live on or near campus were throwing snowballs at cars driving late at night on ice and snow uphill with snow still coming down pretty hard, and cars fishtailing all around. Good job. I offered my cab driver a larger tip if he ran them over, and as much as he wanted to, he declined to take my offer because evidently an extra dollar isn’t worth going to jail. Who knew.

Turns out my fears about not getting enough sleep were useless because the next day they cancelled my aforementioned French class because the college was on a late arrival schedule. I normally only have two classes and a French conversation practice tutoring session on Tuesdays so, due to my lack of boots or any sort of snowish shoes and the fact that essentially all of my homework for Spanish is via Quia online, I gave myself a snow day and ordered a ridiculously meat-laden pizza to keep me fed over for three days since I lacked any food beyond two organic~ carrots.

This is Snowpocalypse 2012 for western Washington. This tree is covered in snow so clearly it was worth taking a picture of it.

Getting to be lazy around the house for three days and eat trashy takeout is awesome, though I do feel like I should have just stayed in Seattle for an additional several days to get to hang out with my family and my poor, poor puppy (more about her another time). But still, love the break.

On Wednesday, at least, my limited-edition~ audiobook boxset of The Fault in our Stars by John Green, as read by the author. I read the book when it was released last week on January 10th and loved it. It’s pretty awesome.

It included memorabilia from a concert so epic it never technically occurred.

Yesterday after breakfast/lunch, I finally ran out of pizza which lead me to ordering some trashy-delicious Chinese delivery late last night. I ordered it from a place called Best Chopsticks in the Ham. When you go to their website, there’s a section called online ordering, which normal people would expect to take them to, I don’t know, a page where you can order online. Oh, not so with Best Chopsticks. Instead they have a page telling you to contact the restaurant to find out more information about how to order online. ….really? If I have to call them to find out, at that point, why don’t I just order over the phone? A million facepalms were had. Also despite being called Best Chopsticks, they delivered a plastic spork and fork², but no chopsticks. MYSTERIES OF THE WORLD.

Because I’m fat and also paranoid about getting trapped at my house over the weekend³, I ordered two different dishes with rice, so I got two fortune cookies.

Half of me feels like this is just referring to my untimely, yet inevitable demise at a murder mystery party of some sort.

The party one is largely correct, as me and my friend from QSA…he and I have standing arrangements for My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic viewing parties most weekends. At the last pony party, we had alcoholic smoothies. I vote smoothies should always be alcoholic from now on.

I’m headed back to school today (in about 13 minutes, precisely), so my nearly full week of snow days has come to an end. I’m partially glad because Friday is QSA day, which I always love, but damn, gotta love unexpected vacations sometimes.

1. Since I take the bus and don’t live super close to my bus stop, I have to get up at about 6:45 AM for said class.
2. Why both? NO ONE KNOWS.
3. Not to mention the fact they only delivery orders over a certain amount. >_>

However, the last half of my year was quite eventful for the better, as well as the worse in some cases, but overwhelmingly for the better.

At the very end of July I moved to a town just south of the U.S.-Canadian border and about 100 miles north of Seattle, where I’d lived my entire life. The town, Bellingham, which I affectionately refer to as the Ham pretty much any time I talk about it, is pretty awesome.

I’m finally back in school with no intent of taking another break until I not only finish my bachelor’s degree, but my master’s as well. I’m doing pretty well academically (4.0 GPA, gogo!) despite the fact I still procrastinate like it’s my job. I think I’ve finally settled on what I want to do with my life (another post for another day).

I joined my school’s QSA, or queer-straight alliance, at the beginning of fall quarter to meet people and get involved, and ended up becoming the secretary after a few weeks. We throw some bitchin’ parties and I love everyone in the club. It’s fantastic and meeting other queer people is always nice, particularly in an area that’s surrounded by some severely conservative town, and thus some of the homophobia around is a little bit higher than I’m used to in Seattle. Overall, however, the Ham is pretty awesome in that regard. I haven’t had any major incidents, just a few minor ones.

I started to take advantage of several hours of free language tutoring on campus for speaking practice for Spanish and French, which I’m studying once again because, goddammit, I love languages. I would learn ALL THE LANGUAGES if I could. The Spanish conversation tutoring is particularly important in that I’m going to go visit my friend Hans, or Patty as everyone else calls her, in Venezuela this coming August/September if all goes according to plan. I can’t wait to see my favorite brontosaurus’ face and eat all the amazing Venezuelan food she keeps telling me her mom wants to make me! This will also be my first real trip abroad. I’m ridiculously excited as I’ve been dying to travel for basically my whole entire life. I’m desperate to see everything, but money is such a cockblocker sometimes, dudes.

Speaking of money, that leads me to my next point: I joined AmeriCorps’ Students in Service program (despite its website’s desperate need of a facelift) which basically means I get paid to volunteer. The payout after I complete 300 hours of service is coincidentally nearly exactly the same price to the dollar as a roundtrip Seattle-Caracas ticket.

I’ve started eating a lot healthier (with the last month or so an exception) and have lost a bit of weight, though I still have quite a bit more to go. While I still have several medical issues that need to be dealt with, and hopefully I can begin to deal with them soon as I just got medical insurance for the first time in several years on January 1st, I’m glad I’ve started taking a step in the right direction. I’m very much motivated by seeing results, because if I don’t see results I tend to give up quickly, so early success is helping me keep my eye on the prize, so to speak.

My mom and I got a bit closer this year. She celebrated her first AA birthday (as well as her real birthday) in August, for which I’m very proud of her. We had an amazing time at the Puyallup Fair in September, just the two of us. We bought Dizzy Passes, or unlimited ride passes, and rode rides all day and spent a completely insane amount of money on fair food, but it was worth it. We had a complete blast even if our feet were about dead after standing for about 14 hours straight.

My dad and I get along quite a lot better when I live away from home so that’s been great. We talk frequently. He still says insane and hilarious (sometimes inadvertent on his part) things that I can text to all of my friends.

Internet-wise, I’m still a Twitter scrub in that I don’t seem to post nearly as frequently as everyone else I know, but I’m sort of fine with that. However, after lamenting circa 2009ish that I didn’t understand WTF the point of Tumblr even was, I am now a tumblin’ fiend. I tumble all the things! I even recently started a new tumblr dedicated to reblogging all the Joss Whedon-related things I find and enjoy. I loves me some Firefly.

I’d kill for a Tumblr-style RSS feed aggregator sometimes. It’d be so much easier to keep on top of my reading, though I have been managing quite well lately after culling some old feeds I was never reading. I do still need to learn to be less of a lurker! I’ve always had an issue with being an epic lurker.

Perhaps that’s one more thing I’ll work on in the new year. More about that later. For tonight, I’m out.

1. However, I’ve now done a total redesign and culled some useless pages and reorganized and rewritten quite a lot.

That will show ‘em.

What I’m looking for when I read housing ads

1) Information about the current residents and their partying and/or drug-consuming habits.

Look, I want some warning if I’m going to come home to the cops raiding my house or find an exceptionally drunk college freshman pawing through my closet. You need to be upfront about that shit.

Also, if you’re habitual gaybashers or spend a lot of time having your mom bail you out of jail, I’d like to know that as well.

2) General location of the house/apartment.

First of all: Seattle is a big place with many different neighborhoods. Living in certain neighborhoods can make your public transportation life living hell.

I know this because I spent years having to catch the bus at 6:30 AM to get to my 8:30 AM class even though my college was less than seven miles away from my house. In other words, I spent four hours on the bus or waiting for buses to spend three hours in class every day. Given my tendency to attract epic creepers and crazy women that like to spend forty-five minutes sharing with me the names they have for each individual dreadlock attached to their skull. I’ll never forget you, Testimony. You were my favorite.

It’s also awesome emailing about a listing only to find that someone decided it was relevant to post room openings for Hong Kong in the Seattle section. Yeah, you’re really reaching your target audience there.

3) Information about the living space.

When you said “room available” did you actually mean “You’ll be sleeping in a cupboard under the stairs”? Will I be sharing a room with a crack fiend or just a bathroom?

4) How much are utilities and other monthly expenses?

I love when the cheap rent sounds great and then you find out that they spend 250 dollars every month so they can have 1800 channels–many captionless in languages no one in the house actually speaks.

5) When is the room available? When does the lease end? Do you require a deposit and if so, how much?

You know. Minor details such as…how long before my ass needs to find another place to schlep all my shit to?

What’s actually in housing ads

1) Information about the “rad dumpsters nearby” for prime dumpster-diving opportunities.

What I find moderately disturbing is the sheer amount of Craigslist ads that actually list this.

2) Information about their plots of world domination politics.

From a recent Craigslist ad:

[L]ooking to start infoshop in basement and work with the community to find ways to topple oppressive systems.

Look. I like plotting to overthrow the oppressive power structures in my spare time as much as the next girl, but I just want a place to store my shit, cook, and sleep. I’m not looking for a revolution in Craigslist housing ads, okay. Particularly not when you’re only advertising a one-month sublet.

3) Endless paragraphs about their cats.

Information I want about your kitties:

A) Can I cuddle it?

B) Can it eat a tiny ice cream cone while wearing a tiny hat?

Due to a lack of a winter coat and like. warm clothing of any sort beyond a pair of cotton rainbow gloves, I have not played in the snow. Instead I’ve been staring at it wistfully through my window, praying my power doesn’t go out (again!), and trying to devise a good hot chocolate recipe that doesn’t require me to go get random funny ingredients I don’t keep in my house. (Let me know if you have a good recipe that’s simple. >.> I’m still working on mine!)

The part where the snow is impeding some of my job hunt is probably more important than preventing me from seeing Harry Potter, but it does not feel like it.

My priorities are obviously awesome.

I feel like I should sleep to prepare for the amount of yams I plan on consuming tomorrow, but my terrible sleeping habits persist. I fully expect to fall asleep somewhere around 6:30 AM. I’m just not going to lie to myself. I can always take advantage of the holiday and take a tryptophan-induced nap tomorrow, right?

Again, my priorities. Don’t worry, I’ll judge myself for you.