If you were anywhere near a public place this last spring, you probably were caught up in the swine flu mania.  Maybe you washed your hands obsessively or carried hand-sanitizer around with you everywhere.  Perhaps you even bought a surgical mask and pulled a Speidi.  Regardless of your reaction to the swine flu, by this time you’ve most likely pulled back a bit on the safety measures.

Well, hold your horses and get an economy-sized bottle of Purell, because the worst is yet to come.

Even now we’re seeing summer camps hit hard by the H1N1 virus, purely from the amount of kids grouped together in one place.  Hmm, where else could massive amounts of people be stuck in small spaces together for extended periods of time? Oh right – every university in the country.  What does this mean for the fall semester?  Will incoming freshman be supplied with surgical masks as a part of their orientation kit?

The summer camps have dealt quite admirably with what otherwise would be a huge inconvenience and danger to their campers.  Most camps set up “quarantines” for those who were afflicted with the flu virus.  Sick campers were kept in special cabins and cordoned-off outside areas for seven days after their first symptoms.  Sure, that works well for a summer camp.=, but what about universities?

So many questions remain unanswered and will probably stay that way until there is an appropriate reaction established well into the fall semester.  Yet, as an undergraduate headed back to the dorms in the fall, I’m wondering about a few things (wondering = worrying).  Will certain dorms be “swine dorms?”  Will classes have to be sectioned off to protect the healthy students from their infectious classmates?  What if your roommate gets the virus?

To prepare for what the medical community believes will be an outbreak even bigger than the one we had this spring, swine flu vaccinations are being perfected and distributed throughout the country.  Tamiflu has been used as a prophylactic in summer camps this year, but health officials don’t recommend using it on a long-term basis due to resistances that could build up in the virus.  So where does that leave college students?  Certainly, it’s much more difficult to close an entire university, as compared to the elementary, junior high, and high school closings we saw this spring.  Unless we see more than 50% of the teaching staff fall ill, I don’t think we’ll see any universities close.  However, I wouldn’t be surprised by more than a few campus quarantines.

In another couple of weeks, I’ll be starting to pack my life up for the umpteenth time in my college career to schlep it back on campus.  This year, however, I might forgo a few pairs of shoes to save space for the jumbo bottle of hand-sanitizer and Clorox wipes I’ll be bringing with me.  Who knows?  I might even rock out in a designer surgical mask and start a trend.

What do you think will happen to universities in the fall once the H1N1 virus hits again?  How will you prepare differently for college this semester?

It’s that time of year again: cold season.

Ew.

I’ve been noticing more people sneezing, which is why sanitizer is my new BFF. Unfortunately, thanks to all the common surfaces in college – computers, desks, ice luges – no matter how hard we all try we are gonna catch a cold. Pretty much everybody does. Even if they can avoid the germy keyboards and doorknobs on campus, the change in weather usually has them sniffling before too long.

But I have the cure for what ails us all: the best chicken soup EVER. Don’t use that canned stuff; the time and effort to make this soup is totally worth it. It will fill you up and make you feel all warm and toasty inside, no matter how chilly and snowy it is outside.

What you’ll need:

A pretty big pot

1 whole chicken

2 onions

3 carrots

About 6 small red potatoes

1 teaspoon minced garlic

1/2 teaspoon oregano

1 teaspoon basil

1 1/2 teaspoons cracked black pepper

Salt to taste

1 bag egg noodles

Time to Cook:

1. First, you better clean the chicken. If you’ve never been witness to this before, the stores don’t take all their, um, insides out before they sell it. So you have to pull out the gizzard and everything else. Once you get the chicken cleaned out from the inside, give it a good wash inside and out. Just rinse the bird a couple of times in cold water. If you want to take the skin off or trim the fat, feel free to, but I usually leave them on. It enhances the flavor.

2. Cut both onions into quarters. Stuff one onion inside the chicken and salt and pepper the inside also. While you’re at it, peel the carrots and cut them into good size chunks and set them off to the side. Go ahead and wash the potatoes too, and cut them into even sized chunks.

3. Take the pot and fill it 3/4 of the way with water. It needs to be big enough that the chicken can soak and the water can boil but not boil over.

4. Add the other onion, the carrots, and the potatoes to the water. Add the garlic, oregano, basil, and pepper to the water. Add a little salt, but not too much (you can add more later).

5. Add the bird (carefully!) and crank the stove to medium heat. Bring the soup to a boil and then turn the heat to low.

6. Here’s where the waiting comes in: it’s going to take roughly six hours for the soup to get nice and yummy. Every hour, flip the chicken over in the pot (carefully!) so that it cooks evenly. Around the sixth time you flip it, the chicken should begin to fall apart.

7. Once the chicken starts falling off the bone, take it out of the pot. Leave heat on low to keep soup warm. Debone the chicken, making sure to strip the meat carefully. Once you’ve finished that, set that juicy chicken aside.

8. Take some standard egg noodles and add them to your broth. Turn heat back up to medium. Cook them for roughly fifteen minutes, then add the chicken back to the pot. Once you add the chicken back to the pot, turn the heat off.

You can store this soup easily and reheat it on the stove or in the microwave. It’s awesome with saltine crackers or some nice buttery ones. It seems kind of intensive, but trust me, this soup beats any canned chicken noodle any day.

(Photo courtesy flickr via edestlin)

Saturday night: You’re at a frat party. You just won three consecutive games of beer pong. You don’t think twice about drinking your cups, despite the fact that you’ve seen the ball land in other peoples’ used cups, roll along the basement floor, and watched the ball pass between thirty-something unwashed hands.

What gives?!?

Obviously, beer pong isn’t the most sanitary party game out there. But you have the “water cup,” right? That cup of tepid, dirty water is totes gonna disinfect that old, recycled ping pong ball (that was most likely found under someone’s bed 10 minutes before party time). Or not.

Some microbiology students at George Washington University decided to test exactly how detrimental to your health beer pong can be. If you like beer pong, you may want to skip this article.

After a somewhat mild night of beer pong, consisting of eight students and thirty beers, the budding scientists collected samples from each of the beer pong cups and the water cup. What’d they find? A haven for germs. Bacteria from the E. Coli, salmonella, and pneumonia families were present in every single test tube containing samples from the game. Oh, and that water cup that everyone used to clean the balls? That was the most infected, and housed the most bacteria growth over night.

This study centered on beer pong only, but what about other potentially sickening games? When’s the last time you did a kegstand, putting your mouth on the tap that’s been who-knows-where after a dozen other people slurped down a few seconds worth of brew? How about the time you stood in for flip cup, and rotated through other peoples’ cups round after round?

We put our mouths everywhere when there’s cheap beer involved (and some of us really put our mouths everywhere), but we’re super cautious about where we place our ASS when we’re in a public place? Just some food for thought.

Not that you have to quit beer pong — hell, no! To be just a tad cleaner, change out the water cups and beer pong balls throughout the night, and keep your own beer cup to drink out of after the ball hits (just dump the shot’s worth of beer into your own cup).

Alcohol is bad enough for your immune system; don’t give germs a better opportunity to take up residence in your body.