Steam

by Johanna Kumpula

I’ve accumulated a total of almost 120 hours playing The Witcher 3. I completed nearly every side quest, monster hunt, main quest, and point of interest in the game, except for quests related to Gwent because the last thing I want to do while hunting monsters is bet on my inability to win a card game. My favorite character in the game is Olgierd von Everec – a character accessible with purchase of the Hearts of Stone DLC – and my favorite monster is the Griffin. Whenever I got bored playing the game, I’d switch over to Skyrim or Divinity, games with a combined play time of about 230 hours. It only got better when my friend would join me on Divinity, and we would wreak havoc around town, thieving and killing anything that opposed us.

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Steam is formed by heating water until it reaches its boiling point, which produces a hot gas. It can be used to provide power, as in the case of a steam engine, or to cook food. Steam is also used to iron clothes and remove wrinkles. My mother used to iron clothes on occasion, only the nice ones for recitals or special events, but now if I ever need to get the wrinkles out of my clothes, I hang them in the bathroom while I take a shower. This way you kill two birds with one stone, you get to enjoy a nice shower and your clothes will be wrinkle-free. It works in a pinch.

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The only time I’ve been drunk occurred while playing Overwatch with a couple of my friends. It was a few weeks after my 21st birthday, and I drank half a bottle of Captain Morgan’s Pineapple Rum. It was disgusting. Fortunately, when it comes to pineapple flavored rum or any hard alcohol with a flavor you don’t particularly like, it starts to taste better the more you drink. By the time I decided to stop, I couldn’t play any character that required decent aim, and we somehow managed to meet two guys who were both very high and very gay. The rest of the team kept laughing at us because we couldn’t function better than a group of five-year-olds. Eventually, we had to leave our new-found friends due to some IRL friends wanting to join in on the fun, but we spent the rest of the time similarly intoxicated and at the receiving end of many jokes. It was an exciting night.

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Broccoli is a strange vegetable. As a child, I use to think they were part of a vast forest home to thousands of tiny creatures, but humanity was so intent on eating these tree clones that we would chop down the forest and leave all of the animals to find new homes or die. It was a morbid way of looking at broccoli. While my mother and I were washing veggies one night, we came across a tiny green caterpillar hiding between the stalks. I assumed that I had to have, at one point in time, eaten a caterpillar with my broccoli and refused to eat any more for two months. Now I like to eat the vegetable with pasta and chicken.

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The first time my friend mentioned to me that she might be asexual was while we were sitting in a hot tub drinking RumChata and Fireball to commemorate the new year. This revelation came a couple of years after she came out as biromantic. She’d had two boyfriends during her freshman and sophomore year of college and, while she was romantically interested in both of them, she felt no desire to sleep with them. She’s still coming to terms with what this might mean for her future relationships. Thankfully, more people are coming out as ace, and it’s becoming a more widely accepted sexuality within the LGBT community.

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When I was young, probably around 11 or 12, my brother and I started learning taekwondo. It was an excellent way to release all my pent-up pre-teen aggression. Both of us decided to stop before we attempted to earn a yellow belt and I don’t remember anything that I learned, but I do know we got to use Nunchucks and that the center was right next to a Taco King. Sometimes I wish I could go back and learn all the steps again, but I’ve found that I’m much happier than I was back then.