anger toward computer

    I know I just posted last night, but something has happened and I must explain.

    At work, I get to use a computer. This is awesome because a) I can blog and b) I can Google things like "Worst Celebrity Plastic Surgery". (Go ahead, look in my viewing history. It's there, and it's not pretty.) I never really know where I'm going to be "placed" (I say "placed" because it's more like "sent" but to make myself feel better, I pretend like my boss actually cares where I go) from day to day, which is ok because my usual basement location gets kind of drafty.

    Right now, I have been "placed" in the basement to work on probably the oldest computer in the entire building. It's not old old, like those ancient desktop computers that look like some creature made from mega-blocks, but it's pretty old. It would be fine if they updated it once in a while, or at least ran a virus scan, but they don't. Which is why I get to use it, no one cares about the basement computer!

    My place of work is in the midst of organizing a ton of school-related events which means I get stuck updating addresses of invitees and making "reserved" signs. Sounds pretty easy, right? It would be if the computer didn't hate me.

    Today I was told to update invitation info. I opened up the attachment in my email, began the mindless process of copying-and-pasting, and then I made the amateur mistake of trying to minimize a window. I should have known better. After trying to patiently wait for about three minutes, this is what my screen had for me:

   Nothing. It literally hadn't even began to "minimize". Getting a little irritated, I wiggled the mouse around. Nothing. More wiggling=nothing. Exaggerated ESC key jabbing=nothing. CTRL+ALT+DEL=nada. Slamming mouse up and down= aha!

   Progress! I can just imagine those little fish taunting me, saying "haha you still can't see all of us! And you're not going to for at least five more minutes! Haha you suck!"

    By now, I was thoroughly pissed. I contemplated punching the screen but realized that would be dificult to explain to my boss. I resorted to just slapping the sides, which probably wasn't a good idea, either. I clicked around, moved my mouse, CTRL+ALT+DELed probably fifty times, and ESCed to no avail.

    SEVEN MINUTES LATER (I'm not even kidding you) it finally sorted itself out. I was relieved but still overwhelmingly irritated. Can't wait for it to happen again! Lesson learned: don't try anything "fancy" on old computers. Stick strictly to simpler methods such as typing, clicking with mouse, and using Word for as many projects as possible.

ironing

    Every trendy person owns a pair of cuffed beige shorty-shorts, fact. I say "person" because I have indeed seen menfolk sporting them as well as overly tanned teenaged girls. They are a great investment; they're comfy, they're casual, they're cuffed. They're just overall fashionable.

    What they don't tell you in American Eagle and Old Navy is that there is a very important requirement you must adhere to after purchasing said shorts: you must iron.

   I don't think I've ever really ironed anything in my entire life. Sure, I asked my mom if I could "iron" her work shirt once or twice when I was younger, only to drench it with that cool misty-button and leave weird waffle-like marks on the cuffs. That's why I said only once or twice.

   I remember going over to my grandma's house on a laundry day and she would literally shut herself in their "den" all day in order to complete the entire laundry process. It went something like this:

1. gather all clothing
2. separate into a bajillion little piles (don't even think about putting a tan shirt in with the whites!)
3. begin washing/drying process
4. after every load is dried and folded in basket, bring to den
5. begin ironing EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF CLOTHING

    My young brain could wrap around the first four steps, but the fifth just seemed a little extreme. And even the extreme would be taken to the extreme when she began ironing my grandpa's underwear. I could do nothing but gape in awe.

    Now that I am in the real world (a.k.a. my mom doesn't do my laundry every week anymore), I had to figure out how to look normal in my clothing. I could handle the sorting, washing, drying, and folding pretty well, but ironing was this foreign word that made me angry. I got an iron somehow, but I don't think I've taken it out of the box. Besides, I only have one item in my closet that really needs to be ironed: the cuffed beige shorty-shorts.

    I really love those shorts, they have been there in both good times and bad, but whenever I consider pulling them out of my rubbermaid stacker/dresser I get all overwhelmed with the daunting task of ironing those damn cuffs. Why don't the sewers in Vietnam or wherever just add a few extra stitches here or there so the cuffs will stay up on their own? This I don't know.

    To avoid getting the iron out, and to still maintain a look of self-caring, I have found a solution.

    Why yes, that is me ironing my cuffs with a straightner. Genious!

an unexpected christmas

   I traveled back to my before-college home a couple times in August to visit my family, and during one of my visits we pulled an old memory out that I just had to write about.

   My little sister, and only sibling, went through a phase about five years back in which she really, really wanted a doll house. Not a Barbie Dreamhouse, but an actual wooden dollhouse with wooden dolls and wooden furniture. I thought that was really lame, to say the least, and asked Santa for a 2006 AmericanGirl stone-age-looking equivilant to today's touchscreen devices. So cool.

   Christmas Eve, my parents were setting up all the gifts that Santa had brought my sister and I when they made a discovery that will forever make me laugh.

   They had looked high and low on the internet to find the perfect wooden dollhouse and family. They ordered everything, getting excited about my sister's expected reaction to her dream present, and the package showed up shortly after at our little home. They didn't even bother to check inside the box, trusting that everything would be just how they had ordered.

   Well, the night before the big day, my mom was unwrapping all the parts and pieces when she gasped.

    "Uh, honey?" - my alarmed mother

    "Hmm?" - dad

    "This family is black."

    "Black?"

    "Yeah. And there's no dad. We got a black family with no dad."

   Inside of the bubble wrap sat a mother, two children, and an infant.

   I don’t in any way intend this post to sound racist. But seriously, a black family with no dad? How much more stereotypical could you get? I can just imagine the person whose job it is to wrap up mass manufactured little wooden families looking at my parents’ order form and thinking “Another perfect little white family, eh? Suck on this!”.

   My parents couldn’t exactly give my sister a dollhouse without any dolls, and not many stores in our little town stay open until the crack of dawn on Christmas Day, (or stay open the week of Christmas, period), so they had only one choice: act normal.

   The next morning, my sister was completely elated after seeing her new house and its inhabitants. She didn’t mention their color at all! It was actually really cool; look how far we’ve progressed, America! When my mom asked where the daddy was, she simply replied “the war”.

   I didn’t get the pleasure of hearing this story until a couple years ago, and it’s by far one of the funniest tales I’ve heard. Lesson learned: check to make sure the dolls you ordered are what you ordered. Or, better yet, raise your kids to not care! Acceptance is essential.

warning: bear spray

   In my mind, I pictured only one use for bear spray: spraying bears. You could throw it at an attacker, I guess, but I don’t think that was the intended strategy. You could also attach it to a sort of rope and swing it around, aiming to smack your aggressor in hopes of discouraging him/her/it, but that’s similar to the aforementioned plan. I feel comfortable saying that spraying the bear spray in the face of your assailant is the best bet, preferably in the eyes or other orifices.

   However, this weekend a new use of bear spray was revealed to me. It can also be used as a small bomb! How neat is that?

   This discovery was definitely not intended, to say the least. My boyfriend had been in the midst of the moving process and must have forgotten that his giant can of bear spray was laying on his dashboard. In the direct sunlight. In August.

   Needless to say, the can exploded. Luckily, he wasn’t in his truck at the time of the attack so no one was hurt. His truck, however, is a different story. Now he gets to look at this when he cruises around in his sexy spray-painted 1985 F150! 

   I should also mention that, yes, us Montanans do own giant cans of bear spray. My boyfriend got his from his mom as a generosity before a backpacking adventure. I presume we’ll be hitting up REI today to refuel.

the word “definitely”

   It is the bane of the English language’s existence. Yeah, I said it.

   For some completely unknown reason, we as English-speaking humans struggle with this simple word seemingly more than any other combination of letters known to man. Ok, that might be a slight exaggeration considering there are plenty of other complex words, such as exaggeration, that are much more difficult and which I would struggle to spell if it weren’t for some handy help. Thank you, auto spell corrector. But still, it really shouldn’t be that challenging.

   Let’s look into the word in a laidback manner:

   The base of the word “definitely” is “define”; that’s a pretty easy word, right? Spelled just how it sounds. We could even break it down further for all you dyslexics: “de” as in to undo something, and “fine” as in how I look.

   Alright, so now we have the simple “de” and we slide “fine” in right next to it. Now comes the tricky part. Somewhere along this process, we must move the E in DEFINE. We put the word “it” where the E would usually be if whoever created this god-awful language wasn’t so cruel. So now we’ve got DEFINITE. Hey looky there! That’s a word! Not quite sure how to use it, though…

   Moving on, we add the most integral part of our process: the end. Stick an “ly” to that sucker! We don’t, under any circumstances, add any other letters. Where people pull A’s and extra I’s and take E’s from, I do not know. But I do know that it thoroughly pisses me off.

Definately  = what??

Definetly = nope…

Definitiley = just stop.

Ending result: DEFINITELY! What is so complicated about that???

   I am a Facebook frequenter and there is nothing that I detest and resent more than watching someone repetitively misspell this common word. Ok, another exaggeration. I also resent animal abusers, but somehow that seems a little too deep for a blog post.  Each time I happen upon this gross error, it becomes a mental battle over whether I should correct the mistake and make the post-er feel stupid, or do nothing and allow it to be seen by others who will think “Oh so that’s how they spell it…huh. Welp, I’m gonna spell it that way now, too! ‘Cuz I’m dumb!” Yes, that was mean.

   Thus far, I have refrained from correcting the numerous pathetic attempts at spelling a simple word and I feel good about it. I would hate to really hurt someone’s feelings by saying something along the lines of “Who taught you how to spell? Helen Keller?” Because that would be just plain unkind.