I found a new thing to hate...

It is called circling for parking. Incessantly circling for parking. As if taking CALCULUS at NIGHT after working ALL DAY isn't bad enough, now I have to leave early to circle downtown waiting to pounce on a parking spot that I then have to parallel park into.

Ok so I grew up in a place where "circling for parking" means going up a level in the parking garage, I am not accustomed to this and those of you who know me know my hatred for driving so I think you can sense my displeasure. And I would be willing to take a bus but my class gets out at 9pm, sorry, I'm not getting on a bus for 30=40 minutes at 9pm when I could be home in 20 driving my car... that is if I can remember where I parked.

Texas has nothing but land. I don't care what Joni Mitchell says. Pave this "paradise" and put up a parking lot.

owie

I had kind of a Brian Regan experience yesterday. He does a bit about deciding whether or not to call an ambulance on himself. I wasn't at that point (there was no way I was wasting money on an ambulance) but I was at the point where I was deciding if I needed to go to the emergency room. I had the following discussion with myself:

IT HURTS!!!
you have crappy insurance and no money.
IT HURTS!!!
you barely made it home, how are you going to drive to the hospital?
IT HURTS!!!
if you move, you'll throw up.
IT HURTS!!!
maybe it will hurt less later...

The lowercase letters won out. I didn't go to the emergency room and I did feel better later and am much feeling better today. I'm hoping whatever it was wasn't triggered by the classroom I was in when it started because that is going to add an unnecessary level of stress to Organic Chemistry.

Have you ever had to make that decision for yourself? Up until this point that decision has always been made by my parents. In hindsight they made good decisions, one surgery, 11 stitches, and a necessary morphine induced sleep but let me tell you, it is not the choice you should be making on your own.

Mommy, if you had answered your phone you would have heard this story yesterday. Daddy, I didn't call you because you would have told me to go to the ER and the lowercase letters had already won that argument.

To end this on a funny note, here is the Brian Regan sketch.

I came across this recently and have to say that it is probably my favorite performance of The Star Spangled Banner, it is really beautiful. Ironically this is a couple of months before the Dixie Chicks were branded as traitors for expressing displeasure in our President.



Okay so I found this reading someone else's blog about their favorite performances and while watching the others on the list all I could think was how come every superbowl national anthem concludes with a flyover?

Learning

I learned three very important things in school today.

1. The downtown campus has zero (none, zilch, nada) parking spaces for students.
2. A lot of students take evening classes so be prepared to park far far away.
3. Calculus starts at 7:05 not 7:25.

Learning is fun!

Seriously?

Me: "[company name], this is Victoria."
Customer: "Hi Victoria, wait, is this Becky?"
Me: "No, this is Victoria."
Customer: "Oh, ok Victoria can I talk to Becky?"

I'm not sure if it is summer vacation that has fried my brain or perhaps it hasn't fully recovered from the semester but...

This morning I put a box of light bulbs in the freezer and carried a bag of bagels all the way down the hallway to put in the closet.

Four Square Anyone?

Who remembers Four Square? Damn that was a fun game, it really only sucked when you had to chase the ball all the way across the playground. I remember four square being the thing in like 5th and 6th grade, we played handball before that and again at the end of 6th grade for nostalgic reasons. My school had like four regular sized courts and one giant court. The giant court was where you wanted to be so we would always designate one person to eat lunch fast who then had to get a ball and go claim the court for the rest of us.

I was reading the Four Square Wikipedia page and this line is both hilarious and incredibly true.

"A player [may be eliminated if he/she] violates a special rule. Four square is known for its many spontaneous rules."

It would be amazing how many special rules you could come up with in order to get people out when you wanted your friend in.

Grown-up life needs recess.

Handball? Who Knew?

So apparently Handball is not what I thought it was. I thought it was you know like you played in elementary school, a court with a wall and play against one other person. I thought it had a slightly higher level of difficulty in that it was played with a ball a couple inches in diameter versus one of those big red balls about a foot in diameter that we used in school but I figured the basic principle was the same.

Turns out it is a team sport that looks like a way more exciting version of soccer (because soccer is boring as hell except for during the 2 out of 1000 minutes that someone actually manages to score a goal). Too bad the US doesn't have a team so I could care how it turns out because I would totally watch that sport.

Happy Birthday Kailey!!!

I hope you enjoyed your trip to Sea World. Who knew they had roller coasters now?

I am not Canadian - not that there is anything wrong with that

I have this thing, I don’t know what to call it, rarely is it a problem, usually it just makes me feel like a jerk and hope that others didn’t notice it. I mimic people. Not in a mean way, I just automatically match my speech pattern to theirs or start saying certain words with their accent. The accent thing only happens with English-Speaking accents. I have never – that I know of – begun mimicking a foreign language accent. I really hope I have never done that.

For example, there is a woman in Canada who absolutely refuses to believe that I was not born and raised in Ontario because apparently I left her a voicemail in which I “sounded Canadian.” Despite telling her many times that I have never even been to Canada and rarely speak to Canadians she doesn’t believe me. I know what happened, upon listening to her outgoing message I immediately used the same patterns and words and inflections that she did. After leaving the message I knew I had done it, I just didn’t think it would turn into a 15 minute conversation about how I wasn’t Canadian.

So like I said, this is rarely an actual problem. It does become a problem when I do something like watch two seasons of The Wire in under a week. Let’s just say that my language has gone down hill in the last couple of days. I’m trying to control it, but sometimes it slips out. For those of you who have to speak to me in the upcoming days, I apologize in advance for my language but remember one thing, no matter what you hear, it was worse in my head.

I'm Not Laughing

You know what wasn't funny the first time and still isn't funny the 50th time?

*Ring Ring*
Me: "[company name], this is Victoria"
Co-worker: "This is an obscene phone call." *heavy breathing*

I Have a Confession to Make

I freaking love the Olympics. It is weird but it seems like my generation isn’t as into the Olympics as I am. Maybe it is my competitive nature but I really enjoy watching the Americans kick ass in a healthy, non-war, way.

This is pretty much the only week that I am sad that I don’t have cable. Hopefully I’ll be able to find the good stuff online. NBC has been talking about how their online presence is going to be HUGE this year, and well it may be bigger than last time but in order to keep profits up, if they broadcast in your area (read: the United States) the only stuff that is online is the stuff not on tv. Which means unless I can somehow make my computer look like it is in Turkmenistan (and I can’t but maybe someone else can…) all I’m going to get online from NBC is Badminton and Handball – actually I may watch those if there is an American team.

Good thing I’m on summer vacation for the next two weeks.

USA vs. Australia

and by that I mean Project Runway. One of the upsides to watching all of your television on the Internet is that you then have access to other countries versions of shows you love and after watching the first three episodes of PR Australia and PR USA I have to say, Australia is kicking our ass.

The Designers: To start things off I can tell the designers apart on the Australian version, there is the gay asian, the gay white boy, the gay asian/australian, the straight guy, the guy who does menswear, the amazing girl, the bitchy-but-thinks-she-is-awesome older lady, the vintage girl, you get my point. On the US version we have the Tannorexic, Daniel (right, there is a Daniel???) and 37 girls with mousy brown hair.

The Challenges: Despite the US trying really hard by going back to the grocery store, 90% of the designers chose to use tablecloths on their first challenge and then we have make a cocktail dress inspired by NY night life, yawn. Hello PR Australia pulling it out with make a sporty, racy outfit out of nothing but car parts? That is why I watch Project Runway.

The Outfits: On the US version we have a whole lot of fug with one or two outfits that could be nice if you just changed 10 things about them. In Australia it is the exact opposite, quite frankly I don't even know how they are choosing who goes home.

The Guest Judges: On the US version we have had Austin Scarlett (ok I'll give you that one), Natalie Portman (who despite being awesome and starting a vegan shoe line knows crap about fashion), and Sandra Bernhard. Really? Sandra Bernhard? Is every single person in the fashion world busy so you had to get Sandra Bernhard? Oooohhhh, she has a one woman show to promote and also knows crap about fashion. Lets see, in Australia we have had two top Australian designers and the fashion director of Harper's Bazaar. I have nothing against celebrity guest judges, both Sarah Jessica Parker and Victoria Beckham were capable of giving insightful feedback but Sandra Bernhard? I really can't forgive that.

The only thing that the US has that Australia doesn't have is Nina, Michael, & Tim and that makes me sad every time I watch it.

I understand that Bravo is pissed about the show moving to Lifetime (who isn't) but put just a teensy bit of effort into, this is the show that has consistently been your top rated program and basically put you on the map. Show some freaking class and get over the Lifetime thing, go out on a high note. Hell, just do it so that when the show tanks on Lifetime you can laugh in their faces and say, "I don't know what your problem is, the show was wonderful on our network." I don't care what your reason is just do better.

The Twilight Series

There are no spoilers in the first two paragraphs so feel free to read those without worry.

Yeah I read it. I couldn’t pass up something like that given my current Vampire phase (Buffy, Moonlight, Jaz Parks’ books…) and the fact that people keep touting it as “bigger than Harry Potter.”

Because the books are constantly being compared to Harry Potter in terms of hugeness and impact on the reading world I’m going to have to address that. Technically both books were written for and marketed to young adults (even children in Harry’s case) and hoped to gain an adult following, both seemed to have accomplished that pretty handily since they’ve sold millions upon millions of copies and quite frankly there aren’t that many children who read. I finished Breaking Dawn in about 10-12 hours over two afternoons and Harry Potter #7 in about 13 straight-can’t-put-it-down-shut-up-don’t-talk-to-me-I’m-reading hours. The difference here is that while I wanted to know what happened in the end to Bella & Edward, you could interrupt me and I would be fine with that. The Twilight series just wasn’t as engrossing as Harry Potter. Another difference, upon finishing Harry Potter (and recovering from that ending) all I wanted to do was read it again because the story was amazing and because I KNOW I missed stuff and would get more out of it a second time. I really don’t feel a need to reread the Twilight series, I don’t think I missed anything and I don’t think anything will be gained by rereading any of the series. It was definitely a Young Adult series – a good one but still, where Harry Potter is arguably (certainly towards the end of the series) an Adult Series that children can enjoy as well.

SPOILERS BEGIN NOW

Now, off of Harry Potter comparisons and onto the books themselves.

Anyone who was in the Jacob camp is an idiot, how could you EVER in a million years think that Jacob could possibly end up with Bella??? I mean seriously, really? You’re stupid, and I think maybe you SHOULD re-read the books because obviously you missed something vitally important. Don’t get me wrong, I love Jacob and I wanted him to be happy, which is how I knew that he was going to imprint on someone because that is the only way he could possibly be happy without Bella. Of course having him imprint on Bella’s vampire-hybrid baby was an awesome little twist that I absolutely loved.

As to Bella & Edward’s vampire-hybrid baby, enjoyed it. Interesting story line to add so that Bella gets to keep some humanity and have those human experiences so yeah, good decision but really my favorite part of the whole pregnancy thing was Jacob. I’ll deal with a slightly out of left field (although who didn’t see it coming as soon as Carlisle told the story about the immortal children???) story arc just for that moment when Bella finds out that Jacob imprinted on “Nessie.”

The ending was OK. Again, wonderful to know that everyone lives happily ever after but who didn’t see that coming? The thing with the Volturi seemed almost like an afterthought, like oh yeah, I the Volturi have to check on Bella, okay, we’ll do it at the end, with little or no build-up and make it slightly lame. I mean they talked the Volturi out of attacking? Happy and unlikely.

In the end, I found the books highly enjoyable but not as amazing as everyone has been going on about. I’m glad I read them but I don’t think I’ll read them again and I’ll see the movie although maybe not in theaters. I’ll probably send my copies to my mom if she wants to read them and I don’t really care about getting them back.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go re-read #6 and #7 in the Harry Potter series because movies are coming out soon and I need to be prepped.

Ahh Work

So my other boss, the one that lives in California but flies out here like every other week is here today. In the office. This means two things for me:

1. Invariably I will sit here bored for hours and then at 2:58pm (I leave at 3pm) he will walk in with a project that needs to be done NOW and sent out to a client. He has known about this project for at least 2 hours and decided not to tell me about it even when I got up and asked him if he needed me to do anything.

2. I have to listen to the Hawaii 5-0 theme song all day. Why? Because his cell phone rings incessantly and that is his ring tone. Yes, I'm serious.