Brain Vomit

Okay, I am going to start by apologizing to any and everyone who is subjected to this post! I was going to blog on a new addition to my nerd collection. However, doing a proper post like that takes me a few drafts and a couple of days and I just now sat down to type up my blog post. So you poor souls are going to be subjected to Zella's projectile brain vomit. You poor things. *shakes head in a grandmotherly fashion*

To start off this subconscious ramble, I am going to attend to two matters that I have forgotten in my last posts--and one of them was triggered by my use of the word "grandmotherly". I'm sure you guys remember my blog that detailed my transformation from a pathetic nerd to an angry granny at the sight of Bratz dolls. My good friend Sana has drawn a quite accurate and very scary portrait of this scene on her own blog. I encourage you to have a look at it. ^^

Also, remember my guessing contest a couple of weeks ago where I had you guys guess what movie I took the name of my dog, Tuco Benedicto Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez, from? I had someone get the answer right and totally forgot all about it! Argggghhhhhh! I am an idiot! Sky correctly stated that I got the name from the classic spaghetti western The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Tuco is a rather colorful bandit played by the great Eli Wallach. During a hanging scene, Tuco has all of his crimes read to him and his full name is stated then. If you have never watched that movie, you simply must see it. Sergio Leone directing Clint Eastwood and Eli Wallach and Lee Van Cleef in a tale of three bad outlaws in a search for gold. Can it get any better than this? NOOOOOO! See it now! *attempts to stop being hyper*

I promised to mention Sky's name because she did know the answer--and is a fellow fan of the movie--and I neglected to do so. I am terribly sorry about that, but I am rectifying that as of now! SKY WON MY GUESSING CONTEST!!!!!!!!!!! And Penguins garners an honorable mention for posting the initials but not giving away the movie's title.

I usually am not quite that forgetful, but I have been extremely scatter-brained lately. That always happens when I am stressed out. I go completely bonkers. Just yesterday, I was at work and I had a handful of movies to file away. Just then a long time patron who always checks out books--and never movies--came up to the desk to check her latest reads out. Idiot me scanned the movies I had just checked in and checked them out to her! She stared at me with a highly alarmed expression until I realized what I had done. Then I apologized profusely and took the movies off of her account and checked her books out to her. After that I went to the bank I have had an account at for thirteen years and forgot my account number when I withdrew money. I have never once forgotten my bank account number! I felt like such a world class goober. Afterwards, I sat in my car and stared into outer space for a long, long time.

That did not help because I kept having horrifying flashbacks of my drive to work in which the large selection of library books I was returning turned on me and attacked me! I have never ever in all of my years of reading been attacked by a book! But it happened Tuesday morning on what seemed like a perfectly normal morning. I sat my stack of about 14 books on my seat next to me and backed out of my driveway. As I was doing so, without provocation and with absolutely no warning, the books began jumping out of the seat and hurling themselves in a highly threatening manner. Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy flung itself at me and landed just centimeters away from a very terrified Zella. Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me launched a vicious assault on my gear shifter and was aided with shocking bloodthirstiness by Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian and Deborah Blum's The Poisoner's Handbook. Not all of my soon to be returned books attacked. Laurie Halse Anderson's Fever, 1793 must have been on the sluggish side--no doubt due to the yellow fever--for it chose to slide to the other side of the seat and fall, wedging it between the seat and my passenger door. Several other innocent books followed its lead and took shelter. Meanwhile, I screamed like a little girl and swerved, narrowly avoiding driving off of the road. It was an outrage! Imagine a world where one is attacked by books! Unthinkable. But it happened to me yesterday. *backs into corner, wary of the next literary barrage*

Today has been much more quiet. I have been packing clothes to take to college with me and dividing them into various piles: take with me so I look like a functioning person at school and work, take with me so I can have something to wear when I feel like being a slob, take with me so I will not look like a complete fashion disaster for halfway formal occasions, not take with me but still keep because I just loved that shirt when I was fifteen, didn't know I had but will take with me because I like it, didn't know I had and not taking but not bad enough to give away--I need something to wear when I am home!, relatively nice stuff I need to give away so someone will wear it, and stuff that I am not in any way taking with me and never will wear but cannot bring myself to give to someone else--either due to sentimental attachment or the fact that I would never ever torture another person with said garment. One such item is a denim dress that looks like something a 1960s era Russian cosmonaut would wear in a sadly misguided attempt to re-enact a Western. Weirdly enough, the couple of times I wore it, everyone told me it was lovely. I don't think so! That is not going to school with me. I deny all knowledge of that dress. So will you. *glare*

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Okay, I think you guys have suffered through all of the brain vomit you can handle at the moment. As many of you who also follow my book blog already know, I am going to be taking a vacation from blogger for the next few weeks. I intend to resume blogging in early September, but I have to leave for a one week long college orientation in exactly 31.5 hours and my internet time will be limited. After that, I will be at a new college, with a new job, living in a dorm, which is a first for me. I am excited--for the most part--but I think it's best that I get adjusted without having to worry about posting two blog posts a week. Unfortunately, because I will have very limited online time, you probably will not be seeing me much of anywhere for at least the next week. Not on Blogger or Sparklife or Critique Circle or Facebook or Twitter or any other website I frequent. I will try to keep up with PMs and email, but I may be a little delayed in getting to those. Sorry! I am going to miss all of you, but I look forward to coming back ASAP! :)

What's In Your Wallet?

Today--in my quest to prepare for school--I opened up a bank account at a bank in the town where my college resides. (My regular bank does not have a branch there, so I figured I'd better have some money stashed away for emergencies.) Overall, it was a pretty uneventful day--excepting my nifty new bank account and a somewhat deja vu moment I had at a local diner.

The place had good food, but horribly slow service, and they put lettuce on my burger after I specifically said they could put whatever they always put on it except lettuce. I saw the waitress write this down on her notepad. There was no excuse for botching that order! I didn't complain. I just peeled the lettuce off and munched away happily.

The reason I mention this is I have a random childhood memory that always flashes before my eyes when I see lettuce. It was December of 1998. I was 9 years old and my decidedly religiously apathetic mother decided that the perfect family holiday memory would be taking her agnostic German Jewish parents and my brother and me to a Unitarian Christmas pageant. You know those well-meaning family moments that are just doomed from the start? This was one of them. I remember nothing about the play except for the bored expression on the face of my grandpa, who bore a disturbing resemblance to one of my favorite authors, Elie Wiesel--I am not joking; they could have been twins--and a skit set in the Titanic's dining room. (This was when the movie was really popular.) Anyhoo, a man was sitting at a table to order, and the waiter asked him what he wanted. The guy said salad, so the waiter asked him what kind of lettuce. The man said "Iceberg!" and right then, an iceberg tore up the ship. I remember being nine and thinking a) What the heck does this have to do with Christmas, b) That pun amuses me in a horribly corny manner, and c) That was some excellent special effects for a local play. Thus, every time I see lettuce or say lettuce or hear the word lettuce, this scene flashes before my eyes. And it flashed before my eyes in slow motion this afternoon as I gazed down upon the lettuce that contaminated my hamburger.

But I digress--lettuce has a tendency to do this to me. While I was setting up my new bank account, I had to hand over my driver's license and social security card. As I was digging through my wallet to do so, I realized that I have a ton of stuff in there. I decided to organize my trusty wallet after I got home. And now here I am, staring down at all of the cards I have in that wallet and wondering what I am doing with half of them.

• I carry a driver's license, which is nice, seeing as I have been driving for a couple of years now.


• I carry my social security card, which is senseless because I know my SSN and also have read it's not really safe to carry the card with you.


• I carry photo IDs for two separate colleges, one which I no longer attend and one I haven't started at yet.


• I carry a handy little tip chart that shows the correct percentage for tipping waiters for meals that range from $1 to $200. I never use the handy tip chart.


• I carry a Wal-Mart gift card that I received for Hanukkah last year. I believe it's been used up, but I am not sure.


• I carry an Aeropostole gift card that I received for my eighteenth birthday in 2007. I went in the store once and never found anything I liked. I am not sure if it's expired by now or not.


• I carry two current insurance cards for my car--I think I forgot to put one in my glove box--and two expired insurance cards.


• I carry a campaign card some guy who was running for sheriff handed out. It has a calendar on it. The calendar is for 2008. I did not vote for the sheriff because I do not even live in that county.


• I carry a somewhat more useful 3 year calendar card from my insurance agent. (It's still current. :D)


• I carry a hunter orange card that affirms that I did pass a hunter safety course three years ago. I have yet to use it.


• I carry a library card. Mine is red, but we stopped issuing red ones a few months ago. In fifty years, I believe it will be a rare treasure for that reason.


• I carry a voter's registration card. *launches into "responsible nerd who does her civic duty dance"* After working two elections where eighty percent of the voters did not carry theirs and had no idea which precinct they vote in, I think not carrying one's voter registration card should be punishable by flogging. Don't argue with me. I'll flog you.


• I carry a Post Office box card that I rely on because I can't remember my newly minted P.O. Box's zip code.


• I carry a handwritten ID card that lists my name, address, phone number, and emergency contact information. I have no idea why that's in there because I have so many other cards that list my name and address.

I also carry a bunch of business cards with me. I have my mechanic's business card, though I never call him because my grandpa--my other grandpa who does not look like Elie Wiesel--knows him and does that for me; I have my hairdresser's business card, but I never call her because I stop by her shop when I want to book an appointment; I have two bankers' business cards--one of which I just added today; I have my vet's business card, but I always forget that I have it and look his number up in the phone book, though it is programmed in my cell phone; I have two different attorneys' business cards, though I never use them, either; I have my insurance agent's card--she sure hands out a lot of stuff, doesn't she?; I have a business card from the local pawn shop because I like to compulsively swipe people's business cards; I have a friend's business card from Sears because he told me if I ever had mechanical problems and needed help to call him. If I ever have a problem, all I have to do is call, and I'll have a tall blond knight in shining armor show up! Well, a tall blond knight in a polo shirt and jeans . . .

But the one thing that really puzzles me and that I barely remember putting in there is a large folded index card that literally lists the phone number of every relative I am in contact with. It also lists all of my then friends' numbers. There are two of them. I haven't spoken to either one in nearly a year--nothing personal; I just don't see them anymore--and neither of the numbers are accurate because one friend is now divorced and lives in another state and the other is just married and moved away. The card also lists the numbers for the local tow truck company, my eye doctor, a doctor who my grandma goes to but who I have never been to, the electric company, the post office, the library, the city police, the county sheriff, and--get this--Wal-Mart. I have no idea what possessed me to write this out, let alone carry it around with me for years. I feel sorry for whoever finds this card and tries to figure out who would feel compelled to write down the local Wal-Mart's number.

After I was done, I decided to blog about my wallet. I then promptly restored all of its contents to its rightful place, including the creepy card with mostly outdated numbers. You never know when you'll need to call Wal-Mart . . .

What's in your wallet?

Blogiversary

You know those guys who forget their wedding anniversary and then scramble to redeem themselves with last-minute hysterics that backfire? And you don't feel any sympathy for them because if the goomba would have written the date down on a calendar, he wouldn't be in this fix? We all know one of these, right? One of my friends accidentally bought his wife a sympathy card for their anniversary because he sent one of his employees, who was barely literate, to pick up the card. (Talk about doing it yourself if you want to get anything done right . . . )

My point is, I am like one of those deadbeat significant others. But my case of mind-numbingly stupid forgetfulness was toward my blog. We had our one year anniversary here on Blogger on July 17th and I totally forgot! Well, I didn't entirely forget. About a week beforehand, I had a nice blog post devised in my head in which I would discuss my year here on blogger and have a an e-party with my dear followers. But I forgot all about it until today! I felt like a failed blogger, but I can't let this occasion pass by! So . . . I decided that I would celebrate my 1 year and 12 day anniversary on Blogger! Yeehaw!

Just 377 days ago, I had one blog, one blog post, and no followers. Now, I have two blogs--and am a contributor to another (Penguins, I will write a chapter! I promise! I have just been busier than I had planned!), 91 posts, and over forty followers. When I first started blogging, I didn't think anyone would ever read what i was writing. I assumed it'd be like talking to myself online, which I do in real life all the time. But you, my wonderful followers, have prevented that from happening. Thanks for putting up with me on a weekly basis, both here and on my book blog.

I had planned on having a vlog up for my blogiversary, but seeing as I missed the original blogiversary , I suppose it is only fitting that I do not have a vlog for you. I shall vlog! I really will. Scott tagged me to do a vlog and with his and Feathery's superb tech support, I will do one as soon as possible. (Time is a factor.) But until then, I figured that you guys are sick of that picture I always use for my profile. That's my high school graduation picture . . . which was taken two years after I graduated high school, though I was home schooled and didn't technically graduate high school and, in fact, hold a GED, instead. Yep, that picture.

Today, my library had a party for all of the kids who attended our summer program and, in addition to getting 6 hours of overtime, I also came away with a delightful frog balloon I named Leonard. So here's a pic of Leonard; my fearsome attack Chihuahua, Tuco Benedicto Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez; and myself.

There on the left is my fearless trusty fido, my cute frog balloon is to the right, and, erm, that's me in the center wearing one of my library shirts. Just ignore my crazy hair--it got trimmed this week--and the acne, okay?

Now that we're past the formalities, let us partake in e-cookies and e-cake. :D

P.S. If you can guess what movie I got my Chihuahua's name from, I will mention you on my next blog . . . and use lots of exclamation points to do so. ^^