Thursday, March 31, 2011

Cycling

I came up with so many good and different blog ideas today. Where did they go? Hell if I know. But here's something I wrote in my daybook in my teaching of literature class (paying attention isn't worth my time much of the time).

"This morning, I rode my bike to class. It was a rather over-zealous endeavor to save money and not hurt the environment. I hadn't been on a bike that wasn't stationary for what feels like ten years. Hell, for all I remember it may actually have been that long exactly.

It was cold. Uncomfortably cold. My lungs burned in icy labor the entire way. Snot threatened to spray from my nose and my ears stung from propelled wind. The seat was adjusted for a 6'4" man and I felt like a child every time I clamored off of it at an orange hand..

Later in the day as I looked out a floor-to-ceiling window of the student center, grey clouds were crowding a not-so-distant expanse of the sky. "Fuck." A thirty-minute bike ride in forty-five-degree weather was miserable enough without perpetual drenching."

All 100% true. It didn't rain, thank goodness but my crotch...oy it hurts. It doesn't quite help that last night in the mall I took a jump on the bungee trampoline (because it was my birthday and I do what I want). The harness strapped around my waist and my inner thighs. While being sprung about 100 feet up into the air was the most fun I've had in a long time, it didn't do my fragile flesh any favors.

Saturday, March 26, 2011

A Rather Desultory Post

This morning has been intensely random. I've done things that don't make sense for me to do. For instance: I painted my nails. BOTH SETS! That's not a thing I normally do, and will probably take the polish off of my fingernails within the next 48 hours.

I was reading a new book called The Search for WondLa and on the cover, the main character has her hair done in the most fantastic way.

No, I didn't do the Princess Leia spirally things, but I really dug the fishtail braids.

Fishtail braiding is something I never thought I could achieve with my hair. Sure it's long enough and it's definitely straight enough, but it takes for-ever.

What the hell, while I'm procrastinating in every other facet of my day, I'll give it a go. One YouTube tutorial later, I came out with this:













It took maybe 20 minutes to a half an hour to do both and I think they turned out pretty well! It is really easy and once you do it a million times (and by the end of it it feels like a million) you start to really get the hang of it.

Have a close up!

My family is taking me out to eat for my birthday (which is on Wednesday) and I've been basically killing time until then.

I could be working on:
a) Global revision for Eng 300
b) 7-10 page paper about self-punishment, also for Eng 300
c) One of three observational reports for Eng 297
d) One of five unit lessons, also for Eng 297
e) Reading The London Merchant for Eng 327
f) Anything even remotely more productive than braiding my hair. Which would be just about anything.

After family time (and laundry time because, let's face it, free laundry is pretty fantastic) I may go see Red Riding Hood with a friend of mine for frees at the theatre where my sister works.

Have a happy weekend everyone!

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Time To Mellow

My job is not difficult all the time. Like any other job, it has its moments where when I'm performing it I wish very much that I wasn't. This past week was a rotten one work-wise and life-wise (on the fiscal end) and I have done nothing but complain about it since it started.

Last night when Jay and I got home from closing together, I pissed and moaned about the entire night, how busy I was, how little recognition I get for what I do while his job is "where its at" as far as getting recognized for doing well. This is a very common conversation. So common, in fact, that he interrupted my rant to throw it right back at me, almost word-for-word what I was going to say. Then proceeded to clarify that his job is often just as thankless as mine is.

Wake up, Meg. Complaining does nothing to help anything. It just makes you feel worse and more exhausted than you already are. Also: You're pissing off people you love.

So: Stop it. Just stop it.

Today (at work, believe it or not) I decided to make a change in how I run myself. I will not complain: about work, about money, about school, about family, about anything. If I feel the urge to complain...well...I'm working on that. Changing my train of thought to another track is really hard. Getting the train to stop altogether or even slow down is damn near impossible for me but I'm going to make a conscious effort to chill out about everything from now on.

I WILL get over myself. Ironically I'm waiting for a humbling experience to come along and sit my ass down on the metaphorical pavement and tell me, "Look, this is how it's going to happen from now on."

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Spring...Break?

Apparently someone in Italy and someone in Russia viewed my blog recently...

I'm down with that.

So this is my spring break which, if you are a college student over the age of 20, you will know is not actually a break but a week-long allowance that we get from the university/college to do the incredible amounts of work that we've amassed so far in the semester. Not out of procrastination, but because professors work this week into their assignment budget. It's like a spending spree in which students are required to learn and prove that learning while educators (and not all of them) do not quite as much.

However, this is also the week that the younger crowd (so college students 18-19 who haven't stepped into their majors yet) go away for a whole week and take time off of work to do so. That leaves a lot of hours open in the retail business for people like me to pick up. I'm totally cool with working more hours because I'm totally cool with having money. However, here's how a phone conversation went with someone dealing with the schedule for this week:

"What's your availability for spring break?"
"Well...I mean...I have open availability but..."
"So I can schedule you for 40 hours?!"
"...but I have papers to write and quite a bit of work to do..."
"So how many hours?"
"Uhm..."
"Because about 11 people have taken that week off *shuffles papers around* Oh...more than 11."
"Well...I need the money so, I'd say no more than 35 hours."
"Okay. That's how many I'll put you down for!"

35.75 hours is what I'm working this week. Luckily, I have Thursday off in which I can do some catching up. It might not be so frustrating if I didn't work until 10:30-11:00 at night because it's not like I can do work when I get home. And trying to start a paper or, indeed, get back into a paper that you started yesterday is difficult to do when you know you need to get ready for work in a few hours. It's possible, but difficult.

That's all I have for today. Maybe I'll suddenly become more fascinating next time I post.

Friday, March 4, 2011

Want To Know What The Cutest Thing You'll See Today Is?

Jay and I have a guinea pig named Murray.

Here he is:
This is from about two years ago right after I got him. At the time, Jay was endeavoring to get me a hedgehog (my not-so-secret ultimate pet desire). He happened upon a woman giving away her 6th grade daughter's guinea pig.

Murry is...less than social. "Antisocial" is a good word, actually. He doesn't like to be touched...at all. Trying to pick him up is a chore and once you finally have him he sits there in terror. I don't know what that girl did to him, but he does not like to be handled. We figured we would try and get him a buddy someday to get him to be more social.

Skip to a few days ago when Jay told me a friend of ours from work was moving to Colorado and had some guinea piglets that he needed to give away before they ended up at a pet store. I'm learning more and more every day that Jay has a bleeding heart for animals, especially ones that are of the cute and fuzzy variety.

Tonight, we brought home Theocoles: The Shadow of Death.

Okay, so he's 2 1/2 months old and was the runt of the litter (hence, why the name is so ironic-funny). Omigod he's so soft and cute! I can pick him up with one hand! And he lets me!

Garret is much more pleased with this guinea pig than "that other one."

As a bonus, we also got a really big cage. It's probably a little over 4-cubic-feet (which is ideal for one guinea pig but these two will easily be comfortable in it, even when Theocoles gets bigger).

We have not introduced them yet. Right now they're in "quarantine." They really should be in separate rooms but as we have limited space, they're in separate cages on opposite ends of the wall in the living room (Murray is occupying the bigger cage because he's huge and we felt we should get him used to it).

Here are a couple parting shots:



((Cross-Posted at Holy Matrimony!))

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

March.

It's March! It's March! It's March! It's March!

I love March.

Here are some reasons why:
-Spring happens!
-Spring break happens! (Which ends up being a time when I do more work than any other week out of the semester)
-My birthday is on the 30th!
-St. Patrick's Day! (Which I tend to celebrate in the lamest way possible: Corned beef and cabbage dinner with my family. I may endeavor to drink this year if not until I'm gone [which doesn't take a lot] at least a beer or two)

Last, but not least, here's my most favorite thing to do in Springtime, maybe even ever:

Flying a kite!
These particular photos are from 2009



Our kite was a jolly roger that I named Achmed (I love to
anthropomorphize almost everything through names. Jay likes to do it too, but he mostly just makes a throwing-up sound when liquid is coming out of a container [i.e. garden hose, pitcher, sink, bucket, etc...])

Unfortunately, Achmed broke that very day. We didn't have any kite string so he's tethered to a roll of sparkly pink ribbon that we found in the shed. Something about the tension of the ribbon wasn't quite as good as a real string and Achmed's center pole snapped in half. But not after hours and hours of running to and fro laughing like a 4-year-old!

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

MultiPass

When I was a kid, I remember The Fifth Element being on TV a lot. But I always came in on my parents watching it and it was halfway through the movie. I had no idea why there was a tall blue lady singing opera/techno-pop while this angry orange-haired chick beat up aliens, but I knew that I liked it.


Several years later, I have 2 DVD editions of the movie (one just the film and one special edition that was made when they realized everyone loves The Fifth Element), a book adaptation (that's god-awful and reads like a 12-year-old watched the movie as he wrote it, and the soundtrack.

The soundtrack is on my iPod which I mostly listen to during my commute to school and the town 40 minutes away where I do my clinical observations this semester. One of the songs (dubbed "Akta" after what Leeloo says to Korben in the cab once the police have caught up with them) is super fun to listen to while driving.

I really wish it went into the song directly after that when Korben is speeding through the New York of the future in his beat-up cab, throwing out quips like, "Look, lady I only know two languages: English and Bad English." That song is very up-beat and has words in some language other than English, but it's fun and would really fuel that part of me that wants to be in either a space ship or a car chase whenever I'm driving.