Final Preparation

Friday, September 29th, 2017

Finals week is coming, and that means one thing: it's time to get together, make some food, sing a song, and get studying. I brought eggs and syrup, and everybody else brought everything else. We all set to work making our various contributions: Sarah cracked some eggs for scrambling, Caleb sliced some apples to... I don't know what they call it but they tasted really good when he was done, and they reminded me of the way my great-grandma used to make apples for breakfast. I think Lucy and Brooke set the table whilst Anna prepared the crepe batter. After that I don't remember what everybody else did because I started frying up some bacon. It all smelt wonderful, and we listened to music that various people said, "Oh, we have to listen to this song!" And so that's how we made our playlist. Brooke fried crepes, and after I was done with the bacon Sarah threw her eggs on. Being the person who I am, I couldn't help but tell her how it was done. "See this little chunk of egg here? (I scooped up a little sliver out of the pool of soupy scrambled mostly still uncooked eggs) You need to strain it out and set it on a plate. It's done cooking."
"What, no! That's crazy!" Sarah cried out.
"No no no, I'm serious! This is how it's done!"
Sarah would have none of it, and began to wrestle the spatula out of my hand. "I've got twenty-one years of experience cooking eggs, which is more than you've got, so let me do it!"
Well, she had a point. Classic older sibling move. Not that she's my sibling, but she is a sibling. At any rate, the eggs got cooked and she told me to get the cheese out of the fridgerator. After grabbing it, I threw it to her, planning on... well I forgot what I was planning, but that's besides the point. Due to the bag not being zipped properly, (*cough* Sarah *cough*) (It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that it had been thrown through the air, I can assure you.) it came open and threw cheese all over the kitchen beneath it's flight trajectory. Cheese was all over the place. Very sad, yet very funny. I started gathering the floored cheese while Sarah put some unspilled cheese in with the eggs. By the time she was finished and put the bag away, I brought the cheese I'd picked up over to the pan, saying, "Ok, I salvaged the cheese. Lemme put it in right here..."
"What, NO!" shouted Sarah. "What are you thinking!?"
I laughed, we all laughed, and the cheese was thrown into the abyss of Tartarus.

Once all the food was cooked up we sat down, prayed, then preyed on the food. It was amazingly good, with whup cream, fancy apples, apple cider, crepes, eggs, and bacon. Lots of bacon. We talked, ate, smiled, and listened to more songs. By and by though, it was around nine o'clock. So we cleaned up all the dishes, the kitchen, and whatnot, then prepared for the climax of the evening: our Taylor Swift song. Every quarter when we get together before finals, we sing a Swift song, usually from her repertoire of good ones, or at least decent ones. This time, however, we were going to sing Look What You Made Me Do. The only version I had seen up to this point was one done by an Asian girl plucking strings on a... I'm not sure what you call it. A thing. It sounded hilarious. From the lyrics I heard from this version I could tell it wasn't that great a song, and most everybody's comments were to that effect anyways. At any rate, this was the song we were going to sing. We set up the phone with the camera, and two others for lyrics and/or chords, and off we went. It was hi-larious. Our vocal skills were off the charts, which direction I'll let you decide. But we had it all: epic dimmed lights at the end and beginning, (that was Brooke's idea) a dramatic solo (courtesy of Caleb), and lots of bopping, sitting still dancing, and strange hand motions that supposedly have some meaning or other. What else could you want?

After this was over, we headed downstairs to the basement where Brooke and Anna and Sarah's main area was, (we were at their house) and we got to work. Between the talking, laughing, and general goodness, I managed to get a good chunk of my Loot dialogue done, which was nice. For the first part, Anna was in her room taking a Greek final online. At some point though, Lucy went over to her to see how it was going. A little after that she came back, and then a lil after that Anna yelped out, "BROOKE! There's a spider! Help me!!"
"Alright, I'll be right over!" She got up to run to Anna's assistance.
Caleb joked, "Now it's going to be a real big spider and Brooke will call for Leaf to come kill it."
We laughed. Caleb must've been a prophet or else Brooke must've overheard, because not a second later she cried out, "Aghh! LEAF! It's big! Come kill it!"
I was up and over there in a jiffy, and Brooke and Anna were out in half a jiffy.
"It's behind that box!" cautioned Anna.
I moved said box. Sure enough, there was the spider, and he was definitely considerable in size.
"Could you give me something to squash it?"
Anna handed Lucy's shoe, which was alright because Lucy didn't see it.
SQUASH. Scrape. Wipe off, and "Eewww!" from the girls. Victory. And Lucy never knew we used her shoe. Heh heh.

We continued to work, and then Caleb invited Benjamin over, so he came by too. He also brought a twenty ounce can of redbull, which sparked a hilarious conversation all about it. Then Lucy had to go, so she hugged everybody and said goodbye, because it'd be two weeks before she got back since she was heading home in early the next morning. I drove her home and then went back to everybody else. At some point Sarah had cracked open the pita chip jar, and now a thought came across my mind. "Brooke, do yall still have that humus?"
"Umm, lemme see."
She walked over to the fridge, looked, then pulled it out. Then she struck a unique pose, with arms high in the air as she tried to make it as epic as possible while extending the humus out to me. I approached and did an equally baffling obscure series of contortions before finally grabbing it from her hands.
"Heh, that was random. Not sure why we did that."
"Not sure either. Hahaha."
I then returned to my seat at the coffee table and she to her spot on the couch, and I proceeded to eat the pita chips with the humus. Which, by the way, is really good and you should try it some time. After a good spell with more writing and so forth, Benjamin decided he, too, wanted some pita. He came over, grabbed some chips, then dipped it into the humus. But then he caught a woof of it.
"Whew, that is foul! This humus' best by date was a week ago!"
"No no, it's still good!" I pleaded, "It's just not at it's best right now. That doesn't mean it's bad."
"Really Leaf!? Haha, this is still bad." Sadly, he threw it away. "I'm just wondering, how did you not notice it was bad? You looked pretty happy munching on it for the last, what, hour?" He laughed. They laughed. I laughed.
"It tasted fine to me!"
"Well hopefully you won't get sick off it, or experience any other negative effects."

Later, at some ungodly time of night, we all departed, each to his own home, and went to sleep. That was quite the fun evening, and, thus refreshed, we say to finals week, "Bring it on!"