ignore me

I am trying out this banner thing. I have a basic theory of how it works so forgive this lapse of oddity.

I'm a Popsicle (a survey)

Are you a sir or a ma'am?
I'm a Popsicle.

How do you feel when people call you sir or ma'am?
This only happened to me once when I was in a mall in Seattle and a woman was trying to sell me a cell phone plan. I'll be honest, it was kind of awkward. Then again, maybe she was talking to someone else and it's extremely weird that I responded.

Do you keep a diary or journal?
Not really. Sometimes I write stuff down in an unintelligible manner when I'm mad about killing people, but that doesn't happen too frequently.

What's the favorite thing about what you're wearing?
They have stripes which could mean three things: I'm a convict, I'm a baseball player, I'm a girl who likes stripy pajama pants.

What movie has the greatest soundtrack?
Juno, Love Actually, Pride and Prejudice, The Holiday. I'm sure there's more but that's all I've got at the mo'.

Do you watch educational TV (like National Geographic or Discovery)?
Only when my mom forces me. Being home schooled is a wonderful thing sometimes, but not after lunch when I have to watch Planet Earth.

Have you ever watched a local Christian channel?
We have a local Christian channel? Holy crap. No way!

Are you even Christian? If not, what is your religious affiliation?
This question is so lame. But I'll answer it anyway. No and not applicable.

Fiction or non-fiction?
Seriously? You have to ask?

What's so great about the city you live in?
Not much, not really. That's a lie. I'm sure there's tons of ways I could answer this question but I'm watching Supernatural and it's distracting.

Have you ever been confused about your sexuality?
Well there was that one girl with the cherry chapstick... but other than that no. Pretty damn clear.

What would have people labelled you in high school?
The most awesome girl ever in the entire world.

Do you dislike people who are different from you?
No. Unless there's something to dislike in the difference. For example I dislike people who don't care about the environment and kill kittens. But if you wear a yellow hard hat I'm going to give you a chance to prove yourself before I go about hating on you.

Were you a cute baby?

Duh.

How do you feel about premarital sex?

I don't know how to phrase this. It's a funny way to ask something. How do you feel? Like, uh, I feel sad when I think about premarital sex. I guess I feel like if you're safe, it's all good. Go ahead. :)

Have you ever been a loner?
Kinda. I've sat on the bus alone, before. I've eaten lunch alone before. I never carried around a duffel bag. Depends on your definition, I suppose.

Do you like '80's music? (It's great!)
I wasn't alive in the 80's. I don't know what the music was like.

Have you, or would you ever smoke pot?
No and most likely not.

What do you think about harder drugs, like heroin, meth, and coke?
It's sad that people are unhappy with their lives and feel the need to escape using drugs. :(

Do you have asthma?
That's pretty random question. No.

Homosexuality: is it nature or nurture? Or just a straight out choice?
Is being a girl nature or "nurture"? Oh wait, let me think: should I be gay today? Homosexuality is a fact, not a choice.

What's the awesomest planet? (Besides Earth.)
Honestly? I refuse to answer this on principle.

Blogging vs. Vlogging

I've been watching a lot of vlogbrothers lately, which, apart from being insanely entertaining and giving me lots of time to play Frecell, has also made me think about my [non-existent] history as a vlogger.

So today I am going to be comparing the two forms of internet journaling and partaking in both. First I'm going to write this blog post, and then I am going to talk about the same thing in a vlog. It should be interesting. Should is the key word in that last sentence.

You should note that I've tried vlogging a few times and never found my niche. Also it always felt a bit awkward to me, talking to a camera. I'm willing to give it another shot, but I make no gurantees about the end result...

From my experience, I've compiled this list of things you need to be a successful* vlogger:

1. A topic/point of view
2. Basic video editing skills
3. Some place that you can be alone and talk to yourself/the camera
4. Creativity
5. A good quality camera

You also need some confidence. Putting a video of yourself on the internet is easier said than done. In theory, people are going to be watching that video, and you have to believe you aren't wasting their time.

To be a blogger you need less things, in my opinion:

1. A topic/point of view
2. Writing ability
3. A computer

Again, you need confidence in yourself. Making you inner thoughts known the the internet at large? It takes an ounce of courage. Especially if you realize that maybe no one will ever read it.

After that, everything else is bonus points.

My point here is that, for me, vlogging is harder. I'm sure it's different for everyone, depending on your personality, but it's much easier for me to type quietly at a keyboard than try to charismatically capture attention with a video camera.

When people read my blog, I'm not on display, gesturing my hands and stumbling over my words. If I don't know what I'm about to say next, my fingers pause over my keyboard. Vlogging seems a lot more personal, and with that a lot more scary. Maybe sticking to blogging is a it cowardly, but if you're good at it, why not?

*By successful, I don't mean insanely popular. I just mean being a good vlogger. I'm sure there's lots of under-watched, under-rated, yet awesome vlogs out there. Bonus points for views.

Moving and Moral Matters Solved

This morning, I woke up at 8:30am. This is unusual, to say the least. It's possible that I might make this a regular occurrence, simply because I like having the house to myself. It's so quiet. I like it.

Two major happenings filled up my day (one more than the other):

1. The autumn Girl Guide cookies arrived. (not all of them, but 24 cases are residing in my dining room at present)

2. My dad moved.

Up until the actual act of moving, I was uber excited. I thought I liked moving. But I realized it's not moving that I like.

What I like about moving is the furniture arrangement and such. I love putting stuff away and hanging pictures on the wall and finding out where the couch fits best. I like rebuilding the desk and hooking up the computer.

Carrying boxes from one place to the other? Not so much.

It's not that I hate it. One good point is that I'm sure my muscles got a good workout from it, but it's not something I love.

I can't wait until everything is put away. That is what I truly love, seeing the transformation of empty house to livable home. Sounds a bit cliche, but's it's the truth.

On another note, literally, I was writing some Nerdfighter notes today. I'm going to be all sneaky and drop them off when I go to buy Paper Towns in paperback.

The decision about whether or not to buy Paper Towns has been a moral dilemma I have been debated over for the past week. Somehow, my mom's friend loaned/gave me a yellow Margo copy (not what I would have chosen) and I feel guilty buying a second when I have a perfectly functional book right on my shelf. As guilty as I feel, however, for the trees cut down and carbon emissions, I have convinced myself that it's in support of something important to me (i.e. John Green) and that the hardcover doesn't really fit on the shelf anyway (it doesn't match his other books).

I'll just make sure I lend it around to everyone I know so that I'm not the only person benefiting. Who wants to borrow it first?

Random Thoughts Tuesday

Courtesy of Crazy Brained Rena (Uttering Nonsense)

Ponder this...

- Why can't I buy unicorn pinatas in bulk? I would love to take one of them out on a bad day and beat the crap out of it. And then eat candy.

- Why can't I go into any Starbucks in the entire world, order an ice coffee and then leave, satisfied? This may never happen. However, I still hope.

- Who invented the lawn? Seriously, what is the point of having grass in front of your house? I'd rather everyone plant tomatoes and I HATE tomatoes. That says something.

- How come I can force myself to write lowercase a's like the keyboard writes them, but every time I go and type chai tea latte, it comes out with an extra r?

- Why do people drink beer? It's disgusting. Ew. *vomits*

- Come to think of it, why do people drink wine? It's gross, too. *triestothinkofalchohalthattastesgoodbutfails*

- Just want to say I don't support teen drinking. Bad. Very bad. And gross.

Random commentary...

- I love Indian food, but there's very fine line of spiciness that must be met. I don't want it to be flavourless, but I don't want to have to run around outside with my mouth open to try and calm the flames. Stop, drop and roll, my friends, simply does not work in these cases.

- All I want (well, one of the things I want) is for people to bring own their damn travel cups to Starbucks. I think Starbucks should have a week where anyone who brings their own re-usable cup gets their beverage free. 10 cents off is not enough.

- I want to watch Gilmore Girls.

- My battery is low. 20% remaining. Shucks.

- I'm liking the math right now. Spreadsheets are easy and Excel 2007 makes them super easy. It's like it does half the homework for me.

- TOMORROW IS MOVING DAY! HOORAY!!! EXCITEMENT! *jumpsupanddown*

- I'm hungry.

Human needs pull me away from my keyboard, but fear not, I will return. Someday.

Despair for the World

I'm going to talk about one of those incidents that makes me groan and fear for the future of our society whilst listening to A Very Potter Musical. It's things like AVPM that keep me from following Dobby's lead continuously banging my head against the wall. Thank you, Harry Potter, for making my life livable.

Let's just jump right in.

To get to my neighbour's house, you have to walk up a big staircase. It's kind of laborious and creepy because the stairs creak and you feel like you could come crashing through to the ground (and your death) at any step, but apart from thaaat the trek is just peachy.

It's not that I have a problem with stairs, though they are a bit irritating, the problem is that at the top of those stairs is the mailbox.

If it hadn't been for my extensive (*laughs*) work as a newspaper carrier, I might not care about this, but as it is I have a lot of compassion for those who trek through sun, rain and snow to fearlessly conquer evil barking dogs and finger eating mail slots just to deliver your mail to you. So I have a big problem with lazy-assed people who can't even walk down a flight of stairs to retrieve their own damn mail.

We've broached the subject with our closed-minded, selfish neighbours before. The mail carrier has also made a comment. Their flimsy argument is that they are worried that people may steal their mail if it is any farther away from the door. Now I know it's a bit pretentious, but has anyone ever seen those locking mail boxes in Home Depot and Canadian Tire? Yes, it's kind of conceited to assume your mail is important enough to be stolen, but there are options. You may need one of these if you're in the mafia, say, or maybe if you're an FBI agent, or just really paranoid, and maybe I'm just naive, but I don't think the average citizen needs to be so worried and mail theft.

Are people really that lazy and selfish that they can't grab their mail on the way to their door and save the mail carrier a tiresome journey? Seriously people, get over yourselves.

Now I'm going to go back to hitting my head against wall to the beat of AVPM.

Happy Dancing

I got a new layout, I got a new layout. It's very pretty. La di da.

Yesterday was pretty chill. Rachel, Caitlyn and I went out for coffee today. After some internal debate, I ordered a London Fog. Medium. Yeah, I'm that hard core. When the barrista handed over our drinks at the table, I took a sip, and, to my surprise, discovered that it wasn't a London Fog, but a large chai tea latte*. I suppose I was never meant to get that London Fog, and the chai tea latte was, indeed, delicious, but I still missed my Fog. Life is funny.

I've noticed I've been using Twitter a lot more frequently of late. I wonder why that is.

Now that I have this pretty, new (or pretty new) layout, I feel like I need to be providing some worthwhile content. Is anyone interested in the fact that the barrista screwed up my order? I don't think I'm even interested in it. So what to do. Well... LET's PLAY I SPY!

I Spy with my little eye, something that is tragically hip...

any guesses???.... no???

The Answer: Trying to write something meaningful in your blog so that you can live up to your lovely layout (Tragic because it's just plain pathetic, hip because new layouts always are).

I Spy with my little eye, someone who is sitting in her pajamas, blogging, and wants to eat breakfast...

guesses? c'mon, I made this one nice and easy for ya.

The Answer: Yours truly.

And so I take my leave of you. If you even made it this far. I will work on writing something more worthy of your interest. Did you like playing I Spy? I thought it was oodles of fun. Ta ta.

*Every time I try to type chai tea, i ALWAYS spell chair tea. It's this weird reflex. I wonder what a chair tea latte tastes like...

After typing that subject, I realized I don't really have a specific happy dance. When I'm excited about something I usually just jump up and down and twirl around. Hmm.... I'll have to think abotu that.