Joy

Sometimes I feel like Outlook takes 17 years to open.

In other news, I've decided to stop pussy-footin' around and commit to biking to work.
If I keep pussy-footin' around, I'm going to end up looking like this:

Sam = the pussy-footer

Even though he is cute and fluffy and adorable, look at the way he doesn't fit in his clothes from last year (and that one golden eye is just creepy).
I want to be cute, but not at the expense of being fat...

So in an effort to besuade myself from not committing to commuting by bike, I've come up with a series of dichotomies to thwart even my lamest excuses.

"Wait, Allie, 'besuade' isn't even a word. Like, seriously, I typed it into Word and a red squiggly came under it."
I know, I know. I have a habit of inventing words.
But if you want to be cool like me, "besuade" means to persuade someone against something.
For instance, I besuade you from doing drugs because it ruins lives. "Persuade" doesn't make much sense here.
So there. If you say it fast enough and with conviction, it sounds quite impressive.
Increase your lexicon!

And now onto the dichotomies:

Problem: My butt hurts so bad after like eight miles.
Solution: First off, be thankful that you actually have a butt. Secondly, be thankful that your commute's only like 10 miles. Thirdly, buy some padded biking shorts.

Problem: I usually drink coffee on the way to work. What am I supposed to do, take coffee in a Camelback?
Solution: Don't drink coffee on the way because you're going to have to pee like a cow on a flat rock before you get there which will lead to some even more uncomfortable riding. Drink some water when you're half way there and then get free coffee at work. Also, drinking disgusting work coffee builds character and makes weekend coffee taste that much better.

Problem: It gets dark earlier and earlier. How am I supposed to not get killed while biking in the dark?
Solution: Buy some snazzy, cheap lights from China with free shipping. Seriously, I just bought a set for like $3.

Problem: I wear heels to work, and I don't want to lug them around in my backpack.
Solution: Bring all the heels you ever wear to work and store them the bottom left drawer of the desk. Yeah, you know the one with nothing in it. You don't wear your boring work heels to church or anywhere else anyway, so they might as well live there.

Problem: I sweat.
Solution: Bring a change of clothes, duh.

Problem: I get really, really hungry and tired after working out.
Solution: Eat a few pounds of vegetables first. Then oatmeal, beans, chicken, eggs, greek yogurt, and nuts. It may not be all super tasty, but you'll be so hungry you won't even care. You might even start drinking black coffee. As for being tired, good thing you'll be sitting at desk for 8+ hours after your ride. And then...
And then and then and then
You get to go home and eat and sleep. Doesn't that sound WONDERFUL?
Yes. Yes, it does.

Problem: What if it rains?
Solution: We're actually still working on this one because it hasn't happened yet. Well, I did ride in the rain to Lowe's that one time. But that's because I grew a pair and just did it.

Problem: I'm going to have to wake up stupid early to do this.
Solution: Just by 40 minutes... Plus, you don't have to put on makeup at the house. You can just change and go. And if you do it more and more, you'll get faster, maybe, and then it will take even less time.

Problem: I'm going to get home stupid late to do this.
Solution: 5:15 isn't that late, and you won't even need to spend time in the evening to work out. That way, when you feel like collapsing into a heap of bones after dinner, you can. Win.

Problem: People are going to look at me all weird.
Solution: Be cool. Because you are cool. I know it doesn't seem like it right now, but you are way cooler than you used to be.

Tie my handlebars to the stars,
TWS

Caving In; Owl City

Australia

Somehow, I got invited to this:

It was so cool.

Stuffing my face with renowned wings in a restaurant before it even opens without having to pay for it?

Heck yeah!!!

Though, I did spend $3 in the following way:

Me: "Dillon, am I allowed to tip you?"

Dillon (waiter): "YES."

The bad news is that I didn't get to go surfing last Saturday. It looked like it was going to be all hurricane-y, so I called and asked if they would cancel my lesson. I didn't want to drive two hours just to be turned around.
Tom, the guy at the place, was like, "I'm not going to lie; it doesn't look good."

That always baffles me. The way people sometimes preface sentences with, "I'm not going to lie."
Does that mean that when they don't say it,  they are lying?
I mean, wouldn't that be burdensome to put that in front of every sentence you said if you wanted to tell the truth?

"Allie, that's ridiculous. It's just something people say."

I guess I'm just wondering why it ever became a valid phrase.
I'm a truth advocate. Who advocates truth. Always.

(Also, the phrase "going to hell in a hand basket". I mean, aren't there other ways to get to hell besides a hand basket?" These are the kinds of things I think about.)

It's bad when the closest concert of my favorite band is in Chicago.
Or is New York closer?

Bereft of all social charms,
TWS

Note: It just occurred to me in the post before this that I mentioned both a guinea pig and hot wings. The two are not correlated in anyway because I got the invitation to the party today. Life really is just that coincidental.

Conscientious Objector

I had a dream involving the girl from The Ring, estimated tax payments, a grey guinea pig that ran really fast and bit people, and dating a guy that wasn't Mike.
It was pretty much a nightmare.
Guess that's the last time I'll ever eat hot wings right before bed.

GUYS. I don't understand time travel.
I feel like there are so many books on it that it should be a real thing, but I don't understand how it should work. If you are "from another time" and you go back to the past, and you change anything, then you could potentially not exist in the future. So then where would you go?
And since time as we know it is linear, while you're in the past, do people in the future know that you have gone? What happens to your life then? Is future time equal to past time? Like, does an hour in the future equal an hour in the past? Could you opt to forgo the future since you could quite literally live in the past?

And how come whenever time travel happens in these books, they never arrive at night? Isn't that just a little too coincidental?

I just finished reading The Here and Now by Ann Brashares. It was pretty disappointing. I kept waiting for my mind to be blown, and then it just wasn't.
Also, it didn't have enough hot action.
The Time Traveller's Wife also didn't blow my mind, but it had way too much action.
Balance, people.

I don't know. Maybe time travel isn't for me. Kind of like how being an astronaut or a vet sounded cool, but they were never for me.

*Mike picks out some deodorant*
Mike: 48 hour protection? Cool. That means I don't have to shower for two days.
*laughter*
If I only put it under one arm, do I get 24 hours of protection?

My legs are asleep. This feels so cool. It's like they're not even a part of me anymore.
I bet this is how amputees feel.

My city is pretty,
TWS

Let's Get Weird

I have so much exciting news that I can't share with you yet.
And it is absolutely killing me.

Maybe if I pretend like I'm writing about each piece of news, it will make me feel a little better:

1. Exciting thing number one:
This is the best thing that could've happened, in my opinion. I was like- YES! Opportunities! And new ferenz. I think I even have the ability to grow my mustache a little longer.

2. Exciting thing number two:
She was all like, "Can we move it to the fourth?" And I was like, "No" because I REALLY want to go this Saturday. So I'm going this Saturday. And I get to put together a great playlist to remind me of the time I hung out with myself.

3. Exciting thing number three:
I've got this HUGE project I'm working on. Like, I'll come home. Eat. Work on it from 6-11, then go to bed, wake up, work, repeat. It's that good/terrible artist's cycle of "omg i wish i could just stay home all day and do this one thing".
I'm so incredibly focused and driven it makes me think I really could've done this for a living when I was 17.

Especially when I was 17. That's when my love life was tumultuous.
Let's all pretend I didn't just say that.

So in working on this HUGE project, I came across some writing I did back in high school. Most of it was, dare I say it, not bad? A long short story that I thought I didn't finish, I actually did, so I have even more to work with!

By the way, this is one that you've never read before, which means it is neither The Specificity of My Phenomenal Maneuver or I'm Dating the Drum Major (which I didn't really finish anyway).

Yesterday, I was able to turn all my handwritten scribbles to processed words. I just have to make the last few chapters make sense and tie together, which will be kind of hard.

But not as hard as what I've been working on the past two days: l'amour.

Do you know how surprisingly DIFFICULT it is to write love scenes?

Now I'm not talking about the erotica-50-shades-of-poop kind of scenes, alright?
I'm talking about the ones like in the Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants.
PG-13, as it were.
Where there are feelings, with a little physicality, but it's mostly a mental wave of emotion.

My problem with such scenes is not that I don't know what to do. My problem is that all the words that are typically used to describe such hot action are inherently disgusting words to use, in my opinion.
Let's review the list, shall we?

tender (this word is acceptable only if you're talking about chicken nuggets)
caress
desire (this one is atrocious and should never be used. Not even if you're talking about how bad you want chicken nuggets.)
touch
soft (this word is just highly offensive to everyone)

I could think of more believe me, e.g. stroke, tease, etc., but then we will start wondering where are heads are.

The problem, then, is that I have to delicately construct this love scene out of not a lot of words.

Here's what happened: He kissed her. She liked it.

So here's what I want to convey:

But without being gross, juvenile, or trite.

I tried putting myself in both pairs of shoes. I got the girl part, but I only sort of know what guys think but I don't know how guys feel (or if they even do), so I kind of went through a small gender crisis while wearing those shoes.

Then, I tried to recreate the scene with Mike, but he was being uncooperative.

Then, I went to my library and tried to find other scenes with words I didn't hate the sound of, and that sort of helped. I think I got, like, one.

So, it's been quite a challenge.

"Maybe you should just leave those scenes out of your book." - A Puritan

Sigh.
Is it bad when you start to fall in like with one of your own characters?
YES.

There were a lot of Amish people, but they never raised a barn,
TWS

True Science

I know you've been weight-ing for someone to explain the difference.

I hope you found it up-lift-ing.

Uninstall AVG and be free,

TWS

Simple Machines

Do you ever do mic checks and have nothing to say except the boring old "check, one two three"?

Majority of audience: "No."

Well, here are ten more interesting things to say while your audio team is fiddling with the levers and pulleys:

1. I saw a hippie girl on 8th avenue; she barely looked at me for a second or two. And I suddenly realized I no longer look much like a hippie. Mmmmm.

2. You have reached the Sprint Voicemail box of...Nine. One. Two. Four. Seven. Eight. Nine. One. Three. Five.

3. Hallo. Ich heisse Allie. Ich mag schwimmen und Gitarre spielen, und ich mag Katzen. Ich komme aus Amerika und meine lieblingsfarben sind orange und blue da ich habe zwei lieblingsfarben. 99 luftballoons. Tschüss!**

4. This one time at college, I was putting on my make up in the dorm room, and I sneezed. At the same time, a guy was walking by in the hallway, heard me, and said, "Bless you!" I said thank you and he said you're welcome. And we never saw each other. True story.

5. They say that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. But what about the daddy long legs?

6. If you're faithful to your daily practicing
You will find your progress is encouraging.
Do mi so mi, do mi so mi, fa la so it goes
When you do your scales and your arpeggios

7. I always try to minimize the amount of noise that the microwave makes, so I usually just press the 30 Second button and let it go. In order to make popcorn, I have to press it four times. I was like, "Wait; four beeps seems like a lot of beeps for just two minutes." So then I tried pushing a 2 and two zeroes and the start button, and that also makes four beeps. Looks like popcorn's just going to be noisy no matter what.

8. If there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now. It's just a spring clean for the may queen. Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run, there's still time to change the road you're on.

9. The man who did the waking buys the man who was sleeping a drink. The man who was sleeping drinks it, while listening to a proposition from the man who did the waking.

10. I come from a land, from a far away place where the caravan camels roam. Where they cut off your ear if they don't like your face. It's barbaric! But, hey, it's home.

Citations: Jeffrey Lewis, The Aristocats, Led Zeppelin, Pirates of the Caribbean, Alladin.

No, silly, that's not my phone number,
TWS

I did more art again.

I just can't help myself.

Teahupo'o, Tahiti

Big Sunday,
TWS

Smudges

When people ask me how I chose the adrenaline-pumping career of accounting, I usually tell them one of two of the following stories.

The false story: I didn't know what I wanted to major in at college, so I looked at the list of majors, picked the first one, and went with it.

The true story: I wanted to be a chiropractor in high school, but then I didn't want to go to med school for a billion years, so I took a career test. Apparently, my strengths and interests aligned to being either:
a. a comic book writer, or
b. an accountant

Since I wanted to actually make money in life, I chose accounting.

But it's nice to know that even five years later, I still want to write comics.

And, yes, I over-sized them so you could read them.

TWS