As a conscious citizen of the Northland, I would formally like to alert you of Prop 10478347, also known as Use It Or Lose It: The Appreciation of Livable Winter Weather Act.
This is what it looks like in much of the northern part of your great country right now:
This photo was snapped by government spies last week in San Jose, California:
Regenesis
January 1stWith 2008 officially behind us and 2009 officially begun, general consesus is that we have officially begun a “new” year.
… But just who exactly says its a new year?
The calendar? Your friends? The rest of the world? The fact that you will now date your notes with “January” instead of “December” and “2009″ instead of “2008″?
What makes yesterday any different from today?
New beginnings don’t just “happen”. You need to make them happen, and no amount of cheering, glitter, alcohol, counting backwards from ten, change of dates, new resolutions, renewing of the calendar year or lucky kisses with the ones you love at midnight will change that.
What defines a new year, then? Perhaps not the renewing of the calendar, but a renewing of the mind.
Things I’ve learned this holiday season
December 30th- When the roads look perfectly clear but all motorists are pulled to the side of the highway to put on chains, you should probably step out of your vehicle first, giving yourself a chance to slip and fall on the black ice BEFORE you pull up to a motorist and ask, “why are you putting on chains??”
- How to put on chains.
- How to check the oil in a car.
- How to replace windshield washer fluid.
- How to take off chains.
- How to dig your car out of three feet of snow.
- How to catch a runaway dog that’s less than two feet tall in three feet of snow.
- If you try the dangling-of-treats-in-front-of-camera approach to get the dog to pose for a Christmas photo to go in your Christmas cards, expect most of his expressions to look like he wants to eat you. And by the way, Merry Christmas!
- Boxing Day does not exist in America.
- Some Americans believe Boxing Day has something to do with boxing.
- You get better deals after Boxing Day.
- The day you decide to dress up like an anime doll (complete with high pigtails in Christmas scrunchies and furry boots, effectively de-aging you some 10+ years) to make your first video game purchase (DDR!), you will run into old friends and extended family who haven’t seen you in years. And to them, you haven’t aged a bit!
- Snow isn’t all that bad when you’re plowing through unchartered back roads with your little Corolla. The best part? Front wheel power (and no ability to get stuck, thank you snow chains!) and back wheel slippage.
- The best way to find some things is to stop looking. All summer you looked for the perfect pair of semi-dressy shorts to pair with neon leggings, dunks and suspenders. In the dead of winter, you find the perfect pair on the clearance rank for EIGHT DOLLARS, and you weren’t even looking.
- It’s really, really hard to cut through a frozen Tufurkey roll, even with The Knife That Cuts Through ANYTHING. Give up while you’re still a head (and ten fingers).
Well there you have it—further proof that learning can happen outside the classroom, even when school isn’t in session. Happy holidays everyone! Hope your Christmas vacation was just as educational.
Why I don’t take vacations
December 28thBeing that I am a person of extremes, vacations rarely do me any good in the long run. Working vacations are fabulous. Vacation vacations are not.
Working vacations, if done right, generally combine a perfect balance of work and play, creating a healthy balance of reality; just in a different setting. For me, this is how I live my life at home, just magnified and more intense. The result? Little to no readjustment, but much refreshment.
Vacation vacations, if done right, generally involve a entire process of forgetting reality all together and just “relaxing”—and while that sounds ridiculously tempting, it’s generally a “putting off”, “delaying”, or “running away from” of your problems, i.e., reality. The result? A painful readjustment process in the face of sharp, rude reality when you get home. And sand in your suitcase.
As time goes by
December 12th 
Today the best friend and I met up for lunch at Finch’s Tea & Coffee House on Pender Street. I ordered the veggie sandwich on multigrain with potato nutmeg soup and masala chai tea. She ordered the avocado sandwich on a baguette with chamomile tea. The food was superb, and the atmosphere, lovely.
In less than a week, I leave for California. I return to home shortly after the 21st. She leaves for Mexico on the 20th, and arrives home early next year. We barely get to see each other as it is, and as it often happens, our vacation times tend to narrowly miss each other. This Christmas is no exception.
Her and I have been friends for over thirteen years now. Between then and now, time has taken us all over the place; different schools, different lifestyles, different goals, and different tastes in nearly everything—but despite that, we’ve always remained the bestest of friends.
Today, I’m thankful for soulmates.
Here’s to the firestarters
December 8thWhere there is no vision, the people perish.
Proverbs 29:18
We all may be alive in the technical sense of the word, but could it be possible that we all carry parts of ourselves that have died long ago?
When we were children, we loved without abandon, questioned without hesitation, dreamed without guidelines and lived without limitations… But then we “grew up”, and much like the proper adults we were expected to be, we put walls around our possibilities and became “realistic”.
But How much of us died because of that?
Somewhere along the way, many of us have lost our drive for life and settled for mundane mediocrity. Have you ever looked at middle-aged people earning minimum wage in dead-end jobs and wondered what series of events led them to where they are today? Surely they didn’t dream of being a Wal-Mart greeter when they were a child. What happened? What went wrong?
If you’re like me, your desktop probably doesn’t look like this most of the time. In fact, if you’re anything like me, it probably looks more like this.
As part of Operation: Clean Out The Engine Sludge, I recently reorganized my entire computer and put every last file away where it belonged. If you’re thinking, gosh, that sounds like a lot of work, it is. It took me about 2-3 hours and freed up about 10 gigabytes in space, but it was well worth it.
Today I thought I’d share with you how I organize the files on my computer in a way that makes them easy to find again, even if I leave them there and forget about them for months. I call it the “How To Organize Your Computer And Still Remember Where You Put Everything” system, or “The Alphabetical Reference System” for short.
Bring on the cheer
December 3rdIts officially December. This may not be terribly exciting news to you, but to all considerate Christmas lovers around the world, the coming of the twelveth month means one thing, and one thing only:
We’re officially allowed to bring on the cheer.
It’s a little known fact that singing Christmas songs, playing Christmas songs, referring to Christmas songs, putting up Christmas decorations, having Christmas decorations up and having a Christmas tree after January 30th and Before December 1st is considered a no no.
Malls don’t always follow this particular unwritten code, but this year, I think we can let them off the hook—with that whole economy thing going on, nobody can blame them for trying to pump out premature Christmas cheer in hopes of sustaining what should be their busiest time of year.
This may be incredibly difficult to believe, so brace yourself, but some people don’t like Christmas. Some people don’t even celebrate it, or any other cheerful equivalent of it. Some people say it’s just a big hullabaloo (that’s an actual word by the way, did you know that?) created by the commercial giants with the intent to suck away all our money. And you know what I think?
I think these people need a big dose of HAPPY! CHRISTMAS! CHEER! shoved up their backsides.
Chanel says: (8:18:46 PM)
so I had a dream about [redacted]
Marissa says: (8:19:26 PM)
OOOH TELL ME ALL THE DIRTY DETAILS!
Chanel says: (8:19:45 PM)
it wasnt THAT good
Chanel says: (8:19:51 PM)
actually, it was quite weird
Chanel says: (8:19:55 PM)
he was sitting next to me
Chanel says: (8:19:59 PM)
very close to me
Chanel says: (8:20:19 PM)
and then something prompted him to lean over and whisper in my ear,
“so I heard you blogged about me”
5 Reasons why Twilight sucked
November 27thBefore I begin, let me preface this by saying that I actually had hopes for this movie. Even though I did not enjoy the books, I felt that Twilight was the kind of story that would make a better movie than a book; and it would have, had the following not gone all wrong…
1. The acting
It was more than bad. It was awful. Most of the characters seemed so awkward with each other, like they had all been thrown together on a high saturation set with a script and told to just act it out. Edward and Bella seemed to have zero chemistry (just like the book) and were awkward around each other all the time, even when they should have been more comfortable.
Charlie and Jacob’s dad (Billy, was it?) were the two best acted parts in the movie. I thought that Charlie’s relationship with Bella was believable, true to the book (from what I can remember) and just awkward enough to fit the background. And, he was funny, in a sort of a passive way.
2. The dialogue
I’m not even sure where to get started on this one, because I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie that has had such awful, choppy, awkward, inexperienced dialogue such as this one. I thought vampires were supposed to have smooth, melodic voices that flowed like honey? Instead, what you get is short bursts of crammed dialogue followed by long awkward pauses. Nothing flows, even when it’s supposed to. Instead, you get this: “Iknowwhatyouare” (in one breath) [pause pause pause] “whatami, (in one breath) bella?”
3. The facial expressions
Edward: Most of the time, he looked (and spoke) like he had a large stick up his ass.
Bella: Has this girl never had a happy moment in her life? She claims to be in love with Edward, and the last time I checked, when you’re in love with someone, they generally make you happy. Why is it then that Bella NEVER CRACKS A SMILE throughout the ENTIRE MOVIE? I understand danger befalls you constantly and you live in a small town that would make anyone want to kill themselves, but girlfriend’s gotta lighten up a bit!
