George McFly

When I was a little girl I used to make friends with bugs, which you may find hard to believe if you have ever been lucky enough to see my current reaction when bugs are around. I may or may not scream like a little girl.

I had grasshopper friends, snail friends, bee friends and fly friends. I will try to remember to write posts about the first ones, but this post shall be devoted to my fly friends.

As you may or may not know, if there's a fly and a window in the same room they'll likely be within 3mm of each other, chatting up a storm. When I was a kid, I used to play by the sliding glass doors leading to our backyard. I'm sure I played on the porch or in the backyard as well, but I do remember playing by the doors. I don't really know what I'd be doing there, but without fail, a fly would also be 'playing' by the window. I thought it was our special bonding time.

I can recall the first time I made friends with the fly. As I was sitting there, talking with the fly, I called it just that: "fly". At one point my grandmother called from the other room "His name is George!". I was confused and shocked; not only, was I surprised that Granny was also friends with my fly, but I was mostly shocked that Granny knew his name. I mean, he never told me his name was George. But since I loved Granny was completely gullible, I believed her.

After that day, whenever Granny caught me with George by the window, she would stop and ask me how George was doing and if we were having fun. I'd be all "George this" and "George that". If George was over, I'd be hanging out with him at the window.

Sometimes I wouldn't even be playing at the window and I'd hear him from across the room.

I'd run right over and welcome him.

One day I was stopping by to say hello to George, when my cat Jenny walked by. She looked questioningly at George. I took this to mean that she wanted to meet him. I introduced my two friends to each other. George buzzed his hello to Jenny; Jenny looked intrigued.

She approached him, gave him a quick sniff and sat back with her head cocked. I started telling Jenny all about him. Next thing I know, her body language changed. Even as a young child, I was aware the dynamic in the room had shifted. I wasn't sure what was going to happen next.

And then Jenny pounced on him and gobbled him right up. I was crushed. I couldn't believe that my cat ate my fly. My friend George was dead. I was so upset. Granny came rushing into the room after I started screaming to see what the hell was going on.

Through chocked sobs, I managed to explain what had happened. Granny was very sympathetic; she wanted me to feel better, she wanted to say things that would make it all better. I started hearing the typical explanations for these sorts of things:

"Sometimes people we care about die..."

"Sometimes an animal will eat another animal..."

"I know you were friends, but he was just a fly..."

And finally, the last ditch effort to try and console me and get me to stop crying Granny told me something I'll never forget:

"Flies don't live that long. In fact, the fly I told you was named George probably died two weeks ago. I think a different fly comes to the window everyday."

I was mortified. I couldn't believe that my very best friend, George, died weeks ago, and I didn't even know. I ran to my room and wailed all night.

... ... Well, probably for at least half an hour.

If you write it, they will read.

I recently got forwarded a link for blogging basics. http://boingboing.net/2011/09/25/the-1000-words-rule-of-blogging-book-excerpt.html

Thanks Brain Trepaning!

In it, it states that every blogger should write at least 1000 words per day. I'm not even sure I know what 1000 words looks like.

I responded to his email with: "1000 words per day?? I'm not sure if any of my posts are 1000 period. Pictures are worth a 1000 words though right?!?!!? :)". To which he replied: "your posts are close to a few hundred words. Just checked, your He's A Cruper post is 987 words."

Notice how he didn't acknowledge my picture comment?? I did. I guess pictures aren't worth a 1000 words. Dammit. There goes that idea.

So. The idea of this book is to give yourself goals and to try and achieve them. Since I'm fairly convinced that 1000 words is a lot and way more than I have to say on any given day (put that in the record books!) I'm going cut that number down to 500, okay fine, 600 and try and achieve that in any given day. And by given day, I mean, at least 4 days a week. I've really cut that down to a goal a monkey could achieve, but you gotta start somewhere, right??

If I achieve my goal for 3 straight weeks, then I'll consider actually following the experts advice.

So, that's one example of really helpful friends. Here's an example of a not so helpful friend. One of my loyal commenters is also my loyal skewing-Google-results-by-fabricating-search-terms-and-linking-them-to-my-blog friend.

Hamster porn?! Really, Gorm?! I don't even have a hamster story, let alone a hamster porn story. Also, he said that it's getting easier and easier to find me on Google - to the point where you don't have to have quotation marks around my blog title anymore for me to show up (you know, unless you want it to show up under hamster porn, that is!).

I do have stories relating to spiders, and horses, and dogs. I have more that I haven't written too. I think my next post will be about flies. Big, old, black, flies.

Is this 600 words yet??

Epic fail - 363. (Palindrome for the win!) (367)

Like a baby club.... and you seal it?

About a month ago I took part in The Warrior Dash. I wasn't too sure what to expect and part of me was absolutely terrified, but I did it, I completed it and it was awesome.

What is The Warrior Dash? Well if you're too lazy to look it up, here's my synopsis.

It was a 5km hike/obstacle race around Whistler. There were roughly 10 obstacles throughout the 5km course. Looking at the website, it was obvious that the first kilometer or so had zero obstacles; all the obstacles were crammed into the remaining 4km. I wondered why.

The website also showed potential obstacles, which is what terrified me. Most of the obstacles looked challenging, but I did think I could complete them. However, there were two potential obstacles shown that I was pretty sure I would fall to my untimely death if I attempted them.

Needless to say, when I was gearing up for the race, my heart rate was a bit higher than it should be for someone who was just standing there.

The race started and the first kilometer was directly up a ski-hill; it was steep, it was long and I had to climb that thing with the sun beating down on me. At that moment I was pretty sure I wasn't going to finish the race. No, no, no, not because of obstacles, but because I couldn't even get to the obstacles. How embarrassing. I soldiered on. No wonder the first kilometer didn't have any obstacles.

The first obstacle was a series of hurdles and 'crawl-unders'. The hurdles were basically 4.5ft walls of plywood and the crawl-unders were about 3ft high and covered in barbed wire.

*actual sequence of obstacles gets hazy from here and I doubt I'll remember all of them*

The second obstacle was a long, dark crawl-under. Basically a wooden frame with a black tarp on it; you had to crawl through it without being able to see where you're going or the spider that was trying to bite you.

Next up, was a lame ass "slip n slide" that didn't do anything except shoot you down 2ft into a pocket of water and then you got up and walked down the dry tarp. I just walked the whole thing; I wasn't going to get my ass wet if it wasn't going to be any fun. Besides, I got wet enough in the snow-blower obstacle.

Two snow blowers aimed at you from opposite directions. The water that was blowing completely blinded you, soaked you and made you want to die. It was also freezing cold. Which was nice when you were on the outskirts of it, but absolute hell when you were in the midst of it. I'm actually not even sure if that counted as an obstacle, but it should have dammit.

Next came the army wall. 10ft wall, with a rope and you have to climb over it. This is about the time that the super-fit runners from the next wave time caught up to me. As I was approaching the wall, I heard the hard footsteps and laboured breath behind me.

I attempted to climb the wall. The super-fit-runner was catching up pretty quickly.

I needed all the strength I could muster. And yet, he somehow just flew over the top and kept running. Seriously, I don't think he even touched the rope.

I made it. Eventually.

Next came a series of balance beams. Which wouldn't have been too difficult, if I hadn't already climbed a ski-hill, jumped hurdles and climbed a wall. My legs were practically jell-o and I was pretty sure I was going to lose my balance and fall headlong into the supports. I tried not to picture my subsequent injuries and focused on the task at hand.

Next up, was a 25ft cargo-net climb. You know, like those rope ladders at playgrounds? Only instead of it being a ladder up to the slide platform it was 25ft high and had ropes on both sides. So after you climb up, you have to climb down more ropes on the other side. The first little bit was exciting (I used to love those rope ladders and now here's this giant one... weeeee!), but then I realized that I had to, not only get down the other side, but also climb over the bar at the top of the thing and not fall to my death. I was about 2/3's of the way up when I started to panic.

For a brief moment, I looked down behind me and considered going back the way I came, but people were coming up behind me and I didn't want to be the girl who was like "Excuse, I'm coming back down now...." so I took a deep breath and said "Suck it up; get it done" and I did.

Insert more obstacles here -------->

The final obstacle is a mud pit where you have to crawl through it and under barbed wire. I took one step into the pit and was up past my knees in mud (probably roughly mid thigh). I extracted my foot from the quicksand and knew immediately that something was missing. My foot easily came out of the mud. A little too easily, perhaps. Fuck. I lost my shoe in the mud pit.

I dug down deep and tried to extract my shoe. It was buried; it was hard to get out.

I finally got it out, but being so caked in mud, it didn't resemble my shoe at all and looked about 5 sizes too big.

I crawled through the mud, under the barbed wire and ran across the finish line, all the while carrying (hopefully) my shoe. My goal was to finish in less than two hours; I completed it in just over an hour (1h10m - ish). K and I were so happy. And dirty.

Big thanks to EliseArt for providing illustrations

Holy Feeck, he's a cruper

**UPDATED** (see below)

Sometimes I think I'm destined to be alone. A week ago, I would have felt somewhat saddened by this statement. Today, I think it's probably better than the alternative. Here's the deal.

Periodically, I go onto the internet in an attempt to meet someone. One of two things generally happen:

1) I meet no one, I talk to no one, I basically waste a bunch of time doing something I don't enjoy.

2) I meet someone and he is a complete nutjob and I spend the next month screening my calls and making sure no one is hiding in the bushes near my house.

Neither scenario is all that desirable. After I've gotten bored/scared of the internet dating scene, I decide that I'm better in real-life and to take this show on the road to try to meet people. And I do - I've actually made friends with several people that I wouldn't normally have met and now we go out and do things together. It's great; I like friends!

Now here's where it gets interesting... Since I've been in school, I've always kind of held out hope that I would meet someone through that avenue. It took a long time, but I did. Go me.

I went out on a date with this guy from class last week. We made plans to see each other two days later. The day in between, he messaged me to see what I was doing. I thought it was a bit weird, since we already had plans to meet up the next day, but I thought, well, maybe he's eager and just wants to see me. Kinda sweet, right? I ended up talking to him later on that night and he told me what he was thinking of doing:

1) Show up at my work so we could go have dinner. Or

2) Drive around my neighbourhood and when he found out I was home, to let me know that he's 5 minutes away and would be right over.

You know, since I like surprizes. Being that I have an "interesting" sense of humour and he said it with a chuckle, I assumed that he was kidding and just kind of laughed it off. But after hanging up with him, and thinking about the conversation more and more, I couldn't help but think "But what if he's not joking......."

We had plans the next day to meet up around my place and I was beginning to worry that if I met up with him and he found out where I lived, I would come home one day to find him sitting on my porch. Yes. I was beginning to worry that he may start stalking me.

I thought, maybe I'm over-reacting (that has been known to happen once or twice before). So I called K and told her about it and asked her what she thought. She said one thing that I was also thinking "He seems needy. Like really needy. But maybe he just really likes you". I had double-booked myself, so I decided to cancel the plans. Here's what happened in our text convo (have I mentioned I hate text convos?):

Me: Hey - turns out my stepmom wants to play badminton, so I can't play tennis with you. Sorry.

Him: Oh, no problem - what about dinner?

Me: Will be staying at my dad's for dinner.

Him: Well, what about after that?

Me: Depends on what time I finish up with the folks, but I doubt it will be early enough to do anything afterwards.

Him: Oh, okay.

... ... ... (some time later)

Him: What time are you leaving?

Me: Soon, just gotta get cleaned up.

Him: Something really inappropriate.

Me: Shooting him down.

Him: Ha ha - I'm so creepy. Can I call you?

Me: I just got on the phone. (quickly call K)

Him: Oh. Okay.

... ... ... ... ... (some time later)

Him: Have you left yet?

(I didn't respond, because I figured I'd left by then)

... ... ... ... (some time later)

Him: How was the game? Are we meeting up?

Me: Still with the folks

Him: Oh. Okay.

... ... ... ... (some time later)

Him: Are you asleep? Can I call you?

(I didn't respond, because I figured I was asleep by then)

He also told me that when I don't respond right away, he gets grumpy and doesn't feel better until I reply. He has also started calling me "Babe". He also told me that he has started liking me more and more "ever since our first beer". Our first beer was yesterday, buddy.

So - it turns out that I have an innate ability to meet complete nutjobs. Period. Internet, real-life, public transit; my gift knows no bounds. Options?

1) Go for it!! Get into a relationship with someone that is completely off their rocker, who's entire day/life revolves around me and won't be happy/complete unless I'm there with them, reassuring them and giving them a reason to live.

2) Remain single.

Being single never looked so good.

**UPDATE - I've since told him that we want different things and that it's not going to work. He really wants to talk about it. I really don't. He continues to text me to tell me that he's been thinking about me and he hopes that I'm okay. I don't respond.

I just re-read this post and I don't think it does justice to just how creepy this guy is. I mean, he was really, really creepy. The fact is, he had me running for the hills within 24hours of our first date. I think that's a record... well, except for the first nutjob; he had me running in an hour. But that's a whole other post....

Big thanks to EliseArt for providing illustrations!

C'mon.... "Like" me on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/That-White-Girls/235085719871139

The tea in the UK is far superior

So I took part in the Warrior Dash a while back. (A real post pertaining to this will show up, I swear!) One of the perks of doing the warrior dash is you get a super cool Viking hat. A girl from work was unnecessarily excited about my hat and wanted me to bring it in. I did.

As I was standing there holding it, EliseArt looks up and says "Is that a tea cozy?". I scoffed and assured her that it was not a tea cozy. Yeesh. But that got me to thinking... I drink tea all the time. I use a tea pot.

My current tea cozy is a makeshift set up consisting of tea towels and oven mitts. Kinda ghetto. I'd been meaning to test out the hat, but the idea kinda fell to the wayside and I forgot until one day I was wrapping my tea pot in layers of ghetto-ness. I recalled the conversation (that's kinda what I do) and got super excited. I had to calm myself down because normally when I get super excited, things end badly for me. I calmly walked to the hat, all the while thinking "It's not going to fit anyway".

But it did fit. Perfectly, in fact. Now I'm not longer ghetto and tea drinkers everywhere will totally be jealous of my awesome tea cozy.

It's unreal. And it keeps my tea piping hot!

Big thanks to EliseArt for giving me the idea, even if you weren't serious about it!

Those shoes are illegal!

I was sitting at home the other night, minding my own business, surfing the internet. It was pretty late - maybe 2am; I'd just gotten home from a bar. So there I was; deep in thought, surfing with the exaggerated care of that of a drunk person. I was really into the computer and my own little world.

I tossed my head back in laughter at some anecdote that I had come across when something caught the corner of my eye.

It took a moment before my eyes adjusted and the image registered in my brain.

And then it sunk in.

A giant* fucking spider on my wall. Just hanging out. Practically right above me*. Scared the hell out of me. I ran, grabbed my vacuum cleaner and sucked him right up. I tried not to be too loud, but with my squealing and bashing around, running the vacuum cleaner and laughing, I'm pretty sure I wasn't that quiet. Also, I may have been drunk.

*Disclaimer: Spider was not that big and it was about 3ft away from me*

Bored stiff

I'm home sick. Not 'homesick', but I'm at home. Sick. This is the second day in a row. Yesterday was a blur, I spent the entire day drifting in and out of unconsciousness. Today is better but remaining upright is a difficult feat and my attention span lasts minutes at best. I just realized that I made a cup of tea about 2 hours ago. It's sitting directly beside me and I didn't realize it was there until just now. I'm glad I didn't go into work today - any work that I 'completed' would have had to be redone. By the looks of it anyway.

The good news is that my headache has subsided to a dull roar, I've been conscious for nearly 3 hours, I feel as though only a small child is sitting on my chest preventing me from breathing, instead of the sumo wrestler that was there yesterday and earlier today. Things are looking up - I'm starting to feel better.  The bad news is that I'm bored out of my skull. I've read my book, read blogs, watched movies and stared at the ceiling above my bed. And it's barely the afternoon.

I'm hungry but lack the motivation and skill set to make food happen. I'm thirsty but my tea is cold and my water glass is empty. I would have to get out of bed and carry two glasses to the kitchen AND then carry them back. Seems like a lot of work. I'm in the middle of doing laundry. I started a load on Sunday night when I was still in denial of being sick. I finished drying it Monday morning when I thought I was going to work and decided that pants were probably a good idea. Now, I have one load on my bedroom floor and another load, presumably, still in the dryer. I heard the upstairs lady talking about laundry to her daughter yesterday. My lack of progress may or may not have been the subject of the conversation, but given how sick I am and how shitty at laundry she is, I don't care. I'll get pants when I want to get pants. Dammit. So there.

I told myself today that I would spend the day upright, so that when I go back to work tomorrow I'm not a miserable mass of a person. I've spent approximately 8 minutes upright today. And then back to bed I went. I'm really glad for this laptop that I bought... if it wasn't for this little beast, I wouldn't have been able to watch movies yesterday. Which ones? Well, I had a Marky Mark Marathon. Why? Well, he's an astounding actor, for one. For two, he's super hot and I might have slightly more than an unhealthy crush on him. I watched "Shooter" first, because he spends a lot of time with his shirt off. Next, I watched "Rock Star" because he spends a lot of time wearing leather pants and a leather jacket with not much else. I actually really like Rock Star. It's got Jennifer Aniston in it, playing pretty much the same girl that she always does, but it's a good story.

I just remembered about my tea. I think this may have been the most random string of words that I've ever put together in one post. Sick, laundry, tea, Marky Mark, and tea again. I'm not sure if I should post this monstrosity. Maybe I should draw some pictures too. That would make it more fun.

I just had a burst of energy. I got up and microwaved my tea and filled up my water glass. I also realized that I have fruit in the fridge and fruit is easy to eat (as in: put in bowl, wash, eat). But now I'm sitting down with half a pound of cherries, which is the first bits of solid food I've had since Sunday. This probably won't end well. I've also propped myself upright using pillows. That's progress, right?

Twitter has also become my best friend. You're only allowed 140 characters per post, which doesn't seem like much, but with my newly inherited short attention span, it really helps me from creating things like this (^). I would need like 75 twitter posts to make this happen. It would probably be infinitely more ... .... ... I actually forgot what I wanted to write. It's just gone. That thought lasted less than 30 seconds in this brain. God help me.

Coherent!! Infinitely more coherent. How ironic.

I don't think I want to start calling twitter posts 'tweets' I know that's what all the cool kids call it, but I feel like it's kinda like Starbucks; I simply just do not want to get the lingo down. It's a culture I'm not sure if I'm into.  Surely it would be easier than calling them twitter posts, but I'm not sure I care. I might feel differently in half an hour.

Anyway, I'm going to call this post complete. A complete mess, but complete regardless. Please don't lose any respect for me (there wasn't much there in the first place, right?!). :)