Blogger doesn't much like me these days...

...so I'm moving.  I'll let the few of you who read this know as soon as I get it set up.

Imposing wall of calm...of doom.

I've hit some sort of wall of karmic calm and I'm not certain what to do with it.  My life, for the most part, has been an insane sort of adventure with up and downs, turbulent brushes with death, really wonderful opportunities, and my favorite times when I'm able to just sit in a room with a few close friends and be.  Yeah.  Life has been pretty satisfactory on a whole despite or because of everything that happens to me, but it's never been calm.  Not once. 

Over all, I'm just not a calm person and a calm life doesn't suit me.  In fact, that is why I treasure the times when I can relax with people I love.  I raced through childhood, adolescence, and college and have ended up in a place that, up untill recently, I considered limbo.  I do not have the full time career that is fabled to come with this magic piece of paper I paid tens of thousands of dollars for.  I'm still living in Cheyenne, which is not a place I've ever been particularly attached to.  The whole having-a-family thing is far out on the horizon and may not ever be something I care to pursue with much vigor.  I'm just kind of...being for awhile untill the life kicks in again. 

Or at least I was. 

I'm not quite sure when it happened exactly, but over the past week I've been feeling something akin to contentment with what I'm doing right now.  It's as if I'm okay with just this being my life and I know that that's wrong.  If someone told me that this was as far as I was going to get for the rest of my life, I would not be okay with that.  So, why am I okay with it right now?

I'm enjoying being contented, I just don't know that I'm okay with it happening under these circumstances.  And it's making me contemplate weird things.  Like, am I content because I need the feeling of being settled once in my life?  And if so, will I go back to my old ways once I am settled thereby making my feelings of anxiety and wanderlust worse?  Am I subconciously conning myself into being happy because I'm scared of what the future holds?  Will I flip out when an opportunity comes my way?  Will said flipping out cause me to screw up something I actually want?  Am I capable of liking someone anymore or do I just like being liked?  How often am I being misinterpreted when I say or do things and what kind of damage is it causing? 

Heavy, I know.  And after that mess, you might wonder if I actually am happy and yeah, I am.  At least for now.  I just am not sure why. 

Why yes, I do work in IT...

As I am soon leaving this job, I'm going to share with you some of my favourite exchanges from my time in ye olde Computer Center.

At a job application website: "It's asking me for my resume; should I upload my resume or what should I do?"  (Note: I am punctuating these sentences as I hear them in my head, but knowing this guy, there's no way in hell he'd think to use a semicolon.)

With the internet browser open on the screen: "How do I get to the internet?"

"Why is it deleting my browser history?"
"That's just something our computers do to erase any personal information you might've used while on the internet.  It happens when you close the browser.  It's just a security thing; don't worry about it."
"But I didn't close the browser, I just closed the window."
Thinking that browser did not equal internet in her brain, I said, "If you exited out of the internet, though, that thing is going to pop up."
"I didn't exit out of the internet."
Okay, maybe an actual error happened.  "You didn't?"
"No, I just hit the red X."

(I cannot do this one justice in text, but I HAVE to write it down.)
At 5:30: "Hey sister, what time do y'all close?"
"We close at 6:00."
"Right!  Man...  Right!  Man...  Right!  Man...  Right!  Man...  Right!  Man...  Right!  Man...  Right!  Man...  Right!  Man..."
(I wanted to see how long he would've gone on like this, but Daniel decided to say something to him.  Damn!)

After maybe 3 nanoseconds of waving the card's barcode under the scanner light as though she were having a seizure: "I CAN'T GET THIS TO WORK WHY WON'T IT SCAN WHAT AM I DOING WRONG I NEED HELP IT'S NOT WORKING DO THIS FOR ME THIS THING NEVER WORKS AND I DON'T KNOW WHY AHHHHHHHHH!"

"How do I get to a webpage if it doesn't exist anymore?"

On the phone...on the quiet floor: "I'M AT THE LIBRARY SO YOU HAVE TO BE QUIET!"

(This one has nothing to do with IT, but it was pretty awesome.  So, I work in a library, right?)
A mother to her child in the library: "Remember that place with all the books?  I want you to go there."

(I feel like a jerk when I say stuff like this, but if I point at the screen, the try to touch the screen instead of using the mouse.)
"Where do I type in my pin?"
"In the box next to where it says 'pin'."
"Where do I scan my barcode?"
"Underneath the big arrow that says 'Scan Here'."
"What button do I press if I want a day pass?"
"You just touch that button that says 'Create a Day Pass'."

"I put in google in the address bar.  Why won't it go to google?"
"Did you type 'www.google.com'?"
"No, I typed google."

After showing me one of those fabled emails from Prince Ahmud Jafar in Kenya or whatever:  "Now, if I send him my bank account information, will anyone else be able to steal it from this computer?  'Cause this is a public computer, right?  Is there some way we can delete this info after I send it to him?"

Things that are irritating me this week.

I'm actually having a really fantastic week, but I'm not going to let that stop me from whining about things in the most comical way I can... 

1.  Wyoming residents ability to drive, particularly in Cheyenne.
See, I've stated several times to my out-of-state friends that Wyoming does in fact have four seasons, they're just wrong.  The seasons we have are Winter, Still Winter, Construction, and Rodeo.  Anywho, we are now smack in the middle of Construction which just puts the stupidity of drivers in this town into even more stark detail.  This week, I drove home a different route everyday in some futile attempt to avoid construction...ha!  How silly of me.  Of course, it was unavoidable, but what baffled me is that every time I drove home I ran into a car accident.  Seriously.  One day I drove through three.  As it is one of our seasons, you'd think Wyoming residents would recognize the intricate language of orange cones and avoid the minimal amount of danger they create, but no...it is better if we drive through the cones and straight into the ditch.  You know how when you drive past an accident and you can sort of guess how things went down?  Not here!  We are creative in our vehicular destruction in the great state of Wyoming.  >.<

2.  Schedules that don't seem to have important dates on them.
I won't share the specific story that goes with this one, but I'm sure my moderately organized friend understand the general frustration this causes. 

3.  The fact that I am still terrible at the piano.
I've actually been practicing as it turns out.  Haha!  I took a break from working my way through some piano books to learn the voice parts for the musical I'm teaching here in a week or so.  The voice parts.  For children.  That means one note at a time and no pedal.  I'm not musically stupid, but every time I see Bb Major, I turn into a person who has broken both of their elbow and has had their fingers replaced with seaweed.  WHAT MEANS THIS TWO FLATS!?!?!?  Yet I can play in Eb juuuuuust fine.  What?  Seriously, brain??  There are harder keys...I know there are.  I had to play them in scales for proficiency.  BUT B FLAT IS HAAAAAAAARD!!!!!  Hell.

4.  People who don't inform applicants when a position has been filled. 
Screw you guys.  I want a job.  Oddly enough, I imagine this little paragraph may well prevent me from being hired. 

5.  SciFi (SyFy is just stupid.  Just another gem from the mind of the man whom I shall call Corporate Moron 1.) channel's approach to holidays.
For those of you who live in eternal denial of the fact that I am a trekkie (Daniel), you may wish to skip down.  This particular irritation is best illustrated in the following scene I just wrote.  We find ourselves in an office resembling a closet with far too many toys from happy meals.  As we approach, we hear a conversation between three men whom I shall call Corporate Moron 1, Shareholder, and Intern.
Corporate Moron 1: Memorial Day weekend is upon us!!  Whatever shall we show on our channel??
Shareholder: I feel we should show a Star Trek marathon.  Everyone loves Star Trek.  And that's SciFi (Excuse me, SyFy), right?
Corporate Moron 1: Brilliant, sir!  Another excellent idea!  That's why we listen to you!  For the ideas!  Not at all because your money is the only thing keeping our channel afloat!
Intern: Sir, we do a Star Trek marathon every holiday...and also every Monday from 2-7...also, some weekends when we can't come up with any terrible ideas for our original movies...
Corporate Moron 1: Gasp!
Shareholder: Silly Intern!  This is no ordinary Star Trek marathon.   This is a Star Trek movie marathon. 
Corporate Moron 1: Your best idea ever, sir!!
Intern: Oh, that'll be pretty cool. 
Shareholder: Ah, yes, I am wonderful, aren't I?  We shall play Star Trek movies all weekend!  And we shall play them in no discernible order!  Those numbers attached to the titles are silly!  Canon means nothing to us here at SyFy!!
Intern: But sir, the trekkies...shouldn't we play them in order?
Corporate Moron 1: Nonsense, Intern!  This is a fantastic idea!!
Shareholder: And we shall play Nemesis the most because that is the best and my favourite Star Trek movie!
Corporate Moron 1: Yes!  Yes!
Intern: Really, Nemesis?
Shareholder: And we shall "forget" to play Star Trek III!!  And we won't play Wrath of Khan untill two in the morning!!
Intern: Oh dear...
Corporate Moron 1: No one like The Search for Spock anyway!!
Shareholder: And anytime we would've meant to play III, we'll instead play...ZARDOZ!!!!!
Corporate Moron 1: Oh...Zardoz?  Sir, I don't know...
Intern: Really?  That's where you draw the line?
I actually would've been down with some Zardoz.  That's one on a long list of scifi movies that are sooooo terrible they've cycled right back around into awesome somehow.  But yeah, the Star Trek movie marathon this weekend has been an adventure.  (They did replace Star Trek III with Sunshine.  Sunshine is a fantastic movie, but really doesn't belong in a Star Trek marathon.  At least it's in space, I guess.)

6.  My car.
We have now spent approximately $500 more in repairs for the Mazda than it originally cost.  Awesome.  And yet, I'll still be driving the rolling death trap to Minnesota this summer.  Wish me luck!

I'm gonna go write more of my lesson plans and continue plucking away at the piano. 

A personal adventure...

You know, I used to be quite the book worm.  I devoured books.  I kept telling myself in college that the reason I didn't do that anymore is because I was reading all these academic texts and I was, but what's my excuse now?  I don't have one.  And there are an awful lot of books I should have read that I just didn't ever get to.  This week and the next month, I'm turning off my television and going to get some things read.  Here is my list so far and I welcome some recommendations!


Danse Macabre - Gerald Elias
Something Wicked This Way Comes - Ray Bradbury (Thanks, Daniel!)
Turn of the Screw and Other Stories - Henry James
The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
Long Days Journey Into Night - Eugene O'Neill
Bhagavadgita
Moll Flanders - Daniel Defoe
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil - John Berendt
The Student Conductor - Robert Ford

I'm gonna do this.

I have this rad idea for a party.  I want to have people over, like a small cozy amount.  And what we're gonna do is get some wine and some nifty finger food-esque sort of things.  Then we're gonna get some of the awesome kid movies from yesteryear that we grew up with.  THEN we're gonna get an epic amount of colouring book pages.  We put all these things together in my house and we drink and watch cool movies and colour and geek out on nostalgia.  Oh yeah.  It's gonna happen. 

More about the pain scale.

This.  Is.  Brilliant. 

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/02/boyfriend-doesnt-have-ebola-probably.html

Pain scale.

I love XKCD.  They hit the nail on the head so often.  And I about died when I saw this one.  See, I was just in the doctor's office for an ear infection on Thursday and she asked me to rate the pain on a scale from one to ten.  I said eight.  Then I thought about it.  I've broken my toe and that was excruciating.  I've had a root canal on a live tooth.  *shudder*  I've woken up from a surgery during which they've sliced open my abdomen and spread apart my rib cage...  After thinking about this for a minute, I turned to her and said, "You know, like an eight as far as ear infections go.  It's not really all that bad..."

Speaking of that particular appointment, I learned that I have this thing called bullous myringitis.  I will spare you most of the details on that, 'cause it's gross.  Anyway, the doc looks in my ear and says, "Oh, wow..."  I've gotten a little desensitized to this kind of a reaction given the fiasco that occurred two years ago.  I ask her what's wrong and she just looks at me and says, "Can I have the other doctors come in and look at your ear?  It's just that, you never really see a good example of this outside a textbook."  *sigh*  I guess if I'm gonna be a medical wreck, I may as well be a learning experience. 

Brundibar

Brundibar was a story I heard when I was pretty young; I had a music teacher in elementary school who thought it'd be a cool thing for us to learn as a Holocaust survivor was coming to speak to us around the same time.  Brundibar is a Czech children's opera written during the time of the Holocaust about two children who go to the town square to get some milk for their sick mother.  With the help of their animal friends, the manage to end the musical tyranny of Brundibar the accordion player (with very Nazi-esque evil tendencies) over the town square so they can sing and earn some money to buy the milk.  The wiki of the story is really good if you want to learn more about it.  Now as a college graduate with a degree in music education, this lesson has popped into my head on more than one occasion because I think it'd be a neat thing to teach my older students and tie into learning about the Holocaust and WWII in their main classroom some day.  What fortune that I should happen upon a copy of the adapted book by Tony Kushner (Angels in America) and Maurice Sendak (Where the Wild Things Are) in the delete rack while I was processing books to go to the book sale room!  The book was in lovely condition and $.50 for such a rad children's book is a steal!  I'm pretty jazzed about the find and will definitely find a way to use this in my classroom in the future.  ^-^

Things I Do at Work OR The Adventures of Bob the Space Cowboy Pt. 1

My job, at times, does not require a great deal of brain power.  I mean, really I'm meant to sit around and wait for people to ask me questions along the lines of "Where's the 'print' button in Microsoft Word?" and "How do I delete something in my email?"  Not exactly rocket science considering I've been working in IT for about five or six years now.  (Note: My degree is in education, but I'm becoming increasingly aware that my technology skills are much more marketable.  Go figure.  *sigh*)  Anyway, when boredom strikes, I am often looking for something to make the time go much much faster.  Luckily my friend Carrie is often able to supply me with such a distraction.  We were chatting in gchat and she tells me to tell her a story about Bob, the space cowboy from Neptune.  I was more than willing to oblige.  The resulting is this: Pt. 1 of The Adventures of Bob the Space Cowboy.  (There's not much.  I did still have to help people during this time, after all...)

Once there was a three arm gephlot named Bob.  And he was a space cowboy, boy howdy.  But not the kind that wrangled alien wildlife, was rugged and strapping, or generally particpated in the romantic stereotypical definition of what you and I know to be a cowboy, mind you...  No, no. Bob, he liked hats. Specifically of the wide brimmed variety.  And to him, this qualified him as a cowboy.  He was a recent transplant to the planet Neptune from his home planet, Atlepraxis II.  Sadly, Atlepraxis II's leader, Mimzy, decided to outlaw the wearing of wide-brimmed hats and Bob was having none of that, no sir!  So he shipped out to new environs.  Now, Neptune was nice enough.  Lots of gas clouds...reasonably freezing...crooked rings, not like that unartistic planet, Saturn.  Pish with your fancy colours!  You're not artsy at all!  You just found a box of crayons you unwashed miscreant planet!  Yeah.  Bob, he liked Neptune allright.  But after three and a half Neptunian years on the planet (which was only equal to an Atlepraxian week), Bob was beginning to feel just a twinge of homesickness.  "I miss the carnivorous sloop-margles that used to bound in and out of the dunes in the Atlepraxian desert," sayeth Bob.  "I miss the infinite convenience of the three suns that kept my Atlepraxian homeworld in eternal day!  What the hell is this nighttime business, anyway?  How does anyone get anything done when it's so dark?  And what's with all these random points of light in the sky?  They don't do anything.  They don't shed any sort of light on the planet's surface, they don't make any pictures, you can't find your way around with them.  Pish, I say!  Pish!"  So, Bob, he says to his friend, Ed, "Ed, my man, I miss my home.  I miss cave surving in the audial hwho-bangs on the Eastern mleldelnop."  Ed, who's just about had it with his friend's incessant belly-aching, says to Bob, "Really man?  Your planet, Ablebab the Fifth or whatever, sounds like a drag.  Everything sounds like this ridiculous amount of danger and thoroughly unfun.  Furthermore," says Ed, "You had to leave your planet because they outlawed wide-brimmed hats.  I mean, really?  That's your reason for packing up and changing your entire life?  And who wastes their time making stupid laws like outlawing certain kinds of hats?  You, sir, are an idiot and you planetary leader is a bitch."

So endeth Pt. 1 because, you see, work had ended and I went home to watch Fry and Laurie.

Award Winning Banana Bread

It is a constant source of pride that I can call my Banana Bread "Award Winning".  Granted the award it won was just a high school club competition and not some reknowned culinary thing, but I'll take it.  It's been awhile since I've been able to bake a lot and since baking is my favourite way to warm up the house when it's cold, I figured it was time.  Anyway, here is the recipe for my banana bread...

• 2 ripe medium bananas
• 1 8oz pkg cream cheese
• 3 eggs
• 6 tbsp butter
• 1 c. flour
• 1 c. sugar
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract

Preheat your oven to 375.  This first part is my favourite...at least the way I do it anyway.  I don't have a standing mixer, so I put the bananas, cream cheese, and butter into a bowl and pulverize it with a potato masher!  Yeah, I'm a crazy person...  So you're gonna beat that untill it's soft and add the eggs and vanilla.  Once this is completely mixed, it'll kind of look like a custard if you did it right.  Next add the sugar and mix it in completely.  Then the soda, powder, and salt.  Last add the flour.  Pour the fully combined mixture into a greased bread pan (the ones I use are glass) and bake for somewhere in the neighborhood of an hour and twenty minutes.  I've had a lot of angry ovens in the past, so I've just always had to keep an eye on it and check often with a toothpick.

Things I REALLY wish teenagers understood about auditions.

So, I decided to hop off and watch Footloose auditions on Tuesday and teacher-me kicked in wanting to fix so many little problems I saw...couple of issues with that, though; 1. I'm not their teacher and 2. in order to illustrate why they shouldn't do some of these things, I'd have to use some teaching unfriendly language.  Therefore, I'm gonna put it on the internet where I will not be fired for saying such things and hopefully, this'll help at least one someone out there.  There are three lists.  The first is a list of things that I used to think were common sense and maybe just hadn't floated into the heads of these kiddos.  The second is just a few singing tips that are a lot easier said than done.  The third is a few voiced irritations toward the behind-the-scenes people.  Here goes...

List One: Wow, the lights are really bright, aren't they?

1. For those of you whose largest stage debut to date was in the school's gymacafetorium, let me tell you something: stage lights are bright.  Blindingly so.  That's where all those cliched phrases about actors getting lost in the blinding lights came from.  (Ugh.)  Now that you know this, there's really no need to mention it to the people you're auditioning for.  Chances are they know it.  And when you hear the phrase, "Wow!  Those are really bright lights!" from 60 different kids, it can get very taxing on the nerves. 
2. Wear nice clothes.  It makes you look like you care.  And take off your damn hat.
3. If you bring a CD to sing with, for the love of all that is right in the world, make sure it's actually a karaoke track.  If I can't hear you over Journey, I can't tell how well you can sing.  It also says that you probably can't hold your own with a chorus behind you.  Neither of those are a good sign for a director.
4. Do NOT injure yourself during the dance audition.  I don't care how cute or cool the move you just did was.  A cool dance move is so not worth having a gimped character for the rest of the show.
5. Allright, this one isn't necessarily common sense, but it needs to be said.  Ladies, do not toss your hair every five minutes.  To the casting committee it makes you look nervous, fidget-y, and not in control of your body.  To the other female auditioners, it just makes you look like a stuck up bitch.  Hopefully, neither of those sentences is true of you and you don't want to be perceived as such. 

List Two: The walls make for a good audience, I promise.

1. If you are going to bring sheet music, try very hard to find a copy with the chord changes written above the measures.  (They're the things that look a little like this: Gm7, BbM+6...stuff like that.)  It helps the accompanist fake their way through your song if the written notes are really hard to play without lots of practice. 
2. On that note, when you've got an accompanist whose sight reading your music, things might not go perfectly like you'd like them.  Don't freak out and DON'T try to make it look like everything's the piano player's fault.  It's in your best interest to know your song backwards and forwards and plow through when things go awry.
3. Did I mention practice?  Practice.  When you're done practicing, get a captive audience and sing some more.  Sing to the wall, sing in front of a mirror, sing for your friends...what-have-you.  Most people who work in music have magic powers that allow us to be able to tell the difference between a nervous brain spasm and I'm-so-awesome-I-don't-need-to-practice syndrome.  The latter is soooo not endearing.
4. Breathe, but not too much.  You know when you speak and you just naturally breathe where commas and periods would fall if what you said were written?  It's the same things with singing.  Breathe where the commas and periods are and you'll be allright.  If that doesn't quite feel right, say the words out loud as though you were speaking to a friend and make a note of where you took breaths.
5. Chill out.  Natural you will always be better than overacting you.
6. This may be difficult for you to know the difference, but please pick a song that is in your comfortable singing range.  You may have picked a song that you like, but if you can't hit some of the notes because they're too low or high, it sounds bad; you'll normally end up either cutting out in those spots or singing wonky notes.  And while a seasoned musician will be able to tell that that's what the problem is, we're still stuck with the issue that you sang something out of your range and we didn't get to hear what you sound like in your range.  Essentially, we don't know what you sound like and that makes it hard to give you a role. 
7. Gentlemen, there is nothing wrong with singing in your upper register.  Just because you're not a low, growl-y bass, doesn't mean you're not manly.  Hell, tenors are hot and the majority of musical theatre roles are written for them, not the basses.

List Three: It is just never okay.

1. If you're going to cut a person of in the middle of their song, please at least wait untill a cadence.  It is irritating and jarring to get cut off smack in the middle and because of how we're trained with music in modern society, it actually makes the person singing feel like they've done poorly to be cut off so unceremoniously.
2. Being a choreographer does NOT give you free license to be a raging bitch.  Being a director or member of the production staff doesn't either, but this seems to be a pretty common choregrapher character flaw.  Theatre is a professional community and that means it is built upon respect.  You have to show your performers the same amount of respect you expect them to show you regardless of age or skill level.  I've had really nice and awesome choreographers take uncoordinated people like me and turn them into a spinning, awesome-looking, dance-y thing.  Respectful choreographers (and directors, stage managers, etc.) get their performers to learn steps quicker and better.  The bitchy ones get ignored and argued with.  I mean, really, you're only making more work for yourself.  Especially with teenagers!  What, do you have a death wish or something?  An adult is going to write a letter of complaint or something reasonable like that when you suck; a teenager's gonna put krazy glue in your socks.  Choose wisely. 
3. Parents.  Chill out.  Chill out, chill out, chill out.  You're making everyone crazy.  Sit in the back, watch politely, keep your comments to yourself, and after it's all over, tell your kid he/she did a good job. 

Really, after all of that, I guess the important bit is to not get discouraged by stuff and keep auditioning.  Practice makes perfect and what-all. 

Bits and Pieces

My brain is just beyond scattered at work and over the past week I've collected an odd mix of thoughts and events and I just need to write them down to get them out of my head. 

I have a great deal of trouble making eye contact with someone in an involved conversation.  I really hope people don't think I'm bored or ignoring them - most of the time, I am listening intently - but I think I'm focusing so damn hard that my multitasking brain short circuits or something.  It's like trying to block out all of the minor distractions just makes them worse. 

I've been thinking a lot about shoes lately.  Yes, shoes.  Spurred mainly by a conversation about how children don't wear loafers ever under any circumstances.  Anyway, shoes really can say an awful lot about a person.  My favourite pair of shoes are special edition fair trade green chuck taylors with silhouettes of trees printed on the side that I bought from a thrift store.  If that doesn't say something about me, I don't know what does. 

There's a lady who comes into the lab who likes to talk to herself...a lot.  She's generally pretty harmless, but today, after loitering at the scanner for about half an hour, she walked by my desk and gave me a mean, threating, contemptuous sort of look.  I have this bad habit of looking up from my desk and smiling at people, which only made things worse.  As she started to walk off, I heard her mutter to her imaginary friend, "...probably accused of murder too."  o.O

My addiction to sour cherry flavoured candies is likely a bad thing.

Every few weeks or so I go through one of these bizarre desperate-need-to-self-improve sort of phases that often involves changing how I react to things or what I think of people or what have you.  Recently, however, I came to the conclusion that there would be no need for me to change anything about myself if I could just learn to not say the thoughts in my head aloud. 

Somewhere, someone in the world, someone is listening to Sibelius and it's his fault the weather's like this. 

I spend a lot of time oblivious to social cues and such things, but man, the amount of people who have no sense of decorum or manners is just staggering.

As I am numbering the measures in my Rachmaninov Vespers, a patron asks, "What instrument do you play?"  "I sing."  "You know, some people say that the voice is the original instrument.  Do you believe that?  I would've thought it was the drum."  "Maybe, but I think people probably learned how to scream before they learned how to hit things."

Things are more impressive looking when they're in a different alphabet.

Having a ruptured eardrum is a lot like living inside a honkytonk piano; things echo at inappropriate times, everything is just slightly out of tune, and it's impossible to hear clearly anyone talking.

I very much need to go on a road trip.

Getting Over It.

In short version news, attempt no. 73 at learning to stop biting my nails is going pretty well and my new job is awesome.

In long version, I've been thinking and evaluating a lot lately.  I have two issues I've been dealing with and one of them I've sort of figured out and the other is just probably going to stick around for awhile.  The latter is just that I'm lonely and I apparently became a coward at some point.  I've been working on psyching myself up to making a move in a direction for a few weeks and no amount of support and logic seems to be enough to push me in that direction.  So, I think things are going to stay that way for awhile.  Maybe resigning myself to such a thing will irritate me enough that I'll break the pattern.

I've also been struggling with authority lately.  The sentence "Power does not equate knowledge and experience." comes to mind.  The overarching theme of that particular thought has plagued me for most of my life.  I'm always finding myself in situations where I think, why on earth are you in charge of this nonsense and did you even think before you started doling out orders that make no sense?  Normally, I'm pretty complacent in situations such as these just as long the person in question is nice or personable.  When you start making decisions that hurt or upset me or others, I pretty much fly off the handle internally. 

I've been stuck in this situation for the past two weeks and it's been making me miserable.  My friends have helped by allowing me to hash things out and stress and I didn't have to worry about rumours getting thrown about as a result.  Trust me, adding that to my already visible disdain would be the opposite of helpful.  The other bit that helped is me finally centering on the fact that knowledge and experience does not equate power.  We've all had those moments where we look at what's going on and say, "I could do this better.  My ideas make more sense," but the thing of it is that that's not what gets you in a position where you're in charge.  So, in this situation, I have two options: either get willing to play the local politics or shut up and deal with it.  Guess which option I'm going with...

Uhhhhh...fog?!?

Okay, so, upon leaving Jake and Andrea's house, Dan and I found ourselves immersed in a ridiculously thick fog.  Of course, my what-would-happen-if syndrome kicked in and instead of going home and going to bed, I decided to drive around in it and take pictures.  Yeah, yeah.  I know.  I'm not so bright. 

This is my neighborhood.  You can tell because...uhhh...well there's a car in there, I think.

Then I drove out to Hilltop.  Boy howdy, was that drive frightening.  For those of you not from Cheyenne, Hilltop is one of the few places in town you can see a good majority of the city lights in all their glory.  You know, except for tonight.

In this picture, I am literally as close as you can get to the refinery without being either in a restricted area or sitting on the interstate.  Normally, the refinery looks like a giant, sideways Christmas tree belonging to the Griswold family, but is now defeated by the fog.

Hey, look!  Artistic trees!  Light and fog equal eerie silhouettes, didn't you know?

This may or may not be a street on which I am driving...  (Relax, I pulled over for a sec to snap the shot.  No electronics while driving.)

Now, my phone's camera is a pretty nifty piece of technology: high resolution, great colour, lots of settings.  I turned on EVERY setting I thought would help these come out.  I turned off the flash, turned on the night vision, set it to cloudy...yeah.  This is as good as I got.  And this fog clung to the skin.  It was some kind of thick.  Surreal as fuck.  *nods*

Allright, Monday...

Allright, Monday.  Here's how it's gonna go down.  I need something to occupy my time, so when my phone goes off for the second time tomorrow, it's gonna be for a job interview.  When I open the mailbox, I'm going to see my transcipts and my diploma from the university.  When I go on my post office adventure, it WILL go smoothly.  When I call the CO law enforcement, they will speak English, not look-how-many-unhelpful-legal-words-I-can-use-in-my-nonhelpful-response-to-your-questions.  When I call the OTE, I wil learn that the institutional recommendation IS as easy as it looks.  When I go to my audition, I will knock it out of the park and I WILL hit every high A in that damn piece flawlessly.  And when the majority of this list has occured on Monday, I WILL have a delicious drink!  YEAH!

Article Dump #1

I read things.  I have little else to do between job hunting.  >.<

Friends of a Feather
Huck Finn Sanitized
College of Ed Fails to Educate

Loud and Soft

I don't think I stopped laughing for most of that class.

Livestrong!

I've had some time to write some amusing depictions of things I have heard in my classroom.  Enjoy.

The sad bit is that this is one of my high school classes.  Sigh. 

Experiments...

I made the best damn marinade/sauce ever.  Ready, go!

• 1/2 c. mustard
• 1/2 c. honey
• 1 tbsp. olive oil
• 1 tbsp. lime juice
• 3 tbsp. sour cream
• 1/2 c. cream
• 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. garlic powder
• 1/4 tsp. curry powder
• 1/4 tsp. pepper
• 1/4 tsp. vanilla extract

In a bowl.  Oh yeah.  I also gave this recipe a shot on Thanksgiving and it was fan-bloody-tastic.  Nom nom. Although, it's pretty important to use the same size pan they recommend.  I used a pie pan and all the batter barely fit and it kind of cracked from the bad ratios.  I didn't use the crust recipe.  I used a simple graham cracker crust.

•  2 c. graham cracker crumbs
• 1/2 c. salted butter
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 c. brown sugar  

That turned out pretty well.  I must off to clean house.