Game night

Tonight I got trounced at Carcassonne (a very nerdy and awesome game we play often). I'm talking, I didn't even hit a hundred points, and SOME PEOPLE had over 250. TROUNCED.

(trounce - verb. 1. to beat severely; thrash. 2. to punish. 3. to defeat decisively.)

I was surrounded by friends, and cats. We had a delicious dinner, sweets for dessert, and water to drink. It was a night of good, clean, nerdy fun (punctuated by my swearing, fine). I couldn't tell you when I got this nerdy, or this sober, or grown-up enough to be having hosted game nights at a couple's apartment, but let me tell you, I love it.

Despite being defeated decisively, I could not have imagined a better way to spend my evening.

I just am so happy with life right now. And I thought you should know.

Confession.

I have a huge sweet tooth. Cupcakes, muffins, candy, fruit, cookies, ice cream. I don't actually eat candy bars very often, though, mostly because there's something else I prefer.

Sometimes I eat sprinkles right out of the container.

Irrational fear #1: dinosaurs.

When I was four, we took a trip to the Witte Museum in San Antonio, where we lived at the time. They had (actually, have, still to this day) an exhibit called Dinosaurs Unearthed. It's a whole big display with plants, environments, and full-size dinosaur models. I was wandering along with my family, staring up at the huge dinosaurs from my tiny four-year-old vantage point, having a grand old time. I'm staring up at one of them -- a gentle brontosaurus, of all things -- when all of a sudden, it swiveled its long, life-sized neck, looked directly at me, and ROARED.

I climbed my mom.

I think that's probably when my fear of dinosaurs began.

When I was, I don't know, eight? Nine, maybe ten? Anyway, some time after we had moved back to Minnesota, my sister and I sat down after school one day and watched Jurassic Park. I had a little puppet on a stick, like this guy:

Mine was a white cat. You could make it turn around, or hide inside its little cone. For some reason, I had this with me while we watched the movie. I don't remember much of the movie (I've watched it since, and I still couldn't give you a good plot summary, and I definitely couldn't tell you how it ends; I think I block these things out), but I do remember what I was doing during the movie: peeking out from behind my cat, who I used to translate my fear. I made the cat stop watching during all the scary parts. I'd twist it away from the screen, or if things got really intense, make it hide in its cone, maybe let it peek out of the top a little. I spent most of the movie curled up tight to myself in my chair, peeking around my poor, terrified puppet. To this day, I can't watch Jurassic Park without getting ridiculously tense, and maybe hiding behind my hands a little.

There's a ride in one of the parks in Orlando called DINOSAUR. Even the name is intense. When we took our family vacation to the parks a couple of Augusts ago, Pam decided I needed to ride this terrifying contraption. (Actually, I had been on the ride a few years earlier, when I was in Orlando for orchestra tour, and I loved it. My dinosaur fear must have been in regression in high school.) The picture that resulted from the ride was so hilarious, we had to buy it. I wish you could see it better, but here you have it.

Let's discuss it a bit, shall we?

First, let me tell you that the picture is taken when some sort of raptor or something pops out of nowhere and roars. We think a better place to take it would be at the end of the ride, when a terrifying T-rex swoops down from above and threatens to eat everyone. Then everyone would have looks of terror and surprise. It's a little more hilarious this way, though, when I'm involved.

Note the kids in the back row, who are impressed, awed, and downright delighted.
The middle row has a small child who is hiding, but I think we'll give him a pass; he's young, after all.
The front row is Pam, me, and our dad. Pam and Dad look.... mildly interested. "Oh, look at that. A dinosaur. Huh." I am smiling, but also cowering. This was not a fake pose I thought would be funny; I didn't even know this is where the picture takes. I was actually trying to hide from the dinosaur, because dinosaurs, you see, are terrifying. (The ride is actually awesome, and Pam and I even went on it a second time. It's like scary movies: it made me tense, even as I enjoyed it.)

The moral of the story is, while I may occasionally enjoy them, I am irrationally afraid of dinosaurs. Now you know.

Oh, the horror!

Eric's friend Ed was in town this weekend for some sort of horror convention. There were movies with Q&A sessions, bands, costume contests, all sorts of horrifying activities going on. Ed is, apparently, a huge horror fan.

I saw The Ring in high school, and it scared the shit out of me; I loved it. I've never been a huge horror fan, though. If I get to pick the movie, I can almost guarantee it's going to be a chick flick, maybe a comedy. Action, drama, sure, I guess those are fine occasionally. But horror was never even really on my list.

Then I spent some years with D, who was a horror freak. Zombies in particular, but any sort of horror was at the top of his movie list. I started getting used to watching it, maybe enjoying it. I even requested horror movies a couple of times.

Then I spent some time with no one (and obviously you can't watch horror movies by yourself), and now Eric, who is not a big horror fan. I can't even remember the last horror movie I watched. I am no longer desensitized to the scary.

Tonight, Eric and I were trying to figure out what to watch. The movie he wanted wasn't on netflix instant, we weren't thrilled with any of the options of actual available dvds, so we turned to his dvr. We settled on Walking Dead, the new series on AMC about zombies. About, oh, fifteen minutes in, I realized I was clenching every muscle I have. At the 30-minute mark of the hour and a half long show, I actually said, "Augh, there's still another hour of TENSE!"

See, I do actually like horror movies/shows, I just get so tense. I need to be clutching something: an arm, a blanket, a cat, a pillow. And maybe every once in a while just remind myself to relax. Watching a tv show was good for that; I could unclench during the commercials. Which, by the way, led back into the show with a warning that the following program could be TOO INTENSE for some people. (Does clenching everything you have during a scary movie count as a workout? I think it should.)

The show was good, though, and I actually look forward to watching more of it. Perhaps I need to start watching more horror in general so I once again get desensitized to it. Although, desensitized or not, I'm pretty sure I'll be screwed when the zombie apocalypse comes; I'm so not a survivor girl. Except that I did notice all the stupid mistakes the main guy made in the show, so maybe I'd have a fighting chance. Here's a hint: if there are broken down cars crammed on the road OUT of a big city during a zombie apocalypse, and the roads in are clear as a bell, you SHOULD NOT GO INTO THAT CITY.

But I digress.

The scariest movie of all time, in case you were wondering, is Jurassic Park.

Temperature regulation.

I don't know if this a problem all men have, or if I'm just lucky in my encounters lately, but it seems to me as though men have no concept of temperature regulation.

Eric's heating and a/c settings in his car are always either off or on high. "Oh," he thinks, "I'm cold." He blasts the heat. "Oh," he thinks, "it got hot." He turns the heat off. He never turns it DOWN. Just off.

I'm on a plane, and it's freezing in the cabin, so I call my pilots and ask them to turn the heat up. They oblige. Since I told them it's freezing, they blast the heat, for which I am grateful. Twenty minutes later, people are getting a little too warm, so I call the flight deck back and say hey it got warm, thank you, can you turn it down a little now? And they turn the heat off. Um, guys? We're still in a metal tube at 30,000 feet. You turn the heat OFF, and it's going to get cold again. This has been happening to me on every trip lately. "Hey guys, it's getting a little warm in the back now that people are boarding, but it's still cold in the front with the door open." Heat off. Um.. guys? I can't feel my toes.

Eric has the bonus problem of not recognizing when it's stifling hot in his apartment. All summer long, I'd show up, and go immediately to the door to get some fresh air in the place. I'm usually colder than most people around me, but I'm coming to learn that if most people are comfortable, Eric is apparently freezing. A few days ago, we had some weather in the area, namely a pressure system above us that was the same as a category 3 hurricane, and thus it was a bit windy. He doesn't have a cover for his a/c unit, so wind was charging through and making his apartment legitimately cold. We were buried in blankets, cowering from the wind. We determined that heat was necessary in this case. (Also, we rigged up a pretty sweet temporary cover out of a fitted sheet.)

Yesterday I show up, and it's a little warm, but I don't think much of it. He had the door to his room closed, but again, I don't think much of it. When it is eventually time for sleeping, I head into his bedroom, and am immediately stifling. Having previously been asleep on the couch, I don't have the available faculties to problem solve the heat, so I lay down and attempt to fall back to sleep. After about ten minutes, I cannot ignore how hot I am. I get up to check the thermostat, and he has it set at EIGHTY DEGREES. Eighty.

So I turn the heat off.

This morning we wake up, and it is freezing. "In hindsight, I should have probably just turned the heat down instead of off. I took your extreme approach." Turns out, the balcony door was cracked open, so not only was the heat off, but the outside was also getting in. We close the door, turn the heat back on (at a reasonable temperature), and all is well.

But I have to wonder why the door was open. Could it be that he realized it was too hot, and decided to let in some fresh air? Maybe he's learning. I, however, may be regressing.


Edited to add: Eric's friend Ed is in town this weekend, crashing at his place. This morning, when Eric and I were freezing, Ed was perfectly comfortable. "Guys, it's not even cold." What does it all mean?

Oh no, I forgot to add a title!

I don't have a subject in mind to blog about tonight, but being November, I must blog nevertheless.

I bid reserve this month, because there were some specific days I wanted off, and I wanted a chance at actually getting them. The good news is I got every day I wanted off. The bad news is, well, I'm on reserve. Today was day one (I had a trip at the end of October that carried over into the first two days of November, and then I got one glorious day off), and naturally, I got called in. They didn't call me until noon, though, which is exceedingly preferable to a 4am wakeup call, and it's just a nice, easy two-day trip. Now I'm just hoping they'll let me have my Friday night off (I'm scheduled as of right now to get off at 5 tomorrow), and maybe even not find anything for me to do on Saturday. Hey, a girl can dream, right?

I've been getting a lot of questions lately about how, exactly, being a flight attendant works. And people are always surprised at my answers. Before becoming one myself, I certainly had no idea how the job and scheduled worked. So I ask you, do you have any questions for me? Anything you want to know? I think later this week I'll tell y'all a bit about how everything runs, answer my own frequently asked questions, as it were. If you have something you're dying to know about my job, ask, and I'll tell you! You probably already have a better idea than most people, though, given that I talk about my job on here from time to time, and some of you are actually my friends IRL. Even so, feel free to ask anything and give me some blog fodder!

So. Coming soon: your questions and my answers. In the meantime, good night, and good luck.

Posting posts post-postdate.... buffalo.

Guys, I lied to you. My November 1st entry was not, in fact, my 100th post. Apparently blogger counts drafts when it tells you how many posts you have. Far from 100, this post will be my 87th, which begs the question.... what are the other, hiding entries?

Some of them were just saved pieces of posts that I went back and finished and posted later, but which for some reason stuck around in draft form. Some of them were little tidbits to remind myself to post about something in particular. And a couple of them are unfinished entries that are actually worthy of being finished and posted.

If you'll forgive the timeline, I'd like to post a couple of these forgotten entries.

Of course, that means I have to finish them first...

Reading: Exercise for your brain.

I started a 4-day trip on Saturday, and it didn't take me long to realize I forgot to bring a book. We had one short flight, during which I finished my one and only magazine, and then a long sit up in Hibbing. We call them different things: sits, turn times, productivity breaks, airport appreciation times. Whatever you call them, they're unavoidable. I for one like to have time to eat lunch once in awhile, so if I have one nice hour-long break a day, I'm happy; any more than that is unnecessary, and I'd rather spend my time working or doing whatever it is I have time to do post-work at the hotel (coughdrinkingcough). The trip I finished this evening had a three-hour sit every single day. And I forgot to bring a book.

Usually our sit times are at a large hub airport, and on our smallest plane (which I was working on this trip), sits are almost always in Minneapolis. This is nice because I love my airport. There's a perfect loop to walk to get some exercise in, I know what's good and/or cheap to eat, and I know the good places to sit. As I mentioned, though, our first sit on this trip was in Hibbing, and it was three hours long. The bad news was it was a long, long sit in a tiny, tiny airport. But there was good news, too: Hibbing has a courtesy car at the airport for crews to use. So the three of us piled in the car and headed out in search of some lunch.

A short drive around town later, we ended up at Walmart, because it has a Subway inside. As much as I dislike Walmart, I like Subway even more. Mmmmm, vegetables. Anyway, Walmart. We finish eating and it occurs to me that I still lack reading material, and books will be much cheaper at Walmart than I could hope for at the airport, even with an employee discount. So I head off to the book section with nothing in particular in mind, just figuring I'll grab whatever looks interesting.

Lemme tell you, the book section at Walmart is not very impressive. Oh, I had my pick of romance novels, series romance novels, chick lit, cookbooks, puzzle books, and magazines. And as much as I respect romance novels for what they are, I knew my pilots would ask what I got, and I just couldn't go back to them with smut. (Did you know that one of my many secret ambitions in life is to write romance novels? I have a pen name picked out and everything.) I considered getting a paperback of Harry Potter 1 to see if I can reread them all before movie day (OMG HP7 IS ALMOST HERE, Y'ALL!), but the only book they had was, reasonably enough, seven.

I was running out of options as well as time to ponder, when I spotted a brightly-colored bargain that just might do the trick. Since it seems that no passengers are going to leave it behind for me to read any time soon, I decided it was time to pick up the book I see someone reading on almost every flight I have: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

When I started writing this entry earlier today, I was on page 112 of 644. I was already in love with this book. I'm currently on 153, and it just keeps getting better. And this coming from someone who doesn't even like crime novels! I just... I am hooked. And I'm even more drawn in because apparently, the author died before any of them were even published! Oh, intrigue!

The point is, I always always always try to resist hype, and I should just succumb to the peer pressure because people are right about books. I am reading this book, and you should too.

Also my other point is, sometimes I get nervous about buying books I've never heard of, because what if it sucks? I'm going to have to read the whole damn thing regardless, and if it sucks, it was just a waste of my time and money. So I fall back into re-reading my proven classics and never branching out, which is just not an exciting way to read. But I'm so glad I branched out into reading this book.

My OTHER other point is this: my captain was bored during one flight, so he called me to see how the temperature was and to see if I would entertain him (answer: always no. I am busy. Leave me alone.). I told him he should read a book, and he said he doesn't like to read, it hurts his brain. I said, "Reading is like exercise; it hurts at first, but it's good for you!" He had no comeback for that one.

So my final point is: read. This book in particular. But don't buy it at Walmart. And maybe eat some Subway.

Things I Thought About Using as Status Updates Today

Cindy has suffraged so. Hasn't she suffraged enough? Oh, end women's suffrage!

Voting takes too long when you have OCD and a ballot full of ovals.

I hope you appreciate my vote, only-person-in-this-section. It came from my heart.

I judge politicians based on the grammar on their shiny websites.

Well that's the first time I've ever left my elementary school and gone home and had a stiff drink. [Legally, anyway.] / [But not the first time I've wanted to. Rough years, elementary school.]

Let's try this again, shall we?

Dear readers, I must apologize. Updates around here are sorely lacking. I imagine you've been waiting on pins and needles for me to return. Might I suggest finding a different chair?

Anyway. It is once again November: National Novel Writing Month. Once again, I know myself well enough to know not to attempt it this year. Someday, when I'm more patient, more disciplined, less caffeinated. Instead, I think I'll give my personal blog-a-day challenge another go. The goal: at least one blog entry every day, regardless of length, wit, or subject. Just something to get me back into the habit of writing, which is actualy something I miss quite a bit. I think it can be done.

Incidentally, I do believe this is my 100th post. Coming soon: many, many more.