Oh, Public Transportation.

So I ride the bus now. I've never had to ride the bus before.

It's actually not that bad other than being kind of late, and one time someone spilled their coffee and it sloshed all over the floor of the bus and soaked the bottom of my back pack and was totally gross because I don't even like coffee. But that wasn't really the fault of the bus.

Taking the bus to the mall is always fun, because who doesn't love spending an hour on the bus? The bus going out to the cool mall is always full of hip Japanese teens who, on the way back, have yet more hip clothes and stuff. So that's not that exciting, other than the cute accessories and amazing hair. Now, going out to the lame mall is more exciting (not the mall part though) because on my way back there was a wacky Turrets guy and a crazy cell phone guy. Wacky Turrets guy was wearing a snappy suit and mumbling to himself the whole time except occasionally he'd scream "JESUS CHRIST!!!" and go back to mumbling. Then Crazy cell phone guy spent the time we spent waiting for the bus and the whole time he was on the bus calling everyone in his cell phone and leaving essentially the same message for everyone. "Hi (name), it's me. It's uhhhhh...11:36, gimme a call when you get this, just want to talk."

No one ever called him back.

Probably because he was on the phone non-stop leaving messages for people.

Shun the Non Believer!

I have a confession.

I...I don't believe in Kate Beckinsale.

I used to. And, maybe, Kate Beckinsale used to be real, and maybe there's even a real Kate Beckinsale now, but I'm sure they're not the same. All I can say is that I don't believe in her. She's like Santa, or the tooth fairy.

See, once upon a time there was an actress called Kate Beckinsale, but I only ever saw her in "Much Ado About Nothing" and "Cold Comfort Farm". Then, all of a sudden, there was another actress called Kate Beckinsale and I saw her in "Underworld" and "Van Helsing" and I thought to myself "That's not Kate Beckinsale."

It was as simple as that. One day she was real, then she wasn't.

Now, this isn't a comment on her acting skills or anything. I'm not trying to be judgmental here, all "oh, she used to be an actress, now look at her being all mainstream." No, that's not what I'm doing. I just...don't see any similarities between the two, and now I don't believe in Kate Beckinsale. Even looking at pictures of this alleged "Kate Beckinsale"...I don't recognize her. At all. In any pictures.

Here's the thing: I'm good with faces. I'm good with names. I'm fantastic at remembering actor's names. So why is there such disconnect with Kate Beckinsale? Why can't I recognize her, like, ever?

So I don't believe in her.

Sorry Kate Beckinsale.

Blogging for real now. Really.

So, yeah, I'm giving the whole blog thing another go. I kind of forgot about it for awhile, but I'm back, to blurt out random stuff. Like how this video almost killed me dead:

So That's, You Know, Coming Along.

I am obsessed with this video and song:

Yeah. It's pretty amazing.

I'm also obsessed with "The Guild" so you should go watch that.

Felicia Day is amazing and gorgeous. Just saying.

Time for Some Thrilling Heroics

I have only ever locked my keys in the car twice. The first time I was at school, so I just called my dad and he came over and unlocked the car for me. This is the story of the second time, which was two days ago.

I was heading home from school and had stopped to get cat food on the way home and I was hungry (nothing to do with the cat food! I just hadn't had time for lunch and it was, like, 4pm!) and since I was on my own for the weekend, I thought I'd just stop somewhere and get something on the way home. But what? I just could not decide on anything and as I was driving home I was getting increasingly frustrated with my own indecisiveness. So I finally decided to just go home, drop off my stuff, then decide on dinner based on whatever coupons were around. Well, I got home and got my stuff out of the car, but in the process of doing so I dropped them on the driver's seat. Which I didn't realize until I got to the door.

Now, we do actually have a hidden spare, but I couldn't find it (the house is super disorganized because we're remodeling the kitchen). And of course my cell phone was in my purse, inside the house so that was no good. Next I went to the front of the house to see if there was a way to get in there, but the door and windows were locked. Sigh.

This might be a good time to mention that in addition to being super hungry, I also kind of had to pee.

I went back to the back door and considered my options: 1) I could walk 5 blocks to my sister's house, where she presumably would be home and in possession of a spare key. 2) I could break the window on the back door, which would be kind of silly and I'd probably just hurt myself. 3) If only there were a way to get to the second floor roof, because I almost never lock the door to the deck up there.

So it was down to options 1 and 3. I should take this time to explain that there is a deck on the second floor, off of my bedroom. There's some space around the deck and I have had to go out on the roof occasionally and I have often though that if there were a way to get to the ground from the roof then that would be a convenient way to escape in an emergency. Hang on, I'm going to try to sort of sketch this out for you here:

__________

../..... /.\

/....../... \

Okay, so there's a little peak roof over the entryway, the sloped roof over the tiny attached garage, and the flat roof with the deck on it.

So, basically I'm contemplating the roof, and trying to figure out if there's a way to get up on the roof over the entryway. Because, really it'd be faster than walking over to Ann's. But I'm not seeing anything, so I'm about to start walking, when I see a ladder at the back of the backyard. And it's gross. It's covered in cobwebs and I hate spiders so much, it's not even funny. But there are also rakes back there, so I rake all the crap off this ladder and it's a big aluminum sucker that weighs a frickin' ton, but somehow I wrangled it over to the house and got it next to the entryway.

Then, while being actively stabbed in the ass by a thistle plant, I climbed the ladder, got onto the small roof, successfully evaded the wisteria vines that tried to entangle me, climbed up to the flat roof, over the railing, into the screened area, and into my closet. Success!

Of course I was totally covered in dirt, leaves, and sweat and the cats were totally freaked out by my coming in that way, but it was a hugely successful endeavor. And I felt like a total bad ass! Which is always cool.

In the end I found a spare house key (in the house, naturally), but had to wait for my dad to come home the next day to get my keys out of the car.

I ended up ordering pizza that night.

The Spillage That Was

So a couple weeks ago (I know, I bad about writing about stuff when it happens) I had a day where...well it was messy.

I had to get gas on my way home, so I did that and then I thought "Hey, there's 7-11 over there, I could get myself a slurpee" because I do love slurpees a whole lot. So I go over to the 7-11 and what should they have, but blue raspberry slurpee! And in addition to loving slurpees, I also love blue raspberry a whole frickin' ton, in case you didn't know that from the name of this blog. So there I am, pouring some frozen blue tastiness, when the machine jams! Oh noes! Well, I wiggled the handle a bit, turned it off and on, then all of a sudden -- PSSSSHHHHH! -- it exploded. The blast of the slurpee nocked the cup to the floor, hit the drip tray, and covered me in blue slurpee. I am not kidding at all, I was seriously covered in the stuff. My arms were covered from my hands to my elbows and it was all down my front from my neck to...well, to my thighs. So I went to the counter and was like "excuse me, the blue raspberry exploded" and the guy was all "yeah that happens, here's a washcloth, don't worry about the floor". So I got most of the slurpee (that hadn't already melted) off of myself, got a coke slushee (my other favorite flavor) and headed home smelling extremely fruity, feeling extremely sticky, and with a suspicious wet patch on my crotch. Good times.

So I got home, washed the stickiness off, and changed my clothes. Then we had to take my kitty, Schroeder, to the vet. Now, Schroedie is a big boy. He's 32 pounds. He...actually doesn't eat that much and he's active, so we just keep an eye on him and figure that that's just how he is. And he's a sweetie. Anyway, he doesn't exactly fit in the cat carrier, so I just put a towel over him and hold him in my lap while mom drives. So we got to the vet after a long ride (he's anxious about the whole "car" thing and the towel is for shade (since he's black and gets toasty in the sun) and to block the view out the window because that makes him nervous). And so we're sitting at the vet's office in the lobby thing and I see a lady mopping and I think "It's a good thing she's mopping because this place smells like pee. It really smells like pee." Then I think "Man, Schroedie's warm. I think my legs are sweating." And of course you know where this is going, but it took me a minute to put the two together and realize that Schroeder had peed. On me. And my mother was absolutely hysterical, she was laughing and laughing while the nice lady at the desk got a bag for the wet towel and got me a clean towel and so on.

Well, we got home and I was damp and stinky, so I opted for a shower in addition to another wardrobe change. Then I went and chucked my sticky fruity clothes and my smelly cat-pee clothed into the washer and as I was pouring the detergent, it sloshed and my arm was covered in detergent. And then I gave up on doing anything tidily ever again.

And that was my day of spillage.

Bad Luck Things and Bad Idea Things

So this summer has been the Summer o' Bad Luck at my house.  Actually a combination of bad luck and failing to recognize bad ideas.

Back in June I went to the beach with my sisters, which was fun except that I am very white and don't go out in the sun for extended periods all that often.  So I didn't think to reapply sunscreen and ended up with severe sunburn on the front of my legs and some sunburn on my chest and arms.  Which would have been okay except that I was on my own for the weekend and didn't take care of it RIGHT AWAY and then my life sucked for a week.  It didn't just hurt, it was an experiment in how much pain I can physically take.  Then, going from bad to worse, I failed to recognize a bad idea when I noticed that the accumulated layers of aloe gel had formed a sort of gluey layer on my legs, which I peeled off on one leg.  And didn't notice that it took off the very top layer of skin.  Terrible idea.  I'd been having trouble walking because of the pain in my legs, but this was way, way worse.  It was just pure, raw pain all the time to the point that even aloe gel burned with an unholy fire.

So there's a picture of it when it was really bad.  Just a warning because it's kind of gross.

But now I'm totally fine!  And I learned important things about sunscreen and after sun care!

So that was one event this summer.  Then two weeks ago I kept...well, not breaking things, but just finding out that things didn't work.  One day I went to make brownies to take to a potluck and when I went to put the pan of brownies in the oven I realized that, while the dial said 350, the oven itself said "no".  Then a couple of days later when we were having near-record heat I went and turned on the air conditioning and while the fan/furnace/blower thing was totally down with having some AC, the the thingie outside was not.  And since I know so much about things like this, I decided to go look at the AC thing outside (see!  I don't even know what it's called!) and in the process I got hit in the face with a tree branch and kind of squashed my toe with an unsecured concrete stepping stone.

Then yesterday my dad broke his thumb.  He was putting up the satellite dish on their house up north and decided that instead of going back down the ladder, he would come in through one of the upstairs windows.  Now, the windows upstairs don't lock or anything, so all you really have to do is pop out the screen and slide the window open.  So he did that and then hoisted himself part way through the window and rocked forward to he would tip in.  Well he did, but he also slid a bit and that's when his thumb broke.  And it's not the kind where it can just be set.  It broke on the lower joint and there's a bone chip and the tendon is between the two pieces of bone and so on, so he's in surgery today having a pin put in and he'll be in a cast and all.

Now remember how I said I 'd learned something from my sunburn experience?  When I was on the phone with him last night he said "I'm still not convinced that going in the window was a bad idea."

Sigh.