Transportation

So in the past year that I've lived on my own, my transportation has evolved quite a lot.

One year ago, when I started out, I had a scooter. Most people upon hearing that say something along the lines of, "Oh cool. Is it just a little electric one?" No I had a foot powered scooter. I seriously just hopped on it and just ride down hill to school. It was pretty awesome and when I feel like I haven't put in enough effort getting from place to place I even still ride it.

After awhile my parents bought me a bicycle at a garage sale. It was a pretty decent bicycle. The problem was that I am short and it was built for a person who wasn't. I rode it a couple times before I decided being alive and uninjured was nice and continued on with the scooter.

When the second semester of college began my parents had boughten another bicycle off of some friends. This one was slightly too small, but with creative adjustments I had a fully functioning bicycle I could ride to go do things. I finally had timely transportation.

It was such a nice bike and hadthe added benefit if being pink so very few people weren't surprised when they learned it was mine. (I also have a pink phone which somehow happens to boggle everyone's mind.) This bike met a very sad demise though when I was coming home from work at 3:00am.

Some dill hole ran into the front tire with his car. I was crossing on the crosswalk. I wasn't even riding and I was doing so with the light, but this jackass decided that turning left was more important than my being alive and while he turned left plowed into my front tire obliterating my bike. The bastard didn't even slow down. Just kept going. And for added effect he was on the wrong side of the rode as well.

So for at least a month I had two bicycles sitting in my apartment neither of which was ridable for me. Then a couple weeks ago I got a brand new bicycle that is just my size and works wonderfully so I had three bicycles filling up my living room.

Since I first got the bicycle that was too big, I had been trying to sell it or even give it to someone. People would mention that they needed a bike and I'd say, "well, I have an extra one if you'd like it." Then they just shrug it off as if they realize that if someone gives them a bicycle they have no excuse to be out of shape.

That is until last night. I was taking the nonfunctioning bicycle down to the dumpster when a lady who had just moved in asked if I was getting rid of it and said she'd take it. This allowed me to offer her the one that was too big and she took it! Hallelujah!

It only took me ten months to get rid of the blasted thing. (It's like the worlds most unwanted bicycle.) I now have so much free space in my living room, I don't even know what to do with it.

No Plans

I, unlike most people, don't hate Mondays. This may be attributed more to the fact that Monday acts as a Saturday in terms of the rest of the world. This means that my standard plans usually consist of sleeping in until 4:00pm. (I know you're starting with the judging and I will have you know that I work until 2:00am, so bite me!) Then I nuke corndogs and pretend that watching The Middleman counts as being productive.

The past two Mondays have been quite different from my usually ones. In other words I actually went places. (Initiate gasp spasm here.)

(Insert exhale exhale exhale here.)

Last weekend (Monday for you people with normal schedules) consisted of a lot of insanity only made more absurd by a lack of sleep. The plan was for me to go to work and when I got home my younger sister and her boyfriend would be at my place where they were going to stay the night before we caught the first busses to Fort Collins to visit our older sister. This worked about as well as capturing a squirrel with a tin can while you're on crutches because you lost a leg.

My dad decided that since he was going up to Wyoming anyways he was just going to drive my sister and her boyfriend up to Fort Collins. My dad, being a master of passive aggression, decided that he was not going to pick me up on the way because "he didn't have room in the car." It was "not" because he has been pissed at me for the past three months about a blog post I wrote about the insanity of my sister's graduation in which he comes out as far less of a gentleman than he would have the world think of his "cowboy" ass. (I'd link you to it, but I took it down to end the email lectures argument I was having with my mother.) I was trying to think of a way in which his excuse may have actually been viable and for a little while was on the "well if he's driving the truck he wouldn't" page for about an hour and wasn't as pissed. Then I realized that even in the truck he'd have room and pissed off resumed. I don't care how pissed at a person I was, if they needed a ride somewhere I was already going so that they could hang out with their sisters before one moved to Texas, I'd give them a damn ride. Especially if I'm related to them. Maybe I'm a little preachy because I've never been in that situation, but if I did blow them off I could at least think up a solid excuse.

So my Friday (Sunday in normal world relation) was a shit day. It was in fact The Never Ending Day From Hell.

I worked all day as tech support (which is actually my job even though I sort of made it sound like it was a one time thing). It is normally not such a terrible thing, but when you are already having a shit day dealing with entitled assholes that think 28¢ a day entitles them to every movie ever made on a golden platter that is guarenteed to make the movie play perfectly without issue and that there is a magic fix all button because all they know about technology is what they've seen in 80's movies and Hackers (which is actually a fun movie despite it's inaccuracy), can make you want to pull a supervillain and destroy the world with that doomsday device I've totally been building because I'm a Bond villain.

Anyways, it was getting close to 2:00am and my day was finally almost over when I got a chat from a bored no life psych major who somehow thought that online tech support was the place to collect smart ass puns and use your psychological expertise. I was thus on a chat for an hour past when I was supposed to leave because Americans seriously need lives! So at 3:00 am I finally got to get off the computer and by 3:15am I begun my five mile trek home.

At 5:00am, after stopping for salty and surprisingly healthy snack food, I actually got home and had fifteen minutes to lay down and pretend I could actually stay in bed before I had to pack up my shit and catch the bus to downtown Denver. Where I then caught the bus to Longmont. I actually got about half an hour of sleep on this bus which worked quite nicely in getting rid of my urge to blow up the earth.

By the time I caught the bus to Fort Collins my reserve tank kicked in and I was somehow able to have a conversation with some vagabonds that had a kitty and not seem crazy. This was likely due more to the fact I was talking to vagabonds than that I actually seemed like a normal person. Then when I got to FoCo, I got to catch another, bus to meet my sister. Three hours from catching my first bus I was able to crash land on my sister's couch and not sleep because I get excited when I see people I like.

A steaming cup of coffee and an episode or two of Orange is The New Black later, my Dad arrived with the human cargo he's had a conversations longer than "Hey Dad! Happy Forth!" "Do you want to talk to your mother?" in the past three months. This led to an awkward lunch in which my dad said nothing to me before he quickly needed to leave and we shared a half hearted murmur filled obligatory hug.

After Pops left, we hung out which I don't really remember much about because my brain was sleeping even while I was fully awake. Then towards the end of the day we watched Jericho (which could not capture my sleep deprived brain's attention for shit), ate pasta and went to a carnival.

The carnival was just like any other one a person would go to. Obligatory mocking of the fully capable people that refuse to go on rides. Mocking the faces of people who do go on the rides. A ferris wheel. And of course eating vendor food which in this case was the Holy Grail of corndogs. (Maybe because I was sleep deprived and hungry, but my younger sister's boyfriend agreed so I think it was.) Then after I ate the corndog, my body started crashing so I took a bajillion photos to avoid falling asleep next to that spinny swing ride and being trampled by masses of carnival goers rushing to vomit.

I sleapt in the car back to my sister's place and managed to stay up for a couple more hours with both my sister's boyfriends and the pumpkin of my younger sister asleep on the couch. So, thirty-six hours from my waking up at 1:00pm on Sunday and running on a couple of small naps I finally passed out on my sister's sofa. 

So Sunday (Tuesday in relative terms), I woke up at what I claim as too early to fiddle music (not kidding) and me and my siblings with the younger one's boyfriend in tow went to get matching tattoos of the three stars from th Harry Potter books (something I didn't actually notice existed until my sisters mentioned getting tattoos of them). We then walked to get frozen yogurt while I debated Star Wars with the boyfriend. Then after buying henna in a pungently sweet Indian shop and purchasing Peace Tea we went back to my sister's and played Supernatural Risk (which is just  Risk, but no one dies just switches sides, so taking over the world is fucking difficult). Then after going to a nerd shop ("Hobby Shop" for the people too pompous to admit their nerdom), played D&D while drinking until 2:00am. Which as it turns out was plenty of time for me to be raped by a lizard woman until I was on the verge of death from aids. (Yeah D&D is weird with my friends.)

Then I woke up again too damn early and started the three hour bus ride with my younger sister and her boyfriend who stayed at my flat for the next two days and saw very little of me because I work nights.

So yeah that was last weekend. This weekend has been quite different despite being still on the quite crazy side.

Yesterday I got up early (and by early I mean 11:00am) to eat tomato free cheese pizza and discuss nerdy things with a friend from high school I hadn't seen in awhile on her way up Fort Collins. Then after she departed I went back into my apartment for a little while with the plans of watching The Middleman (seriously check this show out). This of course didn't work due to the fact that there was a black out in my area that left the windowless hallways of my building feeling like a level of Silent Hill. So I rode the bus downtown to check out the show my friend who is touring Colorado was playing in the basement of a coffee shop. I then hung out with this friend and his friend for the rest of the day whichever basically consisted of dark humor jokes involving dead hookers, while I navigated the drive in their man-stanky car to Westminster where me and the friend I went to go see play at the coffee shop cooked a pasta stir-fry (something we invented after I berated him for thinking canned ravioli counted was food) while his friend serenaded us on his guitar. We then drove back to downtown Denver where they played in a coffee shop bar combo where the audience fluctuated in its ability to give a crap. At this place my friend was told by J Megatron that his shit was dope but he needed to own it and recieved a free lecture on the magic of Tupac. We then went back to my place where my friend crashed and I hung out with his friend until 2:00am.

They woke up at 7:00am and I woke up with them, made them frozen waffles, then passed back out until 4:00pm. Then proceeded with my normal weekend plans of microwave food and watching The Middleman. (I do watch other shows this is just what I've been watching lately.) That's when I got a text that they forgot stuff. Stuff that I then noticed was laying in the middle of my floor and the two traveling musicians returned.

After a trip to the grocery store, in which I discovered men can't find things you send them to find, laughed a bit too hard at Naked! (yes the juice) related puns, and was told laughing in the produce section isn't allowed because produce is serious buisiness, we returned to my flat where my friend passed out on my sofa, I made fried cheese tortilla things (I'd say the actually name, but for some reason I can't remember how it's spelled), and my friend's friend did my dishes. I then chilled and watched The Middleman (is this reference number four?) for a couple hours before he went to bed. So yes as of right now I have two traveling musicians who haven't showered in a few days passed out on my sofa.

I do really enjoy having no plans because it leads to far more adventures and interesting things then having them. When you have a plan for the day you never get to experience the deliciousness of pasta stir-fry, the suffocating stench of being crammed in a man-stank filled car, or understand how serious the business of produce is.

The Sexy Scientist

Who doesn't love a good sexy scientist character? Even straight chicks can't deny the awesomeness of a well written sexy scientist type character. That being said, the sexy scientist has to actually, well, be a scientist not just boobs in a lab coat.

I spent last weekend as any self respecting nerdy film student would. That is working on a film set. I was production designer which was awesome because it was a science fiction shoot and I got to build some really awesome props and put together some awesome costumes. I seriously did more sewing and even some ironing than any person should do because seriously I was the only person that knew how. (The damn director didn't even know what was needed to work an iron.) It was a lot of work, but I enjoy making props and costumes a lot so I was fine with it.

The original script I liked a lot. It was a first draft so it probably needed a couple tweaks, but was over all pretty awesome! One of the main characters was a female scientist. Yes, she was the signature sexy scientist, but you could tell that she actually had the brain power to do science and I quite liked her character. So, starting out, I was pretty damn excited to work on the shoot. All the cool stuff I got to design and build as well as the cool characters made it a dream job.

Things only started to get iffy when the director decided to rewrite the script. It wasn't originally the director's script. A friend of ours wrote it and if it needed revisions, for all intensive purposes, it should have been the writer to make them, but the director opted to do it himself. The script suddenly ended up being twice as long (mostly because he pumped up the dialog), it made the assassin a guy who apparently doesn't know how to unfurl his eyebrows (this one at least worked), and stripped our friend the sexy scientist of a brain. Instead of the smart, but sexy scientist we all know and love, she has now become a woman who got the job apparently because she has boobs (which to be fair might know more about science than the actual scientist). The character felt a fair amount like a stripper doing a sexy doctor strip tease.

I must give kudos to the actress who played our doctor, however. Somehow when we started out filming and before the director gave her the instructions of "act slutty" she somehow managed to make the line "I left my makeup in the car. I wanted to touch up before the surprise party!" sound like it was coming from an intelligent woman and wasn't just written by some guy who apparently never talks to girls. That line physically made me cringe everytime I heard it. I had to fight the urge to either 1. Walk out the door and take all my props with me or 2. Confront the director and beg him to change that line to something someone might actually. Even the most stereotypical of woman don't say shit like that.

It was frustrating, very damn frustrating and I wasn't the only one who left that shoot more than a little annoyed. The guy who was the director really is a great guy, but there are two things he needs to do. 1. Learn how the hell time management works. (There was way to much waiting around for him.) And 2. Maybe just ask and actual woman how her brain functions. And possibly 3. Stop watching so much porn. (It's starting to show in your work, dude.)

Like I said I'm all for a sexy scientist, but can you please keep them as actual scientists. This director isn't the only one to do it. It's all over Hollywood movies. There's the sexy scientist that doesn't actually seem to know what science is, or in at least a couple cases, she knows, but is to preoccupied with love interests. (*cough* Suzanne Storm *cough*)

Come on filmmakers. Is it really too much to ask for a sexy scientist that actually knows and cares about her work. Sorry to burst your guy bubbles people, but we don't just get jobs with our boobs and there isn't a special branch of science where woman are chosen as scientists by the quality of said boobs under a lab coat.

An Amazingly Comfortable Shirt

I have a shirt that is so endlessly comfortable, it beats out the feeling of new socks ten fold. And no matter how many times I wear it, it still feels that comfortable. It clings to my body in just the right fashion using static cling to it's advantage. Then, throughout the day, the cloud like material stretches out perfectly. Upon washing it, the fabric contracts back to where it was when the day began. It is even so comfortable, I can't even feel itchy.

I kid you not, this shirt is like snuggling with a kitten on the inside of a new sock! It is just that comfortable. I don't even know what the hell it's made out of. (I could check, but that would involve taking off the shirt and I'm pretty sure the label is worn off anyways.) I just feel so cozy and relaxed like all is right with the world when I wear this shirt. Seriously if you want world peace, give everyone one of these shirts. (You have to try to want to blow something or someone up while wearing something this comfortable.) I'm pretty sure people aren't promised shirts this comfortable in heaven.

Just to demonstrate the power of this shirt, let me tell you a little story. This morning I woke up like an hour earlier than usual, so I had an extra hour to bum around before going to school. This of course ment that I spent the time reading Cracked.com. Somehow, I stumbled upon a website called Conservapedia. (I only suggest you click that link if you feel the need to induce forehead swelling via face palms.) Anyways, after browsing for a bit I  was feeling more than a little bit sad for the human race. I decided to get up and ready for school before I reached a point where I wanted to slap the dumb out of people so much I actually tried it. I then found this shirt on the top of the hamper and in no time I forgot all about the stupidity of people. Even one of my lead actors being an hour late didn't bother me. It's just hard to be pissed off when you're this comfortable.

While my shirt is so wonderfully comfortable, it really isn't a shirt for wearing in public. It started out as one of those long sleeved under shirts you wear to keep your arms warm and give you a schnazzy look when it decides to snow in May. (I'm talking to you Colorado!) It was never designed to be worn alone in public, but really just to make you feel wonderfully cozy underneath that T-shirt. Over time and due to lots of use, it lost the sleeves about half way down the arm giving it a bizarre cut off t-shirt look. So now when I wear it I just have these areas at the bottom of my sleaves where it's splayed out all funky. In other words I just look strange.

While before I put on the shirt I may contemplate how bizarre I will look, as soon as that shirt is on, I am so confortable, I don't care if I look like a homeless person. (Something my siblings accused me of for most of middle school. That is looking like a homeless person not actually being one.) I've always preferred comfort to looks, but this shirt just adds to the weirdness of my day to day appearance. (At least my hair no longer makes me look like a Muppet.)

The saddest thought, though, is that eventually this shirt will completely die. The already holey wonderous material, will eventually fall so far apart that I will be forced to do away with this shirt. I feel like a shirt this spectacular deserves it's own funeral. So if a few year down the road I invite you to it's funeral please just sit politely in the back giving me "what the hell" looks while I deliver the eulogy. (Also maybe call the nut house.)

Laughable

For years, my best friend has been laughing at my family when they argue. I've always found humor in my family's arguments, but I never got how absolutely hilarious they were until I got to listen to one objectively.

Normally, when my family argues, I'm right in the middle of it, so it's near impossible to laugh at until much later (usually when I write about it on my blog). But this weekend, when I visited them, I got to hear an argument I had no participation in. And damn it was funny!

Of all the absurd things they were arguing about bird seed. Not even about something like what type of bird seed to get or how much to use, but where to put it for feeding the birds. Apparently, she had put it in the wrong place. For a good twenty minutes at least my mom and sister were arguing like this.

My mom's argument:
The birds are used to it being on the picnic table. You should have put it where we normally put it.

My sister's argument: They're wild birds they'll find the food.

My mom's argument: You were just being too lazy to walk to the picnic table and back to the shed.

My sister's argument: That if you spread out the bird seed more birds could eat it without fighting with other birds.

Then the arguments just looped for twenty minutes. To be fair, my sister was probably just being lazy. (I spent all of high school and probably middle school doing the same things.) Also, i really doubt the birds give a crap where the free food is. (College students don't.)

While I have always found our family arguments ridiculous, I never realized how hilarious they were until I wasn't participating. I get it, Holly, my family truly is hilarious.

My Music Collection

I love music. It's just one of those things that is awesome and everyone loves in some form or other. I just happen to be slightly crazy when it comes to my music collection.

I have so much music on my computer that I could push play and it would continue for ten days straight without stopping and without repeating a song. And that's just the music on my computer. I'm always finding new music I love and adding to my already insane collection. I expect that by the time I get old (assuming I survive my inability to do anything without injury) I will have enough music to play for at least a month straight.

Now my music collection appears as quite random to a lot of people and often leads to many very notable "what the hell" looks from friends when I have it on shuffle (which is almost always). I will start off playing something like A.F.I. and then the song will change to Let's Go Sailing (since you probably don't know who that is, I assure that is a drastic change). Then some Rasputina, followed by Phineas and Ferb (I really have a bit too much of this). Then it's likely to leap to Jet and then onto some Patsy Cline. After some good old Patsy, there's Jimmy Hendricks, which will change to Demi Lovato (my sisters never stop giving me crap about this one). Next up some Beyonce followed by some Scooby-Doo chase music. And to top it all off some Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. (This list could go on for pages, but ain't nobody got time for that.)

Like I said, I love music. I really don't care the genre (except dubstep. I have no idea what the hell that is!), as long as it's good music. There are only a handful of artists that I absolutely can't stand listening to for even a moment in time. One of those is Serg Tankian. (I like his lyrics and meaning, but I prefer nails on a chalkboard to his voice.) Another would be Nicki Minaj because seriously that's not music. (My friend insists on playing this when I ride in her car and I have on occasion debated just opening the door and leaping to freedom.) Just about everything else I can stand even if I don't enjoy it. But Nicki Minaj and Serg Tankian are so invasive it physically hurts. (I am convinced if I listen to them for too long, I will end up like the aliens from Mars Attacks.)

The most prominent part of my music collection is oldies. I'm always jamming to oldies. Seriously, if I could only listen to one artist for the rest of my life it would be Ella Fitzgerald (and if you don't know who that is drop everything you are currently doing and Google her. Also that's just sad, dude). She has one of the greatest voices ever! (When an episode of Code Name Kids Next Door made a joke about a disease called Salmonella Fitzgerald that made you scat sing, it made my day. (Then it made me sad because I realized how few children would actually get it.) My favorite song is her version of It Don't Mean A Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing. (I listen to that no less than twice a week.)

While no one would ever dare mock someone for a love of classic jazz and swing, my love of doo-wop is often called into question. Of all my musical obsessions doo-wop is the most random. Seriously, like no one likes doo-wop. Even in my music appreciation class last year, the teacher (who was supposed to be teaching us all the great things about music) kept calling doo-wop "terrible music." I felt so awkward sitting there actually enjoying the doo-wop, while everyone, including the teacher, was treating it as a boring required part of the class. Seriously is doo-wop that bad?

A random side note of awesome: While listening to my music on shuffle, one of my best guy friends (who happens to be my sister's boyfriend) didn't bat an eyelash at The Platters (doo-wop in case you were wondering), but seriously questioned my sanity when Cohead and Cambria began to play. (For the record they have an awesome drummer.)

I love my music and am not afraid to show it. Life's just too damn short to not be singing I Feel Pretty while riding your bike to school (something I do daily, although the song changes). I love my music collection and am damn proud of it. Also I can out nerd even the nerdiest people with it. (Nothing can beat the Japanese Spiderman theme song.) And just so everyone knows, I will likely be the only old lady of this generation who will be playing the music of her grandma's generation. (A lot of Bing Crosby I'm afraid.)

Door to Door

Living in an apartment is drastically different from the house in the middle of nowhere I used to live. When I moved out, I actually had some idea that this would be the case and even adapted to it quite nicely. There are some things I've experienced, however, that wouldn't have even crossed my mind as something that could happen before it did.

My first couple days into the apartment living experience, I was awoken at 4:00 am by mariachi music. This, while annoying, wasn't really something surprising. A month after moving in, it rained in my bathroom (the day before my birthday no less). Again annoying, but not really something I hadn't heard of happening. (It raining while I was watching Singing In The Rain, however...)

A couple months in and the Jehovah's Witnesses had figured out at what times I would answer. There were ones who even managed to find the house in the middle of nowhere, so to be honest I was actually surprised at how long it took them.

A few months ago, I started running into a guy at the Chinese place who was always trying to sell me pirated DVDs. Again still nothing surprising. Then about two months ago a chick and some guy would come by knocking on the door asking if I'd buy movies. None of these events really surprised me. They may have annoyed me (or in the case of the third bathroom rainstorm made me ask "seriously?"), but none of it was something I wouldn't have thought of. Well that is until yesterday.

Yesterday, I was chilling and pretending that at some point I might actually do my homework when there was a knock on the door. I expected either someone with pirated DVDs or a Jehovah's Witness. What happened instead was so endlessly random, I had to double check that it wasn't just some weird dream. The two people who normally try to sell DVDs, had a giant basket full of donuts they were trying to sell. Seriously, donuts. Of all the things people have asked me to buy (one being a vacuum cleaner), the door to door donuts salesmen were by far the strangest.