Excuses, Excuses...

I suppose I should answer the obvious questions for my mother, who is probably the only person left who checks this blog. Where have I been? I could feed you some bull about having had a “personal emergency”. Then there’s the old blogger’s excuse: “I have no internet at home right now, and so blogging is going to be sparse”. Or perhaps the age-old line: “I’ve been really, super busy “. Actually, since my absence commenced, all of those things has to a certain extent been true at one time or another (If you consider a personal emergency forgetting to change your oil for an embarrassingly unmentionable amount of time and having your “cam shaft freeze up” [whatever that means…mechanic speak] and needing to replace your engine to the tune of two grand right at Christmas time. This is a really long parenthesis). So, I suppose I do have what could be considered a valid excuse. Except, I am a hardnosed, no excuses kind of person. It’s how I roll. So, that said, the reason I’ve been gone is because I’ve just been so busy, ya know?

Rather than continuing to unsuccessfully defend myself for an undefendable absence of almost half a year, I’m just going to dive back in. Hope you don’t get whiplash.

As I write this, I’m enjoying a deliciously rainy, thundery Saturday and trying to finish painting my apartment. The latter end of that sentence has not been overly successful. Did you know that finding the right color of green for your walls is much like parallel parking or running a marathon? It’s dang hard. The last attempt at this venture was to fix the mucous-like color I had originally thought looked like spring green. It resulted in an even grosser shade of body secretion. So, it looks like I’m going to throw out the original paint selection – it’s probably too far gone – and start over. I’m holding out hope that the experts at Sherwin Williams could rescue my investment, but it’s probably going to be $41 wasted along with a tiny bit of my sanity. But, I will press on, and when it’s time to move out of my apartment, I’m sure I will have just finished painting.

I also just got a really awesome haircut. Behold:

A little bit pixie, a little bit emo. Fabulous, no? Please ignore the crazy eyes I am making in the first photo.

Pita chips are good. Salty, buttery, crunchy goodness, they are.

And with that, I complete my update update. And, rest assured, you can keep checking in on me, as I WILL be a more consistent blogger this spring. You’re welcome.

Paint the town... raspberry

A random smattering of little threads of potential interestingness happening in my life right now...

I'm pretty sure my landlord would sue me if he knew the color I painted my hallway today. Picture a raspberryish color only darker...and more saturated. Kind of like the color in my header only darker and harder to paint over. He said I could paint as long as I didn't didn't use a "dark" color. Dark is relative. Relative to black, this is not a dark color. I have to say, it isn't totally finished yet, but I'm very happy with the results. It makes my little bathroom hallway looks like a boudoir dressing room kinda thing. It's fabulous. It will be interesting, however, once my lease is up and I have to replace the dark, saturated raspberry color with a dull, boring white. Prepare to prime.

My lovely boyfriend (and I mean lovely in all the masculine ways...) will be gone on a business trip this week and every other week for the foreseeable future. I will miss him.

I'm tempted to continue my "open letter" series with a witty tirade aimed at priceline.com. I would do this if it weren't totally my own fault that I ended up with a non-refundable, exchangeable or transferrable airline ticket that is going to be very difficult to work with. Firstly, it is my own fault for waiting to book my Thanksgiving travel until two and a half weeks before the event. Secondly, it is still my fault for assuming they wouldn't possibly give me a flight during the only possible time during the requested day that could potentially be hard to work with. Except they did. The one possible window that isn't going to work well, they gave me. It's sort of poetic, really. Oh well...a lesson learned for the future. I will not make this same mistake at Christmas.

I'm sitting at Caribou across from a know-it-all doctor guru lady talking with two people I'm presuming are residents. They are sitting there quietly hanging on her every word while the doctor guru lady deigns to bless them with her fount of never-ending knowledge and experience. I'm discreetly eavesdroping, trying to only occasionally glance up to take in the bloated sense of self-importance oozing from this woman's countenance. It's an entertaining sight.

My tendonitis (in some of my internet research, it appears that the actual spelling for this word is tendinitis. That is jacked up...) inflicted foot continues to ache somewhat when I walk. This condition is depriving me of my running which I have actually been enjoying lately. It is yet again poetic in sort of a cruel way that the first time I have actually enjoyed some type of physical exertion, I would develop an injury that keeps me from engaging in said activity.

Thwarted again...

The Results of the Post a Day Experiment

So, really the only learning I made from the post a day experiment is that I do not want to be blogging motivated by guilt. So, no more arbitrary posting requirements. I also realized that forcing myself to post more often than I feel inspired to do so leads to sub-par quality in posting. See the Post Day 3 of 7 when I was at the end of a long day, realized I hadn't posted and could only come up with half-baked phrases recounting my day. I think I'll go back to the one or two times a week model while trying to avoid absences longer of more than a couple days.

In other news...

I saw the most ridiculous infomercial of all time today. Has anyone heard of the snuggie?

In theory, this is idea is not all bad. Actually, when I first saw it, I was all "look, no more cold arms while I read!" Then, I realized the first glaring flaw in their design. Your hands are still hanging out there, exposed to the elements. So, really, all you have are warm arms and frigid hands. May as well just put on a sweater.

Then, I realized, this is no more than a backwards robe without the tie at the waist. That makes this invention even more stupid. Why would someone go out to buy a stupid blanket with arms when almost everyone already owns a robe?

Then, I realized the greatest problem with this product. I kept having a nagging feeling that the look of the snuggie is uncomfortably close to another look I had seen before. Could the makers of the snuggie be subconsciously perpetuating a religious system?

See for yourself.

Now, behold.I'm just sayin'...

Day 3 of 7

Kirk Cameron

Quiche

Running while admiring the fall leaves

Trader Joe's

Fresh basil

Napping on the couch during football

Scones

Gummi bears

Cheap wendy's burgers

Soon to come...
Sleeping really hard tonight

Day 2 of 7

I just remembered 2 minutes. ago that I'm supposed to be posting every day this week so I'm posting this from my boyfriend's blackberry. This might be a hard habit to maintain. Currently I'm annoyed by how long it takes to type on a Blackberry and how hard it is to capitolize a letter.

Today I went to look into a program I've been thinking about pursuing. My boyfriend and I found ourselves late to a presentation given by a "professor" who could hardly string an English sentence together and who plugged her latest adventure in amateur documentary film-making. Her subject of choice was architecture, skyscrapers and how those relate to male sexuality. She then told us the name of the film. Just know that it included a word a word common to an architectural structure and a state of male arousal. As soon as I heard that, I knew this program was not for me.

This realization was further confirmed when said professor called the victims *ahem* I mean group to the front of the class to view some student work and I was stunned and disturbed to find that my potential teacher was eclipsed in dumbness only by my potential classmates.

Yes, this will not be the perogram for me.

My boyfriend and I exchanged scared and contemptuous looks and hightailed it out of there at the first opportunity.

The search continues...

A Mini-Update

Is that allowed?

I think something that keeps me from blogging more regularly is that I feel like I have to write a well-thought-out, chapter-length, hilarious entry on some Really Important Subject every time. And so, I only post every two weeks.

To shake things up a little, I'm trying an experiment. For the next week, I'm going to take an adventure in trying to post something everyday. Be it just a thought or a picture, even if it's not something substantial.

Here is my first attempt at this.

One of my constant struggles in living more zen is that I tend to want to take little to no time to pick up after myself in day-to-day living. The end result of this is an apartment with the accumulated messiness of two weeks of no day-to-day picking up. Not a pretty sight. I noticed in college that the messiness of my living space tends to mirror the messiness (and sometimes just the busyness) of my life. As soon as things become busy, cleaning is the first thing to fall off my to-do list. This dynamic has been very evident lately.

Judging from the shameful mess my apartment can become under the influence of this philosophy, I've decided that this is not helping myself as I try to clean up my lifestyle. So, here is one little thing I'm going to try in pursuit of further zen-ness. When I get home from work, I will put my clothes away instead of draping them over a chair or leaving them on the bathroom floor. Then, I will take my washable dirty clothes directly to the hamper.

That's it.

Elementary, you say?

Really; yes it is, but this little step has evaded me thus far. I tried this last night, and it really only took me an extra three minutes, but it saved my newly cleaned apartment from becoming that much more messy. And, two weeks of this behavior will help my mental/emotional state as I will not have to flog myself when I can't even make it to the kitchen without tripping on shoes and yesterday's outfit.

This is really a small tweak that has a pretty big potential benefit. I'll try to update on how this has been going since I'm going to need lots of blog fodder in the upcoming week.

An Open Letter - Volume 2

To the bottom-dwelling law-breaker who spent all my money at ticketmaster--


You must be pretty proud of yourself concocting an engenius idea to steal some unsuspecting schmuck's debit card info, buy dozens of Tina Turner tickets on ticketmaster and then sell them on ebay. Pretty brilliant, right? The unsuspecting schmuck's bank account is merely collateral damage, right? Well, bottom-dweller that you are (I will hereafter refer to you as BD), there is more at play here than you realize. Let me educate you.

I am having a hard time understanding, BD, why you would endeavor to do such a thing. I could understand if you were out of work in this terrible economy and took someone's cc# to buy food for your hungry children. I wouldn't agree with it, but I would understand it. I suppose it's possible that the funds from a massive Tina Turner ticket sell-off could provide funds to feed your undernourished children. But, the turn around time of tickets that sit on ebay for a couple weeks make that scenario unlikely. Your kids would've died of malnutrition long before you saw any profit off those puppies. It is clear to me, BD, that you are doing this for a more malevolent purpose.

Remember our friend, the unsuspecting schmuck? What do you say we put a face to her? I think that's a good idea, BD. She gets by, working really hard to save her money and get out of debt. She just got her first apartment and doesn't even have enough furniture yet to fill it up. She's working hard doing the Right Things to make her way in this world. Enter BD, who thinks that selling a bunch of Tina Turner tickets on ebay purchased with fradulently obtained debit card information is a really smashing idea.

Aren't you ashamed of yourself, BD?

No?

Ah, my unscrupulous friend, apparently more convincing is in order.

More likely, the purpose of your scheme is to use this money, or, shall we say, MY MONEY to buy yourself a few toys, or to reinvest it in your shady business of doing illegal things. You may make a little extra money to pad your bank account using these foul methods. But, rest assured, BD, you will get complacent. Easy money has that kind of effect on people. Complacency leads to mistakes. This money won't be so easy when you're in a state prison, with an anxious, white-knuckled grip on your bar of soap. That will be very hard money indeed.

The law will catch up with you, BD. It always does.

Until then, BD, I'm not sweating it too much. My bank has already decided that this isn't something I'll be liable for. You can thank them for that. Had they not come to that conclusion, you can bet that I would've hunted your fat, lazy a$$ without sleeping until I found you. And then I would've exacted some creative vigilante justice with a stiletto and a cut-up debit card. Use your imagination.

Love always~
M.I.F.