Happy April Fools Day! This morning I met with a lady at Peet's Coffee outside dwight to take a look at a camera she listed on craigslist. The listing was for a Canon Rebel (the original one made in 1990) with a 50mm lens for $50. Since the listing was for $50, I thought I could bargain it down to $40 somehow.

In addition to that, since it's an EOS compatible EF 50mm lens, I knew it could only be one of the six EF 50mm that exist for the EOS system. The cheapest of these 6 lenses is worth about $50 used (I have one already), so I thought I could at least sell the lens to recoup the cost if the camera wasn't good. If the included 50mm wasn't the cheapest and latest model, but was the original Mark 1 version, then it would have been a rare lens that sells for even more than the newer version (about $150 on ebay). I had one before but I sold it off.

I waited in Peet's coffee for about half and hour, reading Shadow of the Almighty, and when she came, I discovered that it was in fact the cheapest of the 6 50mms. "Shucks", I thought, since I was hoping it was the rarer version that's no longer manufactured.

The camera itself is very outdated, and the lens seemed a little worn. It didn't come with the body cap or either lens cap, so at first I passed on the deal. However, when I got back to dwight a minute later, I called her and offered her $10. She accepted, so I walked back over to the intersection and purchased it.

Later in the evening, I went to walgreens and discovered that the battery the camera uses costs $15, more than the price I paid for the camera and lens itself. I couldn't find a good rechargable version of the battery.

I've been spending a lot of time at the Y lately.

This afternoon after classes and before prayer meeting, joseph, sean, james and I were sitting around in our living room talking. Our conversation was pretty entertaining, but at some point, we started trying to think of some prank to pull for april fool's day.

Someone came up with the idea of putting stuff into the toilet tank, so we experimented for a while with various liquids to see what effect they would have on the flushes. Adding dish soap made the flush bubble, but not significantly, and adding mouthwash gave the flush a slightly blue tint, but nothing too noticeable.

After thinking about it for a while, one of us suddenly suggested that we try soy sauce. We took some kikoman from the kitchen, added it to the tank, and flushed.

Pretty nasty looking brown water suddenly streamed into the toilet bowl.

Furthermore, after the toilet had flushed, the water that remained was still a pretty nasty looking color. Seeing this, we started laughing pretty hard, and started plotting how we could use this to prank other people's apartments in addition to our own (derrick).

One of us came up with the idea of taking some soy sauce packets from the GBC, so we made plans to go in a group after prayer meeting to collect them.

After prayer meeting, our small group went to asian ghetto for dinner. Afterwards, five of us with to GBC, and after buying some things for studying, we each took about 10 packets of soy sauce.

We took some on the way in, and some on the way out. We felt a little sneaky taking them, but we did make purchases there, even though the purchases and the soy sauce didn't go together. Some of us, namely james park, didn't know how not to act suspicious. While we had packets of soy sauce in our hands in GBC, he opened up his pocket and tried to sneakily tell me to put my packets there.

That's pretty hurting.

Joseph was pretty suspicious too, but not as publicly. He slyly put his packets into his own pockets.

Sean, Tommy, and I were smarter, holding onto the packets with our hands in plain sight. We then studied at the library for two hours, and walked ditha home at midnight.

Once we were outside ditha's place, I asked to use the bathroom, and went up to the apartment. Once inside, I unloaded three packets into the tank, but then realized that it would be fishy if a flush wasn't heard... Thus, I had a moment of stupidity and flushed the pranked toilet, and filling the toilet with brown water.

"OH SHOOT!", I thought to myself, "THIS IS BAD!" Even after two flushes, the water was still brownish. If ditha or her roommates used the bathroom, it would have been over. I muttered some words of gratitude, rushed down the stairs, and ran to the entrance of the apartment complex, where the other guys were waiting. Waving them over, I quickly told them what happened, and we sent joseph up with five packets.

Joseph said something about the toilet being dirty, thus giving himself an excuse to do an initial flush on the toilet to make the water clear (and unintentionally jacking me in the process). After loading the tank with five packets, he left, but not before spending an absurd amount of time inside, leaving the rest of us sitting on the curb outside the apartment.

I have yet to find out what happened with them, since we couldn't stick around to find out. I'll ask one of them soon.

After hurrying back to dwight, we pulled the same thing on our own toilet for derrick. Once we entered the apartment, he "called shower", but I asked to use the bathroom before he went in.

Once the toilet was ready, we sat in the living room and patiently waited. When Derrick flushed the toilet, we heard him suddenly say, "WHAT THE HECK?" He poked his head out and we started playing along, wondering why brown water had come out. Derrick blamed me for it, since I had used the bathroom before him.

After Derrick, we went upstairs to apartment 7 to get steve, sang, and jon chao. We spent a good amount of time in there, since they weren't getting ready for bed yet.

Basically what happened was this: Jon Chao flushed but didn't notice, and Steve noticed the toilet Jon Chao left behind, but wasn't too surprised by it.

What the...

We left after that. Joseph went to apartment 8, and James went to apartment 6. We haven't gotten many results of what we did tonight, so the prank has pretty much failed so far.

Thinking it up was really fun, but it didn't turn out to be as effective as we thought it would be.

Oh well. Next time... Next time...