Snow Tubing on Easter... YAY MN!

Sunday was Easter, as everyone knows of course...

I went over to my aunt and uncle's place up in Champlin with my mom and grandpa (on my dad's side) to celebrate Easter. My Aunt Debbie and Uncle Brook have been the closest of any of my aunts/uncles in my family. They have three wonderful and spirited/motivated children, and it's their house that we mainly gather at for the holidays. We also met my Grandma and Grandpa on my mom's side up there as well, along with our family friend Carol, who is a wonderful chef.

My cousin Evan and I are 7 years apart, but he's my closest cousin, and we're great friends. He's a great kid, and a very good/well mannered young man with morals, and is always fun to hang out with - we usually will play video games in the basement, including Guitar Hero, Halo, or Call of Duty.

Dinner was great, and afterwards the cousins and I went to a hill nearby to go snow tubing. At first I wasn't very motivated to go, but once we got there it was filled with laughs and crashing our tubes into snowmen and going over jumps. Overall, it was a good Easter!

Go Away, Come Again Next Winter!

The sun has been shining, the snow has been melting, the grass has been showing...

Then I wake up this morning and all the branches out of my window are white... the ground is white... the roofs of every house are white... the top of my car is white...

ARG!

It's not that cold out, so hopefully it will melt within a day or two, but I'm ready for spring. I'm ready for this cold season to end and for it to be shorts and t-shirt wearing weather!

Snow is falling even as I type this... big, chunky snow.

He's Mr white Christmas,
He's Mr Snow,
He's Mr icicle,
He's Mr ten below.

Go away Snow Miser! Go away!

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Seven Entries In One Day!

I decided today to get caught up with the previous week's entries which I have been getting behind on.

To find out about my hectic week that I have JUST blogged all about, please read the relatively short entries, and comment freely:
It All Ends Thursday
Friday Fish Fries... er, Pesto Linguinis
Spastic Saturday
The Book!... I Mean, The Movie! - Spiderwick Chronicles Review
Finally Forever Plaid Auditions!
Ta Ta Tuesday

and obviously this one... to find out about today - Wednesday.

I found out today, via e-mail, that the callbacks for Forever Plaid will be held March 10th. Also, anybody who is cast will need to be Equity or "go Equity" if they aren't already. This was a big bummer to me, as I don't feel like I'm ready to become an Equity actor, but I will worry about that if the role is actually offered to me. I can always resign from the union if it doesn't work out for me in the long run, and then join again when I am properly prepared.

Next Top Model was on tonight...

***only read further if you have seen the episode or don't care if the episode is spoiled for you.***

Sooo many surprises came with the first elimination episode of Cycle 10.

First, HOW excited am I that the OH-SO-GORGEOUS super model Paulina Porizkova will be enhancing the weekly judging panel with her grace - replacing Twiggy from previous seasons. I LOVE this woman to death! She is such a classy and refined model. Her mere presence on the show made me beg for more. I don't know if I will ever get enough of Paulina, I am SO excited.

So wonderful!

The second surprise, was Kimberly's running away! It makes me want to sing Beauty School Drop out from Grease... Top Model drop out, no graduation day for you!

In front of the panel she told the judges she didn't really see the interest in modeling and would like to leave - so she left! And after THIS great picture!?

What a disappointment!

As I predicted, Atalya AND Allison were found in the bottom three, and Atalya was sent home. Paulina said that she kept forgetting who Atalya was - it's like we have the same mind!!!

BORING!

Also, Anya - one of my first glance top two - jumped ahead and was the frontrunner of the competition this week; being called first by Tyra at elimination.

She reminds me of a french painter!

The third surprise came when my FAVORITE, Amis, was placed in the bottom TWO! Honestly though, I think that girl will tap into her true potential and make it really far. I honestly think she's got what it takes, regardless of what this week's panel stated.

I LOVE this girl!

Now, as I've seen the girls actually perform - I'm still sticking with Allison being the worst. Of the girls that I previously thought wouldn't make it - I have reconsidered Whitney and Aimee. I think both of them are AMAZING, and honestly, I would LOVE Whitney to make it to the end. I've been very disappointed by the previous seasons' plus sized model - I think she would be the perfect fit for the next Top Model. I'm still rooting strongly for Amis though. I'm scared Anya will crash, but I think Aimee will pull through out of nowhere and beat everyone else down... it's going to be a bloodbath!

Go Whitney Go!

OH I LOVE THIS SHOW!

Yeah, I DEFINITELY have a cold, 'tis the season, non?... boo!

The Word Corporation Means...

boring... bland... statistics... performance reviews... rules... guidelines... suitcases... water coolers... a life of gray... gray suits... gray cubicles... gray coffee cups... gray expressions... gray hearts... no wonder why Milton was so attached to that red stapler.

or, it could also mean 'Town Hall Meetings' like the one we had today - mandatory meetings to tell us workers how we're doing - usually consisting of silly powerpoints that say "1/1 Wonderful!" and the like...

or, as one man said during the Q&A portion of the meeting, "The word corporation means 'making a body'. How is our company working towards doing that? I mean, even geese know to pass information to their next destination"

Shoot me now... please.

What do I care about how my company is working towards "making a body"? To me this either is some gorey literal meaning, close to the skin suit fetish in Silence of the Lambs, or it makes me think of being of one mind, as if I am a small insignificant detail and my only purpose is to serve the collective as a whole - wait, isn't that what I already am? Whatever way, I see no appeal in either of these options.

The topic of call center talk times came up, and boy was it the hot potato in the room. Apparently another of our offices, which resides in New York, has an average talk time of 2 minutes less than our offices - which EXCITINGLY means that their calls are shorter and allow for more calls to be taken every day. Everyone was asking questions about how the statistics of our offices differed - this mainly consisted of two guys (including the goose man above) pretty much complaining about all of the things that they have to do when verifying a caller or documenting a call - the other man even said that he was looked at as pond scum if he didn't include a tax id # in his phone log.

geese... pond scum... a room of hunting Minnesotans... what a party. These two men talked so much, about things that honestly didn't matter, that I think they answered their own question of "where does the 2:00 minute extra talk time come from?"

There was a greasy gleam on the meeting's gray caserole dish though - it was the "feel like a family" time towards the beginning of the meeting where the speaker gives us all a jolly corporate chuckle about their clumsy ventures. We got to make fun of him - a southern man - as he experienced his first Minnesotan winter. The slideshow was... nice, dontcha know.

At one point I turned around and there was Caboose - staring at me from across the room. Well, he was wearing sunglasses - at a corporate meeting inside an office building while it's overcast outside - but I'm pretty sure he was staring.

After the meeting, I came back down to my department to find the Mullet King shaking hands with... get ready for it... the air. There wasn't anyone there... I would be careful if I were you mr Mullet King - or someone might think you're making some inappropriate gesture!

Awww...

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A Beautiful Set of Hypno-Disk Eyes

I came home from work yesterday to find a present that had been delivered to me earlier in the day by UPS. It was from Barnes & Noble, and it confused me greatly. I didn't remember ordering a book from online, and I would definitely hope to remember something like that especially since I almost never order anything online anyways.

With a little difficulty I tore open the cardboard wrapping paper and found, to my delight, a book of poetry titled "The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories" To those who know my artistic style, you'll know that I love tastefully dark, mysterious, and twisted stories - very similar to the style of Tim Burton - which this book just happens to have been written by.

Unlike some of his movies in the past, this book was nowhere near disappointing, but was instead very delightful to read and a welcome addition to my ever-growing book collection. It has many different small poems and a couple of longer ones, some of them have reoccurring characters or themes, and they all have cute little illustrations very reminiscent of the styling of Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride. It even has stories of Mummy boy and Stick boy who are close to the mummy and Jack respectively in Nightmare.

Here's an excerpt from the book - illustration above:

VOODOO GIRL

"Her skin is white cloth,
And she's all sewn apart
And she has many colored pins
Sticking out of her heart.

She has a beautiful set
Of hypno-disk eyes,
The ones that she uses
To hypnotize guys.

She has many different zombies
Who are deeply in her trance.
She even has a zombie
Who was originally from France.

But she knows she has a curse on her
A curse she cannot win.
For if someone gets
Too close to her,

The pins stick farther in"

My sister was the one who gave me this gift :) She was in her warm state of Florida when she saw this book and thought of me. She just HAD to get it for her little brother! I love it when little surprises are tailored to my personality, just like this one. It means more than some standard card or flower - which I always kill off anyway. On a short tangent, I have decided when I get flowers I will kill them on purpose by drying them out. I have a bouquet of dried red roses, which I love so much, resting on top of my bookshelf. That deep red color is my favorite.

Speaking of my sister Rosie - she recently moved to Florida with her boyfriend Dan, but she is home for the weekend! I haven't seen her in at least a month, which is a big thing for us as our whole lives before this we lived very close; even in the same apartment building once (with our own apartments). She was on the second floor and I was on the third. I won't go into how she tricked me and stole away my childhood bedroom, but it's all in the past anyway as when she moved to Florida I stole it back.

We talked on the phone yesterday when I called to say thanks for the book. She told me that after experiencing a Florida winter that she doesn't know if she'll ever be able to move back to Minnesota due to it's chilly weather. I don't blame her, but at the same time it's sad. My sister and I are very close, and thanks to her gift, I will have Oyster Boy and his freak friends to keep her near when she's enjoying the sunny south in all it's glory.

To think this movie is turning 15 years old. What the hell?


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How do you scrape?

So there I was, on my 15 minute afternoon break from my job in the corporate world, standing out in the "cell phone allowed" hallway, making calls to other friends, most of which also have corporate jobs and are busy - so inevitibly I'm getting their voicemails and leaving pointless messages "on break, just thought I'd see how you were doing, talk to you later" - and in the meanwhile I'm watching people down in the parking lot, six floors below me, getting their cars ready as they're already going home.

I was amused at all of the different ways that people were scraping off the extremely light layer of snow powdered on their car before attempting to drive off towards their humble abode, and I was inspired to write this blog entry! YAY for blog inspiration.

So, what kind of Minnesotan are you?

Are you the prepared Minneostan? You are the one who has pretty much lived in the cold North for most, if not all of your life, and are so well-versed in snow you have it all ready by the time you leave your office. You are wearing an amazing amount of layers, and have perfected the scarf fold to the point that only a couple of square inches of your face are exposed to the cold bitter air, and ready at any moment to sacrifice your necessary eye-sight by covering it up with your hat when a very sharp wind comes blowing by. After you start your car, you get out the gigantic 'foam-grip brushtastic scraper pro-thousand and ten plus' model that with just a few quick arm movements has completely cleared off any and all snow/ice on your car. You are ready to leave in less than a minute from when you get outside.

Are you the lazy Minnesotan. You are prepared for the cold, but even so you want to be in contact with it as little as possible. You start your car from inside with your keyless entry button pad thing, because you made sure you had that feature when you purchased your vehicle, and you let it warm up for at least a couple, if not five or ten, minutes. You run outside, and quickly get in your car. Hopefully by now the heat has melted anything and everything off your car, which isn't very likely but can sometimes happen if you hope for it enough. You then use your windshield wipers to swipe off all snow blocking your view to the front, the heat strips on the back window to melt anything there, and you use your automatic windows to slowly push of any snow on the sides - going just slow enough to make absolute sure NO SNOW gets inside. God forbid there's any ice, you let it melt on its own, or you wait an extra five minutes until its melted enough to the point where the wipers can get it for you. Hopefully no snow will blow at you from the hood of your car while you take off down the road.

Are you the artistic Minnesotan? You don't mind the snow, in fact you embrace it as you get out your scraper that looks more like a christmas card and you manually pump your hand up and down five hundred times as you brush off any and all snow from your car. You make artistic patterns as you scrape, and you also "reach behind the ears" for the car as you scrape off things that don't necessarily need it, such as the area below the side windows, and your back bumper. You've reached as far as you can on top of your car until the point of satisfaction. After all of this you then realize that in all of your artistic snowy bliss you have forgotten to start the car. Oh well, cold doesn't matter to you, you make snow angels as the car warms up.

Are you the butch Minnesotan. You wear the essentials, but you also enjoy testing yourself when you're outside in the cold. Your brush is your glove and any ice that forms on your bristly face - sorry girls, if you are like this you still probably have a bristly face - is a badge of honor that you wear with pride. You purposefully don't like starting your car until you get in it, because the closer you get to hypothermia the more alive you feel.

Are you the preppy Minnesotan. You just want to look good no matter how you brush/scrape your car. You're constantly looking around for cameras to catch you wearing the latest fashions. You imagine the caption saying " looks amazing in his/her incredibly up to date outfit EVEN while doing the incredibly challenging task of scraping off their car in the winter!" You drive away wearing your sunglasses even if it's night, and you make the zoolander face a lot.

Just something to think about.