After getting officially licensed...

So, yep. I'm alive.
The DMV guy was nice enough, he actually was pretty funny.

In an attempt to ease my nerves, I tried to make small talk as we walked to my car.
Me: "So, you must be a really patient guy, huh? All of those new drivers. You must be laid-back."
Mr. DMV: "Actually, no. I wouldn't say that at all. I really don't like this job. I was laid off last year, and I was drawing unemployment. When the government offers you a job, you can't really say no without giving up the unemployment benefits."

I had a greater sympathy for him after that. Up until then, I had felt that he was just a creature in a uniform, with no life. After he shared that tidbit, he became more than an old guy working at DMV. He wasn't some mean trickster trying to trip me up and fail me. He was just trying to keep his head above water. He was a human being.

At one point he told me he was going to tell me to stop in the near future. He said I should stop as if there was a little child in front of the car.

A LITTLE CHILD IN FRONT OF THE CAR?!???!! AHHHH!

A minute later, he told me to stop.
Immediately, I pictured myself screaming and slamming on the brakes, hard. Maybe throw a little skidding and swerving in there too, for dramatic effect.

I'm such a literalist.

Since there was no child, and he didn't need whiplash or hearing damage, I just stopped quickly (but smoothly, if I do say so myself)

The rest was uneventful. 

I have no idea about the picture, since the DMV has started mailing out licenses...but I'm sure it's terrible. Such things usually are. Especially since he didn't tell me when he was snapping it.

w00t! a fast little update

License: it's happening today.
Am I nervous? Not about the test. The picture that will define me for the next 8 years? There are horror stories that I've been told...
Gee, I'm superficial. You guys know I'm kidding about the picture part, right?
heh.

Update and maybe an anecdote coming soon...

happy place, happy place, happy place

Oh, and this is my crazy hair, if you were
wondering after that post about my hair.
What can I say? it's wind-tousled 

ahhh. A happy spring day is what I'm going to be envisioning as I take the test.

a semi-embarrassing truth about me

Ayy Blog.
while this blogging thing is becoming a habit, I'm realizing I need to form other habits too.
Namely, the ability to realize that I don't have to be perfect at everything.


Reader, stop it. I know you're rolling your eyes.


I have it in my head that I can be perfect. I think that maybe it's possible.
Yet it never works out.

Ready for a semi-embarrassing story/fact about me?
*sigh* Here goes:

Where do you get that hair?

Hair color is just hair color, right?
Well, if you've a specific color that seems to define you, it's not.
(you don't know how tempted I was to type "it snot". The 12 year-old in me lives on!)

If you haven't seen me before, I'm a redhead.
It's not orange-in-your-face, but it's a multi-colored variation with gold, orange, red, and brown. It looks like varying shades of copper, pretty much.


The question I'm asked most frequently (aside from, "how are you?") is,
"where did you get that hair?" 

Instead of giving my family tree and history, sometimes I'm tempted to come up with a more creative response.

Things To Remember If I Ever Become an Evil Overlord

It's Monday. Ew. I'm working on my plans to overtake the world, and this is what I must remember: 

1. My Legions of Terror will have helmets with clear plexiglass visors, not face-concealing ones.
2. My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through.
3. My noble half-brother whose throne I usurped will be killed, not kept anonymously imprisoned in a forgotten cell of my dungeon.
4. The artifact which is the source of my power will not be kept on the Mountain of Despair beyond the River of Fire guarded by the Dragons of Eternity. It will be in my safe-deposit box. The same applies to the object which is my one weakness.
5. I will not gloat over my enemies' predicament before killing them.
6. When I've captured my adversary and he says, "Look, before you kill me, will you at least tell me what this is all about?" I'll say, "No." and shoot him. Actually, on second thought I'll shoot him, then say "No."
7. I will not include a self-destruct mechanism unless absolutely necessary. If it is necessary, it will not be a large red button labeled "Danger: Do Not Push". The big red button marked "Do Not Push" will instead trigger a spray of bullets on anyone stupid enough to disregard it. Similarly, the ON/OFF switch will not clearly be labeled as such.

Friends like these...a long update filled with excuses

I'm sorry, blog. I didn't post yesterday, though I started to last night.

Here's what I wrote:

I'm writing a fast post.
My brain is funtioning on little sleep.
Yesterday night I watched the five hour version of Pride and Prejudice. I love that movie. I think I almost have it memorized. I also got to have some friend time, and we continued our tradition of trying on ugly prom dresses. (SEE THIS POST FOR WHAT HAPPENED LAST YEAR. It's good, I promise. Sorry to shout.)

I think we shall have to do this every year.
And, since I'm not planning on going to prom, and she is not planning on prom, we are going to do something perfectly ingenious to make up for the lack of "normal teenagerness"

I have a feeling our adventure will be silly and marvelous.
Prom dresses will be involved.

(...and I stopped. Because I couldn't think straight enough to even use proper grammar. It started to go into the land of asdfjkl;ehrw)

But I'll continue the thought.

Serious Rambling

Since I said I would, (and I'm a girl of my word) to commemorate my blog's belated anniversary, I'm going to do a top ten of the things running through my mind.

...you may not want to read this. I warn you that it may not make coherent sense.

You've been warned.

WHAT'S ON MY MIND:

Jarle Bernhoft

This guy has some talent. Serious talent. He hails from Oslo, Norway.
I'm amazed at his voice and lack of accent.

Check it out (I'm sorry you have to pause my music player...life is tough):

Wonders of the Weekend

Alright, so, I present a sum-up of the weekend:

mmm...brains

so, usually I've been posting in the early morning, right?
Weeeeell, today is different. Today I woke with a caffeine/sugar/benadryl hangover.
Ew.This weekend was awesome, and I'll type about it when I feel less like a zombie.

How do they know I love them?

You've seen Enchanted, right?
I hope so.
It's a majorly cute movie. Imagine a cartoon disney princess coming to real-life. Imagine her prince pursuing her to Manhattan.

That about sums it up.
On a tangent, how neat would it be to act like a cartoon disney princess in real life? Answer: majorly neat.

I was reading today, and this song came to mind (albeit a bit cheesy, I admit, it's cute and fun. And I'm sorry that you have to go and pause my music player to watch this. Extra clicking. Oh my. Do some finger exercises; it usually helps.):

practical art.

soo, I have too many earrings for that dinky little frame I made a few weeks ago.
Using spray paint, wire, more wire, and a bit of time, I made a much larger, more usable (and in my opinion, prettier) earring rack. Amateur, I know, but it's art. There's no such thing as bad art.

taa-daa!

This is the dinky frame that wouldn't hold diddly-squat earrings:

I know that this post isn't terribly thought-provoking, or all that interesting, but I have a test for which to study. 

And I'll leave you with this. I'd be very rich indeed if this was true: 

A formal apology

Umm, so I thought I liked Mumford and Sons. I've heard a few of their songs.
I have a friend who has a friend who knows the band.

BUT, I didn't listen to one of their songs totally before posting it on my blog. I thought they'd all be good and clean (and they site I was using didn't have much of a selection)...

I didn't know that the version of the song I picked would have some unsavory words sprinkled in there.
I'm so sorry.

...
Be glad I didn't use this form on you.
This would be offensive if there was any real harm done {but it's funny all the same} (if the font is too small to read, clicking it zooms in):

L’esprit de escalier

Ah, but what I could have said. The words that are too late to deliver. Coming up with an awesome remark, much too late.

English really needs a word that captures the true feeling of wishing you had been wittier. I suppose you could always call someone a few days after a conversation, and tell them what you should have said. Can you say awkward goofball? Not happening. 

So, what's a girl to do?

A new Vocabulary of non-english words

I think I shall start to incorporate more foreign words into my everyday language...I can be more expressive.

Words That Don’t Exist in the English Language

Cualacino: (Italian) The mark left on a table by a cold glass.

Sgriob: (Gaelic) The itchiness that overcomes the upper lip just before taking a sip of whisky (Ummm, but I won't be needing that one)

L’esprit de escalier: (French) The feeling you get after leaving a conversation, when you think of all the things you should have said. Translated it means “the spirit of the staircase.”

Pari-pari and Saku-saku: (Japanese) Hard-crispy verses Soft-crispy, i.e. a rice cracker versus fried chicken

Stam: (Hebrew) An agreement out of amusement and frustration that something doesn’t have a satisfactory answer among those talking.

Forelsket: (Norwegian) The euphoria you experience when you are first falling in love.

Pena ajena: (Mexican Spanish) The embarrassment you feel watching someone else’s humiliation.

Musical Sub-conscience

I've never been one of those "turn the music up till you can't hear anything else" types. Really, I treasure my eardrums.

For the past few nights, I've been listening to some majorly loud music. I can't help it. It's my sub-conscious.

stress

Wow. There is so much on my mind. You don't need to know all of that stuff though. It'd bore and potentially confuse you (if it's not making sense to me, then I doubt it'll make sense to you. Case in point, I woke up this morning with 80's tunes on the brain, playing rather loudly.)
***
First of all, I should say that I'm (somewhat sucessfully) combatting my tendency to stress-out.
Stress out? Me? Never in a million years! 
It's a sad but true fact. If I have something for which I do not feel totally prepared thrust upon me, I usually freak-out-ever-so-slightly. I like to think that I'm good at projecting an image of confidence and lack of concern for the fact that I'm insufficient (ha!), but on the inside, I'm jittery as a bug.

I'm usually pretty chill, in fact, I'm good with bending most silly rules (other than the hard and fast ones...like, no killing other people and stealing is bad, etc) the rules like, "dessert must be saved for after dinner", are the kind I'm good at breaking.

Super-structure isn't really my thing.

But back to what I was saying. How have I improved (ever-so-slightly)?

oops. My downfall.

I made a mistake.

A big, fat mistake.

It can be overcome, but it's going to take a while to rectify the situation.

I need some sympathy here, people.

Are you so curious as to know what my mistake was?
...well, I'll tell you.

My mistake is still staring me in the face and I don't know what to do.

SO, here's what happened.

One Year Later.

It's been over a year now, blog!

(play celebratory music)

One. Whole. Year.

That's a long time to be posting. Do you know how many things have come and gone within the past year? So many fads and trends.
Well, this blog is still very much alive.

This blog is still hot stuff. *rolls eyes*

My very first post was a top ten list of things running through my mind. I think, for old time's sake, I'll do it again.
...later.

And to all you crazy awesome readers who are so lovely as to commentate on my commentary of life, thank you! Commentary is great. Commentary on commentary? Even better. 
I must say, I really do appreciate you. Thanks for sticking around.

We don't have that here:

Excellence.

So, blog readers, I have a confession about my character.

It's a weird paradox of sorts.

I admit that I can be über-motivated and competitive. A serious go-getter. Between Mary and Martha in the Bible [see the story here], I'm mostly a busy-bee Martha. I like doing things to help, and I get annoyed by people who are seemingly "dead weight".

 On the flip side, I can be chillaxed to an infuriating degree. When I feel daunted by a task, or I don't feel like pursuing it, I'm simply mediocre. I annoy myself with apathy.

 I never wanted to be an all-or-nothing sort of person, yet here I am with this dilemma.

a basic truth with radical implications

I woke up with a terribly simple thought on my mind.

So simple, like Sunday School basic, yet my little brain couldn't grasp it very well.

I'll attempt to elaborate.

I'm sure everyone out there has a person who has hurt them/annoys them in some way. At least, you might have someone that you don't like very much at all.
(If you don't, well, great for you! You don't need to read this. You can leave.)
 Sadly, I have some peoples of whom I am not a fan. They're like burrs in my shoe (don't worry, it's not you). God has been working on me ever-so-slowly.

I'll use an old example:

rain, running, rest

Weekend? Where did you go?

Umm, come back. I need a good long nap (again)

The past few days I have felt so tired. I don't think it's anything I've done; maybe it's just the weather. This weekend was gray and drizzly, which makes for awesome sleeping/reading/chillaxing weather.

Also, I got to wear my ugly boots and polka dotted orange raincoat! Rainy days let me look tacky without people thinking I'm too weird. 

Here are the boots. Cowboy+fall leaves+rubber = these: 

because I'm awake.

You know when you've been riding in the car, and the rhythms of the road begin to lull you into an utterly sleepy stupor?

Ah, yes.

Well, that happened to me tonight as we drove the three hours back from my Aunt and Uncle's house.
So peaceful.
The vibrations and noises of the road combined with the darkness and my sleepiness totally turned me into a hibernating Kenzie.

But then, we stopped, the hum of the engine left, and doors were noisily opened. I fumbled, squinted at the overhead lights, collected what luggage I could, and lugged it into the house (that MUST be how luggage was named). I had to make another trip to the car, since I am such an over-packer.

By then, the magical feeling of sleep had all but disappeared.

I need it back.
Badly.

Books...and bookwormishness

So, my posts have been really long as of late.
I don't mean for them to be so overwhelmingly detailed and rambly, I assure you.  I'll work on keeping them to the point.

I'm just assuming you're a fast reader, that's all. It's a compliment.
*wink*

Creative spring fever

Yesterday, I felt creative.
I also had a desire to do some spring cleaning.

The desire to clean comes in waves for me.
I always have a hint of OCD (others make fun of me for it), and I like to be organized. I really do.

But sometimes, it feels like too much of a burden to care if everything is truly tidy or not. Life gets busy, and I feel like I don't have time, especially for my bedroom.
Yesterday, it was a weird joy of sorts to clean. To have things TIDY and PRETTY was an awesome feeling.

After taking care of basic cleaning, (dusting, vacuuming, etc. I'm sure you know what that means, so I shouldn't have to explain it, but I did, and now I'm over-using parenthesis. So sorry.), I embarked on some projects:

*insert inspiring quote*

I quite agree with what J.R.R. Tolkien had to say about critics, even though he was referring to an actual published book and not a blog. It still works, at any rate:

"Some who have read it,
or at any rate reviewed it,
      have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible;
and
I have no cause to complain,
              for I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kind of writing that they evidently prefer."

Way to stick it to the man, J.R.R.!

Updated: This about sums me up

(Blogger was being a goober yesterday, as I thought I could schedule a post and not write anything today...but it didn't work out. So, I've updated today's post) 


I've taken the ORA personality test about four times over the past two years. My results have always been VERY similar, if not the same. I figure that the fourth time should be the charm for me. 


The test decided that I was extroverted. I've always considered myself a very social introvert. Well, when it comes to my emotions, I'm an introvert. A MAJOR introvert. But I guess I seem extroverted-ish, in the fact that I talk to other humans. 
It also decided that I was intuitive, thinking and organizing. Whatever that means.


I've been stuck in a box by the man. 


Here's what the profilers have to say about me.