May the MADventures begin!

Let the MADventures begin! This is a VERY long post, so if you have something in the oven right now, you should probably set the timer before you too engrossed in the story of my weekend and burn your dinner. If you don't, put the oven on, you'll be hungry by the time you've read all this!

Since we called this blog the MADventures of Charrrel Kingwright, I decided it was time I started having some MADventures to contribute. So, this weekend I went all out and had 4 mini-adventures in a row! Oh yes, you’d better believe it! I shall share assorted tales from the weekend with you here now.

This week the weekend started on Thursday with the annual Research Campus Bash. Basically, they gave us free beer and german food and polka music. All three of these were most excellent, particularly the beer. I had biked to work in anticipation of possibly partaking in an amount of beer such as to render me over the drink-drive limit. It’s a good job I did, because this is what occurred. My skype chat records show a sharp deterioration of my typing skills after the bash ended. Funny that. Anyhow, as a female international student, I had been invited to a sorority house later that evening to share in some nice autumn foods (read: pie) with the girls there.

**Disclaimer 1: please don’t think the story that follows makes me a terrible person. Beer was involved.**

I had already emailed the girl who invited me to ask if I could bring an American friend, and she’d said yes, with no restrictions. Now, this perhaps was a mistake on her part as all she knew about me was that I’m not American. I decided to make the most of this opportunity and take a male friend, for several reasons:

1) I didn’t want to bike there on my own. Safety first, see?

2) Said friend has taken me to free food events before.

3) I thought it would be funny.

We biked over to the sorority house and it was decided (this is the part where the free beer may or may not have played an important role) that in order to excuse the presence of my male friend, I should pretend to not speak English very well. This was a fairly tall order, since I am in fact English. A snap decision was made that I would pretend to be from Serbia. Quite why Serbia was chosen is beyond me now, but I think it could have been that I know some people from Serbia. So an hour of me pretending to not know very much English ensued. It was more difficult than I’d thought it might be! My friend spent a lot of time explaining things to me, and how he managed to keep a straight face is beyond me. It was both ridiculous and hilarious. The girls never questioned whether I was in fact Serbian (but you wouldn’t I suppose!) and they were very kind to us. I felt a bit guilty by the time we left, because they’d been so nice and given us pie. Sorry girls! You were very good hostesses! The pie was very good, by the way.

The MADventures continued on Friday, when I was invited to a costume party. The night before I found a large box in our garage (the lawnmower box) and decided to use it to make my costume. Later that evening I was talking to a (drunk) friend on skype chat and I asked him what the funniest thing I could be in a box was. Before this conversation, I’d had Froot Loops in mind. However, when Matt suggested I go as a box of condoms a new idea was born. It was genius really. So on Friday night after work I hot-footed it down to Walmart to buy spray paint. I picked blue glossy for the Durex Extra Safe box. By the time I got home it was dark so I opened the window to let some light out and stood in the back garden spray painting this box. Then disaster struck! The spray paint ran out and ‘Black and Decker’ was still clearly visible through the paint! There was only one solution. I headed back to Walmart for more paint. As luck would have it, I had the same server as before. To look less suspicious I also bought bread and milk. When I got home the first layer of paint was dry so I moved to the garage for the rest of the spraying and painting of the letters. I spent a happy hour painting and trying to keep the dog out of the way. I was pretty pleased with the finished product and I headed over to pick up some friends. They helped me tape up the back of the box and after sorting out their costumes we headed for the party. I should explain at this point that I didn’t really know any of the party hosts, but my friends had invited me. So I’m walking into a party where I don’t really know many people dressed as a box of condoms. It went down pretty well though, all in all. It was impossible to sit down wearing the box, and dancing required some special and unusual moves. There were lots of other amazing costumes going on there, including two Sarah Palins, John McCain, Hillary Clinton, Ashley Todd (google her, stupid girl), Daft Punk and Amy Winehouse. Very good times.

On Sunday I went to the Kings of Leon concert in Oklahoma City with some friends. It was incredible! They played all my favorite songs from the new album so I was very happy indeed. You’d think this would be adventure enough, but no, there was more. I bought drink vouchers and when I went back to get my second beer the girl gave me a voucher back by mistake (I think). I decided it was time for a random act of kindness so gave it to somebody waiting in the line. The guy I’d given the voucher then introduced me to his friends and came back to stand with us to watch the concert. He was a REALLY big Kings of Leon fan. His friends invited us to go to the Deli with them after the concert, but by the time we got back to Norman everyone else was wiped out from their parties on Saturday night. Well, everyone except me. After getting home I decided that my friends being tired was no reason for the party to stop, so I went to meet the people at the Deli to watch Hosty (who you really should see if you’ve not seen him before, what a great musician). After an hour or so the new people I’d met decided to head out, and they invited me to go back and hang out with them. Being a street-wise and safety-first young lady, of course I went. They dropped me off back at my car and beer-voucher-boy came with me while I followed his friend’s van. We eventually made it back to the house via Taco Bell and Conoco. Now, I should really have been paying attention to the directions. This would become apparent later on. A happy hour was spent sitting around chatting and watching two of the guys play Wii baseball. Then one of the guys fell asleep with his shoes on, which in their house meant he got stacked. I’d never witnessed stacking before, but the general idea is to pile as much stuff on the drunk person as possible. It was incredible, this guy ended up under chairs, pumpkins, cushions, rugs, coats, and a lot of other stuff. Once he was stacked up, we took lots of pictures on his camera and then unstacked him until no evidence was left. I wish I could have seen his face when he went to upload his pictures onto the computer! Once 2.30am rolled around it was time for me to head home. I thanked the hosts and went back to my car. This was where the problems started. The girl whose house it was had given me vague directions for how to get back, but anyone who knows me well will know the trouble I have with directions. Well, predictably I got very, very lost in NW Norman. I’ve tried looking back at google maps since and I still can’t work out where I went. After many three point turns I eventually found a sign for Robinson (finally! A street I knew!) and took it. It took me over half an hour to get home, which is pretty shameful for a town I’ve lived in for 14 months now. Oh well, can’t be helped. At least I made it home safely in the end.

**Disclaimer 2: I am not recommending that it is a good idea to go to the houses of folks you’ve just met. Think smart, kids. Stranger danger and all that.**

That is the story of my first weekend of MADventures. It was pretty EPIC all in all. However, now it’s back to ground with a bump for more homework and research. Darrel, I expect suitably comparable MADventure stories from you shortly.

-Charlotte