Bucket List Entry: NYC for New Year's Eve

Today, I was looking at the number of PTO days I have going into the last two months of the year. And I was pleasantly surprised to find out that I had more than enough, and that I could probably even take a mini-vacation sometime here soon if I so desired. So I started to think about a destination that could be a fun vacation in the winter, and for some reason, one place popped into my head right away! No, not traveling to Colorado to go skiing. and no, not trekking down to Florida to warm up. But I thought about how I've always wanted to go to Times Square to celebrate New Year's Eve one year! And while I have been to New York City and Times Square before, I've never been there for New Year's Eve. You could say it's one of the things on my bucket list, as I am sure it might be for many people. And today I thought to myself: Why not make this year, that year! Right away, I got really excited and started looking at prices of hotel rooms and flights online, but it turns out the hardest part for me is going to be finding someone to go with me... No one seems to have enough money or enough time off work to go. And what would New York City be on New Year's Eve, if I had no one to share it with, no one to hug and scream with, to yell HAPPY NEW YEAR! with... It would probably be about as good as a really buttery bag of popcorn in front of the T.V. So I didn't do anything crazy and book a flight today, but it would be really awesome if this would work out. It makes me feel so GREAT when I am able to cross things off my bucket list... It makes me feel like I am actually alive and experiencing the world around me. I don't want to be just some bum on the couch, picking kernels out of my teeth, who falls asleep before the ball even drops... Ya... that would be lame. I want to experience NYC on NYE... Honestly, is that too much to ask?

Reading for Fun

I have been doing a lot of "reading for fun" lately, which is good because it stimulates my mind and really gets me thinking about my own book. I take a half hour or so during lunch and open the book I am on or while I am waiting to operate the catch cart for my dad in the field, I flip on the overhead light in the tractor and find my dog-eared start page. I've never had a chance to read much before this. College was overloaded with reading for all my classes (hence this being titled "reading for fun")... and quite honestly, as a child, I hated to read. (And now I want to write novels so other people can read them? Weird, I know!) So this has been a pleasant change for me. But since normally, I don't have this extra time to read, you will more than likely never EVER catch me reading the same book over again. I mean, I'm limited, and I am not going to waste my time on a book when I already know how it is going to end. However, just last night, I started a book that I thought I'd never read before. Turns out, I have... but by the time I realized this, I was so engrossed in the storyline and characters, I decided to keep reading anyway. And I kind of decided that I think this is what makes a good book AND a good writer... when you can't put it down, even when you know you know you've read it before or it's two hours past your bedtime or a half hour late coming back from your lunch break (Oops!). I hope my book can do that for people. I hope my book can be either so emotionally stimulating and interesting that my readers can't put it down... or so wonderfully well-written that readers must read it again!

P.S. I've set a goal for myself regarding my own book. I want to have my book done and sent into a publisher by my five year high school class reunion next spring. Why then? Two reasons. I need a reasonable timeline to work with so I push myself to get it done. And two: I want to be able to say I've accomplished something in my life since high school. Okay three reasons: And so I can brag! :)

Childlike

Do you ever do something that is childlike? You do it and don't realize until after you did it that you did something that a grown up wouldn't normally do, something that a grown has long since "grown out of." Now, I don't mean "childish" as in stupid and immature, I mean "childlike," as in young and innocent and all-believing. A good example would be like sitting on the floor cross-legged. Or putting out cookies for Santa Claus. Or coloring from a coloring book with real Crayola crayons... I did this just the other day.

I was sitting in a Chinese restaurant eating with my family. When I walked in, I had placed my keys on the table, because I had decided to leave my purse in the car. During a lull in the conversation, my dad asked me: "Are those your keys?" (Now that I think about it I have no idea why my dad even asked me this question, considering they were in fact keys, and they were in fact sitting right in front of me... but the story goes on.)

And I replied, nonchalantly: "Yep... and I even have this wicked cool key chain on them."  Now, this key chain had been one that had come on my keys when the salesman handed them over to me the day I purchased my new vehicle. You know, it was one of those plastic oval key chains with the dealership's name on it. And normally, I would have taken this key chain off long before that night because I find items with company's name on them to be really stupid things to keep around, but I liked this key chain for one simple reason: It glowed in the dark! And I don't know if you've ever been stuck digging around in your purse, outside your vehicle, in the dark and cold, but I figured this little diddly might come in handy one night in the winter. So I kept it attached to my keys and proceeded to hold it up and show it to my dad that day at the Chinese restaurant. And then I acted childlike.

I said: "It even glows in the dark!" To prove it, I pulled the key chain up to my eye and held my hands around the neon yellow key chain, as to block out the light and allow myself to see the glow. My tongue stuck out as a attempted to block out different angles of light.

My dad laughed at me... "What a goof ball," he said.

"It does!" I claimed, "See..." I handed him my keys, and he proceeded to do the exact same childlike thing. (And he's fifty years old!)

This may seem like a really funny experience to blog about or even tell again, but I felt really good after I did this childlike thing, because I felt relieved. I thought: Yes! I am not a boring, old, workaholic, adult. My childlike qualities are still intact. I am still going strong. And while in some situations, acting childlike isn't a good thing, I think it keeps you positive and believing in something somewhat magical. So my goal is to stay "forever young"... and childlike.

Color Blind

Yesterday at work, a group of my co-workers and I were discussing our grandparents and how they tend to make racial comments, because they grew up in a time "before" all men were created equal. And while we all believed their behavior to be inappropriate, we all decided that there was really no changing their minds. Then a co-worker through out a quote that really stuck with me.

"Old people may be deaf, but they sure aren't color blind."

And while at first, this phrase may seem semi-comical, it is such a true statement. And then I thought about how the world would be so much different, if we lived in black and white. There's no doubt that life would be altered on a grand scale, but would skin color still be an issue? More than likely the answer would be yes, considering we would all still be different shades, but who really knows? In a world in which color would be extremely limited, maybe it wouldn't be such a big deal.

A Morning Commute

My dad and I have about a thirty minute commute to work everyday. We pull out of the drive way in the early morning, right about that time when it's not quite dark and not quite light out yet, so your eyes play funny tricks on you. This has come to be an everyday routine for us. My dad drives... and I ride. My dad always eats his breakfast, a bagel and fruit, and the truck begins to smell of blueberry and banana.

We usually listen to the radio, turning to each other with smiles on our faces when the morning radio topics are really comic. But most days, we sit in silence, tired and commited to simply observing. I stare out my window into a world, that is becoming more and more visible to me with every minute. Despite the darkness, people are up and about, commuting to work, fighting the small town traffic, and stopping at the local gas stations for their morning fix of doughnut and coffee beans.

Yesterday, while my dad and I were on our regular commute, I noticed a flock of birds, picking up from a lake near the highway and taking off into the air. I remembered how cold it had become outside and how it had come so quickly too. To me, it seemed that mother nature had flipped the switch, demoting summer and pushing fall right into our laps. At the time, I was comfortably sitting inside my dad's truck, while those poor unprepared birds flew around outside. They probably had not received any warning of sudden change in temperature. Much like Pearl Harbor when the Japanese struck, these birds were ambushed by the cold. And while I could remember so many times as a young girl that I wished that I could be a bird so I could fly, at that moment, I did not envy the winged animal. I spoke in disgust.

"If I were a bird, I would have flown south already!"

My dad and I turned towards each other with smiles on our faces... despite the fact that the radio was only running a commercial.

My Barren Mind

My mind is barren. It is too poor to develop any deep, intelligent thoughts to post about today, which is strange, because I feel like when I first started blogging, a lot of my blogs were so deep and critical. I think it's the whole working thing. My mind is constantly moving from subject to subject throughout the day, computing, analyzing, creating... that when I get off work, I am ready to just sit and not think at all, which is perhaps why my novel is going nowhere fast.

Which is also strange because when I was in college, I had this theory. I believed that college and all the homework and reading that comes along with it, drained the creativity right out of you. In a place that is suppose to stem brilliance and authenticity and innovation, instead you get none. Why? Because college students are too busy reading pages upon pages of books for their classes, that they never get a chance to sit down and read something that could actually develop their mind in other ways, or heaven forbid, something they might actually enjoy! And college students don't have the time to draw or paint or create poetry and short stories, because they are too overwhelmed and consumed with writing essays and papers for all their other classes. They don't have time to investigate and research their own topics, because they are in the lab for four hours every other day of the week picking at frogs and mixing substances. My theory was that college froze up the mind.

But now that I am out of college, here I seem to be stuck in the same situation. I can't blame college anymore! I guess I might have to actually step up and have a creative thought. I guess I might have to step up and start working on my novel. No more excuses. No more alibies. The time is now.

(Whoa... wait a second. Did I just CREATE a blog topic?)

A Victim of the Infomercial: A True Story

Yes. I am a victim... a victim of the CRAZY, UNBELIEVABLY CONVINCING ATTACK of the infomercial.

And it's my own fault really! I know I shouldn't be watching them, because yes... I love to shop. And yes... I like to hear about and purchase products that will solve BIG PROBLEMS in my life. Or so the commercials say. Problems with things like cooking, cleaning, fashion, diet and exercise. But I know I have an problem. I admit it. I mean in college, I actually fell asleep to infomercials, just like babies fall asleep to lullabies.

This past Sunday, my boyfriend and I sat down to watch some T.V. Now with I only having regular T.V., no satellite or cable channels, we didn't have a lot of options. We flipped through the channels endlessly, until finally stumbling upon the last few minutes of an infomercial for the NuWave Oven. We paused, as the announcer on the show showed us the pleasures and perks of this AMAZING device, broasting a full chicken, steaming vegetables, and grilling burgers. After only five minutes of watching how this NuWave Oven was going to save us not only time and money but calories as well, my boyfriend and I were both convinced and already configuring a plan to buy the NuWave Oven... when the next infomercial popped up.

I fell into a trance for another ten minutes as I watched a man who seemed to be a well-known hairstylist (even though I had no idea who he was) explain to me how the InStyler Hair Straightener was going to miraculously change my life. It could straighten and curl and flip, all without any damage to you hair! I was in awe! So I turned to my boyfriend puppy-eyed and drooling... "PLEASE," I begged. "My birthday is coming up!" I said. Even though I knew full well my birthday was not until June, but technically it was coming up right!?

NuWave Oven what? I ran to the computer to check out the deal online... and within ten minutes of turning to the infomercial, I had NOT JUST ONE, but TWO InStyler Hair Straighteners on the way to my door... BUY ONE GET ONE FREE!... and billed to my boyfriend's credit card. (I DOUBLE promised to pay him back.)

Horrible, huh?

And then the next infomercial came on... It was for a workout DVD package called Zumba, which my sister has done at her local gym and has actually seen results from. "My sister loves this workout!" I exclaimed, beaming towards the T.V. screen.

My boyfriend quickly changed the channel. He was looking out for his credit limit. What a selfish guy! :)