Barnes & Noble

I have always wanted to work at Barnes & Noble. When I was in high school, my mother had a part time job there and she said during the interview process they ask you for your ten favorite authors or ten you would like to have dinner with or whatever. Here is my list. I have decided to write it out and carry it with me at all times, just in case they see me browsing and I get an impromptu interview, because they know I would be the best addition.

EDIT:
Jeffrey Brown
Jodi Piccoult
Al Franken
Charles Bukowski
David Sedaris
J.K. Rowling
Francesca Lia Block
Audrey Niffenegger
Laurie Notaro
Shel Silverstein

Alternates: Noam Chomsky, Christopher Pike, Ann M. Martin, V.C. Andrews.

Havalinas

On the drive home from San Francisco a few weeks ago, I found a cool new station on my sirius radio. It is old time radio shows. Brad and I totally lucked out that when we tuned in we got to hear an episode of The Twilight Zone! It was the "The Obsolete Man", which is a great one.

Then we heard a show starring Douglas Fairbanks where he had just gotten out of prison but then saw the man who he had been convicted of killing. Much hijinks ensued. That was pretty good too.What they were great at though, was keeping me awake.

p.s. I am going to Sedona for the night. Brad's Mom is up there and we get to stay in one of the rooms of her two room suite. I hope to have much fun. I think on the drive up, I will make Brad play The Pixies, Havalinas just so I can sing: old Sedona.....A-reee-zooonaa!

p.p.s. Isn't the weather just great today (and yesterday)?

Dear Oprah

Now that I have dvr, I have been watching Oprah every day. I realize that all she does is make me cry. Every. Episode.

Yesterday was pretty bad (I think it was Wednesday's ep.). She talked about Africa and all the genocide going on in Sudan, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in Uganda. There were pictures of dead people and the talks of rape and cooking people alive and feeding them to other people.

In Uganda the children must walk like 5 miles every night to be locked in overnight or else they could be kidnapped by the Rebels and forced to kill people and be raped. Then they walk home 5 miles every morning. They do this every day. They are called the Night Walkers.

Tear :*(
It made me so depressed because all I knew nothing about this stuff and there is not much I can do except give money. And it makes me angry because our media is for SHIT!

Baby Names

Let me precede this by stating, I am not pregnant. But I have been searching for good baby names since early high school. I was looking at a popular baby name site and i am dissapointed that some names I like are on the Top 100 for 2005. I want my baby to have an underused name. I hated being Shannon B. because there were other Shannon's in my classes. Here are some names that I like, but will probably not use.

Girls:
Sophie
Olivia
Sydney
Lily (sorry Amber, it's # 26 on the most popular list)
Reagan
Kennedy
Lucy

Boys:
Noah
Robert
Patrick

I seriously will probably use Robert sometime, because that is my dad's, grandpa's and great-grandpa's first name. I also like Dean, but only as a middle name, it was my maternal grandpa's middle name.
I'm glad Claire or Wendy was not on that list, because I love those names. I'm sure this will all change more in the next couple years before I plan to have a baby.

That one candy with the sweetness?

The other day, I could not remember the name of a certain childhood candy. I kept giving Brad memory cues, but he was no help.
Me: It came in a tube of clear cellophane.

Brad: I don't know

Me: They were all different flavors and pastel colors.

Brad: I don't know

Me: They are like hardened pixie stixs.

Brad: Silence

Me: Nevermind.

Well I still didn't remember until I read it right now on someone else's blog: Smarties. Duh.

p.s. In 6th grade on the bus, my friend and I crushed them up and snorted them. There was no high, but much sneezing. That relates to the time my sister and I rolled up grass that we tore out of the yard in notebook paper and tried to smoke it. What? That's what "grass" means, doesn't it? No?

Adulthood

I made one of my first major purchases as an adult last night...... a vacuum. Not just like the other vacuums I've had, which all cost under $50, this baby cost $200. It is amazing. I vacuumed last night and it has this light that turns from Red (dirty) to Green (clean) to tell you when you can stop vacuuming that spot. Lets just say that i did so much vacuuming on my little patch of apartment carpet that I am actually sore today. But that could just be because I am out of shape.

Maybe this will help with the weird smell that seems to be in my apartment no matter how much I clean, it was probably due to the ancient crumbs that set up camp in the depths of my carpet.

p.s. Brad's mom is in town and he hung out with her last night. I know this will sound lazy and spoiled (i am) but doing things by yourself is hard. I bought the vacuum and went grocery shopping and then had to carry everything up the stairs. Yet another reason for my soreness.

Exposed

I have exposed myself on my myspace page. I put a link to this blog so now my friends know about it. Which is good. Now maybe I will have hits other than just me looking at it. And comments other than just spam.

Behind the times

So about three weeks ago I got a few cds for our trip to San Francisco:

Neko Case- Fox Confessor Brings the Flood.

Patty Griffin - Flaming Red.

Interpol- Turn on the Bright Lights

Now I think I am behind the times when it comes to Interpol because this is the first cd of theirs I have bought, but it has become one of my all time favorite cds and I can't wait to get more.

Other cds I have bought on Itunes lately:

William Shatner- Has Been. This is a great cd, produced by Ben Folds.

The Magnetic Fields- The Wayward Bus/Distant Plastic Trees. All the songs are sung by a girl which is different and good

Arcade Fire- Funeral. Also something I am behind in. I heart this cd.

James-Laid. I haven't listened to it all the way through yet, but I love the song Laid.

Lemon Jelly- Lost Horizons. Cool Cd with a lot of voice overs

I really like my Sirius Radio. Not listening to my local station play Radiohead - Creep, Greenday - Blvd of Broken Dreams, and FallOutBoy - Sugar we're goin down on a loop, is very nice. Also no commercials.
Also, I am trying to learn a little bit of html. Yes I made all of the above links myself.

Silent Hill

I have decided that I will never see another movie that is made from a video game ever again. This movie, although yes I did jump once or twice, was not good. You did not know the plot until the last half hour and even then it was told through flashback and voice over. There was like an alternate dimension inside of an alternate dimension. But yes, it was gross when that random demon guy pulled that random character's skin off.

Flikr

I added a flikr link to the right side of this page. I don't really have many pics on there yet, oh but I will.

I know when I read people's blogs I imagine them a certain way and then I see a pic and they look pretty different than what I expected.

David Sedaris

I am reading Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris and it is hands down, the funniest book I have ever read.
Pure Awesomeness.
But don't read it if you are anti-gay or anti-France. And if you are, please get over yourself

I can't wait to read his other stuff.

Tom and Katie

Well, Tom and Katie finally had their baby. It is a girl which they name, Suri. I really thought it would be a boy because I was sure that Tom just had his clone implanted into her womb.

I have been researching Scientology. No matter what it is about or if it helps people, the creator was a lying nut. I suggest reading this: L. Ron Hubbard article at wikipedia.
That's why I could never be Mormon either (not counting the whole polygamy thing). Both religions were created by con men who just wanted money, therefore the religion is just based on lies.

P.S. L. Ron Hubbard also wrote Battlefield Earth. Enough. Said.

Thoughts

There is a little gnat thing that I see almost everyday in my cubicle at work. I hope it is always the same one, or else there is a colony of littly bugs. Although I think I remember killing it once.

I woke up this morning a half an hour before my alarm with the overwhelming need to pee. I then remembered my dream of peeing on a broken toilet and getting splashed by my pee water and am thankful that I didn't pee in my bed.

I haven't written in a few days because I am really busy reading other people's blogs. Right now it is http://www.queserasera.org/. I find myself always wondering, how do these people get so much done. After work and school, all I do is watch tv. Some people find the time to raise children, have a successful blog, make crafty stuff, walk their dogs, read blogs, and watch TV.

I got COX DVR, otherwise known as Tivo for the lower middle class. It is nice being able to actually watch The Daily Show, Conan, Oprah (which I cry at every time), and every Design on a Dime and Devine Design.

Bowling

So Brad is always turning down the suggestion to go bowling whenever it is brought up.

Some one "Lets go bowling!"
Brad "NO! I hate bowling. It is not fun."

So I assumed he had some traumatic bowling experience that he didn't want to talk about. Then one day a few weeks ago:

Brad "I want to go bowling sometime with just you."
Me "Why? I thought you hated it?"
B "Actually I have never bowled in my life. I just didn't want to go bowling and then really suck at it."

I felt so bad that he had missed out on bowling. Also now everytime he says he doesn't like doing something, I assume he has just never done it. See: Playing board games.

Forgiveness

I have been reading my old diaries from junior high and high school. I am so different then I used to be (thankfully), but it made me so sad to see how I acted and was treated.

I really was such a flirt and a make out slut. This was in the summer of 1999 between my sophomore and junior year of high school. I worked at a movie theater (yes I am a movie nerd) and every few nights I would be making out with a different guy. But then I would complain about how my guy friends didn't respect me and everyone talked behind my back. It's no wonder.

I'm not saying what they did was right but I wish I would have stuck up for myself more and not put up with their shit. Or maybe not made out with so many guys.

But I don't regret it because I am happy to have gotten it out of my system then instead of now in my early twenties. I have an acquaintance that was in a relationship all through out high school and college and now that she is free, she is going wild. I think there is a lot more at stake in our twenties than then in our teens.

Now I am in a long term relationship that I can see lasting forever. I have already seen what's out there and I know that Brad is all the love I could ask for.

APE Part II

I think I had the closest thing to a panic attack that I have ever had on Friday night in San Francisco.
We got to the city at around 8:30 and had to park in a garage like three blocks from our "hotel". The guy waiting to be helped behind me didn't put on his brake and his car rolled into mine, which then ran over my toes! Thankfully it didn't hurt bad and it was fine by morning.

Then we walked to the "hotel" through a bad neighborhood. So I started crying, but I think it was just the scariness of being run over finally hitting me. I was scared that my car was going to get stolen, that we were going to get attacked, stuff that probabaly wouldn't happen. I though Brad was mad at me for overreacting, but the next day he told me he went to bed quietly crying because he couldn't fix it and make me feel better.

You might be wondering why I keep writing "hotel", well because we stayed in a hostel. We had a private room with a bathroom, but no TV or anything else. Which wouldn't be that bad, except because I was scared of driving around the city at night, or rather parking late at night, we didn't go out on Saturday night. It was so boring we went to bed at like 9:30.

APE was cool, but it was mostly like going to a comic shop with a lot of different choices. I saw Jeffrey Brown which was cool and got to meet the guys from Modest Proposal. There is only so long (three hours) that you can walk around there though.

So Brad was upset because we wasted all this money and he thought the trip was a total bust. Thankfully Sunday was pretty fun. We went down to Pier 39. We were going to go on the Alcatrez Tour but it was sold out. So we went to the Aquarium and then drove over the Golden Gate Bridge. Then on impulse I was going to drive part of the way home on Highway 1, which follows the coastline. We only got about 10 miles, the the road became closed, so we had to turn around and take the original way home. Oh well!

If I go to San Francisco again, I will stay in a better hotel and fly there.

Funny

This is from The New Yorker:

http://www.newyorker.com/printables/shouts/050926sh_shouts

APE

Brad and I are leaving for a weekend in San Francisco tomorrow morning. I am beginning to feel stressed about it because I haven't made a list of what I need to buy at Target tonight, or what I need to pack. I can be OCD that way. But I did print Google Maps of how to get to the hotel; how to get from the hotel to APE; how to get from the hotel to Chinatown; and how to get from the hotel to Haight and Ashbury. Yes I am a tourist, as anyone will be able to tell from the camera that will be attached to my hand

The weather is going to be cold, well at least by my Arizonian standards. It rarely gets to be 50° except in the two month long winter. And then only with 10% humidity. In San Fran it is going to be 75% humidity. I may have to buy an actual coat at Target tonight!

I will update with pics when we get back!