{"id":1323,"date":"2009-03-24T01:06:04","date_gmt":"2009-03-24T06:06:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tommy.lardbucket.org\/?p=1323"},"modified":"2014-04-07T09:22:30","modified_gmt":"2014-04-07T14:22:30","slug":"spring-break-chronicles-of-a-hobo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tommy.lardbucket.org\/?p=1323","title":{"rendered":"Spring Break: Chronicles of a Hobo"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A friend of a twin brother of a friend in Group C was so kind to drop me off in front of the dormitories of the former Scholastic Bowl at UIUC as he drove my friend and my friend&#8217;s twin brother back to Illinois. My arrival was met with less fanfare and confetti from the old gang than I expected. Although there were nachos, the news of a cake was a fabrication.<\/p>\n<p><img src='http:\/\/tommy.lardbucket.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/id.JPG' alt='fake uni ID' class='alignright' \/> I was a infiltrator in the hordes of UofI students. With forged papers, I rode the buses, studied in the libraries and sat on the grass. Neal &#038; Peter among others, took turns swiping me into dining courts. Neal also got me hooked on the fruit smoothies from LateNight, the local after-hours food source which every college seems to have. <\/p>\n<p>While I was there, Neal and I collaborated to convince some dining court workers to make the &#8220;Margaret Thatcher&#8221; fruit smoothie. It has peach, strawberries, mango and a <em>hint<\/em> of &#8220;Prime Minister-iness&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>What with being away from smoothies for several days, I&#8217;m experiencing fairly severe withdrawal symptoms right now. Cravings, anxiety, dysphoria; all of them.<\/p>\n<p>(Neal, if you are reading this, and I know you are, probably fresh from shooting zombies. I need you to mail me a strawberry banana smoothie in a ziploc bag. Purdue is a produce desert. Exotic fruits like mango and blueberries have been hard to come by with Hillenbrand closed and the Great College of Ag Schism.)<\/p>\n<p>I do miss hanging out with Asians. I did all the requisite college Asian things that I haven&#8217;t been able to do with my white friends: basketball, sleeping on the floor, studying in the library. I got so much chemistry done at the undergraduate library. And I finished the anatomy chapter I&#8217;ve been holding off on. It was awesome.<\/p>\n<p>I also got to watch real Asians play Super Smash Bros. I learned for the second time what it&#8217;s like to be beaten and thrown around by a falsetto-voiced pink puffball (JY). And I was a green dinosaur that threw eggs. It was humiliating.<\/p>\n<p>I was also exposed to a lot of Left4Dead, thanks to Neal.<\/p>\n<p>*Neal is playing Left4Dead.*<br \/>\nNeal: This gas can is my son. His name is Fred. I love him.<br \/>\nTommy: So you pour his insides all over dead people?<br \/>\nNeal: He isn&#8217;t potty-trained yet. No, bad Fred!<\/p>\n<p>Friday, I hitched a ride home with Meredith and her dad, which mostly consisted of me snoring (asleep) in the backseat as &#8220;travel disco&#8221; played. I got back home and my family all said I got fatter. Then I made a massive backup of all my music and I beat Portal. Just like any other return home.  <\/p>\n<p>I refilled on laundry detergent and got a new toothbrush. To cut down on weight and space, mom provided dry detergent. I&#8217;ve learned by now not to ask where she does her shopping. Though it was tempting in this case when she presented me with a quarter kilo plastic bag of suspicious-looking but nice-smelling white powder. I made a note to myself to do my own shopping from now on as I tried to make it look less stereotypical by transferring it to a tupperware container.<\/p>\n<p>I also sawed off another toothbrush for the same reasons as last time. It&#8217;s about time I indulged myself in a new toothbrush. I think I deserve it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A friend of a twin brother of a friend in Group C was so kind to drop me off in front of the dormitories of the former Scholastic Bowl at UIUC as he drove my friend and my friend&#8217;s twin brother back to Illinois. My arrival was met with less fanfare and confetti from the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1,26],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tommy.lardbucket.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1323"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tommy.lardbucket.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tommy.lardbucket.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tommy.lardbucket.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tommy.lardbucket.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1323"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/tommy.lardbucket.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3620,"href":"https:\/\/tommy.lardbucket.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1323\/revisions\/3620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tommy.lardbucket.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tommy.lardbucket.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tommy.lardbucket.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}