Tag Archives: musings

Human Flight: A Survivor’s Tale

3 May

Photo by Xlibber on Flickr. Click to check out his photostream.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have survived human flight.   Happy Lollipop Tuesday.

Thisweek, I abandoned my assigned status as a grounded biped and soared into the great blue somewhere. 

There are Lollipop Tuesday adventures that make me a little nervous or require me to try something I’d typically ignore, or to just jump in both feet and see what happens.  And there there is getting on a plane for the first time, which scared the absolute living daylights out of me the way, oh, I dunno – dying might scare the living daylights out of someone.   Because that’s all I could picture.   All I could think the entire time I was in the air was of what absolute disaster was about to overcome me.

I was raised on a lot of action movies.  So if I’m on a plane, I expect to see Harrison Ford or Bruce Willis.  

There I was, strapped into the seat in a steel death cage thinking of all the possible scenarios that could lead to my timely demise.   The stewardess is up there doing her safety demonstration thing and I’m staring at her intently, taking notes of every single thing she is saying.  Everyone around me is busy doing something else. 

I kept thinking, Can you possibly review this enough? Even if you’re a frequent flyer, shouldn’t everyone be paying attention every single time? Who knows what we’ll remember in the face of death!

But everyone just tuned her out.  Before we started moving, the stewardess instructed the exit row behind me that they would have to help in the event of an emergency given that they were in an exit row.  She asked that they take time to review their instruction cards and check in with her soon.  But the girl behind me was having none of it.  When the stewardess approached and asked if she was prepared to help in the event of an emergency, she had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.  After some explanation, she agreed to comply so that she didn’t have to move and give up her 6 extra inches of leg room.  She followed it up with “Whatever, if something happens, I’m the very first one out of here.” 

So I’m right in front of her, trying to listen to The Postal Services “Recycled Air” ironically, and I’m thinking about how someone’s going to hijack the plane because the President is secretly on board and some terrorists want to use him as leverage to get a Presidential pardon for one of their jailed buddies.  And all the while, this silly wench behind me won’t be able to get it together to lend a hand and stand up for America.

Luckily, the ride to Chicago is only a little over an hour and by the time I played through 3 full-scale action movie scenarios that could apply to my life right there in that moment, we had landed in O’Hare.

Besides the flight, everything else was pretty enjoyable.  I mean, airport security really does yell at you and treat you like an idiot for not knowing that you’re supposed to take your shoes off or that when they tell you to put your hands above your head, they don’t mean like the police mean when they say the same exact thing.   And I think that taking my water bottle so that I have to go through to the other side of security and buy another one is a little silly.  

But hey – I survived a flight.  And since my only experience with planes has been action movies and not many of those folks come out alive, I’d say it was pretty freakin’ fantastic. 

Lollipop Tuesday win. ♣

Share

Tags: , , , , ,

The Peculiarities of Old Cars

2 May

old car free stock photo

I think our car is on its last metaphorical leg.

You can usually tell that things are getting serious when there is some sort of physical obstacle to hurdle every time you want to use it.  Like our car, for example, has a passenger door that doesn’t shut all the way sometimes.  Instead of latching once it connects to the actual car, it will just swing back out into the great blue yonder.  The only way to fix it is to pull the door in close to you and push in a mysterious little piece of metal by the door handle.    Once you’ve made that fine adjustment, the door shuts with ease.

The physical sign of old age is different for every car and every owner.   For example, my last car (let’s call it Fred) had a broken gas gauge. I never really knew how much fuel was in Fred at any given time because it always read Empty.  I had to do the math for about how many miles per tank I could get and then constantly reset my odometer every time I filled the tank.  

Sometimes my math was wrong.

Fred had an added bonus of losing its charge every once in a while and occasionally overheating.  On any extended trip, you’d find me in a state of constant haggardness, flicking my eyes from my temperature gauge to my odometer and back again.  I would refuse to stop anywhere to use the restroom or eat because I wasn’t sure if the car battery would suddenly die.

It was a stressful period in my life.

I would almost rather endure all those problems combined to the problem I had to the car prior to that one. Let’s call it Bess.  One of the beauties of old car issues and their owners is that in order to keep the car moving through space, only the owner can be in operation of it.  The slowly fading bells and whistles are too much for a newb to manage.  But unless you actually ride in the car with the owner, it’s unlikely you’ll ever suspect the car has problems.

But Bess had noticeable problems.

A glaring white quarter panel (installed to replace the original one I ruined in my wreck), a couple dings, a water-stained roof, a “not-so-automatic” window, a broken handle cover, an unrecognized CD player, a cherry-stained backseat, a lack of air conditioning, rust that was spreading like cancer, and a gas tank I believed to be leaking topped off the list of amenities on this crap trophy.  And then it lost its power steering.  And started squealing like a naked newborn piglet every time I turned the steering wheel to the right.

I can’t remember a time when I ever had a car that didn’t have some sort of magic password of physical obstacles to overcome in order to drive it.  Even when I was young I remember pinning up the fabric on the ceiling of the family car with little push pins because the fabric glue that once held it up had become old and stick-less, and I’m not sure I’ve ever even known someone who owned a car with a working air conditioner.

And so it looks like our car is slowly stacking up its list of old age peculiarities.  The CD player doesn’t read discs unless you put them in a few times in a row with a small turn of the disc at a different angle until you trick the player into not spitting it back out.  There is a peculiar thudding that develops occasionally upon braking, and an interesting squeak developing during hard turns.   The driver’s seat doesn’t quite pull up as far as the passenger’s, so we can only let people into the back from the passenger’s side.  Oh, and of course there’s the door trick with the mysterious nub of metal that started this whole post.

We will eventually have to part ways with Old Faithful, and venture out into a used car lot to find our next glorious bucket of peculiarities.  

Or maybe we’ll just use bikes. ♣

Share

Tags: , , , , ,

One Third Celebration

1 May

Folks, I’m 1/3 of the way there.

Today marks my celebration of completing 33% of the postaday2011 challenge.  And though I already did an Ode to 90 Days post, I’m pretty excited that the good chums at WordPress have encouraged us to use today’s post to link our three favorite posts from the challenge so far.  Because hey – I’m all about celebrating small victories.  And I’m all about having more time to run around Chicago like a crazy fool.  So here I give you: my three favorite posts from the challenge so far.

3) Emergency Underwear Day: This post make the top three because it embodies a lot of things I love about blogging.  I didn’t go out of my way to think of a topic or stress about whether it was entertaining.  I just sat down and wrote whatever came to mind first, and it’s great when it turns out all right.  But my favorite part about this is the comments you all left for me.  I absolutely adore that I can blog about anything from untameable underarm sweat to underwear wedgies at work and you will all unashamedly chime in that the same happens to you.  Thanks for that.

2) The Underwear Made Me Do It:  I just like this guy because I think it’s well-written.  When you have to blog every day, it’s tough to take the time to focus on each and every post.  Sometimes you just have to accept that you have things going on and you’ve done your best with the time and effort you could dedicate that day.   So some of the posts I enjoy the most are the ones that are the most effortless and this is certainly one of them.  I don’t know why I blog about underwear so much.  Apparently it presents a lot of challenges for me.  

1) My Pole Name Is Jasper Highland: This gets top spot, without a doubt.  This blog post is the best Lollipop Tuesday event yet.  I would have absolutely never, ever wandered into a pole-dancing class if I didn’t have a blog to maintain.  And  I’m so proud that I did it because it is without a doubt the most terrifying thing I’ve done so far.  And as an added bonus, it made for a pretty decent post.  This is certainly the post earning top-most marks this far into the game.

So I’m 1/3 of the way finished.  That’s pretty cool… but what can I possibly write about for the next two thirds of this journey?  

Meh – I gave up on worrying about that a long time ago.  Here’s to the next 2o0-something posts.

Thanks for coming along for the ride. ♣

Share

Tags: , , , , ,

Chicago Is a Fine Seductress

30 Apr
File:Chicago Sears Tower.jpg

Image by Daniel Schwen via Wikimedia Commons

Hey, I’m in Chicago.

Last night I went to a show (cuz I’m a theater nerd like that) and then went to see some really, really bad stand-up comedy (because I like to die a slow, painful, humorless death).  I then traversed back to my friend’s apartment where we promptly went on the roof with a guitarist and a fiddler.  

The best part about mingling with entertainers is that there is always an odd variety of talents hanging out in your social circle.  One never knows when a professional-grade picture will show up on Facebook thanks to my photographer friend.  Or perhaps a random, improvised dance will bust out in public by a couple of my Dance degree friends.  

Last night, it was a random blue grass concert.

So standing up on the roof with a beautiful Chicago skyline before me and a little twangy music behind me, I thought – I could really get used to this place. Chicago, that is.  Then again, I’m sure that if I hung around for any extended period of time, I would find that blue grass bands and rooftops are only a sometimes snack.  So they can’t really be the reason I come here to stay.

Today I will go out and eat delicious food and celebrate having survived the terrifying experience of human flight.   I will walk amongst the Chicagoans and see if they can smell the Central PA lingering on me (it’s something like Amish mixed with cow manure).  And I will – mark my words – eat an absolutely divine piece of Chicago pizza.  I will not sleep until it is done.

I’m tending to important things here.  Pizza is certainly worth moving for. ♣

Share

Tags: , , , ,

My Life’s Calling

29 Apr

Today could be my last  day alive.

At 9:00 am, my blog will be updated with this post.  And at 9:05am, I will be boarding a flying machine that will quickly transport me through time and to Chicago, Illinois. 

I am wrought with fear.

There are so many things I don’t know.  Airports seem so complicated – what with all the scanning and checking and lining up.  I’ve spent the last 4 years sending my bosses on airplanes all over the world and have completed itineraries for them chock full of details on what to do, where, and when.  But alas, this is my first flight and I personally don’t know a damn thing about it all.

Most of what I know about flying comes from stand-up comedy.  Isn’t that sad?   It’s totally sad.  Just say it.  I didn’t even realize until today at Rite Aid just how darn convenient travel sizes really are.

Perhaps the most pathetic moment was when a director in my department at work reenacted a play-by-play for where I would go in the airport and the things that would happen to me in each phase.  She literally walked through it in her office, going on about gates and boarding passes and things. She logged on the computer, put in my name, and printed my boarding pass.  She ran through every single detail she could and took note of each step.

 And that’s when I realized that that’s what it’s like to have an assistant.

Suddenly, the roles were reversed.  All I had to do was tell her where I was going and she looked up the flight, printed my info, and directed me on the next steps.  It was freaking awesome.  I can’t even imagine how incredibly cool it must be to tell someone what I want to do in life and to have them figure it out and break it down for me in terms I can understand without humiliation in learning it because it’s that person’s job and I pay them to do it.

That’s pretty mindblowing.

I have literally logged on to Google Maps and converted it to Street View so that I can walk on the sidewalk exactly where my boss is walking at that moment to tell her exactly where to go.   Can you imagine having someone do that for you?!  I wouldn’t ever have to worry about how something happens – I could just go out and have new experiences and pay someone to research them and explain what to expect to me in small, childlike terms.  I COULD DO ANYTHING.

I love this.  This may be what I’ve always wanted my entire life.

I will make it so. ♣

Share

Tags: , , , , ,

Vote. It’s Patriotic.

28 Apr

All right, folks.  It’s poll time.

Last night I went out to face the biggest of my Lollipop Tuesday adventures yet: singing in public.  I ventured out to an open mic session that Dave frequents (Dave’s a musician, for those of you who are just tuning in) after psyching myself up all evening.    It features a small but loyal crowd of about 40 folks on a good night and would serve me well as my locale of choice for absolute suckage.

Unfortunately, I failed to realize that the Penguins game was on and it was a home game.  And it’s finals week.   And since I live in Pittsburgh, home to the Penguins and several colleges and universities, the open mic was absolutely dead.   There were ten people in the crowd and I knew 3 of them were good friends.  And one was Dave.

It wasn’t exactly the pee-myself-scared experience I was looking for.

Now don’t get me wrong – I was scared.  I was nervous enough to not have any breath when I went to open my mouth at the microphone – but I wasn’t nervous enough to feel like I wanted to run away crying.  

And if I don’t fight the urge to run away crying, what kind of Lollipop Tuesday is it anyway?

So I’m taking a poll.  I want to know if my singing in public counts or if it was unworthy of the Lollipop Tuesday series.  Whatever you say goes.  I can do a redo on a night with a full bar, I can nix the idea altogether, or I can call it a day with last night’s performance.   So please do chime in: I want to know if I have to shake in my boots until the next open mic or if I’ve shaken in them enough. ♣

Share

Tags: , , , , ,

The Thing About Baking Cookies Is

27 Apr

File:Raw cookie dough in cookie clumps.jpg

When I die, I’m fairly certain it will be from salmonellosis.  And soon.

I have personally ingested more raw cookie dough in my 25 years than all the children you know combined.   My mother constantly yelled at me when I was little for getting into it.  In my defense, my mother owned a cake business and it’s ridiculous to let your child help and not expect them to lick every leftover bowl.

It was the fun part.

The awesome thing is that I’m all grown up now and I can have raw cookie dough whenever I want it.  I’ve been known to bake entire batches of brownies, and cookies, – even an entire cake – simply to eat the batter and dough.    Don’t get me wrong – it’s not bad when it comes out of the oven, but I really prefer it prior.

The problem seems to be that I’ve slowly changed my method from cleaning the well-scraped bowl to blatantly picking up entire gobs of it at a time.  I made an enormous container of chocolate chip cookies last night and managed to eat 5 baked cookies and close to their equal weight in raw cookie dough.

And it was delicious.

I think the only way to stop myself is to stop baking altogether.  There’s no resisting the powerful call of sugary, raw beauty.  Quite frankly, I suck at resistance.  But I really don’t want to stop because I just love baking so darn much.  Making cookies is one of the most therapeutic activities I can possible conjure.  All the ingredients are simple and delicious, the recipe is easy, you can mix it with your hands, and everyone loves them.  Baking cookies tends to all my major needs.  Just one batch of cookies provides a myriad of benefits:

  • satisfies my craving for chocolate
  • makes me feel like I’m doing something productive
  • gives me something to show Dave I lurve him
  • have a backup gift or host’s gift ready at all times
  • gives me a reason to listen to rock out to music between batches
  • provides a killer arm workout by hand mixing cold sticks of butter
  • improves my sense of time lapse by not setting a timer and trying to “feel” when they are done
  • is a great chance to eat a startling amount of cookie dough

How can I possible resist making them when there are so many positive outcomes?

So if I don’t post tomorrow morning, it’s safe to assume I’ve been hospitalized for symptoms of salmonellosis.  I’ll update as soon as I can convince the nurse I have a successful blog to maintain.  

It might be a while. ♣

Share

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Another Wrongly Judged Book Cover

26 Apr

It’s Tuesday already?

Man, the corporate jungle is eating my brain.  Time is absolutely flying by.   Happy Lollipop Tuesday, ya crazy kids.

This week, I decided to tone it down a bit (because my ideas for the next two weeks have me shaking in my boots – for realsies).  I took Podunk‘s suggestion from the What’s Lollipop Tuesday page: “Maybe you could pop in to the library and check out a book in a genre you never read. And then read at least the first 20 pages.”

And so I curled up with a financial self-help book.  Which, might I say, is not my idea of a good time.   

Or at least it wasn’t.

I started digesting a few pages of wisdom from Ramit Sethi‘s I Will Teach You To Be Rich and expected to hate every grueling second of it. jacket image for I Will Teach You To Be Rich

After all, with its ridiculously loud cover and Ramit being all barefoot and casual and the term “6-week program” on the bottom, I was pretty sure that this was gonna be rough.

But hey – it wasn’t.  And I find that totally weird.  Maybe it’s because yesterday , I just made the last payment on my pile of credit card debt I amassed in college (no joke).  I’ve been working on it for 5 years.  So when the first chapter was all about telling me how stupid I was and how stupid I didn’t have to be anymore, it was pretty pertinent.  Actually, it was spot-on.   It reaffirmed everything I’ve learned through the grueling process and got me excited to have conquered it.

I must admit that part of the appeal is the way he talks in the book.  He almost sounds like an asshole because he’s telling you the truth about yourself, but you realize that it’s only because he cares.  The book to do that to me was Skinny Bitch, and I immediately became a vegetarian for 8 months. 

Which is saying a lot for a burger dumpster like myself.

I think the best part is that I don’t have to be stupid anymore.  I have never understood money.  I mean I get that I give someone a dollar for a soda and I get a few pennies back, but I don’t get all the acronyms and percent yields and annual accrual.  I don’t have any interest at all in stocks, bonds, online banking, or retirement funds.  Every time I hear those words, I want to scoop out my brain with a tiny spoon.

But I also really want to live as a peaceful hermit someday on a ranch.  With a dog.   So I really want to see if this “save early, retire rich” thing is doable.  After all, I know there are people out there who are less intelligent than me successfully investing in their futures.  And if I didn’t make it clear in my do-your-own-taxes post, I can’t stand the thought that I’m failing at something intellectually when there are millions of others succeeding.  And the idea of paying those people to complete something for me because I’m too stupid is just too much to bear.

So maybe it’s time to give the rich, old, ranch-hermit-with-a-dog dream a shot.

I don’t want this to digress into a book review, so I will suffice it to say that I went twenty pages into this book and then dove full-force ahead.  The most exciting activity in my near future is picking out an online savings account.  Seriously.

And I already had a payoff.  Yesterday I had to sit through an Explanation of Benefits session at work and for the first time didn’t tune out when they started babbling about retirement funds.  I wonder how long I have to do these Lollipop Tuesdays before I finally learn to stop writing things off before I try them?

Maybe just a few more. ♣

Share

Tags: , , , , ,

An Open Letter to Pegoleg

25 Apr

One of the things that keeps me blogging every single day of 2011 is the witty comments my readers leave. 

Ya’ll are some witty folk.

But yesterday I was so struck by the wit that affronted me from the unassuming position at the bottom of my post yesterday about how I really wanted to start seeing thunderstorms if I’m going to be bogged down with all this ridiculous rain.  In it, I included a tidbit about my Emergency Glow Sticks that I have ready just for the occasion that I’m blessed with an awesome lightning crack and a power out.

A fellow blogger, pegoleg, left the following comment:

“When Mother Nature picks up the gauntlet you just threw down, at least you’ll be prepared.

Because your emergency plan is glow sticks, right? If the power goes out, that’s what you’re going to count on to see you through. What, you couldn’t find any fireflies? The store was out of sparklers?”

Actually, it wasn’t bold.  Or italicized.  You know, to be fair.

Pegoleg just happens to be a well-deserving Freshly Pressed Triple Crown holder.  And though that sort of makes her sound like a race horse, I actually mean she tends to write amusing and unique posts that WordPress features because she’s amusing.  And groovy.  And because she’s taken the time to bless me with her sarcasm, and because I follow any post idea I can get these days, I have decided to compose this open letter.

Dear pegoleg,

I would like to begin by thanking you for your comment.  By you leaving a note at the bottom of my posts, it makes it seem like sometimes people actually stop by my site and read it.  Which, although it may not be necessarily true, is a facade that I can happily keep up thanks to your frequent comments.

I would like to use the body of my letter to address your questions because your inquiries are dear to me and I want to see to it that your curiosities are satisfied.     Also, because as I said above, it’s day hundred-and-something in 2011 and I’ve removed my filter for whether or not to pursue a blog idea immediately.

Now I just do it before bed, schedule it for morning, and wake to reap the consequences.  

In my defense, there is such a thing as “Emergency Glow Sticks”.  And while it seems like a silly child’s toy for a late night parade, I assure you that the glow sticks that have amassed beneath my kitchen sink are no small potatoes.  They are super charged, super bright, 12-hour glow sticks and they will not be mocked.    After you crack and shake them, they continue to slowly and discreetly release a faint hiss that makes me concerned about the reaction that caused the eye-blinding neon liquid to form.  In fact, I just cracked one to check the validity of my claim, and aside from the usual hyperbole you’ve come to expect from me, this is all totally accurate.  Because I kind of don’t know where I’m going to put it for the next 11.95 hours.

I’m not quite sure what you use in your home in the event of disaster.  We’re fresh out of oil and torches, so I thought it best to stash the glow sticks in their absence.  This is indeed the extent of my disaster plan.  Well, these and a pretty complex blanket fort.  

I would stash fireflies and sparklers, but unfortunately they don’t come out until summer.

I hope that this helps clear things up.  If you have any further questions or concerns, you know where to find me.  And as always, thank you so much for stopping by.

Puppies and Sprinkles,

Jackie ♣

Share

Tags: , , , ,

Get It Together, Mother Nature

24 Apr

File:Lightning3.jpg

I’ve gotta say – April has been preeetty unimpressive in the thunderstorm realm.

I hate pathetic thunderstorms.   At the slightest rumble, I grab my emergency glow sticks from beneath the sink and lay them around the apartment, in hopes that the electricity will be zapped and I’ll finally have an excuse to crack them open in their chemical, neon green glory.  I run to the window, pull up the blinds, and anxiously stare out toward the eerie orange sky awaiting an awesome thunderstorm.

But the awesome never comes.

April has been nothing but rain, clouds, and more rain, and I can’t even get a little heat lightning out of the deal.  Just a rumble, a tease, and then – nothing.  

I love a good thunderstorm.  I want lightning that cracks right beside the apartment and makes me wonder if I’m going to die.  I want torrents of rain that put rubble and branches in the streets and make everyone want to stay indoors.  I want my television to BOOP BOOP BOOP on a poorly colored, archaic station that has a robotic voice telling everyone that anything in the open air is unsafe.    I want tips and tricks to flash across the screen for what to do if you find yourself in an open field.  I want several grids to shut down so that people are wary at intersections and I have to whip out some candles and play rudimentary time-passing games in my living room.

But none of that has happened.  Not once.

What kind of a spring goes by without a good T-storm?  It’s bad enough that winter has wiggled its way almost completely to the rise of our May flowers – must I also endure a perk-less spring? 

Lame.  Super lame.

Listen up, mother nature.  I’m sick of this willy-nilly weather.  When you’re winter, you’re winter all the way.  We get bone-chilling cold, blizzards, and frozen car windows.  So when you’re springtime, be springtime.  I want thunderstorms, craziness, and flowers to follow.  I want freshly mowed grass and orange skies that lead to violent lightning cracks.   I don’t want to have to give you a lesson in the properties of the four seasons. 

So get it together, will ya? ♣

Share

Tags: , , , ,

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →

Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started