Environ-mental

Do you remember Flip a Cup? No, not the drinking game. The drinking caffeine environmental initiative!

If yes, skip the following paragraph in square brackets.

[If no, read me! Flip a Cup was an environmentally savvy program at Nipissing involving Tim Hortons and bright lime green travel mugs. If you wanted to be environmentally friendly (and who doesn't want to be, especially when it's convenient?), you could pick up one of said attractive mugs, order your hot Tim Hortons beverage, then return the cup to designated bins around the campus. The travel mugs were washed and reused continuously.]

Great concept, right? I thought so. Except it had its flaw. A fatal flaw, if you will. People just took the mugs home with them ... mug after mug. Just pick one up, get your coffee, take the mug home. This method still would have worked if the students had brought the mugs back and reused them. But alas, it was not to be.

I have to say I was quite disappointed when this initiative failed. So, I have decided to give you a couple environmental tips for both those of us who bring travel mugs and those of us who don't.

1. If you bring a travel mug, the Tims on campus only charge you for a medium when you get a coffee refill. Great, eh? On days when I know I'm going to need coffee, I bring the biggest travel mug I have and just order "coffee, one milk, one sugar" and they fill it right up to the brim for the price of a medium, when it would actually be a lot more like a XXL (which I don't think is even an option for non-travel-mug customers). So using your travel mug will save you money!

2. I also want to give the Tims on campus special recognition. In my experience, if you take a travel mug to the Tims chains in town, they use a regular cup to measure your coffee, then have to throw the cup out anyway. They may not do this at all places, but they definitely do it at some, and to me that just entirely defeats the purpose and intent of most travel mug users. So props to NipU's Tims peeps.

3. Now, I know double cupping can be necessary sometimes. It makes sense; you don't want to burn your hands and the Tims cups don't exactly have handles you can hold onto. So if you have to double cup your drink, or even if you don't, I just want to make more people aware that Tims cups are actually recyclable. Yep! RECYCLABLE! Isn't that exciting?! So double cup, single cup, iced cap cup--none of them have to be thrown in the trash! I find not many people are aware of this and would prefer to recycle if they were aware of the option.

Well, I'm off to grab a "coffee, one milk, one sugar" on my way to class. Happy Caffeine!

[Photo by and of author; no license infringement]

I am becoming an alien

After writing the midterm for my honours seminar this afternoon, I have opted to write a post today in a form of celebratory writing. Based on the comment by Anonymous in the post below, I have decided to tell a little tale ... a tale involving English, movies, and gruesome images. Prepare yourself.

Last semester, my honours seminar was about apartheid literature from South Africa. As part of the class, we actually watched two movies, which was neato! One of those movies was District 9. For those of you who have not seen it, I now give a selective brief summary. Aliens come to earth above the Townships in South Africa (Township = designated area for coloured people during apartheid. Apartheid = split between whites and coloureds that we hopefully now all recognize was horrible). Well! This dude named Wikus is put in charge of moving all the aliens into District 9 from the makeshift huts they currently inhabit. Of course this is intertwined with a love plot and a father-in-law who wants to destroy Wikus, but that is beside the point. Wikus becomes contaminated by alien fluids. *Cue dramatic music* He slowly starts to change after this, into AN ALIEN! Of course a lot of dramatic things happen after this, including capture, explosions, cool weapons, and suits that look like the Transformers; there are racial undertones and symbolic statements about apartheid, etc.

At the same time in my own life, for an unknown reason (which is still undetermined, but

may be resolved after a specialist appointment next Monday), two of my fingernails were slowly detaching themselves from their nail beds. Yep, I am telling you this embarrassing life story for the sake of entertainment. Enjoy. Now, in District 9, one of the first indicators that Wikus is becoming an alien is that his fingernails fall off. That's right, I was becoming an alien. It was just one event in a series of ironies called my life. Talk about getting involved with your class! But, needless to say, it was quite disturbing. Teachers out there: Text-to-self connection. So, of course I told the class, and my fellow students and professor gave me possible causes, all of which had been disproved by doctors. If you hear of some crazy person who slowly became an alien, it was probably me. It'll make a good party story for you! Or even just library talk. Maybe there will be a plaque, dedicating the library to me instead of the other option, something catchy with Alien in the title . . .

(As a clarification, said condition is not contagious, and has been improving. One fingernail is now fully returned to normal, and the other appears to be on the same path. Do not fear me, earthlings, I am not actually an alien and cannot infect you with a foreign parasite).

Organized Chaos

Yep, exams are officially over. How do I know? The most obvious indication is the state of orderliness of my bedroom. During exam season, my room essentially becomes organized chaos. I feel as though many of you can relate, so I am going to describe my room to you for an "it's funny because it's true" moment.

Ultimately, every surface in my room becomes covered in piles of ... stuff (to use an extremely nondescript noun).

The floor = dirty clothes.

The foot of the bed = clean clothes (which stay on the bed day and night ... they just add to the warmth for sleeping - of which there is very little anyway).

The head of the bed = books in use for essays.

The middle of the bed = open snacks.

The nightstand = 10 coffee cups in various levels of consumption.

The alarm clock = the television series on DVD you watch for breaks during studying and writing.

The desk = piles of papers from classes.

Beside the bed = piles of papers for essays.

The chair = books for research/textbooks for quick reference that can be reached from the bed.

The bookshelf = Gatorade to avoid dehydration from the coffee, cough candies and Kleenex to help with the cold acquired through minimal sleep, cell phone in case of stress or studying emergencies.

The wardrobe (Does anyone else instantly think of Narnia every time they hear this word?) = basically empty because the clothes are all over your floor and/or bed.

I am happy to report my wardrobe is now fairly empty for another reason - packing for home :) Christmas break (which is really an illusion, as we all know it is actually full of readings and assignments, but allow me to live in ignorant bliss for a few days), here I come!

Merry Christmas Nipissingites! Bonne fin de semestre!

Everyone Deserves a Chance to ... fly!

Dear All,

As I am sure most of you are also doing as of late, I just spent all weekend watching a television series on DVD (I'm watching Smallville, if anyone is interested) while preparing for midterms and reading notes for final papers. As a break, I decided to share a little anecdote, showing how much of a nerd I truly am, or about 30 first year English students perceive it anyway. It's okay though, I know I am a nerd. I've accepted it. It's the first step.

It all began (and ended -- I've taken awhile to write the story) 2 Fridays ago, when I was going to the third floor F wing to run an ENGL 1106 Exam Strategies Cram (reason #1 I seemed like the nerdiest person of life). I went to use the staircase by the theatre and there was a small group congregating on the stairwell. One girl was singing "Defying Gravity" in

the stairwell at the top of her lungs (reason #2 I am a nerd: I knew the song just by hearing it, and reason #3 that it is from Wicked, the musical - which, reason #4, I knew BEFORE it was featured in Glee, I might add). So I ascended the stairs and waited for some delightful first year students to come to the room, and once it was beginning we each went around and said our favourite book. I kind of forgot that that would mean I had to say my own. So on the spot I

decided my favourite novel is Pillars of the Earth, a basically 2000 page novel (Reason #5). Then, I stood up to close the door since the music was so loud and said "As much as I love Wicked, Idina Menzel does this better in the original anyway" (Reason #6). When they looked at me funny I said "Kristen Chenoweth? No?" (Reason # 7). Then, reason #8, before all of them had left, some volunteers came to an information meeting that I was hosting in the same room about NU Reads, a literacy program I co-created with a friend 3 years ago.

I like to think it made them feel in safe hands for talking about exams; considering I am a nerd, they hopefully trusted me to tell them how to be one for a day to write a successful exam. I have to say, most of them laughed at my nerdy comments, so at least it relieved some tension ...