Heat, Heat, Go Away

Dear Mr. Heat Miser,

First, let me start off by saying that you have always been one of my favorite Rankin/Bass characters. You are way cooler than your brother, Jack Frost. When you dance around those flames and sing your song about why the heat is better.. well, I get all warm inside.

However, recent events in our local weather patterns have begun to disurb me. Perhaps Mr. Frost has been playing a nasty trick on you, and messed with your new GIS/GPS integrated system. It would be just the kind of thing he would do. My point is, I live in Kentucky, not Ecuador. So perhaps you could back off a bit with the 100º weather. I mean, it's only June. I thought that was more like "only for two weeks in August" weather.

Whatever you decide, please remember that I am forever your friend. Though I swear, if you don't cool it off a bit, I WILL get your mother involved. I mean hey, it worked for Santa.

Warmest Regards,

SG

Weird

I'm pretty bored today. In an effort to entertain myself, I ran across this.

http://joharie.blogspot.com/

I don't know if I should feel better about our schools teaching better English here, because normally I have a pretty dim view of our school systems, or if I should feel worse about the spread of bad English as something cool.... *shudder*

The Origins of the Sleep Goblin

Once upon a time... there was a girl who had two friends. These two friends went to the far away land of Madison, Wisconsin one weekend, where they met some boys. Together, these three boys and three girls made the notorious groups of L3 and BMR. The girl had never met el capitan of BMR, and as they had been designated the secret weapons of the groups should the revolution occur, the girl decided that meet they must. So later that week, the girl im'ed said boy, and they talked for hours. A "geek contest" ensued, which the girl won hands down.

The girl and boy talked everyday after that night, and the boy stayed up until the wee hours of the morning, entranced with her witticisms and anticdotes. Anyone who knows the story of the origins of the Dragonslayer will already know that the boy never stays up past 9:30 pm. Surely you can tell what a feat this was for the girl, keeping up the boy all night. Once, they even talked on the phone until they had to go to work the next morning.

As a result, the boy began calling the girl, "The Sleep Goblin." In a letter to the girl, the boy drew a little figure, as he had decided that the name required an image to match. It wouldn't be long before the figure and the name became permanent institutions for the two.

Slowly, over time, Sleep Goblin came to represent both the girl, and also her inner demon. Whenever the girl would do something "wrong," she said, "The Sleep Goblin did it!" Eventually, Sleep Goblin took on a life of his own, and became the mean little demon we all know and love today.

The End.



Today's Highlights:

1: My mouth has become adjusted to Splenda enough that Diet Coke with Splenda now tastes as good as real Coke! Yea!! (also, Pepsi One continues to suck as bad as regular Pepsi... BOO!!)

2: A flicker of the oil light followed by a quick investigation led me to the startling realization that I had lost 4 qts of oil in under a month... BOO!!!!

3: Upon driving home from work, I had the opportunity to drive through one of the fiercest (though small in area) storms I've seen in over a year. Yea for the wannabee storm chaser!!

Starving Artist

I've decided to take MT's advice and start selling things I make. As a result, I am taking this opportunity to shamelessly promote myself. Go on, help a starving artist! You know you want to...

New Toys!

Yea! I have new toys! I got these little critters at Michael's today for a dollar. Aren't they awesome? I love wacky little things. I know I can do something cool with them. I challenge you all to come up with A) names and B) ideas for their use. Go!

That's a pool?

I don't have much to post today. I went for a long walk with my brother this evening, and that's about it. So to keep you from boredom, I give you this -

DS went swimming with some of his friends yesterday, and he generally takes his camera on outings and shares the pictures with me when he gets home. Yesterday he forgot, so he drew an illustration in something other than Microsoft Paint, though I can't remember what. Whatever it was, it didn't help his skills much.

SG: "Which one is you?"

DS: "The one out of the pool."

SG: "Why are you wearing arm floaties?"

DS: (very offended) "Those are muscles!!"

SG: "They look like arm floaties..."

DS: "You just don't appreciate good art!"

Oh well, you know what they say.. anything can be art these days. ;)

Foxy

On my way to work today, I saw a little fox run across the road. Then it ran along a field. It looked so happy, the way dogs can look happy when their tongue is out and they kinda smile. It was a very cool way to start the morning.

Then I drudged through 8 hours of work...

And then I came home to find that I'd sold my first painting on eBay!! YEA!!!!! What a day :)

Warning! Mushy Stuff Below!

Many of you may already know that DS hurt his hand a while climbing some time ago. Without climbing, he's a sad little slayer. As his girlfriend, it's generally my job to help cheer him up. However, our current 9 hour separation makes that a little difficult.

So, this one's for DS.

Sleep Goblin sends its love the best way it knows how. No small feat for an inner demon. That's your very own goblin magnet, which will hopefully be in the mail shortly. Cheer up babe.

Rantoul and Oglesby

Here are the other quilled cards, as promised.

This one is named Oglesby Hennepin, and I made it for tRJ. He likes dinosaurs.

And this is Rantoul Heyworth, which I made for DS. You know, so he could slay it. They were both named after road signs on the way to Madison, mostly because they amused me on the long drive. Now, don't you wish your girlfriend was so cool? I know you do!

Making Cards

Father's Day is tomorrow, and though I'm not always on the best of terms with either of my two dads, my brother made me an offer I couldn't refuse. I, as usual, had little money to put towards any kind of gift, so he said he would get the gifts if I took care of the cards. Which is great, because I can do that for free!



The image on top is the card I made for my stepdad, which feature images of my brother and I as little tykes. We were little horrors. Especially my brother. Can't you tell by that face he's making?

The image on the bottom is from a Harley ad in a Rolling Stone issue. I tried to make it appear 3d, but I think it shows up better in person.

Finally, this is a card a made for my grandfather, who was recently in the hospital. Though as far as I know, he's doing fine. Since we're actually going to his house for Father's Day, I thought I'd make something for him too. I used a technique called quilling, which is basically just rolling up a lot of little pieces of paper and gluing them together. Its an effect I've used a lot, because I really like it. If I find some of my older designs, I'll post them later.

Surfs Up

Some free association web surfing led a friend of mine and I to ponder why the South Carolinian troops of the Revolutionary War had crescent moons on the caps of their uniforms. Please feel free to inform us if you know.

paper cuts

My work moved to a new building about a year and a half ago. The thousands of reports we have were boxed up, and moved too. None of them have ever been filed properly though, and now my boss has decided that she wants to implement a new filing system. Guess who gets to do this. Yeah, you're looking at her. Well, sort of.

So now, thousands of files in thousands of manila folders have to be transfered to blue folders. Then those blue folders have to be put in their individual expanding folders, with coded stickers.

All I know is I'd better be getting some kind of pat on the back for all these damn paper cuts. Not to mention one sweet reference letter when I move. Either that, or I'm going to have a find a job where I just tell other people what to do. I'm really good at that. Surely experience counts for something, right?

Singapore?

I thought it might be fun to get myself a statcounter, so I can see who is coming to my site, how often, and other interesting tidbits. Because I'm so open and sharing, I'll let you know too.

I am currently receiving visitors from five states, which include Wisconsin, Kentucky, Indiana, California, and Michigan, in order of frequency. Interestingly enough, about three days ago I had one visitor each from Japan, Singapore, and Taiwan. Either they weren't well versed in the English language, or they failed to appreciate my unique sense of humor, because they haven't returned. There are eight unique IP addresses coming from Wisconsin, which makes it by far the winner! What? You didn't know you were competing? Well, you are. Everyone I know is always competing for my love and affection, so get over it. Considering I'm from Kentucky, I find it interesting that there is only one other person from here reading this thing. I have a feeling I know who it is. I think they must be bored, because they check it a lot.

Jesse wins the award for most referred visitors. Yea! Go Jesse!

And in case anyone was wondering, the most popular screen display seems to be 1024x768.

Breaking News: I learned two odd things about my boyfriend today. He finds it terribly funny that I 1) Chose to stick my finger in my nose today instead of simply telling someone at work that I didn't know the answer to their question, and 2) Exclaimed "Holy Moly" upon noticing that gas prices had risen 20 cents here since this morning. It somewhat disturbed me that he found the nose thing as funny as he did, because generally people are slightly disturbed by that. And I firmly stand by my claim that holy moly has too been used since 1942. Stupid boy.

Update: My brother is out of the hospital and happily taking hydrocodine 7.5 (sp?). However, he is very unhappily maintaining a "light diet." Though I think someone failed to mention to him that an entire pint of Ben and Jerry's Half Baked doesn't really fall into the light category.

Morphine and Demerol

The doctor's finally did surgery today. Because we weren't sure what time my parents would make it to the hospital from work, my brother listed me as the person they should talk to through everything. When the surgery was over, my mom had shown up, and they still directed all of their comments to me, which I found pretty funny. Though after spending nine hours at the hospital with him, I deserved a few moments of amusement.

They showed me pictures of all of his internal organs. It's very neat to see what a gall bladder looks like. You may think it's gross, but I assure you, that was the highlight of my day. Everything seemed to be perfectly normal, including his appendix. They took it out anyway, but there is still no answer for the great mystery that is my brother's pain. The surgery may have all been for naught, though it's hard to tell with all the painkillers he's on. Getting morphine and demerol can't be a total waste. Lucky bastard.

Death by Chocolate

I've spent two days babying my little brother. Says he has stomach pains. Friday evening, he comes up to me, asks me to "feel this." Now normally, this would be the perfect opportunity to make some crack about us being from Kentucky, and how I've been waiting all my life for him to make my dreams come true. Those types of jokes make him turn a little green, which my mean older sister handbook said I have to do at least once a week. However, he looked like he might be seriously hurt, so I take a look. I'm not a doctor, I have no idea what I'm looking at. Appears to be a stomach...

Saturday morning, he goes to the doctor, who takes one look at him and sends him to the ER. The ER gives him a catscan, tells him there's nothing wrong, and sends him home with heave duty painkillers. Again, I'm not a doctor, but if there's nothing wrong with him, why did his doctor send him straight to the ER, and why are you sending him home with painkillers?

Whoops. They called him back this morning. "Yes, we're stupid, please come back in." So he does, they run a blood test, and again tell him, "We don't really see anything." So he's home again, except this time, they told him not to take the painkillers. "If you're still in pain in the morning, we'll probably go ahead and take out your appendix, just in case. But we're not ruling out constipation or a virus."

Just in case?? And how exactly is it that in two visits to the ER they still can't tell the difference between constipation and appendicitis? We're just supposed to sit around and see if it bursts or if he has a good dump? Craziness. My faith in modern medicine has been drastically reduced.

I applied my own kind of medicine and bought him some Ben and Jerry's Mood Magic ice cream in Chocolate Therapy. He feels much better.

Celery can make you starve!

I learned an interesting fact from a friend yesterday. Celery is what you would call a negative food. Meaning that it takes more calories to digest celery than you get from the food. So if you live on celery alone, you'll starve to death. CrAzY! Though it might make a good snack between meals if you're slimming down. Personally, I prefer things with a little more flavor, and I think positive is a good thing.

I'm having trouble being funny today. I went to the eye doctor, and they put all those numbing drops and dilating drops in my eyes. I think some of them must have gone straight to my brain. I've been in a fog since this morning. I'm quite sure the only cure for this is vegging out in front of the television. I'll let you know if my diagnosis was correct.

splenda is splendid

how do you respond when someone tells you that sometimes we need people to treat us abusively?

i find it very strange that people actually responded to my first post, because that means people took the time to read it.

in other news, i've discovered recently that i have developed a taste for drinks sweetened with splenda. "made from sugar so it tastes like sugar" blah blah blah. but honestly, it does taste about as close to sugar as i imagine it can get without actually being sugar. my drink of choice: fruit h2o in lemon or raspberry. though dasani waters and even ocean spray cranberry juice isn't bad. i've never liked 'diet' drinks much, because aspartame and phenylalanine just leave a weird taste my mouth. but splenda doesn't do that, so i can enjoy sweet things with zero calories. and i've found that since i started counting calories, finding i have 200 left over after dinner, which is about two chocolate chip cookies, is very exciting. if anyone is interested, i use this website by self magazine that allows you to keep track of what you eat and how you exercise. you put in whether you want to lose, maintain, or gain weight, how active you are, and it gives you a calorie goal to get you there. then, as you put in what foods you've been eating for the day, it breaks everything down for you in pretty graphs so you know if you're eating too much fat during the day, or not enough protein, or even if you're getting enough vitamin a. really wonderful thing. it's cool to be able to see the impact everything is having on you individually during the day. it's easier to take in than just looking at a nutrition label, because you don't have to keep a running tab in your head, or carry something around with you. at any rate, it's gotten easier to resist eating a whole bag of chips when i know that it will add like 700 calories, almost half of what i can have right now. especially when it probably takes two hours doing light/moderate aerobic exercise to get rid of that. also, gardening for two hours burns 635 calories. yea!! i love to garden.

well, i'm sure everyone is dieted out by now. i know i am. i'm going to hit the pool.

sleep goblin = cricket slayer

so... I just got finished telling my boyfriend that blogs are STUPID!

"blogs are stupid"

"why?"

"they're just people's lame diaries. i don't understand why you would put your diary online for all to see. i don't understand why anyone would make a point to read other people's diaries. it's just dumb."

"eh. it's just a place to rant."

and look.. here i am, making a blog. why you ask? well, truth be told, i'm pretty lame. but mainly, i wanted to make a cool place to put my profile picture.

Things you should know:

• Sleep Goblin is my inner demon, and male (don't ask why, because I don't know.. he just is).
• My blog title was inspired by his catch phrase, "I kick you."
• DS is my husband, and those initials stand for Dragonslayer.
• My banner, if drawn, was designed by Willie Baronet. If not, I did it.
• I have two cats, Winston and Felix. Felix is a girl.
• I relocated to Philadelphia in 2010, after 1.5 yrs in CA, after 3.5 years in WI, after the first big chunk of my life in Kentucky.