Sesasha says:

It’s really small and you’ve probably never noticed it. I only noticed it today, and I’ve been writing this fairly regularly for a few months. It made me happy to see it.

So, because I’ve gotten asked: No, the guy I’m referring to in the post just before this one is not my boyfriend. He’s my friend who was dating one of my other friends.

Also, along with the rest of the random things I’m noticing, I saw that the widget on my linux desktop that tells me the weather and temperature turns from a sun to a moon at the exact time that the sun is scheduled to set in the time zone. We’re pretty far west, so though the sun has gone behind the horizon, it’s not even close to dark yet. The days are getting shorter.

I’m retaining water. I wish I weren’t, but I can’t stop eating savory food. Maybe I’m retaining fat too. Hmmm.

I made a swamp cooler today out of a humidifier in front of a fan. It works fine, so long as the air coming off the fan isn’t a 90 degree breeze. MacGyver I ain’t, as it seems. I desperately need the relaxing cool. I wish the temperature would go down. It’s still 88 outside, and it’s 9:20. Grrr…I wish I weren’t so grumpy when it’s hot. Ugh.

So, there is my randomness. Enjoy. I’m going back to my TV.

So, I keep a decent eye on the news feed on facebook, because, let’s face it, it’s well nigh impossible to stay caught up on all 200+ people you’re friends with on it once a week, let alone everyday. I love the news feed. It helps me to know when people post new pictures or videos or make comments on each other’s walls and I also know this way when they’re in relationships and when they break up. It’s so convenient, because then you don’t have to ask the awkward question, “So, how’s it going with your-girl-friend-last-I-was-aware-of-the-situation?” only to have your now very embarrassed or upset friend say, “oh, yeah, we broke up.” It shows you right in the news feed. I saw one of my friends go from “it’s complicated” to “single” and I have some understanding of that situation. It was complicated before because his not-girlfriend was being incredibly immature and though she wasn’t willing to make the effort for the relationship to work, she wasn’t willing to let go either, because she was comfortable. If he’s declaring that he’s actually single now, then that means it’s off and for real this time. I’m glad of it. She’s not a bad person, but she’s not ready to be in a relationship with him. He needs more consistency and effort. It’s just so convenient though. Now, rather than asking how things are going with them, I can just say, “I saw that you’re single again on facebook. I’m sorry man. You need anything?” And thus avoid the awkwardness of him having to explain the relationship and it’s downfall.

Also, for the record, I would like to state here and now that I disagree with Aaron Karo about his feelings on relationships statuses on facebook: He claims that if someone gets married, the very next thing he should see on the news feeds is “so and so deleted their facebook account.” Married friends, you’re married but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to stay in touch with you! Facebook isn’t even set up so you can randomly browse people, other than your friends friends and the pictures in the avatars are so small that you can’t really see faces anyways. Facebook is for staying in touch with people you went to high school and college with. Period. It’s at the very best an awkward social networking tool for dating. Beware trying to find dates on facebook. Seriously. Look at eChemistry.com instead or one of the other dating sites. You should probably avoid trying to find dates on Myspace too. Fine for making random friends that you’ll never meet in person, but I don’t recommend taking it to the next level there. Also, the Myspace application that quizzes you on how beautiful you are says I’m ugly. Given the typos in it, I’m not really inclined to believe the logic the person who designed the quiz was following. Just saying.

I actually am sunburnt. I went to an amusement park yesterday, and the overarching theme of this park is “get everyone sunburnt,” so, I am.

The quote, however, comes from Much Ado about Nothing (which for those of you who don’t read or enjoy culture in any form, is one of Shakespeare’s plays. Read it: it’s hilarious.) And the quote is said by someone watching people in her life get engaged to be married and she’s commenting that she’s not fair-skinned enough to catch a husband herself.

Depending on how you look at it, I’m either very close to catching a husband, or very far away. This fact was brought to my attention as two of my friends got engaged last night to each other. They’re cute. It’s kind of gross.

I’m dating a guy and he and I have been down this road many, many times. I care about him deeply and sometimes I’m a little in love with him, but I’m not experiencing much of the magical “I just want to be near him always” feeling, which I’ve had in the past. I’m glad I’ve had it in the past. And he apparently wants to marry me. Given that i don’t feel “the thing” I have a hard time imagining that he feels “the thing.” And this is my dilemma. He’s not a bad guy, but I can’t put it together in my head that he’s the right guy. It’s distressing. Also, because I fall very quickly in love and I’m usually quite devoted once I’m there. I’ve known him for years, and it’s just not happening.

So all of that is concerning. I’m getting ready for a short road trip next weekend, which is followed by a much much longer one 2 weeks later. I’m excited for both, and I’m happy about both. Hopefully the longer one will help resolve the things that are concerning me, and if not, I’ll at least have the chance to forget about them for a short while.

I got rick rolled at the amusement park, yesterday. It’s something I cheerfully manage to avoid, most of the time. I also got bowled into by a lady who really needs to learn that she’s not quite as skinny as she thinks she is and I saw 4 obese children (actually obese, not with baby fat) in swim suits that didn’t flatter them. I witnessed a man who probably shouldn’t have been a father smack his kid too, and the dude couldn’t understand why his 2-year-old son wasn’t allowed on the huge water slide that they can’t let people go down as doubles. The kid isn’t even 3 feet tall. Everything that’s sad about the world is visible in an amusement park, and no one is ashamed of it. For all of the happy-feel-good fun you’re supposed to feel there, it seems to me to be more a satiric commentary on the state of humanity. Now, if you’ll all excuse me, I’m going back to my box of donuts.

One of my pet peeves is people who ask for opinions about something and then discard them. I’m a fairly low-maintenance girl. I’ve said this repeatedly. More often than not, I don’t care what we do. I can find food to eat at pretty much any restaurant and I’m fine with most activities most of the time. I usually don’t care, and when that’s the case I don’t offer an opinion. When I do offer an opinion, it’s usually because I do care. So, just as a tip for your dealings with me: Don’t ask me if I want to watch a movie and then be unbendable as to which movie you will watch. In that case, ask, “do you want to watch __________?” and if I don’t, I’ll say something like, “no, please go watch it in the other room.” When you’re general about the question that means you want input. If you don’t want input, don’t expect me to bend to your film-viewing whim; be polite and plan to watch it elsewhere. Then please for the love of all that is good, leave me alone.

I really hate people. It’s so annoying when they don’t know how to be polite. Don’t plan to oust me from my roost just because you’re in a movie watching mood. Find a movie we can agree on, or watch it in another freaking room. It’s not like there aren’t 15 dvd players and drives in the house.

As a kid I made a comment about leaving coffeemate out on the table and not knowing how that would effect such a dairy product. My aunt responded with, “That ain’t got nothing to do with dairy.” I’ve been scared of coffeemate ever since along with all other forms of scary dairy. A short list: coffeemate, cheez whiz, whipped cream in a can, margerine, powdered milk, velveeta and the powdered cheese that comes in macaroni packages.

I’ve started making my own ice cream and yogurt and I’ve tried my hand at making cheese too and I believe now that dairy is always better when it’s real and even better when it’s homemade. Mmmm… cheese… Mmmm… Ice cream… oh, french vanilla ice cream… Don’t succumb to the temptation to eat fake dairy food! Eat real dairy! Boycott the fake! Eat real dairy!

Yeah, I had the same thought: smelly. Apparently skunks belong to the weasel family, they’re a distanct cousin to ferrets and when they’re descented they can make really good pets. Ferrets have to be descented too, so I guess that’s not too weird. Turns out they’re really smart too, so you have to sort of skunk-proof your place with baby-proofing stuff for them to be safe. They eat mostly human food too, so you can feed them raw vegetables and eggs and stuff, but apparently like dogs you have to control how much you feed them or they will just keep eating until they get sick.

I’m all intrigued by this idea of having a pet skunk now, and there’s a part of me that wants one. My cats would flip out, I’m sure. They don’t even like it when other kids come over to visit, let alone having a new animal family member. I love my boys and I respect them too much to put another animal in their territory. Of course, being cats they don’t recognize this at all. Not in the slightest degree shocking.

I wish my junk email was as taylor made for me as the ads when I log into facebook or myspace. At least those ads show me stuff that I might be interested in based on the things that are listed in my interests or my location or whatever. I periodically see ads for things I’m even interested in. Dance shoes interest me. Show me ads for dance shoes, because there is a place I would probably spend time and money. I don’t like pepsi. What am I going to do with 12 cases of it? Nothing. I’d water my yard. And then my yard would die. Does spam mail even work? I mean, yeah, maybe the first couple of times you think you might win a free iPod you’ll try, but after that, doesn’t everyone just delete everything that even comes close to looking like that? I’m scared of putting things in the subject boxes of my emails when I find commercials or ads that are funny and I want to share them because I’m afraid my recipients spam filters will just toss them out. I end up putting nothing there. Or if I do put something there, it usually includes phrases like, “this is from Missie, don’t just delete it, you’re a sucky human being if you do.”

It seems to me that as we get more advanced technologically that rather than making our live easier, it just makes them more complicated or busier. Yeah, now I can pay all of my bills online from my phone, but that also means that the people I’m paying expect to see electronic funds transfers or ACH transfers rather than the check that I used to just send in the mail. Or they want my debit card number so they can run it like a credit card and just take my money out of my account automatically every month. It’s stuff like this that makes me scream. What is the point of life and reality if it’s all virtual anyway? I can’t wait for my roadtrip this summer. It’s going to be great holed up in a car for 4 days with no technology to slow me down. Well, except my laptop, my pocket pc phone, my iPod, my satellite radio, my GPS, etc…

I loathe being up this early in the morning. It’s far too reminiscent of the horrible days when I had to get up and be at work at 6:30 a half hour away. Ugh. But I’m awake. I fell asleep around 10 last night due to extreme fatigue and it’s been 7 hours so my body isn’t still so conked that I fell asleep immediately (or at all) since recognizing this. So, yeah, I’m just a touch on the side of grumble at the moment.

So, it turns out that I suffer from wanderlust and agoraphobia by turns. Yes, I’m a homebody who can’t stay home. Or rather, I’m a freespirit who doesn’t like to go out in public. An acquaintance recently described me as free-spirited. It was a nice way of saying that I’m flaky. I’m ok with that. It’s true. I am a flake. I’m going to write this right here right now though: just because I’m flaky doesn’t mean that I stop caring about the people who are important to me. It just means that I get distracted and don’t call or write nearly as often as I should. This goes for my blog as well. I love you all in a love-thy-neighbor kind of way. Sorry, let me get my Christianity back in check here…

I have dreams about not hearing traffic the next place I live. Just birds and insects. I wouldn’t mind the occasional dog barking or wolf howling but I really don’t want to hear the cars on the highway anymore. There’s no void in nature, and it seems like all they do is drive all over all the other things I could be hearing. If through some twist of fate I do end up staying in this vicinity, I’m planting quaking aspens so at least I’m hearing the wind in the leaves rather than trucks downshifting.

Is it strange to want to be both integrally involved in the world and also totally ostracized from it? Is it strange to wonder if you’re strange? Am I strange?

 It doesn’t produced nearly enough electricity to power anything. It can’t even charge a battery, but it makes a very cool science fair project or learning experience for kids. Just thought it was cool and I’d share.

Here’s a reference for how to make it:
http://scitoys.com/scitoys/scitoys/echem/echem2.html

While researching one of my articles today, I came across this blog posting which I thought was absolutely hilarious and so I will point you in the direction of the site where i found it here: http://www.volcanicmarketing.com/blog/2008/03/06/what-is-marketing/

And repeat it in full here:

 The buzzword in today’s business world is MARKETING. However, people often ask for a simple explanation of “Marketing.” Well, here it is:

• You’re a woman and you see a handsome guy at a party. You go up to him and say, “I’m fantastic in bed.” That’s Direct Marketing.
• You’re at a party with a bunch of friends and see a handsome guy. One of your friends goes up to him and pointing at you says, “She’s fantastic in bed.” That’s Advertising.
• You see a handsome guy at a party. You go up to him and get his telephone number. The next day you call and say, “Hi, I’m fantastic in bed.” That’s Telemarketing.
• You see a guy at a party, you straighten your dress. You walk up to him and pour him a drink. You say, “May I?” and reach up to straighten his tie, brushing your breast lightly against his arm, and then say, “By the way, I’m fantastic in bed.” That’s Public Relations.
• You’re at a party and see a handsome guy. He walks up to you and says, “I hear you’re fantastic in bed.” That’s Brand Recognition.
• You’re at a party and see a handsome guy. He fancies you, but you talk him into going home with your friend. That’s a Sales Rep.
• Your friend can’t satisfy him so he calls you. That’s Tech Support.
• You’re on your way to a party when you realize that there could be handsome men in all these houses you’re passing. So you climb onto the roof of one situated towards the center and shout at the top of your lungs, “I’m fantastic in bed!” That’s Junk Mail.