Such a tease

In hindsight, heading home for a night when there are only a few days left until Thanksgiving was probably a mistake. Going to Rhode Island where there is home cooking and no thoughts of looming due dates only made coming back to Boston that much harder, but I'd say that it was well worth the time to recharge and be ready to push through these last few days before break.

I took Eileen home and showed her the ins and outs of Cumberland. She got a grand tour of the house and a kick out of the old pictures we have hanging up on the refrigerator. My brother had the most adorable chubby cheeks when he was a toddler. They make pictures both cute and hilarious.

Then, of course, we went to Cumberland House of Pizza with my parents. We left them with the check and headed to Providence for some mall time. Little did we know they would stay there for another three hours mingling with the usual Friday night crowd. We actually got home before they did. Lame!

So Eileen bravely entrusted me with her life as I drove into the city. More importantly than going to the mall was a special trip to drive by the New England Pest Control's big blue bug. Eileen had never seen it, so it was a necessary detour. As an added bonus, it was already decked out in its Christmas gear. Needless to say, she was excited.

So we wandered around the mall, drooling over the new winter sweaters and boots. Eileen indulged and bought herself the softest scarf ever made from the Gap. Then we went upstairs and got carded before heading into Dave & Busters, where you have to be 18 years old to go in without a parent. I told the guy we were 2o, but he didn't believe us. Hey, you win some, you lose some.

To top off the weekend, we slept in this morning and woke up to my mom preparing hot tea, warm banana bread and homemade pancakes. Blueberry AND chocolate chip. Oh yes, I'm ready to go home.

Is it time for turkey yet?

Last night I had a rare feeling of homesickness. When the bright city lights kept me from seeing the meteor shower after I stayed up until 4 a.m., I missed my backyard, my lawn and my ability to see a sky full of stars.

After finishing my homework a little after one o'clock this morning, I decided that trying to sleep for a few hours and wake up would be harder than just staying awake. I don't have a problem staying up late, but 4 a.m. was a tough time to stay up for, especially when I knew I had to wake up four hours later for class. I had ELLE magazine and snacks to keep me company while I waited. Sure, I could have been doing more homework, but who wants to start a new project after midnight? Plus, the picture wouldn't be nearly as entertaining.

So at 3:30, Eileen and I bundled up and headed outside in the freezing cold. She even tore herself away from studying for an exam because this meteor shower had promise. After half an hour of shivering and yearning for some fragment of space rock to soar across the sky, we returned inside a bit defeated. I even stayed up a little longer, staring out my window in the hopes of validating my decision to stay awake until the early morning hours.

Unfortunately, my view was obstructed by the abundance of light. This meteor shower was nothing like the one I watched with my family a few years ago, when my mom woke us up so we could lie on blankets in our backyard. We saw so many shooting stars that night!

Some things just aren't the same in the city as they are in the 'burbs. In this last week until Thanksgiving, now all I can think of is heading back to Rhode Island. Because sometimes we all just need a slice of homemade apple pie.

Ace bandages and ice packs

Yesterday, on one of the most beautiful fall days I have ever seen, I was supposed to run a 5K. But instead, I was stuck inside, tortured by the view outside my window. The cause of this frustration? An utterly embarrassing move on my part during a flag football game, where I jumped up in the hope of intercepting a wayward pass, only to land on the side of my right foot, rolling my ankle. The embarrassing part was that there was no one within 10 feet of me. Yup, it was all me.

The race was a goal I had set for myself early this summer when I signed up and paid the $20 fee. While I wouldn't say that I'm out of shape, I definitely miss the days of high school track and the ease with which I ran every day. So this summer, I gave myself a goal of running a 5K with months and months of preparation time. Right on cue, I arrived at school in September and started running every day before class. Getting up early wasn't easy, but I loved it. I felt accomplished and energized.

Fast forward a few weeks and I was in the middle of midterm exams, a nasty cold and a number of different projects. I avoided the gym like the plague, not that I really had a choice. The race was always in sight though, looming ominously in my future. I did start running a bit more, but nothing close to what I would have liked. My goal shifted from running the race well to running it without embarrassing myself, just crossing the finish line without any major problems.

Well, this past Thursday night happened. A failed attempt at an interception and a swollen foot. It was the championship game for Victorious Secret, the co-ed flag football team I played on for the past two years, but took a break from this year because I knew I'd be too busy to fully commit. Well, after a few injuries and people not being able to show up, my friends asked if I would come and play. Of course I would get hurt in a game that I wasn't even supposed to play in.

In fact, in all my years of playing soccer and running track, I have never rolled my ankle like this. Today, five days later, my foot is still bruised, swollen and the cause of some major pain. I'm icing, resting, elevating, drugging myself with Motrin, but it's simply not healing fast enough for me. This limp is starting to annoy me and my ace-bandaged foot cannot fit into most of my shoes.

So here I sit, a hostage of my stupid foot. Today, oh joy, it even started to feel like something was popping in there. I should probably go to Student Health to get it examined, but I'm not willing to risk catching the dreaded swine flu by sitting in the waiting room, so I'm keeping my distance.

But on the up side of all this? A pretty impressive bruise, lots of crossword puzzle time and the fact that I'm now more determined than ever to get back in shape and race.

A rant

So, you're dating someone special, someone you love. That person gets down on one knee, pulls out a big diamond and proposes. After the tears and hugs subside, you begin the wedding planning process, every bride's dream. The dress, the flowers, the food, the band. Chicken or beef? Where will we sit that crazy uncle? It's the Steve Martin movie "Father of the Bride," two families preparing to come together and act as one, however dysfunctional it may be. The deposits have been made, the dress found. Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue? Check, check, check and check.

Now stop.

Mere days before your big day, your wedding is cancelled. No, your fiancé didn't leave you at the altar, your neighbors did.

The people you see every day while you are walking your dog or shopping for groceries have said that you aren't allowed to get married. In fact, you are wrong to even want to.

That's exactly what happened last night in Maine, where 52.7 percent of the state voted to repeal the state's same-sex marriage law, which had been a part of legislature for six months.

The reasons? In today's Boston Globe, Mary Conroy, spokeswoman for Yes On 1/Stand for Marriage Maine, was not shy in sharing her feelings of joy that the sinful gay people will be reduced once again to second class citizens.

According to the Globe, "Conroy said most of the Stand for Marriage supporters are ordinary families who are worried that children will read stories about same-sex couples in schools, that teenagers will be encouraged to experiment with their sexuality, and that same-sex marriage will be widespread. She said that gays and lesbians have won antidiscrimination protections and should 'leave marriage alone.'"

"No one's antigay," she said. "It's just whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa....Not so fast."

I have a few issues with this.

I am a product of 13 years of public schooling, and heterosexual relationships have never been taught to me, so who is to believe that homosexual relationships would start to be part of the curriculum? And even if relationships were taught, I'm sure teachers would have a more difficult time explaining to little Johnny why he doesn't know who his father is than explaining to the class that Timmy has two moms. In a time where the divorce rate of this country is at a whopping 50 percent, a steady home life of two loving parents, no matter the gender, should be praised and welcomed, not shunned. If the sanctity of marriage is most important, we should ban divorce and people getting married on TV.

As for the teenagers, look around, Mary Conroy. According to StayTeen.org, three out of ten girls in the United States gets pregnant at least once before they turn 20, and I'm pretty sure homosexuality is not to blame. MTV has a show called "16 and Pregnant." Jamie Lynn Spears, of Nickelodeon fame, had a baby at 16. Bristol Palin had a baby at 17 and look who her mother is! That's good old fashioned heterosexuality right there. For this woman to think that same-sex marriages will contribute to the problem of teenage promiscuity is utterly ridiculous.

As for Conroy saying that homosexuals should "leave marriage alone" because they already have antidiscriminatory protections, I have to wonder if she cannot see the parallels between this issue and the African American civil rights movement. Is it not the same? Gays and lesbians want to have every right that straight people have. Blacks wanted the same rights that whites enjoyed. Don't we look back on that generation and wonder how anyone could have looked into the eyes of any of the African American students trying to attend Little Rock Central High School in 1957 and told them no? No, you don't deserve to get an education because of your skin color, something you were born with and have no control over. Today, the dialogue has not changed much. No, you don't deserve to be married because of your sexual orientation, something you were born with and have no control over.

As a generation, we will look back upon this time with shame and regret. We will be embarrassed of our intolerance.

My Gagalicious Halloween

Halloween on a college campus is more of a circus than a holiday. There are no jack-o'-lanterns, there's no trick-or-treating. There are only costumes.

Most are of the skimpy variety. Immortalized in the movie Mean Girls, "Halloween is the one day a year when girls can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it." Well, I'm saying something about it. It might be appropriate to take a feminist stance to criticize the objectification of women or something of that sort. Really, it's just funny to see groups of girls in October, in the rain, running down the street in a napkin and 6 inch heels. They may be dressed as angels, but they're dressed to sin. The sad thing is that I don't think most realize the irony.

For my costume, I opted for pants, even though Lady Gaga herself is known to go without them. It was so much fun to get dressed up and be blonde for a night. Plus, I got to hang out with Miss America.

Here are some of the girls in my suite before we all headed our separate ways: a nerd, Jupiter Moon, a cat, Lady Gaga and Miss America.

Eileen and I spent the night at our friends' house, where there were some pretty hilarious costumes. This year's popular H1N1 costume of a pig with a surgical mask and scrubs on was pretty funny, but the best of the night may have been Ben and Justin as Ali and Erica.

Ben showed up as the usually bearded Ali and Justin showed up dressed in drag. Supposedly he is Erica, but saying they look alike would be a bit of an insult to the pretty blonde.

Let's hope you can pick out the real couple.

This week, I successfully refrained from buying bags of chocolately trans and saturated fat bathed confectionary treats. So though I missed out on a self-induced sugar coma, I enjoyed my Halloween, fully clothed from head to toe.