Rachelskirts

On Second Thought, Forget the Trip to Antarctica

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 23:57:47 -0600

Stay away from drugs, kids, or you'll end up putting things on your bucket list that you really, truly do not want to do. Like eating pickled pigs' feet or climbing Mt. Everest or knitting a sweater. However, doing all those things at once might make for an interesting goal.

She's Gonna Blow!

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 23:41:37 -0600

I have twenty-four hours to vastly improve upon my story-telling skills before @Skittle_Brains and I record our first episode of Bacon Famous (our podcast). Don't count on this happening.

Do count on us sounding really sharp because our new mic is definitely all it is cracked up to be.

Of course, all this depends on whether or not I survive the next twenty-four hours without shoving sporks in my own eyes.

Send hugs. And chocolate.

It's the One Involving Space Camp

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 23:53:13 -0600

On the downside:

My perfectionism will be the death of me.
I cannot bring myself to care about my health as much as I should. That might also be the death of me.

On a happier note:

I just remembered that I picked up an Adventures of Mary-Kate and Ashley movie on VHS for $.25 at a book sale a few weeks ago.

I Has a Bucket

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 23:21:20 -0600

Noooo! They be stealin' my bucket. For the longest time, my good friend Boy had the first half of this image series on one monitor and the second half on his other monitor. It never failed to make me laugh.

For some reason, this popped into my mind today and then made me think of bucket lists. If you're unfamiliar with the term, a "bucket list" is simply a list of things you want to do before you "kick the bucket."

I've been wanting to write up a bucket list for many years now, but as I mentioned the other day, I'm still trying to narrow down my passions, what motivates me, and what matters to me. That's an incredibly easy thing for some people, but I am not one of them. I remember feeling like a deer in headlights when I realized I would have to pick a college major and that there is no such thing as a career path that encompasses piano-playing, math, history, writing, and graphic design all in one job (especially since I would rather chop off my own limbs than become a teacher). Having multiple interests is fun, but choosing between them is definitely not.

Anyway, dear friends and strangers, what are some things you have on your bucket list? Have you done anything from that list yet? Do you plan to accomplish anything from the list in the next year?

If you have a bucket list (or something similar) posted somewhere online, leave the link in the comments because I'm dying for ideas and inspiration, and oh yeah, I'm just really stinkin' curious.

Nine Lazy Lives

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 23:50:55 -0600

Callie spends most of her time sleeping in the sunshine, when she can find it. When I am filthy rich, I plan on doing the exact same thing.

I do not understand "dog people," and I never will.

Bacon Famous: Before They Were Famous (or Bacon)

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 23:57:14 -0600

People who upload music under creative commons licenses: I applaud you. I am too skint to pay for an intro song for my soon-to-exist podcast, Bacon Famous, so it was a blessing to find free tunes that weren't all awful. (But good heavens, your categorizing skills could use some work.) My brother and I spent hours pouring through libraries of royalty-free music tonight, and here are some highlights from this entertaining, enlightening, and terrifying time:

There is such a thing as "instrumental rap." No, you do not want to listen to it.
That group that promised celtic jazzrock blues instrumental heavy metal reggae music actually came through. Much better than the instrumental rap.
The Jewish Bob Dylan track is probably the funniest thing on the internet.
Anything with the word "ambient" in it should be avoided at all costs. So should an album filed under "skak."
Step away from the Beelzebub Airlines album!
My brother thinks that all "old-timey" music sounds like goats singing through horns. Sorry, but our intro song will not be that 1920s piece with the sweet accordion solo.

Where the Air Is Rarified

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 23:38:00 -0600

One of the things I miss about being at LeTourneau University is being around all the aviation majors. Most people I know in college don't have a clue what they want to do with their lives after graduation, and some of us end up changing our majors six times in as many semesters in hope of finding something interesting and perhaps even lucrative.

Aviation majors, however, know exactly what they want from the very first day of class — they want to fly planes.

You don't become a pilot by accident or because you think it will be easy. If you plan to take a huge hunk of metal into the air, bring it back to land, and survive the experience, you have to really want to do that. You have to go through a lot of training and possibly be out of your gosh dang mind. Classes are hard and long, and attendance policies are as unforgiving as they come. (Pretty much every lecture could be titled "How to Avoid Death," so missing a class means failing the course.) Practice is equal parts exhilarating and terrifying. Really bad things happen if you aren't 100% focused.

The result of all this is that people who want to be professional pilots are some of the most driven and responsible people on the planet, and it is incredibly inspiring to listen to them talk about their passion. (One of my favorite college memories of all time was watching Top Gun with a bunch of aviation boys. For the entirety of the film, they were as giddy as twelve-year-old girls playing truth or dare at a slumber party.)

All this decluttering and prioritizing has made me wonder what my core passions really are, and when it comes right down to it, I still don't know. My online profiles would lead you to believe that I'm mostly passionate about grammar and Lord of the Rings and banning Comic Sans, but my spiel about how churches today should be using internet resources is twenty times longer than my spiel on overused fonts. And at the end of the day, none of those things would probably make the top five in my list of life passions.

What about you? What drives you and motivates you to do what you do? What are you passionate about? Who do you look to for inspiration when you're feeling apathetic and listless? Have you always known what you wanted to do with your life?

(I grew up wanting to be a secretary or a CEO. I like organizing things, and I like controlling things. Having already tried the former, I look forward to eventually trying the latter.)

P.S.

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 21:32:23 -0600

Not to be a tease or anything, but my brother and I just ordered a fabulous mic as our motivation to start podcasting together. Expect episodes that are 100% less sappy than my previous blog post and fifty times funnier than our Twitter streams (here and here) combined. Or if you don't like disappointment, expect episodes that are full of too many awkward pauses and too much of my laughter.

The Most Endearing Salad Fork of All

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 21:07:45 -0600

Everything is perfect about this moment, from the classical music to the clean sheets to the pink polish on my fingernails. My cat is napping beside me on the bed, and my skin smells like spiced apple body wash. Juan Pedro the sock monkey nods off while I read to him from Emily Post's Etiquette. We might not be the most adventuresome crowd in town, but we could possibly be the happiest.

A Verbose Start to NaBloPoMo 2009

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 21:33:02 -0600

Normally, I save my "turning over a new leaf" phases for January, when everyone else is in the spirit of setting goals and making changes and bettering himself. However, I guess November will be just as good a month for a personal revolution, since it is our beloved National Blog Posting Month. I will not be writing about this every day, but it'll be a good topic to jump-start a month of daily posting.

Recently, I received a bit of a wake-up call because of an ill-handled situation in the workplace, and at the end of it all, I was left with a lot of lemons and a recipe for lemonade. I realized that it was time to stop complaining about all the nuisances in life — big or small — and to start being active in dealing with them.

As a result, I found myself on Unclutterer.com, reading about ways to deal with excessive amounts of paperwork. The stacks of bills and class notes and sheet music that have been collecting in bins and drawers and stacks on my bedroom floor have nothing to do with this situation at work, but tripping over them when I was already in a foul mood was the final straw. I decided that the first step to getting my life and my priorities in order was to rid myself of distractions, including my perpetually messy room.

In my heart of hearts, I am the biggest neat freak you have ever met. I have been alphabetizing my books since I could read (which was at the tender age of two-and-a-half), color-coordinating my closet since I was tall enough to reach the hangers, and [assembling] my Christmas wishlist from the Office Depot catalogue since the time I started school. When I first discovered IKEA and the Container Store (and the fact that they are located within spitting distance from each other), I wept. However, my room is one place where my perfectionism becomes my own enemy, where I decide that if I don't have time to do it right then I shouldn't do it at all. But no more!

When I popped onto the Unclutterer.com website, I started reading the most current post and worked my way through the archives at an unhealthy rate. I devoured all the tips for my paper clutter (the family scanner has never seen so much attention in its dusty little life) and was pleasantly surprised to find some new ideas for managing the files on my computer.

But what truly shocked me was an idea that is mentioned over and over again in the Unclutterer.com articles — the idea of truly decluttering your life. That extends beyond the realm of getting rid of unnecessary objects in your bedroom, bathroom, or kitchen. It involves more than just sorting and purging and filing. The people who write these articles have decluttered their rooms, their schedules, and their priorities, so that in the end they have the space and the time and the energy to focus on whatever matters most to them. I cannot tell you how amazing that sounds.

For a really long time, I have been letting life happen to me and feeling helpless to change its direction. What a waste! I have so many things I really want to do that I will never be able to do unless I truly focus on them and let go of the less important things. I'm still working on the stacks of paperwork on the floor because I know I won't be able to concentrate until there is a place for everything and everything is in its place. But while I'm doing that, I'm taking notes on things I want to do (travel! write! dance! start a podcast!) and ways to make those things realities. I'm forming my biggest goals and deciding which ones are most important to me. I'm taking inventory of all the things that consume my time and energy and cutting out the ones that aren't moving me in the right direction.

And at the end of each day, I am excited to go to bed simply because I cannot wait to start that all over again.

Man, it feels good to be this alive.

Hastily Jotted Down Notes from a Recent Dream

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 02:42:54 -0600

Skeletons overlooking house. Hiding behind door, didn't shut fully. Border collie, tiger, small gate. Tiger eating fried chicken. Let them out to use yard. Raining. Yelling at someone about the chicken. Taking the tiger on a walk.

Sorry Again, Miss Lobster

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 10:37:10 -0600

I wrote this on my laptop from the Boston airport, but then I decided not to connect to the shady-looking free WiFi to post it immediately. Instead, these words have been getting dusty for almost a week now, so . . . enjoy?

Boston in the fall. For the past six days, I've been experiencing the wonder that is New England during one of its most romantic seasons. Most of the pictures on my camera right now are of the beach, the trees, the quaint little homes, and cobblestone.

However, if you asked me to tell you about my trip, I would talk about how great it was to be able to hug my boyfriend. I would tell you how nice it was to be able to check my email while sitting in the same room as him or how fun it was to watch a movie together without Skype being involved. I would most definitely sing the praises of his friends, who are sometimes eerily similar to my own favorite friends. I might tell you about the day we tried to go to King Richard's renaissance fair but instead spent the afternoon hanging out at the American headquarters of the Whale & Dolphin Conservation Society, drinking mead and talking about Lord of the Rings-themed Crayola crayons.

People who know me well will be proud to hear that I tried Boston "chowda" and lobster. I installed Age of Empires 2 on my laptop and watched roughly five hundred episodes of Bleach while managing to convince a skeptic of the wonders of Google Wave. I was unable to finish something called the Hunka Hunka Chocolate Love, but I spent ten dollars on gourmet chocolates at Quincy Market. My boyfriend's good friend accidentally proposed to me and then intentionally called me a bottom-feeding skunk wallet. I was hit in the eye by a rubberband, an elbow, a hat, and three fist-sized snowflakes.

Most importantly, I got to visit my really sweet boyfriend and meet some really great people and make some really fun memories.

File this trip under "Unquestionably Good Times."

Serial Flosser

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 10:17:34 -0600

I went to bed with a bit of a knot in my stomach last night after watching a particularly frightening episode of one of my favorite television shows. In the last two minutes of the episode, someone who was killed in the last season SHOT OUT OF THE WATER and grabbed the hand of someone on a boat, which turned me into a nervous wreck who may or may not have stabbed a pile of laundry with a pair of scissors because it was dark and the laundry looked suspicious.

Anyway, I was expecting to have terrible dreams involving murder or stabbing or giant piles of dirty laundry. Instead, in my nightmare, my mother replaced my toothbrush with one of those free ones from the dentist, and she didn't care that the bristles were hurting my gums.

Intermission

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 16:42:08 -0600

The chocolate syrup furrowed its brows with great determination and hurled itself out of the refrigerator as I reached for the milk. My free hand automatically shot out to protect this nectar of the gods from falling to the floor. "Gandalf! Noooo!" I cradled the bottle in my arm and looked at the familiar Hershey's label with fondness. "Okay, then, little buddy," I said. "Chocolate milk it is."

The Nose Knows: Part Two

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 20:14:18 -0600

Somehow, my family came to own a giant chest filled with dress-up clothes. The chest sat in the basement, where my brother and I would play during the summers when it was too hot to go outside. One dress in particular reminded me of the country and the prairie, so I'd often put it on and imagine myself as Laura Ingalls Wilder or someone from that era. Occasionally, I would place a white, silk dress shirt on the punching bag that hung from the basement ceiling, pulling on the sleeves to create a makeshift dance partner.

The chest smelled unlike anything else in the house. It smelled of adventure and mystery and, once in a great while, like Grandma's house.