20 December 2010

True Stories Pt. 1

A pterodactyl pooped on the car on the trip up to maryland for my grandmother's funeral.



True story.

06 August 2010

Brother In Law Identity

YEARS ago, my sister, Jenny, went out on a date. She met a guy online who called her a "seemingly normal person" (wow, he was way off! ;)) and he was british and had nice pictures on his profile, so she met him at a mexican restaurant.

Being her siblings, my younger sister, Megan, and I HAD to morph this into an opportunity to tease our sister.

Since this was an online romance at the time, we went with Identity #1: "he's really an old fat guy,"



Dad even offered to go with her on the date and sit at another table to wait for a signal to get her out of there if the date was going badly. He was only half joking.

But, when my sister came back looking like this:



we had to let go of that one as chances were, considering Jenny's taste in men, he was not an old fat guy.

The next logical step was that he was, Identity #2, a drug dealer. Here's what Andy would look like with all the typical markings of a man of that trade:



But then we met him and he was waaaaaaaaaaaay to clean and well put together and well spoken to be a drug dealer.


This leads us to Identity #3: The British Spy.



But after several years of knowing Andy after he married my sister, I have finally, FINALLY discovered his secret identity. Andy is Super Brit. He's just brilliant at everything he does! So, he gets a super suit and a fancy hat with an exceptionally large feather.



05 August 2010

Seattle, Day 5

On my last day in Seattle, I very briefly was able to go to Pikes Place Market - which I learned was a very, very bad place to go when your things are already packed and ready to go because you want to buy EVERYTHING because everything is super duper awesome. I restricted myself to buying a giant sand lizard and some sweets for the kids (and by that I mean my brother and sister).



The plane home decided to be nice and not shake us around. The pilot turned off the lights and everyone went to sleep as the flight left at 11pm (1am EST)



That is, everyone went to sleep except me because my seatmate would.not.stop.talking!! At all. I was absolutely exhausted and never even replied to her, but she didn't stop!!



When I arrived at Dulles after 5 hours on the plane with the living chatty cathy doll from heck, I had a 2 hour wait until my next flight. I didn't want to fall asleep and risk missing my flight, so I went to starbucks.



It was then that I was reintroduced to Mr. Espresso. Mr. Espresso and I had been estranged for a long time. This is what the personification of Espresso looks like in my head.



And I became my own nightmare - a person who cannot sit still no matter how hard they try. At one point, I was standing in a corner dancing around to Single Ladies. I was a crazy person!!



When I finally got home (thanks to mom, who picked me up at the airport), I pretty much crashed!! The bunnies disapproved.



I woke up to this, so dragged myself off the couch and went to the store to buy the rabbits' kale.



And that concludes my day!

23 July 2010

Seattle, Day 4

On day 4 of Seattle, I was starting to feel the burn from walking up and down the Hills of Pain and Suffering.

On top of that, I seemed to have caught a cold some where - which is odd, since I seemed to have been in Seattle the ONLY week out of the year where it was a steady 80 degrees and sunny. Not one day of rain. So, I will not say I caught a cold - I will say I caught a pleasantly warm and sunny. Bizarre. I must have made a sacrifice to the right god or something. A hamster sacrifice.

So, back to feeling the burn and otherwise feeling like crap. I was not going to let that stop me from doing touristy things!

So, I rolled down the Hills of Pain and Suffering back down to the piers.



Ok, I walked, but it was really painful and I almost cried when I had to climb back up them.

But, it was completely worth it. For $6.90, I took a half hour ferry ride.

It's an F-E-R-R-Y ride. Not a F-A-I-R-Y ride. Just thought I'd clarify that.

So, it didn't look like this:



I took about 50 bazillion pictures on the ferry because the landscape was BEAUTIFUL!! What this means is that Ied post 5,000 pictures of the SAME DARN MOUNTAIN on facebook and SAVED SOMEONE'S LIFE because the pictures were so inspirational and wonderful that they found new meaning in their existance and finally found the will to go on!!



This is the path of the ferry ride I took to Bainbridge Island. I really recommend it!



Bainbridge was this cute little town with these cute little shops and I wanted to buy everything! But I satisfied myself with adorable salt and pepper shakers!!




After I got back, I went back to my hotel and collapsed. Again.

22 July 2010

Seattle, Day 3

Today was a day for going to things that had a double meaning. ("Ha! 'Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner;' there's a double meaning in that" - Benedict, Much Ado About Nothing - best of shakespeare's plays!!)

After class, I traveled to the space needle, which in the head looked like this: a sewing needle in space.



But was actually vaguely similar but not really to this:



See me all the way down there? It was really tall. I did not go up in it because I would have a panic attack and no one with me to drag me back down.

Plus it cost $20 to go up.

I don't know anyone who would pay $20 for a panic attack!!

So, to make myself feel better, I sat for a while and imagined I was space-needle sized and attacking cars (the red ones taste like cherries!).



Then someone told me I should go ride a duck. So, in my head, it should look like this:



But it looked like this:



The incredible offspring of an illicit union of a truck and a boat!

I asked, the wheels stay where they are and just keep spinning. Poor wheels must be so confused and like, "WTF, mate, there's no ground here!" And the passanger side wheel says, "Just keep going man! Just keep going!! We'll make it!" And the rear passanger side wheel is like, "Ahh, I don't think I can make it! I can't do it" and the last wheel says, "Don't give up! Never give up!"

It's all very dramatic.

After that, I went back to the hotel and went to bed.

21 July 2010

Seattle, Day 2

Day 2, Seattle.

I start out the day by going to Management Analysis class, which is really boring. People were nice - one woman was a total Mean Girl, but liked me for some reason so we went out for lunch every day so I could sit there and listen to her critisize everything everybody else was doing. It was interesting, being on That Side of the social ladder for 4 days. I mostly just sat there quietly, listened, and bean-dipped (penny for anyone who can tell me what that means!), but still it was very high school.

The three hour time change was really messing with my head and I had trouble concentrating.



But then class was over. I went to my hotel room for a quick change (and flirt with the bellboy. What? Men love girls in a red suit), then went back down the hills. On the way down, I was followed by a homeless man who was smoking weed as he asked me questions in an alien language. I escaped by jumping in a cab to take a $4 ride to Pioneer Square, which was WONDERFUL.



Then, I went on the Seattle Underground tour, where I learned that the historical population of seattle was 80% lumberjacks and 20% *ahem* seamstresses. With no sewing machines. Here I am, pretending to be a seamstress. Would you pay me 10 cents to fix your clothes?



20 July 2010

To begin the insanity...

People told me to make a blog, so, being a follower, I have done what I was told.

First just moving some things from my facebook account over here:

I recently went on a business trip to Seattle, Washington (which is a fantastic place, if you are ever heading in that direction).

I took over 400 pics while I was there (remember when pics were photos?), but forgot the cord to my camera. So, to mollify those who were trying to live through me (I love you all), in a moment of idle inanity (whoa! whoa! See what I did there? Making the connections, baby), I decided to illustrate what I had done today.

And it was downhill (and uphill) from there!

To begin my journey, I flew from southeastern Virginia to Dulles Airport in DC. My flight to Dulles was uneventful, except that everyone on the plane was going to Seattle. I began to believe I was being followed (see suspicious me below).



But, that didn't last long because I had had about 3 hours of sleep the night before!!



My good luck couldn't last, though, and my five hour flight to Seattle was the worst!

First, I was in the middle seat between two large men who both decided the needed the inside armrest... I was all like "I object" and they were like "der?"



Then, a lady sat in front of me with her teeny, tiny little baby who had the lungs of a whooping crane and the bm capacity of a large elephant. Mommy thought it was okay to change the diaper right there in her seat... that was a lovely smell...



Then the stewardess came over the Big Voice and said that the in flight movie featured Miley Cyrus and her Teenage Angst in "Nobody Understands Me and Everyone Makes Me Cry." Oh, that wasn't really the name of the movie - but that was the gist of it. I was not a fan.

Then we hit turbulance. People hear turbulance and think of a little jolt every once in a while. No, this was the plane jumping about like a bean (do they still sell those) - things falling (stewardesses included [wait, what is the PC term for them now]) as the passangers sat in our seats and tried to pretend like we weren't all thinking "OH NO WE'RE GOING TO DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIE"

I perhaps exagerate a little.

But here's a picture!



But things started to look up as I looked down through the airplane window and saw lots of pretty mountains! We don't have real mountains where I'm from, so I took pictures whilst leaning over the lap of the man sitting in my way.



The plane landed and I fell to my knees to kiss the ground in thankfulness that I had finally reached the safety of the earth.

Then I got into the Taxi of Death and Fear. The taxi driver inexplicably forgot the basics of physics, driving and common sense. But I lived to animate another day!



When I reached my hotel room, the time change made it so that it was actually only 1100, even though I had left at 0600 and gotten up at 0430. So, what's a girl to do?

I went to the aquarium. The animals there loved me and were my friends and I blew them kisses, took their pictures and then left!!



Then I went to the restaurant next door and ate fish.



After eating my salmon (which seemed to happen to me a lot in Seattle), I went shopping up and down the piers. I found stores with lots of Twilight and Pirate stuff in them and I spent far too much money!



It was only after I had nearly exhausted myself that I realized... holy crap... Seattle has hills. Like, serious hills. Serious hills on top of serious hills. Sort of like this:



By the second incline, I was like this and had 3 more hills to go before I got to the street with my hotel on it (5th Ave if anyone is interested):



But I finally did make it to my hotel, where I collapsed and died, only to be resurrected so that I could make this blog!