They are also a good reminder that one law doesn’t speak for everyone.

I would like to marry the guy who raps on the mini tractor. Also, Puddles with a rim spinning might be the greatest thing ever.

GO DUCKS!

The Airport Greeters:

I love a capella singing.  I think my favorite part of this video is the “Return of the Mack” guy with the sunglasses (assuming he’s truly caught off-guard and not a plant). He’s so perfect for the song!

The Train Station:

It’s so cool how people go from being “stunned passersby” into performers in a moment.

One of the songs we sang for our performance was “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” which is one of my favorite Christmas songs. Of all the versions, though, this may be the best:

Official video coming soon!

I have a good rain jacket, as all Portlanders must, and felt fully equipped when it first started raining during my commute.  I park my bike outside at school, though, and quickly realized I had underestimated the discomfort a wet bicycle seat can cause… as well as the sheer amount of water a bicycle seat can hold.

This is what my jeans looked like after my first post-rain ride home:

However!  I wasn’t bothered by the wet bicycle seat because that was also the day I decided to take a new route up North Williams Avenue.  I was in fact pleasantly surprised to see that Williams not only has clearly-marked bike lanes, the bike lanes are complete with banana peels, coins, mushrooms, power boosts, stars and even a few turtle shells.  Apparently some awesome rogue Portlander decided to paint icons from Mario Kart on the bike lanes, making my ride home that day (and every day after) totally awesome.

I later found out it was recently covered on the local news:

Please note how everyone in this video successfully avoids the banana peel.

Although I understand where so much of the stereotypes and criticism of cheerleaders comes from, I still think this is an awesome concept.  Jezebel.com covered the topic, saying, “Science shouldn’t have to be sexed-up to make it an acceptable career choice for women, but hopefully the message girls take from the Science Cheerleaders is that your attractiveness is not a reflection on your intelligence.”  I agree with them, but as a girl who has always been good at math and science, I think there’s another important part to this message, which is that you can excel in “nerdy” subjects and still be girly.  You don’t have to be, obviously, but sometimes, as female nerds, we don’t realize we have a choice.  Sometimes in middle school and high school we feel pigeonholed.  Everyone is given a label (nerd, football player, cheerleader, druggie, hippie) and then expected to play their part.  It took me a long time to figure out that I could pick and choose from various stereotypes, INCLUDING the “girly” one without accepting the whole package.  There were a few years in college when I had acrylic nails and got them “done” regularly, not because I was a super girly-girl overly-concerned with my appearance, but because I wasn’t really girly and having fancy nails made me feel good and a little rebellious.  I liked that I could rock my naturally curly hair and hooded sweatshirts every day but still have some feminine touches like manicures and matching accessories that made me feel good.  To this day, I sort of like the way people react when I tell them I majored in math.  I like defying their stereotypes.  And I really wish someone had told me when I was thirteen that I could spend time on my hair and dance and do neurology research, without having to choose.

Now I’m just hoping they start some sort of program for science professionals who want to be BlazerDancers.

In one of my classes the other day we were learning about how children learn to tell stories and my professor showed this video, which I loved: