Auld lang syne

I just want to say to everybody out there in Internet-land that I hope you have a safe and happy and prosperous 2010. And that you find a comfortable thing to call the new year. Because "ten" just doesn't sound right. "Ninety four," "eighty seven," "oh-nine," they all sound right. "Ten"? Not so much.

To send this blog off into the happy land of The Year Known as Ten, Yes, That One That Comes After Oh-Nine, I give you my list of resolutions. Which will likely be broken in epic fashion. But this is what we do, so here I go doing it:

1. Get knocked up.

2. Try to exercise and eat well for purposes of being healthy during the said knocked up-ed-ness. (Notice I didn't say 'lose 50 pounds' because who actually follows through on that?)

3. Read 52 books.

4. Suck it up and break-up with some of those shows on the damn DVR that I need to stop watching so I have time for the exercise and the reading.

5. Win the lottery.

6. Save $150 every month until that winning the lottery thing kicks in.

7. Blog my little heart out. I was bad in December. I want to be a good girl again.

8. Help Edgar out more with the around the house cleaning and laundry. Unless it entails getting up earlier on the weekends. Then he's on his own.

9. Improve my Spanish.

10. Call my parents more.

This is in addition to the pro-life pamphlets outside the bathroom door

When Edgar was younger, younger in the sense that he was younger than he is now but still an adult that was on his own and taking care of himself, he made a promise to his mom. That promise was that he would attend church with her on Easter, Mother's Day, and Christmas Eve, as long as she promised to stop giving him a damn hard time about how he never goes to church. He kept up his end of the bargain. Naturally, she did not. That's what mothers do, right?

His mom is a very devout Catholic. I'm not Catholic at all. It's been an adjustment. I'm accustomed to my mom, as I go out the door, yelling "Drive carefully!" from the other room. His mom blesses me. If there's a problem, my mom says "Let's see what we can do." His mom says "You need to pray more." That's just how it is. When we bought a new car last year, she threw Holy Water on it. When we lived with Edgar's parents while we were both out of work, Jesus watched us whenever we [quietly] got it on, because his benevolent likeness was hanging on the bedroom wall. Did I mention his mom gave us a crucifix to hang in our apartment by our front door?

Let me be clear: I love my mother-in-law. I'm not saying anything here to disparage her, this is just the exposition to my coming story.

And don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking Catholicism. I was raised in a denomination of the Protestant Church. Neither Edgar nor I practice the religions that we were raised in. Nothing against religion, but neither of us really understand the fervor and the devoutness that being a "good" follower of a religion entails. We attend church services three times a year to appease his mother. Neither of us really falls in line with this idea of a vengeful or judgmental god as its presented in the Catholic church. And since I'm not Catholic, my duty by attending the services is to basically keep Edgar and his brother separated because they revert to 12-year-old boys in church. And while it's really quite entertaining, SOMEBODY HAS TO BE THE GROWN UP.

So, this Christmas Eve, we put on our Sunday Finest (which in my case is comprised of "The Clothes I Wore When My Job Required Me To Dress In Business Casual But That I Never Wear Anymore Because My Current Job Doesn't Care If I Wear Sweatpants, Thank You Universe" clothes) and made the trek to West Covina to attend Mass with Edgar's parents.

About halfway through the service, a thought occurred to me. That thought was that most of the people that had parts in the service really didn't deserve to be there. The sheer pomposity of everyone but the priest was maddening.

My impressions of church, the things I learned growing up, were that church is a place you go to put all of your bullshit aside and talk to God and learn how to be a better person. That's what it's supposed to be, right? The part of religion that I've always agreed with was the part about how you use it to help shape you into a better person. A person that cares for the needs of others, a person that can lend a helping hand, a person that can put aside all of their own petty crap and be at peace with the world as they try to make it better, not by shoving their beliefs down the throats of others but by turning the other cheek and extending kindness. You know, those few fundamental things that people of all faiths agree upon. That stuff.

Instead, I found people whose heads swelled to seven times the normal size with the prospect of a microphone being shoved in front of their gaping yaws. Example: the two ladies that did scripture readings. ATTENTION SHOW-OFF LADIES (yes, you ladies, the ones with their joyfully embroidered Christmas sweaters, tacky gold jewelery in your ears and around your necks and around your wrists and TOO MUCH TACKY PUFFY GOLD EVERYWHERE, along with your carefully teased short hair): there is a difference between speaking with clear diction and adding gratuitous pauses between phrases to extend your time at the pulpit so that you can sound like the greatest storyteller of all time.

Attention boy who does that thing that I don't know what it's called because I'm not Catholic but that thing where you sing a phrase, and then the congregation sings it back to you, and then you sing something else, then sing that one phrase again, and who also gets to sing into the microphone to lead the congregation during hymns (yes, you, that guy): there's a thing in music called a beat. Live it. Learn it. Love it. Stop trying to be all grandiose and think that it makes you more special than the rest of the people there because you get to lord it over all of us underlings and sing it in a way that clearly sends the message that you want everyone to slow down and follow you, including the organist. I THINK THE ORGANIST KNOWS BETTER THAN YOU.

Attention fat guy with the reindeer ears (yes, you!): Stop popping around the whole sanctuary before the service being a little social butterfly that's all "Look! Look at my reindeer ears! I'm so popular and great and everyone loves me because I wear reindeer ears! This totally gives me validation for the fact that no one would play with me when I was a kid because of that incident with the teeter-totter!" CHURCH IS ABOUT JESUS, NOT SANTA.

Attention all of you people that don't show up until random intervals after the service is halfway over: You missed it. Deal with it. Wait until the next service starts in 45 minutes. Showing up for communion right at the end kind of negates the fact that you missed all of the other stuff.

The only tolerable person that was there was the priest himself. He looked like some crazy mad scientist, but that man knew how to take care of business. No ridiculous posturing from the pulpit. No ridiculously over-exaggerated prayers that lasted for what felt like hours. Just a quick, concise, cheerful sermon that wasn't even five minutes long, because he knew PEOPLE HAD SHIT TO DO AND PRESENTS TO OPEN.

Mad scientist priest, I applaud you.

She says, as the shelves of the bookshelf groan in agony

I hope everyone out there in Internet-land had a safe and wonderful Christmas. I enjoyed my Christmas in the company of my husband (not to sound all sappy, but that's really all I needed) while wrapped up like an eskimo in this blanket/throw/wrap contraption that my father-in-law gave me on Christmas Eve. It has zippers and snaps and SNUGGIES BE DAMNED. I am now Eskimo Wife. And as Fiyero spent a good part of the pitiful Colts game yesterday under the blanket with me, he is now Eskimo Kitteh.

While I have lots of Christmas themed things to write about (the bulk of which center around Catholic church attendence on Christmas Eve by this not-at-all-a-Catholic girl), I thought I'd throw this out there in the meantime. It's a random meme that I found floating around out there and thought it to be rather timely since I'm at the beginning of a massive "Read all the books you always 1) wanted to read 2) thought you should read 3) heard you should read" project. The ever-growing project list is currently at 525 books. I've managed to cross sixteen off of that 525. The project began when I was out of work and had a lot of time on my hands while armed with a library card. Reading time has been scarce the last few months, will probably become scarcer still, what with this Lost project, but it's always something that I can come back too. For the meme, it's apparently the consensus that most people will only have read 6 of the 100 books.

So here's the deal. From this list, you bold the books that you've read and italicize the ones that you've not completed. I'm also adding a new category by asterisking (is that a word? If not, it should be. Websters, TAKE NOTE) the books that are part of my project, so you all can see my good intentions. I liked this list because even with the ones that I haven't read and don't own, there are a ton that are on my personal to-do list as well. And yes, I too find it kind of silly that they have the Chronicles of Narnia and The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe listed separately, but I guess that's because most people have read the one part of the series while not reading any of the others.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien*
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte*
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell*
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy*
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien*
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald*
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy*
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams*
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh*
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky *
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck*
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy*
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens*
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen*
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez*
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery*
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood*
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding*
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan*
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert*
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth.
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens*
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley*
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez*
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck*
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold*
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas*
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac*
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville*
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens*
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker*
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray*
80 Possession - AS Byatt*
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker*
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro*
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert*
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams*
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole*
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas*
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare*
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

So between completed and started I'm at 25 out of the 100. Not too shabby, I don't think, but it could definitely be better.

I'm working on it.

Chalk this up to a probably bad idea

December is The Land of No TV, wherein all of the good shows that you like to watch and DVR and fill your long cold evenings with go on hiatus and leave you seeking other sources of warmth. Like the under the covers naked kind of warmth that your husband CAN'T STOP THINKING ABOUT. I will not number the amount of times that I've had my leg humped like a dog as playful playing quickly turns to "Hey, so you wanna *raised eyebrow, cocked head*......you know?"

It's a lot.

Needless to say, as I am a person that appreciates the capability to walk and also knows she can't get pregnant if she's not ovulating (SO WHAT'S THE POINT, RIGHT?), we've had to turn to alternate forms of entertainment. Don't look at me like that, I was only kidding and I still give it up multiple times a week. Since you wanted to know that.

Anyways.

Alternate programming has found Edgar and I renting the first few seasons of Lost on DVD. I never saw the first two seasons. Edgar didn't start watching it until late in the third season with me. Both of us are sufficiently lost (no ha ha pun intended) when we watch the show, but feel like we can't let the pop culture phenomenon pass us by.

Side note: Edgar and I watch a lot of TV. It's an easy and cheap and lazy form of entertainment, so I'm all Sign me up! But we don't watch shows just because pop culture tells us we should be watching it. I'll give a show a try if I hear good things about it or if someone I know really likes it or if it looks interesting. But I won't continue to watch it if I don't like it. So SUCK IT Anna Paquin and your stupid show on Showtime about vampires (no pun intended there either, but I guess it works). You call that acting? I call it raising your eyebrows and speaking in a hideously bad impression of a southern accent. I tried watching the first episode of that show when it premiered and couldn't figure out if you were trying to play your character as slow or not. That isn't a good thing to leave the audience wondering, especially when they realize that you aren't and become offended for all of the slow viewers out there. So stop shoving it down my throat, Golden Globe Awards!

Rant over.

Anyways.

I was talking about Lost. I had a friend that really liked the show and got me started watching it. It was all very confusing to me, but I liked the mystery aspect, and I was able to pick up enough of the backstory as it went along to be able to provide a sufficient explanation to Edgar when he started watching it with me. And then it went all bat shit crazy and we were all "Would this make sense if we had watched the show from the beginning?" "Time travel?"

And that brings up to present day. With all of the final season Lost promos everywhere we decided to catch up on what we missed in hopes that going back to the beginning would help the end make more sense. Plus, it's fun to watch a show back-to-back-to-back like that. Don't agree? I'll lend you the entire collection of Friends and Sex and the City on DVD and find out what you think after basking in that glow for a few weeks. Anyways, I'm totally stoked for this little Lost marathon that we've embarked upon, and I'm hoping that we can get through all of the seaons that are out on DVD before the new season premieres. I don't think that's until February (bless you, TiVo, for always remembering) so I'm sure we've got the time.

Please tell me I'm not the only person in the world doing this?

Buy none, get one free

I haven't posted in six days.

Bad blogger.

So let me regale you with this tale of thievery.

Edgar decided for Christmas that he wanted to buy me a pair of running shoes. I've been going to the gym again lately and running, but my feet have been hurting because my tennis shoes are older than Miley Cyrus and offer less support than Jon Gosselin gives his kids (whoa, two pop culture references in one sentence, CAN YOU DIG IT?). We decided to take a walk over to a sports store a couple of blocks away when he saw that there was a pair of shoes from a good brand on sale. And by on sale I mean they cost $39.99, down from an original price of like eighty bucks.

So. We go to the store. I try them on. They're pretty and they fit. Sold. After I picked the shoes out we walked around the store for awhile checking ot the merchandise and goofing off with tennis racquets. Because we're grown up like that. We ended up grabbing an inflatable exercise ball (with workout DVD included!) and went to the counter to check out. The girl working at the counter checks the shoes to make sure they're the same size. She rings up the exercise ball. She bags the items. Edgar swipes his card and enters his pin. We grab the bag and walk out of the store.

Did you notice what was missing?

The part where she rings up the shoes. Before putting them in the bag that she gives to us.

AND WE WALK OUT OF THE STORE WITH A FREE PAIR OR RUNNING SHOES.

Merry Christmas to all and Happy Savings.

It's beginning to look a lot like.....

We got out Christmas tree yesterday, and man, am I all of a sudden in the holiday spirit! Not in the "I want to give the world a song" kind of spirit, just the "aw, wow, Christmas trees are pretty!" kind of spirit. Because they are. Pretty.

An exercise in patience

Um, yeah. Patience. It's a thing that I lack. I've never had it. I was that kid in second grade when we had to read out loud that was like "CHILD, PLEASE! COME ON!" when another kid was trying to sound out a three-syllable word.

I got it from my dad. He had no patience for your bullshit, nope, none at all. And since I loved my dad and was a total Daddy's Girl and wanted to be like him, I emulated that behavior. Hence, my lack of patience. (He's gotten the patience in droves as he's gotten older and become a grandfather, so I figure in about 30 years I'll chill out, too.)

But yes, no current patience. I want to kill the people in my parking garage when I come home, because how freaking hard is it to just go to the next aisle and park there instead of waiting five minutes blocking EVERYONE ELSE while you wait for someone to unload their groceries and return their cart and then come back to their car and YOU COULD HAVE BEEN HALFWAY DONE WITH YOUR SHOPPING BY NOW. I threaten the cat that I'll drop him over the balcony or give him to the Asians down the hall when he won't stop meowing after ten constant minutes of meowing all the time with the meowing after I walk in the door. Or when people call me at work and take five minutes to find their account number to give to me--shouldn't you have looked for that before you called, dumbass? Or waiting for that damn second line on the pregnancy test. WHERE ARE YOU, SECOND LINE?

So I wanted to say that I am tremendously proud of myself, because last night when Edgar and I went to the grocery store and had to wait THIRTY FIVE WHOLE MINUTES to check out, I did not freak out once. I had to steel myself for it in the parking lot, because it took about five minutes to find a parking space. I knew we were in for a bad night. Then there were no carts and we had to scour the parking lot in the cold (yes, it gets cold in Southern California in December) to find one. So we get inside and we walk down the first aisle and when we come around to the next aisle the lines from the cash registers had already snaked back and were reaching towards the back of the store.

Oh, no.

I do not handle long grocery lines well. I don't like seeing people with carts heaped to the top standing in line in front of me. I detest cashiers that can't do their jobs. I AM IMPATIENT.

But you know what else I also hate? I hate when Edgar and I are standing in long lines in the grocery store and I say something snarky and he just sighs and says "There's nothing you can do about it, babe" in that voice that says "How many times have I freakin' heard you compain about this and how many times did you not survive?" Because then I feel bad for being all petty and impatient.

So last night, I kept my cool. I even refrained from yelling at this morbidly obese 13 year old behind me that NEVER SHUT UP and who's every other word was "like" and who, along with her younger sister, had no sense of personal space and kept getting all up in my biz-nass.

I should get a medal.

I know one place I won't be living

I read an article last night online (shame on me for not remembering to save the URL) about a couple living in Manhattan in a 175 square foot apartment that they purchased for $150,000. That's ONE HUNDRED SEVENTY FIVE square feet for ONE HUNDRED FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS. Thought I would reiterate that.

ONE HUNDRED FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS. For 175 square feet. That's the size of most people's bedrooms.

And in the article, they were all happy and novel and "Oh, life is so simple in our 175 square foot apartment!" In which they didn't have room for a trash can. That they can't keep any clothes in because there isn't a closet, so they have to keep their clothes at "strategically located" dry cleaners around the city.

Did I mention that they also had two cats?

My parents bought their house in Indiana for a little over $150k. That $150k got them four bedrooms, two and half bathrooms, a formal dining room, a breakfast nook, a family room, a formal living room, a loft, a two car garage, a huge front yard and a huge back yard.

COUPLE IN MANHATTAN, PERK UP YOUR EARS. YOU SPENT $150K AND YOU GOT A CLOSET.

Living in California, I get crazy housing prices. Edgar and I have come to the sad conclusion that we'll probably never be able to buy a house here because how do you save $30k for a down payment before you're 50 years old? And I know that New York City has insane housing prices as well. BUT SERIOUSLY, PEOPLE.

That couple is insane. Congratulations on wasting $150,000. At some point your novelty fails to be novel and just becomes stupid.

Books=Good

I just finished reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. I'm not going to write a book review because that's not what I do (Google The Book Thief and you can find plenty), but I just wanted to say: Read it. It was good. I made Edgar sleep with the lights on for an hour the other night so I could finish it because "Ooh, I'm just going to read one chapter" turned into "Yeah, I think I'm just going to have to finish the whole damn thing because I can't wait any longer," and that man HATES to sleep with the lights on so you know what I was risking.

My 60 year old drunk dialing uncle recommended it to me at Thanksgiving and lent me his copy and I'd been fairly distracted by it since then.

The [sour patch] kids are [not] all right

It's rainy and cloudy and gross today and it's put me in an all around sour mood. I've always disliked the expression "sour mood;" I've never been quite sure how one goes about being sour. I always kind of associated it with being smelly. But I think that it perfectly applies to today. I woke up sour, I showered sourly (see? no smelliness involved), I had a brief respite from the sourness as I brushed my teeth and was generally minty, then I sourly trudged out of my apartment to the car and have continued with the sourness ever since.

Days like these are a total bummer. It's one of those days where I'm just looking for the bad. And nothing really bad has happened besides all that crappy rainy-ness and cloudiness (I even won a $25 gift card to Target at work!), but I still have absolutely no part of my being that wants to contribute to making this a good day in any way. I want to get home, close the blinds on the patio door from the bedroom, put my pajamas on, and watch TV in a cave until it's time to go to bed. I don't even want to read because that would require turning the light on and I WANT THE DARKNESS.

Surprisingly, I wrote those last few sentences in the absence of black eyeliner, candles, an iPod stocked with lazy emo, and a few dozen Twilight posters clustered about my walls.

So I guess I have that going for me.

Please touch that dial

Seriously, what's the big deal with Taylor Swift?

She's annoying. So really, what's the big deal?

This is one job where I'll forgo the salary

Makin' babies, makin' babies, makin' babies.

Who knew it was this much work?

And I knew that everyone had opinions on it, but jeez! Do it every other day. Do it every day. Buy those really expensive tests that you pee on to let you know if you're ovulating and only do it when they say you are, not any other time just for fun because then you'll NEVER GET PREGNANT. Don't eat deli meat! (Yeah, I thought that one was weird, too).

And now that my parents know that we're trying to get pregnant I'm getting a lot of "any news yet?" questions asked in that hopeful voice that I quickly have to dash and be the party pooper and be all "nope, no news," when I really want to add on the end AND THERE NEVER WILL BE IF YOU DON'T STOP.

Glad to see I'm currently working on pregnancy mood swings. Edgar, hold on to your chonies, this is gonna get crazy.

Compromising my convictions

Why is it that I hate the idea of manufactured pop stars who can't sing, but every time I hear a Britney Spears song even after all these years I can't help but inexplicably love it?

Wondering, Part 2

Do I always have to be the grown-up?

Turkey with a side of ghostly death

Here on Sunday afternoon it's hard to believe that the last week is over. I'd been looking forward to my parents' weeklong visit for months, and now it's already over. It's a common sentiment, I know, but worth noting all the same.


Random thought: it sucks that the last time I see my mom, every time I see my mom, she's crying at an airport.


Not-so-random thought: I hate LAX during the holidays.


Excluding my wedding, this is the first time in I Don't Know How Many Years that I've spent a holiday with not only my parents, but with all of my dad's siblings at the same time. It's much louder than I remembered. My aunts are pretty funny ladies, and watching them (lovingly) belittle my father is a sight to behold. Add to that an excessive amount of drinking among many of the participants and I often ended up with a headache each morning despite the fact that I was once of the few non-drinkers. THIS ATTEMPTING TO GET PREGNANT THING BETTER BE WORTH IT.

With my parents and my aunts and uncles all being at least 52+, there was often a lot of just sitting around and talking and playing cards in the evenings. Lots of conversation. And lots of me snickering in my head because I can recall the some of the same specific conversations happening last year when we were all together for my wedding. Must suck to get old and lose the memories! The one that was the most enjoyable for me to rehear was the one where pretty much everyone talked about how they believe in ghosts and to recount their ghostly encounters. My parents insist that they have a ghost in their house--specifically, the ghost of a woman from the 19th century who most likely came from the graveyard that is down the street from their house. And the location that their house is on apparently used to be a horse barn so they think that she died in the barn and has been haunting the house ever since it was built, and she really likes my sister's old bedroom. My mom likes to make things up like how my sister used to wake up and swear that she felt someone choking her, and I'm all Mom. Please. That never happened. I would have heard about it at the time. And oh yeah, the ghost likes to open cabinet doors and then close them and turn lights on. Please. Ghost. Be a little more original. Of course the ghost talk led to all of them talking about how they all new the exact moment their parents died before they had even been told. Which was totally depressing. Coupled with the conversation they all had before going to the airport about how wouldn't it suck to die in a plane crash but even though you would be scared all the way down you would never know the instant of impact because it would be so fast. And I'm all HEY. OLDER PEOPLE. CAN WE QUIT IT WITH THE DEATH TALK? It's the holidays, be thankful you're alive.

Oh, silly adults.

Oh yes they did

To all Indianapolis Colts fans: HAPPY FREAKIN' 11-0 SUNDAY!!

Thankful

Much more to come on the posting front once the week is over and we aren't entertaining family anymore.

I will say that last year at this time, Edgar and I were in a very bad place. We were staring at a black hole. And now life is completely different. It's turned itself around. We're happy, we're healthy, and we're getting ready to start our own family.

Thanks, universe.

I don't do anal

Having gotten myself into a spot of debt problems (called STOP BUYING SHOES AND OTHER SHIT) I decided after Christmas in 2007 that I was going to go debt fee. Mind you, this was before all of the "Aaack! Oh my god, recession! Cut up your credit cards and run for your lives!!" talk and was prompted by my realization that I would one day like to own a house instead of renting an apartment and that if I didn't start working on a down payment now I would never get there. I've been largely successful (at the paying off debt part, not the saving part). I essentially stopped using my credit cards and paid off a few store cards, leaving me with one student loan and three 'real' credit cards with balances. One balance was small, around $600ish. The other two cards were higher; one tottered around $4000 and the other around $3500. I paid off the largest card in the summer of 2008 using part of a generous early-wedding gift that my grandmother gave Edgar and me. I paid the $600ish card off in April using my tax refund. I had planned on that tax refund to go towards the other large card, but Bank of America forced my hand when they increased the interest rate on the card (which I had never ever once paid late on). Not long after that I got a notice from the other card where I had paid the large balance off that they, too, were increasing my interest rate.

No problem, I thought. I have my one "big" card left and even though it's still got a high balance it has a limit of $6000 so if I ever have an emergency I'm fine. I happily went about my business. Happily going about my business has ended up increasing the balance on that card though; add up that day you realized that your wedding china was on sale with free pieces thrown in for purchasing a certain amount with that time in Solvang where your husband got you drunk and made you think it would be an EXCELLENT time to sign up for a wine club with that other time you needed to buy a new laptop, and it all equals Damn I Thought I Was Supposed to be Paying This Thing Off.

No problem, I thought. I pay more than my minimum balance each month, maybe not double but always more, and it's still not a big deal because I have a huge cushion on the card for emergencies. And a great interest rate of 9.99%. You see where this is going, right?

About a week ago I read an article online talking about credit card practices that some banks are pushing through ahead of all of the credit card regulation that's going to be happening in the next year. One of those detailed a certain bank that would be greatly increasing the interest rates of even their good customers, offering them "rebates" on their interest the next month if they paid on time and/or spent a certain amount every month. Didn't sound too great for me. I don't want to use my credit card anymore, and this article talked about how a person (whose description was very similar to mine) would have to put over $750/month on the card to break even on the "rebates." All in all, not a good deal. Seeing as this article was talking about the bank for my "big" credit card, I crossed my fingers and hoped that it would not apply to me.

I was wrong.

I got a notice yesterday from the bank that my interest rate would be increasing to 29.99%. YES, THAT IS TWENTY-NINE POINT NINE NINE PERCENT. I mentioned my current interest rate is 9.99%, right? That is TRIPLE my interest rate. Let me repeat, I have never ever been late on one single payment. EVER.

Oh, but wait, the bank says. The bank says, hey, if you pay your minimum payment on time, you can get a 65% rebate on your interest. We won't give it to you until the statement date of your next month's statement, so we're totally going to screw you up the a-hole for the daily periodic interest rate for two months, but LOOK. SIXTY FIVE PERCENT!

Hello, bank? It's me. Do you realize that I'm not stupid? Do you realize that you will be DOUBLING my minimum payment because of this? And that you're an absolute fuckhead because of the fact that instead of letting me opt out of the interest rate increase and just pay the account off while not using the card anymore, you're actually requiring the account to be closed if I opt out? Unlike any other credit card company where you can opt out under the agreement and pay your card off at your current rate but keep it open and if you ever use it again you automatically accept that higher interest rate? Do you realize that I know you know that I don't want to close the account out because it has a high credit limit and closing the card will slash my credit score because my available credit will plummet? Do you realize that I know you know I know this and that you've intentionally selected my account for this position because I have a good credit score and am obviously the type of person that would want to preserve it and you know you can play me?

I swore to myself when I started this blog that I was not going to ever mention by name my current or any former employers. To quote Chandler on Friends: Can...open. Worms....everywhere! Too much trouble can come of it. But I've decided to change my stance on this just this one time because I am so super pissed off and because I never intend to go back to the mortgage/insurance industry. I'm comfortable burning this bridge.

FUCK YOU CITIBANK! FIRST YOU LAY ME OFF IN THE MIDDLE OF A GODDAMN RECESSION AND THEN YOU COME BACK TO POUR SALT ON THE WOUND? WOULD YOU LIKE SOME FUCKING LEMON JUICE TOO?

And so it begins

Holidays are always great because you end up with a big group of family that is normally never together but for the reason of that specific holiday. Thus, we end up with Keene Family Thanksgiving Week 2009.

My dad has one brother and two sisters. The brother lives in a town called Simi Valley, about an hour away from Long Beach when there's no traffic on the 405. That's a rare thing, the no traffic on the 405 thing, but we can always wish. My dad and his two sisters, one that is married and one that is a widow, live in Indiana. This Thanksgiving the Indiana part of the family decided to come to California. It's gonna be an interesting week.

Their flight got in a little after 6 on Saturday evening. We managed to get out of LAX a little before 7:00 and headed up to Simi Valley from there. My mother, who is not a drinker, immediately started pounding the chardonnay. My aunt and uncle that live here are regular drinkers ( but alcoholics they are not), and I think my mom was trying desperately to keep up. She failed miserably. About three glasses in she started talking with her hands, and with every point here and gesture there the wine kept coming closer and closer and closer to slopping over the edge of the glass. And it eventually reached that point, resulting in a huge splash of wine onto her pants and her drunken vehement denails that she wasn't in fact drunk, that she just talks with her hands and it was bound to happen. Bound to happen BECAUSE SHE WAS DRUNK.

I was viewing this show from my non-drinking armchair. My parents and my California uncle and aunt seemed to be highly disappointed that I wasn't getting sloshed with them, my aunt even going so far as to say "I told you that you needed to wait until January to try to get pregnant so that you could enjoy the holidays!" That point of view makes me think that people must have a waaaaay different perspective of me than I thought. When Edgar and I were at his friend's birthday party two weeks ago and I mentioned that we weren't drinking anymore since we were trying to get pregnant, they were all shocked and "Wow, that's got to be hard for you!" Just because I'm the only girl of the group that ever drank I guess that automatically made me the group's alcoholic. And then my family thinks that I need to be able to drink in order to enjoy the holiday season. Ok, yes, I miss the wine and the bourbon (OH MY GOD THE GOOD BOURBON) but I don't need it to enjoy my holiday. And I actually discovered that I can enjoy myself plenty being stone sober and watching a bunch of 50+ year old men and women getting wasted.

The best part of the story came the next morning from my dad: my mom apparently had to crawl up the stairs to bed, be undressed and then redressed in her pajamas by my dead, during which time she kept falling over, and then once that was done she laid down on the bed and alternated between moaning and giggling until she went to sleep. Oh, mom.

Let the festivities begin.

More to come

My parents got in on Saturday, and of course I have tons of things to write about that happened this weekend.

For now:

My mom got wasted on Saturday night.

My 54 year old father is trying to grow a ponytail.

Chew on that for a while.

Yes, this is where I live

Keeping in the tradition of Friday night date night, Edgar and I walked down Pine Avenue last night to have dinner at a place called George's Greek Cafe. We've walked by it every weekend since we've lived here, usually always saying "Hmm, we should give that place a try sometimes." And would then continue on down the street to Rock Bottom to get $3 beers. BUT, since the drinking has been kiboshed since I'm trying to get pregnant, we've started trying out the places we've wanted to go.

We got a nice little table outside on the patio right against the sidewalk. We started out with their hummus, and dear lord it was the most delicious hummus I have ever had in my whole life. I'm planning on having pregnant cravings for it once I'm knocked up.

But then, out of freakin' nowhere, these two ghetto teenagers that had been walking back and forth in front of the restaurant ran by a table a few tables down from ours, grabbed a plate off of their table, and threw it on the ground. Then they ran away down the street laughing and yelling like the little tools that they were, holding up their pants that were down by their knees.

Welcome to Pine Avenue.

Why would you even REMOTELY think that it's ok to just ruin someone's dinner like that? What the hell is your problem? Do you have a disease that prevents you from wearing your pants around your waist instead of belting it around your knees?

Motherfuckers.

LAX Again

My parents get to California tomorrow for a weeklong visit. I haven't seen them for 14 months.

I'm pretty sure my mom is going to cry.

What is the music coming to?

I'd like to preface this post by reminding everyone that I am 25 years old, not 80.

That being said, what the hell is this world coming to? I kid you not, on the radio this morning I heard a song that had these lyrics:

Shorty's like a melody in my head that I can't keep out
Got me singing na na na na na na na na everyday
It's like an iPod stuck on replay

(It probably ups the funny quotient even more if you actually read it in your head with an 80 year old man's voice.....)

Elsewhere in the song he sings about how he met his "Shorty" at the mall and about how he's in the kitchen cooking her things that she likes, later failing to rhyme the word 'likes' with 'wife.'

So you're such a bad songwriter that the only melody you can think of to accompany the feelings that you have for your Shorty is fairly monotone and sung with a 'na'? And you're comparing it to a broken iPod? If I was Shorty I would not be impressed.

Really? This is what music is now?

What ever happened to song lyrics that actually meant something? I know that every song in the American music canon can't be chock full of meaning and symbolism and messages about the current state of affairs, but this is just ludicrous. And I like a good, silly, meaningless pop song as much as the next girl, but please. It's like these people weren't even trying. At least be entertaining. Don't be a song where I'm just waiting to hear the ridiculousness of the next word and marveling at your inability to use words correctly in your vocabulary.

Side note: I got an email yesterday at work where this lady (who was also using selective capital letters as I do to make a point--but doing it incorrectly) kept using the word 'fallacy' in her email, but put into the context of her sentence it was clear that she had no idea what the word 'fallacy' meant. Word of the day toilet paper isn't for everyone.

One race where I get to sit still

On Saturday evening Edgar and I made the three-quarters of a mile trek down Pine Avenue to check out "2012" at the local Cinemark. Which brought up a few things, like:

1) Must stop going to movies in the evening at full price.
2) Why do people bring tiny tiny children to movies that aren't going to let out until well after 10 o'clock?
3) Why was the movie theater playing the sad Wal-Mart commercial? As if I wasn't already feeling trepidation for the people that were surely about to bite it in the movie I was about to watch?
4) Why do people clap at the end of a movie? It's a movie, not play, stupid. They can't hear you.
5) Why would you stand leaning against the sink playing with your phone in a crowded bathroom after a packed movie gets out, blocking other womens' access to a free sink to wash their hands and completely ignoring the bitter "Excuse me?" coming out of other's mouths? (Yes, tweenie, I'm looking STRAIGHT AT YOU.)


Going to the movies also brought me that little happy feeling in my gut that Oscar season is upon us. Of course that feeling might also be a little bitty baby but let's not confuse one thing with another, shall we? I've always loved to go to the movies; something about overpriced popcorn and buckets of soda six times the size of my bladder (for only 25 cents more than the medium!) make me tremble with delight and say "Sign me up, please." I revel in movie trivia. I may not have seen all of the "classics" and I can tell you very little about foreign films, but I still just like going to the movies, plain and simple. I have my standards, but they are totally inexplicable. I like what I like, and that's that.

Last year, though, I got very into the Oscar race. Edgar and I saw every movie that was nominated in the Best Picture category, and nearly every movie that had an actor/actress in the lead/supporting races. I say nearly because some of the smaller release movies that had actors in the race weren't playing at the theater near our place and I didn't feel like driving 40 miles to downtown LA to catch them. Especially since to catch a matinee showing we would have to leave much much earlier.

And take advantage of the matinee showings we did. At the AMC theater that was near our apartment in the December-February period of last year, they offered weekend matinees before noon at $6 per person. And since their security was ridiculously lax Edgar and I would make it a double feature and just movie hop. Nothing like a 10:30 am breakfast of salty buttery popcorn goodness washed down with a couple gallons of Diet Coke. There was also nothing like the slightly sick feeling that it would inevitably leave me with around 2:30 when we would be stumbling out of the theater into the blindingly bright light; turns out that your body does require more than fluffy carbs and soda in order to function.

And so it is time to begin that Saturday morning tradition once again. The only thing that is not going to last is the movie hopping part of it, I fear. Long Beach is much more ghetto (in the we-need-more-security) way than where we lived before (which was a whole 'nuther kind of ghetto). The Cinemark is much smaller and designed in a way that is not conducive to movie hopping activities. There's an AMC theater closer to our apartment, but it's even worse for the movie hopping, and *gasp* it does not have stadium seating. I guess I'm just spoiled, but we saw one movie there after we moved in and I don't really fancy seeing another.

But I love movie season! I love being able to watch the Oscars with a previous knowledge of the movies that are taking all of the top prizes. I like having my horse in the race. And I'm glad that I do this. While some of the Oscar fodder is, utlimately, fodder ("The Reader," anybody?), I also found some movies in there that I really liked as well ("Slumdog Millionaire," "Doubt") that I never would have seen if not for my goal to see all of the big Oscar movies. So let the games begin! My movie-watching ass is ready and waiting for that popcorn.

An open letter, vol. 3

Dear Colts,

I'm sorry I doubted you. I'm sorry at the end of the third quarter I said some choice words and phrases mostly beginning with the letter "f" and stalked out to run errands because I was mad.

I'm sorry I went to Rite-Aid to soothe my pain with a triple scoop of chocolate malted krunch. Actually, my waistline is really sorry for that.

You did not fail me. You made me happy when I came home.

Sorry for being a sucky fan.

Love,
Amanda

Envious

Edgar and I attended the 33rd birthday party of his best friend Chris yesterday. During which he and his wife dropped the bomb that they are having a baby.

WHERE IS MY BABY?

They are only about four weeks along. So if Edgar and I are successful this first time out, we'll only be about a month behind them. Which would be very exciting. Edgar doesn't have any other friends that have kids, so it would be really great if he could go through the whole experience of fatherhood with another person that's been there.

I have to say, though, that when I find out, after that initial moment of shock I kind of plunged into a place of anxoiusness. Now that Edgar and I are trying for a baby, finding this out makes us more excited and impatient for us to be the people that are saying "We're having a baby."

So when we left and I gave the wife a hug I hoped that her fertile mojo would rub off on my belly. Osmosis works that way, right? Or is that only what people desperate to get knocked up think? Probably.

Beat you to it

The other day, I wrote about this, where I typed "is there" in Google and the search suggestions came up with "is there anyway I can get this popular guy to get me pregnant?"

I'd just like to note that today, the exact same thing was posted on failblog.org. Go me, I'm ahead of the times!

Wondering....

If my parents will freak out when they come to visit next week when they see my huge jar of prenatal vitamins.

I have a feeling I will become involved in a long, circular conversation with my mother that no, I'm not pregnant, and no, I'm not going to call you every time I have my period until I get pregnant.

Oh, Internet. You make me laugh.

Since Edgar and I are trying to have a baby, I'm trying to do everything right. Start exercising again. No more alcohol. Don't stand in front of the microwave. Easy on the ibuprofen. Morning sex. OH THE MORNING SEX. Eating right. Those five servings of vegetables a day aren't going to magically get in my belly on their own, you know.

So I've been brown bagging it to work again. Part of my lunch today was an Apple Turnover flavored Yoplait Light. Out of curiosity I was reading the label to find out how much fiber was in it. Fiber=good. But there wasn't a listing on the label for dietary fiber. I wasn't really sure what that meant; does it mean that there is no fiber at all or just that they chose not to list the fiber? I'm not an expert on the requirements of food labels, so I went to Google to find out.

Google. I heart you. Here is why.

As I started to enter my search string, which I intended to be "Is there any fiber in Yoplait Light?" Google conveniently listed what they thought I might be looking for as each letter was typed in. And after getting to just "is the," the SECOND item listed in the search suggestions was:

"is there anyway i can get this popular guy to get me pregnant"

Of all of the questions that could begin with "Is there" in THE WHOLE ENTIRE WORLD, this is what comes up second on the Google search suggestions?!

Oh, honey, where there's a will there's a way. Good luck in your endeavor.

Get to "is ther" and it's number one.

Ay carumba, papas del jamon

So this is just too good to pass up.

One of my coworkers just returned from vacation in Spain, bringing with her lots of tasty Spanish treats, including: HAM FLAVORED RUFFLES POTATO CHIPS.

That's right.

Ham flavored potato chips. And they are delicious.

Thank you, Spain.

Listen to the words coming out of my mouth

Edgar and I had a dinner and a movie date night last night; now that we're trying to have a baby (more of that to come in another post) we want to make sure that we're still giving ourselves "us" time and that our only focus in life isn't becomeing a baby factory. Even though Edgar would love to do nothing but make a baby. All. The. Time.

Anyways.

We walked down to The Pike to have dinner at everyone's favforite Pan-Asian restaurant, PF Changs. Whatever, scoff if you will, but HOT DAMN, HAVE YOU HAD THOSE DAN-DAN NOODLES? No? Then back off. The meal was great, but our waitress was...well, how should I put this? Mensa. And I mean that in the Spanish language way, which is the exact opposite of what you would think it means in America.

Edgar and I shared two dishes between us. At the end of our meal, one dish was empty, the other had less than a third left, Edgar's rice bowl was empty, my rice bowl was half empty. Our chopsticks were down. Our napkins were on the table. We were sitting back in our chairs and talking. In short, we were done eating. So the waitress comes up and asks "Are you still working, or all you all done?" I've been a waitress before; this is standard. Essentially, you're asking if you can remove the plates. I say "Nope, we're all finished." This should be the point where she asks ok, would you like a dessert menu or just the check? Instead, she asks Edgar "Ok, would you like some more rice?" Um. Lady. We're all finished. That doesn't mean more. So he gives me the look, that look that every married couple can share with one another where you know exactly what the other one is thinking, and says "No, we're done." So she happily says ok and wanders off.

Ok. So we're assuming she'll be back with the check. Instead, we don't see her for about 10 minutes, and when she comes back she says "Can I go ahead and take your plates? I wasn't sure if you were stll working so I just want to make sure you're all finished before I take them." Um. Lady. Again. What do you not understand about "We're finished?" Especially that part where we told you twice? So we give her the okay, and then she starts shilling the dessert menu. Um. Lady. You should have asked that about 10 minutes ago, thank you very much.

I was totally a better waitress than her.

No, I'm not pregnant...just easily upset

Does anyone else besides me get really really sad when they watch that Walmart commercial that is always in rotation lately? You know, the one where the grandpa gets to go visit his grandkids because his daughter saved so much money at Walmart that she could buy him an airline ticket? And he packs his neatly folded shirts into his little grandpa suitcase? And he has to take a taxi to the airport and go by himself because he has no one else?

Why does it have to be a not-so-old-he's-a-dinosaur grandpa that is clearly a widow? Huh? Why? Where is Grandma?! What happened to her, huh? THAT COULD BE MY DAD.

Walmart, you suck.

Patience

I know that my posting has been sparse through the last week; please forgive poor lil ole me. Our friend just got out of the hospital and we've been focusing on getting him settled in at our place as well as getting his apartment packed and in storage.

Plus the whole trying-to-get-our-cat-and-his-cat-to-get-along thing. Last night when we were in bed we heard some hissing and screeching and what sounded like a cat body slam going down outside our bedroom door. Come on kids, can't we all get along?

And I've been crazy busy at work because I unexpectedly had to take on one of our national accounts this week.

Look for regular posting to resume in a few days.

Baseball

I find it funny that after a baseball team wins the championship (ie: the Yankees tonight for the World Series) that they always, always run into a big group and start jumping up and down. Up and down up and down up and down. Every. Single. Time. As if they're SO EXCITED that they just won that the only way they know how to express just how excited they are is to jump up and down in a big group.

How cute.

Thinking

It is absolutely mind-boggling to walk into a bathroom and see poop floating around in the toilet with no toilet paper.

So not only are you the type of person that doesn't flush a public toilet, but YOU DON'T WIPE EITHER? Were you raised in a barn?

Quien habla?

So for the first time in my life, my life as a white girl from the suburbs, I have been ethnically profiled.

When we got married, I took my husband's last name. His Hispanic-sounding last name. Tonight, for the second time in a week, we have gotten a telemarketing call on our home phone asking for me in Spanish. Edgar has happened to answer the phone both times and told the people, no, my wife doesn't speak Spanish and what do you need? I understand enough Spanish to get the gist of the conversation from what I can hear him say, but I just find the fact that these people trying to shill long distance phone plans all of a sudden want me in Spanish since I changed my last name.

Since the first name Amanda is so clearly Hispanic.

Loco.

It's time

The time has come where I Edgar and I can finally start trying to have a baby. It would have been a little bit earlier, but we wanted to avoid any possible fallout from The Battle of the Flea so we wanted to wait for the next egg, just in case. Since you were so obviously wondering about my menstruation schedule. GET USED TO IT.

We’ve been wanting to have a baby for about, oh, FOREVER now. We were originally planning on having a baby right after we got engaged, when we were in those (metaphorical) drunken-stupor days that accompany an engagement. Once reality clicked back in we realized that it wasn’t the right time for us, but that we wanted to try as soon as we were married. But job losses and real life and the lack of health insurance and flea repellant kept getting in the way. Until now.

And it’s kind of freaking me out.

I’m trying to wrap my head around the idea that I’m actually allowed to have a baby. That I won’t get in trouble for it (some people would say that babies are trouble, and I’m not talking to them right now). I’m a grown up, I’m married, I have a job, I have insurance….I have the things that society says are good things to have when getting pregnant. When you’re a little kid, you look at your parents and think “How will I ever be old enough to get married? Or *giggle* have all the sex?” AND I TOTALLY AM.

Like I said: freaking me out.

I’m going to grow a whole human being. Inside of me. And it will be my little human being.

This can’t be allowed, right?

We’re going to make a whole person. We’re totally about to become someone’s parents. Someone that will always be there, day and night, that we alone will be responsible for taking care of, nurturing, feeding, clothing, teaching him or her how to tie shoes and make the perfect blend of Jack and Coke Zero.

I’m going to have to go a whole year of my life without Jack and Coke Zero.

I can’t wait.

Improving my grade

As I was getting home from work on Friday night, I received a phone call from a friend of mine to tell me that he was in the hospital. While he was reluctant to give details of his hospitalization over the phone, the message was loud and clear: a week prior to that he had attempted to take his own life. I'm not going to talk about his reasons and his method; those are his own and it's not my place to share that with the world. He is alive, he is still with us, and he's hurting like hell, but he is still here.

This situation has made me aware of what a really bad friend I am. I had absolutely no idea that he was going through the things that he was going through. When Edgar and I visited him in the hospital on Saturday, he told us about a myriad of things that have been compounding over the last year that brought him to his breaking point, and in the back of my head there was this little voice going I had no idea. I once had a friend that jokingly told me "You get an F in calling people back." I can't even remember what friend it was (BECAUSE I'M THAT BAD AT BEING A FRIEND), and while it was meant as a joke, it was totally right. I'm notoriously bad at answering my phone. Usually because it's buried at the bottom of my purse, and if I'm not in the same room with said purse, I'm not going to hear the phone ring. Or sometimes I'll hear the phone ring but I'll be all "Hmmph, I'm comfortable right now, I'm not getting up. If it's important they'll leave a message." And later I'll listen to the message, but if it isn't life or death, the likelihood of me returning that call is very slim. Not that I don't care, but I'm lazy. I'd much rather be reading a book or curled up on the couch with my husband watching TV than talking on the phone. My parents, once Edgar and I had moved in together, often started calling his cell phone whenever they wanted to talk to me because they knew that Edgar would answer.

Because it's easy. It's easier to not make the effort than it is to work on a friendship. I always hear people say that "Relationships are hard work"; I'll admit to finding this expression ridiculous in the past. My relationship with Edgar has always felt effortless. We don't work on our marriage. Or at least if we are working on it, it doesn't feel like work. Yes, we've had to work through hard times together, but it was always the circumstance, not the relationship, that needed the work. But I'm beginning to see that this expression, at least in my life, doesn't apply to the relationship in my marriage--it applies to my relationships with my friends.

I have very few friends. I have one friend from when I lived in Indiana that I still keep in touch with, and even that is very sporadic. Not because we don't like each other anymore, not because we've had a falling out, just because I GET AN F AT CALLING PEOPLE BACK. I only really have one friend in California, and seeing as his life was so bad that he wanted to end it and I didn't even know about it, I guess you could say that I SUCK AS A FRIEND. Whenever Edgar and I have people over, it's his friends that we're seeing. Edgar doesn't suck as a friend.

I think that making friends as an adult is hard. Once you're out of school and you're in a professional environment and you're out of the world where it's ok to stay out until 2 every night drinking, you don't really get to meet a lot of new people that are of the friendship material. Not without putting out the effort. And even with the effort it's still hard. Where do you make these friends, the friends that you can invite over for dinner, or go shopping with, or catch a movie with on a Saturday afternoon?

So here is my goal: to be a better friend. To be a better daugther, a better sister. To call people back. To answer the phone. To put forth the effort.

And I'm getting my first chance. Our friend will be staying with Edgar and I once he is released from the hospital while he starts to put his life back together. It's obviously not a permanent situation, since we live in a one bedroom apartment (even though it's spacious with the loft) and will very soon be trying to have a baby. He'll probably be racing to get out of there after a few weeks; three adults, 1 bathroom, 2 cats, 1 litterbox. Fiyero will likely not be pleased with having to share his domain with another cat. I talk too loud. The parking is bad. But now is the time to start being that friend that I should have been all along. It's time to stop caring from afar and to actually do something besides listen to a voicemail. It's time to help.

I'm gonna win the lottery and buy a helicopter

Seriously, I've had enough already. These bat-shit insane drivers that I've been encountering on my way home from work this past week are driving me ABSOLUTELY LOONY. I will soon be one with the bat-shit.

I'm pretty sure that's unsanitary.

My drive home from work, while taking less than half time now that I live in Long Beach as compared to when I was living in West Covina, is kind of like an obstacle course. First, there's the "Ooo, here? Maybe here? Oh no, gone to far!" game every day of trying to figure out when exactly to get over to make a left-hand turn from Crenshaw Boulevard onto PCH. The standard left hand turn lane is far to short to handle rush hour traffic, and instead of that overflow spilling to the next lane and backing it up, there's one of those yellow-line-on-each-side lanes that runs up the rest of the street. People who are savvy to the traffic at that time of day know that when they see a line of traffic in that yellow enclosure that they need to suck it up and get in line. But then there are the ASSHOLES who don't get over and then stop in the next lane with their blinker on, blocking traffic, and try to intimidate you by playing chicken with their front bumper to get in front of you. GO TO THE BACK OF THE BUS, MISTER.

After navigating this minefield, it's on to PCH, which is nothing but a plethora of stoplights, and the four miles that I have to spend on it every day take up over half of my commute time. And then you have to watch some jackass in front of you bounce around from lane to lane, always trying to get ahead, thinking he's a race car driver, and ten minutes later he winds up RIGHT BACK IN FRONT OF YOU. It doesn't work, dude. Save yourself the trouble.

Once I can mercifully get off of PCH, I end up on the 110 freeway. Joy of joys, the on-ramp is one of those lanes that continue on to the next exit; it's not forcing you to merge right away. So it's often my luck to get stuck behind some jackass that's getting off at the next exit and therefore has no need to accelerate above 30 mph. Or they're Asian (OH YES I DID). Or some person in the lane you want to merge into that wants to get into my lane, but every time I speed up they speed up and every time I slow down they slow down and it's just like "Um, excuse me, can you quit annoying the fuck out of me so we can do this?" And then the next lane over is no better because it's loaded with semis that are getting off at the next exit after that. A girl's only choice is to dart into that lane, gain some momentum, keep her eyes on the next lane over in the sideview mirror, and jump over whenever there is sufficient space.

This is where my problem has been the last two days. I don't cut people off. Even if you're pissing me off, I don't cut people off. Mainly because I don't trust other drivers, and I really don't feel like them fucking up my lovely red Dodge Neon and forcing me into another five years of car payments. Because I only have liability coverage. UNDERINSURED AND PROUD OF IT. So for the last two days, yes, TWO days, I have waited for that appropriate gap to get over, and all of a sudden cars are all up behind me about to run over me. As in they are like hundreds of yards behind me when I check that lane before I move over, and then all of a sudden they're on top of my ass. As in they are so far back that you can't even judge how fast they're going, because how could somebody that far back ever catch up to you. Which leads to the question: If I am going over 70, and you can get to me that quickly and are about to run over me, you've got to be pushing 90, SO WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU IN THE #2 LANE? I'm all about the driving fast and the getting home as quickly as possible, and I waste no time in the #2 lane. The purpose of the #2 lane is to get myself at a sufficient speed to move into the #3 lane. Ninety mph is definitely #4 lane material. RULES OF THE ROAD, RIGHT THERE.

So the first time, it's this old purple ghetto Windstar. He was way far behind me when I checked my mirror, far enough back that if he was going at normal #2 lane speed he never would have caught up to me. But this....this....DOUCHEBAG! Oh my god I said it again, he made me say it....time warps to the back bumper of my car and I can see him in my rearview mirror throwing his hands up and yelling and trying to be all hard, and when I see that, IT JUST MAKES ME SLOW DOWN. Don't push me. So he finally gets into the next lane (where he should have been all along) to pass me, and flips me off as he drives past, leaning forward just to flip me off a little bit more as he pulls ahead like "Oh my god oh my god oh my god I have so much middle finger for you that the first time you saw it it wasn't enough!" And I was all "Dude, you drive a 14 year old purple minivan. Not impressed."

And then yesterday, same thing. I get in the #2 lane after checking to make sure that the next vehicle is far enough back. Which he totally was. But again, he all of a sudden put on his super speed and starts FLASHING HIS LIGHTS AND HONKING HIS HORN as he starts to catch up to me. Dude, I can see you. You're going 90, why are you even in this lane?

I'm not even getting into the part after the freeway with the people who have mental blocks that prevent them from crossing bridges at more than 15 mph and then people who have stupid philosophies on when it's okay to drive through a crosswalk.

My conclusion: My was is the only way, and those motherfuckers need to never drive again. Ever.

Some movies would be a lot less annoying if they considered this

How to be a Successful Overlord

Can't. Stop. Watching. Why?

Ragdoll

Wax on, wax off

I'm going to talk about earwax now. If you're not a fan of the almighty wax, you might want to take a step back.

I have had earwax problems for what I feel like is my entire life. The problem being that I have an obsession with sticking Q-Tips in my ears and digging for gold. If I go too long without Q-Tipping my ears, I become like an addict in need of a fix, and I switch from the coke to the crack just to keep myself from illin', and crack is my fingernails. So, yes, I'm that random person that you'll see in her car absolutely GOING TO TOWN on her ears, trying to dig her fingers down as deep as she can go. I'm sick, I know.

Obviously, this type of meticulousness isn't good for your ears. You can run into lots of dangers, like irritating them, scratching the insides raw, or, say, poking out your eardrum. Obviously, since I still do it, I've never poked out my eardrum and all of this practice has helped me learn exactly how far in I can go with my cotton-tipped friends. I know I shouldn't be doing this, but it's a habit and I can't help it. Restraint is no good, and sometimes it's even an absent minded thing and I don't realize I'm doing it until I'm doing it. It's bad.

This habit has landed me in the doctor's office a few times when I was younger. More times than I thought; I recently picked up a copy of my medical records since Edgar and I moved to Long Beach and were no longer near the only doctor that I ever went to in California, and I was going back and reading through all of the stuff dating back to when I was born. I went to the doctor at least four times for this. If I was my mom, I would have glued earmuffs to my head and been done with it. But I would end up back in the doctors office because sometimes, instead of scooping up the earwax on the Q-Tip, a little bit would get pushed farther in, farther in than I go because, like I said, I know how far I can go. Do this enough times and those little bits of earwax add up and can form a layer that covers your eardrum and then you are absolutely miserable. Because now your hearing is impaired in that ear and all the sounds are muffled, everything is quieter, and when you watch TV you have to watch it at the same level that your 82 year-old grandfather does. BECAUSE YOU CAN'T HEAR. Not being able to hear does yield a few advantages, like helping to dull the sound of the voices of really annoying people or lessening the deafening roar that is your cat when you come home, but for the most part: not that fun.

So when I was younger, I would end up at the doctor, and he would put these drops in my ear to dissolve the wax. After letting the drops do their thing, he would sit me up and use this high-powered, Super Soaker type thing to flush out my ear. Oh, sweet relief. I would be able to hear again and my ears would actually feel clean, and that would be the only thing that would keep me from having to attack them with Q-Tips. Eventually that squeaky clean feeling would go away, and then I'd go back to the Q-Tips, and then the cycle would start all over again.

Other times, the problem wouldn't be the earwax, it would be the ear canal itself. After getting swabbed by a Q-Tip two or three times a day the skin can get dried out and irritated. And when it's irritated it gets painful and swollen. In these cases, there's not really anything you can do but lay off the Q-Tips, AS MUCH AS YOU NEED THEM, and swab the area with peroxide day and night.

Since I've gotten older and started working and not had the luxury (or in the last year, the insurance) of being able to go to the doctor whenever I needed it, I've taken to self medicating in these situations. You can buy these little kits at the drugstore that are eardrops designed to break up the wax in your ear, and they come with his little bulb that you can rinse your ear out with once you're done. THESE DROPS SUCK. Not that they don't do the job, it's just that they do the job eventually. I go to them whenever I have that "oh, crap" moment when I pull the Q-Tip out and realize that my ear is clogged again. So I lay on my side, I put the drops in, and then I fidget for 10 minutes as the bubbles tickle the inside of my ear (this is actually the best part, because you can hear all the bubbles fizzing and popping right there inside your ear and it's kind of funky). But then the bad part happens, because you know that bulb I mentioned? Yeah, the directions say to use it to flush out the drops and wax with warm water. Tell you what: It doesn't work. You just end up with a water-logged ear, no matter how you contort your head for it to drain, so then you go around feeling like you have swimmers ear and everything sounds like it's underwater on that side. I eventually discovered that if you just stick the end of a wadded up tissue in there after 10 minutes and flip the side that you're laying on so that it can drain, and don't use the water, that you can knock it out after a few treatments and you don't have to feel all water-logged. They're not as good as the doctor treatment, because that's a one shot deal. These take days.

So right now, I'm in the midst of a double whammy, a clogged left ear that is also swollen. It began with the clogging. I was trying to avoid having to go to the drops, sometimes I can angle the Q-Tip just right so that I will be able to swipe up the offending wax, and, let me tell you, when I do that, it is JUST SO SATISFYING. I love nothing more than to pull a Q-Tip out of my ear and see the end covered in wax. Well, I might be exaggerating there, there are a few things that I love more than that, but this is right up there. It's like that guilty pleasure that you get when you pop a really big pimple. Anyways, it didn't work. And somewhere along the line, my ear started to swell. And now, AND NOW, my ear is clogged and my ear canal is super swollen and it hurts like a mo fo. It hurts reeeeeeeeaaaally bad. Like THIS MUCH bad. If I press on my cheek right in front of my ear, it hurts. If I press on the back of my ear, it hurts. If I press up on my ear, it hurts. It even hurts down into my jaw on that side when I eat. I've dealt with this before, and peroxide always wins in the end, but this discomfort is just so annoying. And what's more annoying is I know that I HAVE BROUGHT THIS UPON MYSELF. I know, I get it. And you know what's even more annoying than that? Is that I can't stick an effing Q-Tip in there to make it better! And it itches! I NEED MY Q-TIPS. The muffled hearing out of that ear is what is bugging me the most, though, and I'm hesitant to use the ear drops while my ear is swollen like that, because I'm worried that the drops will sting my raw and angry ear.

What's a girl to do? (Hint: the answer here is not to tell me that I should lay off the Q-Tips)

I will survive. I WILL survive. Earwax will NOT be the end of me.

This might be my new favorite thing ever

Twilight: The Abridged Script

Two minutes and thirty-five seconds of awesomeness

I am no where near patient enough to create this, but Thank Whoever that there are people in the world that can bring us this:

You are no Santa

There are a lot of ways that living in California trumps living in Indiana. There are a lot of ways that living in Indiana trumps living in California.

Pro-California:

• No snow or ice (unless you go looking for it up in the mountains)
• No tornadoes
• It hardly ever rains
  
• Lots of sunshine once the marine layer burns off
• Seeing a TV show shooting a few blocks away from your apartment as you walk to happy hour
• The ability to go surfing and skiing all in the same day
• The weather channel has to give three different weather forecasts: one for LA, one for the beaches, and one for the inland valleys, because they're all different
• People call interstates "freeways"
• The number of a freeway is always prefaced with "the"
• Much better ethnic food restaurants
• Carls, Jr!
• Driving an hour and a half in rush hour traffic to get to work doesn't seem like a big deal
  

Pro-Indiana:

• Thunderstorms!
• Different types of rain
• No earthquakes
• The Indy 500
• Colts football every Sunday during football season without having to pay DirecTV for the NFL Sunday Ticket
• Changes of seasons
• People call the freeways "interstates"
• You don't have to preface an interstate number with "the" ("The 465," are you kidding me?)
• White Castle!
• Drive an hour and a half to work and you end up in Ohio, that's how awesome rush hour traffic is

So, when I moved to California, I was happily in the land where no tornado could come and huff and puff and blow my house down, and then I was introduced to the Santa Ana winds. I'm not really sure what causes the Santa Ana's, but it's a seasonal weather thing with winds that can gust at like 80 mph on a continual basis all day and all night. They thrive in the canyons and inland valleys and the land even further inland than that. When Edgar and I lived in Ontario, the Santa Ana's were so bad that they would knock over the landscaped trees in our apartment community, cover our cars in dirt, knock over patio furniture, generally wreaking havoc on the morning after clean-up. I got used to them fairly quickly, and when the winds would kick up I'd just be like "Oh, hmpf, the Santa Ana's again" and that would be that, and I would walk away feeling satisfied that I had successfully assimilated. HOWEVER. When we moved to Long Beach, I secretly thought to myself "How awesome is this, no more Santa Ana's!" Here we are, living less than a mile from the water, how would it be possible to have Santa Ana strength wind here?

Apparently it's possible. I want my money back.

Something crazy and wacky was going on in the air yesterday, because by the time I got home, the wind was insane. There were dirt and leaves and palm tree fronds whipping around the sidewalks, trash blowing around everywhere, and the cat was freaking the hell out because he was all "This? I thought we were done with this shit?" And I was all "Me too, little buddy, me too." And that stupid wind kept me up until ONE O'CLOCK this morning. That is one hour after midnight. That is five hours before I have to get up. THAT IS NOT RIGHT.

California, you're testing me. I don't like it. Quit it.

I win

WARNING: This post is going to be about how awesome my husband is, so if you don't want to read it, or you're already sick of reading about how awesome he is, stop now. See? I'm friendly. I care. I watch out for you.

We had a work-sponsored happy hour yesterday at an El Torito Grill near the office. There are only two men that work in my office, and one of them was hesitant to RSVP last week because he didn't want to be so outnumbered by the girls. Spouses/significant others were welcome, so I told him I would bring my husband to help even up the score. Both of the guys in my office ended up not being able to go at the last minute, so Edgar, my wonderful, understanding, caring husband Edgar, had to be the only male at an all-girl happy hour. Poor guy.

I felt so bad for him, but he was so great. That man could make friends with anyone. I got nothing but good reports today from my co-workers, telling me how nice my husband was and how funny he was and how they were so happy I brought him.

My husband totally kicks the ass of any other husband.

Black ski masks

Um, Charter. Again? Really?

Our bank account was charged another $30 from Charter Communications today despite the fact that we do not have an account with them and that means WHY ARE YOU STEALING OUR MONEY? That's now over $80 that they have jacked from us.

This is gonna be interesting.....

Our immortal souls may matter after all

Edgar: Hmm, College Game Day is at BYU.

Amanda: That's weird, who're they playing?

Edgar: TCU.

Amanda: As in Texas Christian?

Edgar: Yep.

Amanda: So it's the Mormon's versus the Christians?

Edgar: Uh-huh.

Amanda: Joseph Smith versus Jesus?

Edgar: Yep.

Beat.

Amanda: We should probably care how this turns out, huh?

Apple a day my ass

Today was the first day that I've hated my new computer. Hated like the way that you hate that girl in high school who never had to wear the same outfit twice and always had the perfect hair and designer makeup and an expensive car. But she was really nice and so you felt bad to hate her, but you still hated her and wanted to throw her out a window? That's how I hated my computer today. But I didn't throw it out the window, just like I never threw that girl out of the window, because I'm better than that.

The impetus to this font of hate was my feeble attempt to transfer my iTunes library from my old crappy computer to the new computer. I thought I was being so good, I went to the Apple website and everything, and I was following the directions, following the directions, followng the directions, but nothing would go right. If I had some blank CDs, this would have been a much easier process. But I didn't, so I followed the directions to use my iPod as a hard disk to transfer the music. Except that's where the Apple directions turned into a total FAIL. And I'd just like to note here that I have the newest version of iTunes on my computer. And the Apple website directions are for the newest version. FYI. So it tells me for the new computer that I need to backup the things that I have in that iTunes library so they don't get erased when I load the new music on there. Okay, simple enough. So it says to go File>>Library>>Consolidate Library. EXCEPT THERE WAS NO 'CONSOLIDATE LIBRARY.' Way to suck, directions. So there was no way for me to save my new music, which totally sucks because I have about $45 of recently downloaded music on the new computer. So I chose the next best option, which was Export Library, so something like that, and saved a copy of it in a different folder. I think that works, right?

Then, the directions wanted me to move the original iTunes Library folder on to my desktop. This is where the window came in. The computer wouldn't let me do it. No matter how hard I tried. It kept saying that I needed administrator permission to do it, except I AM THE ADMINISTRATOR, so what the fuck?

I'd like to also mention that at this point I was about three hours into this project. Three hours in because everytime I tried to copy the iTunes folder from the old computer onto the iPod, it would copy copy copy copy for about 10 minutes then tell me the disk was full. So I'd have to cancel it, make the folder smaller, and try again. And then it would do the same thing. Again and again and again and again and again and aren't you as frustrated at my computer after reading all of this as I am? Because if you aren't, you have no soul.

At this point, I do what I always do when computer problems have me down, and I called my Dad. Daddy. The man who, despite being 2300 miles away, can fix everything. HE COULDN'T FIX THIS. He also laughed and told me that I could just download a program on the old computer that is already on my new computer that would allow me to hook a USB cord between the two and transfer all the files I wanted. Of course, Apple never told me this because Apple wants ALL PC USERS TO DIE.

At this point, I just aborted the whole project, because the only thing you should ever spend over three hours on is the director's cut of Titanic. Or The Lord of the Rings. Both were pretty cool. Or childbirth. NOT FUCKING WITH YOUR ITUNES LIBRARY.

Guacamole: A Love Story

Breaking from tradition, I went to Quizno's today for lunch. I say "breaking from tradition" because tradition is a Lean Cuisine that I eat at my desk. I could not take another Lean Cuisine. Or Healthy Choice. Or Smart Ones. Or Eating Right. I am frozen entree fried. I fear if I eat any more that I will soon be crapping only Santa Fe Rice and Beans.Thus, Quizno's.

I haven't eaten at Quizno's in forever. I was somewhat put off of Quizno's after my last experience there with my husband, probably almost two years ago. There was a Quizno's near a Ralph's and a Blockbuster a few miles from our first apartment that we had together. We normally would do our grocery shopping on Friday nights after work, go to the Blockbuster and grab a few movies, pick up some takeout for dinner, and settle into an evening of domestic bliss. You may think that's boring. Excuse me, did you not read my use of the term 'bliss'? Domestic bliss totally kicks ass, and ye singles should not be knockin' it.

Okay, going off topic. Right. Quizno's.

We go to Quizno's. Two stoners are working behind the counter. Now, let me be clear and say that I have no problem with stoners. I myself was a super-stoner from my senior year in high school through when I graduated college. Then I realized I needed a real job, and with that real job took on the responsibility of things like rent and health insurance and groceries, and could no longer afford said stoner activity, especially the groceries for the munchies. But I was a good stoner. I was a stoner that graduated second in her class in high school and first in her class in college. And the only reason I missed out on being valedictorian in high school was because my junior year I wanted to take AP Chemistry, which would have vaulted me over the person that ended up being valedictorian, but they only offered the class during fourth period, and fourth period was show choir. Yes, show choir. I gave up valedictorian for show choir. Whatever, my sister was valedictorian of her high school class and she never got anything special for being that either, except the title of valedictorian. My valedictorian was not in show choir, so she did get to take the AP Chemistry class. Suck it, valedictorian girl, you didn't get to wear dresses covered in sequins for three years while you sang and danced!

Oops, off topic again. Right. Stoner guys working at Quizno's.

Stoner guys took about 15 minutes to make our sandwiches. There were no other customers before us. None after us. Fifteen minutes. FIFTEEN MINUTES. They, however, probably thought they were going super fast, because they were stoned, and in Stoned Time fifteen minutes is like 18 seconds and HOLY SHIT, DID YOU SEE HOW FAST I MADE THOSE TWO SUBS? IT WAS LIKE 18 SECONDS.

So being fairly disgruntled, Edgar and I got home, unpacked our groceries, and opened up our sandwiches. Our sandwiches that were made ALL WRONG. I had asked for something with chicken, maybe turkey, I'm not quite sure because it's been a long while now, but the sandwich I unwrapped was prime rib. That's not even in the same category of animal! Cow, not poultry. Four legs, not two. And I hate prime rib. So there I was, no sandwich to eat, not willing to go back because I didn't feel like being arrested in the double murder of two stoned Quizno's employees.

This boycott of Quizno's has unintentionally lasted almost two years. It wasn't really an intentional thing, it was just that after we moved away from that Quizno's I never really had a craving for it, haven't really lived close to one, and it's never come up. But there's a Quizno's by work, I was hungry, I was fearing the Lean Cuisines, and it made a perfect storm.

After perusing the menu for a few minutes, I finally decided on the Turkey, Bacon, and Guacamole sandwich. Seems yummy, right? Until I got back to the office with it and discovered *gasp* THEY USE IMITATION GUACAMOLE. All it is is mushed up avocado that they freeze and then squeeze out of a bag. THAT IS NOT GUACAMOLE. Guacamole should be made fresh, and it has more ingredients than just avocado. That's why it's called guacamole, not avocado. This guacamole, this cheap imitation of guacamole, is the kind that restaurants order in bags that come in bulk that they freeze in the freezer until the day that they need it, and then they throw it in a boiling vat of water to unfreeze it, along with bags of things like "homemade" chicken noodle soup or marinara sauce. Guess what, people? If the menu says homemade, they're probably lying. It was delivered to them on a truck in a frozen bag until the day you ate it. I used to be a waitress, I know this, and now I'm giving away trade secrets and they'll never let me back in the club. I DON'T CARE, I'M TAKING A STAND ON MY GUACAMOLE.

This is clearly important to me, because back when I didn't know better, I used to think that I hated guacamole. I told everyone it looked like something that I would find in my niece's diaper. And maybe that's true, I haven't changed any bright green diapers as of late, but it could happen. And because of that mental image, I wouldn't eat it for the longest time, but when I finally did.....oh, when I finally did. Eating guacamole was like coming to Jesus, it was JUST THAT GOOD. My husband doesn't eat guacamole. I KNOW, what kind of Mexican is he? A BAD ONE. You know what else he doesn't eat? Cheese. Queso. He's not havin' it. It was very odd to me when I met him, because I come from a place called the Midwest where we are of a firm belief that if it doesn't have cheese on it, it's not worth eating in the first place. Oops, we weren't talking about cheese, we were talking about guacamole. My husband doesn't eat guacamole! He says he's allergic to avocado. On our second date, we got burritos from this awesome Mexican place called Alberto's, and it had guacamole in it, but he didn't die. He claims that it made him really nauseous and that he had to try really hard to not look like he was going to throw up. I didn't find out about this avocado aversion until several dates later, and I was all "Um, why didn't you tell me that burrito was about to make you throw up?" and he said "Oh, I didn't want you to feel bad since you suggested the burrito." THANKS FOR SPARING MY FEELINGS, BUDDY. YOu gave it away, guacaomle won't kill you, GIVE IN TO ITS GREATNESS.

Oops, off topic once again. Right. Quizno's is a total cheater when it comes to guacamole.

Congratulations Quizno's, I'm probably not going to eat you for another two years.

Trip or fall?

Yesterday while playing around on the computer and being kind of bored, I discovered the joy of StumbleUpon. I know I'm way behind the times on this, but please forgive me, because I'm the lazy type and it's much easier for me to go "Eh, maybe later" than it is to take action to do anything new. YOU KNOW YOU ARE TOO. Don't judge me.

So StumbleUpon is pretty cool. You tell it what you like, and then you can begin "stumbling" and it will take you to random things on the internet that it thinks you will like based off what you told it you like. If you become a member, which is free, you can also rate stuff with a thumbs up or thumbs down; I'm sure this somehow affects how often others stumble on it, but I don't know how, so I'm not going to pretend like I do. Using it yesterday I found some pretty funny sites, so I decided to add a BlogRoll to my page because sharing is caring and so I share. Some stuff I already read, some is new. This is also why I've also started posting links to random stuff. F to the Y to the I.

It's also a great way to find new readers and get your site/blog out there to people you think will enjoy it (at least, I think this is true, but as I have not registered my blog with them yet, I don't know--I'm just having too much fun finding random silly things). And even if people don't find you, you can still come across random things like hamsters in wine glasses. Who doesn't want to see that? NO ONE, THAT'S WHO.

What about popcorn?

Easy Mac Micro Maniac

I like the soap.

Twenty-five motivational posters

25 Motivational Posters

I LOL'd, too.

Because I like this kind of stuff

I like learning random facts, so if you do too, check this out. Among my favorites:

Dublin is home of the Fairy Investigation Society.

A ten-gallon hat holds three-quarters of a gallon.

A parthenophobic has a fear of virgins.

More money is spent each year on alcohol and cigarettes than on Life insurance.

Elizabeth Blackwell, born in Bristol, England on 3 February 1821, was the first woman in America to gain an M.D. degree.

The Dutch in general prefer their french fries with mayonnaise.

No joke

I was getting lunch at Rubio's today, and I heard the woman ordering after me say this:

"Can I get a lot of extra white sauce?"

Maybe I have the emotional maturity of a 13 year old, but I think that is FREAKING HILARIOUS.

And it might also be of note that she got a ton of extra napkins.

Everyone who is not me is not allowed to drive ever again

That sound this morning? The one where you were like "What the hell is that? No really, what was it? Should we be scared?" Were you wondering what that sound around 7:00 this morning was? That was my head exploding.

It goes like this:

I was driving to work this morning. There are two big bridges that I have to cross on my way to the freeway. On the first bridge, each side begins as three lanes and then the two right lanes merge a little way up. Before I reached the base of the bridge, I could see that somewhere up around where those two lanes merged that there were flashing lights and some stopped cars. I got in the left lane, as I normally do, but I notice a semi-truck merging from another lane that connects to the bridge before where the accident was was. Me, being surprisingly nice and giving for that time of morning, I decided to be cool and leave the space between me and the car in front of me for that semi, because I figured that he was going to have to get all the way over to get around the accident. He didn't get over. And I'd just like to note that I left ample time for him to move over before what happened next. Since he hadn't gone, I figured that he didn't have to get over into the far left lane, that the middle lane was not being blocked by the accident. So I sped up a little, catching up to the car in front of me. At which point, THE SEMI DRIVER STARTS TO COME OVER IN MY LANE. And I'm talking come over into my lane in a way that if I hadn't slammed on my brakes, if I had gone forward even two inches further, this guy would have creamed me against a concrete barrier. My throat, being very froggy in the morning because of this head cold that I can't seem to shake, croaked out "What the FUCK?!" in a way that sounded liked a barking dog as I slammed my fist into my horn until the semi had pulled past me. Cops be damned, I was using that horn. And then, AND THEN, once the semi had moved back to the other lane after he cleared the accident, and I drove past him, HE had the AUDACITY to flip ME off. And I was like "Oh no, oh no, FUCK YOU, Mr. Semi Driver, you take THIS finger!" I swear, I wanted to be one of those crazy people who would stop her car on top of that bridge, forcing him to stop, in order for me to get out and yell at him that no, you did not get the right to flip me off, since you are the one that is A COMPLETE AND TOTAL DICKWAD. I'm the one that was being a courteous driver and left plenty of space for you to move over, but then you didn't.

Excuse me, China Shipping? You have a driver out that right now that NEEDS HIS BALLS CUT OFF.

What's the point of this story? That there is NO POINT IN BEING A NICE DRIVER, BECAUSE YOU JUST GET FLIPPED OFF ANYWAYS.