O, Christmas Tree

I just realized that this is going to my first Christmas in my house. That means I get to put up my very own Christmas tree and everything. I don't have any decorations though. I'm kind of excited about it all. This means I get to pick out my own tree and decorate it myself.

Last year my grandma decided not to put up a tree or do much decorating. I was so busy with work I really didn't say anything but when Christmas day rolled around, it just wasn't the same.

I will never go another Christmas without at least having a tree up. I know it's all superficial and that the day is about spending it with loved ones but there's just something about having the tree standing there shining that gives it that little bit more meaning.

Fuck Off, Facebook

Dear Facebook,

Please quit sending me bogus "notifications" trying to get me to log in to my account. I don't give a shit or you wouldn't be sending me these "notifications" about things I "might have missed" last time I was on. I "missed" them for a reason. I don't care when someone says "Had Taco Bell for lunch, taking a nap now." So kindly understand that I just don't give a flying fuck and quit spamming my inbox. I only have an account so people don't gasp in horror whenever I tell them I don't have a Facebook page and justify my reasoning for the next 20 minutes.

Thank you,

Tin

P.S. If you say I have to log in to disable the notifications I. Will. Cut. You. At no point did I have to enable these notifications, so eff-to-the-u.


P. P. S. Don't take it personally. Have a lovely song to make you feel better.

Holy Swizzle Sticks, Batman!

It's obvious I have no particular purpose for this blog other than to use it as a place for my thoughts on random topics. I don't write for anyone but myself, which is evidence by how crappy a lot of the writing is on here. But ever since I wrote this short post, it gets on average 20 to 30 hits a day, and on the rare occasion a couple hundred.

I really didn't think too much of it, I just figured it was a topic a lot of people were interested in. I know I still think about that post quite a bit because it was a "Eureka!" moment where I went "Intrusive thoughts? Aha! So I'm not crazy! There's a perfectly logical explanation for this. Go psychology."

And I crossed that topic off my list of things to worry about.

That was, until I happened to check my statcounter for the first time in months and I see that my blog had over 2,000 hits yesterday on that one post. I'm curious why so many people are searching that single phrase all of a sudden but all I can figure out is that they're all coming from google searches.

Ah well, tis a mystery and ever shall remain one.

Words With Friends

I like words. Words tend to like me. We have a mutually beneficial relationship, words and I, in the sense that I know a lot of them. So it wouldn't come as a surprise that I also like Words With Friends.

I started a recent game with my brother and half way through I used the word "dulcet". The following conversation ensued.

Doug: I call shenanigans!
Me: Huh?
Doug: Do you even know what that word means?
Me: Of course, it means to be sweet.
Doug: Oh, I thought you were cheating.
Me: Dude, I'm minoring in English, I don't have to cheat.

Mouse Trap

I mentioned previously that I have a mouse. I have spent all summer trying to catch the little bastard but have failed so far.

Two fucking minutes ago he was crawling around in my ceiling. I could hear the little shit scratching against one of the beams. That's the last straw.

I'm going Mouse Trap on the fucker. I'm going to cover every inch of my house in mouse traps.

Not really, but it's time to break out the big guns. I avoided putting poison down, because the last thing I want is for Coda to get into it. But I was at Home Depot the other day and found some covered things that are dog proof that hold the poison for mice to get.

So get comfortable you little fucker. Come next payday I'm buying a shit load of them and you're going to be in cheesy mouse heaven very soon.

So. Tired.

This whole working 40 hours a week and taking 15 credit hours is not leaving me with very much sleepy time. Although, surprisingly I have managed to keep up with my homework in all of my classes thus far. In all honesty though I haven't had that much. I have an outline on a paper for my Health Care class due in a week and I still haven't picked a topic.

The reason I'm taking the class is because it was a subject that I'm not at all familiar with. I figured it would fulfill a graduation requirement and I might actually learn something at the same time.

I didn't plan ahead on that one.

Now it appears that might prove slightly detrimental to my grade if I don't pull something out of the hat soon.

I'm not too worried though, I always come up with something.

To go slightly off topic but still stay in the range of talking about class, let's do a review on my professors, shall we?

We've got:

Professor Baldy, who teaches my Media Management class. I like him, he even reminded me to respond to one of our class Blackboard topics when I forgot, instead of just docking me the points.

Then there's my Shakespeare class with Professor Don't-worry-we're-not-going-to-do-a-lot-of-acting-in this-class. We've had to act out a scene in every class so far.

I also have Professor Talks-too-fast-to-understand-half-of-what-he's-saying and Professor Corn Dog. So named because he tells terribly corny jokes at the beginning of every class. Trust me, they're so bad they don't even bear repeating.

And last but not least, because he's the one I really wanted to talk about,
there's Professor "Right?"

Just to give you a little context, this guy is the one teaching my Communications in Business class. He's supposed to be teaching us how to properly communicate in a business setting and he also happens to be the Professor that teaches Public Speaking as well. It drives me nuts being in his class. It's not the material, that's fine, your basic Comm stuff so far; sender, receiver, decoding the message, symbols and their multiple meanings, context, etc., etc., ad nauseam.

No, what bugs me about this guy, is at the end of every sentence he tacks on the question, "right?" I noticed he did it a lot on the first day but it didn't really bother me because I figured it was just first day jitters, since we were his first class to teach at the university, blah blah blah. Not a big deal, he'd drop it eventually.

Wrong.

The second day of class we were 15 minutes in and I wanted to bang my head on the table, he kept saying "right?" so damn much. Finally, I couldn't even listen to him, all I kept waiting for was the "right?". I started keeping count. Every time he said "right?", I put a little tally mark at the top of my paper. I gave up when I got past 300.

The class is only an hour and 15 minutes long.

Today it was a challenge but I managed to get past a few of the "right?"s to at least make it bearable. He's a nice enough guy and all, and I do find the class interesting, but good lord if you're a professor that teaches Public Speaking you should at least be a little more conscious of what you're saying, or better yet, what you might be communicating with that reflexive "right?".

My Kryptonite and Other Ramblings

I'm sure I've discussed this on my blog before but I have a weakness for shoes. Girly, I know, but I'm not talking about the pointy heeled ones. I'm talking about the super comfortable, wear-them-every-day-and-only-take-them-off-when-you-go-to-bed type of shoes. You know, the Converse kind.

I tend to form unhealthy attachments to my Converse. Any time a pair of shoes that I've been eyeballing on their website goes on sale it's an insta-buy. I can't resist. I get the shakes, break out into a cold sweat and whip out my bank card. On the less dramatic side, I rarely ever buy the shoes at full price, so when they do go on sale I grab them before my size sells out.

Tempt me with the promise of a new pair of Converse and I'll rob a bank for you. But then I'll keep the money for myself and buy more Converse with them. It's a vicious cycle.

Currently, I have 5 pairs; 2 Chucks, 3 Skater. There are 2 more pairs that I'm keeping my eye, but they're newer so they won't be going on sale any time soon. But I check it weekly anyway.

I need, help. It's seriously getting out of control. Do they have a self help group for this kind of thing? A Converse Anonymous? Oh well, I guess it doesn't matter because I wouldn't go anyway. I love my Converse way too much to give them up.

I'm excited because this weekend at work it's jeans and kicks days, which means we get to wear jeans and whatever shoes we want....Guess what shoes I'm wearing?

....The highlight of my week is wearing jeans to work

....FML.

I lead such a boring life, but I kind of like it that way. It leaves me with plenty of "Me" time. The older I get the more I turn into a hermit.

When I'm not at work or school, I'm at home doing one of three things; sleeping, playing Xbox 360, or doing something on my laptop. Exciting stuff, I tell ya.

Between work and school though I'm "working" more than 70 hours a week so that doesn't make me sound like such a loser.

In other news, it hit me this week in class that I'm going to be graduating in a year so I need to figure out what kind of job I want to have when I finally get that little piece of paper that I paid a shit ton of money for.

I don't know what the fuck I want to do.

I'm not afraid to work hard so that isn't the problem. It's figuring out where the hell I should even be looking and how do I get my foot in the door?

It's such a terrible job market to be going in to that all prospects seem bleak.




Maybe I'll move to Hawaii and become a beach bum.

Back to School I Go

Classes started this week. I'm going to be a busy girl once again. I barely had time to say good bye to sleeping in until 1o'clock, or sitting around the house playing Xbox 360 in my pajamas, before I was scrambling to get all of my books together and make it to class on time. [Instert frowny face here.]

Once again all of my classes are 300 level which I expected since I'm finally going into my last year, although technically I won't graduate until August next year. Four of my five classes are typically what I expected, lots of work, lots of writing and research, but at least the professors don't seem terrible.

I can already tell my English class on Shakespeare is going to be my all time favorite. I'm already excited and I've only been to it one time so far. The professor is really enthusiastic about the plays, and we won't just be studying the scripts we're also going to be looking at the performances as well. We're going to be reading Titus Andronicus, Richard III, A Midsummer Night's Dream (Read it), Twelfth Night (Read it) and King Lear. My professor also arranged for us to go see Titus being performed at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Ontario on the 24th, which I'm very, very excited about.

In other news completely unrelated to class, I got a new car. I effing love it, it's a 2006 Chevy, in a kick ass red, oh man I keep coming up with excuses just to drive it everywhere. This is the first time I've had a car that wasn't almost as old as I am. I'm probably going to post a pic just to show her and Coda off together. I have yet to really settle on a name for her; you know, every good car has to have a name. I've been leaning toward Penny maybe, since she is a saucy red head, but we'll see how that fits.

TWSS

I was at my uncle's over the weekend. With Doug being here this week we've been making the rounds with the family so everyone can see him before he flies home. I hadn't been over to my uncle's in a few weeks so when I came up his sidewalk I wasn't expecting to run into a bush, which is exactly what I did.

One of his shrubs hadn't been trimmed and I didn't see the branch hanging over the sidewalk and it whacked me in the face.

My uncle was at the front door waiting for us when we walked in.

"I think your bush just attacked me," I said still rubbing where the branch hit me.

Without missing a beat my uncle respond with, "that's what she said!"

I couldn't help but laugh because it was absolutely perfect and unexpected. Sometimes I feel "that's what she said" is used way too much but at other times, it's the only appropriate response.

All I Ever Wanted

I saw Life As We Know It for the first time today and thought it was cute. A nice fluff movie that I didn't have to think while watching and could get a few laughs on the side. Essentially, a no-brainer, which I definitely needed as much as I've been working lately.

After the movie was over I let the credits roll while I straightened up until this song came on:



The second the strings started to play I was hooked and caught myself just sitting and listening to the song without even meaning to. I'm a sucker for strings and a good beat. Which this song has both, add the drawn out vocals and I was a goner. While I sat and listened I even briefly thought to myself the strings strongly reminded me of OneRepublic. So it didn't come as a shock when in my Google search it came up that the song was written by Ryan Tedder aka the frontman for OneRepublic although I was surprised to find out it was Faith Hill who was singing. To be honest though, the lyrics? Not that great, a bit too cliche for me but I figure 3 out of 4 isn't bad at all.

Surprises

It always comes as a surprise whenever I am asked out, or asked for my number by a guy. I think it's because I know I'm gay and I assume everyone else does as well. I don't hide it and I certainly don't deny it. I'm definitely not the brand of gay girl that likes to flirt with the boys, to me flirting is like a prelude for more, and there is no way I would be preluding anything with the male variety.

Tonight, I was on my way to a movie with a friend from work and needed to stop for gas. It was one of the rare times I had cash on me so I headed inside to prepay for the pump. As I'm walking up I wasn't really paying any attention to the person I was walking behind until he noticed I was behind him and held the door to the gas station open for me. I smiled and thanked him politely as I stepped inside.

From the way he was holding the door open from the inside for me, he was still angled closest to the register so I was going to let him go first. He waved his arm and told me to go ahead and this time I smiled and thanked him out of surprise. I paid for the gas and headed back outside and started pumping it when I noticed the guy walk to the car next to mine. I went back to watching the pump meter when I heard him say something and turned to look when I realized he was talking to me.

"I'm sorry, what was that?" I asked him.

"Your gas, I would have pumped it for you if I knew you were going to do it yourself," he repeated again.

I raised my eyebrows in genuine surprise at such an old fashioned comment. And while the feminist in me would never have allowed it, I appreciated the thoughtfulness of his remark at the same time.

"How chivalrous of you," I said as I chuckled lightly. "Thank you anyway."

He took a step toward me and held out his hand. "I'm Mike."

"Nice to meet you Mike, I'm Amanda." I returned his hand shake.

"So can I call you some time?"

Surprised again, even though I should have seen the signals by then. I hesitated for a split second, trying to figure out a way to let him down nicely because I already liked him for his politeness. So I said the first thing that came to my head.

"Sorry but I'm already seeing someone." I always feel guilty after turning someone down, but I have found the easiest way of doing it is telling them you're seeing someone else so they feel you have a legitimate reason for saying no, rather than just saying no to them. Honestly, I rarely if ever say it's because I'm gay. 1) It opens up a whole other can of worms and 2) I can usually make a quick getaway if I just stick with the "seeing someone" comment.

"You are? That's too bad," he replied.

By that time I was done pumping my gas and as interesting as things had been I needed to get going because my friend was already waiting for me at the theater, Re: quick getaway. I said good bye and drove off. On the way to the theater I tried to evaluate what could have encouraged him to ask me out. I wasn't wearing anything out of the ordinary, a light Columbia jacket, jeans and Converse. My hair was just in a pony tail and I didn't have any make-up on.

In the end the only conclusion that I could come to was that he took my politeness as potential interest.

A Post Buffet

It's been over a month since my accident. My hand still hurts from time to time. I can't really grip anything too hard or I get a sharp pain up to my wrist and it hurts just making a fist. My knee is still sore to the touch on the side. It doesn't hurt to walk on it but if I have to kneel down or squat it really hurts. That sucks the most because before my accident I had been doing a lot of different work out exercises and I wasn't having any problems with it at all and now I feel like I'm back to square fucking one. It's frustrating. The only cool thing out of it is the scar on one of my knuckles, although it itches like a bitch some times.

I still have a small bump on my forehead. I wonder if that's going to go away completely. The doctor said when the mirror hit me in the head it crushed tissue and it would take a while to heal. I remember when I went back to work after my accident one of the guys I work with noticed the bump on my head and asked me about it. I told him about the accident and how the rear view mirror hit me, and he points to the other side of my forehead and goes, did it get you there too? I looked at him for a second and said, uh no that's just how my forehead is. He apologized quickly and I cracked up at him because he's always so nice and his face was too funny not to laugh. To make him not feel so bad I told him not to worry, my forehead does stick out a bit.

New topic.

I took Coda up to my grandfather's at the lake last week. I've never seen a dog who fights me so hard when it's time for a bath have so much fun playing in the water at the lake. Seriously, she constantly tries to climb out of the tub when I'm washing her but the second she set paw into the lake she was splashing around like a mad pup. Crazy dog. It was fun to watch her having so much fun though. She even got to go for a boat ride, which I was a little nervous about at first but she was really calm and sat nicely the entire time.

She and my grandpa also became best buds. She would check on me through out the day but she followed him everywhere and he loved it. He kept teasing me about it and trying to make me jealous and I let him have his fun. He misses having a big dog of his own ever since my grandma got her two small poodle mixes and vetoed getting anymore bigger dogs. I'm hoping to go back once more before the end of the summer.

Switching topics again, I started watching True Blood. Holy fuck that show has a lot of sex, but when the writers aren't too busy making their characters have crazy monkey sex, the show isn't half bad, even funny with lines like "I'm a fairy?! How fucking lame is that?"

Although at times it does seem like an R rated version of Twilight with the whole Edward/Jake vs. Bill/Eric rivalry, especially since they've thrown werewolves into the mix.

Tonight

I'm incredibly saddened that tonight will be the last time I see Harry Potter premier in theaters.

Summer Reading and the BBC

Since I got my iPhone I've been reading a lot more. It's so convenient to have the iBook app right on my phone and just whipping it out whenever I know there's going to be a long wait...(heh, that's what she said.) Because most of the classics are public domain, I downloaded a ton of them and have been gradually making headway.

So far I've read Jack London's, The Call of the Wild, such a good book if you haven't read it, The Scarlet Letter and Little Women.

Currently, I'm reading The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

I got the strong urge to read the book after seeing the BBC mini-series Jekyll, which is currently streaming on Netflix, *hint* the show is Uh-Mazing *hint*.

Next, I feel like going on an Oscar Wilde kick and reading The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest.

In other news, Torchwood made the jump to Starz. I practically had a Nerd-gasm watching the first episode. It was great, drawing in some well known names like Bill Pullman and Mekhi Pheifer to add to the previously British cast. Though I was glad to see the show picked up where it ended with BBC, I wonder how new comers are going to take being thrown in the middle of a cast of characters that already has a long history.

If you watch Dr. Who at all then you'll understand when I say the mid-season finale gave me a full on Nerd-gasm. I have fallen completely in love with the show, even more so than I thought I could. Since the new Dr. Who series had premiered I would catch an episode here and an episode there, but I never actually took the time to sit down and watch from the beginning.

Halfway through season 1 I was hooked, but season 2 would be my ultimate demise where I fell head over heals for David Tennant as The Doctor.

The 10th Doctor and Rose were effing MTB and there was no arguing with me.

After the end of season 4 I was determined to cross my arms and pout, refusing to like Matt Smith as the 11th Doctor.

I failed miserably. What can I say, bow ties are just so cool.

Matt Smith's adorable awkwardness and brilliant acting as The Doctor swept me off my feet and assuaged any previous worry or doubt I had about my love for The Doctor.

Little Visitor

There is a mouse in my house. That sounds like a title to a children's book, but I will tell you right now it is not going to have a G rated ending.

I was letting Coda back in from outside when I happened to look over towards the end of my kitchen and saw him scurrying along the back wall to get out of sight.

My literal reaction was "Oh hell no little dude. You have to go." So now I get to make my way to Home Depot to pick up some mouse traps and hope he's the only one. Maybe Coda will do me a favor and get rid of him for me, she's pretty good about spotting stuff. She's hilarious to watch when she sees a fly or a moth or pretty much anything with wings.