My Generation

To be honest, all this generation talk is kind of annoying.  I hate it when people point to something that current 12-year-olds like and say "our world is doomed".  They're fucking 12.  Their little brains aren't fully developed yet.  They'll get over it.  I don't even want to remember all the fucked up shit I thought was awesome at 12 years old.  I thought my life would be complete if I married a guy twice my age in a shitty boy band.  You can't expect a half developed mind to know good music... or talent.  Teenage girls just want a cute boy to ogle.  That's probably the reason people don't seem to notice how horrible Kristen Stewart's acting is.  My bet is that the majority of 13 year old girls don't even notice she's in the movie.  They're too busy wetting their pants over douche-bag Pattinson. 

The thing that's really weird about the whole Twilight thing is the 30-something year old housewives who are in love with Edward.  I really feel like they should be old enough to know better.  Its also disconcerting to think about what these stories are teaching teenage girls about love.  If you fall in love in high school, its forever.  If he stalks you, it means he loves you.  If he leaves you, you'll NEVER get over it.  Basically, the main character has no personality without Edward.  Shit, she has no personality WITH Edward, she's just not crying over him.  So, the moral is you're nothing without a man, you might as well die.  And don't say "its different, he's a vampire" cause that's bullshit.  MAYBE its a little different for him but Bella's human and she is setting a shitty example for other human girls.

So while Kris was complaining about today's literature, we decided we're gonna write our book.  It's gonna blow all the other books out of the water with its awesomeness. 

The Hunger Games...for real

So I apparently picked a terrible topic a few weeks ago and it has completely stalled updates to the site.  I take all the blame.  Because Angela is wonderful and she didn't want to disappoint me by not posting, but she didn't post because the topic I picked was terrible (there Angela, you are absolved of all blame for being lazy :p).

I originally wanted to talk about the generation gap because I've been taking classes in middle level education and have been having some interesting experiences.  One of which being that I had to read a book that most middle schoolers are reading and then discuss it.  So I chose "The Hunger Games" because everyone is raving about it and even my niece is enjoying reading it.  To be honest, I have no idea why everyone likes this book.

I went into reading it expecting something really good.  Don't get me wrong, the writing is very engaging.  But somewhere around chapter three, I just couldn't stomach the book any further.  The idea of adults laughing and joking about children being made to murder each other for their entertainment is apparently far too disturbing a concept for me to get over (even though there wasn't a lot of gorey detail in the book).  I also don't understand the message that kids are supposed to take away from this.  The world is so cruel and unfair that clearly the upper class is entertained by the suffering of the lower class?  That adults are so far removed from the lives of their children that it's up to them to raise themselves?  That love is nothing more than a tool for some people to use at their convenience?  There was little about the book I liked and I especially hated the ending which clearly railroaded the reader into reading the second book just so that you got a sense of completion to the story.

I wonder if I simply don't understand the concept of the book because it wasn't meant for me and for my generation, but I thought the author was a product of my generation.  Perhaps I'm wrong about this, I'll have to look more closely into it for my review of the book.  Whatever the case, I clearly missed the point and I clearly don't understand why this is having such an influence on my niece and nephew's generation.  I wonder if I really am more out of touch than I originally thought.  I'm starting to feel like the "uncool adult" I've always wanted to avoid becoming.

"Crazy" Mrs. Winchester

The story of my life.  Kris is off on vacation busy doing awesome vacationy things and she STILL manages to post before me.  But its cool because for this particular adventure, we were together!

See? Its us. TOGETHER!

After three LONG years apart, Krangela was finally reunited for 10 whole days!  We spent one of those days at the Winchester Mystery House because neither of us had ever been there and Kris really wanted to go and I really wanted an excuse to drive to San Jose to see it.  Totally worth it.  Fun times were had by all.  Even the tour guide was cracking himself up at practically every stop.  Its nice to know that he was enjoying his job.  It seems like tour guiding could get a bit tedious. 

Also, Kris got to meet my husband.  Not that day, they met earlier when we picked Kris up from the airport.

Evidence that Kris and John met

I think it goes without saying that they hit it off because everyone loves my husband... and everyone loves Kris too so there was really no way for this to go wrong. 

In the gift shop, there was a candy house replica of the mystery house.

It looked exactly like this.  And here's a pic of the actual house for comparison. 

Nailed it

Fun story, apparently the ghost hunters filmed an episode here and they were jerks to everyone and didn't even stay the whole night because it was too scary even though nothing happened.  I wonder if I could track down that episode.  It would be interesting to watch. 

Alas, Kris left us for Canadaland on Monday.  I can only hope it wont be another three years before we see each other again.  We're working on convincing her to move to California which shouldn't be too difficult because we have awesome sushi.  Apparently our mediocre sushi is way better than their "really good" sushi.  Perhaps if we had taken her to the best sushi place, she would never have left. 

The House of Winchester

Due to travel and issues with the internet, I have not been able to get around to this week's topic (which was actually meant to be an adventure topic, but Angela decided to turn it into this week's topic :p).

Every picture I've ever seen of the Mystery House has it nicely surrounded by farmland.  This picture clearly demonstrates how this is not the case:  see the movie theater sign on one side, the busy street behind the sign, and the housing on the other side.  The House of Winchester is now in a sea of city, looking oddly out of place, and all the more like a tourist trap rather than a historical site.

We weren't really allowed to take pictures of the inside of the house, but I got some neat shots of the outside.  It's hard to tell how big the house really is from these, though, because it looks much smaller than one might think.  The inside is indeed a labyrinth, but it seemed much more straight forward than they wanted us to believe.  They said if you straggled behind on the tour, you would get very lost and wouldn't be able to find your way out.  Yet, I noticed a lot of doubling back on the tour, which led me to believe it would be very easy to find your way out as long as you knew what you were looking for.  Mrs. Winchester and her guests needed to be able to find thier way around the house after all.

There is in fact a "Door to Nowhere"

Teresa and I couldn't help bending the rules a little...technically this is outside the house

Angela and John being cute in the garden

The statue built to appease the Native American spirits who died from Winchester guns

I would definitely recommend taking both parts of the tour to anyone who wants to go.  You only see parts of the house on either tour, but it's only $5 more to see both and as much of the house as they open to the public.  We didn't see any ghosts, but apparently others have, plus you can spend as much time wandering through what remains of the estate (outside of the house) as you'd like for free.

I'm sailing away

I wouldn't say I've done a lot of traveling really, but I have seen a lot of airports.  I had to travel back and forth to college in Illinois and I would often have a connection flight at some random airport in between destinations.  Surprisingly, the only experience I've had thus far with lost luggage was on my very first air travel experience when I was in 9th grade.  Luckily they lost it on the way home so we didn't need the contents of the luggage for clothes and things. 

My favorite city for layovers is Las Vegas.  It is very entertaining to touch down among pyramids and random world land marks in the middle of a desert.  I've never actually left the airport so I have no idea what the rest of Las Vegas is like.  To me it is a sea of fake land marks.  On one flight, the stewardess was so excited to be going to Las Vegas and she just assumed the rest of the passengers were staying there as well so she was trying to get everyone excited about going to her favorite city.  Then on the connection flight out of Vegas, the stewardess commented on how people were 'leaving the party'.  I guess it was a short party for me. 

"Next week" is Winchester mystery house!  Kris and I will be going on an adventure together!  AND BLOGGING ABOUT IT! 

Flight from Insanity

I am getting to be as bad as Angela...although I blame Angela for the lateness of this week's topic posts.  It is entirely her fault for inviting me to come out to her crazy part of the country and then taking up all my time with doing cool fun things.

The trip to California was relatively uneventful.  Apparently we brought the winds from the midwest with us, though, because we hit a ton of turbulance as we flew.  The plane couldn't even land straight because of the winds.  There was also a marked difference from flying out of my neck of the woods and into California.  My airport was dirty, full of irritable people, and absolutely packed.  Angela's airport was clean, empty, and full of people all happy to be in California.

I really don't have anything interesting to discuss about the flight.  It wasn't interesting at all.  In fact, it was so boring that it put me to sleep a few times.

However, upon my arrival, Angela and John took me out for sushi. It was the best sushi I have EVER HAD IN MY LIFE OH MY GOD.  And then they told me later that it wasn't even "the best sushi place" just the "most affordable" and in fact it isn't even all that good in comparison.  Clearly I am missing out on something special here.

Tomorrow we're going on an adventure to the Winchester Mystery House.  I'll probably have an update to my adventure log shortly thereafter...with pictures.

Celebrities

So this weeks topic (and by this week I mean last week) is celebrities.  I wanted to get into the full experience of a celebrity by writing my weekly topic late.  Whenever celebrities go places, they're always the last to arrive because it gives people a chance to gather and get super excited about their appearance.  Except in this case I'm pretty sure the only person anxiously awaiting my post is my co-blogger, Kris, and she's probably more annoyed than excited about my tardiness.  But that's okay because that's the other thing celebrities do best: annoy people! 

What really interests me about celebrities is the pedestal society puts them on.  Take for example fan-girls.  I think I can speak fairly on their behalf because I used to be one.  Don't ask which ones, I will never tell.  The only one I'm not really embarrassed about is Chris Pine because I think he has actual talent and also his voice is super sexy. 

Whats interesting is when girls think these celebrities are super marriage material.  We think just because they're hot, they would make perfect husbands... or wives.  Any idiot who has even accidentally overheard any kind of celebrity gossip can tell you that this is not the case.  Celebrities have the worst track record when it comes to relationships.  I'm guessing its because they spend most of their time pretending to be someone else so its hard to figure out who they actually married. 

Whats really annoying is this idea that a person would drop whoever they were with if they even had a chance at dating a celebrity.  Like that episode of Seinfeld where George tries to date Marisa Tomei at the expense of his fiance.  It's like people think celebrities are made out of different material than regular people.  I mean maybe there's some regular person whose soul mate is super famous but I think people who fantasize about marrying celebrities are just gold diggers. 

My name is a celebrity!

David Selby

When my mom was younger, she was interested in this television soap opera called Dark Shadows.  It's been getting a lot of attention lately because of Tim Burton and Johnny Depp.  My mom always liked Barnabas Collins as her favorite character and later on, when it returned to television on reruns in the early 90's, my sisters and I used to watch it with her.  Even though I always told her Barnabas was my favorite, I secretly always liked Quentin more.  This flies in the face of my general interests.  In the debate of vampire vs werewolf, I'm totally a vampire person.  And yet, Quentin (the werewolf character) was somehow superior to Barnabas in my opinion.  Go figure.

Years later, after seeing the movie, I suddenly decided to find out what happened to "Quentin Collins".  It turns out the actor, David Selby, has done quite well for himself.  Apparently he's in the Batman animation "The Dark Knight Returns" part one and two as James Gordon.  This may be something I will have to look into tracking down, if only because I'm apparently something of a fan girl...and unobservant.

So even though David Selby is likely to never read this blog...here's to you David Selby!  You're totally awesome!  The best werewolf ever!

WT: The Stress Monster

You may be wondering why Kris has been carrying this blog single handedly for the past few weeks.  The answer just so happens to be the topic of this weeks weekly topic: stress.  Stress is why I neglected to post by thoughts on cinco de mayo and why I asked Kris to skip last weeks posting cause I didn't want to spare 5 minutes to come up with some bullshit CAUSE I WORK AT HIGHER QUALITY THAN THAT!  At least I like to think I do.  But now I'm finished with school for an entire summer so the blog can go back to business as usual.  Actually, I'll probably be posting more often cause I have all this extra time now.  Meanwhile, Kris is still working her ass off and somehow managing to keep up with weekly topic AND making extra posts when I was MIA.  She must be some kind of super human.

So, for this post, I thought I'd walk you through my typical paper writing process.  Here is a step by step of practically every paper I've ever written. 

1. Initial encounter of assigned paper (for this example, lets say 15 pages) in syllabus. 

2. "I have 3 whole months to do this!"

3. Forget about paper

4. Half way through semester, remember I have a paper

5. "I should pick a topic"

6. Think about picking a topic for 5 minutes

7. Forget about paper

8. 4 weeks left in class, remember paper

9. "Oh shit!  Only 4 weeks left! I need to do some research!"

10. Pick paper topic

11. Put off research till 3 weeks left

12. Pick up 5 books from the library

13. Find 4 articles on Ebsco host

14. Put off reading until 2 weeks left

15. Read a few chapters

16. Make a super vague outline

17. Feel huge sense of accomplishment, take a few days off

18. "Oh shit! I only have 10 days to finish this!"

19. Panic

20. Decide to write 2 pages a day until its finished

21. End up spending 7 days reading and get 1 page written

22. Panic!

23. Write 3 pages

24. Panic!!!

25. 2 days left, write 5 pages

26. "OMG I STILL HAVE 7 PAGES AND I HAVE BEEN WORKING ON THIS FOREVER!"

26. 1 days left, write 4 pages

27. Feel relieved that I only have 3 pages left. 

28. Next morning, wake up early

29. "Shit I need to finish this by 4 o'clock!"

30. Get mad at myself for not finishing sooner

31. Find the courage to finish paper

32. Turn it in

33. Life suddenly has new meaning and feels beautiful

34. 1 week later, write blog about it, get PTSD

And that is my process.  For smaller papers, its similar but toned down depending on the size of the paper.  If the assignment has anything to do with writing fiction or telling a story (which is NEVER), I actually enjoy doing it and none of this applies. 

Losing my Sanity

Angela picked the perfect topic this week:  Stress.

Boy am I under a lot of it.  A master's program is a lot of work and I am completely mentally drained on a daily basis.  This morning I woke up today with some great, creative ideas.  I haven't had that in a very long time.  I wanted to work on writing with them today, but I knew that I had a ton of reading to do and a couple of assignments to get done before I could.  As of right now, I have one more reading assignment left and haven't begun on the other assignments yet.  I no longer remember my ideas or care about writing creatively.

Stress sucks.  When there is no release to it, it feels like the world is a bleak and horrible place.  You feel sick and depressed.  But the worst thing about stress is when you know there's an end to it.  In a few weeks, I will be going to visit Angela in the strange state of California.  I am so excited that I simply don't care about school anymore.  There's an end in sight and it's a few weeks away, so the amount of work I am willing to put into any given assignment is minimal.  The irony is that this in turn creates more stress on me because if I don't do well, my grade will suffer, and I am desperately trying to maintain a high level GPA.

Clearly, my current method for handling school work loads is not working.  I am doing work at an unmanagable rate.  I am always doing school work...daily.  Whether I am also working at a school or not.  I never have a day that I can have a break because I tend to over tax myself and am never able to get on top of things.  Because of this, I think schools ought to include stress management as part of health classes.  I don't see a reason not to.  Especially since teachers have a tendency to overwork students with busy work bullcrap that has no real bearing on learning concepts.  It's micromanaging students, it puts more work on the instructor, and the quality of actual learning diminishes.  At least teach students how to deal with the stress they are being put under, that would be nice!

This rant has been brought to you by mathematics homework.  Thank you blog for stress relief!

El Burro

Cinco de Mayo, a traditional Mexican-American celebration, is being celebrated today.  According to the internets, it is not the celebration of the Mexican Independence day (which is apparently September 16th).  What is Cinco de Mayo then?  I have done some personal research and I can say from experience that Cinco de Mayo centers around the scrifice of the painted burro.

The burro is tied to a rope which is thrown over a tree and hauled high into the air, making it difficult for the creature to escape its fate.

The burro is swung upon its rope to disorient the creature while a group of people surround the burro.

The people are blindfolded one by one, reminiscent of the executioners of old, and given a stick to beat the burro with.

If the rope doesn't hold the burro, it must be restrung and the ritual begins again.

But even so, sometimes the burro wins.

Another person will come and take the place of the burro beater.  They too will be blindfolded, the burro will be swung, and they will take a wack at it with their stick.

Trophies are made out of the pieces of burro they manage to dislodge.

The innards of the burro will be consumed or given to children to play with.

The ritual of the burro sacrifice is a time honored tradition of Cinco de Mayo.  It must occur year after year in order to secure a favorable harvest in the coming fall.  I highly recommend everyone go out into the world and purchase the sacrifical burro today so that we might have a bountiful harvest this year.  Also it's fun to beat things with sticks!

Some Kind of Irony?

So as I was reading Angela's post, I noticed a link in her blog.  At first I thought she posted a link to the website she was talking about, so I didn't click on it.  Then I scrolled down a little too far and missed the end of her post, only to discover that there is also a link in my post.  Now, I did not blog a link in my blog.  I am assuming Angela did not go in to change my blog.  I am also assuming Angela did not intentionally blog a link in her blog because the link does not go to the website she's discussing.  No, no.

The links go to advertisments.

Am I the only one seeing this?

Maybe it's because we picked the advertisement topic this week, but I've been noticing ads a lot more lately.  For instance, today while I was on facebook, I suddenly realized I'd been seeing ads posted on my facebook page.  I did not link these adds to my facebook.  I don't want them there.  I don't want people thinking I endorse these products.  In fact, facebook is telling people that I endorse these products.  Why else would it be linked to my facebook page?  People link the things they like to facebook.  That is a whole new level of invasiveness and guile.  I don't anyone reading my facebook page to click to these products.  I do not endorse them.

Now blogspot is linking links in my blogs?  Again, I don't want anyone reading them or clicking on them and thinking that I endorse these products.  And then what happens when I actually do link something?  Will people assume it is an ad and not click the link?  This is a problem.  This is a problem that may result in buying our own section of the internet to avoid future incidences.

Edit:  Now that I've gone back, I see that they are orange links that keep changing places in our posts, so I'm not sure what they will be when anyone else clicks on them.  I have yet to determine whether this is an I.E. phenomenon or whether this happens on Firefox as well.

Edit II:  FAIL!  So spyware had been downloaded onto my computer which was giving me extra ads.  They are gone from the blog...but facebook is still a quandry.  I can only include that, yes...this is some kind of irony.

You want to sell me what?

So this weeks weekly topic is advertisements.  It was my turn to pick the topic so I chose this one because I came across an ad that was too good not to blog about.  At first I was disappointed because its about relationships and that topic was just done two weeks ago but then I realized that it could fall into a second category!  So I twisted the topic to fit what I already wanted to talk about.

So, I was doing some research for homework one day when I came across this on sparknotes...

At first I ignored it because who the hell clicks on ads?  They're just trying to sell stuff and nobody has money these days.  However, it popped up again and my brain suddenly process the information enough for me to say "wait.... what?  They're selling ex girlfriends?"  Of course that sounds ridiculous, but that's essentially whats going on here.  Even if she used to be your own girlfriend, this ad wants you to pay money to get back with her... they are selling you your own ex girlfriend.  Also this is pretty sexist.  Apparently there's no market for girls who want their ex boyfriend.  Either that or they figure guys are the only ones who are qualified to determine if love is real and worth getting back.  I don't believe either of those, so I'm going with sexism.

So I click on the link and behold this

And underneath was 9 boxes of information about what program you need to follow.  I have pictures but its tedious and unnecessary. 

I think the moral of this post is be wary of people trying to sell you other people.  That sounds suspiciously close to slave trade. 

I like how in the first picture it says "It's much easier to get her back... than it is to move on!"  I disagree.  Obviously something happened to kill the relationship so in order for it to work again, you'll either have to work on the relationship or (if you're just a shitty person) work on yourself.  There is no easy way out.  Relationships aren't easy so if you're choosing something because its easy, you're expressing your desire for laziness... which will ruin a relationship.

There's so much more I could say about this website.  Especially if I read all the dribble on the front page.  But for now, this will have to do. 

SuperAds

This week we were supposed to discuss advertisements and I was going to discuss this advertisement that has been on TV for some kind of insurance that has been bothering me.   It goes something like this:  "Scientists say on December 21st 2012 the poles are going to shift, causing gravity to hurl everyone into outerspace."  Everything is wrong with this statement.  Especially the use of "gravity".  I suggest the people who made this advertisement go sit beneath a coconut tree to discover what gravity is.

But as I was gearing up for a long rant, I was distracted with another idea.  The idea of the Superbowl.  Now, most people who watched the Superbowl in the past were sports fans who wanted to see how the season was going to end.  Superbowl eventually became a popular way for the average sports fan to gather in one location and pretend to be "there" wherever the Superbowl was being held at.  However, as sports fans usually bring wives along to these occassions and wives generally don't care about the Superbowl or the end of a season, a new phenomenon began to develop:  advertising became more clever to attract the attention of the bored people watching the Superbowl.

Generally, when people sit down to watch a show they are interested in, they do not sit to watch it because of the comercials.  People usually don't pick up the remote and say "I'm going to watch channel 8 today because I love those comercials, they crack me up."  Or "Boy, I can't wait to watch Walking Dead.  Their comercials are the bomb!"  But the Superbowl had brought advertising into a meta state.  No longer do advertisements have to try to capture the attention of the people watching the show.  Many people watch the show to SEE the advertisments.  There are even advertisements for the advertisments.  This is something I don't understand.  As a nonsports person and an anti-advertisement person, I dislike the Superbowl more than most, so I might be a little biased when I say this has become completely rediculous and ask what the hell is wrong with people.  Then again, perhaps I'm the outside voice of reason trying desperately for people to realize how they have been tricked into this situation.  Hey!  Here's a stellar idea.  Maybe if you got invited to a Superbowl party and don't like the game, instead of falling prey to the advertisers, you could designate a room for awesome movies or games?  Be proactive!  Stop the madness!

WT: Adventure

This week Kris decided that we should blog about adventure.  This is how this particular post is gonna go down: I'm gonna start out describing some half ass adventure I had this week and then try and loosely connect it to some reading I did today and some crazy idea I came up with.  So, by the time this post is concluded, I will have completely diverged from the topic of adventure.

First point of business: Kris told me to have an adventure this week.  I didn't really plan on actually doing it because I have lots of homework to do so I figured I'd just dredge up some old story about times past and try to draw some new insight into what happened.  However, without even realizing it, I actually did go on an adventure and forgot that I was fulfilling the assignment until Kris mentioned that she neglected to go on hers (suck it).

Adventure of course can be loosely defined so I consider anytime I exit the apartment for any length of time without the car to be an adventure.  Of course adventure can also include an automobile but you have to do something extra special with them to be considered an adventure like go on a road trip or drive around with no destination. 

This particular adventure was simply a walk in the neighborhood which I initiated because John and I neglected going to the gym that morning.  We ended up walking close to 3 miles though so our walk more than made up for lost exercise.  We delivered a letter to the post office and then settled down at wienerschnitzel for some ice cream.  At least that was the plan.  Actually, I ate ice cream and John had hot dogs.  Super exciting, I know; it gets better.  After our stop at hot dog heaven (insert some sarcastic intonation) we headed over to dimple records to look for movies about communism because SOMEHOW John convinced his professor to let him write a 10 page paper about movies.  Then we went home and showered because its pretty hot outside.  There was a nice breeze though so we were pretty comfortable the majority of the time.

Anyway, to loosely connect this to academia, reading books is kind of like an adventure in that it takes you places and causes you to think about things you would not otherwise go/think about.  I am well aware that that last sentence was a disaster.  I'm actually impressed with the speed at which this post is coming along.  Usually I demand complete perfection before I continue on to my next thought but for some reason, I feel like just letting it slide.

Anywhozers (again), I'm reading The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey and let me tell you, this guy thinks he's God's gift to Christianity (seriously).  He tells us a bunch of stuff that some guys came up with in the 19th century and he pretends like its been in the Bible the whole time.  Also he basically calls Jews idiots... and pretty much anyone else who has the audacity to suggest the Bible is not literal.  In fact everyone is an idiot who does not understand the Bible and biblical prophesy EXACTLY the way he does.  And we wonder why.... never mind that's really not the point. 

For SOME REASON while I was reading this psycho babble about how Philosophy of Religion is secretly witchcraft, I thought of this weird idea (that I swear I've had before... or maybe I heard it somewhere else and am just taking credit for it).  What if every person in the whole world is actually the same person?  I don't mean like the whole Buddhist "we are one" theory (although that could tie in nicely) I mean like what if one person was reincarnated after they die into someone else and this process just kept happening until that person lived the life of every single person in human history?  Think about what that would mean.  Essentially we would be fighting and disagreeing with ourselves. 

Someone's probably gonna read this and be like "there's already a whole religious system built around that concept" and then sue me for copyright infringement.  Either that or I just started a new religion.  Not that I believe it.  But then, who really believes in the religions they start?  I have a hard time believing that L Ron Hubbard really believes in Scientology.  By 'hard time' I really mean 'not at all'. 

Did you see?  I'm not even talking about adventure anymore.  I have come to the end of my own prophetic statement at the beginning of the post.  It's easy to prophesy your own actions.  I have about 90% accuracy rate.  I think this post is a record for me.  I hope no one got bored. 

A Jedi Craves Not These Things

I really, really, really wanted to have an adventure this week.  I had adventures in misadventures instead and now I don't have time to go out seeking adventure.  Which is sad, because I told Angela she had to have an adventure this week too.  Only I don't know whether she did or not.  She probably didn't because she was busy too.

Then I started to think about what qualified as an adventure.  I tried very hard to fit up some new experience I'd had this week as an adventure.  But I think in order to have an adventure, you have to experience personal growth on the journey.  I don't think I experienced personal growth this week.  I think I experienced frustration and irritation, but not necessarily personal growth.

Then, I tried to fabricate an adventure.  But the people I was fabricating an adventure with didn't experience personal growth either.  That was my bad.  There should have been a personal growth moment there...somewhere.  But I failed to provide opportunity for personal growth.  So there was no adventure there either.

THEN I tried to write about previous adventures and include Angela.  But Angela has pretty much covered those bases.

Oh!  Oh wait!  Now I know!  I will discuss the time we had a Chicago adventure together:

Angela was looking at going to a college in the state of confusion where I live, so we were going to Chicago to look at a school for ourselves. Only we were too poor to take a taxi and neither of us knew the bus routes, and there was one train that would take us mostly to where we needed to go, but we had to find the train station first.  Being the pro from Chicago that I am, I set us off in the wrong direction.  We boldly walked further and further away from our destination.

About the point I realized something was amiss was when we entered an area that was starting to look kind of shady.  I had Angela duck with me inside of a place so we could reorient ourselves off of the street.  The place we ducked into was pretty much a dive and at that point I realized if we just head back the other way, quickly and boldly, maybe no one would notice we were lost and come hastle us.  So we did just that!

Eventually we managed to find the train that took us into the area we wanted and we made it to the school.  We sat in on some classes, ate their food, got shown a really, really old book that belonged to Martin Luther, and then Angela was put on the spot with a councilor to tell them whether or not she was going to go there.  She didn't end up going there, but we did make it home with less confusion!

We were two women, alone in a big city and we persevered!  Woo adventure!

Wait...no...there was no personal growth there either.  DANGIT!

Weekly Topic: Relationships

Since Kris did an info graphic, I thought I would be a sheep and follow suit. 

The point is that no matter what kind of relationship you have, somebody will be judging you.  If you manage to get past the single stage (the one where people feel sorry for you for not being competent enough to find someone) then you go into the annoying new couple phase where people are disgusted by your cutesyness.  Then you may pass into the boring couple phase where people are inspired to wonder why you're even together.  However, if you manage to find the perfect balance and be a perfectly happy non-disgusting-cutesy couple, then people are just going to hate you for being happy cause they're super jealous.  I think my point is supposed to be you can't win, but you totally can because who really cares what other people think?  There are people who hunt big foot as if he's Jesus Christ.  Their opinions do not factor into my sense of self-worth.

Moral: Being single is awesome.  Being in a relationship is awesome.  Both of these things are true. 

Nuff Said

(In case it isn't clear, the last image is time)

Edit:  I fixed the stupid typo...I can't believe it took a week to realize there WAS a typo.