We were merely freshmen.

I could write an entire blog on my freshman year of college (who couldn't?), but to tide you over until that happens (probably won't), here's a classic from the archives:

Mark and I began dating in early October of 2007 and in January of 2008 decided it would be fun to load up all of our friends into two tiny cars and drive 18 hours to Florida. You're probably thinking, Holy crap, here comes some spring break secrets from the deepest, darkest files. No, sorry.

This is a tale of how we tried to get to Florida as broke college students.

With little spending money and zero income (somehow I didn't have a job my freshman year; how did I con my parents into that one?), we resorted to...

Donating our plasma.

It was all the rage. Advertisements in the student newspaper. Promotions about it on the radio. Facebook status updates. We could make $100 per donation and we could do it twice a week! We added up the weeks left until spring break, assuming we could get $200 per week. "We could move to Florida!" I joked.

So the next day, against my darling mother's wishes, Mark and I went to the plasma center. We filled out mounds of paperwork and had a screening done. We could donate and we could start instantly! The nurse led us back to a cheery room where everyone sat with sleepy smiles and IVs hooked to their arms. I glanced at a needle in someone's arm and my stomach immediately felt squeamish. The sandy beach, the splashy waves. I pushed the image of the needle out of my head and began thinking about how much fun Florida was going to be.

About twenty minutes into the procedure, the nurse came up to me, mumbled a few things, and called another nurse over. I started getting sweaty. What is wrong? I started to ask if everything was okay and the nurse interrupted my thoughts, explaining that my plasma wasn't flowing correctly (except it was in medical jargon). "We're going to have to do an inverted flow and put the plasma back into your veins," she told me (again, in some sort of medical jargon). Cue: this. The nurse fixes the needle so the plasma can flow back inside my veins and all the sudden my arm is on fire. It is the warmest sensation and I turn to Mark, who is holding my hand, and say "I don't care if we ever go to Florida!"

I finish, but Mark still has about a half hour (his procedure is going swimmingly), so the nurse gives me a big bottle of water and tells me I can sit in the waiting room. Just a few minutes after I sit down, another nurse finds me and says "M'am? I think your boyfriend --" and I jump up and we walk/sprint to the back and she's all, "He looks like he is going to pass out." And - this is not my finest moment - I'm plainly like:

"No, he's just naturally that pale."

For those that don't know, Mark is a redhead and - therefore - has super fair (freckly) skin. Turns out, though, it wasn't him just being naturally pale. Nope, he was about to pass out.

They unhooked him as quickly as they could and sent us on our way. You could almost hear them shouting "No lawsuits, please!", as we scampered out. The staff at the front desk handed me $20 and Mark $40 and gave us the it-didn't-work-out-but-thanks-for-playing talk.

Needless to say, we didn't get to Florida. Not even close. We did, however, make it in the spring of 2010, and that is another blog post for another day.

No shame in my mortified flushed cheeks game.

Good morning! Thank you zillions for the feedback on how to spruce up my blog. I received a few super-helpful comments and e-mails. I hope my "blahg" (ha!) transformation will be complete within a few weeks. There's lots of work to do to get there, but that's why I always ask the barista to sneak in three shots of espresso into a double-shot drink. Zing!

Is anyone in the mood to cringe this morning? I have a couple embarrassing stories to share, if so. (Did you miss some? Check out other horrifying stories here and here.)

Story #1 happened a couple weeks ago. My co-worker - the bubbliest person to ever exist - walks in, her head hanging and her bottom lip quivering. She's the girl you could never say a bad thing about, even if you wanted to, because she's just that sweet.

She's clocking in, really worked up and brushing the hair out of her face with her sighs. Our boss comes up and hugs my co-worker, and I hear her mumble something about a wreck. Eventually my co-worker collects herself and joins me.

Me: "It would really cheer you up if I told you how many tickets I've been issued and how many accidents I've been in. I'm so sorry about your wreck!"
Her: Blank stare.
Me: "Oh. I --"
Her: "What? I wasn't in a wreck, silly!" (She actually called me 'silly', which I found rather endearing.) "I ran a red light and it really scared me. Thankfully the other car honked and I missed them completely!"
Me, in my head: "Oh, yeah. I mean...I've pretty much never been in a wreck, either."

And the story above helps transition into this story, if not only to serve as an explanation for why I don't currently have a car (another story for another day). Okay, story #2, but a back story first. The back story will also embarrass me, so the story is two-fold and double the fun for you guys.

I spent the majority of my junior high afternoons at a friend's house watching his band practice. One evening at dinner I was like, "Moooom. I need to learn guitar because I want to impress all the guys at practice." After weeks of whining and convincing, she bought me an acoustic Fender Stratocaster. Oh yeah, baby. And signed me up for lessons, too. My mom was and is a total saint. I would have been like, "Shut up, zit-face and go do your chores." (I'll make a great mom.) Fast forward to age 17. I'd taken lessons and knew a handful of songs, but I had stopped hanging out with the band guys after school, so my interest had reached a plateau. I did have a new boyfriend, though. And that new boyfriend needed a Christmas gift.

You must be thinking, "Oh, no she didn't! She gave him her super-sexy, expensive guitar!" Worse. I pawned it. And even worse? I was only 17, which meant I couldn't legally pawn it. I had to have one of my best friends, who was 18, pawn it. And I got like $70 for it. (I'm still so sorry, ma!) (Please don't stop reading, readers! - I'll prove to you in some post down the road that I'm not completely heartless.)

Then, for my 20th birthday, my now-boyfriend gifted me with a brand new acoustic guitar. I had told him about my glory days playing a little AC/DC during my old friend's band practice and then bashfully had told him about pawning my golden beauty. So he got me a freaking guitar! I opened it and he was like: "Play!" And I froze up and was like "Uh, wait. Is a C# like this or like this?", demonstrating with my fingers. He was like "Huh? I thought you knew how to play." And I was all, "Where is the nearest hole I can crawl in?"

Fast forward again to present day. Last week I secretly bought guitar lessons. I say secretly because I think my boyfriend only gets on the computer to mess with his Fantasy Football team; he doesn't read the blog. (Gasp!)

I went to my first lesson this week. How did I get to my lesson, though, if I don't have a car?

Normally I would bike. Alas, I don't have a soft-case or a strap, and I wasn't about to bike through town one-handed holding my guitar. I had no other choice except to walk. (We have poor public transportation, FYI.)

I walked through this freaking college town carrying a guitar and nothing else. I looked like the biggest wanna-be on earth.

Before I left, I almost practiced my "I am aware I'm the biggest douchebag on the planet" face in the mirror. I refrained, though once I was actually doing things like waiting at the crosswalk holding nothing but a guitar, I just put on my best: "Yes, I'm a total douche" face and soldiered on.

Oh, and also? Guitar lessons went great. I remembered how to play a C minor, too.

Now it's your turn - share your embarrassing stories with me!

Story II, for your pleasure.

Last night as I drifted to sleep, I pictured a productive Wednesday where I would: clean out my closet (literally, not figuratively), buy a new bulb for my getting-dimmer-by-the-minute headlight, sign up for a bicycle permit so I can bike to class without worrying that I'll return from class with a ticket on my handlebars, go to the gym, and study for Thursday's mechanical quiz. However, my alarm - set for 9:30am - did not go off. Instead, I woke up at eleven-freaking-thirty-ante-meridiem. Nix the closet cleaning, bulb buying, and permit purchasing and maybe that will give me some time to blog and window-shop for Christmas.

Instead of relaxing with a cup of coffee this morning, I grabbed sub sandwiches with roommate J for lunch... and I haven't accomplished anything else today. Boo. Hiss.

Just to make sure I don't get anything done today, I'll tell a story from two years ago, when I was a sophomore in college, wide-eyed and bushy-tailed.

Once upon a time, roommate J, boyfriend M, and I all needed to take a nutrition class as a part of our separate major requirements. The class gods shone on us and granted us to all have theory together. For the nutrition there was theory and lab. Theory was held in a giant auditorium that could seat around 350 students. That's about how many were in our nutrition class. (Labs, though, were broken down into about 30 students per lab.)

On the first day of class, our professor asked us to write our name, major, and one thing about us on a note card. Back story: I have been called "funny", "humorous", "hysterical", etc. my whole life. It's how my parents describe me, it's what boyfriend M says partly made him fall for me, and it's how I'm sometimes introduced to people. Example: occasionally my friends will tell their friends that I am hilarious before we're introduced and they'll say: "This is M. The hilarious one I told you about?" Oh, thank you, now I am going to have to make this person laugh all evening. No pressure.

So I'm tapping the note card on the arm of the chair thinking of what I should write. "I love nutrition." No, that's a lie. "Nutrition intrigues me. I'm always striving to be healthy." Nah, I had a Red Bull, cheese fries, and sour gummy worms for dinner last night. The professor tells us to pass our cards to the center and the "about me" line is still blank. "I am funnier than Tina Fey," I scribble hurriedly, and passed my note card in.

Huge mistake. The next time our nutrition class met, the professor asked into her microphone for me to raise my hand. Just me. Timidly, I raised my hand. "You funnier than Tina Fey?" she asked in her adorable Chinese accent. Red face. "Er. I mean, I--", I started to respond but she cut me off. "Okay, then. I love laughing. You perform joke for us next class."

I spent the following two days researching jokes - literally researching - and planning an outfit to wear. I didn't want to look frumpy while making an idiot of myself in front of my 350-ish peers.

Friday came and I was called to the front of the auditorium. "They'll laugh," I thought. "Be cool. Stop blushing. Stop freaking blushing!" My heart was pounding. I told the joke. (I apologize to you all, but I don't remember the joke.) Maybe 40% of the class laughed.

1. That should of earned me an automatic A. It didn't. I got a C in the course.
2. I'm not funny on command. I had no idea a quick scribble would land me a stand-up gig in front of my 350 peers.

The best part? When I was hired for my job at the dessert shop, a girl I work with (the owner's niece, actually) smiled perkily and said "I know you from somewhere! Oh. Oh! You're the girl that told a joke in front of our nutrition class a couple years ago..."

Hi, I'm M. I am majoring in hospitality and planning to open a coffee shop. I'm not funnier than Tina Fey. In fact, as my nutrition class peers probably think, I am not funny at all.

Prom is a Pipe Dream.

Good morning, loves. As I stretched out of my long slumber this morning, my first thought was: I need coffee. And my second thought was: how about Starbucks? Yes, I know, I'm not doing very well avoiding Starbucks. I try to keep my money local for mostly everything else, save for the grocery store and the very-occasional lunch at a brand-name restaurant. But this morning I just had to have a salted caramel hot chocolate + double espresso. The drink is heavenly, but I'm over the lack of seating and lack of windows at Starbucks. Next time I will go to the local coffeehouse that I love - the coffee house that grows and roasts their own coffee beans, has fat chairs to lounge in, and is covered in walls of windows.

Anyway. I promised you all a story. I plan to post one story a week. The stories will be something that left me mortified or embarrassed. This unnamed series (I need a clever title!) of stories are meant to be light-hearted; in the scheme of things, these experiences are very insignificant, but at the time made blush creep over my cheeks and the back of my neck.

It's the spring of my senior year of high school; the season of acceptance letters, prom, and graduation. My junior and senior year of high school I dated a guy that lived two hours away. So when I was asked to prom my junior year by a guy that went to my high school, I declined saying that I was dating someone, but thank you anyway. Declining my friend's casual invitation meant I only had one shot to make prom the mostmagicalthingthateverhappened: my senior year. I spent several hours (sorry, mom!) the spring of senior year looking for the perfect dress. I finally found the dress on a weekend trip to Kansas City. It was a white, strappy Betsey Johnson with the proverbial Betsey Johnson glittery sparkles. The morning of prom I got my hair and make up done. My out-of-town boyfriend (we'll call him A) would arrive around 2 and we were going to take pictures with my friends at 3:30. A was a little late, but we were going to be having a luxurious dinner with several friends and then we'd be dancing the night away, so I didn't mind. "You look gorgeous," A murmured when he arrived clad in a t-shirt and shorts. "Thank you," I gushed. "Now go get dressed so we can go dance!" He grabbed his suit and disappeared to the bathroom.

A few minutes later he came out and said, "Um. I forgot...I forgot my pants." WHAT! HOW COULD YOU NOT BRING YOUR SUIT PANTS!! I blankly stared at him. "I could just wear the suit jacket with my shorts." Oh, you could? You can wear a black suit jacket with navy cargo shorts? No. My mother, a true saint, ran to the mall and bought an almost-matching pair of black pants for A, but I was livid that the first half of our pictures feature A donning freaking cargo shorts. (And mad that we were late to prom pictures because of the pants fiasco.) Conclusion: prom is not magical. At the end of the night we had all had a good time, but the night would have been just as fun without the $300 dress, the $100 dinner, and the feeling in the pit of my stomach when A came out of the bathroom and said he didn't have his prom pants. Looking back, this story makes me laugh. At the time, however, I felt my seventeen year old world crashing in the form of nasty navy cargo shorts.

Oh, and to add to my stories of embarrassment, I just realized I've been sitting at the table designated for handicapped customers the entire time I've been at Starbucks. What a jerk.

Hope you all are having a nice week! I can almost taste the weekend...