back and blogging

Well I'm back from my cruise to the Carribean, wow, I haven't blogged in so long! Internet access was priced at a premium on the boat, so I figured I'd take a week hiatus.

Did you miss me?!?!

Photos to come soon, but in the meantime, rejoice that I am alive, because I almost hit a deer on the way home from Baltimore when I got back from my trip! Who knew there were deer in Baltimore?? After being awake for 20 hours and my last real meal 12 hrs in the past (i did have a snack size doritos, a handful of trail mix and a small glass of apple juice in that time period) I attempted the 40 min drive home - its hard enough to focus on just getting home in that zombie-like condition without having to worry about ruminant mammals jumping out of the mist into the path of my speeding car! Some screeching and swerving and thumping heartbeats later, everything was cool and no one was hurt. But man, just think about how anytime, in a slow-reflex moment, you can go from fun vacation to crippled or killed. yikes.

Anyway!

5 yr plan? uh...

Carmel, CA vs. Rt. 175 MD

a quote from my sister's blog (she just moved back to MD from a year-long cross-country road dtrip) that makes me sad that I am so complacent and non-adventurous and tend to take the easy route, and thus find myself still in central md, and now with a mortgage:

"At least when i lived in new orleans and had a boring ass job i went outside for break or when i got off and THERE I WAS! In the fucking bustling french quarter and it was beautiful and there was the river and the horse drawn carriages and the music in the streets and the awesome bars that were open all night...Damn getting off of this boring job and walking outside to rt 175 in fucking central maryland and going home to prepare for my next boring uneventful day in hell."

Ok given she has a job she doesn't like, which makes everything worse, but, the point is the comparison between central maryland and anywhere cool you can think of! She's so right.

A larger problem? No 5 yr plan. If you don't look at your life and imagine how you want it to be in 5 or 10 years, you just chug along day to day with no goal in mind and no effort to work towards that goal. Suddenly, you are in your 40's and still doing the same thing, still chugging along, still at the same job with the same pay in the same town in the same house while those around you are moving forward. Just letting life happen to you instead of taking advantage of your time on earth. That doesn't seem very smart. Lazy, yes. Prudent, no. *sigh*

fight alzheimers with curry?

Check out this offensively stereotypical
picture from the article... a snake charmer?
come on!
Epidemiological study suggests that lovers of turmeric-rich curries cut their risk of senility by about 50 percent; even occasional enjoyment reduced dementia risk by 38 percent.

Dementia rates rise worldwide as lifestyles shift to Western model. An estimate published in 2005 (Ferri CP et al 2005) suggests that some 24 million people have Alzheimer’s disease or another form of dementia, with one new case every 7 seconds (4.6 million new cases every year).

Worse, the number of people affected may double every 20 years. The authors said that in 2001, some 60 percent of dementia cases occurred in developing countries, and that this proportion may rise to 71 percent by 2040.

Sadly, as diets and lifestyles in developed countries shift toward the Western model, the number of cases occurring in their populations is forecast to increase by 100 percent by 2040, and to increase by more than 300 percent in India, China, and their immediate neighbors.

While lengthened life-spans play a major role in this phenomenon, many observers attribute the rapid worldwide rise in dementia rates to the increasing dominance of the standard Western diet, which is high in fat, sugar, and calories but low in protective dietary factors (fish-derived omega-3 fatty acids and plant-derived antioxidants).

http://newsletter.vitalchoice.com/e_article000689711.cfm?x=b8mTBjS,b5WwLnpH

well anyway, being a curry-loving vegetarian, with a boyfriend who cooks exquisite vegetable curries, I have no fears of losing my brain function (i can feel it coming, so just keep your jokes about my current brain function to yourselves!!! :P)

quick boring 'what i did this weekend' post (with coupon!)

Buy one get one free at coldstone creamery!

saturday my ex picked up the kids, we had a fight about my blog, he thought it made him look bad
then i cleaned the house, then awesome V and his 2 awesome neigbhbors (I'm not just saying that lightly, they really are awesome, I mean nicer guys you will never meet) came over with my boxspring and bedframe that i bought from this chick in baltimore, and put it together, and put up a wire shelf in my closet over the bar, and patched a big hole i made in the bathroom wall when i accidentally pulled the towel rack out of the wall along with a big chunk of drywall since it wasnt screwed into a stud, goddamit.

Then we all went to the irish festival which wasnt great, but we got in for free even though you are supposed to pay $10 so it didn't really matter that it wasn't the best thing ever. It was just weird going to an indoor festival. We had a few beers there and also met up with V's other neighbor who worked on O'malleys campaign so it was sort of also to celeberate her victory. V bought me this awesome bracelet that I love so much! Then we went out to dinner at Thai One On in Towson, was suprisingly good, thats about it. I stayed over at V's, we had crappy diner breakfast, then i went home and got the kids. Later on V came over to watch the Wizards game because he doesnt get it because he has sattelite. They lost!

Basically, I am very happy right now. You know how life has ups and downs? I guess this is an up :)

infiltrated!

I had to move my blog because my ex found it and I don't really want him reading about my day to day life and (semi) private thoughts. Then we had an argument about me publishing things about him because he said it made him look bad. I think he does a pretty good job of that himself! But anyway I guess I can try to not write about him in the future.
So, the new URL is spyder-girl.blogspot.com (Y instead of I) .
lame.

word of the day: backronym

Sic is a Latin word meaning "thus", "so", or "just as that".

In folk etymology, "sic" is sometimes erroneously thought to be an abbreviation of "spelling is correct", "same in copy", "spelled incorrectly", "spelling incompetent", "said in context", "stupid in context", "stand incorrect", "spelling intentionally changed", or "sans intent comique", to cite but a few backronyms.

Can someone tell me WHY?

Because I have been so busy there are alot of things I haven't blogged about, like the party I went to in DC with valet parking, my upcoming conference in Pittsburgh (ugh), the traumas and joys of being a homeowner- woah does it feel like a ball and chain sometimes! Largely because its so scary doing something so major on your own. I think if I bought a house with someone, it would feel more like, just fun and exciting and new, and less like, scary and financially catastrophic and like I'm trapped there for a long time. But mostly its great.

Instead of catching up on all of that stuff, I just want to blog about the woman who took my ticket last night at the movie theater. Lets call her Monique. But first, I want to complain about what is supposedly the most popular movie theater in the country, Muvico Arundle Mills. $10/per ticket, $15 for 2 tiny pizzas and a wonka bar, not getting the wonka bar, having a line down the center of the screen through most of the movie, all while having to fight hypothermia. Last time I went there, they forgot to turn off the lights, someone had to leave the movie to go tell them. Then, 20 min into the movie, the lights came back on again! We saw the Prestige, which was pretty good without being astounding.

Anyway, back to 'Monique'. Monique. I ask you this. You are already disabled and in a wheelchair. You have some physical deformities, being tiny with small arms and hands, which probably makes life's daily taks pretty difficult for you. That really sucks being dealt that card, and I feel for you. However, why, oh why, would you choose, with all of this against you already, to grow your fingernails out to such long and crippling proportions that you can barely take and rip my ticket? Aren't things already difficult enough for you?

I guess my rant is not specifically against Monique, but against cripplingly long fingernails in general. Can anyone answer the following question-- WHY?