Remember when you were a little kid, and you’d actually wake up on time for school… just so you could huddle next to the radio and listen for your school to be called on the list of snow days? With winter’s doom impending and temperatures dropping faster than The Situation’s pants, we can’t help but cross our fingers and pray.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

Are snow days something you never grow out of? Or, in college, do they prove that miracles really can happen? Here’s how our anticipation of snow days has evolved since grammar school.

Then: A snow day meant a day off from times tables.
Now: We don’t have to finish copying someone else’s MiniTabs before Stats lab.

Then: We would make a beeline to the street and get all the neighborhood kids together for a snowball fight.
Now: We don’t have to brave arctic winds to walk to class and sit through lecture with snotsicles hanging from our frostbitten faces. Read More »

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Let’s just say, we were all very, very excited about this episode. We all saw the clip of Sammi Psycho… I mean, Sweetheart, punching Ron-Ron square in his nasty mouth. We were at the edge of our seats waiting for her to leave or some big, climactic blowout…that ended with her leaving So did it happen? You be the judge of this week’s J. Shore Fairy tale.

Once Upon a Time, we are brought back to the greasy, dirty (city? town? state?) Kingdom of Long Island (why God, why?)… the land of disasters and stolen beds. Our heroines, Snookers and JWoww are raiding what Tom’s left in the house. Stealing a BED? Chop his nuts off, Snook! The princesses collect Jenni’s 17 fluffy puppies and bring them back to the Sleazeside Heights Palace.

Amidst all this, Ryder (who should be on the show instead of Deena) arrives before Snooki. Vinny answers the door and it’s “awkward” since he was caught by Miss Snooki fornicating with her bestie. He reminds us of what Snook heeded him: “Do not have sex with my best friend.” Conflicted, Vinny responds, “I don’t know what to do at this point…” Uh, how about don’t have sex with her best friend? The Dragon Deenasaur decides to play Fake Snooki so she and Rrrrryder claim that 11 AM is the new happy hour and down shots of all sorts of mystical elixirs.

Since it is Ryder’s 22nd birthday, what better place to celebrate the momentous occasion than Club Karma, the finest ballroom scene in the land of New Jersey. Deenasaurus dons a tiara made of plastic flowers and ”my friend Bjork” (aka JWoww) looks like a castoff from the Swan Queen: Asbury Park Edition. Ronald succumbs to his fatal last words to “Mike’s girlfriend, “Lemme see you get krunk,” and Sammi flies off into a fit of jealous rage, scowling with her ceiling eyes in full force. Attractive. Read More »

23 is a young age for a lot of things.  It is a young age to be a mother, to be on your own, to lose a friend, or to have cancer.  Yet, all of these things and more happen to young people every day.

It was a cold day in November when I got the phone call from the dermatologist telling me my results were back and I needed to come into the office the same day.  As I put down the phone, I looked at my boyfriend and nervously laughed and said, “Well that can’t be good.”  Since I am a full time student, I had to go to class before I could even think about heading to a doctor.  I sat through the hour and fifteen minute class thinking that maybe I was being silly and everything was going to be fine.  Surely a girl who is 23 years old, outgoing, determined, and full of life could not have cancer.  It had to be something else.

The drive to the office took too long and I called my mom on the way to deter some thoughts.  She immediately went into full panic mode and I couldn’t understand why.  By the time I arrived at the doctor, she had called five times to find out what was wrong but they wouldn’t tell her because I am an adult.  I sat alone in the room and waited for the nurse practitioner.  She was the only that would see me that day because the doctor was too busy.  She sat down and said, “Katie, you have level four Melanoma and the next step is for you to go see a surgeon in St. Louis to have the tumor removed.”

It’s hard to explain what I was feeling at the moment I was processing everything she was saying.  I don’t really know if I was feeling anything but disbelief.  I’m not sure that I was even processing it.  I just shook my head like I was some kind of bobble head so she knew I was still listening.  The strangest thing, after looking back on it all, is the feeling that I just wanted to please her or that I couldn’t cry because I needed to be strong.  I asked her different questions about what the biopsy meant and she couldn’t tell me.  At this point the hardest thing was that she didn’t know the details or the main question everyone wanted to know:

Was I going to die? Read More »

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We already know that beer does a body good, but you can’t have alcohol without food, so ditch that late night pizza and indulge some late night chocolate instead.

Here’s why:

Chocolate is good for your heart.

A bar of chocolate helps lower your blood pressure and cholesterol AND reduces your risk of heart disease. Start thinking about these things now, so in 40 years that’s at least two less pills you’ll have to be popping.

Chocolate stimulates endorphins and serotonin.

Endorphins are hormones that give us a sense of pleasure. They’re allegedly released when we exercise (I’m skeptical), and also when we have sex (this, I can believe). Eating chocolate also has the same effect. Serotonin is a natural antidepressant, which may help to explain why we ladies crave chocolate so much when we’re premenstrual.

Chocolate is rich in antioxidants.

Antioxidants are crucial for killing off free radicals that roam around your body trying to wreak havoc on your cells. Cacao, the base substance of chocolate, contains 8 times as many antioxidants as strawberries. (New diet plan: chocolate covered strawberries all the time. Hello, 100th birthday!)

Read More »