The Internet is Awesome

It doesn't take long for me to lose hours in reading a website. I sign on to look at one thing, and BAM, it's been three hours and I've read 36 pages of MLIA or whatever.

But the sites I frequent the most include:

http://www.mylifeisaverage.com/ (of course)

http://www.homemadepolariod.com/ (which usually consists of giraffe drawings)

http://www.awkwardfamilyphotos.com/ (speaks for itself)

http://www.theoatmeal.com/ (started with "how to pet a kitty" when Dani sent it to me a few weeks ago)

http://www.dearblankpleaseblank.com/ (which I believe I have talked about before :D)

Oh, and, you know. Blogger :) And Barnesandnoble.com, of course.

The Toaster Oven Scandal

About two hours ago, I decided, "Hey, I'm hungry. I think I'll make one of those disgusting looking french-bread pizzas that have been sitting in the freezer for the last few weeks, because we have nothing else to eat in the house."

So, naturally, I look at the box and say, "Half an hour? Shoot dang, I'm not cooking this thing in the oven for 30 minutes! I've got things to do! I'm hungry!" because, really, what else is there to say?

I decide to pop it in the ancient looking toaster oven, hoping against hope that it'll cook faster than the oven, but not make it all gross and soggy and half-way cooked like the ancient microwave we have in this house.

Needless to say, it burned the heck out of that poor little frenchbread pizza in less than six minutes.

But what's making me wonder... it's been over two hours, and despite the fact that I opened all the kitchen windows, turned on the overhead fan in the kitchen, and the microwave/fan/thing over the oven on full blast (making Diego run under the bed because it sounds like a jet plane is about to take off from our front porch), it still smells horrendously disgusting in here.


I had chocolate milk for lunch.

Jerks

Again, it is coming to my attention that, outside of the little world of Mormons which I so love to just dive into and surround myself with, there are many jerks in the world. Just plain old not-nice people that even I have a hard time finding some good trait within. Grinches of everyday life with terrible motives and selfish perspectives and just all around jerkiness. And, unfortunatly, these people-of-jerkish-nature tend to find high places in life, and typically are in positions where they can make our lives Hades and we just have to smile and nod, or else they fail you/fire you/take away your funding/don't let you out of your parking ticket.

Ugh.

Smile and nod, boys. Smile and nod. We'll get them in the end... because good always prevails, right? Right?

(And in the meantime, we'll just vent our frustrations on our blogs. Sigh).

Proof of Good Animal-Karma

Took a picture! Bahahaha...

Okay, so it's totally nonattractive, but I did just wake up. And it's blurry, but really, you can't blame my mom for her lack of camera phone skills.

This, my dear friends, is how I am forced to use my computer. With my cat thinking it's a personal, warm sling for him. (He's usually lying over both arms, but I'd shimmied the other one out to give the phone to my mom). It's a wonder I don't get carpal tunnel from it all...

Look at that innocent little face, like "What? How could this possibly inconvience you?"

Oh, Diego. You sure are spoiled.

Animal Karma

I like to believe that I have good animal karma. My cat is one of the most loved creatures out there. This does not mean that I feed him real, raw meat, or push him around in his own stroller so that he can come to the mall with me. I do not buy him costumes or sweaters (although he does get a big bow on Christmas, because, well, it's tradition). Nope, it's kitty kibble (although he does have a pretty expensive diet one that the vet prescribed, because he's quite... shall we say... plump) and tap water for Diego, but he is one happy boy, because we are all quite fond of him. Whenever he walks by, it's "Here, kitty kitty! Come see me!" or just a "Hey there, big boy!" greeting. We do enjoy our cat.

Okay, maybe I spoil him. He currently is lying on my arms, purring like a jet engine, cramping up my arm and making typing quite difficult. I really need to take a picture of this... And I did bejewel his collar when I was fourteen with star rhinestones that fell off and turqouise puffy paint, declaring "STUD MUFFIN."

ANYWAYS, besides Diego, back to my karmatic energy, animal-specified. I do quite enjoy animals, of the non-reptile variety, that is. I like them, and I like to think that they like me, and because I am kind, my animal-releated karma is quite good.

If I were to be reincarnated as an animal however, I do believe I would be someone else's housecat that, like Diego, is appreciated and sometimes given little pieces of donut and cheese-it crackers (his two favorite foods).

(Even though, you know, I don't believe in reincarnation. But I do think it is a very creative and fun concept :D)

In Case of an Earthquake...

Today, while standing in line to check out of the craft store, these two guys came up behind me to get in line. They were speaking with heavy Spanish accents, so I assumed they were speaking Spanish. When I realized they were really speaking English, and I could understand them, this is the comversation I then over heard:

GUY #1: Should we get in that other line?

GUY #2: Nah, we should stay here.

GUY #1: Why? The other one is shorter.

GUY #2: Because if there was an earthquake, this would be the safest line because it's closest to the door. We could just run outside.

GUY #1: Really?

GUY #2: Yeah. Or you could always just jump out the window.

GUY #1: Yeah?

GUY #2: No, no, no. You could jump out the window. I'll run through the door.

GUY #1: Okay.


It's good to be prepared. The Boy Scouts would be proud.

When You Move, Do You Dance?

When you move, do you dance? When you speak, do you sing?

To some, it may be an obscure method-acting technique, but to me it's a way of way. Being aware of your movement and appreciating your body and all the things it can do gives life a certain kind of joy and humanity that you can't get any other way.

It's not a crime to love life and enjoy the simple things. In fact, I highly recommend it.

More Doodles

My cup of Koolaid was happy today :)

Doodle #6? What I did yesterday in Health Care Essentials. Poop on that class and us no longer learning!

Scary Strange

Writers are freaks.

I've been following some authors, and recently, have been looking at blogs, random videos they put on Youtube, etc, and holy crap. These people are weird.

I suppose you need some eccentricity to write about someone, something, some situation that is so absolutely normal; you can only be strange if you can look at something utterly ordinary and pick it apart so unjudgemental, so objective, that you can create it so realistically that a reader will read it and not even notice.

You need to be eccentric to understand what I just said, because, seriously, that makes no sense whatsoever.

Now, I know I have always been on the unique side (silly, random, prone-to-dancing-at-innapropriate-times, etc). I've always been aware of this.

I know I am a writer.

BUT IS IT POSSIBLE THAT I AM JUST AS ECCENTRIC AND FLAT-OUT SCARY WEIRD AS THESE LEGIT AUTHORS, and not even realize it?

AHHH!!!!!!

Doodle Progress

Okay. So I WAS serious about learning how to doodle. And while I missed the last two days (I was doing other crafty-like things, like spending money at Michaels, painting random wooden letters for my room, and organizing our office full of craft supplies-- which was quite a feat, let me tell you), I have been trying to doodle a day.

It's been kind of fun, actually. In certain areas, I'm not as inadequate as I thought I was. Huh.

MY PROGRESS AS THUS:

Day 1, doodle #1! Eh.

Day 1, Doodle #2. I do enjoy this one :)

Day 2, doodle #3. I also enjoy this one :)

The most non-legit doodle ever. I was in class, watching the movie on parasites. That what was "Not Cool." Parasites suck. Thus, inducing sucky doodles.

Day 4. So, I'm counting this one. Haha, I was bored in class. Most terrible chapter ever. Yes, this is my textbook. :)

Please, no no no Parasites!

!_)*$#*!#*&$@#$%^(*#AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!@$*%#*$#*^*!@#*U@$

PARASITES!!!!!!!!!!!

Health Care Essentials, why must you show the freakiest, most disturbing, most disgusting, most TERRIFYING movies ever?

I never want to breathe, eat, drink, or touch anything again. Or go to Milwakee.

Parasites (or, as you might identify... WORMS) are absolutely revolting and terrifying and a fate worse than death. Parasites suck eggs. (Not literally. At least, I don't think so. It's just an obscure saying I like to use in dire circumstances such as this.)

Man, will I be saying my prayers tonight... THANK YOU FOR NOT GIVING ME WORMS!!! AHHH!!!

New Challenge: Doodle

It has come to my attention that I can not doodle.

Nope. For serious. I really can not doodle. I am hopelessly, dully, doodle-free, and it's quite pathetic.

How can I consider myself a creative person, and not know how to doodle? Impossible!

So I am creating myself a new challenge.

I will learn how to doodle. I will research, and I will study, and I will practice, and I WILL LEARN HOW TO DOODLE.

(In other words, I herby pledge to practice doodling daily until I am satisfied in my ability to efficiently add swirls, cartoons, patterns, and creative whatnot to whatever spare paper comes my way.)

Cat Nap

The other morning, I woke up to find my cat lying on my head.

Not by my head. Not on my pillow-but-not-quite-on-my-head.

On my head.

I believe this is because I pushed my pillow too far over to the right, where his designated corner of the week is (it changes on time of day, type of day, his mood, the position of the moon --- not really, but I don't understand cat logic, even if it is Diego), and he decided that he simply was not going to have any of that.

So he curled up, plopped down, and proceded to fall asleep while lying of my head.

I sat there, smothered by his fur, for a few minutes, trying to figure out how I slept through this development. How did the fact that twenty pounds of warm, fluffy, fat was suddenly pressed against my head not wake me up? I still do not know.

Then I realized, hey man, you're a cat. I'm a human. I've got opposible thumbs, you use a liter box.

Get off my face, fool.

Beach Day X 3

Going to the beach is something that I highly associate with my childhood. Going to the beach, in my mind, equals Oceanside, "cul-ta-sac beach," and all of my mom's family: the cousins, the aunts, the uncles, the grandma (Grandpa usually stays at home, but we see him afterwards). "Going to the beach" does not just include going to the beach. Not at all. It includes maybe four or five hours of beachy-time, then piling into our respective cars, and hauling back to Grandma's house to use the outside shower, one by one, to was off all the sand (yes, there is a shower curtain, and no, I'm still not sure that the neighbors can't see it from their attic window. Not that they'd want to see anything we've got.) When we were babies/toddlers, the shower was omitted and instead we got to hang out in the blue, plastic baby pool and pull various shells, sand clumps, and dead sand crabs from our diapers. (Or sand-craps, as Stephanie, quite famously, referred to them.) Later, we'd all chill in the family room, lethargic from the sun and red-skinned from lack of sunscreen reapplication, telling Grandpa about the beach and recalling who got tumbled by the waves, who got the worst sun burn, what weird people we saw at the beach. Then we'd decided we were too tired to make dinner, and since it was around four or five anyways, none of us wanted to go home yet because traffic would be terrible, so we sit around and debate for at LEAST half and hour over where we're going to get food from. Usually, if we planned the day ahead of time, it'd be this massive, disgusting excuse of a pizza (and I mean massive, we had to tilt it to get through the front door) where one would feed at thirty-whatever of us. That or some sort of Mexican takeout.

THIS TIME, however, our beach excursion differed from the norm of my childhood. It was just me, my mom, Grandma, my Aunt Lynne and my Aunt Lisa (give or take on differing days). We went three consecutive days in a row. That's a lot of beach time. Typically, my mom/aunts don't go in the water, don't swim. They leave that up to us kids. But this week, for some weird reason, it was a reverse tide, so you could walk straight out forever and it'd only be up to your ankles. For some reason, this delighted the women of Harris decent, and they spent hours frolicking in the water, searching for sand-dollars (of which we found dozens), and talking to the other beach-goers about how fun the reverse tide was.

I must say, I am pretty beached out. Three days in a row is quite a bit. And I'm not going to lie, I was seriously waiting for my mom's cell phone to ring with one of my aunts... "So, what do you think about going to the beach again today?" And although we'd laugh at how silly we're being, and how many errands and chores we have to do, but we'd just blow them off and go again.

However, it's Saturday, all my other cousins are free from school, and it turned out that nobody wanted to haul themselves to the beach. Three days turned out to be enough. I really don't think I could have handled any more vitamin D, to tell you the truth. I want to sit in a cave for a few hours--- I got too much sun! Haha.

And that, my friends, is the story of my beach-week. The end.

Poop on You, Universe

UGHHHHH.

It's one of those days.

No, actually, it's been one of those days, that turned into one of those couple of days, which looks like it's heading for one of those weeks.

Not. A. Happy. Camper.

Secrets

So, I've been looking at different writing exercises online, trying to hone in on my skills and (for certain stories) characterization. One I found that puzzled me... coming up with secrets.

Secrets. Ugh.

Secrets are way fun. I mean, in stories, secrets make things fun and fantastic. In real life, knowing someone else's secret makes you feel powerful, even if you would never actually spill. Having someone tell you their secret makes you feel loved and/or interesting, like you're in the know, and how many people has this person told beside you? It makes for great thinking and pondering.

However, I have lived a life of very minimual drama. Therefore, secrets haven't been a main part of my life. Even in childhood. Kids always "have secrets," right? That's just a part of being a kid (Or being a little girl, really, because I have no idea how little boys work).

I'm not good at coming up with secrets. Hmmmmmmmmm.

Shh... don't tell anyone!