Party Planning for the broke and lazy

If college students were rich, party throwing would be easy- call the planner and the caterer and write a couple checks. Actually, broke students could do that too, but it does nasty things to the probably already crappy credit rating.

So instead, a bit of creativity is required.

Music is easy- I dare anyone out there to find a group of ten or twenty with no ipod or other music storage toy. Drinks are easy- provide plastic, ice, and mixers- let them bring their own if they want more.

Food- now food is where it gets interesting. You can do the ever popular pot luck, which is no fun. Or you can have the rotating party, where one person (or group) provides the food, then you swap out. You get more parties that way too. And it doesn't have to be expensive either. Spanish rice, bean burritos (homemade tortillas if you're someplace like NZ where they're 50 cents each), chips and salsa, maybe some fajita fixings or tamales if you're feeling rich/ motivated, and you have a yummy kinda mexican inspired party. Baked ziti, home made pizza, cheap antipasta, and you got a kinda italian fooded party. And until you try it, don't tell me that sushi's tough. Not good for cancelling out boozy extravagence, but if you have four or five people rolling, it doesn't take long to get *a lot* done. And if you leave out most (or all) of the fish, it's pretty cheap too.

Entertainment, of course, depends on when you hold the party. And who you invite. Some people are happy with no more than a kiddie pool and some beach toys. Others want activities. My favorites for activities (and both can be played outside in the depths of winter with some modifications) are soda bottle bowling and street golf. Which are pretty much what they sound like.

For soda bottle bowling you need-

• At least 10 empty soda bottles- all the same size and brand
• masking tape indoors, chalk outside
• a long, straight, flat surface
• One ball of moderate weight and firmness per 10 bottles

I like nerf balls, the basketball ones- about the size of a kids head. You set the bottles up in nice shiny triangles, each the same distance from anything next to it. You know, like at the bowling alley. mark where to put them on the floor, so you can reset faster. and mark the spot you have to throw from. Then run it like normal bowling. easy and fun. Or you can use a heavier ball and put some water or sand in the bottles. If you wanna play outside in the snow, make sure there's enough water to keep the bottles from floating on the snow, and you probably want it frozen, too- just for fun.

For street golf you need-

• Golf clubs, at least 2 each.
• Golf balls- at least 1 each
• a cup (or cups)
  
• running shoes
• aim

Pick a route out from your house- or from another location to where you want your party to end- usually your house. Draw it out on a map. Pick a route with friends' places on it, so you can have intermediate holes- one endless hole is just no fun, after all. In palmy I'd pick a rather back route to my house from the square- the main street is just a bit too busy, even at 3 am. Put a cup, as a hole, somewhere in your house. Mark it on the map. Send everyone off, counting (of course) as they play to the last hole. Lowest score wins. As does anyone who doesn't get arrested, break a window, or lose their ball.

I have to thank the students of St. Andrews in scotland for street golf, actually- I never would have thought that up on my own. Maybe with help, but it's tough to find golf minded mischief makers around here.

I'm sure with this start you can now throw at least part of a cheap party. Or at least keep yourself amused (and arrested) for at least a week. Oh, and no wading in Wyoming in october through may without special clearance from the loony bin.

j.

Way too spendy for students Pasta

This is what I had for dinner. Just now actually.

ingredients:
sauce-

• 1 pt Cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
• 8-12 pitted kalamata olives, chopped
• 1c fresh chifonaded spinaches (like linguini- I can't spell)
• 1-2T Olive Oil
• 1-2T other veggie oil
• 1/2-3/4 chopped onion
• 1T sea salt
• 1 Glug basalmic vinegar
• squirt or two of good lemon juice
  

Pasta-

• 1 serving medium shells (about 1" or 2.5cm from top to bottom)
• 1T sea salt (seeing a pattern here?)
• water for in boiling.

to make-

• First you puts the water in the pot and puts it on the stove. Don't, for the love of the kitchen toy gods, put the salt in the water yet. It'll pit the living hell out of your pots, and this is only Way too spendy, not crazy put me in debt for the rest of my life spendy pasta.
• I'm assuming you know enough to wash your veggies before cutting them, but if not, do it. icky nasty stuff on veggies. They grow in dirt, ya know.
• Put your (hopefully deep) frying pan/ sauce pan on the stove, with maybe medium heat. Add the oil. All the oil. If you're rich or crazy you can use olive oil for all of it. If you're me you go maybe half and half- you're trying for a total of less than 3T of oil. 2 should work.
• Let the oil heat, then add the onions, and cover the pot. Swish or stir them occasionally while you wait for the water to boil. Oh, and the salt goes in about now, too.
• Sane people would put the spinaches in next. I am obviously not sane, because I put in half the tomatoes next. About a minute after I put in my pasta. I'd wait, if I was you, until about 5 minutes after I put in the pasta to dump the tomatoes and spinaches in. And turn the temp down to about medium low after you put the lid back on.
• After a couple minutes, add your chopped olives. They don't have to be too finely chopped. Just probably not whole.
• A minute before you need to pull the pasta, add the splash or so of lemon juice and the basalmic vinegar.
• Drain your pasta, and toss your yummy fresh veggie sauce with it.
• Oh yeah. Eat.
  

For the love of all that's happy and good to eat, don't put in *glugs*, plural, of the vinegar. It'll overwhelm everything else and you won't be able to taste all your way too expensive fresh stuff. Voice of experience, here, people.

If you can't or don't want to get fresh spinaches (weirdos) you could use frozen, but I don't think it'd be as good.

If you're one of those meaty people, this'd be good probably with like those roasted lamb chop thingies- you know, with the bone? Or maybe veal. Slab or two of wood fired suckling pig (how do I know what you have in your kitchen)? Duck would be too strong, I think, and chicken or turkey too blah. Fish just sounds wrong to me, but maybe there's one that would go well with this. Yeah, I think a good thick seared or roasted lamb chop. Nothing fatty, tho. Probably good "impress the date" food.

And they take away my magic vegetarian card. Again.

Maybe next time I tell you all about how I bastardized a roast lamb recipe I got from that Alton Brown guy's show.... Tho again, that's wandering back into the debt for life range of foods.

What? A school blog? are you crazy?

j.

Strange new time warp of DOOM (+1)

Somehow, for some reason I can't quite figure out, yahoo manages to deliver to me mail from next week.

Sure, it's all spam, but still- it's not even the 18th here, and they're delivering me mail from the 23 of april 2007. How, oh mighty yahoo mail server, how???!!!

and for your procrastination enjoyment, may I present freecell.net

j.

I been a baaaad baaaad bunny

Sorry I not post much. I been lazy. Extra lazy. Extra super, olympic, above and beyond even my own expectations lazy.

In vaguely positive tho scary news, I have in fact actually bought a school book. Required text and everything.

I have not, however, actually opened it yet. It's for a test next wednesday. I have plenty of time. I do need to do some physics work, tho- that one's monday... I think.

In totally different news (but strongly related to my outrageous lazyness) I watched all of CSI Miami season 3 yesterday.

Where's the crime scene investigating? where's the follow thru? How the hell do they do DNA sampling and stuff so fast? 10 minutes, start to finish, I swear!

Yes, it's cheesey, and no, if there were more CSI vegas available, I would not watch it. But I've seen all of the Vegas one, and I can only watch it soooo many times. Even if it has more yummy men (warrick and the video guy- archie?) I can only watch each episode so many times in one week.

But back to Miami. What's up with the kid that shows up and magically just *knows* how to do all the stuff in the lab? And they just throw him, alone, on a case? And what's with all the shooting? Don't normal, real cops get in trouble if they shoot people? 'parently criminalists and stuff in Miami get into huge shootouts at least twice a month. They killed off or fired something like half the staff. If it were a real place, I think everyone would be looking for new jobs.

And for bob's sake, could they stop giving the bad actor guy those two part lines? And please, please take the sunglasses away? or just fire him and hire someone else? Someone who can act? Please?

For anyone who made it this far- Yes, I am drinking lots of caffeine filled soda, why?

And I don't know if I mentioned it here or not, but I'm going home at the end of the semester. The dollars drop against, well, everything makes NZ less economically feasible for me. So I be going back to the land of doritos and mac n cheese. Maybe I join foreign service. Who knows.

j.

I have indeed *not* been deported

I know, sad day for kiwi's and international students everywhere. They want me to get the very nasty, totally unenjoyed physical again- I think they lost my paperwork.

So while I'm not leaving 2 days ago, I am leaving in June.

Why? At the rate I'm going here, I'll be about 300k in debt before I get in to the real program at massey. And I there are (shock, horror) some things I miss in wyoming (and no, they aren't just reasonable internet and doritos).

Plus, I looked at what I've got, class wise, and I'll only be 2 prereq's short for colorado (and about 4000 hours experience) at the end of the semester- if I pass everything. No comment on my GPA.

I wonder, do international students studying in the states feel as much like an ATM as I do here?

j.

Import/Export

Depending on what happens monday when I go to have a chat with the people at school I may or may not be staying.

see, they have these rules for students, expensive rules. Which are a totally different subject, of course.

Well, in order to stay I have to pay my fees for this semester, get a receipt, and wait a day. Then I can get a bank statement (saying I have about 14kNZ sitting in my account) and get another receipt for $120 (yep, visa fees went up. Again.) and take that stuff, plus this whole other list of stuff I need (photos and applications and records and who knows what else) to the immigration desk on campus 10 days before my visa runs out, so they can get it renewed for me.

So I need to take receipts for things I haven't paid yet (still no loans) and bank statements with money I don't have, and the 120 for the fee, to this desk. Last wednesday.

Now, some time next week I'll have *some* money. But it won't be 24kNZ. Not even close to that. My stafford may or may not get here by friday, but even if it does, the school won't admit to having it for a week. I don't know if this is normal for universities, but it's honestly the only place I've ever heard of holding checks (cashed in the school's account the whole time) for a week before crediting the account.

But since, as I said, they hold those checks for a week, my account won't show even partial payment before friday (also known as the day before my visa runs out).

now yes, at least some of this is my fault. After all, I could have borrowed a huge-er pile of cash at crazy rates. I could have pestered the loan company to let me apply for my private loan earlier. Heck, I could have put it all on a credit card somewhere.

But I didn't do any of that. And so now if I don't get an extension (and I'm really not holding out any great hope) I have to leave.

Funny thing is, I might just go anyway. Anyone who's actually read the more coherent posts in here- the school related ones, anyway- will realise that I'm really not getting anywhere, except maybe in debt.

For comparison, what I've borrowed (and spent) in the last year would have been enough to travel on for at least 2 years. The tuition alone was enough for at least one really good year.

I am, oddly, not comfortable here. I don't know if it's the out there racism that I keep running into this last 6 months or so, or the way people here manage to be some of the best travelled xenophobes I've ever met. Or maybe it's just that I miss doritos. It could be how most of the local students think a great night hanging out with friends starts with a bottle of vodka each and ends with puking.

Or maybe I just want to go home because I know there is no way I'll actually study here. I have no motivation. The better I do, after all, the longer I have to stay. Call me commitment phobic.

So, probably wednesday or thursday I'll be taking off for home.

which means that this weekend I'm cleaning and pre-packing and doing laundry. I don't want to think about what else I have to do- who I need to see on monday, finding tickets, getting some/ any furniture for when I move back, getting rid of my bed here, telling the flatmates I'm taking off, and who knows what else.

Blegh.

I want my mommy.

I know- so mature.

j.

YAAAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!!

If i were to say there was a certain someone here in NZ I wanted to see dipped slowly in acid until her/his limbs dissolved while they screamed in hideous pain, with death at the end just for fun, would anyone here be really surprised?

If I told you this person (to whom I won't actually do this, since it would be waaaaay more work than the person is worth) worked for the university would it be surprising? How about if she (yes she) was so good at her job that she only answered e-mail after 8 days, without checking on anything before replying, and always with no information ("I'm sorry, I don't know if XYZ is here. name")? Would it really hurt to check? Is that not what office workers in direct contact with customers get paid to do?

On the exact same subject, my stafford loans get disbursed (less than 1/3rd of them, for some bob forsaken reason) this friday. The school will have it's money on or about the 30th, and will admit to having it sometime after I'm deported.

My private loan company contacted the school electronically on the 15th (that would be the 16th here, and a friday, which people seem to think is part of the weekend here....) but they haven't heard back, and the loan lady (who I so adore) hasn't heard from them. Really.

I would probably have fallen for this, but last year my loan was "sent" for about two weeks while it was sitting in a file on a desk. Somewhere. So I called the loan companies. And they told me all sorts of fun stuff. And now I want boiling acid and a huge vat and a crane. And an idea of where to go when I get kicked out of school for not paying my tuition. I was thinking south america then travel overland back to the states.... Maybe on my bike.

Maybe universities that are running out of money are exempt from decent customer service? Tho what with a good portion of their operating budget coming from international student tuition and fees, You'd think they'd try a bit harder. I might just do well enough here this semester to get back to Wyoming. After all, it's cheaper and they won't deport me.

j.