Five days back into the school grind and already two exams passed, I still haven’t recovered from my spring break hangover.  As such, I really haven’t stepped outside of my dorm for any other reason than to go to class or go get food.  Sooooo it looks like this week is going to be a spring break edition of my blog!

While I watched many friends pack up to head off for their luxurious vacations to warm and wonderful destinations, I packed my bags to head back to good old Edinboro, Pennsylvania.  For those of you who have never been to Erie (so most of you I’m assuming), it is best described as a tiny college town with three stop lights, a Wal Mart, and a handful of small locally owned businesses.  Although it is sometimes a nice, quiet little lake town where many elderly folks come to vacation in the summer, in the winter it is a desolate, perpetually snow covered tundra (seriously, we had two and a half feet of snow on the ground even when it was 50 degrees out), inhospitable to college students home on break trying to find something fun to do.

That being said, I spent the majority of the first few days of break trying to drown any thoughts of college or exams in copious amounts of Netflix, finishing two full seasons of Parks and Recreation in a mere two days.  I also made a trip to the Erie Zoo to look at all twelve of the animals still outside and on display midst all the snow, a trip to the mall to cry over all the nice new clothes I can’t afford, and multiple visits to my favorite local breakfast place to try to stuff myself with enough red velvet French toast to hold me over for the rest of the semester.  All of these things were of course accompanied by endless hours spent hanging out with my dog (oh, and my family too I guess).

By day four, however, I was bored beyond comprehension.  Refusing to waste my time doing such things as studying or applying for scholarships, I instead decided to try my hand at something I rarely get the chance to do here at college: cooking.  Now, I have never been much of a cook outside of making the occasional peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but insane boredom makes people try crazy things.  So, I took requests from everyone in the house and eventually settled on a baked mac and cheese recipe.

I gathered all my ingredients and began cooking.  As the pasta cooked and the cheese and other ingredients melted, the aromas of a home cooked meal began to fill the house.  I wasn’t so bad at this after all!  As I added butter and other ingredients to a hot pan on the stove, I began to dream about dropping out of college and attending Le Cordon Bleu, pursuing my true destiny as a world class chef.  I wandered out of the kitchen to go grab my phone and text my mom about bringing home fresh bread to accompany dinner, and as I sat in my room, I began to smell something a little different.  The delicious scent of spices was now gone and replaced instead by what smelled like… FIRE.  Not long after I recognized the scent, I saw the dark grey smoke indicating that something was indeed on fire.

Mrs. Doubtfire and I probably would have been good friends

Rushing out to the kitchen, I found my pan of butter spouting red hot flames and my very concerned younger brother waving his hands in the air desperately try to fan away the smoke without bothering to try to put out the fire.  Quickly reaching for the controls to turn off the stove, I then grabbed the pan and blew on it as hard as I could until the flame died.  While I waited for the pan to cool, I reached for the phone and kissed all my dreams of being a chef goodbye as I ordered a pizza.  Fingers crossed I marry a man who can cook.