My whole problem is that I can't give up on you.

Little Things

Everything seems a little better now. It's going to be a hard semester, but I'm going to set limits for myself. There are things I can do, and things I desperately want to, but feasibly can't. As long as I know that, and with some help from God and my friends, I'll be okay. I'm a little late, but junior year, let's go!

How long would it take someone to notice if you talked only when necessary and were as inconspicuous possible?

One Night at a Time

It's a bro night, he said. So she spent the night by the fountain, thinking of the nights she had spent there before. The broken nights, with the darkness falling on her like water, sinking into her. The happy nights, dreaming about the future and savoring the calm and joy that had spread themselves like cream, smoothing out all the bumps. Her heart beating to the sound of the rushing water. A bright peal of laughter from the other side of the street. The faint twinkling of a plane filled with people off to explore, none of them thinking of her as she was of them. Her feet dangle in the water. The cold ground digs into her palms. A tear stings at the corner of her eye. Minutes. Hours. She pulls her feet out of the water, puts her shoes back on. One step at a time. Up the steps, across the street, down the hill. A cold breeze. Music blasting from a room twenty feet away sounds as far as the moon. One step at a time. One night at a time. It's a bro night, he had said. It's a lonely night, she had thought. 

If God wills it, it will be.

OA Command: Day 6

Nick: "I don't know if decaffeinated is the right adjective to apply to a person."

Nick: "I also can't see right now. I believe that was Sarah, but it just as easily could have been Weimen."

Safeeyah: "I am not drinking water until I get coffee."

Ben: "Horia, turn on the lights."
Erica and Rory: "No."
Ben: "No?"
Erica and Rory: "No."
Tenley: "Horia... Don't."

Nick: "Did anyone bring a pillow?"

Rory: "Guys, the tables are surprisingly comfortable."

Tyler: "Hang on, there are people calling that are more important than you."

Daria: "Jones Mills Road. Jones, as in like the last name."

Kathryn: "I love Vermont. They're pretty reliably not dead."

Tenley: "Oliver, where do you want to be?"
Oliver: "Well, I don't want to deal with stinky kids."

Rick: "We can just get Naked... That didn't come out quite how I intended."

Tenley: "I was just about to say, 'I would love to get Naked!'"

Rick: "You could just compose something on your phone and send it to me."

Caroline: "I don't have that type of phone."

Rick: "Caroline... We need to have a chat."

Tenley: "He wants to know how you want your sheets folded - in thirds or quarters?"

Rick: "They should just be crumpled up into a ball."

OA Command: Day 5

Daria (on phone with group): "One moment. Dude. Bro."

Tyler: "It's a constant struggle with Central. I just need to talk to them to make sure they're not dead."

Van: "A stone wall came out of nowhere!"

Caroline: "I was looking at the wrong one. Too many Sarahs have been evac-ed."

Rick: "If we do pizza, maybe Naked?"
Rory: "Yeah, I was thinking Naked."
Tenley: "I think we should eat pizza naked."

Caroline: "How many crackers did he feel like eating?"
Group: "Well, he had two packets of Saltines, so... About 50 Saltines..."
Aforementioned frosh also had 8 Nalgenes of water and 2 Nalgenes of Gatorade.

Weimen: "Thai food?"
Rei: "Ooh, Thai food!"
Jim: "Typhoon!"

This hair disaster...

Ben: "Do you have any other edible substance?"

Erica (talking about a group): "Just get them oatmeal!"
Tyler: "I don't think Cheeburger has oatmeal..."

Tenley: "The calories don't count when... You're eating with other people."

Horia: "Okay Google. What is the etymology of -ish? No, not fish!"

Tenley: "What happens in the tent, stays in the tent!"

Tenley: "At least it's the vans, not the trips. It's not like 'NOM NOM NOM CHEESEBURGERRR'"

Rick: "Now you have their keys, so lock that sucker up."

Sarah: "Actually I really should transfer you to Kathryn. She knows way more about what's going on."

Kathryn: "So in Denmark, people put salt on licorice."
Sarah: "That sounds like an insult... You piece of salty licorice!"

Oliver: "How do you get money then?"
Sarah: "Communism."

Erica calls into Command with a throwback from last year...
Chris: "Hi, this is Christopher."
Erica: "This is IF120."
Chris: "OF120 what's up?"
Erica: "No, IF. Indoor Farming?"
Chris: "I will kill you."

Chris (to Andrew Tsukamoto): "Do you know Aoi? Because you're Japanese."

OA Command: Day 4

Tenley: "My iPhoto library is BOMB."

This artistic masterpiece...

Tenley (while laughing): "Guys, I still have lo mein in my mouth!"

Paul: "So it's like superfrosh all over the place?"

Caroline: "Are we Facebook stalking frosh? I don't understand."
Chris: "No, we're Facebook stalking their roommates!"

Kathryn: "Even if we still have a couple problem children..."

Paul: "Yeah, so it's Van ---, they're nice people."

Van: "Hey, it's Van ---. We're just checking in; we have absolutely nothing to do today."

Nick: "I'm going to be slightly gross for the next ten seconds... -pulls out deodorant- 5, 4, 3, 2, 1."

Talking about rooms being heat traps...
Rory: "The worst things are the bathrooms, when you're sitting in the stall, and by the time you come out..."
Ben: "Are you sure that's from the heat, or your exertion?"

Rick: "They make do with the paddles they have!"

Nick: "If Rick Curtis had the same level of dedication I do, he'd have been fired by now."
Rick: "That's true, absolutely."

Paul: "I was in the bathroom with him this morning, and oh, he needed to go. It was clear, and very copious."

Rick: "Get me a mediterranean chicken flatbread, single."
Paul: "Foccacia."
Everyone: "..."
Paul: "There was going to be more to that joke, but I got nothing. I was going to say more types of bread but I couldn't think of a single one."

Nick: "Oh and we can color code it, because we have three different colors! Orange, mocha, frappuccino!"

Weimen: "Guys, they're out of garden vegetable soup."
Chris: "L42?"
Everyone else: "No, Panera."

Ben on a "prank call" to me...
Ben: "Hi, this is LH99 with a code yellow."
Erica: "LH99 with a code yellow? Let me transfer you to Central."
Kathryn (being totally serious): "LH is South!"

People are now so familiar with my OA Command quotable quotes and my blog that they have taken to leaving me notes if something quotable happens when I'm gone...

Rory: "How do they pick these [girls'] bathroom codes? They're so random."
Chris: "Ooh I want to see! ...That was really creepy."

Command telling jokes...
Erica: "Wait guys, I got a really good one! Why did the chicken cross the road?"
Ben: "Why?"
Erica: "To get to the idiot's house."
Ben: "..."
Erica: "Okay, fine. Here's another. Knock knock."
Ben: "Who's there?"
Erica: "The chicken."
-laughter-
Tenley: "Guys, I don't get it..."

Daria: "How many Nalgenes has she had? Six? So she's supersaturated?"

Tenley: "We love you guys all equally! Like parents! ...Don't listen to me, I'm weird."

Daria: "I'm just going to put you on hold now. Hello? No? Damn it."

Caroline: "Can you spell that? Or spell the first word and Google will tell me."

Horia: "SHHH! Listen!"
Everyone: "...?"
Horia: "Nothing! No phones, no nothing!"

Van: "The people at the motel requested that we leave the cup of bugs with them."

Tenley: "How come pulling a Tenley is breaking down and pulling a Caroline is successfully presenting an alternate course of action?"

Tenley: "I'm just looking through my Twitter because I'm funny."

OA Command: Day 3

Paul: "You're the one that... doesn't have diarrhea?"

Kathryn: "We do such a great job that we concentrate all our evacs to just two groups."

Talking about evacs...
Paul: "North has fourteen. South has... six. Central has... fourteen. Now for a tiebreaker we need to see which ones are more amusing."

Paul: "'Quesy' is an alternate spelling. Maybe Old English, does anyone have the OED?"

Caroline: "I am going to the bathroom. If Rick calls, you are not allowed to chase me down the hall. Or call my name. He can wait. It is not my top priority."

Chris: "This is Chris. I didn't get it! No, I did get it! No, I did not get it."

Safeeyah: "'Going' without the second 'g'..."

Caroline: "Nick, are you busy right now? Can you do me a huge favor? Can you fill up this water bottle? The fountain takes forever and thus I have been dehydrated all day."
Nick: "You need to learn a thing or two - if this is a huge favor, then when you have a life-threatening situation..."
Caroline: "Then it'll be a life-threatening favor!"

Ben: "But mesh is cool. DUH."

Nick: "Chris, let's just say if OA were run by people with the level of commitment you're showing right now... It would not be the monumental success it is. It would probably not exist."
-Chris walks out-
Nick: "You should thank God that there are people like us here to pick up the slack."

Erica: "Call the crap out of them."

Caroline: "All the Massachusetts groups are..."
Kathryn: "Dying?"
Caroline: "Struggling."

Nick: "Damn, we've got some trigger fingers in this room!"

Erica: "Command has the aura of a casino, where you don't know what time it is, and you just stay here forever."

Van: "We need more ice packs."
Paul: "Okay, so hundreds of ice packs."

Tenley: "She actually sounds like a cat, that's scary. I hate cats..."

Throwback to Rick in 2012: "This is the suck bus of the universe."

Rick: "I had this fantasy that I was going to get some other work done today."

Kathryn: "What kind of place name is this?!"
"Be careful of Dead Woman Hollow..."

Erica: "You're not going to leave me tonight? All alone? Forever alone. -sings- All by myself."

Daria: "I would take the Epipen and just AGHHH. Just evacuate me."

Kathryn: "They're right by something called an improved dirt road..."

Ben: "Forbes is definitely the easiest college to get through. It's like the AT, north, south."

OA Command: Day 2

~ Runaway freshman trying to spend a week with a girlfriend instead... Command knows everything!

~ Vans complaining about a cot cramping up the room

Erica: "Sitch?"
Rory: "Can't you say 'be there in a sitch?'"
Erica: "No... I think that's pinch..."

Erica: "Who's technically off-shift right now?"
Caroline (trip coordinator): -raises hand-
Erica: "No."

Paul: "We put a lot of names on this board today. -motions to the 'Displaced' board- That's our goal right? Leaders try to keep frosh on the trip and we try to get them off?"

Rick: "We should just have those big army 500 gallon support tanks."

Caroline: "Yo Gap!"

Paul: "Re-undeactivate it."

Rory: "Why are there Pikachus running across the top of my screen?"

Rick: "No, those are lightning strikes. Completely obliterated eastern New York. Goodbye Catskills."

Van: "We're 100% almost confident that we've found the drop site."

After finding the med forms for a group, Rory calls the group...
Rory: "Hey ---, could you get your med forms for me? ...You lost them didn't you!"

Rick: "She said you have to put in 'two' because there are three Old Sharon Rds in Sharon, CT."

Talking about a teacher she had...
Tenley: "She said, ''Oh I hate Connecticut! It doesn't deserve to be a state, it's so small and it takes so long to drive through!"

Nick: "This is how I think of Rick. Rick Curtis. Silent Protector. Watchful Guardian. Dark Knight."

Rick: "Nope, they hung up. That last part was all by myself."

Caroline: "I'm going to the bathroom. If you need me, come get me, but don't."
-phone rings- "Hi Caroline."
Kathryn: "CAROLINE!"

Paul (from across the room to me): "Can I try on your glasses?"
Erica: "..."
Paul: "I just want to see what they look like."
(Note: They weren't big enough to fit over his ears.)

Paul: "Someone put me on the Facebook!"

Chris: "I have a small sewing kit. I am a guy after all."

Rick: "Just get them a room in Pittsfield or whatever, who cares about what it costs?"

Rory: "Quality Inn. High speed wi-fi. ...Shower curtains?"

Rick: "Quality Inn Gettysburg... What is this from? Like a fortune cookie? Your fortune lies at Quality Inn Gettysburg."

Tenley: "My body was making me cry but my mind really wanted me to laugh."