Little Things

The follow up to the Shappu Post is coming soon. We're aiming to do a video post of the events that transpire when we take the Shappu to a shoe.

Also coming soon, will be a/some audio post(s). Julia's husband has a digital recorder and has been so gracious as to allow us to borrow it for our blog hijinks. So here's your open ended chance to ask any questions or pose any topics for discussion or debate. So suggest away.

Here's to you

You know, it's funny. You forget how awesome it is to receive unsolicited compliments until you get one.

I went to a family reunion on Sunday, my paternal grandmother's family, the Smiths. [Yeah, guess it's okay to drop that name, rather hard to trace, that.] Anyway, my dad wasn't there when my I arrived, but my grandmother was. I sat down to talk with her and her sister, and some other people whose names I do not know. They were actually doing all the talking. I don't remember what they were talking about, but my great-aunt suddenly said to me, "You have a beautiful complexion. I'm not saying you're not pretty either. You're a very pretty girl." Aw, a gaggle of relative's think I'm pretty. People are paying attention to me? What do I do?!? Ack! Self-confidence resevoirs totally overwhelmed. System Failure! Blue Screen of Death!!!

Reboot.

So, I felt pretty good about that. Then I thought about how nice unsolicited compliments are, and how I'm sure most of us don't get enough. So without further ado compliments for eveybody!:

Ladies, you're all beautiful and your hair looks fantastic!
Guys, you're all very handsome and witty!

Or would you perfer more individually specific compliments? Wait, would that make them solicited compliments then? Crap. I had good intentions

And Break!

Who has two thumbs and the next three days off? This guy!

I don't even have any plans.

I was going to go to the place on the lake if no one was up there, but my cousins are up there. I considered going camping, but funds need to be applied elsewhere. Maybe a day trip then? Decisions that can all be made in the morning. For now all I have is a quiz. The results are none too surprising. Laters.

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Inland North   You may think you speak "Standard English straight out of the dictionary" but when you step away from the Great Lakes you get asked annoying questions like "Are you from Wisconsin?" or "Are you from Chicago?" Chances are you call carbonated drinks "pop."
The Midland
The Northeast
Philadelphia
The South
The West
Boston
North Central
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

Vexation

I have had a terribly unproductive and unfulfilling day. The most I acheived today was having luch with Julia at Zarape (mmmm....delicious fajita burrito) and pruning my plants. Other than that the whole day was a wash. Julia accompanied me on a venture out to score some loot. First, I went to see if the shop I want to buy a bed from does deliveries. They don't. The guy told me that they never had offered delivery. I informed him that my roommate had furniture delivered a while back. (Take that!) He suggested I could rent a truck from Home Depot for "like, 20 dollars an hour or something". Yeah, right.

Frustrated but undaunted, we drove up to Toledo. I was hoping to get a new stereo put in my car. I've gone two years without one, which is fine when I'm by myself. I just crank up the volume on my headphones and wear them around my neck. Because wearing them on my ears might, I don't know say, impair my driving. Still, a radio would vastly improve the quality of my driving experiences, and will be quite necessary for some of the planned trips coming up. The kid at the place I went to informed me that the installer had already left for the day when we arrived. Don't advertise same day installation if you don't have people there to do the work! Also I learned that 'free installation' isn't exactly free. Gee, who'd've thunk it. Five dollar shop fee, 30 to 60 dollars for a mounting bracket and some wire attachment thingy.

I called my dad to see if he could install it. He could, but would rather not take on that project. He didn't understand my frustration and further added to my irritation with his own special brand of logic. On the up side he'll probably come down and help me drag a bed home when I buy it. All I wanted was a little instant gratification. Yes, I could make an appointment. Yes, I could go in tomorrow when I know the installer will be there, but sometimes you just want it done the first time you show up when you came for that express purpose and brought your friend so you could go shopping while you waited. Normally I'm more patient. Ah well. And, of course, the other car stereo store we stopped by was already closed.

By this point retail therapy sounded like a good time. Payless failed to offer me any cute shoes that I didn't already have similar to. We also stopped at Old Navy to look at clothes. Apparently "stupid" is all the rage this season in fashion. [Although it was nice to grab my usual size in a pair of shorts and have them be too big. Yay for losing weight. Healthiness rocks.] Lastly we stopped at a chain bookstore. I thought I'd pick up a Games magazine since they're one of the few places that carry it. Some puzzles to soothe my frazzled brain. Nope, just a shit-ton of Sudoku. I don't know why everybody is so damn crazy for Sudoku. They're just magic number puzzles where the the rows and columns don't necessarily have a goal sum. They're okay, but that's all you can find anymore.

The best and only thing I bought this afternoon were fountain drinks.

It was like all things were conspiring to irritate the hell out of me.

ZZzzzzzZZZZzzzz...

Sleeping is probably one of the simplest, most natural things you can do right? Lay down, sleep, wake up, repeat. So will someone explain why I have such trouble with it?

1. I have trouble falling asleep. No matter how tired I am, no matter how comfy my bed (which it's not right now*), no matter how late it is, I have trouble drifting off. I don't do naps either, unless I'm really sick I can't fall asleep in the middle of the day. Honestly I think it's because my internal clock is set to a longer than 24 hour day. Left to my own devices I'd probably stay up for 18 hours and sleep 10. Like yesterday I had to work at 6 am (on 3 hours of sleep) and didn't go to sleep until after 1am last night. Nine or ten hours of sleep later and I'm good to go.

2. I am a night person. It's nigh impossible for me to fall asleep before midnight, which is a problem if I have to work at 6am. I've been this way since I was born (my mother has confirmed this with bitter grousing).

3. I talk in my sleep. I realize this doesn't impact me so much as others. One time, when I was in high school, my mom asked me if I'd left my tv or radio all night. Nope, just me talking in my sleep, rather loudly apparently. My mother loved it when I fell asleep and started talking in my sleep. She start asking me questions, encouraging me to continue to say nonsensical things so she could later belittle me in front of others. Thus far I have not revealed any scandalous secrets, been a channel for ancient mystical knowledge, or spoken in tongues. Although somebody once told me they thought I had been speaking French in my sleep. I am most definitely not fluent in French. Usually it's just bizarre dream nonsense.

4. Speaking of nonsense, when I do finally get to sleep I have really weird dreams. Often incredibly lucid and imaginative full colour, full sensory experience dreams. Sometimes with velociraptors. I can tell you that anyone who tells you to pinch yourself because "you can't feel pain in dreams" is full of shit. Ditto the whole "if you realize that you're dreaming you can change what's happening". That doesn't always work.
I won't bore anyone with details. I like talking about dreams, but it seems that precious few people do. I mean, there are certain people whose dreams I wouldn't want to hear about because I think they are annoying to begin with and I'm sure their dreams would be just as annoying. I think dreams are an interesting insight to a person's mind. Although I'm not sure what mine say about me then. Like this one dream where I was at this girl's apartment and there were zombies running rampant outside, but that wasn't the weird part...


*I have been sleeping on a futon for the past five years. In the last week I have woken up every day feeling like I've been beaten up, especially in the back and neck region. I'm on the hunt for a better sleeping apparatus, preferably something that doesn't fold in the middle when you lay down on it.

My Family Loves Me

A month or so ago my family (okay, my dad's family) had an apartment warming party for my Cousin M. She's my age, but she just got her first apartment and is living by herself. I was hanging out at her new place for a while after everybody else left. My cousin asked me what we did for my apartment party because she didn't remember. I reminded her that we didn't have one for me. She freaked out a little and kept saying how bad she felt. I told her it was no big deal. I moved out the same year I graduated from high school, so people got me stuff for my apartment at my graduation party. She maintained that it wasn't the same and she felt bad. I kept telling her it was fine and thought that would be the last of it.

A couple weeks ago my Aunt N (not that cousin's mom, a different aunt) called me up. She said she realized that it was quite a bit late (like, oh, say 7 years), but they wanted to have a party for me. I agreed, but told her that nobody had to buy me stuff. Of course a List was demanded from me later and I was told to make sure I put plenty of stuff on it so they didn't all buy me the same thing. Whatever makes them happy I guess. :)

Yesterday was the appointed day for my family to descend upon my domicile. This apartment is the largest and nicest one I've had, and I feel like it's my first really grown up place, so I was happy to have my family over. Plus it gave me an idea of what it's going to be like at Christmas when they all come over. I bought some chips and made a fruit salad, my grandmother made meatballs (I don't know what kind of meat other than, the delicious kind) and brownies (they may be from a package, but they are soooo good). All in all we had a really good time. Some of my cousins even raided my dvd collection. They were checking out what I had and started going "*GASP* You have Howl's Moving Castle!?" "You have the Simpsons?!?!" "You Have Chrono Crusade!!! I Haven't Seen The LAST EPISODE!!!" So being the awesome cousin that I am I let them borrow a few items.

And, of course, I got some Loot. Including a new dvd player. Mine works about one time in twenty, so yeah, that sucks. Everybody makes fun of my dvd player, and by association me. So now you can all shut up. You won't have to deal with the 'Shitsonic' anymore. My roommate will be especially happy about that; I guess that will make meeting my family all worth it for him. :P

(Awesome) News to Me

So, a guy at work told me (and I have confirmed with the internet) that there's going to be NEW FUTURAMA EPISODES!...!

Holy crap dudes.

I'm very excited about this. I've read that all the original cast and writers and other essentials to the series are going to be back, so that makes me cautiously optimistic about the show's return. I don't know if I want it to come back if it really sucks.

My questions: did everybody already know this, and I'm just the last one to find out? If so, why didn't anybody tell me? Or did somebody tell me and I not believe them because I didn't want to get my hopes up?

I have been violated

Yesterday our summer visiting manager saw how I had my shift set up, and what I had her doing for it. She comes running up to me.

Excited: Oh. My. God. You have no idea how excited I am by this!!!!! I'm going to give you a hug!! I know you don't like touching, but I'm gonna anyway!!!

Me: WhaaaNO...

*Bone crushing awkwardness ensued*

Let's break it down and begin with the "no touching". On a previous occasion I had told Captain Excited that I didn't like being touched. This isn't exactly true. I do not have a problem with physical contact with other humans beings. I'm all for it given the right circumstances and the right people. Sometimes I just have to tell people this because they are abusing their touching privileges.

Next, proper hugging etiquette. When embracing a person whom you are not on intimate or even say familiar terms with there are a couple of acceptable hugs. You can do the side arm hug: arm thrown around their shoulders, couple of seconds, good to go. You can do the lean in hug, minimal contact, a bit of back patting is acceptable.

Here's what went down: Crazy McExcitedPants threw her arms around my neck and proceeded to crush my vertebrae in a full body, full contact hug. It went into overtime; can I get a ref to call a foul for non regulation length hugging? Way too much of her was pressed against way too much of me. I locked up. I couldn't think. The only way it could have been anymore awkward is if she had tried to wrap a leg around me too. One step below absolute awkwardness. Afterwards she bounced away to go terrorize others and I had a good shudder.

Don't Step in the Shappu

I don't like shopping at Wal-mart, or as I like to call it, Evil-mart. Sometimes I find myself doing it anyway. Sometimes I don't feel like driving all the way across town to another store (do you save enough gas over a four mile round trip to offset the badness of buying their crap?). Or like that time a couple weeks ago when Julia and I were shuffling about evil-mart, her drugged out from having her teeth pulled, me with mild to moderate sleep depravation. I think I really needed to get shampoo, and she just wanted to get out of the house.

Anyway. We were making out way towards the registers, mmm, my favorite part of shopping at walmart. On an endcap I spotted a display of knives. It looked lilke one of those super knife sets they have on the infomercials. They always take the knives and cut through a shoe or a pvc pipe, or saw on some granite and then cut a tomato to show that it's "still sharp". As someone who has trouble falling asleep I know these sorts of things. So there were these knives, but the box looked really thin. I decided to investigate (needed sleep remember?).

I discovered that they were selling the "Shappu 2000 (tm) Stainless Steel 10 pc Professional Cutlery Set" that Never Needs Sharpening. Made from Japanese stainless steel with a lifetime guarantee for A. Dollar. Ninety. Four.

I bought them.

"Superior quality stainless steel knives makes cutting easier than you can expect. The scientific-mechanical cast cutting edges are so fine and sharp that can create various incredible cutting capabilities. Different blade designs to satisfy all your needs in the kitchen - they slice, carve, rip, tear, saw... and much much more."

It includes a 'Set of 6 Steak Knives', the 'Shappu Parer', the 'Shappu Cleaver', a 'Shappu Fillet' and of course the 'Shappu Utility'.

The best were the captions on the pictures. "Perfect for carve ribs and meats" "Slice nicely on soft, crispy or crumble breadstuffs" "Steak knife suits casual or formal dines" "Saw through aluminum or PVC pipes" and "Rip through tough leather and rubber" with a picture of one of the knives halfway through a tennis shoe. So we have Engrish and super knife cliches. Why do they always do the shoe thing? Who the hell is it that needs to grab a kitchen knife to slice their sneakers in half? And pipes? Hah. Maybe if you were trapped by zombies in your kitchen and there was a hole in the wall you could escape through, but it was blocked by pipes and you had your trusty Shappu handy, then just maybe this would be applicable.

The knives came taped into a flimsy plastic tray, and aren't even straight. Awesome. This was totally worth the 1.94.

I did put the Shappu to the test. They're surprisingly sharp (although they edges don't feel that keen, must be that serration). The Shappu suffer from an excess of flimsiness, guess that's why they're guarunteed to not need sharpened, not to not break. I found you can cut through a plastic water bottle or cardboard. I didn't have any extra shoes to sacrifice for this experiment though, so I guess that will have to remain a mystery until another day