I was pretty busy in 2015, but I did manage to consume a decent amount of art. So here's a quick rundown of some of my 2015 top 5s!
Top 5 Blogs I Wrote:
1. The Quest for Forgiveness: A Busy Post-Conversion Evening
2. Surprise Blog! And It's a Movie Guessing Game
3. Answering Extroverts' Questions About Introverts
4. Introverts Are Not Fragile
5. The Most Depressing Disney Songs
Top 5 Movies I Saw For the First Time:
1. The Last Five Years (2014)
2. Inside Out (2015)
3. Whiplash (2014)
4. Welcome to Dongmakgol (2005)
5. Captain Blood (1935)
Top 5 Songs I Discovered For the First Time:
1. You'll Be Back from Hamilton the musical
2. (Never Gonna) Steal My Joy by Mandisa
3. Love Me Like You Do by Ellie Goulding
4. Do You Really Need Her by Harry Connick, Jr.
5. WTF (Where They From) by Missy Elliott
Top 5 Books I Read:
1. Fight by Preston Sprinkle
2. Fat Vampire: A Never Coming of Age Story by Adam Rex
3. Five Flavors of Dumb by Anthony John
4. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
5. Gentleman's Agreement by Laura Z. Hobson
(As you can probably tell, I've been reading through my collection of Kindle books alphabetically. In 2015 I read from E-H.)
Top 5 New Board Games I Discovered:
1. Coup
2. Legendary (both Marvel and Encounters)
3. Splendor
4. Concept
5. Codenames
How about you? What were your top 5... anything of 2015?
Showing posts with label best of the year. Show all posts
Showing posts with label best of the year. Show all posts
Monday, January 25, 2016
Monday, January 19, 2015
Best of 2014: Books
I'm holding off on doing my "best movies of 2014" until next week, when I'll have finished my movie challenge and will be reorganizing most of the movies of 2014. So this is my last regular Best of 2014 post, aside from the movie one, which will be written next Monday or Wednesday.
This last year, I set a book challenge goal on Goodreads of 100 books. Thanks to my Kindle and my insomnia, I met that goal and read ten extra. These were my favorite ones I read last year:
Books I Wholeheartedly Recommend
Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine. This was a reread, and I found it just as delightful and engaging as I had the last time I reread it, years ago. I got seriously sucked into this story.
Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened by Allie Brosh. I got this for Christmas in 2013, and it was everything I could have hoped. It contained all my favorite stories from the Hyperbole and a Half blog, plus plenty of others. I laughed out loud a lot.
Dark Places by Gillian Flynn. This is the author that wrote Gone Girl, although I haven't read that one yet. But based on this one, I very much want to. This book is beautifully written, with a very relatable main character and a good mystery to solve. She even resolves it in a way that with any other author would have seemed far-fetched, but somehow she makes it work.
The Cider House Rules by John Irving. I read A Prayer for Owen Meany a year or two ago and loved it. While this one isn't quite that great, it's still a fascinating story. I got really wrapped up in the lives of these characters.
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler. I discovered this year that I really like Anne Tyler's writing. I read three or four of hers and this one was my favorite. Her characters are really easy to connect to. And I particularly liked this book's method of cycling between the characters, telling all their stories a piece at a time.
Day of the Predator by Alex Scarrow. So apparently this is the second in a series, and I didn't realize that when I picked it up, but it's a super fun YA time travel story, so I may have to look up some of the others.
Stolen Innocence: My Story of Growing Up in a Polygamous Sect, Becoming a Teenage Bride, and Breaking Free of Warren Jeffs by Elissa Wall and Escape by Carolyn Jessop. Apparently this year I was really into memoirs of women escaping the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints. The second book in particular looks at how this specific polygamous sect got more and more cultlike, with leaders claiming to hear directly from God about creating new rules that, oddly enough, benefited them the most. These are fascinating reads and very exciting when the women finally make it to freedom.
Death Comes As the End by Agatha Christie. I think this was one of the few Christies I never read -- I certainly didn't remember it at all. In many ways it's a typical Christie mystery, but it's set in ancient Egypt, and seeing one of her stories unfold in this very unusual setting is great fun.
The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft by H.P. Lovecraft. Although there are quite a few startling moments of blatant racism that leave a bad taste in my mouth, there are also so many excellent gothic horror stories, my favorites being "The Curse of Yig" and "The Colour Out of Space." This was well worth the long read.
Bossypants by Tina Fey. Since my favorite thing about Tina Fey has always been her writing, it's probably not a surprise that I really enjoyed her autobiography. I read most of it in the day when our power was shut off during 2014's snowpocalypse, so my memories of this book largely involve snuggling under a blanket with Jacob and my Kindle.
Books I Read and Have Ranked High on Goodreads But I Don't Really Remember Much About Them At the End of the Year So Maybe They're Not As Good As I Thought When I Read Them
Cloaked by Alex Finn
Alexandra, Gone by Anna McPartlin
The Better to Hold You by Alisa Sheckley
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke
This last year, I set a book challenge goal on Goodreads of 100 books. Thanks to my Kindle and my insomnia, I met that goal and read ten extra. These were my favorite ones I read last year:
Books I Wholeheartedly Recommend
Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine. This was a reread, and I found it just as delightful and engaging as I had the last time I reread it, years ago. I got seriously sucked into this story.
Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened by Allie Brosh. I got this for Christmas in 2013, and it was everything I could have hoped. It contained all my favorite stories from the Hyperbole and a Half blog, plus plenty of others. I laughed out loud a lot.
Dark Places by Gillian Flynn. This is the author that wrote Gone Girl, although I haven't read that one yet. But based on this one, I very much want to. This book is beautifully written, with a very relatable main character and a good mystery to solve. She even resolves it in a way that with any other author would have seemed far-fetched, but somehow she makes it work.
The Cider House Rules by John Irving. I read A Prayer for Owen Meany a year or two ago and loved it. While this one isn't quite that great, it's still a fascinating story. I got really wrapped up in the lives of these characters.
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler. I discovered this year that I really like Anne Tyler's writing. I read three or four of hers and this one was my favorite. Her characters are really easy to connect to. And I particularly liked this book's method of cycling between the characters, telling all their stories a piece at a time.
Day of the Predator by Alex Scarrow. So apparently this is the second in a series, and I didn't realize that when I picked it up, but it's a super fun YA time travel story, so I may have to look up some of the others.
Stolen Innocence: My Story of Growing Up in a Polygamous Sect, Becoming a Teenage Bride, and Breaking Free of Warren Jeffs by Elissa Wall and Escape by Carolyn Jessop. Apparently this year I was really into memoirs of women escaping the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints. The second book in particular looks at how this specific polygamous sect got more and more cultlike, with leaders claiming to hear directly from God about creating new rules that, oddly enough, benefited them the most. These are fascinating reads and very exciting when the women finally make it to freedom.
Death Comes As the End by Agatha Christie. I think this was one of the few Christies I never read -- I certainly didn't remember it at all. In many ways it's a typical Christie mystery, but it's set in ancient Egypt, and seeing one of her stories unfold in this very unusual setting is great fun.
The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft by H.P. Lovecraft. Although there are quite a few startling moments of blatant racism that leave a bad taste in my mouth, there are also so many excellent gothic horror stories, my favorites being "The Curse of Yig" and "The Colour Out of Space." This was well worth the long read.
Bossypants by Tina Fey. Since my favorite thing about Tina Fey has always been her writing, it's probably not a surprise that I really enjoyed her autobiography. I read most of it in the day when our power was shut off during 2014's snowpocalypse, so my memories of this book largely involve snuggling under a blanket with Jacob and my Kindle.
Books I Read and Have Ranked High on Goodreads But I Don't Really Remember Much About Them At the End of the Year So Maybe They're Not As Good As I Thought When I Read Them
Cloaked by Alex Finn
Alexandra, Gone by Anna McPartlin
The Better to Hold You by Alisa Sheckley
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke
Wednesday, January 14, 2015
Best of 2014: This Blog
Looking back on this year, which posts of mine have gotten the most attention? Here are our top 10. Some of these surprise me... and others I forgot I wrote in the first place.
10. My Top 8 Disney Soundtracks (April 2)
10. My Top 8 Disney Soundtracks (April 2)
Alan Menken in the eighties and nineties was freaking AWESOME. The Little Mermaid has not only some of the most iconic Disney songs, but also truly some of the best. "Poor Unfortunate Souls" is a really fantastic villain song, "Part of Your World" is probably the best I-want-more-out-of-life song Disney's ever produced, and "Les Poissons," although short, is hilarious.9. Best of 2013: Facebook Posts (January 1)
Last night I dreamed I was at a church and they sang this bizarre and terrible hymn called "The Lord Thy God Demands Thy Soul." All the verses said things like, "God, take my eyesight, but not my soul!" and every chorus was God responding, "BUT THE LORD THY GOD DEMANDS THY SOUL!" The final verse revealed that your soul is literally a magnet inside you (yes, literally) keeping you stuck to the earth, so if God doesn't take your soul, you can't fly off the earth to go up to heaven.
My subconscious has some *goofy* theology. Also, that's a terrible hymn. Nobody write it.8. What Happens When You Remove a Syllable from a Movie Title? (October 8)
Dependence Day: When aliens attack earth, a computer genius and a fighter pilot team up to assist the aliens in their invasion. Events come to a head when the president gives a rousing speech about the joys of bending knee to the new overlords.7. My Favorite Underrated Actors (March 10)
I used to think I didn't like Tom Cruise, but when he has a chance to do something really good, he nearly always delivers. Turns out he just also picks a lot of blah movies with one-note action star characters -- which, yes, he does phone in a lot. But just look at his work in Tropic Thunder, Magnolia, Rain Man, Vanilla Sky, Collateral, or even the awesomely ridiculous Rock of Ages (where he was easily the best part of the entire movie), and it's clear that he's capable of so much more.6. The Worst Children's Book Series Ever (February 24)
Then, once upon another time, we thought it might be fun to come up with as many rhyming phrases as we could. Somehow this morphed into creating a series of children's books, representing it with a rhyming one-sentence pitch. (We tried to roughly keep the meter the same throughout.) Since Baby Wayney was our placeholder name, it only made sense to center this series of kids' books around him as well.5. Depression, Guilt, and Giving Advice (August 27)
Walsh says in his post that he has dealt with depression. A lot of people have claimed that's a lie. I am not a fan of dismissing people's personal experiences, and I certainly don't know him in real life, so I don't really have any reason to think he is lying. Plenty of people struggle with depression that you wouldn't suspect. What I can emphatically say, though, is that his depression must have been drastically different from mine.
Mine comes with a built-in layer of All The Guilt.
For me, this is actually usually the first symptom of an upcoming depressive period and the last to leave. I begin to believe that everything I'm doing, I'm doing wrong. I'm dealing with my depression wrong. I'm talking to my friends wrong. I'm writing this blog wrong. And then that guilt converts into crippling anxiety -- if I move or breathe or think or speak I'll do something wrong -- and then I get paralyzed.4. Walking With God in the Midst of Depression (November 10)
For me, "walking in victory" isn't about the depression going away. It's not about walking in my victory because I feel awesome and I've conquered depression -- it's about walking in God's victory. It's about trusting that he can get me through the day, the week, the year, and my life. It's about realizing that if I can't walk any further, he can carry me, and I'm still victorious because I'm trusting him.
3. When Introverts Get Lonely (January 27)
Turns out when you're not constantly in a situation where you have to socialize with people, it's easy to withdraw until you've withdrawn yourself all the way out into hermitiness.
Whoops.
2. How to Find Other Introverts (April 28)
Not every introvert spends all their time in public staring at their phone or reading a book. You may be meeting introverts all the time and you just don't know it. To find an introvert in a crowd, try striking up one-on-one conversations -- an introvert is more likely to direct all their attention to one person for a long period of time, while someone more extroverted will probably still love talking to you but will include others in the conversation or move on to mingle with someone else.
1. Frozen's "Let It Go": Sad Isolation Song or Triumphant Anthem? (February 10)
"Let It Go" speaks deeply to me of the moment when you're like, "I JUST FIGURED OUT I DON'T HAVE TO LIVE LIKE THIS ANYMORE" and even though there may be a downside to the new arrangement, even though you may not have healed yet, it's still an incredibly joyous moment to find freedom of any kind... It just honestly never occurred to me to see it as a sad song. It feels very... self-empowermenty.
Monday, January 12, 2015
Best of 2014: Songs I Discovered
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| © 2009 [puamelia], Flickr | CC-BY-SA | via Wylio |
Last year, I only really fell in love with 18 songs over the course of 2013. This year, I found 27 -- though six of those are from Heathers: The Musical. I covered a few of them in a blog post I wrote in April, but now you get all 27.
I've also compiled all the songs on this list into two YouTube playlists: this one for all the choices (except for the one I couldn't find), and this one for only the songs with no cursing. So that way all my readers can enjoy!
1. "Let It Go" from Frozen. I know, I know, this was everywhere, but that's because it's good. I got the soundtrack at the beginning of the year and listened to it a lot, but this is still the best track. The lyrics, the music, and the vocal performance are all perfect.
2. "Frozen Heart" from Frozen. This song opens the movie and was the one that convinced me this was going to be a fun one to watch. Of course, I have a fondness for male choruses anyway, but this is a great little song -- very atmospheric.
3. "Royals" by Lorde. I promise this list is going to be more than just the most popular songs of 2014. But there's just something fantastic about this song. It's got a unique sound and unique lyrics, and it's ridiculously catchy. Seriously, I'm pretty sure I had this stuck in my head for about half the year. And now you can too.
4. "When I Grow Up" from Matilda. Jacob and I got to see this show when we were in New York for our honeymoon, but it wasn't until 2014 that I finally got the cast recording. It's quite wonderful overall, but this is the song that really stuck out to me. It's so wistful and melancholy and beautiful.
5. "Cop Car" by Keith Urban. I am not typically a fan of country at all, but every so often a song will come along that just grabs me. This is one of them. I am kind of captivated by the song -- these adventurous and somewhat aggressive lyrics sung with such a sweet, lovely tune makes the song so interesting.
6. "Let It Go" by Caleb Hyles. This cover made the rounds on the Internet and when I got around to watching it, I ended up subscribing to this guy. It's easily my favorite cover version of this song. The first time around I found myself almost holding my breath, hoping he'd hit the high notes. And even though I obviously know he's going to every time because recordings don't magically change, it's still... kind of amazing to me.
7. "You Haven't Seen the Last of Me" from Burlesque. Let me make it clear: Burlesque was not a good movie. And most of Christina's songs were insanely overperformed. But this song by Cher ended up being a surprisingly wonderful piece. Very much in the style of big Broadway ballads, this song is everything I love about musicals.
8. "Mr. Chu" by A-Pink. I do enjoy Asian pop, and I don't listen to it nearly often enough. This song is insanely cheerful and great fun to listen to and dance along with.
9. "Night Cap" by Jacques Slade. This song is on the Community soundtrack, and it was used as a "party song" a couple times in the background of the show... but, oh my gosh, it's hilarious. It sounds like some sort of rap anthem, but it's all about wearing a night cap when you go to sleep. I am a big fan of songs that sound serious and then... aren't at all. So of course I was going to love this.
10. "Love Never Felt So Good" by Michael Jackson and Justin Timberlake. Man, MJ and JT work so well together, musically. I'm very happy that this "contemporized" version of happened, because they sound great, and the song is another one that's just so cheerful. I love it.
11. "Separate Ways" by Journey. This is a song that I'd hear every so often, think, "What is that? I really like it. I should find it," and then not be able to find because I hadn't been paying attention to the lyrics. Then one day it came up on Pandora and I was like, "THAT'S THE SONG." So this probably could have been on a best of list like eight or nine years ago.
12. "Happy" by Pharrell Williams. I don't care how overplayed this song is, I love it. With all my heart. I can't listen to it and not feel a bit better.
13. "Tacky" by Weird Al Yankovic. I have to admit, my love for this song might be partly a love for "Happy" overflowing onto it... but I do really enjoy it. Especially the music video, which is just great fun.
14. "Fight for Me" from Heathers. And now begins the huge amount of songs from Heathers. This was the first one I really fell in love with -- a funny and sweet love song sung in a girl's mind to a boy she sees fighting.
15. "Dead Girl Walking" from Heathers. An incredible power anthem that actually inspired an entire mix on my blog because, gosh, I love it SO. MUCH.
16. "Lifeboat" from Heathers. In contrast to the last two, this is one of the saddest songs I've ever heard. It's sung by a character who is confessing that she's having suicidal thoughts, and as she sings, it becomes clear that the incredible pressure of being one of the popular ones is tearing her apart bit by bit. It's heartbreaking.
17. "Kindergarten Boyfriend" from Heathers. This song is absolutely going on the annual Anti-Love Mix I'll be posting next month. It's one of those songs I would have related to so strongly a few years ago, and even though I'm not full of unrequited love angst anymore, I still feel connected to this character. This song breaks me a little bit.
18. "Blue" from Heathers. All right... This song is probably the least family friendly of all the ones in this list, but it's one of the ones I love most. It's about two drunk high school jocks trying to convince the main girl in the show that they need to sleep with her. They do not succeed, but this ridiculous song has the musical sound of a boy band-style love song, and the lyrics... are not. It is hilarious and awkward and stupid and I really enjoy it.
19. "Change of Heart" from Love's Labour's Lost. This one, sadly, doesn't get to be on the YouTube playlist because it's not available on YouTube anywhere. It's a big dramatic ballad sung by a very intellectual character who was determined he'd never do anything as cliched a fall in love... and yet, here he finds himself doing that. It's a really lovely little song that makes me very happy.
20. "Meant to Be Yours" from Heathers. One of the songs at the very end of Heathers, once her boyfriend has gone full psycho killer. I LOVE how the song swings back and forth between angry gleeful murder plans and tender love song -- it's a great expression of his unstable mental state.
21. "Jeff" by Jeremy Morse. I rediscovered my love for songwriter Joe Iconis this year. He writes funny/sad songs that tell entire stories, and this is a perfect example. It's equal parts funny and tragic (more funny in the first half, more tragic in the second) and it's just fascinating to hear the story unfold.
22. "Michael in the Bathroom" by Seth Eliser. Another Joe Iconis song that taps into an experience that is awfully familiar to me and some of my introvert friends -- waiting in the bathroom at a party until you can go because you really don't feel like socializing just... at all.
23. "Lost" by Barrett Wilbert Weed. This performer was the lead in Heathers, and I fell in love with her in that show, so every so often I go searching for concert performances she's done, and this was my favorite, all about a girl getting lost in the mountains and separated from her boyfriend on what is turning into the worst date ever.
24. "The Shadow in the Door" by Bruce Robbins. I believe I found this song while reviewing it on Slice the Pie. The lyrics are rather silly and angsty, but I really enjoy the music, cheesy as it may be.
25. "Caramelldansen" by Caleb Hyles. So that guy who sang "Let It Go" and I subscribed to... he's done a lot of other covers, but this was the other one I really enjoyed this year. I love "Caramelldansen" anyway. So dancey!
26. "Gossip Folks" by Missy Elliott. I've been listening to a lot more women rappers in the last year, and Missy Elliott specifically in the last month or two, and this song is for sure my new favorite. It's just so cool and interesting to listen to. And I suppose it is also dancey, although in a very different way than "Caramelldansen."
27. "Not Perfect" by Tim Minchin. To end the mix on rather a contemplative note, here's a thoughtful and funny song from a comedy musician I really need to listen to more of, because every song I hear from him is kind of amazing.
What were your favorite new songs this year? Did you fall in love with any of these? Leave a comment and tell me!
Wednesday, January 7, 2015
Best of 2014: Facebook Posts
I've done this one several years in a row now, so let's continue the tradition by looking at some of my favorite Facebook statuses of the year, in order of when I wrote them. *deep breath* Here goes! Enjoy!
Jacob: I love you!
Me: I love you too!
Jacob: Crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap!
Kind of a startling response until I realized he was talking to his computer game.
I tried to end a text message with, "Just so you know," but my phone changed it to read, "Just so high now." Um. No, phone. That is not what is going on here.
At like 3 this morning, while I was trying to fall asleep, Jacob started rubbing my back, which was quite nice and relaxing. But when I rolled over to face him, I discovered he was sleeping. So either he has learned how to rub my back in his sleep (which I can totally live with) or we have a massaging ghost. Which I can also totally live with.
(We got our bill at the restaurant but were still eating dessert.)
Me: So we'll pay for this later. Although not like... tomorrow.
Jacob: I'll pay for you tomorrow.
Me: Good, because Mom and Dad have been wondering when you were going to pay for me. They've been waiting for like six months. They could have gotten a new furnace a long time ago.
Jacob: (Looking at me with disdain) You think you're worth a furnace?
Me: (Looking sadly down at my lap) I guess not...
Jacob: Aww! No! You are worth TEN furnodes!
That was almost the saddest half-anniversary dinner ever.
So I'm reading The Arabian Nights. These are some CRAZY stories. The first story within a story is about a guy who can understand animals but if he tells anyone else what they say, people will die. One day he laughs at something he hears an animal say and his wife demands he tell her what it was, and she gets to the point where she says she'd rather die than not know why he was laughing. The guy is freaking out, apparently thinking he's just going to have to give in and tell her even though she will probably die, until he overhears his animals saying, "Duh, he should just beat her until she agrees not to ask anymore." So he does, she agrees, and everyone lives happy ever after.
*blink*
This is going to be...an interesting ride.
QI is a fantastic show. I learn such random stuff. My favorite fact of the day: Henry the Young King was crowned King of France and died while his father, Henry II, was still alive, so he doesn't get a numerical king number, and there is a story of how he got in trouble with his father when was 17 because instead of going home to his father's castle for Christmas, he threw a feast of his own where he only invited knights named William. Maybe that'll be *my* plan next Christmas.
I dreamed last night that I signed onto Facebook and got this message from the site:
"We have polled your Facebook friends and thought you should know the results.
1. 90% of your friends think your name is a silly teenage name.
2. 200 of your friends think that if you put on a little lipstick, you would then have the body of a Greek goddess."
I'm so sorry to my friends who are disappointed by my name. I don't know how to fix that exactly, because I'm not sure what makes a name not a "silly teenage name." And, uh, as to the second one, I can only assume they mean I should use the lipstick to draw a Greek goddess onto my own body. This will fool nobody, but I guess I would technically then *have* that body I drew...
The Arabian Nights has now had two separate stories about newlyweds whose siblings were jealous of their marriage and threw them overboard when they all went sailing together. Looks like it's a good thing I've been turning down all those free cruises my siblings keep offering. It's probably the only reason Jacob and I are still alive today.
Re: Martin Freeman's mustache in the new Sherlock episode:
Me: I seldom like mustaches without an accompanying beard. They just make you look like a villain. I mean, look at him. He's clearly going to commit a crime.
Jacob: I don't know. I think he's maybe going to become a plumber.
Some people stress eat... Turns out I anger eat. I was going to make just one peanut butter sandwich for dinner, but after Puppy got into the trash and threw chicken bones all over the kitchen floor, I was like, "NOPE, I NEED THREE SANDWICHES NOW."
Arabian Nights update for you all: I finished the section on Sinbad's voyages. On one of them, he gets stuck on an island with an old man who climbs on his shoulders, wraps his legs around his neck, and refuses to let go. For days. He kicks and strangles Sinbad to make him walk around and pick fruit for him. In the end, the only way Sinbad gets him to let go is by getting him drunk so his legs relax and he falls off.
These stories are wacky.
As I'm trying to sleep last night:
Jacob: OH MY GOSH! OH MY GOSH!
Me: Hon, whatever it is, you're dreaming it.
Jacob: I see it! It's a giant spider!
Me: Nope. It's not real. It's a dream.
Jacob: Nooo...
Me: I promise it is. You're dreaming.
Jacob: Really?
Me: Yes. It's OK.
Jacob: Weird.
(A minute later)
Jacob (still at least mostly asleep): There's no giant spider in our room.
Me: You're right. There's not. It was a dream.
Jacob: You're trying to kill me, I know it.
DANG IT, he caught on to what I thought was a foolproof murder plan - to scare him to death in his sleep by making him dream about giant spiders!
Once, while playing Family Feud on Facebook, I was asked to name something that would ruin a honeymoon. If I was the author of The Arabian Nights, I might have answered, "Wife cut my thumbs off because at the wedding I ate something with garlic in it and didn't wash my hands well enough afterward." Though that probably wouldn't make the top 100 most popular answers.
Me: So I have $40 I can spend on Amazon. I'll probably buy that game I want, and then hold on to the rest of it until I want something new. (Being goofy) And then I'll hold onto the game until I want something new.
Jacob: I'll hold onto YOU!
Me: Until you want something new?
Jacob: Yes. OH NO. WAIT. I didn't pay attention to what you said. I love you!
The little news blurb headline on the side of my Facebook says, "Drake Killed on Saturday Night Live Last Night." I went, "Wait, WHAT?" but thanks to Google, I discovered they were trying to slangily say he did a good job. Turns out nobody murdered Drake on live TV. This is how rumors get started, people.
Me: There are a lot of young contestants on Idol this year.
Jacob: Like 12-year-olds?
Me: Well, you have to be 15 to audition.
Jacob: 15 12-year-olds?
Me: Yes. Because you can audition if you're 12, but only in groups of 15.
First Phil was a background actor on the show Nashville, and now I discover Jonathan is as well. Clearly I should not have stopped watching this show after two episodes, because at the rate this is going, by season five, every crowd scene will consist entirely of people I know milling about in the background.
Some helpful life tips I have picked up from The Arabian Nights:
1) Looking for a fun prank to play on your friends? Drug them, put them in the king's palace, and convince them they are king. Then drug them again, put them back in their normal lives, and watch and laugh as they literally go insane and have to be put in a mental institution. It's fun!
2) If you need some extra money, just tell your spouse's friends and family they're dead, and they'll give you money for the funeral. Then have the spouse do the same to your friends and family. Voila! Free cash!
My new all-time favorite Jesus juke, courtesy of my sister Rebekah: "If you shovel someone’s sidewalk and they say 'thank you, that really blessed me,' you should say, 'I can shovel your sidewalk, but only God can shovel your heart!'"
THAT is how you do evangelism. Right?
The word I had to teach my phone today: "non-pooping."
Is someone you know not eating very much at mealtimes? According to The Arabian Nights, that could be because they are sneaking out to graveyards at night and eating corpses with a ghoul. Be careful confronting them about this, though. They may get angry and turn you into a dog.
Puppy's white plastic bone is the same color as she is, so for a moment, when I saw her chewing on it at a weird angle, I thought her leg had fallen off and she was eating it. ZOMBIE CANNIBAL PUPPY
I have just learned that sugar stops concrete from setting. My first thought after I learned this: "If I were a supervillain, I would run around pouring sugar on construction sites and then laugh evilly as I ran away and nothing new would EVER BE BUILT." I can only hope this is the premise of the Batman vs. Superman movie.
I was attempting to text a melancholy friend some encouragement and advice. What was meant to be, "I give you permission to stay in tonight and watch a silly movie" nearly turned into "I give you permission to stay in tonight and watch a adult movie." That is NOT the advice I meant to send. My phone's autocorrect is not so wholesome sometimes.
Arabian Nights' lesson about awful siblings for the day: Don't let your sisters help deliver your children, because they might hide them in the river and instead present your husband with a dog, a cat, and a piece of wood and pretend you gave birth to those instead. Your husband will then be SO MAD that you keep giving birth to non-humans that he will put you in a cage in the temple and tell all the people to spit on you when they go do their prayers. (If they don't, he'll put THEM in a cage in the temple too and have people spit on THEM.)
So, that Once Upon a Time character quiz... the description for Charming ends with "You literally charm the pants off everyone you meet." Jacob and I debated whether this means he is a sleaze trying to seduce everyone or just kind of a goofy prankster who uses magic to vanish people's pants away and just giggles about it. Either way, I don't remember ANY of that on the show.
I'm only about 1/5 away from finishing The Arabian Nights. Here's the latest lesson it has taught me: Be careful when rejecting people. If someone gives you a love letter, do not beat them up. If you do, they might trick you into marrying someone hideously ugly and then you will be sad.
My proposed plot for the Batman vs. Superman movie: Superman decides HE wants to be Batman, finds the lair, sneaks in, steals a batsuit, and declares himself to be Batman now. If that's not exciting enough, Lex Luthor and Alfred could both decide the same thing, and the final scene would have four people in batsuits running around all yelling, "I'M BATMAN!"
Jacob: I'm tired today.
Me: It makes sense that you're tired. You didn't sleep very much.
This somehow activated voice command on our Xbox, which then searched Bing for "retired sleep very much" and found 24 related videos.
I have finally finished the strange, strange series of tales that is The Arabian Nights. Its final bit of wisdom: Beware new restaurants, because sometimes you sit down and the floor gives way and you fall into a dungeon where a guy tries to kill you with a scimitar so the restaurant owner can essentially steal your wallet.
My last series of candy hearts:
"Get Real
LOL
Get Real"
Wow. That is a definite rejection.
Dreams are funny things. I just woke up from one with this vague sense of terror but I'm pretty sure I was dreaming about an uneaten sub sandwich sitting in our kitchen cabinet, which is kinda gross but not really all that scary. Weird.
Last night:
Jacob: Ahhh! The nrghrbrgh is on top of us!
Me: Wait, what's on top of us?
Jacob: The naked horse is on top of us!
Me: Nope. There's no naked horse on top of us.
Jacob: (Confused) Well, where else would it be?
Writing an article about sensorineural hearing loss (cochlea damage). The problem is, I keep writing it "sensoriurinal." I can only assume that's when you lose your hearing because somebody punches you in the ear while at a urinal.
Awkward Textbroker typo of the day: "Varicose veins are caused by blood pooing in the veins."
This survey I was taking talked about a chore chart that suggested kids 2-4 years old vacuuming. Hmm. While vacuuming isn't a HARD chore, it's a heck of a lot more complicated when you are shorter than the vacuum cleaner.
Jacob: What if I change your name to "Pludlonica"?
(This is a game he occasionally plays, where he offers to change my name to something new. Usually something terrible.)
Me: ..."Pludlonica"? No.
Jacob: But WHY?
Me: Because it starts with "Plud." That's an awful syllable.
Jacob: How about "Shmudlonica"?
Me: No. I don't like that "ud" sound in general.
Jacob: How about "Shmludlonica"?
Me: That still has the "ud" sound!
Jacob: Yes, but it starts with "Shml," which is beautiful.
Yesterday, Lumps pooped on our kitchen floor in the shape of a pepper. Today, it was in the shape of an L. I can only assume she is in the process of sending us a message, and I suspect that message is "Peppers, LOL." Because she probably thinks peppers are hilarious.
TV show narrator: Her wedding is a defining moment in the relationship...
My thoughts: Well, DUH. A wedding is OBVIOUSLY a defining moment in a relationship. If it's not, why are they even getting married? That was a stupid thing to say.
TV show narrator: ...between her and her twin sister.
My thoughts: Oh. Never mind.
What I wanted to text, referring to a FB message Mom sent me: "I saw it but I only looked at it briefly."
What autocorrect wanted to text: "I saw it but I only looked at Imbruglia."
Autocorrect is smart. It knows I ignore most Facebook messages and just look at pictures of Natalie Imbruglia instead.
I had just stopped reading and was settling down to go to sleep when Jacob mumbled something about cakes. I asked him what about cakes? He responded, "None of them are in the present OR the past!" So cakes are only in the future. Just so you all know. I gotta admit, a future full of cakes sounds pretty good to me...
Today, Lumps is sulking because I won't let her sit on my head. I feel, however, that this is a completely reasonable boundary to set with both humans and animals.
So I was sitting on the living room couch and Jacob came in from the kitchen where he was cooking. He was going to be all sweet and give me a kiss, but RIGHT as he got to the couch he tripped and stubbed his toe, which led to him essentially lunging toward my face with a terrible grimace. It was fairly startling.
(Jacob is playing Animal Crossing on the 3DS while I watch.)
Me: You didn't pick up that shell!
Jacob: It's not worth anything.
Me: Not even like... one bell?
Jacob: Well, it's worth a bell, but I'm not doing that 98,000 times until I can afford a new house.
Me: I would!
Jacob: And that's why you would be the only person in the world to lose Animal Crossing.
Catching up on the last couple weeks of American Idol. One contestant walks in the room to find out his fate, and he's crying before he even sits down. Jennifer Lopez asks him why he's crying, and he says, "So many reasons! I'm from Miami!" He was probably going to elaborate, but at that point my computer froze, so I was left with the assumption that living in Miami just makes people cry.
On this survey, one option I can select is "I am not apart of any fraternities or sororities." I suspect the survey makers would want me to check that box, but they unfortunately don't know the difference between "apart of" and "a part of." I cannot in good conscience check a box that says I have joined every single fraternity/sorority in the world.
(Listening to Happy by Pharrell on the radio.)
Jacob: This song is basically "If You're Happy and You Know It."
Me: I hope all his songs this year are rewrites of kids' songs.
Jacob: Me too! I'm excited for the one about the meatball that runs away!
Jacob and I were joking today about getting tattoos and trying to come up with something ridiculous. He said he would get a rose with the word "Grace" underneath it, and it would be significant because my middle name is Rose and my first name means "grace." So I decided I could follow the same pattern for him and get a tattoo of Daniel Day-Lewis with the word "Deceiver" written underneath. My tattoo would probably take a lot more explaining than his would.
It's probably OK that we're not getting tattoos...
I was watching the pilot for Black Sails with my headphones on, while Jacob made up his own dialogue for it next to me. According to him, the two pirates on the screen were having this conversation:
"I hate you."
"What? You can't hate me. I'm nice."
"Oh. OK. You're right. I love you."
Now that is truly gripping emotional drama.
Me: This survey question is "Which breakfast food do you prefer?" My options are oatmeal, cereal, "smothies," with one O, or "eggs and toasts."
Jacob: I feel like I'm in a really sketchy bed and breakfast.
Me: (Watching Say Yes to the Dress) I don't think they can say, "This is the most important garment you're ever going to wear," because what if you're an astronaut?
Jacob: Then you'd better wear your wedding dress underneath your space suit, otherwise you DIE!
Oh, my. My grocery list on my phone was supposed to include "chicken helper fried rice," but between autocorrect kicking in and me not paying attention to what I was typing, it ended up saying "chicken fried hell." That does not sound like a delicious meal.
Jacob: What do we want for food?
Me: Well, let's see. We have pasta, pizza, milk, eggs, tortillas...
Jacob: We could make milk egg tortillas.
Me: Yes. Where you fashion tortillas into a little bowl, fill it with milk, and then crack an egg into it.
Jacob: It'll be delicious!
Me: No. No, it won't.
Jacob: Hey, YOU told me how to make it.
Me: That is why you shouldn't take cooking advice from me.
This survey asks, "Do you sleepwalk?" and the possibly answers are "Yes," "No," and "Undecided." I'm glad they included that last answer, because I haven't decided whether I sleepwalk yet. Maybe yes, maybe no. I'll make up my mind someday.
Yesterday, while Jacob was making waffles for dinner, Lumps somehow got involved and got flour all over her face without him knowing about it. At least we think it was flour. Maybe it was cocaine and Puppy has a drug problem we don't know about.
Jacob: What time is it?
Me: 10:03.
Jacob: Like five minutes ago, it was 10:98.
Me: 10:98?
Jacob: 9.
Me: 9:98?
Jacob: 10:98:9.
I still have no idea what time he thought it was.
Jacob is playing that game again where he tries to figure out a new name for me. I've been objecting them all on the basis that most of the new names he chooses for me aren't people's names at all, so he's trying to fix that by adding "Patrice" to the beginning or end of it so it's at least partially a name. So we get suggestions like "Patrice Lampshade" and "Governor's Tower Patrice." I'm still not agreeing to any of this.
This collection of Agatha Christie books I have for the Kindle was clearly transferred from page to screen digitally. Mostly it works, but every so often I get a sentence like this:
"Arm, imm?,, l," said Rhoda.
So, fun story. Yesterday, while sitting with Jacob and crying (it was a particularly difficult day, depressionwise), at one point I accidentally cried directly into his eyes. That is true marital bonding, right there.
I just took a quiz a friend posted on Facebook about "How single are you?" Apparently I am PRETTY DANG SINGLE, even with the being married thing. But that's mostly because the indicators were things like "You have eaten pizza in the past week," "You have eaten pizza in the past month," and "You have eaten pizza in the past year." What kind of terrible relationships are people in that prevent them from eating pizza?
(Jacob has just started watching Game of Thrones. I've only read the first book.)
Jacob: I hope Bran lives. I hope he gets robot legs.
Me: That would be the best way for the series to end.
Jacob: He disappears and is gone for like the entire series, and then just shows up at the end with cyborg legs yelling, "I'M THE KING!"
Me: And if anyone disagrees, he kicks their heads off.
If George R. R. Martin dies before he finishes writing the books, don't worry. We've got this covered.
My sister Bethany just sent me this message. I will never hear these songs the same way again.
The other day I was singing "Look down, look down, don't look them in the eye" work song. Bekah said that sometimes she wants to start singing these words to that tune: "The sun, has gone, to bed and so must I; so long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodbye." Which is in itself quite funny. But it's even better when you imagine the reverse of Gretl singing sweetly, "Look down, look down, don't look them in the ey-e! Look down, look down, you're here until you die-ie! Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye!"
The text I meant to send: "Yay for returning to a normal schedule!"
The text autocorrect sent: "Yay for returning to a birdman schedule!"
What sort of schedule does a birdman have? Perhaps more importantly, why do I even have the word "birdman" in my phone?
I had a dream last night that I was babysitting some random kids, but then Elvis Presley and Taylor Swift came over to the house and started letting them play with knives. I woke up VERY angry at both Elvis and Taylor, and I stayed angry for like 45 minutes before I fully woke up and realized it was probably a little unfair of me to be mad at them in real life.
Well, this piece of IMDb trivia for The Blind Side is written awkwardly:
"Just before Leigh Anne Tuohy enters the gymnasium before the volleyball game, she mentions Patrick Ramsey. In real life, Leigh Ann was an interior decorator for Patrick Ramsey, then a NFL quarterback for the Washington Redskins."
I had to read it about four times before I realized Leigh Ann didn't go from being an interior decorator to being an NFL quarterback.
(Watching S.H.I.E.L.D.)
Jacob: That guy's in other (something I can't understand) stuff.
Me: What? Other candy stuff?
Jacob: Kind of, but with an M and P.
Me: Ohhh, "campy" stuff.
Jacob: Nope. "Candymp."
The headline for a link posted at Reddit said "Two churches, Catholic and Episcopal, bless palms together." Before I realized they were talking about blessing of Palm Sunday palms, I thought it was going to be an article discussing how Catholic and Episcopal denominations always held their palms together when blessing people, like a "Namaste" kind of hand gesture.
Jacob was playing Bioshock while I was watching The Color Purple. Suddenly he pointed and said, "Look! A whale!" Turns out there was one in his game, but I was a little startled because I thought he was insensitively referring to the pregnant girl in my movie as a whale...
When I shower, I open up Pandora on my phone and set it on the counter so I can listen. Over the sound of running water, I can usually hear vocals but not background music. This means that sometimes I discover what I thought was a really awkward rap about finding cheap flights was actually an ad.
Six-year-old girl: Where do you live?
Me: Indiana.
Her: Oh. There's California where you live.
Me: Uh, no, we're pretty far from California.
Her: No, you just drive six miles an hour on the road, and there's the sign that says California.
So now you all know.
A distressing amount of the Letterboxd movie reviews for Ender's Game complained about it ripping off Harry Potter. Apparently 1) Harry Potter was the first series EVER to use the "he is the chosen one" trope and 2) it is possible to rip off a book 12 years before it is written. Who knew? I should get started on ripping off the big literary hit of 2026 so I can make a pile of money.
I was researching things to do in Lakewood, CO (for an article, I'm not going there any time soon) and came across a website that MOSTLY listed things to do in Lakewood... but then there was the occasional mention of national parks in Vermont. That seems like an unrealistic commute for a day trip.
Life pro tip: If you put your ear to your pillow when you wake up, you can hear voices! Note: This only works if your earbuds are still connected to your phone playing Internet radio and somehow end up under your pillow.
When "Everybody Hurts" and "I Will Always Love You" are right next to each other in an iTunes playlist, it's easy to accidentally mush their titles together and end up with a terrifying song called "I Will Always Hurt You."
I was watching The Switch and Jacob kept pointing at the screen and excitedly saying what I thought was, "Just go boom! It's a just go boom!" I had no idea what he was talking about until I paused the movie so I could actually hear him, and it turns out he was saying "Jeff Goldblum." But I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to call him "Just Go Boom" from now on."
Bethany texted me to ask if I wanted ice cream. Though my stomach is feeling a little better, I responded that I probably shouldn't tempt fate. Or, well, that's what I meant to respond. My phone thought I meant "I probably shouldn't robot date." Though that is true, I probably shouldn't do that either.
OK, guys, it's time to play "Guess Elizabeth's Catch Phrase clue." This is what she gave me: "Uh... like, whooooa! Whooooa! Also, I think it's an ice cream place?"
Good luck with this one.
(Exploring the grounds of a mansion.)
Bethany: I want to live in that house with the turrets.
Me: I want to live in...that boat over there.
Bethany: I want to live on that fence.
Me: I want to live in the clouds.
Bethany: I want to live in that tree.
Me: I want to live in that woman's hat.
This went on for much, much longer than you might think.
Playing Aaron Carter on the iPod. Bethany's observation: "He sounds like a cross between Nick Jonas and Piglet."
A few nights ago, JoJo asked us what we wanted to eat when we were at her house. I told her I wanted one egg, and if she tried to give me two eggs, I would walk out. So this morning, before we left, she gave me my egg. It's sitting in our cupholder.
Proofreading a biography of a psychic that I wrote for Textbroker, I discovered I'd written that "she says she receives her dreams in dreams." I meant she receives her visions in dreams. I receive my dreams in dreams, too.
I think with the next Call of Duty game, they need to think outside the box. It will be called (Phone) Call of Duty, and in it, you have all these phone calls you're obligated to make, like scheduling doctor's appointments and calling a plumber to fix the sink and returning a call from a friend who's having a really terrible day. I would play that game.
That Disney Princess Buzzfeed article claims, "Disney shot the entirety of Cinderella in live-action, using it as a guide for animation." Um, no. I just double checked on that dubious claim and it turns out Walt Disney did NOT try to shoot, for example, the scene where the mice sew the dress in live action. That would have been... unhelpful for the animators. Stop lying to me, Buzzfeed, and saying "the entirety" when you mean "the parts with humans."
My new favorite game: pretending that Facebook ads are actually synopses of new releases from a really, really crappy video game company. For example, these that are on my page right now:
"Say hello to your friends and family. Let AT&T keep you connected on the go."
"Watch HD movies and track your life down to the heartbeat."
"Earn your Master's degree in communication online!"
I don't even remember how this started, but Jacob and I somehow got into a discussion about what it would be like if no one could respect me or suspect me and whether that would be livable.
Me: I could walk into stores and walk out with all their merchandise and no one would suspect it was me. That'd be kind of awesome.
Jacob: But NOBODY would respect your personal space.
Me: No, that'd be okay, because I could like... forcibly shove them away if they tried to hug me, and they wouldn't get mad at me because they wouldn't suspect I did it!
Jacob (looking on ThinkGeek): They have a Star Wars lightsaber lava lamp! You can get a perfect Ebox!
Me: A... perfect Ebox?
Jacob: For fifty bucks.
Me: Yeah, but what's an Ebox?
Jacob: No, "for fifty bucks."
Me: OH! "You can get it for fifty bucks"?
Jacob: Yes!
Me: Ohhhh. I couldn't figure out what on earth an Ebox was. I thought maybe you were saying "Ewoks" wrong for some reason.
Guys, I picked up my phone and it was texting a message to Jacob all by itself. And when it was done typing, it sent. WHAT?
This, btw, was the message: "E TV, hmm Mcbride BBM c Zvezda NC m Xzibit McMahon VX5Z56HQ, c of Sri I for doggone"
I just took the "What Adventure Time character are you?" quiz on Zimbio, and it said I was Jake the Dog. It then went on to describe me as "adventurous," "fearless," and "a love guru full of smooth moves." This is possibly the most wrong a quiz has EVER been about me.
I was watching Drive Me Crazy for today's movie challenge assignment, and this dialogue happened: "I've read your yearbook. 'Onward through the fog! Light up and party! #befree!'"
Super confused about the use of "hashtag" in a movie from 1999 (referencing a yearbook quote from 1973), I did a bunch of research to find out when "hashtag" originated and if there was an older, similar usage.
After several minutes, I rewound the movie and discovered he wasn't saying, "Hashtag be free," he was saying, "Have sex, be free."
But at least now I know ALL about hashtags.
In last night's dream, my aunt and uncle (who looked nothing like any of my real life relatives) were hooked on a drug called "fierce flint" which made them really mean. So I took their 2-year-old daughter away from them and hid her in a dorm shower at HU, because apparently that is the safest hiding place for a toddler. Then I just took off and left her there for the college students to find.
Jacob is playing Skyrim. His character was low on health, so to fix it, he ate 15 sacks of flour. It seems to me that would make you sick, not heal you, but then this is why I am not a doctor in a video game.
I went to heat up some food and when I came back, Lumps was sitting on the couch where I had been sitting.
Me: Hey, Puppy! What are you doing on my space?
Jacob: What? Puppy's on MySpace? She is behind the times.
I think my question is still valid. What IS she doing on MySpace?
I decided today that it would be awesome (and super mean) if at the VERY VERY END of Skyrim, there was a necromancer boss who brought back to life all the people and animals you killed, and they all fought you at once. So you'd spend hundreds of hours in gameplay, defeating enemies and killing spiders, only to find out at the end that you have to start the entire game over because the only way to win is to kill as little as you possibly can.
It's probably a good thing that I don't design video games for a living. I would do things like this all the time, and I would be unsuccessful and widely hated.
Someone being interviewed about someone else: "He played that song for me on his guitar, and I'm not kidding, it literally takes you down this amazing river."
Um, nope. Nope, not literally. Although if I'm misjudging the speaker and it IS literally, that guy should probably warn people about that before he plays anything for them. They may not WANT to be taken down a river. I certainly don't.
Browsing Letterboxd reviews of the 1988 movie They Live, one person commented, "It will never win an Oscar." Hey, don't give up hope so quickly! Maybe it'll win "Best Movie From 27 Years Ago" at next year's ceremony!
Watching Top Chef. One of the chefs introduced his dish and ended by saying, "And a black olive aioli." But at first, I thought he said, "And that black olive I owe you." I wasn't sure when he had borrowed a single olive from one of the judges and why he decided to repay them by putting it in a sandwich.
Last night, I dreamed that my grandfather (who didn't resemble either one of my real life grandfathers) told my family that for his birthday, he wanted us all to go with him to a Jewel concert while wearing ten-gallon hats and cowboy boots. When I told him I had cowboy boots but they were too small, he gave me a $600 Visa gift card so I could go buy new ones.
Breana: So I was literally in the middle of trying to do stuff... (She stops and looks right at me.) And I literally was. Like, I was standing here, and there was stuff on either side of me and I was literally in the middle of it. I just wanted to make sure you knew that.
Had so much fun hanging out with her this evening. Not everyone is that thoughtful of using "literally" correctly around me.
I played Skyrim for the first time today. Jacob stretched out a little and I took the Xbox controller away from him. I ran through the woods, hopped away from wolves, and finally found his character's house. There, I gave one of his adopted daughters 1000 gold and told her to go to bed, and I woke the other one up from her sleep to give her a dagger. And then I was bored and let Jacob play again.
While driving home from lunch, Erika suddenly turns to me and says, "If you could drive from here to your place, how long do you think it would take?" I stared at her for a few seconds, trying to figure out if she was asking me to drive her car or whether she was just trying to get me to tell her how much time left we had on the road... then finally I realized she had said "Europe," not "your place." Which is a different question.
The subtitles went CRAZY on this episode of Top Chef. It introduced one of the chefs' dishes as "a strestreudeludel." Which is the only thing I will ever call it now.
Jacob: I think it's cool that Oculus Rift is going to be, like... an actual thing in people's homes soon. That's cool.
Me: OK, so I know what Oculus Rift is, and yes, that is cool, but my mind decided you meant "Optimus Prime."
I dreamed last night about this new fad diet where every time you wanted to eat, you thought about worms instead, and that would take away your appetite.
Today, Jenny Lawson responded and retweeted responses to The Blogger I Shall Not Name, who suggested that depressed people just need to find joy -- because apparently nobody depressed has ever tried to be more positive or anything. The series of ensuing snarky tweets pointed out all the other ways that happy attitudes can fix biological diseases.
My favorite contribution: "I once saw jazz hands heal a bleeding head wound."
Thank goodness for snarkiness lessening the awfulness of stupidity.
As I read Shakespeare, I mentally cast people who have similar names to the characters, to help me keep track of everyone. For example, Leonato in one of my earlier plays kinda sounds like Leonardo, so I imagine his character as Leonardo DiCaprio. This makes it much easier for me to remember who is who and how they're connected because I have a mental image of everyone.
However, this also leads to weird moments, like the scene I just read where the mental image became Vincent Price conversing with Rex the dinosaur from Toy Story...
Discovery of the day: If I inadvertently rattle the shower door, it sounds like the Jurassic Park T-rex coming to get me.
We put Lumps in the bathroom while we went to the zoo instead of setting up her kennel. We came back to find that she had unrolled several squares of toilet paper, shredded it up a bit... and then re-rolled it. *blink* I'm kind of impressed.
Jacob: You're cool.
Me: Thanks. (A second later) Though I don't think I can accept that compliment right now, while I'm trying to fold the tag on this pillow with my nose.
Jacob: Yeah, I said it before I saw you were doing that.
Jacob; I forgot that BitTorrent was doing a sci-fi series.
Me: What? Who's doing a sci-fi series?
Jacob: BitTorrent.
Me: I thought you said "Rick Warren." The guy who wrote "The Purpose-Driven Life." That would've been weird.
Reddit question: "Who's that one girl you just hate at a party?"
Comment #1: "The crier."
Comment #2: "Yeah, I hate when a girl walks into a party with a decree from the King and is all 'Hear ye hear ye!'"
Now I can only hope I get invited to all the parties because THAT is exactly what I'm going to do.
The most recent review of The Quest for Skye on Amazon reads simply, "I love story."
Saw this post while browsing my RSS feed: "TIL that about 90% of the world's LSD supply vanished overnight when the chemist who was making virtually all of the world's LSD, got caught. he was making it In a nuclear missile silo."
Got super confused until I realized I was reading LSD as LDS. That'll teach me to skim. I thought it was saying that almost all world's Mormons disappeared in a nuclear disaster at some point in history, and I had no idea how I'd never heard of that...
What I meant to text Jacob: "I love you and you're amazing and fantastic."
What I nearly texted him, thanks to autocorrect: "I love you and you're shaving a fanatic."
Sounds like a weird day at work...
Reddit posed a challenge to create a scary story in 5 words or less. A lot of them were pretty typical, but this was my favorite of the night:
"2% milk. 98% spiders."
(I couldn't find my phone. Meanwhile, Elizabeth is on her phone, which kind of looks like mine.)
Me: Is that my phone? Are you texting all my friends right now?
Elizabeth: Yes.
Me: What are you texting Lisa?
Elizabeth: "I like grapes."
This led into a discussion of what would happen if we texted everyone in our contact list "I like grapes," and who would be the most awkward person to text that to. So, uh, if any of you get a random text at some point that says "I like grapes," now you know why.
Just wrote in Textbroker: "The pH level of your soul impacts how well your grass will grow."
What's the pH level of YOUR soul?
Jacob: Britain declared war on Germany...
Me: Wait, what?! Why? That came out of nowhere!
Jacob: ...75 years ago today.
Me: Oh.
Apparently, teaching Puppy not to bark or whine has led to her offering a compromise: a weird hybrid noise that sounds mostly like a quack.
I've been graduated for two years and I'm STILL having HUTC dreams. This week, I dreamed that Jay added "June Bride" from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers into Singin' in the Rain, but that made the show run too long. To fix it, he decided that song, "Make 'Em Laugh," and "Singin' in the Rain" would all be performed simultaneously every night.
So... there's an AWESOME directing idea.
I like helping Jacob name his video game characters. His main one in this game is now called "€££æ". That is a fun one to try and pronounce.
For any of you men out there who have wanted to use Shakespearean compliments to woo a woman, this one from Troilus and Cressida is probably the best one I have ever found: "There is no lady of more softer bowels."
My new favorite hobby: coming up with terrible ideas for the next Star Wars movie. Ideas rejected by Jacob so far:
1) The movie starts off showing that the original series is all just Harrison Ford's dream, but when he wakes up he keeps seeing Star Wars stuff so maybe it WASN'T just a dream... dun dun dun!
2) A Planes, Trains and Automobiles reboot in space, where Chewbacca's just trying to get to his home planet for Life Day.
3) Luke becomes the new Emperor and turns evil. A young Jedi comes to defeat him and Luke reveals he is that young Jedi's father! Except it turns out to be a lie because he remembers how that reveal messed with his own emotions in the original movies, and he wants to throw the newbie off his game. But that's all in the second and third movies. The first movie is just all the other characters calling Luke on the phone and saying, "Don't be evil," to which he responds, "But I can make LIGHTNING now!"
I mean, *I'd* watch these...
Last night, at like 1:00, Jacob told me that "the people on the show" were "sitting in the closet." I sure hope he was sleep talking, because the idea that there were actually people in our closet is FAR too terrifying to consider.
This survey I just took asked, "If there was an Ebola outbreak in the U.S., how would you spend your time, knowing you may not have much left?" with options like "spend all your money" and "quit your job."
There wasn't an option for "stay calm and touch people even less than I usually do."
The Agatha Christie books I have on my Kindle are formatted weirdly, so occasionally we'll get pages that look like this:
"Nofret was wicked and Nofret was dead. Could she not leave it at that? Why this sudden stab of pity - of something
more
than
pity
-
something
that
was
almost
comprehension?"
It's like Agatha Christie stopped writing for a moment and Rob Bell took over.
Jacob: (About someone doing voiceover in his game) This is fake Christopher Lee. I should figure out who he is.
Me: His name is Christopher Lee, but Lee is spelled "Li" and "Christopher" is with a K.
Jacob: I would like it better if it was a Q.
I am totally naming one of my NaNo characters Qhristopher Li.
I just laughed QUITE loud and scared the dog. Why? Well, let me tell you.
I was looking up old NaNo novels, and I ended up getting really engrossed in my novel from 2009. It's a serious dramatic novel about a Christian teen at a music ministry camp, and I was actually feeling pretty proud of it. There were a lot of good thoughts and serious character development in there.
And then at about 16,000 words my brain apparently just gave up. In a scene describing a church service, the pastor gets up and solemnly delivers a sermon... that consists entirely of the lyrics to the song "Purpose" from Avenue Q, switched to second person. (Sample sentence: "Doo doo doo doo doo. I don't know how I know, but you're going to find your purpose.")
The chapter ends with this paragraph:
"As he got down from the pulpit and went to sit in his seat again and the worship leader got up to do his songs, I couldn't help but feel that the sermon was less than inspiring."
That is an entirely accurate assessment.
I just tried to type "Shakespeare" as "Spakeshan."
WHAT HAPPENED TO MY BRAIN
Weird dream of the day: I dreamed that I was hanging out at a food bank, and Jason Borton came in and started pulling ALL the food off of the shelves and shoving it in paper bags. Then I heard him muttering to himself, "Maybe if I give all this food to the children's hospital, people will finally believe that I have feelings!"
...Um, OK.
(Tomorrow Jacob and I are going to go see a show in Chicago.)
Me: So we've got balcony seats.
Jacob: Like fourth-floor balcony?
Me: The balcony of the next building, actually.
Jacob: And we'll watch the show with telescopes and a radio.
Me: This is how I watch all my plays.
Jacob: That's why I'D like to pick our seats sometime.
My new favorite ridiculous hobby: standing near my husband and the dog while they are both asleep and making huge dramatic flailing arm movements that they would certainly react to if they were awake. This cracks me up today and I am not entirely sure why.
Awkwardly-placed line breaks sometimes complicate things. I was reading an introversion subreddit post and saw this:
Post: "I'm also going to bed and waking up at very different hours to other housemates, making it difficult to get high"
Me: "Well, that's a confusing complaint."
Post continues when I scroll down: "quality sleep sometimes."
Me: "Oh."
Today, Netflix suggested a series of movies in a new category: "Watched by Gob Bluth." It included movies about puppets, fathers and sons, and breaking out of prison. I have no idea when they put that together, but WIN.
(Jacob and I are watching The Music Man and talking about how poor lisping Winthrop is so sad at the beginning of this movie.)
Jacob: He's got a crazy name.
Me: That's probably why he's sad.
Jacob: Because his name is actually "Winsrop"?
Me: YES!
Jacob: And NOBODY KNOWS!
Sometimes it's hard to tell whether that noise outside your door is a) the wind or b) EVERY MURDERER.
My NaNo main character is being threatened by an angry mob, and I wrote this sentence: "For the first time in ages, I was afraid that I was going to get physically hurt."
That's a dumb sentence anyway, but apparently my character completely forgot that someone tried to murder her yesterday.
What I meant to say about our Thanksgiving meal: "The stuffing was my request."
What I typed at first: "The stuffing was my retreat."
Yes, with stuffing I can hide myself away from the cares and burdens of life.
Sometimes I get bored of writing my NaNo and decide to sing Jesus Christ Superstar in the middle of a sentence:
"I was a little startled to see this breakdown. Erik had always been so calm, so cool, no lover’s fool, running every show. He scared me so."
Jacob does not wear my favorite color just so he can match my eyes or plan a private picnic by the fire's glow. According to Giselle from Enchanted, I should probably doubt his love. I'm going to ignore that advice.
Jacob: The next Friday the 13th will be the thirteenth. Next year.
Me: ...The thirteenth?
Jacob: The thirteenth Friday the 13th.
Me: Since when?
Jacob: Since the beginning.
Me: (Has no idea what he's talking about because none of this makes sense)
Jacob: (Suddenly realizing) Oh! The next Friday the 13th MOVIE will be the thirteenth.
That was a very confusing conversation.
This Textbroker article I'm writing is a slow cooker recipe, with 250 words devoted to "an overview of the dish" and 250 words devoted to the recipe itself. That is a LOT of words to basically say "Put all this stuff in a slow cooker, cook it for 8 hours, the end."
Sleeping Jacob: I don't know WHERE Puppy is now. I mean... is she a dog?
Me: Yes, she is a dog.
Jacob: But don't you remember? Last night, she was made of rice.
Me: Um... no, she's not made of rice.
Jacob: You remember, don't you?
Me: I don't remember that, no.
Jacob: Huh.
He and I have been on completely different sleep schedules, so it's been quite awhile since I've had a conversation with him while he was sleeping. I've missed it :-) Yay Christmas break!
Just read a bizarre comment claiming that it wasn't possible to see only 10 movies released in 2014 unless you're not into movies.
It was vaguely reminiscent of the guy who told me I wasn't a real movie buff because I hadn't seen Taken.
People have weirdly specific standards sometimes. I should make up some of my own and start holding other people to it. But it'll be more fun if none of it is connected at all. "If you don't watch a musical featuring a song starting with 'R' every 3.5 weeks, you're not REALLY an animal lover." So this is the standard now. I'm watching you, people who claim to love animals.
My friend Travis is going to see The Interview tonight, so I told him to try not to die from terrorism. A little while later, this exchange happened and I couldn't resist:
Me: I am seeing Into the Woods next week.
Travis: Try not to die from whatever threatens musical fans.
Me: That would be Russell Crowe.
My sister Bethany asked everyone in the family to make up some new Scattergories subjects for us to print out and play together, just for fun, so Jacob and I have been texting her ideas throughout the week... although the ones we sent her today might have gotten a little silly:
"Types of dances, shades of yellow, things that are yellow, types of pipes, kinds of rinds, sorts of courts, stuff that's rough, things he sings, takes on lakes, things like rings, ways to haze, places for laces, parts of hearts, those with toes, uses for juices, sights with lights, sounds of hounds, rites for knights, plights for rights, towns with clowns, rhymes with limes, books for cooks, foods for dudes, looks for crooks."
And that is how we spent an hour and a half of our afternoon.
My favorite part of last night's round of Scattegories-with-categories-we-made-up. The topic was "things at a birthday party," the letter was F.
Elizabeth: I wanted to put "furry balloons, but that's stupid. And then I could only think of "furry cake, furry food..."
Kevin: Why not just "food"?
Elizabeth: ...Oh, yeah.
Jacob: I love you!
Me: I love you too!
Jacob: Crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap!
Kind of a startling response until I realized he was talking to his computer game.
I tried to end a text message with, "Just so you know," but my phone changed it to read, "Just so high now." Um. No, phone. That is not what is going on here.
At like 3 this morning, while I was trying to fall asleep, Jacob started rubbing my back, which was quite nice and relaxing. But when I rolled over to face him, I discovered he was sleeping. So either he has learned how to rub my back in his sleep (which I can totally live with) or we have a massaging ghost. Which I can also totally live with.
(We got our bill at the restaurant but were still eating dessert.)
Me: So we'll pay for this later. Although not like... tomorrow.
Jacob: I'll pay for you tomorrow.
Me: Good, because Mom and Dad have been wondering when you were going to pay for me. They've been waiting for like six months. They could have gotten a new furnace a long time ago.
Jacob: (Looking at me with disdain) You think you're worth a furnace?
Me: (Looking sadly down at my lap) I guess not...
Jacob: Aww! No! You are worth TEN furnodes!
That was almost the saddest half-anniversary dinner ever.
So I'm reading The Arabian Nights. These are some CRAZY stories. The first story within a story is about a guy who can understand animals but if he tells anyone else what they say, people will die. One day he laughs at something he hears an animal say and his wife demands he tell her what it was, and she gets to the point where she says she'd rather die than not know why he was laughing. The guy is freaking out, apparently thinking he's just going to have to give in and tell her even though she will probably die, until he overhears his animals saying, "Duh, he should just beat her until she agrees not to ask anymore." So he does, she agrees, and everyone lives happy ever after.
*blink*
This is going to be...an interesting ride.
QI is a fantastic show. I learn such random stuff. My favorite fact of the day: Henry the Young King was crowned King of France and died while his father, Henry II, was still alive, so he doesn't get a numerical king number, and there is a story of how he got in trouble with his father when was 17 because instead of going home to his father's castle for Christmas, he threw a feast of his own where he only invited knights named William. Maybe that'll be *my* plan next Christmas.
I dreamed last night that I signed onto Facebook and got this message from the site:
"We have polled your Facebook friends and thought you should know the results.
1. 90% of your friends think your name is a silly teenage name.
2. 200 of your friends think that if you put on a little lipstick, you would then have the body of a Greek goddess."
I'm so sorry to my friends who are disappointed by my name. I don't know how to fix that exactly, because I'm not sure what makes a name not a "silly teenage name." And, uh, as to the second one, I can only assume they mean I should use the lipstick to draw a Greek goddess onto my own body. This will fool nobody, but I guess I would technically then *have* that body I drew...
The Arabian Nights has now had two separate stories about newlyweds whose siblings were jealous of their marriage and threw them overboard when they all went sailing together. Looks like it's a good thing I've been turning down all those free cruises my siblings keep offering. It's probably the only reason Jacob and I are still alive today.
Re: Martin Freeman's mustache in the new Sherlock episode:
Me: I seldom like mustaches without an accompanying beard. They just make you look like a villain. I mean, look at him. He's clearly going to commit a crime.
Jacob: I don't know. I think he's maybe going to become a plumber.
Some people stress eat... Turns out I anger eat. I was going to make just one peanut butter sandwich for dinner, but after Puppy got into the trash and threw chicken bones all over the kitchen floor, I was like, "NOPE, I NEED THREE SANDWICHES NOW."
Arabian Nights update for you all: I finished the section on Sinbad's voyages. On one of them, he gets stuck on an island with an old man who climbs on his shoulders, wraps his legs around his neck, and refuses to let go. For days. He kicks and strangles Sinbad to make him walk around and pick fruit for him. In the end, the only way Sinbad gets him to let go is by getting him drunk so his legs relax and he falls off.
These stories are wacky.
As I'm trying to sleep last night:
Jacob: OH MY GOSH! OH MY GOSH!
Me: Hon, whatever it is, you're dreaming it.
Jacob: I see it! It's a giant spider!
Me: Nope. It's not real. It's a dream.
Jacob: Nooo...
Me: I promise it is. You're dreaming.
Jacob: Really?
Me: Yes. It's OK.
Jacob: Weird.
(A minute later)
Jacob (still at least mostly asleep): There's no giant spider in our room.
Me: You're right. There's not. It was a dream.
Jacob: You're trying to kill me, I know it.
DANG IT, he caught on to what I thought was a foolproof murder plan - to scare him to death in his sleep by making him dream about giant spiders!
Once, while playing Family Feud on Facebook, I was asked to name something that would ruin a honeymoon. If I was the author of The Arabian Nights, I might have answered, "Wife cut my thumbs off because at the wedding I ate something with garlic in it and didn't wash my hands well enough afterward." Though that probably wouldn't make the top 100 most popular answers.
Me: So I have $40 I can spend on Amazon. I'll probably buy that game I want, and then hold on to the rest of it until I want something new. (Being goofy) And then I'll hold onto the game until I want something new.
Jacob: I'll hold onto YOU!
Me: Until you want something new?
Jacob: Yes. OH NO. WAIT. I didn't pay attention to what you said. I love you!
The little news blurb headline on the side of my Facebook says, "Drake Killed on Saturday Night Live Last Night." I went, "Wait, WHAT?" but thanks to Google, I discovered they were trying to slangily say he did a good job. Turns out nobody murdered Drake on live TV. This is how rumors get started, people.
Me: There are a lot of young contestants on Idol this year.
Jacob: Like 12-year-olds?
Me: Well, you have to be 15 to audition.
Jacob: 15 12-year-olds?
Me: Yes. Because you can audition if you're 12, but only in groups of 15.
First Phil was a background actor on the show Nashville, and now I discover Jonathan is as well. Clearly I should not have stopped watching this show after two episodes, because at the rate this is going, by season five, every crowd scene will consist entirely of people I know milling about in the background.
Some helpful life tips I have picked up from The Arabian Nights:
1) Looking for a fun prank to play on your friends? Drug them, put them in the king's palace, and convince them they are king. Then drug them again, put them back in their normal lives, and watch and laugh as they literally go insane and have to be put in a mental institution. It's fun!
2) If you need some extra money, just tell your spouse's friends and family they're dead, and they'll give you money for the funeral. Then have the spouse do the same to your friends and family. Voila! Free cash!
My new all-time favorite Jesus juke, courtesy of my sister Rebekah: "If you shovel someone’s sidewalk and they say 'thank you, that really blessed me,' you should say, 'I can shovel your sidewalk, but only God can shovel your heart!'"
THAT is how you do evangelism. Right?
The word I had to teach my phone today: "non-pooping."
Is someone you know not eating very much at mealtimes? According to The Arabian Nights, that could be because they are sneaking out to graveyards at night and eating corpses with a ghoul. Be careful confronting them about this, though. They may get angry and turn you into a dog.
Puppy's white plastic bone is the same color as she is, so for a moment, when I saw her chewing on it at a weird angle, I thought her leg had fallen off and she was eating it. ZOMBIE CANNIBAL PUPPY
I have just learned that sugar stops concrete from setting. My first thought after I learned this: "If I were a supervillain, I would run around pouring sugar on construction sites and then laugh evilly as I ran away and nothing new would EVER BE BUILT." I can only hope this is the premise of the Batman vs. Superman movie.
I was attempting to text a melancholy friend some encouragement and advice. What was meant to be, "I give you permission to stay in tonight and watch a silly movie" nearly turned into "I give you permission to stay in tonight and watch a adult movie." That is NOT the advice I meant to send. My phone's autocorrect is not so wholesome sometimes.
Arabian Nights' lesson about awful siblings for the day: Don't let your sisters help deliver your children, because they might hide them in the river and instead present your husband with a dog, a cat, and a piece of wood and pretend you gave birth to those instead. Your husband will then be SO MAD that you keep giving birth to non-humans that he will put you in a cage in the temple and tell all the people to spit on you when they go do their prayers. (If they don't, he'll put THEM in a cage in the temple too and have people spit on THEM.)
So, that Once Upon a Time character quiz... the description for Charming ends with "You literally charm the pants off everyone you meet." Jacob and I debated whether this means he is a sleaze trying to seduce everyone or just kind of a goofy prankster who uses magic to vanish people's pants away and just giggles about it. Either way, I don't remember ANY of that on the show.
I'm only about 1/5 away from finishing The Arabian Nights. Here's the latest lesson it has taught me: Be careful when rejecting people. If someone gives you a love letter, do not beat them up. If you do, they might trick you into marrying someone hideously ugly and then you will be sad.
My proposed plot for the Batman vs. Superman movie: Superman decides HE wants to be Batman, finds the lair, sneaks in, steals a batsuit, and declares himself to be Batman now. If that's not exciting enough, Lex Luthor and Alfred could both decide the same thing, and the final scene would have four people in batsuits running around all yelling, "I'M BATMAN!"
Jacob: I'm tired today.
Me: It makes sense that you're tired. You didn't sleep very much.
This somehow activated voice command on our Xbox, which then searched Bing for "retired sleep very much" and found 24 related videos.
I have finally finished the strange, strange series of tales that is The Arabian Nights. Its final bit of wisdom: Beware new restaurants, because sometimes you sit down and the floor gives way and you fall into a dungeon where a guy tries to kill you with a scimitar so the restaurant owner can essentially steal your wallet.
My last series of candy hearts:
"Get Real
LOL
Get Real"
Wow. That is a definite rejection.
Dreams are funny things. I just woke up from one with this vague sense of terror but I'm pretty sure I was dreaming about an uneaten sub sandwich sitting in our kitchen cabinet, which is kinda gross but not really all that scary. Weird.
Last night:
Jacob: Ahhh! The nrghrbrgh is on top of us!
Me: Wait, what's on top of us?
Jacob: The naked horse is on top of us!
Me: Nope. There's no naked horse on top of us.
Jacob: (Confused) Well, where else would it be?
Writing an article about sensorineural hearing loss (cochlea damage). The problem is, I keep writing it "sensoriurinal." I can only assume that's when you lose your hearing because somebody punches you in the ear while at a urinal.
Awkward Textbroker typo of the day: "Varicose veins are caused by blood pooing in the veins."
This survey I was taking talked about a chore chart that suggested kids 2-4 years old vacuuming. Hmm. While vacuuming isn't a HARD chore, it's a heck of a lot more complicated when you are shorter than the vacuum cleaner.
Jacob: What if I change your name to "Pludlonica"?
(This is a game he occasionally plays, where he offers to change my name to something new. Usually something terrible.)
Me: ..."Pludlonica"? No.
Jacob: But WHY?
Me: Because it starts with "Plud." That's an awful syllable.
Jacob: How about "Shmudlonica"?
Me: No. I don't like that "ud" sound in general.
Jacob: How about "Shmludlonica"?
Me: That still has the "ud" sound!
Jacob: Yes, but it starts with "Shml," which is beautiful.
Yesterday, Lumps pooped on our kitchen floor in the shape of a pepper. Today, it was in the shape of an L. I can only assume she is in the process of sending us a message, and I suspect that message is "Peppers, LOL." Because she probably thinks peppers are hilarious.
TV show narrator: Her wedding is a defining moment in the relationship...
My thoughts: Well, DUH. A wedding is OBVIOUSLY a defining moment in a relationship. If it's not, why are they even getting married? That was a stupid thing to say.
TV show narrator: ...between her and her twin sister.
My thoughts: Oh. Never mind.
What I wanted to text, referring to a FB message Mom sent me: "I saw it but I only looked at it briefly."
What autocorrect wanted to text: "I saw it but I only looked at Imbruglia."
Autocorrect is smart. It knows I ignore most Facebook messages and just look at pictures of Natalie Imbruglia instead.
I had just stopped reading and was settling down to go to sleep when Jacob mumbled something about cakes. I asked him what about cakes? He responded, "None of them are in the present OR the past!" So cakes are only in the future. Just so you all know. I gotta admit, a future full of cakes sounds pretty good to me...
Today, Lumps is sulking because I won't let her sit on my head. I feel, however, that this is a completely reasonable boundary to set with both humans and animals.
So I was sitting on the living room couch and Jacob came in from the kitchen where he was cooking. He was going to be all sweet and give me a kiss, but RIGHT as he got to the couch he tripped and stubbed his toe, which led to him essentially lunging toward my face with a terrible grimace. It was fairly startling.
(Jacob is playing Animal Crossing on the 3DS while I watch.)
Me: You didn't pick up that shell!
Jacob: It's not worth anything.
Me: Not even like... one bell?
Jacob: Well, it's worth a bell, but I'm not doing that 98,000 times until I can afford a new house.
Me: I would!
Jacob: And that's why you would be the only person in the world to lose Animal Crossing.
Catching up on the last couple weeks of American Idol. One contestant walks in the room to find out his fate, and he's crying before he even sits down. Jennifer Lopez asks him why he's crying, and he says, "So many reasons! I'm from Miami!" He was probably going to elaborate, but at that point my computer froze, so I was left with the assumption that living in Miami just makes people cry.
On this survey, one option I can select is "I am not apart of any fraternities or sororities." I suspect the survey makers would want me to check that box, but they unfortunately don't know the difference between "apart of" and "a part of." I cannot in good conscience check a box that says I have joined every single fraternity/sorority in the world.
(Listening to Happy by Pharrell on the radio.)
Jacob: This song is basically "If You're Happy and You Know It."
Me: I hope all his songs this year are rewrites of kids' songs.
Jacob: Me too! I'm excited for the one about the meatball that runs away!
Jacob and I were joking today about getting tattoos and trying to come up with something ridiculous. He said he would get a rose with the word "Grace" underneath it, and it would be significant because my middle name is Rose and my first name means "grace." So I decided I could follow the same pattern for him and get a tattoo of Daniel Day-Lewis with the word "Deceiver" written underneath. My tattoo would probably take a lot more explaining than his would.
It's probably OK that we're not getting tattoos...
I was watching the pilot for Black Sails with my headphones on, while Jacob made up his own dialogue for it next to me. According to him, the two pirates on the screen were having this conversation:
"I hate you."
"What? You can't hate me. I'm nice."
"Oh. OK. You're right. I love you."
Now that is truly gripping emotional drama.
Me: This survey question is "Which breakfast food do you prefer?" My options are oatmeal, cereal, "smothies," with one O, or "eggs and toasts."
Jacob: I feel like I'm in a really sketchy bed and breakfast.
Me: (Watching Say Yes to the Dress) I don't think they can say, "This is the most important garment you're ever going to wear," because what if you're an astronaut?
Jacob: Then you'd better wear your wedding dress underneath your space suit, otherwise you DIE!
Oh, my. My grocery list on my phone was supposed to include "chicken helper fried rice," but between autocorrect kicking in and me not paying attention to what I was typing, it ended up saying "chicken fried hell." That does not sound like a delicious meal.
Jacob: What do we want for food?
Me: Well, let's see. We have pasta, pizza, milk, eggs, tortillas...
Jacob: We could make milk egg tortillas.
Me: Yes. Where you fashion tortillas into a little bowl, fill it with milk, and then crack an egg into it.
Jacob: It'll be delicious!
Me: No. No, it won't.
Jacob: Hey, YOU told me how to make it.
Me: That is why you shouldn't take cooking advice from me.
This survey asks, "Do you sleepwalk?" and the possibly answers are "Yes," "No," and "Undecided." I'm glad they included that last answer, because I haven't decided whether I sleepwalk yet. Maybe yes, maybe no. I'll make up my mind someday.
Yesterday, while Jacob was making waffles for dinner, Lumps somehow got involved and got flour all over her face without him knowing about it. At least we think it was flour. Maybe it was cocaine and Puppy has a drug problem we don't know about.
Jacob: What time is it?
Me: 10:03.
Jacob: Like five minutes ago, it was 10:98.
Me: 10:98?
Jacob: 9.
Me: 9:98?
Jacob: 10:98:9.
I still have no idea what time he thought it was.
Jacob is playing that game again where he tries to figure out a new name for me. I've been objecting them all on the basis that most of the new names he chooses for me aren't people's names at all, so he's trying to fix that by adding "Patrice" to the beginning or end of it so it's at least partially a name. So we get suggestions like "Patrice Lampshade" and "Governor's Tower Patrice." I'm still not agreeing to any of this.
This collection of Agatha Christie books I have for the Kindle was clearly transferred from page to screen digitally. Mostly it works, but every so often I get a sentence like this:
"Arm, imm?,, l," said Rhoda.
So, fun story. Yesterday, while sitting with Jacob and crying (it was a particularly difficult day, depressionwise), at one point I accidentally cried directly into his eyes. That is true marital bonding, right there.
I just took a quiz a friend posted on Facebook about "How single are you?" Apparently I am PRETTY DANG SINGLE, even with the being married thing. But that's mostly because the indicators were things like "You have eaten pizza in the past week," "You have eaten pizza in the past month," and "You have eaten pizza in the past year." What kind of terrible relationships are people in that prevent them from eating pizza?
(Jacob has just started watching Game of Thrones. I've only read the first book.)
Jacob: I hope Bran lives. I hope he gets robot legs.
Me: That would be the best way for the series to end.
Jacob: He disappears and is gone for like the entire series, and then just shows up at the end with cyborg legs yelling, "I'M THE KING!"
Me: And if anyone disagrees, he kicks their heads off.
If George R. R. Martin dies before he finishes writing the books, don't worry. We've got this covered.
My sister Bethany just sent me this message. I will never hear these songs the same way again.
The other day I was singing "Look down, look down, don't look them in the eye" work song. Bekah said that sometimes she wants to start singing these words to that tune: "The sun, has gone, to bed and so must I; so long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodbye." Which is in itself quite funny. But it's even better when you imagine the reverse of Gretl singing sweetly, "Look down, look down, don't look them in the ey-e! Look down, look down, you're here until you die-ie! Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye!"
The text I meant to send: "Yay for returning to a normal schedule!"
The text autocorrect sent: "Yay for returning to a birdman schedule!"
What sort of schedule does a birdman have? Perhaps more importantly, why do I even have the word "birdman" in my phone?
I had a dream last night that I was babysitting some random kids, but then Elvis Presley and Taylor Swift came over to the house and started letting them play with knives. I woke up VERY angry at both Elvis and Taylor, and I stayed angry for like 45 minutes before I fully woke up and realized it was probably a little unfair of me to be mad at them in real life.
Well, this piece of IMDb trivia for The Blind Side is written awkwardly:
"Just before Leigh Anne Tuohy enters the gymnasium before the volleyball game, she mentions Patrick Ramsey. In real life, Leigh Ann was an interior decorator for Patrick Ramsey, then a NFL quarterback for the Washington Redskins."
I had to read it about four times before I realized Leigh Ann didn't go from being an interior decorator to being an NFL quarterback.
(Watching S.H.I.E.L.D.)
Jacob: That guy's in other (something I can't understand) stuff.
Me: What? Other candy stuff?
Jacob: Kind of, but with an M and P.
Me: Ohhh, "campy" stuff.
Jacob: Nope. "Candymp."
The headline for a link posted at Reddit said "Two churches, Catholic and Episcopal, bless palms together." Before I realized they were talking about blessing of Palm Sunday palms, I thought it was going to be an article discussing how Catholic and Episcopal denominations always held their palms together when blessing people, like a "Namaste" kind of hand gesture.
Jacob was playing Bioshock while I was watching The Color Purple. Suddenly he pointed and said, "Look! A whale!" Turns out there was one in his game, but I was a little startled because I thought he was insensitively referring to the pregnant girl in my movie as a whale...
When I shower, I open up Pandora on my phone and set it on the counter so I can listen. Over the sound of running water, I can usually hear vocals but not background music. This means that sometimes I discover what I thought was a really awkward rap about finding cheap flights was actually an ad.
Six-year-old girl: Where do you live?
Me: Indiana.
Her: Oh. There's California where you live.
Me: Uh, no, we're pretty far from California.
Her: No, you just drive six miles an hour on the road, and there's the sign that says California.
So now you all know.
A distressing amount of the Letterboxd movie reviews for Ender's Game complained about it ripping off Harry Potter. Apparently 1) Harry Potter was the first series EVER to use the "he is the chosen one" trope and 2) it is possible to rip off a book 12 years before it is written. Who knew? I should get started on ripping off the big literary hit of 2026 so I can make a pile of money.
I was researching things to do in Lakewood, CO (for an article, I'm not going there any time soon) and came across a website that MOSTLY listed things to do in Lakewood... but then there was the occasional mention of national parks in Vermont. That seems like an unrealistic commute for a day trip.
Life pro tip: If you put your ear to your pillow when you wake up, you can hear voices! Note: This only works if your earbuds are still connected to your phone playing Internet radio and somehow end up under your pillow.
When "Everybody Hurts" and "I Will Always Love You" are right next to each other in an iTunes playlist, it's easy to accidentally mush their titles together and end up with a terrifying song called "I Will Always Hurt You."
I was watching The Switch and Jacob kept pointing at the screen and excitedly saying what I thought was, "Just go boom! It's a just go boom!" I had no idea what he was talking about until I paused the movie so I could actually hear him, and it turns out he was saying "Jeff Goldblum." But I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to call him "Just Go Boom" from now on."
Bethany texted me to ask if I wanted ice cream. Though my stomach is feeling a little better, I responded that I probably shouldn't tempt fate. Or, well, that's what I meant to respond. My phone thought I meant "I probably shouldn't robot date." Though that is true, I probably shouldn't do that either.
OK, guys, it's time to play "Guess Elizabeth's Catch Phrase clue." This is what she gave me: "Uh... like, whooooa! Whooooa! Also, I think it's an ice cream place?"
Good luck with this one.
(Exploring the grounds of a mansion.)
Bethany: I want to live in that house with the turrets.
Me: I want to live in...that boat over there.
Bethany: I want to live on that fence.
Me: I want to live in the clouds.
Bethany: I want to live in that tree.
Me: I want to live in that woman's hat.
This went on for much, much longer than you might think.
Playing Aaron Carter on the iPod. Bethany's observation: "He sounds like a cross between Nick Jonas and Piglet."
A few nights ago, JoJo asked us what we wanted to eat when we were at her house. I told her I wanted one egg, and if she tried to give me two eggs, I would walk out. So this morning, before we left, she gave me my egg. It's sitting in our cupholder.
Proofreading a biography of a psychic that I wrote for Textbroker, I discovered I'd written that "she says she receives her dreams in dreams." I meant she receives her visions in dreams. I receive my dreams in dreams, too.
I think with the next Call of Duty game, they need to think outside the box. It will be called (Phone) Call of Duty, and in it, you have all these phone calls you're obligated to make, like scheduling doctor's appointments and calling a plumber to fix the sink and returning a call from a friend who's having a really terrible day. I would play that game.
That Disney Princess Buzzfeed article claims, "Disney shot the entirety of Cinderella in live-action, using it as a guide for animation." Um, no. I just double checked on that dubious claim and it turns out Walt Disney did NOT try to shoot, for example, the scene where the mice sew the dress in live action. That would have been... unhelpful for the animators. Stop lying to me, Buzzfeed, and saying "the entirety" when you mean "the parts with humans."
My new favorite game: pretending that Facebook ads are actually synopses of new releases from a really, really crappy video game company. For example, these that are on my page right now:
"Say hello to your friends and family. Let AT&T keep you connected on the go."
"Watch HD movies and track your life down to the heartbeat."
"Earn your Master's degree in communication online!"
I don't even remember how this started, but Jacob and I somehow got into a discussion about what it would be like if no one could respect me or suspect me and whether that would be livable.
Me: I could walk into stores and walk out with all their merchandise and no one would suspect it was me. That'd be kind of awesome.
Jacob: But NOBODY would respect your personal space.
Me: No, that'd be okay, because I could like... forcibly shove them away if they tried to hug me, and they wouldn't get mad at me because they wouldn't suspect I did it!
Jacob (looking on ThinkGeek): They have a Star Wars lightsaber lava lamp! You can get a perfect Ebox!
Me: A... perfect Ebox?
Jacob: For fifty bucks.
Me: Yeah, but what's an Ebox?
Jacob: No, "for fifty bucks."
Me: OH! "You can get it for fifty bucks"?
Jacob: Yes!
Me: Ohhhh. I couldn't figure out what on earth an Ebox was. I thought maybe you were saying "Ewoks" wrong for some reason.
Guys, I picked up my phone and it was texting a message to Jacob all by itself. And when it was done typing, it sent. WHAT?
This, btw, was the message: "E TV, hmm Mcbride BBM c Zvezda NC m Xzibit McMahon VX5Z56HQ, c of Sri I for doggone"
I just took the "What Adventure Time character are you?" quiz on Zimbio, and it said I was Jake the Dog. It then went on to describe me as "adventurous," "fearless," and "a love guru full of smooth moves." This is possibly the most wrong a quiz has EVER been about me.
I was watching Drive Me Crazy for today's movie challenge assignment, and this dialogue happened: "I've read your yearbook. 'Onward through the fog! Light up and party! #befree!'"
Super confused about the use of "hashtag" in a movie from 1999 (referencing a yearbook quote from 1973), I did a bunch of research to find out when "hashtag" originated and if there was an older, similar usage.
After several minutes, I rewound the movie and discovered he wasn't saying, "Hashtag be free," he was saying, "Have sex, be free."
But at least now I know ALL about hashtags.
In last night's dream, my aunt and uncle (who looked nothing like any of my real life relatives) were hooked on a drug called "fierce flint" which made them really mean. So I took their 2-year-old daughter away from them and hid her in a dorm shower at HU, because apparently that is the safest hiding place for a toddler. Then I just took off and left her there for the college students to find.
Jacob is playing Skyrim. His character was low on health, so to fix it, he ate 15 sacks of flour. It seems to me that would make you sick, not heal you, but then this is why I am not a doctor in a video game.
I went to heat up some food and when I came back, Lumps was sitting on the couch where I had been sitting.
Me: Hey, Puppy! What are you doing on my space?
Jacob: What? Puppy's on MySpace? She is behind the times.
I think my question is still valid. What IS she doing on MySpace?
I decided today that it would be awesome (and super mean) if at the VERY VERY END of Skyrim, there was a necromancer boss who brought back to life all the people and animals you killed, and they all fought you at once. So you'd spend hundreds of hours in gameplay, defeating enemies and killing spiders, only to find out at the end that you have to start the entire game over because the only way to win is to kill as little as you possibly can.
It's probably a good thing that I don't design video games for a living. I would do things like this all the time, and I would be unsuccessful and widely hated.
Someone being interviewed about someone else: "He played that song for me on his guitar, and I'm not kidding, it literally takes you down this amazing river."
Um, nope. Nope, not literally. Although if I'm misjudging the speaker and it IS literally, that guy should probably warn people about that before he plays anything for them. They may not WANT to be taken down a river. I certainly don't.
Browsing Letterboxd reviews of the 1988 movie They Live, one person commented, "It will never win an Oscar." Hey, don't give up hope so quickly! Maybe it'll win "Best Movie From 27 Years Ago" at next year's ceremony!
Watching Top Chef. One of the chefs introduced his dish and ended by saying, "And a black olive aioli." But at first, I thought he said, "And that black olive I owe you." I wasn't sure when he had borrowed a single olive from one of the judges and why he decided to repay them by putting it in a sandwich.
Last night, I dreamed that my grandfather (who didn't resemble either one of my real life grandfathers) told my family that for his birthday, he wanted us all to go with him to a Jewel concert while wearing ten-gallon hats and cowboy boots. When I told him I had cowboy boots but they were too small, he gave me a $600 Visa gift card so I could go buy new ones.
Breana: So I was literally in the middle of trying to do stuff... (She stops and looks right at me.) And I literally was. Like, I was standing here, and there was stuff on either side of me and I was literally in the middle of it. I just wanted to make sure you knew that.
Had so much fun hanging out with her this evening. Not everyone is that thoughtful of using "literally" correctly around me.
I played Skyrim for the first time today. Jacob stretched out a little and I took the Xbox controller away from him. I ran through the woods, hopped away from wolves, and finally found his character's house. There, I gave one of his adopted daughters 1000 gold and told her to go to bed, and I woke the other one up from her sleep to give her a dagger. And then I was bored and let Jacob play again.
While driving home from lunch, Erika suddenly turns to me and says, "If you could drive from here to your place, how long do you think it would take?" I stared at her for a few seconds, trying to figure out if she was asking me to drive her car or whether she was just trying to get me to tell her how much time left we had on the road... then finally I realized she had said "Europe," not "your place." Which is a different question.
The subtitles went CRAZY on this episode of Top Chef. It introduced one of the chefs' dishes as "a strestreudeludel." Which is the only thing I will ever call it now.
Jacob: I think it's cool that Oculus Rift is going to be, like... an actual thing in people's homes soon. That's cool.
Me: OK, so I know what Oculus Rift is, and yes, that is cool, but my mind decided you meant "Optimus Prime."
I dreamed last night about this new fad diet where every time you wanted to eat, you thought about worms instead, and that would take away your appetite.
Today, Jenny Lawson responded and retweeted responses to The Blogger I Shall Not Name, who suggested that depressed people just need to find joy -- because apparently nobody depressed has ever tried to be more positive or anything. The series of ensuing snarky tweets pointed out all the other ways that happy attitudes can fix biological diseases.
My favorite contribution: "I once saw jazz hands heal a bleeding head wound."
Thank goodness for snarkiness lessening the awfulness of stupidity.
As I read Shakespeare, I mentally cast people who have similar names to the characters, to help me keep track of everyone. For example, Leonato in one of my earlier plays kinda sounds like Leonardo, so I imagine his character as Leonardo DiCaprio. This makes it much easier for me to remember who is who and how they're connected because I have a mental image of everyone.
However, this also leads to weird moments, like the scene I just read where the mental image became Vincent Price conversing with Rex the dinosaur from Toy Story...
Discovery of the day: If I inadvertently rattle the shower door, it sounds like the Jurassic Park T-rex coming to get me.
We put Lumps in the bathroom while we went to the zoo instead of setting up her kennel. We came back to find that she had unrolled several squares of toilet paper, shredded it up a bit... and then re-rolled it. *blink* I'm kind of impressed.
Jacob: You're cool.
Me: Thanks. (A second later) Though I don't think I can accept that compliment right now, while I'm trying to fold the tag on this pillow with my nose.
Jacob: Yeah, I said it before I saw you were doing that.
Jacob; I forgot that BitTorrent was doing a sci-fi series.
Me: What? Who's doing a sci-fi series?
Jacob: BitTorrent.
Me: I thought you said "Rick Warren." The guy who wrote "The Purpose-Driven Life." That would've been weird.
Reddit question: "Who's that one girl you just hate at a party?"
Comment #1: "The crier."
Comment #2: "Yeah, I hate when a girl walks into a party with a decree from the King and is all 'Hear ye hear ye!'"
Now I can only hope I get invited to all the parties because THAT is exactly what I'm going to do.
The most recent review of The Quest for Skye on Amazon reads simply, "I love story."
Saw this post while browsing my RSS feed: "TIL that about 90% of the world's LSD supply vanished overnight when the chemist who was making virtually all of the world's LSD, got caught. he was making it In a nuclear missile silo."
Got super confused until I realized I was reading LSD as LDS. That'll teach me to skim. I thought it was saying that almost all world's Mormons disappeared in a nuclear disaster at some point in history, and I had no idea how I'd never heard of that...
What I meant to text Jacob: "I love you and you're amazing and fantastic."
What I nearly texted him, thanks to autocorrect: "I love you and you're shaving a fanatic."
Sounds like a weird day at work...
Reddit posed a challenge to create a scary story in 5 words or less. A lot of them were pretty typical, but this was my favorite of the night:
"2% milk. 98% spiders."
(I couldn't find my phone. Meanwhile, Elizabeth is on her phone, which kind of looks like mine.)
Me: Is that my phone? Are you texting all my friends right now?
Elizabeth: Yes.
Me: What are you texting Lisa?
Elizabeth: "I like grapes."
This led into a discussion of what would happen if we texted everyone in our contact list "I like grapes," and who would be the most awkward person to text that to. So, uh, if any of you get a random text at some point that says "I like grapes," now you know why.
Just wrote in Textbroker: "The pH level of your soul impacts how well your grass will grow."
What's the pH level of YOUR soul?
Jacob: Britain declared war on Germany...
Me: Wait, what?! Why? That came out of nowhere!
Jacob: ...75 years ago today.
Me: Oh.
Apparently, teaching Puppy not to bark or whine has led to her offering a compromise: a weird hybrid noise that sounds mostly like a quack.
I've been graduated for two years and I'm STILL having HUTC dreams. This week, I dreamed that Jay added "June Bride" from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers into Singin' in the Rain, but that made the show run too long. To fix it, he decided that song, "Make 'Em Laugh," and "Singin' in the Rain" would all be performed simultaneously every night.
So... there's an AWESOME directing idea.
I like helping Jacob name his video game characters. His main one in this game is now called "€££æ". That is a fun one to try and pronounce.
For any of you men out there who have wanted to use Shakespearean compliments to woo a woman, this one from Troilus and Cressida is probably the best one I have ever found: "There is no lady of more softer bowels."
My new favorite hobby: coming up with terrible ideas for the next Star Wars movie. Ideas rejected by Jacob so far:
1) The movie starts off showing that the original series is all just Harrison Ford's dream, but when he wakes up he keeps seeing Star Wars stuff so maybe it WASN'T just a dream... dun dun dun!
2) A Planes, Trains and Automobiles reboot in space, where Chewbacca's just trying to get to his home planet for Life Day.
3) Luke becomes the new Emperor and turns evil. A young Jedi comes to defeat him and Luke reveals he is that young Jedi's father! Except it turns out to be a lie because he remembers how that reveal messed with his own emotions in the original movies, and he wants to throw the newbie off his game. But that's all in the second and third movies. The first movie is just all the other characters calling Luke on the phone and saying, "Don't be evil," to which he responds, "But I can make LIGHTNING now!"
I mean, *I'd* watch these...
Last night, at like 1:00, Jacob told me that "the people on the show" were "sitting in the closet." I sure hope he was sleep talking, because the idea that there were actually people in our closet is FAR too terrifying to consider.
This survey I just took asked, "If there was an Ebola outbreak in the U.S., how would you spend your time, knowing you may not have much left?" with options like "spend all your money" and "quit your job."
There wasn't an option for "stay calm and touch people even less than I usually do."
The Agatha Christie books I have on my Kindle are formatted weirdly, so occasionally we'll get pages that look like this:
"Nofret was wicked and Nofret was dead. Could she not leave it at that? Why this sudden stab of pity - of something
more
than
pity
-
something
that
was
almost
comprehension?"
It's like Agatha Christie stopped writing for a moment and Rob Bell took over.
Jacob: (About someone doing voiceover in his game) This is fake Christopher Lee. I should figure out who he is.
Me: His name is Christopher Lee, but Lee is spelled "Li" and "Christopher" is with a K.
Jacob: I would like it better if it was a Q.
I am totally naming one of my NaNo characters Qhristopher Li.
I just laughed QUITE loud and scared the dog. Why? Well, let me tell you.
I was looking up old NaNo novels, and I ended up getting really engrossed in my novel from 2009. It's a serious dramatic novel about a Christian teen at a music ministry camp, and I was actually feeling pretty proud of it. There were a lot of good thoughts and serious character development in there.
And then at about 16,000 words my brain apparently just gave up. In a scene describing a church service, the pastor gets up and solemnly delivers a sermon... that consists entirely of the lyrics to the song "Purpose" from Avenue Q, switched to second person. (Sample sentence: "Doo doo doo doo doo. I don't know how I know, but you're going to find your purpose.")
The chapter ends with this paragraph:
"As he got down from the pulpit and went to sit in his seat again and the worship leader got up to do his songs, I couldn't help but feel that the sermon was less than inspiring."
That is an entirely accurate assessment.
I just tried to type "Shakespeare" as "Spakeshan."
WHAT HAPPENED TO MY BRAIN
Weird dream of the day: I dreamed that I was hanging out at a food bank, and Jason Borton came in and started pulling ALL the food off of the shelves and shoving it in paper bags. Then I heard him muttering to himself, "Maybe if I give all this food to the children's hospital, people will finally believe that I have feelings!"
...Um, OK.
(Tomorrow Jacob and I are going to go see a show in Chicago.)
Me: So we've got balcony seats.
Jacob: Like fourth-floor balcony?
Me: The balcony of the next building, actually.
Jacob: And we'll watch the show with telescopes and a radio.
Me: This is how I watch all my plays.
Jacob: That's why I'D like to pick our seats sometime.
My new favorite ridiculous hobby: standing near my husband and the dog while they are both asleep and making huge dramatic flailing arm movements that they would certainly react to if they were awake. This cracks me up today and I am not entirely sure why.
Awkwardly-placed line breaks sometimes complicate things. I was reading an introversion subreddit post and saw this:
Post: "I'm also going to bed and waking up at very different hours to other housemates, making it difficult to get high"
Me: "Well, that's a confusing complaint."
Post continues when I scroll down: "quality sleep sometimes."
Me: "Oh."
Today, Netflix suggested a series of movies in a new category: "Watched by Gob Bluth." It included movies about puppets, fathers and sons, and breaking out of prison. I have no idea when they put that together, but WIN.
(Jacob and I are watching The Music Man and talking about how poor lisping Winthrop is so sad at the beginning of this movie.)
Jacob: He's got a crazy name.
Me: That's probably why he's sad.
Jacob: Because his name is actually "Winsrop"?
Me: YES!
Jacob: And NOBODY KNOWS!
Sometimes it's hard to tell whether that noise outside your door is a) the wind or b) EVERY MURDERER.
My NaNo main character is being threatened by an angry mob, and I wrote this sentence: "For the first time in ages, I was afraid that I was going to get physically hurt."
That's a dumb sentence anyway, but apparently my character completely forgot that someone tried to murder her yesterday.
What I meant to say about our Thanksgiving meal: "The stuffing was my request."
What I typed at first: "The stuffing was my retreat."
Yes, with stuffing I can hide myself away from the cares and burdens of life.
Sometimes I get bored of writing my NaNo and decide to sing Jesus Christ Superstar in the middle of a sentence:
"I was a little startled to see this breakdown. Erik had always been so calm, so cool, no lover’s fool, running every show. He scared me so."
Jacob does not wear my favorite color just so he can match my eyes or plan a private picnic by the fire's glow. According to Giselle from Enchanted, I should probably doubt his love. I'm going to ignore that advice.
Jacob: The next Friday the 13th will be the thirteenth. Next year.
Me: ...The thirteenth?
Jacob: The thirteenth Friday the 13th.
Me: Since when?
Jacob: Since the beginning.
Me: (Has no idea what he's talking about because none of this makes sense)
Jacob: (Suddenly realizing) Oh! The next Friday the 13th MOVIE will be the thirteenth.
That was a very confusing conversation.
This Textbroker article I'm writing is a slow cooker recipe, with 250 words devoted to "an overview of the dish" and 250 words devoted to the recipe itself. That is a LOT of words to basically say "Put all this stuff in a slow cooker, cook it for 8 hours, the end."
Sleeping Jacob: I don't know WHERE Puppy is now. I mean... is she a dog?
Me: Yes, she is a dog.
Jacob: But don't you remember? Last night, she was made of rice.
Me: Um... no, she's not made of rice.
Jacob: You remember, don't you?
Me: I don't remember that, no.
Jacob: Huh.
He and I have been on completely different sleep schedules, so it's been quite awhile since I've had a conversation with him while he was sleeping. I've missed it :-) Yay Christmas break!
Just read a bizarre comment claiming that it wasn't possible to see only 10 movies released in 2014 unless you're not into movies.
It was vaguely reminiscent of the guy who told me I wasn't a real movie buff because I hadn't seen Taken.
People have weirdly specific standards sometimes. I should make up some of my own and start holding other people to it. But it'll be more fun if none of it is connected at all. "If you don't watch a musical featuring a song starting with 'R' every 3.5 weeks, you're not REALLY an animal lover." So this is the standard now. I'm watching you, people who claim to love animals.
My friend Travis is going to see The Interview tonight, so I told him to try not to die from terrorism. A little while later, this exchange happened and I couldn't resist:
Me: I am seeing Into the Woods next week.
Travis: Try not to die from whatever threatens musical fans.
Me: That would be Russell Crowe.
My sister Bethany asked everyone in the family to make up some new Scattergories subjects for us to print out and play together, just for fun, so Jacob and I have been texting her ideas throughout the week... although the ones we sent her today might have gotten a little silly:
"Types of dances, shades of yellow, things that are yellow, types of pipes, kinds of rinds, sorts of courts, stuff that's rough, things he sings, takes on lakes, things like rings, ways to haze, places for laces, parts of hearts, those with toes, uses for juices, sights with lights, sounds of hounds, rites for knights, plights for rights, towns with clowns, rhymes with limes, books for cooks, foods for dudes, looks for crooks."
And that is how we spent an hour and a half of our afternoon.
My favorite part of last night's round of Scattegories-with-categories-we-made-up. The topic was "things at a birthday party," the letter was F.
Elizabeth: I wanted to put "furry balloons, but that's stupid. And then I could only think of "furry cake, furry food..."
Kevin: Why not just "food"?
Elizabeth: ...Oh, yeah.
Monday, January 5, 2015
Best of 2014: Quotes from Books
And thus begins the recap blogs of 2014! I'll still be doing Tune Ins on Tuesday and Thursday, and Quest for Forgiveness on Fridays, but Mondays and Wednesdays for maybe the entire next month will be taken up with year recaps of different topics. BUT IT'LL BE AWESOME.
Let's start with something inspirational and fun -- the quotes I saved on Goodreads from this year's books. Every so often I'll come across something I know I want to save, either because it's funny or beautiful or just nicely phrased, and Goodreads is excellent for cataloging those. So let's look at my favorite quotes of the year, in order of when I added them.
(The attribution is weird on this upcoming set of quotes, because I was reading a collection of all the Kindle-available Anne books, so when I uploaded the quote, that's how it marked them.)
Did you keep track of favorite quotes this year? If so, what are your favorites? Or are there any of this list that particularly strike you? Share in the comments!
Let's start with something inspirational and fun -- the quotes I saved on Goodreads from this year's books. Every so often I'll come across something I know I want to save, either because it's funny or beautiful or just nicely phrased, and Goodreads is excellent for cataloging those. So let's look at my favorite quotes of the year, in order of when I added them.
“There was an assumption that I was personally attacking Sarah Palin by impersonating her on TV. No one ever said it was 'mean' when Chevy Chase played Gerald Ford falling down all the time. No one ever accused Dana Carvey or Darrell Hammond or Dan Aykroyd of 'going too far' in their political impressions. You see what I'm getting at here. I am not mean and Mrs. Palin is not fragile. To imply otherwise is a disservice to us both.”― Tina Fey, Bossypants
“I have no affinity for animals. I don’t hate animals and I would never hurt an animal; I just don’t actively care about them. When a coworker shows me cute pictures of her dog, I struggle to respond correctly, like an autistic person who has been taught to recognize human emotions from flash cards. In short, I am the worst.”― Tina Fey, Bossypants
(The attribution is weird on this upcoming set of quotes, because I was reading a collection of all the Kindle-available Anne books, so when I uploaded the quote, that's how it marked them.)
“If I really wanted to pray I'll tell you what I'd do. I'd go out into a great big field all alone or into the deep, deep, woods, and I'd look up into the sky—up—up—up—into that lovely blue sky that looks as if there was no end to its blueness. And then I'd just FEEL a prayer.”― L.M. Montgomery, The Anne Stories (Anne of Green Gables, #1-3, 5, 7-8)
“But have you ever noticed one encouraging thing about me, Marilla? I never make the same mistake twice."
"I don't know as that's much benefit when you're always making new ones."
"Oh, don't you see, Marilla? There must be a limit to the mistakes one person can make, and when I get to the end of them, then I'll be through with them. That's a very comforting thought.”― L.M. Montgomery, The Anne Stories (Anne of Green Gables, #1-3, 5, 7-8)
“I am sure we should not shut our hearts against the healing influences that nature offers us.”― L.M. Montgomery, The Anne Stories (Anne of Green Gables, #1-3, 5, 7-8)
“Mrs. Lynde was complaining the other day that it wasn't much of a world. She said whenever you looked forward to anything pleasant you were sure to be more or less disappointed …perhaps that is true. But there is a good side to it too. The bad things don't always come up to your expectations either …they nearly always turn out ever so much better than you think.”― L.M. Montgomery, The Anne Stories (Anne of Green Gables, #1-3, 5, 7-8)
“I'd like to add some beauty to life," said Anne dreamily. "I don't exactly want to make people KNOW more... though I know that IS the noblest ambition... but I'd love to make them have a pleasanter time because of me... to have some little joy or happy thought that would never have existed if I hadn't been born.”― L.M. Montgomery, The Anne Stories (Anne of Green Gables, #1-3, 5, 7-8)
“That's a lovely idea, Diana," said Anne enthusiastically. "Living so that you beautify your name, even if it wasn't beautiful to begin with … making it stand in people's thoughts for something so lovely and pleasant that they never think of it by itself.”― L.M. Montgomery, The Anne Stories (Anne of Green Gables, #1-3, 5, 7-8)
“I don't want her to be like other people. There are too many other people around as it is.”― L.M. Montgomery, The Anne Stories (Anne of Green Gables, #1-3, 5, 7-8)
“And he says he doesn't believe all the heathen will be eternally lost. The idea! If they won't all the money we've been giving to Foreign Missions will be clean wasted, that's what!”― L.M. Montgomery, The Anne Stories (Anne of Green Gables, #1-3, 5, 7-8)
“Anne was always glad in the happiness of her friends; but it is sometimes a little lonely to be surrounded everywhere by a happiness that is not your own.”― L.M. Montgomery, The Anne Stories (Anne of Green Gables, #1-3, 5, 7-8)
“Little Jem had said 'Wow-ga' that morning. What were principalities and powers, the rise and fall of dynasties, the overthrow of Grit or Tory, compared with that miraculous occurrence?”― L.M. Montgomery, The Anne Stories (Anne of Green Gables, #1-3, 5, 7-8)
“I wish I could like the baby a little bit. It would make things easier. But I don't. I've heard people say that when you took care of a baby you got fond of it—but you don't—I don't, anyway.”― L.M. Montgomery, The Anne Stories (Anne of Green Gables, #1-3, 5, 7-8)
“One of my core fears is that someone would think I can’t handle as much as the next person. It’s fundamental to my understanding of myself for me to be the strong one, the capable one, the busy one, the one who can bail you out, not make a fuss, bring a meal, add a few more things to the list. For me, everything becomes a lifestyle. Everything is an addiction.”― Shauna Niequist, Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way
“Left to our own devices, we sometimes choose the most locked up, dark versions of the story, but what a good friend does is turn on the lights, open the window, and remind us that there are a whole lot of ways to tell the same story.”― Shauna Niequist, Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way
“Grace isn’t about having a second chance; grace is having so many chances that you could use them through all eternity and never come up empty. It’s when you finally realize that the other shoe isn’t going to drop, ever.”― Shauna Niequist, Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way
“The young minister was a very good young man, and tried to do his duty; but he was dreadfully afraid of meeting old Mr. Scott, because he had been told that the old minister was very angry at being set aside, and would likely give him a sound drubbing, if he ever met him. One day the young minister was visiting the Crawfords in Markdale, when they suddenly heard old Mr. Scott's voice in the kitchen. The young minister turned pale as the dead, and implored Mrs. Crawford to hide him. But she couldn't get him out of the room, and all she could do was to hide him in the china closet. The young minister slipped into the china closet, and old Mr. Scott came into the room. He talked very nicely, and read, and prayed. They made very long prayers in those days, you know; and at the end of his prayer he said. 'Oh Lord, bless the poor young man hiding in the closet. Give him courage not to fear the face of man. Make him a burning and a shining light to this sadly abused congregation.”― L.M. Montgomery, The Anne Stories (Anne of Green Gables, #1-3, 5, 7-8)
“That’s why it’s hard, I think, to rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn. I love that line from the Bible, but it’s so incredibly difficult sometimes, because when you’ve got reason to rejoice, you forget what it’s like to mourn, even if you swear you never will. And because when you’re mourning, the fact that someone close to you is rejoicing seems like a personal affront.”― Shauna Niequist, Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way
“Life hands us opportunities at every turn to get over ourselves, to get outside ourselves, to wake up from our own bad dreams and realize that really lovely things are happening all the time.”― Shauna Niequist, Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way
“When you do what you love with people who love the same thing, something is born into your midst and begins to connect you.”― Shauna Niequist, Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way
“The home team concept for me is not all about getting myself out of the doghouse with a whole bunch of people who need something from me. It’s about making sure that the people who deserve my energy and love and attention get it before it’s sucked up by people who have their own home teams.”― Shauna Niequist, Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way
“When we, any of us who have been transformed by Christ, tell our own stories, we’re telling the story of who God is.”― Shauna Niequist, Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way
“We’re the start of an amazing, dumbfounding history of survival that will only get better as the centuries pass.”― Ray Bradbury, Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales
“They sat on the edge of a brook and took off their shoes and let the water cut their feet off to the ankles with an exquisite cold razor.”― Ray Bradbury, Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales
“While we are in that condition of darkness, we cannot have true fellowship with our brother either--for we are not real with him, and no one can have fellowship with an unreal person.”― Roy Hession, The Calvary Road
“They blended religion and art and science because, at base, science is no more than an investigation of a miracle we can never explain, and art is an interpretation of that miracle.”― Ray Bradbury, Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales
“You lose a child and you do understand each other's grief at first, but if you get out of step with each other, it's all over. Suddenly each of you is alone.”― Alison Bruce, Cambridge Blue
“Having spent my life trying to fit the will of others, I was unable to distinguish between what I enjoyed and what I thought I should enjoy.”― David Sedaris, Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules
“Because Saleem was louder about Islam than I was, he was considered more of a man.”― Ali Eteraz, Children of Dust: A Memoir of Pakistan
“Your disapproval is noted. It is legitimate. You are welcome to disapprove. But you are not welcome to be ignorant, to look the other way, to be unable to perform—should you change your mind.”― John Irving, The Cider House Rules
“If you swear by that that is not, you are not forsworn: no more was this knight swearing by his honour, for he never had any; or if he had, he had sworn it away before ever he saw those pancakes or that mustard.”― William Shakespeare, The Complete Works of Shakespeare
“This wide and universal theatre
Presents more woeful pageants than the scene
Wherein we play in.”― William Shakespeare, The Complete Works of Shakespeare
“Marry, sir, she's the kitchen wench and all grease; and I know not what use to put her to but to make a lamp of her and run from her by her own light.”― William Shakespeare, The Complete Works of Shakespeare
“From women's eyes this doctrine I derive:
They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;
They are the books, the arts, the academes,
That show, contain and nourish all the world:
Else none at all in ought proves excellent.”― William Shakespeare, The Complete Works of Shakespeare
“God will judge us, Mr. Harris, by--by what we did to relieve the suffering of our fellow human beings. I don't think God cares what doctrine we embrace.”― Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone
“He that drinks all night, and is hanged betimes in the morning, may sleep the sounder all the next day.”― William Shakespeare, The Complete Works of Shakespeare
“(I was in love with Sherlock Holmes—I even had a fingerprinting kit that I used everywhere—proving my mother’s use of Tampax or that my sister once held the candy bowl.)”― Sarah Silverman, The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee
“I will always try to be happy. I don’t think people really understand the value of happiness until they know what it’s like to be in that very, very dark place. It’s not romantic. Not even a little.”― Sarah Silverman, The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee
“If you’ve ever heard that song by Beyoncé, “Single Ladies,” I am one of the people she’s singing about. I have to be, because she sings, “All the single ladies.” If she didn’t mean to include me in that, then she really needs to choose her words more carefully.”― Sarah Silverman, The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee
“Tis time to fear when tyrants seem to kiss.”― William Shakespeare, The Complete Works of Shakespeare
“Pride hath no other glass
To show itself but pride,”― William Shakespeare, The Complete Works of Shakespeare
“O, let not virtue seek
Remuneration for the thing it was;
For beauty, wit,
High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service,
Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all
To envious and calumniating time.”― William Shakespeare, The Complete Works of Shakespeare
“There may be in the cup
A spider steep'd, and one may drink, depart,
And yet partake no venom, for his knowledge
Is not infected: but if one present
The abhorr'd ingredient to his eye, make known
How he hath drunk, he cracks his gorge, his sides,
With violent hefts. I have drunk, and seen the spider.”― William Shakespeare, The Complete Works of Shakespeare
“We’ve become too song focused, and in truth I believe that we need to be more worship focused. We’ve lost the ability to push aside the songs and replace them with twenty-five minutes of crying out, opening our hearts and heads with the raw worship of God who’s within us.”― Martin Smith, Delirious: My Journey with the Band, a Growing Family, and an Army of Historymakers
“Today there are some worship artists doing well, but when you buy their latest album you don’t expect any difference from the previous three. This doesn’t seem to do justice to the awesome creative power of almighty God. Serving up the same old, same old is never on the menu for God.”― Martin Smith, Delirious: My Journey with the Band, a Growing Family, and an Army of Historymakers
“At times the Christian scene is more dangerous. Sometimes, we have this Disneyland existence where we all have to pretend to be squeaky clean, yet reality’s not like that. Sometimes things are happening in secret that are not healthy: alcohol problems, pornography, people travelling too much or getting into trouble, but it all gets covered up even though it exists, behind closed doors with the 'Do Not Disturb' signs dangling on the outside. If I was hanging out at a mainstream party, I might not agree with what a certain singer of a certain secular band was up to, but at least what you saw was what you got. This sort of honesty was endearing.”― Martin Smith, Delirious: My Journey with the Band, a Growing Family, and an Army of Historymakers
“Unity transcends time, style, and numbers. When people hold hands across their own theologies, that unity can bring down the modern-day walls of Jericho.”― Martin Smith, Delirious: My Journey with the Band, a Growing Family, and an Army of Historymakers
“I did not really seek liberty. I am a civilised man. The civilised man knows there is no such thing. Only the younger and cruder nations put the word Liberty on their banner. There must always be a planned framework of security. And the essence of civilisation is that the way of life should be a moderate one.”― Agatha Christie, Destination Unknown
“Somehow we landed on the subject of Pim’s extreme diffidence. His modesty is a well-known fact, which even the stupidest person wouldn’t dream of questioning. All of a sudden Mrs. van Daan, who feels the need to bring herself into every conversation, remarked, “I’m very modest and retiring too, much more so than my husband!”― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl
“The best remedy for those who are frightened, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere they can be alone, alone with the sky, nature and God.”― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl
“I’d like to live that seemingly carefree and happy life for an evening, a few days, a week. At the end of that week I’d be exhausted, and would be grateful to the first person to talk to me about something meaningful.”― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl
“She was crying because she was far from home, and who among us has never wanted to do that? There need be no other reason; just that. We cry for home, and for flowers on tables, and biscuits in little tins, and for mother; and we feel embarrassed, and foolish too, that we should be crying for such things; but we should not feel that way because all of us, in a sense, have strayed from home, and wish to return.”― Alexander McCall Smith, The Dog who Came in from the Cold
“We should all busy ourselves in being who we are, although many of us do not and spend so much time and energy being something else. We try to be what others want us to be, or what we ourselves want to be. And then we suddenly realise that our lives have shot past and we have not got round to being who we really”― Alexander McCall Smith, The Dog who Came in from the Cold
“That was the way the world was; it was composed of a few almost perfect people (ourselves); then there were a good many people who generally did their best but were not all that perfect (our friends and colleagues); and finally, there were a few rather nasty ones (our enemies and opponents).”― Alexander McCall Smith, The Double Comfort Safari Club
“He could not imagine being interested in that way in somebody like Mma Mateleke; how would one ever get to plant a kiss on such a person if she was always talking? It would be difficult to get one’s lips into contact with a mouth that was always opening and shutting to form words; that would surely be very distracting for a man, he thought, and might even discourage him to the point of disinclination, if that was the right word.”― Alexander McCall Smith, The Double Comfort Safari Club
“Coffee goes great with sudden death.”― Gillian Flynn, Dark Places
“I’m not good at things like that: haircuts or oil changes or dentist visits. When I moved into my bungalow, I spent the first three months swaddled in blankets because I couldn’t deal with getting the gas turned on. It’s been turned off three times in the past few years, because sometimes I can’t quite bring myself to write a check. I have trouble maintaining.”― Gillian Flynn, Dark Places
“As a child, I was constantly being sent on playdates with other kids—the shrinks insisted I interact with cohorts. That’s what my meeting with Lyle was like: those first loose, horrible ten minutes, when the grown-ups have left, and neither kid knows what the other one wants, so you stand there, near the TV they’ve told you to keep off, fiddling with the antenna.”― Gillian Flynn, Dark Places
“It was surprising that you could spend hours in the middle of the night pretending things were OK, and know in thirty seconds of daylight that that simply wasn’t so.”― Gillian Flynn, Dark Places
“And I don’t know, you’re at that age, if a bunch of grownups are telling you something or encouraging you, it just … it started to feel real. That Ben had molested me, because otherwise, why were all these adults trying to get me to say he had? And my parents would be all stern: It’s OK to tell the truth. It’s OK to tell the truth. And so you told the lie that they thought was the truth.”― Gillian Flynn, Dark Places
“I was as virtuously given as a gentleman need to be; virtuous enough; swore little; diced not above seven times a week; went to a bawdy-house once in a quarter—of an hour; paid money that I borrowed, three of four times; lived well and in good compass: and now I live out of all order, out of all compass.”― William Shakespeare, The Complete Works of Shakespeare
“And she began to weep, dropping her head onto her forearms and rocking backwards and forwards in that curious motion that is perhaps a subconscious attempt to mimic the movement that brings comfort to a tiny baby. That we should in moments of sorrow seek to return to a time when the harshness of the world could be forfended by the simple reassurances of our parents; that we should do that …”― Alexander McCall Smith, The Double Comfort Safari Club
Did you keep track of favorite quotes this year? If so, what are your favorites? Or are there any of this list that particularly strike you? Share in the comments!
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