Mix em' up!

Mixer

noun

1 a kitchen mixer: blender, food processor, beater; churn.

2 he attended a mixer: gathering, social, function, get-together, meet-and-greet

A mixer is basically a party, you just plan it a little differently because it's for a bunch of people who don't know each other very well. I know, worth the wait right? So first things first, you need an activity. For me, it's pop pong (like beer pong only less illegal and more competitive). It's great because, assuming you have a table (preferably a ping pong table), all you need is a bag of plastic cups ($2.50), Ping-Pong balls ($1.50) and a few liters of your favorite beverage (approximately $3 ea. the more suger, the better).

How to play Pop Pong:

-----Set up 10 cups at either end of the table in pyramids like this

                      O O O O

                        O O O

                          O O

                            O              the pyramids should point at each other.

-----You can play one on one or in pairs. The teams stand at either ends of the table and take turns trying to throw their Ping Pong balls into the other team's cups.

-----You can either throw it straight in OR bounce it.

-----If you make it in one of the cups, the other team has to drink that cup and take it off the table.

-----If you bounce it, the other team can swat it away. If the other team swats it away without it bouncing, the team who threw the ball gets to pick any cup for the offending team to drink from.

-----If you bounce it and make it, the other team has to drink the cup you made it into, AND another cup of your choosing.

-----Whoever eliminates all of the other team's cups first is the winner.

-----As you eliminate more cups, you may want to re-rack. That means that you can tell the other team how to re-arrange the cups so that it's easier for you to throw into. You should decide how many re-racks each team gets before you play.

-----I've never tried to explain this in writing before so if you have questions, leave a comment below and I'll comment back.

If you're not a pop-pong kind of person, thats fine. There are plenty of fun games that get people talking. Games like Apples to Apples, Loaded Questions, Would You Rather, and The Game of Things are great, you might want to have more than one game going on at a time, depending on how many people you have. Music is a MUST, but you have to be careful to play every kind of music. Remember, we can't get to know new people if we only focus on one thing that we have in common, so make sure you diversify your activities. 

This sounds like a lot of work for just having your friends over, but a little planning goes a long way. No one has fun while they're sitting around saying "I don't know what do you want to do?"

The Do's and Don't's:

• Do let people mess with the music. One person will say "Don't change it!" and the person who changed it will say that didn't like it and BAM the conversation begins.
• Don't stress.
• Do make sure you're spending equal amounts of time with everyone.

Have fun guys!! Keep it real, Emily

Friend? Or accessory?

It's six thirty, and I can honestly say that I have spent the entire day violently ill, in bed, and watching old episodes of a show I haven't seen in a while on my computer. Remember the days when you could go online and enjoy an entire days worth of TV without seeing a single commercial? Well those days are over. Plus it's worse than the real TV commercials because, online, they just play the same four ads over and over and over, but thats besides the point. One of those ads was a trailer for a new Disney movie about Prom (I couldn't find the trailer, so here's the one i found. Movie review to come), and the opening line is "High School has a way of dividing us." It went on to list a few of the typical high school cliques, but, being a girl who's never really belonged to a specific group, I've always seen the cliques a little more differently than what the commercial made them out to be. I don't mean to pretend like I'm "too good for all that clique nonsense," because it's not something that I chose for myself, and I think there a a lot of people like me in my school, and your school, maybe even you. And if I got to do it over again, I'm not sure which path I would have taken. But from where I sit now, I can see that those of us who belong to different groups, really only use those groups like an accessory to match whatever person we are trying to be that day, or that season, or that event in our life.. So often, the system makes us feel like in order for us to be, for example, an artist, we need to hang around with other artsy kids (like when you wear a nice dress, you need equally fancy jewelry, or it'll look odd). Even, sometimes, we wear them like an old heirloom. Beautiful, but we're really only wearing it out of obligation to our family. Like when we're on a sports team and we like we have do EVERYTHING with them. If we hang out with people just because they're on student council with us or we find ourselves saying "I'm going to the movies with the National Honor Society girls," then our relationships are only as deep as that one thing we have in common.

Being a senior in High School, I think that now is the perfect time to make these kinds of changes to my life. I've met a lot of different people, so I can look at who I'm truly compatible with, and maybe try to bring them all together for a game of pop pong and bonding. Being a senior in High School, I think about college A LOT. I mostly think about those people that I really want to stay in contact with, so I think I'll start with them.

All you younglings out there, take a peek at the big picture. Start forming deeper relationships now (don't wait until you've got 3 months and 23 days left). Have a good conversation with someone that you normally stay on the surface with, go deeper. In the words of the guy (yes, that guy) form the Old Spice commercial, go "neck-deep into the waters of friendship and trust."



So yeah! I hope that was insightful. I'm going to post next on how to throw a mixer for just $15 and a little creativity. "What is a mixer?" you say? Well, I guess you'll have to check back tomorrow :)

Keep it real,
Emily

P.S.

This is me and my sisters with our Grandpa at Easter on his new bench. Now Grandpa can sit comfortably while he fantasizes about the untimely demise of his neighbors barking dog. I love that man :)