five lumberjacks walk upto a bar....

...and after having their ID's checked by a bouncer who complains that the Banana Suit is over done, are instantly greeted by Ron Burgundy who tells them he "misses babe too".  Moments after, a scantily clad Dorothy and her creepy Flying Monkey request a picture.  By the time these lumberjacks get their first screwdriver, they've found Waldo. "Britney Spears" is also there...only looking more like a 6' 5" hairy man than the real deal.

Did I mention that it's still dark out? And oh yeah, it's 7 am?

This is breakfast club.  A long standing Purdue University tradition and something I got to experience for the first time this weekend.

After standing around, in awe of the sight around me, us lumberjacks finally found a table.  From our perch we could see a game of words with friends, a couple Cactus mugs (a Purdue bar, famous for it's piano man and neon colored mugs), and Napoleon Dynamite.  Smokey the bear, a friend to the lumberjacks, was in attendance along with Mario and Luigi, Captain and Coke, and the Mystery Machine complete with all the characters.

The scene inside Jakes, a local bar, is energizing.  Every home game at Purdue, students wake up early (or just never go to bed) to get ready in their well thought out and intricate costumes, wait on line, and enter the bars at 7am. The windows of the bars are covered to block out the daylight as the sun rises....inside you have no idea what time it is or how long you have been there.  You can hear the bartender come over the loudspeaker and say "LOOK OUT FOR FREE DONUTS"  to which everyone cheers and continues on singing Piano Man or whatever hit happens to be blaring.  No one seems to notice that it's 7:30, or at least no one cares.

It's like Halloween every Saturday, mixed with a ton of school spirit and a lot more "orange juice"...

Just in case you were wondering....the lumberjacks (complete with plastic ax's) were a hit, getting our picture posted on the B1G mobile twitter and getting our picture taken for the local paper. 

Now I know what you're all thinking.  Since you are all dedicated readers of the blog, you know that the purpose is to share all of the lessons I've learned while living in the midwest.  So while my story about perpetual drunken halloween-esque escapes might be riviting, where are the lessons?  Well, good thing you asked, because here they are...


1. Suspenders should be utilized whenever possible.
      I'm tellin ya, they really work.  They held my pants up the whole day.  Not once did I have to worry about my pants movin around and my bum hanging out.  Thanks, suspenders.

2. Puns are HILARIOUS
     When dressed in a ridiculous costume, try and find as many witty puns to say as possible.  This will make you more intriguing/funny/in character.  For instance, as a lumberjack I enjoyed using "It was an ax-ident", "ax-ually", "you have a funny ax-cent" and "can i ax you something?" throughout the morning and into the afternoon hours before my nap.  People thought it was hilarious, I thought it was hilarious, we all laughed.

3. Don't encourage someone dressed as Frogger to hop across the road into oncoming traffic because it's "what frogger would do".


Since my real camera bit the bullet earlier this summer,  I will be waiting on Ms. Bunder's documentation of all things Breakfast Club, but promise to include photos in this blog.

Until next time....

Lesson Number 4

So here I am! Have you missed me?

Once you read today's blog entry you'll realize why last weekend was just way too taxing for me to put together my thoughts for you to read. However, this weekend has been full of ... a lot of nothing, leaving me plenty of time to share yet another lesson I've learned, landlocked in Indiana.

I know I've been talking about my lesson in obesity, but the fact is everyday I find something else about the fat people here that is shocking. So I'm giving it another week to keep track of all of the factors that go into being a fat person in the mid-west. I kid you not, I heard a 2 year old say McDonalds at Target the other day. She said it 5 times, I was NOT hearing things.


So instead of my lesson in how to avoid entering the 30% of people in Indiana that are overweight (stats as of 2009, congrats NJ...only 22% of us are tipping the scales) I will share with you a lesson I learned last weekend.


After another exhausting week of interning (it's kick ass by the way...I am LOVING every bit of it!) I was feeling a little down. I was missing friends, pouting over the fact that 2 of my best friends are backpacking through Europe and 1 is on the sunny beaches in Jamaica offering Music therapy services to small villages, and overall just being a Debbie Downer.

I read through a great book, called "Walking Backwards in High Heels", which I highly recommend to any ladies out there looking for a new perspective on things, and then got the urge. About a 5 minute walk from my house is a place called yogulatte. It is incredible. The frozen yogurt is the best I've ever tasted and they make the most delicious oatmeal and shakes with fresh fruits! (They also sell gift cards, if anyone wants to send them my way!) So, yes around 10:00pm, the urge hits and I try and stop it. But while I've moped around all day, I tell myself that if I eat the frozen yogurt I need to perk up. I then convinced myself that I had to make sure everything was clean before I left. Well, that lasted all of five minutes but I had at least compromised and tied up the garbage to take out.


This is where the trouble starts.


I live in a 15 or so story building, which is actually one of the tallest buildings in Indianapolis and I can spot it from work!! On each floor, by the elevator, is a "rubbish room". I am quite fond of the name. There is a "rubbish shoot" in which you can place tied up garbage bags that "shoots" somewhere or another into the depths of the building or leave boxes and such in the closet.

Lesson Number 4, don't hold your keys in the same hand as your garbage.

Yup. There went the keys right down the "rubbish shoot". I stopped for a moment in disbelief. Could this have REALLY happened? No. It couldn't have. There must have been something in my trash that just sounded like keys...right? Wrong. I checked my purse and lo and behold no keys.

So now what. Thoroughly embarrassed, I arrived at the front desk knowing full well they would give me a spare set of keys to my apartment. But I could feel my face heating up as I started to say the next question "So, uh, do you know where the rubbish shoot leads to?" Only a blank stare met me in return. Then after what felt like an eternity "Um, no, I just started here last week."

Great.


Let me also share another background detail.....my only spare car key is in Succasunna, NJ. And for the record, that trick where you can unlock a car door through a cell phone, does NOT work halfway across the country.



The way the story ends is that I actually follow my nose into a creepy stairway in the basement of my building with a friend of mine and convince the doorman to give us a key to let us in to said unmarked smelly door. Then my friend proceeded to search all of the garbage from my building until...yes...we found the keys. Dirty, next to a chicken bone, and greasy as all get out. However, if you ever need to wash your keys, know that the clicker will still work even after you wash them, clorox wipe them down, wash them again and anti bacterial them.



Remember this friends. Put your keys somewhere else before you throw away the garbage.

P.S. I never got the frozen yogurt. So I treated myself on Friday after another successful week of interning and a 10 hour shift :)