Rambling for an Hour

The other day I had a dream that I was pregnant. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew that I couldn’t be pregnant because I was on my period (Yes, I know you can be pregnant and still have a period.), but I had a swollen belly just like I was pregnant. It turned out that I just had to pee really bad.

Whenever I play computer solitaire, I have this rule that if my win percentage gets down to 50, I have to reset the statistics. I don’t know why.

Recently, I made a playlist in Winamp that features no anime/j-pop or video game music. It’s pretty nice actually.

Yesterday, I made pulled barbecue chicken in the crockpot. It was yummy, but a little too sweet; I added too much brown sugar. Here’s the link to the recipe: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Zesty-Slow-Cooker-Chicken-Barbecue/Detail.aspx?prop31=4 We also had baked potatoes, but they weren’t quite cooked in the middle.

I don’t know why I have Taylor Swift music in my computer library. I don’t even like her, but there you go.

The weather looks like it’s going to pretty ugly this weekend which means it looks like I’ll be stuck at home watching the Superbowl. I’m hoping it doesn’t happen so I can go to Knoxville early (and possibly meet Bri!) and then watch the game with the in-laws. However, it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen. If it doesn’t, I’m trying to decide if I want to buy a bunch of junk food and pig out Sunday night, or stick with my diet and not feel guilty Monday morning.

Speaking of diet, I was pretty shocked when I woke up on the Feb 1 and saw that I had lost 7 pounds during January. I mean, I didn’t do much in the way of exercise other than taking Carlin out to use the bathroom and fidgeting/dancing in my seat to the tunes on Winamp. Hell, I still ate fast food (burgers and fries) at least once a week. Maybe it’s all the water I drink now.

Haberdashery and onomatopoeia: two words that are fun to say out loud.

I’m not afraid of dying, but I’m not exactly thrilled about what’s going to happen when my body starts to decompose. That’s why I want to be cremated. And I want my ashes mixed in with some soil and I want a tree planted with it. Then I will haunt that tree.

Brian and I are discussing going to Gatlinburg with some of his income tax return. Probably in mid-March or mid-April.

I don’t know if I’m going to be able to keep this up for a whole hour like I wanted to do. I intended to sit here and just type out all my random thoughts for an hour as a way to get rid of writer’s block, but what happens when your thoughts get writer’s block?

Oh snap, the Glee version of Proud Mary! Awesome!

Of course, nothing with ever top the original version by Ike and Tina.

I’ve begun a secret knitting project that I don’t want to talk about for fear that I won’t be able to complete it as planned.

Those apple chips are calling my name. I’ll eat them if I’m still feeling snacky after this hour is up.

We’re having spaghetti for dinner.

I’m really reaching for topics to talk about. Maybe I’ll go ask twitter to give me a topic to ramble on about.

Haha:

@Meg_in_3D: Twitter, I need a topic to ramble on about. GO!

@AClkwrkStarfish: @Meg_in_3D hot Russian girls. Go!

@Meg_in_3D: @AClkwrkStarfish I don’t know anything about hot Russian girls other than they are hot and Russian.

Twitter is like Choose Your Own Adventure IRC Chat.

Okay, @AndeeD suggested two different topics; a hard one and a fun one. I’ll do the hard one first: “being so overwhelmed by responsibilities you are paralyzed.”

Hmm, well, it’s been a long time since I experienced that. I mean, sure, I’ve had days where I have a lot to do and I never know where to begin, but eventually I just get up and start. Sometimes that’s what you have to do. I’m a housewife and a pet parent, so I probably have it a lot easier than most people who work AND do the housework. Hell, half the time I procrastinate and look at twitter and complain about having to do the dishes so I can eat lunch. Still, there is something very satisfying about getting that work done because then you can waste time on Twitter with a clear conscience. LOL

Fun topic from @AndeeD “small plastic farm animals: “

I have a small plastic pig. His name is PIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIG. I got him at Target. Hmm, this topic isn’t as much fun as I’d hoped.

Now @AClkwrkStarfish wants me to talk about sponge cake. Whenever I think about sponge cake, I think about Jimmy Buffet. Then I think about margaritas. Then I think about the fact that Margarita is the Spanish equivalent of Margaret, which is my name.

Those are all the topics suggested to me.

I’m getting hungry; that bag of apple chips is giving me a smoldering, come-hither look, but I must resist until my hour is up so I don’t risk getting the caramel sugars all over my keyboard. I have 21 more minutes to go, then I am totally going to *nom* them right up.

I watched Lars and the Real Girl yesterday for the first time. The description on the paper sleeve that Netflix sent it in said that it was “an odd-ball comedy”. I found nothing about it funny at all. It was sad in a ‘I feel so sorry for that guy’ sort of way. When it was over, I felt weird and slightly uncomfortable. Sort of like the way I felt after I saw The Virgin Suicides. Now that was a weird movie, but the book was even more depressing.

The next DVD I’ll be getting from Netflix is Becoming Jane. I admit I’m only getting that because it has James McAvoy or however you spell it. Also, I consider myself a fan of Anne Hathaway.

I have plenty of movies on the instant queue on our XBOX. So many, in fact, that I have a hard time choosing which one to watch. I like to have movies on while I’m knitting so that I have background noise and something to catch my attention for long periods of time and make me forget if I was doing a knit row or a purl row.

I want to get better at knitting. I want to be able to knit an entire hat in one day. I want to get out my apprehension of round needles. I want to be able to do cables. I want to knit a sweater. I want to be able to knit a Norwegian sweater, only instead or weird patterns and geometric shapes I want it to have some sort of nerd theme like video games.

Sometimes I wish I were more motivated to keep up with the housework. It’s never out of control, just lived in, but I wish I had the motivation to dust at least once a week and sweep every day. So far, the only thing I consistently do is wash dishes and clean my kitchen counters. Of course, when I do really get things cleaned up, I feel like I blink and it’s back to the way it was.

Of course, now this has me thinking that I’ll go clean the bathroom after my hour is up.

But what of those apple chips that are now tempting me with their siren call? “We’re delicious, Meg. Eat us, Meg. What’s the point of cleaning the bathroom when our fibery goodness sends you back in there later tonight?” Damn apple chips, but I love them. I’ll eat them after I clean the bathroom (and wash my hands, of course.)

That’s generally my behavior with food. I procrastinate eating. I get into this mindset where ‘I’ll eat after I wash the dishes’ or ‘I’ll eat after I check facebook and twitter one more time’ or ‘I’ll eat after I get a score of 700 points or higher on twitter.’ I don’t do that if I’m really, really hungry, but I try to do it whenever I think I may just be hungry out of boredom. I think that’s helped contribute to my weight loss.

Man, six more minutes to go.

I just took an overwhelmingly large gulp of water. *cough sputter*

Actually, I think I’ll put the clean dishes up, then clean the bathroom, and then have apple chips.

Sometimes I like play a game called ‘Think of something that cannot be made better by adding bacon’. So far, I have been unsuccessful. Having coffee? Add a side of bacon and it’s better! Having nothing at all? Add some bacon and it’s better.

Microsoft Word is full of stupid. It’s telling me that the “it’s” in “and it’s better!” is wrong and that it should be “its”.

I don’t know why I bothered getting a desktop gadget clock with an alarm on it. I’ve been watching the time like a hawk waiting for this hour to be up. Now I’m just curious as to what sort of noise the alarm makes. Oh, it beeps. How boring and lame. I’m deleting that crap.

Yay, my hour is up!

If You Give a Girl Access to the Internet

If you give a girl access to the internet

She’s going to want a myspace

If you give her a myspace account,

She’ll eventually want to move on to facebook

If you give her a facebook account,

She’ll want to start using Twitter

Once you help her start tweeting,

She’ll decide to start a blog

When you help her come up with a cute, trendy, and unique name for her blog,

She’ll try to earn internet notoriety by writing a parody of a well-love children’s book.

Alternatively:

If you give a boy access to the internet,

He’ll look at porn.

(A note to my lovely male readers: I know that not all men look at porn on the internet [side note: HAHAHAHAHAHA]. I mean, just look at you. You’re reading my blog and not looking at porn.)

And to be fair to Laura Joffe, here is a link to the Amazon page for If You Give a Mouse a Cookie: http://www.amazon.com/You-Give-Mouse-Cookie-Give/dp/0060245867

Why Wait for the New Year?

At the end of every year, people sit down and make a list of resolutions -a list of things they intend to accomplish in the coming year.  Resolutions range from major (e.g. ‘get out of credit card debt’) to minor (e.g. ‘find a shade of lipstick that actually works for me’). Some people resolve to stop smoking; some resolve to work hard to get that promotion at work; some resolve to be more active in their community.

I think the most common resolution people make is to lose weight. That’s certainly going to be one of my resolutions this year. However, why wait to start on the path to better health? I see no reason to wait until January 1st, 2010 to put down the bag of chips and can of soda and reach for some carrots and a glass of water. So, I’ve started my diet/weight loss excursion today; right now, and I intend to keep up with it until I reach my goal weight. So, I suppose I could say that my New Year’s resolution will be to stick with it.

Some of you may be shocked to learn that I actually need to lose around 110lbs to be at a healthy weight for my height. Some of you might be disgusted; some of you might even unfollow me on twitter (*sob sob*), but whatever. It’s taking a lot for me to come out and say this. When I first decided I wanted to lose the weight, I seriously considered not saying anything about it on the internet until I was close to my overall goal weight. However, while I don’t know most of my twitter friends IRL, I do know that you are all awesome and supportive and if I wrote a tweet that said ‘I want ice cream’ you would all @ reply me with ‘No, be strong, eat a banana or whatever instead’.

My current diet plan is to eat better and exercise. Well, duh.  To avoid overeating as I sometimes tend to do, I’ve started cutting my meals in half and eating that. If I’m still hungry twenty minutes after I eat, then I’ll have the other half. I’m encouraging Brian to do the same. We both need to lose a lot of weight.

Ninety percent of my reasons for doing this half to do with my health and overall well-being, but I won’t lie that part of me just wants to be able to wear cute clothes without feeling like the poster child for peopleofwalmart.com (http://peopleofwalmart.com). I’m well aware that I’m overweight, and I don’t dress like I’m a supermodel like I’ve seen some overweight girls do.

Exercise is the hardest for me, and the one I make the most excuses for. I am limited to where I can go walking because the road we live on is off the main street of town, and Carlin isn’t well-behaved on a leash and I worry that he’ll run into the street and get run over. So, to combat that, I walk him up and down our street several times a day, but even then it’s not much walking at all. It takes about 2.5 minutes to get to the end of our street and back to our home, so if I do that five times a day, that’s only 12.5 minutes of walking. I wish we had a fenced in yard so I could play outside with him for 20 minutes every day.

Another problem with exercise is that to really lose weight, I should be doing exercises that get my heart rate up, but I live in a duplex and jumping and stomping and running in place aren’t viable options if I don’t want to disturb my neighbor. I don’t have the money to pay for a gym membership, and even if I did, the only gym in our town is *shudder* Curves.

But if I can make excuses not to exercise, then I can make excuses to exercise -or at least be a little more active from day to day. Since I can’t do anything that’s hardcore heart-pumping, I could take an hour each day and just do something that keeps me moving. I could clean an entire room, for example, that would be win-win really. I’d get exercise, and a clean room. In fact, today I’m going to clean our bedroom.

I’m hoping to lose weight at a rate of about 2lbs a week -let’s be realistic and healthy about it. If I were to do that, I could actually lose 104lbs by this time next year. Now, I’m not expecting myself to be a perfect dieter, I am going to give into temptation sometimes and have a brownie or a soda or some fries, but I figure that’s okay as long as those don’t become staples to my diet.

So, that is my huge confession, and I’m sorry it ended up coming out in an insane stream-of-consciousness sort of way, but I’m not going back and editing it to have a better flow. If I do, I might delete the whole thing. This blog might become my scorecard; a place for me to post weight updates every week and how I’m doing and whatever. Then again, with the rate that I update, I might not update for two months. Who knows.

NaNoWriMo – The Quest for 50,000 words

So, as many of you who follow me on twitter or Facebook know, I am g NaNoWriMo this year. I’ve attempted it for the past 4 or 5 years (Haha, I lost count), and I have yet to actually reach the 50,000 word goal. This year, I’m confident that I’ll reach it (it’s only the 4th and I’m at 36,800). In past years, I would do a bit of planning, get the overall plot worked out, and make very few notes. In those past years, I would run out of steam and notes by the end of the first week and be at ~10,000 words if I was lucky. This year, I made pages and pages of hand written notes detailing everything I possibly could from locations to what was said by the characters.

I also decided that this year I wasn’t going to write  a single story, but instead I decided to write a collection of short stories. That was another problem in the past: I would try to write an entire 50,000 word story when I only had material to make a 10,000 word story and several other ideas dancing around my brain poking me with little spears saying “Write me, I’m a better story. Write me!”

I’ve finished my first two stories, and I’m now working on my third. I figure I’ll risk infinite amounts of internet embarrassment and post part of that third story. Keep in mind that there are probably a bazillion mistakes in this because the point of NaNoWriMo is to reach 50,000 and then worry about editing. So, yeah…here it is, the part of the short story that I currently call “As of yet Untitled”:

The room was dark save for the single dim spotlight that barely illuminated a single round table and chair

“Hello?” Marcelle Aarons called as she stepped into the room. Her shoes made a loud sound with every sound she took even though she didn’t remember putting on her heels. Of course, she didn’t remember how she even came to be in this room.

Now that her eyes were beginning to adjust to the dim light, she could see more details of the room. The table was covered in a deep green tablecloth and an empty wineglass sat atop it. The chair was plush and upholstered in a rich red fabric. A few feet from the table and chair a projection screen was set up, but she couldn’t see a projector anywhere.

“Hello?” Marcelle tried.

“Hello, Marcy,” a new voice said, a male voice.

“Wh-who’s there?” Marcy asked, “How do you know my name?”

“Please have a seat,” the man replied, “I will explain.”

Hesitantly, Marcy walked to the red armchair and carefully lowered herself into it wary that the whole thing may very well be a trap. Once she was seated, the man stepped into the dim light and she was able to make out his features, but barely. His face seemed to blend in with the shadows of the room, but Marcy saw that he had a very defined jaw line and a roman nose. He wore a black tuxedo and carried himself in a very stiff, professional manner.

“My name is Raymond,” he said.

“What is this place?” Marcy asked looking around the room nervously.

“Would you care for some wine?” Raymond asked.

“Ah, n-no, thank you,” Marcy replied. “Where am I?”

“You have to decide,” Raymond replied calmly.

“Decide?” Marcy repeated, “Decide what?”

“Your life,” Raymond replied.

Marcy’s heart stopped and she looked at Raymond with fear in her eyes. This was a trap, he was going to kill her and he was going to make her decide how he would do it. She looked around frantically around for a door so she could escape, but the room seemed to be nothing more than four dark walls. She was trapped.

“I am not going to kill you, Marcy,” Raymond said. “You are here because you are being given an opportunity that very few people in history have been given: the chance to choose the life you will lead in the future.”

“How am I going to do that?” Marcy asked.

“The projector,” Raymond said, “It is not there for show, but it is there for a show.”

“I don’t understand,” Marcy replied.

“I will show you three, ah, movies, if you will, of three possible lives you could come to lead in the future,” Raymond explained, “After the videos, you will be given the chance to choose the life you want to lead.”

“But, isn’t it unfair for me to know the future?” Marcy asked.

“You will have no memory of this,” Raymond replied, “But you will end up with the life you choose no matter what decisions you make after you leave here. Your fate will be set in stone and there will be no changing it.”

“No matter what?” Marcy repeated quietly to herself, and then she spoke up again. “What if after watching the movies I can’t decide?”

“You do have to option to not choose and let the decisions you make determine which life you will have,” Raymond replied. “There are certain rules that I must follow, and I will now tell these to you: Each movie will begin with you meeting the man you will marry in that possible life. You will not be able to actually see these men so that their appearances cannot affect your decision; the same with any children that might come into your life. You will only be able to see people you have already known unless that person is a potential husband. You will never see the outside of the houses you could possibly live in, and the things inside will be fuzzy so that no material possessions can influence your decision. Your decision must be based solely on your intuition and emotions and no other influence can come into play.”

“I…I see,” Marcy replied, “What if I don’t want to watch the movies? What if I don’t want to even be given the option to choose?”

“Then, it is your right and if that is your wish, then I will show you out and we will choose someone else,” Raymond replied.

“Why was I chosen?” Marcy asked, “There are thousands, millions of people who would jump at this chance.”

“They would be greedy and would choose based on which life would bring them the most luxury,” Raymond replied. “You were chosen because you would choose with your heart.”

“Well, I suppose I won’t remember this after it’s over…” Marcy began slowly, “Then I suppose it won’t hurt to watch them.”

“Very well then, please wait here while I set everything up,” Raymond replied.

Raymond walked away and Marcy could hear the sounds of him setting up the projector, and judging by those sounds it was a very old projector. A light hit the screen that made it so startlingly bright that it made Marcy’s eyes burn and she had to blink a few times to adjust to the new brightness. The film began to roll, and Marcy was reminded of watching home videos at her grandmother’s after her grandmother and grandfather would come back from their annual vacation.

“This is the first movie,” Raymond said. “The first of three lives.”

Marcy turned her eyes back to the screen and she could see herself walking down a crowded street. She looked to be maybe a few years older and in a pretty big rush. She was barely paying attention to where she was going and the Marcy sitting in the chair watching brought her hands to her face in embarrassment when she bumped into a man sending both their belongings to the ground.

Much to Marcy’s surprise, she and the man in the movie shared a laugh over the whole experience and began to pick up their things. The way the Marcy in the movie was acting, it seemed like she knew the man because they seemed to be talking like old friends. However, it wasn’t until this point that Marcy noticed that there was no sound.

“I can’t hear anything,” she said to Raymond.

“Spoken words are influences that are not allowed,” Raymond replied.

“Oh,” Marcy replied and turned her attention back to the screen.

What happened in the movie next was a fast moving montage of clips that ended almost as soon as they began. The day she married the man she’d bumped into on the street, the birth of their first child, their second child, the first child’s first day of school, the second child’s first day of school, the unexpected birth of the their third child, the struggle to pay the bills and put food on the table.

And even though things seemed to be hard, the lack of sound in the video made it that much more clear that love played a strong role in that life. Regardless of their troubles, she and her husband seemed to be very much in love and willing to work through the hard times together.

The screen went white again, blinding Marcy a second time. “That’s all I get to see?” she asked, “Is that all there is to that future? Do I die or something?”

“Eventually you all die,” Raymond replied.

“Well, yes, we all die eventually,” Marcy agreed, “But if I don’t die then, then why can’t I see beyond that point.”

“Because that is all you need to see,” Raymond replied, “I never said you would see the entire possible future. A hint of the unknown must always remain. Now I will show the second movie.”

Okay, I’m sufficiently embarrassed now, I’m going to go hide.

Wait, But It’s Not a Full Moon

It’s only 10:30 and today has already been really weird. It started while I was sleeping and was dreaming that I was watching The Blob, a movie I saw only once when I was younger. After the movie ended, I went to bed in my dream and woke up and saw a little tiny blob scooting around on my floor. I was like “Aww, snap, the blob is real!” So, I go through various ways of trying to destroy it, but it always comes back. Finally, I just wake up Brian and we take Carlin and we’re about to go get the Army because they have massive tanks and missiles and stuff, but then Brian wakes me up IRL.

Why did he wake me? To ask if the basket of clothes I washed yesterday was still downstairs. It was, so he went to get it and I dozed back to a half-asleep, half-awake state. Then, I wake up again because Brian has yelled “Oh, what the hell?” and says that the button in his new jeans (-3 months since we got them) has come off for no explicable reason. So he went to work in his khakis and we have to go shopping this weekend for new jeans for him. (Why can’t my clothes tear up as easily as his? I’d love an excuse to buy clothes.)

By now, I’m awake (though whether or not I’m wide awake is debatable), so I let Carlin out of his crate and start to get dressed. While I’m pulling on my jeans (with the button intact TYVM), I hear our trash can outside fall over. I figure it was probably the wind or something, so I just tell myself that I’ll put it back where it goes when I take Carlin out to use the bathroom. Fastforward all of maybe two minutes and I have Carlin on the leash and open the door and we walk around to the side of the house and…

…The trash can is gone. Gone. Just *poof* vanished. I spend a minute trying to see where it ended up, but it’s just gone. I have no idea what happened to it. Did it get blown away by the wind into the woods behind our duplex? It would have had to blow pretty far to get to the part where there is no fence to block it. Did an animal take it? What sort of animal could actually drag our huge (compared to the tiny woodland creatures that reside in those woods) trash can all the way to their forest home.

Now the only logical thing left to do is to post my theme song for today:

The Household Item Project

Earlier today I ask my Twitter buddies to suggest household items for me to photograph. I got a decent response, and now I am going to share those photos with you, my adoring public. I was going to post individual pictures with cute captions and give a shout out to the person who requested each one, but wordpress’ image inserter wears the annoyingpants  in my internet website family. So, I give you the Household Items image gallery. Behold:

This is a toaster oven. It toasts things and it acts like an oven. MARVELOUS!

Electricity meter, ours is the one on the right.

This is a back scratcher. I know it looks like a human hand, but…okay, it is a hand. It’s Brian’s hand.

The place on top of my fridge where I keep medicine, or the “medicine cabinet”. Yes, that’s all the medicine we have.

Tea kettle.

A spatulaaaaaaaaaaaa

This is a clock, it used to be my grandmother’s.

This is a toilet.

A whisk and a fork/eggbeater

To you, this is a whisk attachment for a KitchenAid mixer. To me, it’s also a potato masher

My kitchen, even when it’s messy it’s relatively clean.

Shower drain.

The place where I spend most of my time, comedy edition.

A picture of a picture of my camera on my camera phone

Bathroom sink. I don’t know what’s up with the paint.

Under the couch. It’s a futon.

Under the bed. Dust and a sock that Carlin took under there.

Special shout-out and thanks to the following awesome twitter-folk for helping me make this (boring) blog post a reality: c_peterson, absco, dfella, numberjohnny5, Jack_Daniels_07, aurora00, phronq, elizasea, AndeeD, moegreeb, pettazz, zolakat, chrismwayne.

Tomorrow is my birthday.

Mixed-up Childhood Memories: The Lost Sea

I remember going to the Lost Sea (http://www.thelostsea.com/) at least three times in my youth. It may have been four and I’ve forgotten one of the times, or it may have been two and I’m recalling different parts of one visit as being a separate visit. Regardless, I remember doing three things in the Lost Sea: A boat tour, a flashlight tour, and an overnight stay. I’ll touch on each topic, but I don’t recall every detail of these trips, and it’s possible I’ll mix one trip up with another.

I know my Dad went with me on one of the trips. I think it was the flashlight tour, but it may have been the boat tour. Whatever, that doesn’t matter. What matters is that whichever tour it was, everyone brought a lunch to eat in the middle of the cave. When I was younger and got to take a lunch with me on field trips, I got to go to the store with Dad and pick out anything I wanted to eat. For this particular trip, I chose a ham sandwich, A bag of Cooler Ranch Doritos, and a banana:

My ham and cheese sandwich was in a baggy and not on a plate

Back in my day, they were called 'Cooler Ranch' Doritos. Further proof the awesomeness of my childhood

A possible relative of the banana I ate.

As for my drink, I don’t really recall, but I’m pretty sure I had a coke of some sort. (Fun Fact: Where I come from, all carbonated drinks are called ‘Coke’.

Coca-Cola Classic Carbonated Concoction

Now, you’re probably wondering why the contents of my lunch for that particular trip are some important. Some of you may even be speculating about what I’ll reveal to you about this lunch. “She probably threw up, lol!” some of you might be saying to yourselves.

I didn’t throw up.

No, I was young and I didn’t understand a lot of things. One thing in particular I didn’t understand was how some foods can absorb the flavor of other foods. So, we’re all in the cave and our guide says it’s time to stop and have lunch and we all sit down and giggle and whatnot (girl scouts, lol). I open my lunch box/bag/whatever the crap I had and the smell of banana smacks me in the nostrils. This didn’t affect me in anyway, it just made me look forward to eating my dessert fruit. So, I grabbed my sandwich, took it out of its plastic baggy, and took a bite.

WTF? My ham and cheese sandwich tasted like banana! It was pretty disgusting to be honest with you, but I ate it knowing that the food in front of me was all I had.

I was further surprised to find that my Doritos also had a banana flavor to them. I had thought that surely they would be safe because I thought the foil bag they came in would protect them from absorbing the flavor. I was wrong, and yet I ate my Cooler BananaRanch Doritos.

So, I finally get to my banana, and it tasted like nothing because I had already eaten two banana flavored items. *sigh* And I had been looking forward to that banana, too.

*     *      *

At one point during the flashlight tour (the tour during which I’m pretty sure the above took place), our guide told us to turn off our flashlights. Being obedient children, we did as were were told and turned off our flashlights. It became pitch dark in there; you could stick your hand right in front of your face and you wouldn’t be able to see it.

The flashlight I had (except mine was teal), and an artist's rendering of what it looked like in the cave with the flashlights turned off.

Wooo! Other than waving my hand in front of my face, I don’t think I moved a muscle while our flashlights were turned off.

———————————————————————-Rolling to My Doom————————————————————————————-

As a young child, I was what you could call an ‘active’ sleeper. I would go to bed like anyone else: with my head on the pillow and the rest of me safe and warm under my The Little Mermaid blanket. However, I would wake up with my feet some where up near my pillow and the rest of me dangling precariously off the side of my bed. Needless to say, I kicked and rolled around in my sleep when I was younger.

Why is this important and what does it have to do with the Lost Sea, you ask? Well, it has to do with the time I went camping in the Lost Sea.

One of the times I was there, we stopped at a hole that had a rail around it. The guide told us that this was a bottomless pit and that if we fell in we would never stop falling. Never ever. She invited us to come up to the rail and look down into the hole. I went up, looked down, and then scurried back in less than five seconds (possible exaggeration). We continued on our tour, and eventually we came to the cavern where we would spend the night.

I slept fitfully that night because I was aware of my tendency to move about in my sleep. I kept imagining that at one point while everyone was asleep, I would begin to roll and roll and roll and eventually I would roll right into the bottomless pit and I would fall forever.

———————————————————————–A Few Possibly Made-up Facts About the Lost Sea—————————————————————————-

In the cave lives a Rock Monster named ‘Stony Ben’ (named for the boy who discovered the cavern back in 1905). Stony Ben’s only purpose is to protect the Lost Sea and those who enter it merely to enjoy its beauty and wonder.

The earliest known atist's rendition of Stony Ben. Scientists believe this drawing may have been produced sometime in 2009, but they do not know why it was never finished.

Legend states that if a truly good person enters the cave, Stony Ben will swallow them and allow them to be reborn by exiting through a ‘birth canal’, which cleanses them of any imperfection they might suffer.

This handsome young fellow, named Brian, is being reborn. He went on to become President of Venus and brought peace between the Venetians and the Saturians.

Legend also states that if someone comes into the cave with the intent of misbehaving, or if they randomly decide to misbehave, Stony Ben will crush them with huge stony feet.

A doppleganger of Ashton Kutcher, Aaron Rehctuk, misbehaved. This photo was taken mere seconds before he was crushed by Stony Ben's massive foot.

Be sure to visit the Lost Sea and bring lots of gobstoppers for Stony Ben, they are his favorite food!

Bloggety

So, I spent several days trying to think of what my blog would be about. Well, it would be about whatever I want it to be about, of course. However, that still left me with the problem of my first post. I don’t count that introductory post as my first post; it’s more like a placeholder post with a permanent place.

I’ve never been really good at expressing my opinion, or putting it into writing, which is what most bloggers do. I know what I think of things, I just sometimes have a hard time articulating it.

Being an American citizen, there are at least a bazillion and twenty things I have an opinion on (the economy, health care, the environment, etc etc etc), but I’ll be damned if I’ll give you a long-winded diatribe on what I think of President Obama’s work thus far. When I do express my opinion, I generally like to keep it short.

What do I think of Obama’s work thus far? I think he’s done okay, but I’m really holding off judgement until he’s been in office at least a year. I mean, come on, we gave W 8 years to screw up this country, let’s give Obama at least 1 to fix it or screw it up further.

I always hated when people asked me why I liked or didn’t like a particular movie or book. My simple answer of “Yes”, “No”, or “It was okay” should suffice, but some people just can’t accept that. I have to have a reason. I have to have felt a connection to the main character, or I have to understand the villains plight. Blah, blah, whatever.

Here’s the deal: I like books that are well written with an interesting, easy to follow plot that isn’t all over the place. I like movies that are well acted, well edited, and don’t have an excess of plot twists. (You know the ones: the good guy is the bad guy, but he’s actually the good guy and the bad guy is the good guy’s secret clone twin, but then it turns out the good guy is actually the clone so the good guy actually is the bad guy.)

Beyond the above, I don’t need to give anyone a reason why I like or don’t like something. Be it a political subject, or entertainment, or why I prefer one shade of nail polish over another. Either I like it or I don’t, or I’m in the middle of the road on it.

And the Blogging Begins

I will probably never update this thing. I may,  but it’s likely I won’t. Oh well, that’s how I roll.