Yup, thanks to the genius and generous marketers at Mars Chocolate, we’ll all be jumping for joy real soon. The “Real Chocolate Relief Act” is here.

Starting this month, and continuing through September, the company will be doling out a quarter-million tasty treats on what they call “Free Chocolate Fridays.” ‘Free’ and ‘chocolate’ in the same sentence? Now that’s something to smile about.

Just register (in two seconds) here and wait for your mouthwatering coupon to arrive. Note: the coupon is not edible. DO NOT EAT THE COUPON. Instead, walk (or sprint) to the nearest drug store, bodega, gas station, etc. to pick out your very own FREE Snickers, Dove Bar, 3 Musketeers – whatever tasty treat you fantasize about (or am I the only one who daydreams about silky, smooth, cocoa-y goodness melting in my mouth?).

Oh, and more good news: this isn’t one of those one-time only things. You can request a coupon every Friday. So get out of bed, sign up for some free chocolate, and wipe that frown off your face. Tomorrow is the weekend and you can celebrate with free effing candy bars!

Life. is. good.

[It doesn’t matter what school you go to, what state it is in, how big it is, whether it is public or private, all girls or coed…there are experiences that all college students share.

No matter how crazy you think your personal situation is, it is not just you. So, let’s bring it all out in the open. Right here. Because you are not alone - we’ve all been there before.]

There are many moments in a college student’s existence that are shared by other students around the globe, but none more common than the All Nighter.

You know on the first day of class that there will be a 12-page paper due this Friday. You highlighted it, and put it in your planner. But as the weeks went by – and you sorta stopped showing up for class – you kept pushing the paper off. “I’ll start it this weekend,” you tell yourself a week before it’s due.

But the weekend comes, and with it comes an impromptu house party at your place Friday night, a long recap/hangover session on Saturday, a birthday party Saturday night and work on Sunday. No time for a paper.

You assure yourself that you will do it a little each night this week, but it takes you until Wednesday to realize that heading to the library with the girls and a bag of Baked Lays is not the best way to be productive.

So, now it’s Thursday and the 12-page paper is looming. You scarf down some dinner, say TTFN to the roomies (who are pre-drinking for Thirsty Thursday), and embark on a long-ass night of research and paper writing.

You stop at the drug store on the way and pick up a few things: a couple Red Bulls, a bottle of water, a bag of chips and a Snickers bar. The combination of sugar and caffeine should get you through. When you arrive at the library (because there is no way in hell you’d get this paper done at home), you run past the scene in the reading room and scope out a quiet table in the middle of nowhere so you can’t be distracted. You unpack all of your things, spread them out on the table, turn on your laptop (and turn off your AIM), and get all settled in when you realize that the table you are sitting at is not near an outlet.

Eff.

So, you pack everything back up and find another place to sit.

The first 2 hours go by quickly and you get a lot done: you have the thesis, you have a plan, and now you just have to get writing. You drink a Red Bull and pump out 1.5 pages in the next 30 minutes. And then you crash and start drooling on your keyboard. It’s a war between you and your brain, but you know you must win. You get up, walk around a bit, then come back to write some more.

At some point near about 3am, you eat a little more sugar and pump out the rest of the paper. Your hands are shaking, your eyes are teary, and you are pretty sure you just compared Shakespeare to Will I. Am., but at least you are getting this thing done.

At 5am you finally finish the first draft. It is time to review but you can’t keep your eyes open. You begin to have an internal battle: “If I don’t go home and get some sleep I am going to be a zombie and won’t be able to contribute in class anyway, but if I don’t review the paper and make edits it is totally gonna suck. But, sleep is great. But grades are great. But my bed is so warm and comfy, and this chair sucks, but nothing sucks more than failing this stupid class….”

At some point you pass out.

Eventually you are startled awake (head on desk isn’t very comfortable) and have just under an hour to finish the paper, print it and turn it in.  You are running on pure adrenaline at this point – running from computer to printer to desk to class. You get the paper in just in time, then sneak out of the back of the lecture hall to crawl back into your bed for the rest of the day.

Yeah, we’ve all been there. And don’t worry; we didn’t look as cute and put together as the girl in the picture, either.

While Halloween now is more closely associated with finding a (slutty) costume and drinking Halloween inspired beverages, as a kid, there was nothing better than going door to door loading up on enough candy to last you till the 4th of July.Only problem is, my mom – the smart woman that she is – knew her life would be torturous through July if she let her three hyper children keep that much sugar around.

So every year, my two older brothers and I would have to dump all of our coveted, prized candy into the middle of the table. My mother then carefully separated the candy into piles – Milky Ways in one pile, Twix in another, Candy Corn in another, and so on. She then handed a bucket to each of us and, one by one, we would go around taking our pick and filling our buckets.

Once they were filled, the rest of the candy went to inner-city kids whose neighborhoods were too dangerous to trick-or-treat in (which now I see was a very noble thing but at the time I couldn’t understand why they deserved my candy gold. After all, I spent three long hours in the cold with clown makeup on my face, saying stupid poems at people’s doors while they filled my bag up with all that deliciousness).

Going around that table, each taking our turn, made our piles of crack candy like a game of Monopoly. 100 Grand (because of its rarity) was like Park Place, while Apple Sauce (I mean really WHO GIVES OUT APPLE SAUCE ON HALLOWEEN?!) was like Baltic Ave. Having spent so much time pouring over every. last. piece of candy, I think I’ve become somewhat of an expert. So, I bring you my list of the all time Top 5 BEST Halloween Trick-or Treat Treats.

1) 100 Grand: It’s like a Nestle crunch bar meets a Milky Way meets Amazingness.

2) Peanut Butter Twix and Peanut Butter M&Ms. No explanation needed.

3) Double Stuffed Oreo’s with the Bright Orange Frosting. I’m not even sure if they make these anymore, but nothing says childhood like playing the Oreo game.

4) Skittles. The non chocolate version of M&Ms. Note to self: Don’t stick them up your nose…

5) Whatchamacallits. Mainly because I love the name and still find it slipping into my vocabulary. You know, while playing games of Concentration or jumping around on my Skip-It.

And an honorary spot has to go out to any big candy bar given. Those houses were the BEST. They were few and far between, but they were total jackpots. I bet if you drove through your old neighborhood now you could point out the houses that gave out the full sized Snickers.

Oh and I totally ate those before I got home, or hid them in my room… it took too much room up in the bucket and there was no way those other children were getting their paws on that treasure.

What are your favorites?

My roommate and I have an understanding: I leave the apartment when she watches the Eagles game and she leaves the apartment when I watch Grey’s Anatomy. We both find the others’ television viewing choice ridiculous and pointless. On the rare occasion I make the mistake of sticking around during a football game I am subjected to her ear-piercing screams that are so loud and so full of energy that people must mistake her cheers for domestic abuse. When they are winning she shouts; when they are losing she screams. Either way, it’s a lose-lose situation for me.

However, she apparently isn’t the only one that enjoys the sport and over the years I’ve had to endure several games. By several, I mean two. I’ve learned a few things along the way:

1. The only slightly appealing thing about watching the games is the food. Things that I would never consider ordering in a restaurant are suddenly A-Ok when they are sitting on a table in front of you. It’s not until I go home and remove crusty nacho cheese from my hair, Dorito crumbs from my shirt, and a chicken wing bone stuck in between my teeth that I feel truly disgusted with myself.

2. Life isn’t a romantic comedy and men don’t find it endearing or cute when you ask them how the players make a touchdown. No one finds my naivety about the game charming and I’ve stopped asking about the difference between the quarterback and the quarter pounder.

3. The Super Bowl commercials are never worth watching the game. Ever. I can’t understand why people say they watch the game just for the commercials. Are some of the commercials clever? Yes. Are some of the commercials chuckle-worthy? On occasion. Are the commercials equivalent to an episode of The Office? No. Is it ever worth it to sit through an hours-long football game just to say to say that the new Snickers commercial that aired around hour ten was so funny that you smiled? No.

4. People expect you to know everything about your school team. I can’t count the number of times that relatives and neighbors and neighbors’ relatives have come up to me and asked me how the Syracuse team was doing this year. I would be more likely to tell you the average annual income for a Dutch family of four than I would be able to tell you how many games Syracuse has won during any particular season.

As I write this my roommates are comparing the schedules for their respective football teams and posting godforsaken game-day magnets on the fridge. It’s too bad that I’ll have to accidentally throw it out and replace it with my hand-crafted schedule that outlines every rerun of Full House on TV.

Last night, though, this same good friend also got engaged to her boyfriend of two years. Um. Congratulations?

Yeah, yeah, so they’re in love, whatever. I get it.

I was in love once. I never actually talked to the guy, but it was there. I’m still a little baffled by her annoucement of love and commitment at such a tender age as 22. Maybe it’s me, but a lot of the time, I still feel 14. I just have so much to learn about myself before I can conceive of taking the black – and – white plunge.

And before she started dating her boyfriend — oops, i mean her fiance — my friend was right there with me, braiding my hair in the photobooth with an economy bag of fun – size Snickers and a stack of trashy magazines.

Now, she has the Big Job, the Big Ring, the Big Life, and I’m wondering what to do with all these issues of Jane and feeling like I should take the training wheels of my bike.

Is it just me, or does the prospect of marriage seem insane at this point in time? My own parents and grandparents were married at this age, but today things have loosened up a bit. Maybe it’s because we’re living longer, but I feel like forty is a good age for marriage — live half of your life single, half of it married. The way things are going, I’ll probably won’t feel forty until I’m sixty.

At least there is a potentially fun wedding to look foward to — now I that I don’t have to pay my older brother to steal me drinks.

My mom always told me anything that doesn’t go bad after three weeks is made out of stuff you shouldn’t put in your body anyway.

For the most part, I listened to her. But every once in a while…slipping a few coins in a tiny slot and watching that King-Sized Snickers plummet towards your waiting hands is truly the only thing that can get you through a day.

And then of course, the diet industry went and ruined everything.

Kraft Foods, the makers of that oh-so-natural bright orange cheese, have begun to test out vending machines that are stocked with only South Beach Diet approved options. Yes. South Beach Diet.

As in…lame alternatives for bread, sugar, and whole grains.

According to reports, some of the options included in the new machines are, “planters nuts, Breakstone’s low-fat cottage cheese, Crystal Light drinks, Jell-O sugar-free gelatin snacks, Nabisco Wheat Thins and the new South Beach Diet lunch wraps.”

Low fat cottage cheese? Wheat Thins? Why not just eat some paper and chase it down with stale rainwater?

And what’s with a “lunch wrap” sitting inside a box for weeks on end? How is that healthy? Or even remotely natural?

I guess the ingredients, which include words like “aspartame” (the sugar substitute that is proven to cause cancer), “alpha amylase” (??), and “sodium metabisulfite” (?!?), say it all:

If you’re gonna stuff your body with chemicals, at least make sure those chemicals are tasty.

Now give me back my Twinkies!

You have everything that was ever good stuffed together and covered in chocolate. You are my favorite candy bar. You are even better frozen.

But alas, you hate me. You do! Why? Because of how many calories are in you. Because eating you will give me all the fat I need in one day.

And yet, you tempt me so.

What’s a girl to do? Make a shot that’s the closet thing to your fat-abulous goodness, that’s what.

Snickers Bar

• 1/3 Frangelico

• 1/3 Kahlua

• 1/3 Bailey’s Irish Cream

Take a rocks glass (bigger than a shot glass, smaller than a plastic red cup) and fill it with ice. Pour your Frangelico and Kahlua into the glass, and then “float” the Bailey’s on top.

The best way to “float” a liquor is to hold a spoon upside down and drip the alcohol into you glass drop by drop. It takes a while, but it’s worth it—plus, you look cool.

…just remember, that coolness totally goes out the window as soon as you get so wasted you start wearing your skirt as a hat.