Worth the travel time. And the fever. Kinda.

My last week at home was a much needed break from Indiana Life which I will break down for your reading pleasure in three phases.

Phase One: Nebraska
I am interested in seeing which of the Midwestern states is flattest. I have come to the conclusion that if I were dropped in any part of Nebraska, Indiana, Iowa or a remote part of Minnesota with which I am unfamiliar, it would take at least 3 days for me to figure out my whereabouts. They are all flat. Some have more trees, some have more accents but on the whole they are defined by these: corn, earth tones, humidity.
More importantly, I saw one of my high school besties (see Phase Three for vocabulary explanation) who is a theater major at a tiny school in Nebraska. At least this is her excuse for living in the state, as most people who weren't born there feel the need to justify it at some point during most days. She scored the lead in Stage Door and brought down the house playing essentially herself transported to a rooming house for actresses in the 1930s.
She came on stage and I was overwhelmed with what my friend Katie Rose calls, "Friend Pride" in which a friend of yours appears on stage for a play, a concert or presentation and you are totally overwhelmed with pride for them as if they were your own kid or you were personally responsible for their acting skills or had taught them the violin yourself. Maybe I'm biased and know nothing about the theater, but she was absolute perfection in her sassy 30s dresses.

Phase Two: Homestyle
A six-hour ride home brought me over the hills to the Minneapolis skyline, my mother's cooking, a big girl bed and transportation. I figure I spend a significant part of my Indiana life trying to figure out transportation away from campus. It appears to be one of the only problems that college students here cannot solve. Home was delicious. I paid a visit to GirlLand, was totally weirded out, saw the lakes and consumed non-cafeteria food copiously. Being back, in fact, has taught me to eat less extravagantly when I go home next because upon return, the true colors of cafeteria food will be revealed. Important observation of today: just because chickpeas and tofu are in a flat, circular formation does not warrant the title "burger".

Phase Three: Happy Camper
I spent the last stretch of break in the northwoods of Minnesota. The only thing "northwoods" about this annual adventure is the car ride in the northern direction for a few hours and some trees I saw. For the most part I spent time inside, cuddling, singing, consuming boxed snacks and talking with some seriously awesome young people who have the ability to remind me of how much less awesome I was in high school. But unless you tell them, they'll never know that Sandwich Lady and I used to go on the same trip but instead of socializing, we spent time knitting and pretending to be 80 years old. These young women are cool enough to shorten some words and add fun endings to others and make it sound cool (best friends = besties; probably = probs).

By Sunday evening I was back in my tiny room in my Indiana life, minus some old friends and family, and plus swine flu. Which is just as un-fun as people said it would be. Captain's first question about the situation was whether or not I had mutated yet- if there were gills or extra toes or anything. I'm hoping the government has the situation under control and the flu hasn't mutated to be contageous over the internet because this blog post would be like one giant sneeze in your collective faces.