Enthusiastic and entertaining

Exuberant, exhilarating, exciting, ecstatic, ebullient, eager... that's a lot of positive "E" words. Interesting.

Moving on, everyone loves candy. Maybe you don't eat as much as you used to. Maybe you're a liar and claim you don't really dig sweets. Whatever, it's a fact that within all of us is a kid on Halloween with a full sack of candy, ready to gorge until we're sick, or the kid on Easter Sunday who just ate a box of Peeps, a couple of chocolate rabbits, and a sack of pastel M&Ms. We just learn to tame him/her a bit as we grow up. Or not.

I love sugar. Plain, in coffee, in baked goods, in packaged products, in soda, etc. I'm going to be a sad girl when my pancreas expires and I finally develop diabetes. It's hard to say what my favorites are, honestly, although Reese's Pieces are definitely high on the list. However, I remember when I was little, and Lik-M-Aid was my poison of choice when I wanted pure, unadulterated sugary pleasure, Pixy Stix be damned.

This delightful substance is likely known to you, my reader. A packet of a colored powdery substance with some flavoring tossed in, accompanied by what appeared to be a piece of chalk. Thrown together, it was the childhood equivalent of cocaine and a rolled up $100 bill. Not from personal experience, mind you, but we've all seen the movies. That stuff was good. All three packets would disappear in a matter of minutes, leaving me in a tremulous, maniacal sugar high. My youngest brother was another addict, and we would come to blows if my parents were foolish enough to make us share. How does one share 3 packets with 2 people? Ridiculous. Granted, my brother would win easily, unless I started crying, in which case he'd get smacked and it would be mine. No, I didn't fight fair, but who cares? It was mine.

In recent years, I've noticed it's harder to find this stuff. It still exists, but it's not as pervasive as I recall. That's probably good, seeing what it could reduce me to when I was younger. However, I have found a supplier online, and the temptation is growing everyday...

Random Link: Pathology Rocks! Maybe I should reconsider my specialty...

Dawning remembrance

I just remembered, I'm going to blog about Lik-M-Aid. But not until later, because I just blogged. Like, 5 minutes ago. And I'm supposed to be working. But it's gonna be great when I do. Yeah. Totally.

...

Peace out.

Tag, you're it!

Okay, sometimes I appreciate graffiti.

I'm not talking about the crude "Yo momma's fat, f*** you" stuff you find on bathroom walls. I mean the stuff that looks like it would have taken someone hours to do, and makes you wonder why the hell they don't put it on a canvas and try to make a career of art. Or the whimsical characters that pop up in unexpected places. One of my favorite examples is located just south of I-30 on the access road that runs between Sylvan and Beckley (in case you want to find it).

Originally, there was a small army of rather harmless appearing green goblin-like creatures, all shapes and sizes, some with a little fang jutting out. Those little guys always brightened my day, I dunno why. Recently, there has been some metamorphosis underway... some of those goblins are now white, more rabbit-like, and one of them is stating that it loves Dallas. The sheer size of the whole piece would be hard to capture on canvas, and nowhere else would it get the kind of exposure to the masses as it gets while people are trapped in rush hour with time to actually look around at the scenery.

Now, I know. Graffiti sucks up lots of money and defaces property. I'm not saying that people should endorse it. I just wish that, if it's going to exist, that it takes on this form.

Now, a personal graffiti story. Kind of.

When I was in 7th grade, I sat next to the wall by a corkboard during history class. I forget his name, but Coach X taught the course. I recall he was obsessed with JFK, and was beginning to show signs of male pattern baldness. He also spoke in a monotone. During a monologue where I was particularly bored, I began to look at a bare patch on the corkboard, and noted initials here and there, and a couple of small doodles. One random scratching looked kind of like the ears of a horse.

Now, I liked (and still do!) drawing horses. I'm a girl. It's my thing. The coach was writing something on the board, so I picked up my pen and began to form the shape of a finely formed head (Arabian-esque). Lovely. I began to get into this thing, and where initially I had only intended to complete a portrait, I thought to myself, "I've still got room for the rest of this guy, why not?" In my own little world, I began to engross myself in delineating a prancing steed, complete with flowing mane and tail. A masterpiece.

Perhaps I should have been clued in by the ominous silence around me, but no. I didn't see the shadow across my desk, either. It wasn't until the class erupted into giggling that I glanced up and into the doleful eyes of the coach. Severe mortification for me, I tell ya. I mean, I was a complete teacher's pet, and I broke into a cold sweat thinking "Crap, I'm gonna get detention, it's going to ruin my perfect record, I'll never get into college!"

The coach, to his credit, was a pretty decent guy. "Peralta, you done defacing school property?" "Yes, sir, I believe I am." "Good. Don't let me catch you doing it again." "Agreed, sir."

I'm pretty sure he made me do extra laps later, but it didn't kill me, and I probably needed the exercise anyway.

There was something else I was going to blog about, but it escapes me... 'til next time.

Random Link: Funny T-shirts? Hell, yeah!

Fun times with mathematics

Many of you are probably curious what -G^2 means. No? Well, not gonna stop me.

The latter part of what would have been my high school years were spent at a place known as TAMS, basically an excuse for me to live on a college campus when I was 15 amid people a lot smarter than I am. At TAMS, there were (and continue to be) people who were freaky good at and/or obsessed with math. People who would come up with equations with hidden jokes that would make other math-heads laugh hysterically, leaving me with a rather blank expression. People who did calculus for fun. Strange, sick people. I spent a lot of time climbing trees and blowing bubbles. How did I wind up there? God only knows.

Anyhow, this brings up Tim. Tim was a math guy. He had glasses of such potency that they magnified his eyes to twice their natural size, and he was not known for his social panache. He was often an ass. However, he was really good at Risk, and Risk is a game that I enjoyed spending countless hours on, usually defending Peru with a tenacity bordering on insanity. There was actually a term called "the Peru grudge" applied to this behavior among the TAMS Risk playing set, inspired by this. Many life-changing conversations would occur during these matches, or at least very strange ones.

The exact details of this particular conversation have been lost, but it went along these lines:

T: "You know that your name's an equation, right?"
G: "What?"
T: "Gigi. It can be broken down quite simply."
G: "You're talking crazy. Also, you know I suck at math."
T: "It's simple. You recall that i = square root of -1 (the imaginary number)?"
G: "Uhh... yeah."
T: "Putting it together, (G*G)(i*i) = -G^2"
G: "Hmm. You're right. And if I say that G = the gravitational constant, my name, numerically, would come out to be -44.528929 X 10^-11."
T: "Exactly. Want to go into binary?"
G: "No. My head's already hurting enough."

Thus, the origin of a numerical phenomenon, or at least a quirky online handle.

Random Link: A tale of friendship, explosions, and a murderous mini-lop bunny

Azucar!

I admit, I have never been skinny dipping. Not even as a kid. I'm pretty self conscious, and the idea of stripping down to my birthday suit anywhere there might be even the most remote possibility that someone might see freaks me out. I hated gym for that reason.

Now, this doesn't mean that I've missed impromptu swimming sessions in my life. It just means that, instead of having dry clothes to look forward to afterward, I slog around creating puddles everywhere. I love swimming in the cloth.

Summers at my parent's house usually include the hated chore of cleaning windows, and it gets very, very hot around here. By the time I'm done, I usually sprint toward the deep end of the pool and jump in, sweaty clothes and all. It annoys my mom, but most times she'll leap in for a while, accompanied by a banshee scream that I'm sure the neighbors enjoy. Ah, summer days...

Random Link: I love The Law

Manatees and mermaids

While driving aimlessly around Dallas the other day, I found myself a witness of a small natural drama. It occurred at a stoplight, and the players were a bird and a cat.

The hunter... an attractive creature, ghostly with bluish gray stripes on the tail and face. Thin, likely feral. It approached the bird (a female grackle) as it ambled along, pausing intermittently to snatch crickets, seemingly oblivious. The cat broke into a sprint, but not before the bird's mate called out a warning from a small cedar elm standing alongside. Life for the bird, an empty stomach for the cat.

The light turned green, and I was obliged to move or else anger the line of cars that trailed behind.

So what's so special about that? Cats kill birds everyday, birds escape everyday. But pensiveness struck, and I wondered who had the better day, the cat who succeeds or the bird that escapes? Is it worse to be a cat that starved or a bird that was killed? Every story has two sides, after all.

I'm still not sure which side I would take.

MST3K, how I miss you

Okay, one more post today. This is pretty damn funny. Watch the whole thing, as I personally enjoy the commentary as various "Don't"s begin to flood the screen. There's a whole series of these old propaganda films on YouTube, check it out when life is getting you down. The hygiene one is great!

Curse you, Phil Collins

Curses. I arrived home to find the dreaded "Your Rent Is Late And Now You Will Die!" note that my friendly office staff slipped in the door. Hate it when that happens.

But, moving on. I was thinking today about a character from a book I always liked, A Separate Peace. There was a boy named Phineas, and one of the many cool things about him was the way he ran and walked. His movement was described as flowing, an uninterrupted flow of natural energy that was impossible to emulate. I loved that. I wanted to move like Phineas. I wanted people to look at me and say, "Wow! She flows."

Instead, I prance.

I have tried to deny this fact. My arguments, however, are worthless. Prancing is not my normal mode of locomotion, but it becomes apparent when I go out for a walk with one of my friends, Amy. Now, she isn't that much taller than I am, but I periodically have to jog a few steps to keep up with her. My legs are not long.

During one of these bouts of spasmodic walk/jogging, the word "prancing" was first thrown out at me. I haughtily replied that she must be referring to the fact that I point my toes a bit funny, but that otherwise I was very much jogging, thank you. However, as I paid closer attention, I realized, shit, she's right.

I'm not sure if there is a real definition to prance that fits what I do, but it probably can't be described any other way. I invite anyone who is curious to come down to Dallas for a demonstration of prancing.

Random Link: Silly walks? You betcha!

Because I'm jolly, like the rancher

I don't know what songs should be playing in the soundtrack of my life.

I don't know what my favorite dessert is.

I'm not really sure who I am.

I can't remember important dates that matter to my family or friends.

I usually fail to understand what people are talking about, even when I'm trying to listen.

I haven't talked to one of my brothers in about 4 months.

There comes a time to change. Perhaps that time needs to come sooner rather than later.