can't live with 'em...

one of the things i hate most is not having control. especially of the way i think.

most things in my life are regulated to the extent that no small thing happens without my knowledge (before or after the fact). it's not that i'm not spontaneous or adventurous, because i am both. but there's just one little area that has my stomach in knots, my already-short nails bitten down to the skin, and my mind reeling with the apparently unfathomable answer to my situation.

it's those stupid boys.

what are you supposed to do when a boy who likes you asks you to a program-dinner, you say you can't go because even though it'd be a cool program, a) you have a sort-of prior commitment and b) you don't want to give the impression that you actually want to go to a nice dinner with him?

of course, he will think that i quickly found someone else to go with, so i could go without actually going with him...like a cruel can't-quite-catch-me game. but that's not at all what happened, even though i know that's what he will think happened. in reality i ended up finding an open seat with a co-worker. because i do want to go to the dinner, even though i couldn't care less about seeing him. so...i emailed him to let him know i'd be there after all. because wouldn't it seem pretty rude and or at least coquettish to just show up without telling him? or was that really stupid? should i have decided not go after all? *lets out a mournful wail* why do i have to let boys and our silly social constructs control my life and tell me where i can and can't go?

i just hate that, out of all the things you'd think would be easy for me to figure out, it's those boys -- oh you know, the ones that say they are so easy to figure out -- that get me second-guessing myself. if they'd just be normal, i wouldn't have any problems with them. i mean why can't there only be one guy to ever be interested, and that be the Right Guy? 'cause there's no way i'd ever date this character, but i'd like to be his friend.

but that's not happening either. in my experience at least, boys always ruin good things (like , hmm, friendships) when they try to get all debonair on you.

i know this is all so petty. and it will probably seem more like that to me in a week or so. but it's just really frustrating right now...because i'm fed up with boys.

an easy game to play

here is a new game with one rule: post some random bits of information from the databank of your mind/personality.

i think the two best naturally-occuring foods in the world are honey and grapefruit.

random childhood memory: the first time i was in washington d.c., i was probably around 4 years old. i remember seeing the washington monument out my window, and thinking to myself that it looked like a great big sharp pencil. then i remember asking mom, "hey mom, look at that thing. is that pencil-vania?" because of course, i didn't know what pennsylvania really was.

i am afraid of deep, dark water with slimy dangerous things in it, and when i see deep undersea pictures like in National Geographic, i get dizzy.

i love to read strangers' blogs.

i paid for some music in british pounds yesterday.

things i made my sister memorize when we were little: the moons of all the planets, the laws of thermodynamics, most of the constellations, all the parts of a horse's hoof and all the possible horse-forehead markings.

i have an "extra" bone in my right hand, on my pinky-finger bone, that moves only when i move my pinky.

i never saw Titanic.

i often wonder if we will ever know who really killed john kennedy, and how many corrupt deals and bribes and cover-ups happen every day that i wish i knew about, but am glad i don't because my already-shaky faith in mankind would totally collapse and i would become a jungle-hermit.

i hate things where there is no right or wrong answer, like art and writing. everyone is right. what's the point?? :)

i have visited 38/50 states.

my family used to sing oldie gospel songs together in front of church. we don't do anything like that any more.

i don't have any deep, dark secrets, but i wish i did.

at some point or another in my life, i wanted to be a physicist, politician, storm chaser, astronomer, artist, chef, journalist, linguist, veterinarian and pilot...and once my little sister told me i should be a pirate.

remember when elian gonzales was kidnapped from his house by those US guys and sent back to live in cuba? well, when that happened i was probably ten or so, and i was upset that it took everyone by surprise, and that i didn't know about it in advance.

i collect old classic books and i've bought most of them on eBay.

the intricacies of information-ADD

i think i have a very rare condition. or maybe a lot of people have it, i don't know. it's the disease you get when you have a short attention span, several ways to retrieve important information within a few feet of you, and multitasking tendencies. in my case, it commonly manifests itself in a less menacing form called Radio-ADD, which simply means scrolling through the 16 radio presets in my car, stopping exactly .00089 seconds or half a wavelength on each station (whichever's longer), until i find something i can no longer live without hearing.

i don't know of anything that cures information-ADD. the point, though, for you who may not be blessed with this valuable ability, is simply to absorb as much critical news as possible, in the shortest amount of time possible. so if you have information-ADD, you probably use multitasking to do it faster.

i just realized it because this is what i am doing (before i started typing this blog). please note the variety of mediums, because you cannot effectively micro-multitask with, say, 5 different radio stations. currently i am:

-watching FOXNEWS on tv
-listening to glenn beck on internet-radio
-reading cnn.com ("Three Years Later: Insecurity, Instability and Hope in Iraq"- good article)
-looking at all the random information in the back of the day planner (how to stop an infant from choking, different time zones, mileage between major U.S. cities)
-eating Frosted Shredded Wheat
-drinking coffee

as every multitasker knows, there is always a distinct yet subtle hierarchy in tasks. For example: since listening to Glenn Beck is a rare pleasantry, the radio is my first priority. then, when he gets boring or the commercials come on, i go back to my CNN article (which of course is right in front of my face the whole time i'm listening to the radio). while i'm scanning through that, looking for interesting or relevant tidbits and maybe not finding any, i might look over at the tv when i see pictures of a Wanted guy, and try to tell myself that if i ever see him, i'll remember his face and call to get the 1,000 dollars. i haven't really figured out how my day planner-perusing fits in; i just know that i see it when i look over at the TV, and then forget what i'm listening to/reading/typing and decide to pick it up and see what other goodies are in there. all the while, whenever i have a "break," i take a gulp of now-cold coffee or shove some more sugary cereal in my face. but this is not difficult because they require almost no space in my mental pipeline.

all these are very distinct events, but the thing is: they can happen several times per second. it can be less often than that, but i think my record is radio-article-tv-article-radio-tv in about one second. this is called Micro-Multitasking.

i'm getting really good at this. especially when you add blogging to the mix. now that takes talent. granted, i can't switch back to the cnn article while i'm typing, but i can still listen to Glenn and watch FOX sporadically while i type, and since typing is more mentally involved than reading (plus, it's dispersing rather than absorbing), this is like the next level of information-micro-multitasking. can you disperse and absorb at the same time!!? maybe you can. it depends on how many times you can mentally switch back and forth between tasks, and for the seasoned micro-multitasker, it involves a dozen micro-judgments per second. while you're typing, you have to decide: are you going to miss something precious and irreplaceable if you don't give your full attention to the radio this nanosecond? maybe not, but can you make this decision without slowing your words per minute or typing a bunch of nonsense? what about the radio volume, and is the TV going to flash that cool statistic ever again?

the big secret, though, is the existence of micro-caches. they hold information or body-programming for one or two seconds without you trying to remember it. the micro-caches enable you to blank out in a meeting, and when someone calls on you to repeat what he said, even if you weren't listening, you might remember the last few words. so if you try really hard, you can tap into those temporary memory caches in your mind and, for example, finish typing a sentence without thinking about typing, thereby freeing up your precious attention to focus on the radio. this is the most critical aspect of micro-multitasking.

reading back over this...wow. twitch. i don't know why my parents never gave me ADD drugs when i was little. at least, they didn't that i know of. they probably should have.

people, do you have this condition? have you *twitch* ever heard of a *twitch* cure? what is your favorite way to micro-multi-information-task?

camera strangeness

searching through my Miscellaneous pictures folder, i came across some very strange pictures that i've taken at various points in my wanderings. they stand out only because of their randomness or inexplicable-ness.

first: this is a weird and kind of disgusting picture, taken in Winter Park, colorado. these birds um, graced the interior of an otherwise nice little gift store and for some reason had pecked feathers off each other in a very intentional way -- see the one little guy has no feathers on his head, and the other has none on his torso. strange and gross. ever wonder if birds had feather-picking perversions? this is what that would look like, folks.



this is me in all my strange just-woke-up-on-a-yellow-velvet-couch-and-oh-what-is-this-red-thing-
guess-i'll-just-put-it-on-my-face-and-take-a-picture-of-myself-ish glory.
















i don't know what inspired me to take this picture or to alter the coloring. it's an innocent Photoshop experiment gone horribly, pathetically wrong and displaying my lack of photoshop expertise (at time of said alteration).



my lifetime penny-savings, reincarnated as a happy, square, androgynous street-being (see the street symbols it seems to be making? what sign is this from The Other Side of penny-life?). i hope it does some good things so it can have hair or a figure in the next life. :)

food.

on saturday night, the whole Fam and i ate a hefty meal of mexican food (homemade chips & salsa, enchiladas, rice, beans, flan) at a great restuarant. then on sunday afternoon, i made a kind of south-asian compilation-- fried noodles and coconut and cabbage and pork and ginger and mushrooms and stuff.

so i was thinking, it's so very cool that we can make (at least our own versions of) the same stuff they make across the ocean. what a neat experience, you know? but, what if you lived 100 years ago (or more) when they didn't really travel across the pond much? you would probably be amazed that we know what everyone else eats, and can to some extent replicate it ourselves. because back then, unless someone you know had been to china and made chinese food for you, you'd probably never know what chinese food was because you'd never be there. isn't that weird? or if you lived in russia, you'd never really hear of or care about eating mexican food unless you went to mexico. i don't really know why, but this is just so strange to me. i can't imagine it.

it's just another great side effect of globalism and multiculturalism, folks. ;)

gaaah!

i hardly ever feel as helpless as i did for a few hours this morning.

the heel on my shoe broke off!!!

now i know you're picturing these 5-inch toothpick stilettos, maybe neon pink or snakeskin, which of course are the only kind with heels that break off. you'd be wrong. nay, my ill-fated footwear were a lovely dark red leather, and the heels weren't super high (2.5 inches maybe) and it's not like i paid a lot for them, but come ON!! the thing just snapped almost totally off as i was traversing the well-worn trail from the coffeepot to my desk. stupid! stupid! stupid! the feeling of helplessness breathed down my neck for the rest of the morning as I sat dumbly incapacitated at my desk.

so over the noon hour, my wonderful co-worker drove me to gordmans. i got a pair of plain black ones that i wouldn't have normally bought (but they are comfy). so i am down almost $30. gaah! there weren't any other cheaper ones there!

my imaginary file cabinet

as i fell asleep last night, i was thinking that i need a file cabinet. normally i am contemplating stuff like, what will i wear tomorrow (if i have to work), why can't i ever get enough sleep, and why am i thinking about this instead of sleeping. i don't know why i was thinking about file cabinets, but i am in dire need of some serious, central organization in my little corner of the world. like, here's a pile of receipts on the left side of this drawer, and on this side is stuff i want to keep...you get the idea. i'm a very organized person, really. i'm just the only one who can tell.

(also, typing in no caps is magnificently liberating. i just might stick with this habit.)

what files would i have in my file cabinet? here are some. add your own! this is be-nerdy-like-nikki day!

-recipes
-receipts
-sermon or bible study notes (organized by topic?)
-tax stuff
-cards/letters from people
-prayer-request lists
-guitar chords/tabs
-insurance/medical records
-misc. papers and stuff i've written
-stuff from my job (letters of recommendation, pay stubs, etc.)
-owner's/instruction manuals
-stuff relating to school and classes
-stuff relating to my car

i know there were more that i thought of last night as i was melting into sleep. but i can't remember. i hate that. do you ever think of great ideas when you're melting into sleep, only to wake up and...there's this feeling that you just thought of the cure for cancer last night, but you can't remember it??

my boring friday

this day is like one big yawn. first, i'm tired because i woke up at 5am with delusions of some supernaturally loud alarm clock going off. in my delirious state of sleepiness i was completely certain that it was coming from my parent's bedroom (they are on the 2nd floor, i am in the basement!).

so i roll into work around 9:30 after the half-sleep, only to find a work-free desk. This is a good thing any other time except when you are already half-zombie and you have absolutely nothing to do, and no where to go to wake up from your stupor. I did have InStyle Magazine to keep me company (oh yeah, my coworkers were gone most of the day) and after reading it and feeling inferior for not wearing at least $16,000 of clothes/accessories on my person at any given time, I think I've decided to make smoked wild salmon pizza with caviar and creme fraiche for the kids tonight.

Work I Did Today
-put three invitations into the "Not Going" folder"
-RSVP'd to one "Not Going" invitation prior to putting it in the "Not Going" folder with the others
-checked the mail
-opened the five letters and unfolded them and put them in the "New Mail" folder
-answered the phone about five times

man, what did i do all day? this is sad. i need therapy. i need a nap.

tonight me and Natalie and Jo are driving to someplace for a basketball tournament. a bunch of our friends used to be on the team when they were in high school. the tournament is a few hours away so you know what that means....road trip! i wish the words "road trip" were as loaded as they used to be...now, it's just like, dang, four hours is a long time to not move.

but i think the trip and the tournament will probably be a lot of fun. although, i'll warn you, we are talking about massive numbers of home-schooled high schoolers coagulated in the same little Midwestern town, so...don't be surprised if the terror alert level goes up. but i do expect the poker-playing and pseudo-theological conversations to be at maximum levels. cheers for now!