Why Liz Lemon's Marriage Gives Me Hope

After seven seasons of hopeless love interests, Liz Lemon is finally getting married.

And I couldn't be happier. I mean, I honestly want to throw an engagement party for her at my house. Like, for real.

"But Liz Lemon isn't real, Madison. She's a character on a TV show," you may say. And that's where I stop you and tell you, "No. She's much more than that."

Liz Lemon has taught me so many things in the seven seasons of 30 Rock: how not to buy an apartment; how to wear sexy librarian glasses; eating Mexican cheese puffs will make urine show a false positive on a pregnancy test. See, all these things are so useful! (Until you watch the series, you don't have any earthly idea how kick ass LL is and how hilariously horrible these life lessons truly are.)

So, why do I love Liz Lemon and why is her marriage such a big deal?

It gives me hope.

I've found many parallels between my love life and Liz Lemon's. I have never had the crappy boyfriend that plays Halo under the name "Slut Banger" (Dennis Duffy, Season 1, Ep. 6), even though he is by far my favorite boyfriend that she ever had, but I have had crushes on younger guys (Season 2, Ep. 7), had a thing for a pilot (Season 4, Ep. 22), had a really attractive boyfriend (Season 3, Ep. 10), and have been called a lesbian (Season 1, Ep. 3). All these terrible relationships made Liz Lemon who she is. She is a career woman who has created her dream job and didn't want the troubles of relationships hindering her from achieving her goals. But she's always been a little bit lonely. Deep down she's wanted the troubles of a relationship, but she let herself get in the way of finding Mr. Right. It's not until the finale season that she meets the man of her dreams: a pretty boy who owns his own hot dog cart.

So, Liz's marriage in season 7 gives me hope. It gives me hope that someday, if I decide to give my heart away, some street vendor will be there to take it.

Golden Birthday Plans

It's almost the holiday season, so that means you'll be seeing a few more posts on Arithmetic Mean. 

More importantly, November 23, 2012 marks my golden birthday, and I have absolutely nothing planned. 

I need your help. Could you give me some ideas?

That is all. 

Also, I've been creating this kickin' playlist on Spotify. You should subscribe.

Hodgepodge

Boating with Sean

The chosen few. You know! The friends that you can go weeks, months, or even years without seeing, but when you all get together, it seems like no time has passed since your last congregation? Yeah, I have that group, too.

If you know anything about me, you know that Mississippi Governor's School has had an enormous impact on my life. My summers revolve around it, and I try to use the experience to calibrate my soul. I am able to be myself at MGS, and in the process, I am able to make true, lifelong friendships in a matter of weeks--the kind of friendships that are so pure and so concentrated that the bonds are made in less than three weeks and would take a lifetime to sever.

I spent this weekend with some of the most amazing people on this planet, all of whom I met while working at the wonderful institution that is MGS. We like to all get together whenever we can, which typically means major holidays when we can get off of work or out of school. And this weekend, a bunch of us got together for a fun- and relaxation-filled weekend at Holmes County State Park in Durant, MS.

The weekend consisted of the following:
1. Laughing
2. Story-telling
3. Political/Religious Discussions
4. Sleeping
5. Lounging out in the hammock
6. Floating in the lake
7. Laughing
8. Enjoying each other's company
9. Laughing

Yeah. We're good friends. I mean, who else can you have religious and political discussions with and still have laughter listed three times on the list?!

Let's focus on number 6 for a minute. (Oh, by the way, 6 is a perfect number. During the weekend, Sean and I tried to find all of the perfect numbers out of the first ~30 positive integers. We won.)

So, JJ brought this kick ass inflatable raft to the reunion. It looks like a mini white-water raft for two people. On Saturday, we took a cross-lake voyage to classrooms and porch-swings on the other side.   After we finished, Abigail and Megan took the raft for a spin. Then, it was taken inside to slowly deflate in the cabin for the rest of the night.

Being a boat/water enthusiast, it hurt my soul to see the poor thing deflated in front of the fireplace, so on Sunday, I pumped that baby back up and hauled her down to the pier. Sean met me on the dock, and we both hopped in for an adventure. I hadn't anticipated was Sean's accompaniment because he had been busy doing homework all morning, so I only brought one oar down to the water; the other was still in the cabin with the "Extreme Couponing" quantity of cookies. So, off we go, out into the open water with one oar and a steady, 15 MPH north-wind.

You know what happens when you only have one oar and the wind is stronger than the paddling? You go with the wind. And fast. The couple on the '87 Fischer flat-bottom fishing boat knew that, and they taunted us as I tried to paddle against the wind. After giving the paddle to the much stronger and experienced Coastie, as well as trying to paddle with both of my arms, and failing, we decided we'd float to the other end of the lake and climb up the bridge/walkway that crossed the north finger of the lake. Sean and I enjoyed the time out on the water in the wind and sun; we discussed our relationships and told stories about similar situations. We would occasionally stick the paddle in the water to steer us toward the middle of the bridge and not the snake-infested grass on the bank. Neither of us like alligators or snakes, so we weren't going to go looking for them in that grass. No way, Jose.

After 20 minutes, or so, of floating, we finally got to the bridge. I say, "Aw, yeah. We're gonna T-bone this bitch," meaning that I would try to maneuver the boat so that the middle of the boat would t-bone one of the pilings of the bridge to stop us from going any further, especially into the real snaky-looking part of the lake. (That is the only portion of this boating trip that went as planned, by the way) When we smacked the piling, Sean held on to it while I tied a rope to the boat and to the walk-way of the bridge, which was a good 5 feet above the surface of the water. I tried to pull myself up onto the bridge. "This shit ain't workin," I frustratingly and jokingly said to Sean. "Well, I can definitely pull myself up if we can steady the boat," he said. I tied another rope to the stern of the boat and to the walkway of the bridge. Stability, check. We're almost there.

And just let me say right now that those jack-a-loons in the fishing boat never came to check on us! They just sat out there fishing and probably laughing at us.

After much more giggling and cursing, Sean scaled the piling of the bridge and made his way to the top. I followed behind, mimicking his every move. Yay! We're both safe! "Um, that paddle is going to fall out when we try to lift this," Sean said in an informative and concerned tone. "*&^%," I replied. I crawled back over the railing of the bridge and back into the raft to grab the paddle, and then I climbed back up the bridge. We untied the rope from the walkway and hoisted the raft up on top of the bridge. We took a quick breather to reflect on the sanctity of life and to literally catch our breath because, if you recall, we have just performed a feat of strength and maneuverability. We then carried the raft on top of our heads the entire half-mile (not an accurate distance) through the woods back to the cabin...and we didn't take a resting break!

I have been sore all day today because of this, but I'm glad that we went on this adventure. We had some good bonding time in the boat talking about our daily lives, and we overcame obstacles and worked as a team at the same time. Over the past two years, Sean has become my closest friend, but I hadn't really realized how much we are in sync until yesterday.

I wake up every day thanking (in my mind) my mom for making me go to Governor's School. If I hadn't been a scholar in 2007, I'd never have met amazing people like JJ, Lea, Abigail, Megan, and Sean, and I sure wouldn't have a great story like this.

Life Lessons

As most of you know, I've been in Ruston this summer working for my professor/advisor. I've spent a lot of time in a windowless lab making 3-D models on an online CAD program and printing them out with a MakerBot Replicator. Here are a few of the things I've made...

In addition to making toys, I've been going around the state of Louisiana talking to doctors, rehab engineers, prosthetics and orthotics technicians, and other health care professionals about problems that we might could solve with senior design projects. This traveling involves 4-5 hours of riding in a car with Dr. O'Neal and, sometimes, one of his grad students, Austin. During this time, there is endless conversation about the people we're going to be talking to, future projects, Netflix, my classmates, career goals, Coolio, space travel, and pretty much anything else you can think of. However, my favorite segment of the car ride conversation is "Life Lessons". I really can't explain the conversation behind these life lessons because, frankly, I never know how we wind up talking about this stuff. But I just want to share with you the 8 Life Lessons I've learned this summer.

These are direct quotes.
1. "Get married and stay married; it's emotionally and fiscally beneficial."
2. "In a male dominated workplace, wear an engagement ring to keep from being harassed."
3. "Find something you like to do and find a job that matches those skills."
4. "Don't date a man who lives in a 32' trailer in a state park."
5. "If you don't know what to do by age 22, it's okay."
6. "Pick a career that you won't despise getting up and going to every day for 30 years."
7. "If you don't know what to do, find somebody who does something cool and do that."
8. "You don't have to wear shirts in Australia...because it's hot!"

Okay, so, the last one needs explaining...
He was sending me an e-mail with stuff to add to the senior design webpage. He says, "Okay. I need to send this to Madison McLeod--oh, wait! You need to watch this show on Netflix called 'McLeod's Daughters.' It's an Australian show, and my in-laws are crazy about it." So he stops sending the e-mail, opens up Wikipedia, and starts reading the plot of the show. From wiki, he goes to IMDB where he finds a picture of the cast, and all of the men are shirtless. That's when he spit out life lesson # 8.

I hope that this short post is just a teaser of the adventure that I've had this summer. It's been a blast.

I'm so confused.

Hey y'all!


It's been a couple months since I've posted because my life has been so crazy and weird. Until now, there has been nothing in my life that has been post-worthy, but now there is so much to write about that I don't even know where to begin. I'm sure that I will have to write about MGS before too long, but right now, I don't think I am emotionally stable enough to wade through all of the thoughts to get them into pixels on a computer screen. So, that'll have to wait.


I guess I'll start with how confused I am at this point in my life.


Governor's School always makes me take a step back and examine my life and the way I'm living it. MGS is my own personal utopia where I can think freely, speak my mind, and act the way my soul wants me to act. Every time I have attended MGS, whether it has been as a scholar or as an employee, I have found out something about myself; this year is no exception. This year I have learned that I am ready to move on. I am ready to grow up and be an adult-- but a weird kind of adult that is a combination of Lea & JJ and Sean. I've learned that I'm not going to let my past relationships hinder my future relationships, and that I should never be too comfortable to search for new friendships. Or the other kind of relationships...


And that's where I am confused.


As some of you know, I am a victim of the Matchmaker. Well, not so much of a victim but more of a volunteer. Anyway, for the first time in three and a half years, I am interested in a boy. And it scares the shit out of me. 


I was with the last guy I dated for 5 years. We met our freshman year of high school and dated off and on until February of my freshman year of college.  He was smart; he could make me laugh. He was the perfect boyfriend. But he was lazy. Our relationship was getting to the point where he was asking my mom what size ring I wore and all that jazz. I know it's selfish to say, but I didn't want to have to support him my entire life. All he wanted to do was live in Carolina community and be a volunteer fire fighter. I wanted to go off to school and be something; I wanted to see the world. So, after a long, teary conversation, we broke up. And for the past 38-39 months, my heart has still been breaking. He was my first love, and I'd never gotten over him. I mean, I've been on dates with people since Justin. But it'd be just one date with a guy, then I'd say, "See ya!"


Until Governor's School.


It took about three days of being around my closest friends that I realized I was ready to really date again. If I was going to tell 114 high school students to step out of their comfort zones and try something new, something scary, I should be able to lead by example. So, at lunch one day, I walked up to Lea and, jokingly, asked her if she knew any hot pilot friends. And she said yes. 


So, here I am, two semi-dates later with this very attractive, smart, hilarious pilot friend of  hers. And I don't know how to assess this situation. As I wrote in People Problem, I'm not great with people. I am on the same social level has a junior high girl whose best friends are characters in a Judy Blume book. Not analogous to the characters--I mean, she has no actual friends, so she just reads. And, I don't know how to do this whole "dating" thing, either. With Justin, we'd just hang out and watch Comedy Central and laugh. We could talk about school or sports for a little while, then we'd go back to watching tv. So I guess I never have been really good at this mess, but after an 8 year hiatus from the "first date" period of the whole relationship process, I'm really out of the loop.


I really like this fella. He's really funny and does a lot of voices, which sounds really weird, but I find it completely charming. He's really smart and very very very very cute. (And he's blond which is a big change up for me, but that's beside the point.) We've only been on one proper outing and have hung out once since then. But for the first time in over three years, I have butterflies in my stomach. I'd really like to keep this thing going, but I don't know how that works. How often do I call? Do I even call?! How often do I text? When is it okay to send a friend request on Facebook?  I don't know the answer to any of these questions. 


So, I need your help. I am so confused. Teach me how to date. Teach m- Teach me how to date.


I expect responses, comments, texts, phone calls, Facebook messages, IMs, and/or Tweets. 


This is serious. I need all the help I can get, y'all!

My Best Day. Ever.

I have not been happy in a long time. Don't get me wrong, I have smiled and laughed and had happy moments, but the feeling of joy has been absent from my life for several months. The combination of the stress of school and the stress of adjusting in a place where not everyone knows my name when I go to the Wal-Marts has slowly chipped away at my self-worth and happiness. But I'm heading in an opposite direction.

For the first time in almost two years, I am genuinely happy. It seems like everything that has been going wrong  for the past 22 months is changing for the better. I've made some good friends in this land of solitude. I can go to class and not feel like my head is going to explode from all of the overwhelming information. But most of all, I feel like I am finally taking steps to becoming an accomplished adult. I have a more clear vision of what I want in life, and I'm on the path to obtaining those wants.

I say all of this to give a background of how the past few weeks of my life have been: wonderful, that's how. And the past two days have just been icing on this divine cake.

Here's a play-by-play:

If you follow me on Twitter or have been reading my statuses on Facebook, you may have recently noticed an unnecessary amount of messages encouraging people to watch "The Chris Gethard Show". That is because I am in love with that show. It is nerdy and funny and is the epitome of greatness. When I found out about it, I watched 36 episodes in about two weeks. Anyway, I was online Monday and checked the show's blog to find out about this week's episode. The title was "F**k School, F**k Math." On Monday, I was a little bit stressed out because I had a mid-term in Instrumentation the next day and a test in Mass Transport on Wednesday. I was feeling a little overwhelmed with school, so I decided this would be a good episode for me to call into the show and contribute/vent my grievances against academia. I called in. I got on! I got to talk to two of my favorite comedians on the telephone! It was amazing! I didn't think anything else this week could top it. (If you want to hear my hick voice, check it out: The Chris Gethard Show. I'm around the 12 minute mark. Be warned: if you don't like curse words, don't watch.)

But I was wrong.

I was still on a high on Thursday at school. I couldn't really focus on my lab activities because of the previous night's excitement, so I just sat on the outskirts of my group's area in the lab and wasted time until 4:00pm. During this time, my advisor came to the door of the lab and pulled me outside. He proceeded to tell me that I have received an academic award for the year. (And for those who don't know, I almost failed a class in the fall that would have set me back a full year in the curriculum, so to hear that I had received an award for academics was insane!) My already giddy-for-Gethard self was then over-the-moon with excitement. I held back the emotions that made me want to plant a big one on Dr. O'Neal and went back to my chair to swing my feet back and forth with exhilaration.

Oh, but that's not all.

For the past six months, I have been waiting for April 12, so that I could see the Upright Citizen's Brigade Touring Company at the Dixie Theater in Ruston. As you may have inferred from my rant about Chris Gethard, I am a comedy nerd. I have watched/memorized lines and cast members' information from 20+ seasons of SNL,  The Second City, a couple recorded shows of Improv Olympic's stage shows, and way too much of UCB's stuff (TCGS, Asscat!, etc.). As you can imagine, I was ecstatic when I heard the news that the TourCo was coming to town. After doing research on what performers tour in certain regions of the US, I hoped and hoped that someone affiliated with Gethard would be gracing The Dixie with his/her presence. And, hot damn, it happened. In the middle of the show, I realize that a character from TCGS is on the stage. I proceed to flip the hell out upon this realization and couldn't wait until the show was over so that I could possibly meet him. I asked the head of Troupe Dixie if there was any way I could meet the cast, and she graciously rushed me backstage. I stood there, in an awestruck state, as I conversed with a writer and new star of TCGS. I couldn't believe it. I rambled on and on and on like an idiot for what seemed like forever, but at the same time, a very short instant. I'm sure he was thinking to himself that I was a panko nutjob, but Dru was extremely nice, and he, John, and Frank flattered me by talking to me for a few minutes.

And although I spent the rest of the night (and the majority of this morning) sick with what I assume was food poisoning from artichoke dip that sat out in the Louisiana heat for ~4 hours, it was a phenomenal evening.

I'm on the upswing, nerds. This chick is in high spirits, and I continue to be this way forever, or until I run into the next transitional phase of my life.

SNL Christmas

If you're anything like me, you need a little comedy to get you through the holiday season. I just thought I'd share my favorite Christmas themed sketches from SNL. I hope you enjoy!

                     I Wish It Was Christmas Today:

   http://www.hulu.com/watch/311558/saturday-night-live-christmas-treat

                                         Schweddy Balls:

http://www.hulu.com/watch/4156/saturday-night-live-nprs-delicious-dish-schweddy-balls

                                       **** in a Box:

   http://www.hulu.com/watch/1402/saturday-night-live-snl-digital-short-dk-in-a-box-censored