Accedentally Ukulele

I'm blogging about another musician this week. Except this time I'm not hating on any one. I'm happy to notice that the Rebecca Black stuff has died down. And I don't expect many keyword search hits from this. I stumbled upon Julia Nunes on YouTube about two years ago and she makes the most adorable videos of songs she covers on the ukulele. Something made me think of her the other day and I wanted to share her with you, my lovely readers! She also started doing her own songs but that's less fun since I don't know the lyrics.  Anyway so here are my favorite cover and original songs respectively.  Enjoy!

How to Survive A 12 Hour Plane Trip

Vroom!

1) Do not get a seat outside of a hungover dude. Drunk Dave will want to get up every 30 minutes to get more teeny bottles of alcohol from the back of the plane to make the hangover go away. That is until he finally passes out only to re-awaken at the end of the flight hungover again....

Not-So Fed-Ex

Where I work, we have unlimited sick days. What we don't have is enough staff to always call in people when someone's sick. So people, like one of the guys I work with directly, come to work when they're sick. Yeah. And now I'M sick. Yuck. So today, my lovely readers, all I can muster for you is a super short story, and no pictures unless I decide to add them tomorrow or next week, or if I can re-purpose any from other stories. While I'm typing THIS, I still haven't decided what story to tell, so we will find out, kind of, together if that's possible. Here goes nothing.

So far still nothing. I'm distracted by what ever this show is on DIY which I'm watching because I turned my TV on and don't know where the remote is.

Today I'm blogging from home. Just pretend the cloud is some home improvement show.

I found a picture to re-purpose. this is that picture's third appearance in my blog, not counting the version I made for my header.

Still nothing.....

Ok, I got it. Before I even type it and before you read it I'm going to say "I'm sorry."

Apartment Livin'

Here's what I hate most about living in apartments. And I've lived in a lot of them. Almost a different one every year since 2004. So that's 9 minus the townhouse one year and minus one because I've been in my current one for 1+ years. Seven. Yay, I can do math. 

I know there are a lot of things that suck about apartments. You have up to 8 neighbors around you,.You don't get a driveway to park in. Sometimes your landlord doesn't want to fix stuff that needs fixing properly because of how much it would cost. You can't really change anything like the carpeting, appliances or wall colors. If you're lucky, there are washer/driers in the basement and you don't have to go to a laundr-o-mat [I  have no idea how that should really be spelled/hyphenated]. The list goes on. 

While at my first apartment, which ever cell phone I had [I believe it was a Nokia stopped working. So I called AT&T, which was Cingular at the time, and they said they would swap it out for a new one. Actually, I think I might have just been ordering a new one. Doesn't matter. They sent it Fed-Ex. Which is great because it's speedy. But sucks because it required a signature and the Fed-Ex guy didn't want to knock loud enough for me to hear it from my bedroom. Because I was home the whole day and wasn't listening to loud music or TV. 

I pleaded with my one friend who had a car (BTW this was in college so few people had cars by sophomore year) to drive me out to the Fed-Ex facility which is of course in the middle of nowhere. You think I'm exaggerating but I'm not. I'd never been that far from campus and the farther we drove, the more convinced I was that we had the wrong directions. We finally see it, pull in and I try to go into the customer entrance. Locked! Noooooooooooooo! I WANT MY NEW PHONE!!! I mean we drove all the way there and I didn't want to chance not hearing him knock next time he tried to deliver it. I go around to the loading dock and stand at the doorway looking lost until someone came over. I told him how sad I was and that "I was totally home!" and he felt bad for me and went to find my phone. 

At least the story, while not as short as I thought it would be, had a happy ending.

Again... I'm sorry.

Yes, I Have Taken Pictures of Stuff That Isn't In Japan

I kinda liked it better on the outside than the inside. The sharks were cool. As was the submarine that's disguised as a shark there in front of it the building.

Baltimore, MD Aquarium

The Day I Used A Phone Book

I remember experiencing power outages when I was younger. Back then it was like an adventure. I would take on of the candles my mom lit and explore the mysterious darkened catacombs of my 3 bedroom house. I would make a phone call to one of my friends on the land-line phone that just worked ALL THE TIME. I don't really remember feeling the burden of trying to figure out how to pass the time.

When my power went off earlier this week I was like "Oh fuck! what do I do now?!?" Everything I do requires electricity. I could have made a phone call because my cell is fully charged but everyone I know is at work. Yet another downside to working the graveyard shift. I was fortunate in one way which is that it happened around the time that I was going to take a nap anyway.

Electricity goes out.

I turned my laptop off and hoped the power would be back on when I woke up.

It wasn't.

I'm back to "holy fuck-balls what do it do?!?>@?#!@?!>"

 Decide what to do.


        
Ok first I should call the power company just in case I wasn't the only one to just go about what I was doing and assume they'd find out another way. I go to the kitchen and retrieve the phone book. I blow the dust off of it... well maybe not but that's just because its only a month old... and bring it back to my room. I turn the light on so I can see it better. Fuck no I don't because the electricity is out and it's not one of those whale oil burning lamps. I use the light of my cell phone to locate the number and call them. I was told it would be back on with in two hours. Which was good because at least I could stop worrying about freezing to death. I also liked when the lady wanted to look up my account and asked for the home phone number there. I held back a scoff, shook my head and said we don't have a land line...? And then she asked for the name on the account. Sigh

 What else?


 
I try to think of what else can I do with my not-internet-connected phone other than text Facebook statuses and tweets? Oh yeah I need to make an appointment to bring my car in (I may have been thinking about that when I wrote last week's story and yeah it wasn't until a power outage made me really bored after 5 minutes that I finally did it Wednesday). I needed to look up the phone number so I reached for my laptop. FUCK! No internet. Back to the phone book. I open to the S-es cause I know the place starts with an S. There's a lot of them so I turn on the light.

 NO I DON'T!!! (Are you seeing the pattern?)

I live in a small town, not a metropolis, so there's only two pages of business S-es so I figure it's going to be one of the bold or highlighted ones. This is still a lot to try to look through if using a cell phone as a flash light. It just now occurs to me to open my curtains. That's better. I successfully make the appointment.

Now what?



I figure I can cook something since I have a gas stove. I take a pit stop at my windowless bathroom. I think you know what's coming and dammit if I didn't try to turn the friggin' light on.

I don't need much, if any, light to pee so this wasn't a deal breaker just annoying because I don't like finding out how retarded I am. I go to the kitchen I try to light the stove. NOPE. I was hoping this wouldn't be an issue but I wasn't sure, the little sparky thing [what is that called?] that lights the gas is electric. For smokers there is a simple solution. hold your lighter up to the burner, turn on the gas, vola! For a non-smoker this means "what the hell did I do with my lighter?" I walk around my room looking in possible locations I might have stashed it. I haven't lighted any of my candles in quite some time.

No dice.



I decide I will go to the store, pick up some groceries and while I'm at it a lighter or 5 and kill time and be able to cook. I start to go through my recipes so that I can make something to use for one of my blog recipes.

Salvation.

As I struggle to find something I want to make, I hear my DVD player making noises I whip my head around and the "VIZIO" on my TV is glowing! IT"S ALIVE!!! I get back into bed and start writing a blog post about not having electricity. Life is worth living again.

Crushed

A Crushing Tale

When I think back to when I've felt most embarrassed, I found that it was usually related to whatever boy I currently had a crush on. There are just infinite ways to be awkward and embarrassing in front of the opposite sex, I almost don't know why we bother. Almost. My grade in middle school consisted of a whopping 42 students.  Not a lot went on without everyone else knowing about it. As I mentioned last week I was the absolute least favorite of everyone else, outside of my small group of fellow outcasts misfits awesome people...