December

It's almost here. Time to fret about gifts and being a good person in general. People are a lot nicer during this time of year, which is the one good thing about this consumer-oriented holiday. We put up our tree this morning, and it makes me want to bake gingerbread cookies and hand them out to people. See how the niceness is affecting me? Even looking at a freaking conifer decked out in tiny lights and replicas of various winter icons changes my mood. Sometimes I resent that objects can make me feel a certain way. Resentment will not help me be kind towards my fellow (wo)man.
Our house has a plethora of snowmen because my rommate loves them. This must be like my obsession with dinosaurs. Completely unreasonable, yet fun to indulge in. We do not have enough shelf space for all the frosty snowmen. We've got probably 7 of them on the mantel alone. I think we might have to buy a table for the kitchen so we can give the rest of them a home. She's even got a snownam nativity scene. Baby snowjesus is pretty funny. As is the fat snow(man)angel hanging from the top of the igloo-manger. I should make a dinosaur themed nativity scene. A pterodactyl could be my angel. Looks like I have a new project.

If Only the Obstacles Would Disappear

Some things that I'd really like to do as a full-time job:

-Book reviewer
-translator/community interpreter
-secret shopper
-Everything Samantha Brown does
-candy taste-tester

Me and Dinosaurs

I like them. I carved my pumpkin with the jurassic park logo. I think I might be a dino for halloween. There is a mini velociraptor skeleton in my window. This comic makes me laugh hysterically: http://xkcd.com/87/

I cannot explain this. At all.

Take That, Jack Frost!

It has been so cold lately. I hate the cold. But today I fought back. I went running at 7:30 am, when it was 35 outside. I am not a strong runner, nor do i enjoy breathing in the cold air and tasting that metallic flavor that comes whenever I run in the cold. Being outside when everyone else is indoors and not having to weave through clogged sidewalks is a huge plus, though. So I bundled up in layers and hit play on my running playlist. An hour later, I was warm.

Cold weather: 0
Me: 1

My Nose Knows

Smells seem to be the strongest trigger for memories. Sometimes I will smell a certain body spray and immediately have flashbacks to the years I played volleyball in high school. Other times I will smell a food scent that reminds me of family events. Places have smells, too. My best friends' houses have unique smells which are randomly replicated at times - much to my confusion. Individuals have smells too. I think those are the best and worst because if I smelled a certain perfume or cologne I could be reminded of someone I hated or someone I really cared about. And you can never tell when you are going to be reminded of a place or event or person because you can't control the scents around you. Sometimes I like being reminded. But sometimes I wish I had never known that scent so I can't feel it's pull.

All Candy Half Off

The day after Halloween is half off of all candy day. My dilemma is what I should actually be for halloween. I am debating between a shark, a pumpkin, or a dinosaur. I am thinking these are all relatively easy costumes to make that are also recognizable. I know that Halloween is typically the day when you can dress like a slutty mcslutterson but I am not really into that. I go for the comic effect. Sharks are funny. So are dinosaurs...especially velociraptors. This requires more thought.

P.S.

The posts are like another form of Post Secret, but online for anyone to read. I think there is something fundamentally exciting about airing your secrets to an unknown audience. It probably has something to do with the concept that it is easier to tell your problems to a stranger.

also: I'm pretty sure that punk/emo songs are modern day love songs. just throwing that out there.

Stories in Real Life

One of my favorite things to do is read the "missed connections" on craigslist. There are a lot of really sweet messages out there that make me happy to read. Even if they are directed at other people, it still makes me incredibly joyous to read the words that real people have written. Too often, it seems like these types of missed connections are only to be found in movies or books, but on craigslist you get to read the ones that happen in real life. Of course, some of them are not that great to read, and there are the occasional jerkfaces who write not sweet things on there. But, for the most part, the messages are wonderful to read, to know that people are trying to connect with one another.
That is what I think part of life is about - connecting with other people. Perhaps that's why I have studied languages so fervently, I want to connect and express myself to as many people as I can. Not to mention, poetry in other languages is extraordinary to read, and I love the puzzle that comes with trying to decipher the words the author has chosen to reflect their inner thoughts. I love language.

The Guy Who Lives Below Us

Apparently has a friend over right now and he/his friend is playing guitar and they are singing "Folsom Prison Blues". I think he might be competing with me because I have been practicing my flute for the past hour, but who really knows. This is, however, the first time I have heard recognizable songs from below us. Usually, he plays some weird bluesy music that I have never heard before. And I mean real blues, like the lyrics are about actually having said blues. I can usually hear it through the vents. He also owns three very large "antique" Oldsmobiles. I think that is what they are, anyway. All I know is, one person does not need that big of a car. Or three of them. They are brown. And big.

Now they are singing "Am I Losing"...whoo doggies it's gonna be a long night...

The Good, The Bad and The Crazy

This is a short note about the kids I see at work every day.

The Good:
Dr. - "Now, I want you to open your mouth for me."
kid - "Yes, ma'am"

-kids on laughing gas really do laugh at times. sometimes they just won't stop telling embarrassing stories about their moms.

-most of them are actually pretty cute

-the latino kids sometimes help me translate, suggesting words for me, but they don't interfere when I actually am translating.

-when kids pick snow white or some other, older Disney movie to watch while we work.

The Bad:
-when you see lice on a kid's head
-smelly kids
-being bitten, vomited on, or hit (luckily, this has yet to happen to me. I am sure it will, though)
-having to listen to Shrek/Cars/Finding Nemo 5 times a day..."welcome to Dulac, it's a perfect town, here we have some rules, let us lay them down......." I will learn the dialogue soon to all of these.


The Crazy:
9 year old kid strapped down on papoose board: "I want my mom! THIS IS BULLSHIT! I hate you! Aaaaaahhhhh!"

Any screaming kid who is trying to get away/kick you/scream as loud as they can. It's a good thing we actually need them to open their mouths wide.

The DMV

A guy with a hook for a hand sat next to me at the DMV today. I really wanted to ask him how he got it, but I don't know if he would have been upset or not. If only I was a little kid. They can ask anything and no matter what it is, no one complains.
There was also a woman in line who had a service dog. She told us that it was because she had social anxiety. It seems to me that having a dog with you will cause you to be in even more social interactions, so I don't really understand how that works out.
I bet it would be both awesome and horrible to work at the DMV. Awesome because you would get to meet people with hooks for hands and horrible because everyone would complain to you about the DMV's unintelligible "system" to keep order. As Dane Cook says (more or less)....even in the future when you can teleport and everything is insant, the DMV will still take like 9 seconds. Come on! I had to be at work 2 seconds ago!

Band Name(s) Pt. Dos

Bloody Sounds - a friend told me this sounds like either a metal record title or a brit punk band. I think he may be right. It's almost a title like "Whale Songs" or "Sounds of the Rainforest", but not as pleasant. Maybe it would be a good horror movie sounds group. They could specialize in those cds you can buy for Halloween that play "scary" sounds, like doors creaking or people screaming or heavy breathing (the bad kind).

This has nothing to do with band names, but I'd just like to say how strange it is to me that Spanish seems to be everywhere and yet I am pretty much the only one at work who speaks it. I'm not complaining, because it allows me to do something that no one else can and boosts my self-esteem a bit - especially because I am still in training and probably will screw up a lot. This is like my one saving grace.

Names I Would Consider If I Had a Band

Shiny Electric Horses - makes me think of Asimov or Bradbury, but somehow is still appealing, if reminiscent of Shiny Toy Guns and any time travel movie where the characters go back forward time or live in the 30th Century, but everyone wears Victorian waistcoats and talks with a British accent even though they can teleport. Will somebody please explain to me why this seems to be a recurring theme in time travel stories? Why would anyone want to wear Victorian clothes in the future? How about shiny (the color of the future. Not a descriptive adjective, a COLOR) one piece catsuit that you don't have to undo to go to the bathroom and is also flame resistant, climate controlled and can make you invisible and/or walk through walls.

That's all I have so far.

Children Are Also Hilarious

I just spent the last week with my family in Myrtle Beach and realized that my seven year old cousin is unintentionally hilarious.

The following quotes are all from his mouth, unless otherwise stated.

"Are llamas real? I thought they were fake!"

Sister: "Are you going to put that in your mouth?"
him: "Well, that's how we chew!"

(he pulled out a bag of those apple dippers from McD's, which have Star Wars themed packaging) "Yoda food!"

"Put these away!"
Sister: "I'm not your maid!"
"Yes, you are!"

Aunt: "Do you know what the capital of Vermont is?"
"I wasn't even born that year!"

Aunt: "If you have to go so badly, pee in that bottle."
"Well if I have to drop trou, I'm gonna have to take off my seatbelt. Are you sure about this?"

Aunt: "All I want is a friggin' Cracker Barrel!"

"5! 4! 3! 2! 1!"

No, those are not factorials, that's the crowd counting down at the beginning of each round at the demolition derby. I can't imagine why, but it is unbelievably fun to sit in the stands about 30 feet away from a mud pit where drivers in dirt bike helmets are ramming into one another, each trying to be on of the last few cars left capable of moving. Mud was flying, cars were crashing into one another, townies were standing and cheering for their favorite cars in some of the thickest VA accents I have ever heard. And it was all in the name of the fair.

This is the second year I've gone to the demo derby, and it was twice as awesome this year. We had way better seats this time, being on the other side and not in the large stands; we were close enough to get hit with chunks of flying mud.

Almost better than watching the cars, though, is observing the people around me in the stands. Southern people can be either the kindest, funniest, craziest sumsobitches/ down-to-earth people you will ever meet, OR they can be the worst mannered, craziestsumsobitches/hateful bunch of idiots you will ever meet. Sometimes they are both. These people are the only group I can think of that have the capability to embrace both of those sets of characteristics simultaneously. I don't quite understand it, but I know it is part of what makes them unique and gives them a regional character that everyone can identify as "southern".

It's kind of fun to watch how people take pride in their camouflage, workboots, tractors, country stars, cows/pigs/horses/sheep, trucks, hats with fishing hooks, confederate flags (I know this is given a bad rap a lot, but as hinted at above, not all southerners are about hatred, some are simply trying to display pride at being part of a particular background), chewing tobacco, flannel shirts and hunting paraphernalia. I almost, almost wish that I could feel that sort of pride for a region. But then I remember there are downsides, as well. A friend once told me that she went to elementary school (in the 90's, mind you) at a very rural school outside Harrisonburg, and that most of the class didn't come to school when it was time to harvest or cut hay. As a result, you were lucky to make it out of the fifth grade able to read. Following that, I suppose the common notion about Southerners being ignorant has some basis in reality, as all stereotypes do, but it's depressing to know that even groups of people in my generation, who went to school in the same state I did, couldn't have the same education and opportunity to advance when they were younger because of the demands and stresses on region. And VA isn't even that far south.

Later....

Today I took to a defensive driving course, to get points back on my license. The people in there were mostly under the age of twenty, and seemed to be quite a motley crew. There were your typical southern boys, who work on a dairy farm/drive tractor trailers/got tickets for racing their restored Mustangs on one side. Then there were a few older people, ones who have gotten a series of speeding tickets and need to get rid of the -18 points off their licenses. One guy who owned a motorcycle and got most of his tickets from that, a punk ass looking guy with lots of tattoos and spacers in his ears who seemed to think he was too cool for school or something. A 2 month pregnant 19 year old girl who has to work the night shift every night so she can pay for college and was pissed she had to be up during her sleeping hours to attend this class ( I guess I would be too, though), a girl with multiple piercings and slash marks on her wrists who had her license taken away, one foreign woman, and our instructor - who apparently went into this line of work after he had taken the class himself ten years ago. He had gotten a speeding ticket for going 2 miles over the speed limit. I think that cop was having a bad day.

The class started off being super boring, but after lunch it actually got to be kind of interesting, in the sense that I spent most of the time trying to figure out exactly how what the guy was talking about fit into the context of the class. We began to discuss the concept of time, and how it doesn't really exist outside of your own capacity to create it. Following that logic, it seems that speed shouldn't exist, since speed is a measurement of distance/time, right? So, does that make our speeding tickets null and void? Also, if the past doesn't really exist, then why do things we have done still affect our lives?

Oh, to give the instructor a little bit of character, you should know that a) he used this voice at times that sounded like Tommy Chong when he was on That 70's Show and b) he was reading a book called Armadillos and Old Lace by (I kid you not) Kinky Friedman. Make of that what you will.

Anyway. He also lectured us on natural health and how we basically have a culture of addiction here in the U.S. People used to die from the outside, but now they are dying from the inside. This led into a discussion of drug use and its relation to driving. Although it mostly came off as him telling us he didn't approve of the drug laws in this country and that if they were different, maybe people wouldn't be using babies to transport drugs into the country. I think he might have been trying to make a point about making choices and consequences, but it really just came off as "drugs are not bad, but driving while impaired by them IS." He also cited a lot of statistics, which I don't necessarily believe to be an accurate means of proving any point, because there are a lot of unknown factors to take in. For instance, he cited some numbers about how many Americans were killed by guns vs. other countries. Well, where did these numbers come from or why are we not taking into account varying gun laws/cultural factors that relate to guns? But I did learn that if you want to avoid falling asleep at the wheel, you should hold a fifty dollar bill out the window. That will keep you awake.

Foreigners Are Funny Pt. 2

"When I was in the army, I used to sleep under the tables so the commander wouldn't see me."

Poeple Who Don't Speak English As A First Language Are Funnier Than Those Who Do

I don't know why this is true, but it is. This morning, one of the women I work with, who is Chinese, brought in a jar of what looked like dirty water with some twigs and grass clippings in it. She had it sitting on her desk and one of our teachers asked her what it was.

"Oh that, that is my tea."

"That's tea?? I thought it had worms or something in it."

"Worms?! It's not worms!'

"You Chinese people, we'd better watch out for you."

"Yes, be nice to your Chinese friend."

Absolutely hilarious.

Why Am I Having So Many Nightmares?

Lately I have been having a lot of bad dreams and I have no idea why. Well, maybe I will after I write the latest ones down and try to analyze them. Here goes.

In the first one, I was asleep, staying at my boyfriend's brother's house. The brother came home and I could hear him out in the living room with his friends. He then announced to his friends that he was going to do something to annoy me - so he came in my room, turned on the light, and mooned me. In my dream, I became really angry and my temper flared up. I So I went out to the living room and told him off for being such a jerkface. I wasn't wearing my glasses though, so I couldn't really see him to yell at him, which just made me angrier.

Analysis: The mooning part is actually funny and when I woke up I smiled about that, because that is something he would actually do. Then, I went to the living room to tell him about my dream because I wanted him to know that he found a way to annoy me even while I slept. The scary part, however, was the angry part. I have a really terrible temper that, although it doesn't flare up that often, is really scary when it happens. My temper is one thing that I absolutely hate about me because it causes me to do horrible things I would never do otherwise - like punching someone so hard they were knocked over or throwing glass bottles in the direction they came from and not thinking about the consequences of them hitting the cars or windows and then leaving really nasty voicemails to the office about said glass in complex. Although those jerks who put the glass there totally deserve to have their cars ruined since ruining cars was a consequence of their previous actions that no one ever rectified. Anyway. So I guess this dream was about my temper and how much I hate not being able to control it when it does flare up.

In the second one, I was sitting in a circle of people who were trying to come up with a game. The guy next to me suggested a game where you make a rhythm with your hands and pass it on to the next person, who has to repeat it, then make up a quick rap song and pass it on. He started it and tried to pass it to me but I told him I didn't want to play because I am not good at thinking up rap songs off the top of my head. He got kind of annoyed at me but passed it the other way. Then he grabbed my hand and started to squeeze it. To everyone else, it just looked like he was holding my hand, but it felt like he wanted to break it. He then dug his elbow into my thigh, right at the crease where your thigh meets your torso and I knew he was trying to hurt me. I tried to call out for someone to help me, but they couldn't hear me and when I did, he just started trying to hurt me more. Then I woke up.

Analysis: (smaller scale) I am afraid of guys trying to physically hurt, or people in general forcing me to do something I don't want to. I have never been in, nor am I currently in, an abusive relationship, so there is no reality for this dream. Maybe I just am worried that one day it will happen. (larger scale) This dream is probably about me being afraid of a lack of control as well. And possibly rap music. I could really have used my temper in this dream though - it would have helped me fight back and I could have taken that guy down to china town. Hi ya!

This is Why I Ride My Bike to Work

So for most of the summer I have ridden (driven? Technically, it's a vehicle - but can you get a DUI on it is the real question?) my bike to work. It's a relatively short ride, ten minutes or less to work, ten to twelve back. It makes me feel better about not exercising, and I'm not using gas, which makes me feel like I'm one-upping someone, somewhere. Now that my lease is up in my apartment, I am couch surfing for about a week before completely removing any trace of myself from this area. Said couch is definitely farther away, however, and I may not be able to ride my bike to work. The hills are like a slow, painful death in the 90 degree heat. So I decided to go to Parking Services to get a permit. The following is, as best as I can remember, the conversation I had with the woman at the desk.

Me: "Hi, I need to get a parking permit for these lots. I will be working here for the next two weeks and so I need to be able to park there."

Woman: "Ok, well, are you already in our system as an employee?"

Me: "Yes. I've been here since the beginning of summer."

Woman:"And you haven't had a parking permit so far?"

Me:"No, I usually ride my bike, but I am moving, so I need one now."

Woman:"Oh. Well, a visitor's permit is going to cost you four dollars a day, so twenty dollars for the next two weeks."

note: do the math. 4 x 10 (we're talking weekdays here) = ?

Me: ". . . Isn't there an employee permit that I should be getting that costs less?"

Woman:"Well, yes, there is. It's two dollars per pay period and it's deducted from your paycheck. When you are done with it, you can turn it in and we'll stop taking out the payment."

Me:"So, I should just get the employee one, since I work for the University and it's cheaper, right?"

Woman:"Well, we all have to pay to park."

Me:"Yes, I know. I'll take the two dollar permit instead of the twenty dollar visitor pass."

Probably they will start trying to charge people 25 cents to park their bikes in the racks. Ridiculous.


p.s. welcome to my blog. I write about stuff. enjoy.