Don't judge me
Is it weird I like the bran flakes? Dry? In handfuls?
I feel like the point of
raisin bran is to get you to eat something good for you (the bran flakes) by giving you some kind of bribe/reward (the raisins).
Out of touch
-1-
Calling Christine...ME: Hey!
CHRISTINE: Hey! I can't talk now, I'm going into class, but I wanted to say hi.
ME: But I thought you had Thursday off?
CHRISTINE:
(pause) It's Wednesday.
-2-
In my email:
"Your Choice of One MILLION Horny Women!"
I'm sorry, is there anyone who responds to these things? And if they do, are they thinking, wow, well, I wasn't going to open this email because I already have thousands of horny women, but a million makes it worth my while...
-3-
I'm going back through my South Africa journals, and (as I always claimed) I am a horrible journal keeper. It's so boring for me to go through writing "I did this, then this, then this, then this, then this". I should be able to tell how I was feeling, too, by how I wrote about something. But I have never trusted those kinds of journals. So I do poorly when I try to write them. I was lazy about it and then also purposely omitted lots of stuff. I didn't make anything up - I just left stuff out. Super. I went through, looking for particular events, and found that many of the stories that come up the most when talking to people aren't even in there.
So I'm off to secondary sources - emails, my IF locale sketch, police reports....
I Hear the Bells*
I just had a little happy dance party. After two days of fiddling with the branching pathways of the device manager, checking the obvious (plugs), and using the cds they give you with your computer in case you do something idiotic like deleting a vital audio component on your computer, I fixed the audio on my computer.
All of a sudden, after speaking to me in various tongues, my computer was like, Sound? Sound?! You think this computer has sound? You silly woman. We have nothing of the sort. Why would you think we have sound?
ME: Uh, because we've always had sound.
COMPUTER: Uh, no. I don't know what you're talking about. I mean, I could handle sound. I'm set up for it. But check out my innerds - you'll clearly see we have no device for such things.
ME: Why are you fighting me on this?
COMP: To teach you a lesson.
ME: Oh, yeah? What lesson?
COMP: Okay, there's no lesson. I'm just obnoxious sometimes. And you can't do anything about it.
ME: I could start running old programs on you and you'd hate it. You'd see all your little friends doing fun electro-techno things and you'd get all jealous because you'd be stuck running that program they used to have at the library in 1986 where you could make banners and the most advanced part was the border of hearts function.
COMP: Fine. Check the device manager again. Maybe there's something new on there for you to load in...
While I don't have lots of 'puter schoolin', I'm nothing if not stubborn. I'll fiddle until it's figgered out. (Yes, the fiddlin' apparently got me into the situation in the first place, but I see that as only a minor detail.)
*Is the song that, in fact, first graced my speakers after this whole saga
Hey... I know that accent!
Last night I came across a game on tv - Crows vs Devils.
The Adelaide Crows versus the Melbourne Devils.
Yes, the footy had found me in DC.
I don't have cable yet, so I was flipping through all the channels, then adjusting the rabbit ears as necessary. I can see a game field of some sort and some guys running around with a ball. I'm about to flip the channel (within 0.3 seconds of seeing that's what was on) when I hear "And Adelaide takes possession..."
I made that face that dogs do when they hear something confusing/intriguing/possibly food related, cocking one ear up and looking thoughful. I thought, that couldn't be Adelaide,
Australia.
I swear to you, I stood next to that television, holding the rabbit ears (because the optimal spot for reception was in mid-air) for 5 minutes, watching them bounce the ball (that looks like a rugby ball), pass to each other (with underhand volleyball serves) and run around the field (the round shape of a cricket oval) with no padding (like morons).
And then I changed the channel. Even in Melbourne, my interest in watching the footy on tv never lasted more than a few minutes. Still, gave me a smile.
(photo of neither the Adelaide nor Melbourne side)
travel money
Contest. StudentUniverse. $10,000. ends October 4.
To enter, just click below. You might win, and I get extra entries.
http://www.trustfundliving.com/_A8OOE/If either of us win, we give the other some dough.
and another thing...
Let's flashback together to two summers ago, shall we?
Floating down a river in kayaks, Ashley shares with the rest of the flotilla a recipe from her Mississippi (and yes, I just did that little sing-songy thing in my head when I spelled that) heritage.
ASHLEY: Anybody want some sweet tea? It's good.
Well, sure. What could be better that having a nice, sweet, refreshing beverage as we enjoy this quiet part of the river, right?
HALLEY or MARY-J (
I dont' remember who tried it first): Ashley! What is this?!?!
ASHLEY: (
laughing. probably at us.) It's bourbon.
So, for the rest of the river and the rest of the weekend we enjoyed ourselves some sweet tea.
I figured it was just a kind of code that people understood. Like in Amsterdam, coffeeshop=weed, not coffee. Here, perhaps, sweet tea=bourbon. Fine.
Back to the future. I see a McDonald's commercial where they're selling sweet tea for a dollar. I'm a little confused, but thinking, go MickeyD's. I start seeing it more and more places. Hmm.
DC is not, in fact, a city of big bourbon drinkers. Turns out that in some places sweet tea is actually sweet tea.
Life below the Mason-Dixon line is confusing.
did you know....
....when they say "Washington Redskins" that they mean Washington DC and not Washington state?
I swear I always thought they meant Washington state. And then I got here and they talked abotu the Redskins on the news all the time and I figured they were just in town that weekend. But then they kept talking about them.
I finally figured it out.
Well, you know, I
am quite the football person...
hey, HEY, you, YOU, get off of my cloud!
There's another 'Halley' in one of my classes. Not a 'Haley', but a 'Halley'. It's very strange. This has never happened to me before.
(begin sarcastic, hysterical rant) I'm not like you people! I've never met someone with my name before! I've never had to be referred to by my first name and last initial before! It's madness! Madness, I say! How do you cope??? How can you exist in a world where your name is not your own???
Used by millions and millions of people?!?!? What am I supposed to do with this person, this
undergrad, this seemingly characteristic-free entity?! (end rant)
Okay. I'm sure she's a perfectly fine human being. I want to like her, too... y'know, since she has my name and all. I feel like we should have some sort of camraderie. But she really seems to be quite boring. No, really.
Possibly this is because I don't know her. Possibly, because I don't find her hair interesting. The world may never know.
Years ago, I found a lists in a book of most common and uncommon names. My parents' names were on the most common. My and my sister's names (or some close cousin) were on the most uncommon. Over the years, as the close cousins got more and more popular, my and my sister's names got mispronounced more and more often. "Oh, how are Hayley and Alissa?" Super. Just super.
So you can understand how used to having my
own name I got. And in comes this person who claims to have my name, as well. I feel like challenging her to some kind of grudge match (badminton? jeopardy-style trivia? sock puppets?) for the rights to the name. Is that allowed? Because if I won, I, of course, would be magnanimous in victory. I wouldn't make her throw out her personalised stationary. Of course she couldn't use it anymore, but I wouldn't make her throw it out.
Division was always my weak suit
At our cousin's wedding this past weekend in Ohio, my dad and I started dancing together. It was lovely. I was even following a little. I have a small problem following. Always have. (This is an issue to be addressed at length in the near future to avoid embarrassing situations at my sister's wedding.)
Now, it wouldn't be that big a deal if A) I knew the steps. I'm more of the "intuitive, self-taught" school of dance. Unless you count my years of jazz and bit of ballet. Which you shouldn't. Because neither one have anything to do with popular slow-dancing with a partner. In fact, it probably made the "leading" problem worse.
But even moreso in the "what's the big deal?" department, B) the person I'm dancing with is also leading. Funny enough, when I want to twirl out, the other person needs to be aware that this is going to happen, pre-twirl. Or you end up with something resembling the choreography from a 4th-grade musical's barn dance scene. Swing your pardner, indeed.
However, my dad is a strong lead and consequently I was following at least 60% of the time. The closest anyone else has come has been about 13%.
So we're dancing along for a good 30, 40 seconds, when the DJ turns it into a kind of marriage contest.
"Please leave the floor if you've been married 1 hour or less." We look at each other and keep dancing. We're having a good time, damn the Man...er, DJ.
"Please leave the floor if you've been married a year or less." Still dancing.
"Please leave the floor if you've been married five years or less." More and more couples are leaving the floor. Not us.
"Please leave the floor if you've been married ten years or less." It's like there's someone talking, and we don't particularly care...
We finally left at the fifteen year mark.
As my dad told our family, waiting at the table, "We figured, I've been married 30 years and she's been married zero years. So we split the difference."
I swear to you, I stood next to that television, holding the rabbit ears (because the optimal spot for reception was in mid-air) for 5 minutes, watching them bounce the ball (that looks like a rugby ball), pass to each other (with underhand volleyball serves) and run around the field (the round shape of a cricket oval) with no padding (like morons).
