Muffin in the Sky

This is the legend of Muffin.

It's not a long story, but it is a strange one.

The week my roommates and I moved into 1217, the week before classes started last semester, we received a gift from a girls' apartment in an adjacent building. It was a plate of six banana muffins, one for each of us. Five of us ate one, but Carson did not. We don't know why he didn't eat it; he claims to this day it didn't occur to him that it was his, but we aren't here to speculate. The point is, the muffin sat uneaten on the counter for two weeks.

When we checked on it to see if it had gone bad, we discovered the muffin had become extremely hard, like a cinder block. We showed it to Carson to see what he had done (jokingly, of course), and in so doing we saw fit to smack him with the muffin. When we did, I swear the thing made a resonating sound like a bell. and it bounced down to the table unharmed.

After observing its peculiar stability, the rest of us saw fit to do something more fun with the muffin. Three of us, along with a friend from another dorm, suspended the muffin from a small hook on the ceiling in the center of the living room, directly above a tipped-over chair and a note reading "Carson, you left me alone for two weeks. Why couldn't you let me die?"

Muffin's current state

We had a good laugh over that, and we thought that might be the end of the story, but there was more to come. We put the chair back at the table and disposed of the note, but the muffin stayed there, hanging from its scotch tape noose. After a couple more weeks, that wasn't good enough for us anymore, so I updated the suspension to a single sewing thread, which is nearly invisible in certain lighting and allows the muffin to turn lazily with the air currents.

Since it is now April, Muffin has been hanging there for eight months. Yes, eight months. He is still as hard as stone and shows no signs of decay, so we've endeavored to leave him there, declaring him our seventh roommate. I'm not sure if that's a greater testament to Muffin's wondrous qualities or our own unsurpassed weirdness, so I'll let you judge. In the meantime, we've been discussing strategies to preserve Muffin's legacy, appointing me to keep him safe and perhaps someday cast him in an acrylic block to keep for posterity. I suppose, in the end, diamonds are not forever. Muffins are forever.

Hic Manebimus Optime!

Sometimes You Just Need a Cave

When in the course of human events we find it necessary to retreat from our surroundings and hide in the fetal position, we require a space in which to do so.

Nobody famous said that (unless you count me, in which case I'm flattered, but you're overly generous), but that does not make it less true. Maybe extroverts do not feel this way, but as for my introverted self, I find that when I'm so overwhelmed by the chaotic world that has incidentally prevented me from posting for a very long time, I need someplace to cool off without outside interference.

My room used to be enough, but I still found myself too easily disrupted by roommates bursting in at random. I could lock it, but my actual room-roommate (to use a scientific term) never carries his key. Thus, I set out to find a way to more perfectly isolate myself from other humans.

The solution is to build a fort, obviously.

Some people may deny having any desire to build a fort, but we know they're lying. Fort-building is an intrinsic part of our humanity; we just have to reach the point where we're willing to admit that forts aren't just for small children. As soon as one admits that he or she no longer has any shame, one can accomplish some impressive things. I have developed, in my opinion,  a stellar fort construction method myself, and although I will probably unveil it to you fairly soon, it would take up far too much space in the apartment. I needed a more permanent, more specially conservative approach.

The beds in our dorms are in three pieces: the big (and extremely heavy) horizontal piece that holds the mattress, and a frame piece on either end. The frames have multiple notches in them so the bed can be adjusted to multiple heights. Interestingly enough, the frames are not vertically symmetrical, so the bed can be lowered much more than it can be raised. However, I found that flipping the frame pieces upside down allowed me to raise the bed higher than intended, creating a very large space underneath. With the addition of some Christmas lights from last semester and a stock of sodas, lightsabers and nerf weaponry, I had created my own personal Will-Cave.

Interior 

Complete with laptop space.

Oh and also this stuff.

Every cave needs a bat.

The Will-Cave has become an object of jealousy for my roommates, which I frankly did not expect. I guess it really is true that somewhere, all of us want an awesome fort, but not everyone realizes that there's nothing stopping us from making one.

Hic Manebimus Optime!