Me, Undivided

Quick Update & People Magazine

2010-01-13T16:39:00.000-05:00

First of all, despite the "undivided" title of this blog, I've decided it's quite possible that not all my readers are interested in long lists of giveaways. For that reason, I've created another blog for listing giveaways. I'll post links to new giveaway posts here, perhaps, but the whole lists don't necessarily belong here. The giveaway listings can be found here.

And now, to the People magazine story. Today, I went to the dentist (which I HATE) and was flipping through magazines in the waiting room. My choices were an Avon catalogue, Better Homes And Gardens, a copy of Readers Digest that I'd already read at my grandmother's house, and a few copies of People. I picked up a copy of People, and read mindless celebrity gossip (why are people famous for doing nothing? Famous for talent, I get, but, Paris Hilton? Nicole Ritchie? Kim Kardashian? Someone explain, please!) for a few minutes, when I noticed something:

A topless model in an ad for maternity clothes was wearing a wedding ring.

Why did I notice? I wasn't sure at first, but then I flipped through the rest of the magazine and realized that none of the other ads featured models wearing obvious wedding rings. Okay, some of them might have been wearing wedding rings but the crop of the final photo didn't show their left hands--but no ads except the maternity clothes and an ad for cotton featuring Zooey Deschanel (who actually is married, I think, and a celebrity, not a nameless model for the purpose of advertising).

So what does that say? I would assume that marketing firms have done research into this, that it wasn't an arbitrary decision, because few decisions in advertising in marketing are arbitrary. I guess it means that people feel like a pregnant woman needs to be married.

Is that good or bad? Well, I think having two parents is probably good, but marriage isn't necessary. Mostly, I just think it's really interesting that NONE of the other models wore wedding rings, just the pregnant (well, she probably wasn't really pregnant) one. Interesting comment on society, I guess.

I don't have a lot to say about it, really; I just noticed it and wanted to point it out. If you have any further thoughts, I'd love to hear them!

More Winning On The Internet!

2010-01-10T23:34:00.029-05:00

Okay, people, seriously, I'm a little addicted to internet giveaways. Since the last post, I've won two books and a gift certificate to a vinyl wall decorations store (that's Dali Decals, and the giveaway was from Sugar Pop Ribbons--great site, by the way!). I promise real content soon, but, for the moment....

There's some really cool wineglasses being given away at Sweet, Mysterious Feast. They're really lovely, and I suggest you check out the giveaway here.

I'd also like to point you towards The Hiding Spot, where there's a really fantastic giveaway going on. You can win books! Who doesn't love books? Enter it here.

You can also win a Progresso soup gift set from CorgiPants by entering here!

Also, head over to Sophistikatied Reviews for a chance to win one of two fantastic-looking books, Brightly Woven and The Dark Divine. Both look amazing!

At Simple Sage Designs, you can win a really gorgeous pillow! Enter here.

At Mama Mirage's Reviews And Giveaways, you can win a custom-engraved stone from Adirondack! Enter here.

Hurry, this one ends today (1/11)! Win a $40 GC to Joy Of Soap from Sugar Pop Ribbons here.

Win a pillow pet from Blissful Bee--these are really cute! Enter here.

Win a $15 Language Lizard gift certificate from Simply Stacie. Enter here!

Wonda Wedges is a cool looking product that would make a lot of things (sitting on anything without a back--the floor, a bed, whatever!) way more comfortable. And, you can win one from A Mom's Balancing Act! Enter here.

Alphabet Photography has some really gorgeous stuff! A Mom's Balancing Act is giving away a framed "Home" piece of art. Enter here.

Win a heart charm bracelet from Blissful Bee! Enter here.

Win a String Ring from Blissful Bee! I love these! Enter here.

Blissful Bee is also hosting a My Lip Stuff lip balm giveaway! Enter that one here.

Mama Mirage's Reviews & Giveaways is having a giveaway for some cute girly stuff right now. Go here to enter!

Win a book! Corked has a great cover. The giveaway is at Simply Stacie here.

Also from Simply Stacie, win some really cute socks from Ozone! Enter here.

You can also win tasty single serve Michael Seasons snacks from Simply Stacie by entering here.

Win Falke leggings from Living Smart Girl! Enter here.

Win a beautiful cashmere shawl from Nimli at the Veater Family blog! Enter here.

Win a $25 Dennys Gift Certificate from Kidglue here!

Win a mattress! Okay, yeah, it seems a little random, but who couldn't use a super comfy new mattress? It's a Sealy Posturpedic Mattress, and the giveaway is hosted by From Dates To Diapers here.

This one ends tonight! Win a funny T-shirt of your choice from Snorg Tees and Mommy2TwoGirls! Enter here.

Also from Mommy2TwoGirls and Earthworks, you can win hand cream and soap! Enter here.

Win an Energizer To Go Power Pack from The Clan Mcleod! Enter here.

And from Trying to Stay Calm, win a Skin 2 Skin Care package! Enter here.

Win a $10 Pizza Hut gift card from Our Ordinary Life! Enter here.

Enter to win a personalized spina bifida awareness necklace here.

At Krasey Beauty, you can enter a "krasey" awesome giveaway for a beauty package worth almost a thousand dollars! Details here.

This post will be updated in the near future with more giveaways!

What's In An Envelope?

2010-01-08T01:39:00.000-05:00

My friend Naomi and I have started a new project that we're calling What's In An Envelope. Basically, we want to see what kinds of interesting things people can fit into envelopes and send us. Letters, photographs, drawings, poems, stories, mix CDs, be creative--anything you can think of! We'll post what we get on the blog.

We'll leave self-addressed stamped envelopes in bookstores, on trains, maybe even just stick them in random mailboxes, with notes explaining the project, but if this sounds at all interesting to you and you don't happen to find an envelope, we'd LOVE you to contribute to this project. You can email me at pearcejm@gmail.com for an address to send your envelope (any size) to.

I'd also be eternally grateful to anyone spreading the world by blogging about the project, tweeting the link, or just telling your friends about it.

Feedback welcome! You can check out the website here.

An Exciting Day In Books

2010-01-07T23:59:00.000-05:00

Today was an exciting day in books. I have NINE books that I didn't have when the day started. This is not a great habit for someone who moves between continents every few months with two suitcases, but I'm still excited. So, in case you share my excitement, this is what I have:

Meg Cabot, Queen Of Babble:

Bryan Peterson, Learning To See Creatively: Design, Color & Composition in Photography:

John Hedgecoe, The Book Of Photography:

Robin Maxwell, O Juliet:

Karen Brichoux, Coffee & Kung Fu

Don Kulick & Anne Meneley (Editors), Fat: The Anthropology Of An Obsession:

Bruce Chatwin, What Am I Doing Here:

Rayda Jacobs, Postcards From South Africa:

David Schickler, Kissing In Manhattan:

And that's all, folks :) Let me know if you've read any & have an opinion on which I should read first!

Winning Things On The Internet

2010-01-06T02:11:00.022-05:00

I'm kind of on a roll with the internet luck lately. I've won fudge, postcards, a book, a laptop case, a drawing set, and several other things. It's like Christmas all over again!

You, too, can win internet giveaways! Just enter.

First up on my list of links today, a quesadilla maker!! How awesome is that? I am pretty sure it qualifies as extremely awesome. Enter here.

Next up, a lunchbox! That may not sound too exciting, but wait until you hear this: the inside of the lunchbox is a whiteboard! You can write messages in it! Enter here. And, okay, technically this is for children but I am a legal adult and I think it is awesome.

I'd also like to point you in the direction of this contest to win some earrings.

And, check out Katie's Book Blog for a chance to win a couple of great books, Need and Captivate by Carrie Jones! Enter here.

I'd also suggest book lovers enter an awesome contest at In Which A Girl Reads: there will be three winners who will choose 1-3 books from a selection of 25, and there are a lot of awesome choices in there! Seriously, do yourself a favor and go check it out.

Win some cool lip balm, too! Lots and lots of flavors. This is another one from Peaches' Reviews and Giveaways. Enter here. There's another kind of lip balm being given away at the Frugal Housewife--enter that one here.

You can also win a $100 gift certificate to CSN Stores from Running Just As Fast As I Can! Enter here.

Also from CSN stores, you can win a cool serving tray from the Long Haul by entering here.

On Sugar Pop Ribbons, you can win a really cool flower necklace! Enter here.

Dali Decals has some super cool wall decorations, and Sugar Pop Ribbons is giving away a gift card! Enter here.

And who wouldn't want to win a $10 Wal Mart gift card? They have everything there! You can enter for a chance to win one here, from Let's Just Give It Away.

Also from Let's Just Give It Away, check out another cool lip balm giveaway here!

Win a shirt from Alight.com and The Single Mama Review corner by entering here!

Win chocolate from Sugar Pop Ribbons by entering here! Who doesn't love chocolate? Well, my uncle, but he's just weird... :P

Also from Sugar Pop Ribbons, you can win a $100 Gift Certificate to Stella & Dot jewelry! Lots of awesome stuff. Enter here.

Again, from Sugar Pop Ribbons, you can win a $25 gift certificate to Joyful Girl Naturals. Enter here.

Sugar Pop Ribbons always has lots of giveaways, and I'd also like to point you in the direction of this one for healthy cookies!

Win bean bags! Enter here.

Here's another Softlips lip balm giveaway from The Single Mama Review Corner!

Win a backpack from The Single Mama Review Corner, too! Enter this one here.

And enter here for a chance to win Everyday Minerals makeup!

Win earrings from Bride on a Budget! Enter here.

Win a book of your choice or a $20 Amazon gift certificate here.

And, of course, this post will continue to be updated until I post something else.

Pens, Paper, And Planners, Oh My!

2009-12-31T03:04:00.000-05:00

I really like office supplies. It might be a little weird, but I'm not alone; there are entire blogs devoted to office supplies! Kindred spirits.

I'm pretty happy with my pens right now. Aside from the cheap ballpoints I leave everywhere just in case I need to write something down, I use Sharpie pens and a couple of fountain pens. But, I'm always finding new notebooks & trying to find purposes for them! I really love notebooks. Like, excessively. Aside from the blogs linked to before, I have a couple of friends who share this love, so in case you're not one of them, it's not as weird as it sounds! I swear.

Right now, I have a few in-use notebooks: a 2010 planner from Target, a large squared Moleskine, a small plain Moleskine, a large Moleskine cahier, a cheap spiral notebook, and a couple of journal-type notebooks that don't really have good names or descriptions or origins (they were gifts).

I use them for a few things; the small plain Moleskine is for quotes, the planner is for, well, plans I suppose--appointments, assignments, to-dos, you know, the Moleskine cahier is what I carry in my purse for any thoughts/notes/doodles/etc., the cheap spiral is the Postsecret project notebook, the large squared Moleskine is for "focused journaling," and the two journals are a bucket list and a rambling journal.

That's a lot to have going at once, I suppose, but I have even more blank notebooks that I REALLY want to have a use for. Three one-subject Mead Five Star spiral notebooks (with nice plastic covers instead of cardboard) that I got on sale & thus couldn't resist, another Moleskine cahier, an eight-subject Miquelrius notebook, a blank silk-covered book, a notebook from Barnes and Noble....I really like all of these notebooks, too. And I keep looking at them, trying to imagine what I can use them for, because they just call out to be written in, but I can't come up with anything!

So I'm asking for your help, fellow notebook lovers. What do you use your notebooks for?

The new year....

2009-12-29T17:08:00.000-05:00

People don't keep new year's resolutions. Well, okay, some of us do, but most of us fail anywhere from a day to six months into our resolutions. We don't write every day or exercise regularly or whatever it is we've promised ourselves we'll do in the coming year.

But we still keep making resolutions. We still keep thinking that's going to change, that this year will be the year we finally write a novel or lose 20 pounds or save our pennies long enough so that we get to take that dream vacation to Argentina.

Why do we do it? Why do we keep resolving to learn new languages, climb mountains, and watch less television?

Hope. Faith. Habit. Because we're all crazy, doing the same things over and over and expecting different results. Maybe we know we'll probably fail, but if we don't try, we'll most definitely fail.

Are you making resolutions this year? Why?

Twitter

2009-12-29T14:38:00.000-05:00

So, I don't quite get the whole Twitter thing, but lately I'm a little obsessed with entering online giveaways (see: two posts ago). Mostly it's just that I have nothing to do and I might as well try to win something. And a lot of those giveaways give extra Twitter-related entries! So you'll find a lot of my tweets to be about various online contests and giveaways. But, if you want to follow me, you can find me on Twitter here.

Comment trouble?

2009-12-29T13:33:00.002-05:00

I've just gotten an email from someone having trouble commenting here. So, I'd like to ask anyone with the time to try to leave a comment, anywhere on the blog, and send me an email at pearcejm@gmail.com if it doesn't work. Thanks for your help!

Other Giveaways

2009-12-28T00:46:00.016-05:00

Today I'm very into entering contests & giveaways....I'm sharing some of them here for two reasons: one, so you can enter, and two, so I can selfishly get extra entries to some of them :)

Win a $20 Target Gift Certificate From Seattle Mom Blogs: Click Here. All you have to do is suggest a baby product!

Win fudge here. Very, very tasty looking fudge. And here's another chance at winning fudge!

Win a DVD player here. It's the personal portable kind, good for long trips.

Enter the Cream Perfume Giveaway at At The Fence here! Check out another Cream Perfume giveaway here. I've never tried these products, but the reviews are good.

Win a Marshalls/TJ Maxx Gift Card here! Gift cards are highly exciting.

Win a CVS gift card here. Again, who doesn't love gift cards?

Win a Blush Topless Undershirt here. This is a neat-looking product, I suggest you check it out.

Win a cool vinyl wall decoration here. Very cool.

Win a scarf here. I have a bit of a weakness for scarves. I love them.

Win healthy cookies here. Cookies are great, and you don't have to feel guilty for eating these!

Win a charm bracelet here. And, another chance here. Lots of choices, a charm for everything!

Win a pretty pendant from Helix Elemental Jewelry here!

I know this will appeal to everyone--you can win a $20 Amazon gift card from Peaches' Reviews and Giveaways here.

You can also win a cool laptop sleeve or wine carrier from Peaches' Reviews and Giveaways here. These are not only neat looking products, but also environmentally friendly!

You can also enter to win a 10 dollar Blockbuster gift certificate from Couponing for 4 here!

I'll be updating this post as I find more, as long as it's the newest post on my blog. If I post something else, so this is no longer at the top of the page, I'll start a new giveaways post.

Ebook Readers: Contest!

2009-12-28T00:02:00.000-05:00

It is one of my great goals in life to win an ebook reader. Well, to acquire one, and since I'm poor that means winning.

Some contests like you to blog about them. And, I think that any of the half dozen or so people awesome enough to read my blog deserve to enter.

So, enter this contest for an ebook reader: click here for details.

Exciting Contest For Books & A Nook!

2009-12-25T22:45:00.000-05:00

Go here to enter.

Christmas!

2009-12-25T22:40:00.000-05:00

Merry Christmas to those who celebrate, and happy Friday to those who don't.

I don't actually believe in the religious aspect of the celebration, but in modern America, well, for better or worse, that belief isn't exactly required to celebrate.

I like the presents and the food and visiting the extended family who we don't see all that often. I like the time off of school and the decorations and the music and the shopping. I like Christmas, the non-religious aspect of it.

Every year, we celebrate for a few days: first, usually on the 23rd, we visit one set of grandparents, a great aunt, and an uncle plus family (his wife and kids) in a city about two and a half hours a way. We have Christmas dinner, exchange gifts, and stay the night. We go home Christmas eve, and don't have any set plans; sometimes we open a present, but no set plans. On Christmas day, we go visit the other set of grandparents, and an aunt plus family (fiance and kids and my cousin's girlfriend), in a city about forty minutes away. We have Christmas dinner and exchange gifts, again, and often play some kind of game (Apples to Apples this year). Finally, my other aunt plus family (husband and kids) get into town on the 26th, and there is yet another big dinner and a smaller exchange of gifts.

This year, I got mostly practical gifts, just things I needed, from people who understand my need to live out of a suitcase while in school--a case for my laptop, a planner for 2010, a new messenger bag purse, one of my favorite miquelrius m8 notebooks, and a bunch of consumable packaged food that they don't actually have (or is not easy to find) in Germany (because I have stuff there I'll need to take back in June, so I have more luggage allowance than I can actually use in January with things I'll need to take back in June). Plus a few things that I don't need and won't even have room for in my suitcase, from people unable to appreciate life out of a couple of suitcases. It wasn't a big Christmas--gift aren't usually big and expensive in my family. I know it frustrated me as a kid, when all my friends got fancy electronics, and I never did. But, I got over it, mostly.

In other news, I am pretty sure Kwanzaa is a made-up holiday that no one I know has ever celebrated.

Happy Hanukkah/Christmas/Friday!

New Strategy

2009-12-21T03:08:00.000-05:00

It's been forever since I've attempted to write fiction. Even longer since I've gotten anything substantial written. So, I decided that I needed a strategy change.

Before, I switched between two "strategies" for writing fiction. First, I'd wait until I got an idea. Then, I'd either just start writing, or write a really basic outline (~1 page) that told me where I was headed with the story, and then start writing.

Yeah, I know, not a lot of strategy. But, it worked sometimes. And sometimes it didn't. But that's the way things go.

I've decided to write fiction again, with a different strategy.

The first part of this strategy directly fights my short attention span and inability to finish anything that could be called a novel. I'm writing short stories. But, it's still one story: interconnected short stories are a way to deal with my short attention span, and writing something that's kind of a novel, too!

The second part of this strategy is making myself use ideas that already exist instead of waiting for one to float into my head. I printed out twenty-five semi-randomly-selected Postsecrets that I liked. I cut them out and shuffled through them, seeing which ones might fit together into the same story. Then, I put the piles of secrets, each pile representing one story (and the number of secrets ranging from one to six), into an order, making sure that one character or setting from each story could jump into the next (connecting all the stories, in ways to be defined further once I actually started writing). I made each of the nine stories a page in a spiral notebook, and taped in the secrets.

The third part of the strategy is planning. I'm not yet finished with this stage. The idea is, each story gets a second page in the notebook, where I write out the characters and major plot points, sort of a summary page. I also note the connections to other stories. Part two of the planning stage is writing a more detailed outline for each story, and further exploring the connections between the stories.

And, all the strategy in the world is worthless if you don't actually get some writing done. The actual writing is part four. Cross your fingers that it'll actually happen!

And of course, if part four is completed, part five is editing. I'll be thrilled if I get here. Ecstatic, really. Wish me luck!

I'm excited about this project. I'm sharing here because I think the Postsecret idea could be useful to someone else searching for inspiration. I got my secrets from the current website, this archive website, and this other archive website.

Videos

2009-12-20T12:17:00.000-05:00

I'm not much into spending hours at a time watching funny/gross/tasteless videos on Youtube, but there are a three videos I like and would like you all to see as well...Also known as, I can't think of much to say, but maybe you'll enjoy these.

Postsecret/All-American Rejects:

Free Hugs Bremen/Hearts Burst into Fire by Bullet For My Valentine:

Postsecret/Donora:

Musicals!

2009-12-19T18:50:00.000-05:00

I like musicals. Not all musicals, but, in general, I like musicals. I'm currently listening to the soundtrack of Rent. It's fantastic.

But I can't watch movie musicals without a little nagging voice in the back of my head: "How does this make sense? How do these people accept all the singing? Why does no one think this is insane?"

For some reason, I don't have the same hangups when it comes to stage musicals. I guess there, I'm able to accept that not everything makes total sense, because stage shows never just look like someone's real life. And, movies are supposed to look like something is happening, and a camera just happens to be there. Well, that's not the intention with every movie, but, a lot of them. Really arty films don't have this, but even fantasy movies, for example, are supposed to just be something that's happening in that fantasy universe, captured onscreen. I mean, not really, but that's how it's supposed to seem. People act natural, it's supposed to seem real these days, as opposed to overacted silent films, for example. But when it comes to stage shows, what's going on onstage is obviously not just something happening in the world. It's on a stage in front of you, and therefore obviously a show, so the rules are different.

But movie musicals, well, you watch them all sing about something, and then someone brings it up later as if it was just a conversation they all had...."Remember that day when...." and the "when" is just something that they sang about.

It makes no sense, and while I can usually put my hangups aside and enjoy movie musicals (I do love Rent), I always have that nagging little voice in the back of my head....

My favorite example of an onscreen musical (as opposed to onstage) is "Once More, With Feeling," the Buffy The Vampire Slayer musical episode. Why? Because the whole musical thing is explained in a way that makes perfect sense within the rules and logic of that universe (I mean, obviously there are not demons in our universe, but given that these supernatural phenomena exist in the Buffy universe, the premise of this episode makes perfect sense). It's explained, and silences the voice in the back of my head!

Am I the only one who has this problem with musicals?

Dinner Conversation With My Family

2009-12-18T19:33:00.000-05:00

We were snowed in this afternoon, and I got my mother to watch Across The Universe with me. This may have been a mistake for a couple of reasons. One, she asks lots and lots of questions while watching movies. Two, she is usually unable to recognize any of the characters and asks who they are every time they're on screen. Three, she makes comments: "I can't believe those kids are doing that!" "This could never happen!" etc. And, four, this conversation.

We sat down to dinner, and she was talking about the movie, telling my dad about it. He'd never seen it, but after she tried to explain it for a minute, he said, "So, like Tommy?"

"Yes!" she said. "A lot like that."

"What's that?" I asked. Because that move was made more than fifteen years before I was even born, and I've never seen it.

"It's a movie. Like that one. But with The Who, not the Beatles," my dad explains.

"Who's Tommy?"

"He's a deaf and blind kid who plays pinball. He never loses. He's a pinball ninja."

"Um, how is that possible? You can't play pinball if you're deaf AND blind, and everybody loses sometimes."

"Not Tommy. He always gets a replay. He's a pinball wizard. He plays by feel."

"...."

"It's true!"

"Does he have some kind of supernatural power?"

"No, he's just REALLY good at pinball."

"You can't play pinball by feel. It's not possible."

"That's what you think! Anyway, it's a movie. You watch movies with impossible things. Like VAMPIRES. Those are ridiculous."

"Even a fictional universe has to have rules and logic. And from what you're telling me, there is no logical reason why Tommy is a pinbal wizard. Ninja. WHATEVER."

"It's a great movie."

Yeah, that's my family.

Public Transportation!

2009-12-17T13:10:00.001-05:00

Yeah, this topic totally deserves an exclamation point.

I think public transportation is awesome. I can't drive, but even if I could, public transportation is just way more awesome. It's cheap, you can do other things while on the way (as opposed to while driving, reading while driving is frowned upon generally), it's better for the environment, and, well, it's awesome. Plus you are less likely to die, I think.

Sadly, in America, we apparently do not believe in public transportation.

Okay, big cities have buses and trams and trains and subways, but almost anyone who doesn't live in a big city is just out of luck. Sorry.

That's not the case in Germany, or most of Europe, where even the tiniest towns are connected to the world by public transportation. I get get anywhere I want to go in Bremen on public transportation, no problem. It's awesome.

That's probably what I miss most about Germany: public transportation.

Plus, public transportation provides some awesome people-watching opportunities. There are some very interesting people in the world.

German public transportation is interesting in particular, because of the way you pay for it. You buy a ticket, and validate the ticket when you get on. No ticket barriers. On some buses, at some times, you have to show your ticket to the driver, but that's never the case on trains/trams/subways. There are ticket inspectors, and your likelihood of running into one varies depending on what exact transportation you're using, but it operates mostly on the honor system. You pay a fine or go to jail if you're caught without a ticket, but most Germans would never think of not buying a ticket.

My German friend says that's because you're supposed to buy a ticket, and it would be really embarrassing to get caught without one. Most Americans would stand more by my logic, that if you ride public transportation regularly, the expected amount in fines you'd have to pay, adds up to less than if you bought a ticket every time.

Luckily, this isn't an issue for us in Bremen, because we all have semester tickets for students.

But it's an interesting cultural observation, I think, that an honor system like this actually works. (It's not just Germany, but also a lot of the rest of Northern Europe.)

Just, food for thought.

Things I Miss In Germany

2009-12-17T08:55:00.001-05:00

I'm in the US right now, at home, but in January, I'm going back to school in Germany. I'm considering what I miss in Germany--some things I can bring with me in a suitcase, but some I can't. Here's a few:

Good Mexican food. I mean, there are "Mexican" restaurants, but I'm used to good stuff. One deal-breaker? No Mexican restaurant can be good in my mind unless they serve hot, homemade tortilla chips and fresh-tasting salsa. As opposed to stuff that comes from a plastic bag and a jar.
String cheese. Is this weird? Probably. But for some reason, I really like this stuff, and haven't ever seen it in Germany.
Nighttime. I mean, obviously nighttime exists in Germany, but you can't do much at night. There's not much open at night. I mean, bars, obviously, and döner shops (um, semi-Turkish food), and the McDonalds in Bremen is open on Friday and Saturday nights all night, but most everything is closed. Versus, at home, I can think of, a whole lot more that's open at night, besides bars (because I'm not old enough to be hanging out in bars in the US). Stores and restaurants and lots of things. Being a night owl, I prefer American hours.
English books. Of course, you can find a few English books in German bookshops, but just the bestsellers most of the time. And you can order books online, but there's something I love about just spending time in a bookstore and browsing and seeing what catches my eye!
Twizzlers. Don't judge, please.
Goldfish crackers. Ditto.
Being able to do things for myself. I need a lot more help with everyday errands like going to the bank or post office or cell phone store in Germany. It's frustrating sometimes.
Television. In English. I mean, there are some English programs, and I can watch most anything online, but channel-surfing isn't really something I can do in Germany. Not that I do it much in the US, but I miss being able to!

And of course, I just miss home. My friends and family and dogs and sleeping in my own bed. But that's a given.

And there are things in Germany that I'd like to have in the US, too! I'll write that list sometime.

Spotify!

2009-12-14T05:07:00.000-05:00

I'm considering this a public service announcement about something awesome. If you're nice enough to read my blog (one comment in total, and this makes sixteen posts, so I'm assuming there aren't too many of you), you deserve something awesome that you might not find out about otherwise.

And that something is Spotify. It's a music service that's popular in Scandinavia, and technically not available in the US, and invitation-only everywhere that it is available, with the exception of the UK. But, I'm about to tell you how to get around that, after I rave about its awesomeness a little more.

Spotify is a downloadable program that functions a little like iTunes, except the music isn't downloaded, but streamed to your computer. You can make playlists, share them with people, and just listen to music, and almost everything I searched for was available. I'm using it as my main way to listen to music right now. It's ad-supported, with audio ads every few songs, but they're generally short (and British! which is exciting.), and there's an ad banner at the bottom of the screen (but since I'm assuming you don't stare at your music player while you listen, you probably won't notice that). You can pay for a premium version, if you want, which, among other features, is ad-free.

Anyway, if you're interested, you're now wondering how you, as an American or Canadian or Colombian or Indonesian or whatever you are, can get this awesome application now, instead of waiting for it to be available in your country (which they say it will be soon, for Americans, but you don't want to wait that long).

Well, first you have to sign up for an account. Since you probably don't have an invitation, you should pretend to be British for the sign-up procedure. You'll have to go through a UK proxy, and you can find a long list of proxies by country here. Go to one of the UK sites, and visit this URL: https://www.spotify.com/en/get-started/. Sign up for an account. You'll need a UK postcode; just use W1T 1BQ. Which is located on Tottenham Court Road in London, in case you care. Anyway, once you've got an account, close the proxy, and from your normal web browser address bar, visit this link and download the desktop application. You'll have to provide your login information when you open and install it.

And then, voila! You're connected!

Since you'll be logging on from a country other than the one in your profile, you may have to log in to the Spotify website from a UK proxy every two weeks, but it's a small hassle to keep your account. I'd say it's worth it, for all that free music!

Enjoy.

Information gathered from lots of internet research, including the Royal Mail website, TechCrunch, and Spotify itself.

Religion, The Government, And The Big Questions About The Universe

2009-12-14T03:52:00.000-05:00

I'm from Asheville, North Carolina. It's very touristy, not a really big city, but it is occasionally in the national news for one thing or another. Recently, we elected a man to the city council who doesn't believe in God. Actually, he mostly just says he considers the question of whether or not there is a god to be irrelevant.

Who cares, right? People elected him, he gets put into office, end of story. That's what I would have said, had I not known about our state constitution, which is unconstitutional (that last "constitution" referring to the national one).

Every fourth grader in the state has to study state history. The glossy fourth-grade version, leaving out the civil war for the most part, and generally skipping over the state's economic origins in tobacco farming. One part of that, though, is reading the state constitution.

In that constitution, there's a line that says, basically, that atheists aren't eligible for public office. It doesn't say that a politician has to belong to one particular religion, just that he or she must believe in some god. Apparently, no one has ever run for public office and won in this state, while publicly not believing in god, until now. Which is pretty crazy, I guess, considering all the different public offices in the entire state, which isn't a small one, and all the time that constitution has been in effect, and the fact that about ten percent of Americans call themselves atheist, agnostic, or secular and unaffiliated with any religion.

But now, this guy is a city councilman, and not religious. And, as liberal as Asheville may be considering is surroundings, we're still in the South, and there is definitely a degree of outrage. Including from a black guy who stands on roadsides wearing a Confederate uniform and waving a Confederate flag. Sometimes I think I live in crazy town. Where people are apparently unaware of federal laws. And history. Which brings me to a story about my high school principal....but that's for another time.

I'm not sure why anyone thinks bringing this to court is a good idea; they'll only lose. Federal courts have ruled on similar cases on several occasions, and found that religious tests for holding public office are not allowed. That's not going to change, luckily (I'd have to permanently abandon this country if it did, honestly), and you could have found out about this story on any number of news sites, so why am I writing?

I guess, for two reasons. One, I'm just kind of marveling at the crazy. And the fact that there are a lot of people here who don't see it as crazy at all. I live in the Bible Belt, people, and it's called that for a reason. Those of you from more progressive parts of the world probably think we're all backwards religious fundamentalists. We're not, but there's a vocal group, arguably a majority, that are. Also, these people like to ignore the laws. Except when the laws are ridiculous and outdated but in their favor. They protest reasonable laws, like no prayer in public schools. Also no school-sponsored bible study clubs, but try telling that to my high school.....

I digress. The second reason I'm writing here, is because I like this guy's attitude. I don't live within the city limits, so I couldn't vote in this election, and I wasn't following it too closely until all of this got stirred up afterwards. He says, though, that the question of acceptance or denial of God is irrelevant. And that, I agree with.

Not on a personal scale--I'd say that it's very relevant for many individuals. And if you can find that kind of faith, if you can believe, and if it makes your life better, and if you don't use it as a reason to hate and discriminate, then more power to you. If it gives your live some kind of meaning, if it offers you guidance, if it helps you to be a better person to believe in a god, then that's great. And, if you don't go around trying to convert people. That kind of pisses me off. You have no business telling other people they're going to burn in hell for not following your religion, and handing out religious pamphlets to people who are clearly not interested kills trees. But if it's personal, then it's great for you.

But not for me, and that's not your business. Whether or not I believe in God is irrelevant. Or, at least, it should be. Like the councilman mentioned, I don't think the question is relevant to me; I don't know the answer, I don't care, and it doesn't change my life. It doesn't change what I believe about right and wrong, or how I'll choose to live my life. But on a larger scale, it is, or should be, irrelevant to the world at large. It should be personal, not relevant to politics, in particular. These people who are protesting this election are probably, many of them, those same people that profess blind patriotism much of the time because they believe in America, and in freedom. They may preach, but they sure as hell don't practice. Freedom doesn't mean imposing your religious beliefs on others through outdated laws.

Religion has too great a place in contemporary American politics. I can't imagine this country electing a non-Christian President; Kennedy being Catholic, just another brand of Christian, was scandal enough.

Freedom of religion is one of my favorite things about this country, and it's crazy fundamentalists like these that really piss me off, trying to ruin one of the best things about America.

One of the other best things is that anyone with half a brain can create a free blog on the internet and ramble about anything they like, audience or no. Or maybe you disagree. Maybe you wish I'd shut up. Freedom of speech, and I for one am glad I can ramble about this to someone, even if it's the internet at large, so at least I can fool myself into believing someone's reading!

To Berlin And Back Again, Twice: Part Three

2009-12-14T02:28:00.000-05:00

Read parts one and two, if you haven't.

When I last left off, we had just discovered that there is an Ampelmann restaurant in Berlin. Oh, and since I neglected to mention it previously, I had called a friend of ours from the bus to Berlin and asked him to tell our roommates where we were, and told him what we were doing. He called us crazy, but we were a little sane in that we actually did tell someone where we were. And that is behavior I am condoning, unlike a lot of the stuff I or my friends have done!

Anyway, Ampelmann. The postcard had a map drawn on it, so after finding street signs (never easy in European cities, because generally they are nailed to the side of a building in some obscure place) and orienting ourselves, we set off. First, we passed people selling Russian/Communist souvenirs on tables on the sidewalk. Fur hats, those nesting dolls, you get the idea. And chunks of concrete that theoretically came from the Berlin wall, but if you gathered up all the pieces of the "Berlin Wall" that have been sold in the past twenty years, you'd end up with five walls. Apparently, though, judging from the souvenir business, Communism has become in some way retro-cool.

We then went down by the river, whatever river that is, I don't know, and passed the DDR museum--DDR as in Deutsche Demokratische Republik, or German Democratic Republic as we say in English, not as in Dance Dance Revolution. That explained the location of the Soviet souvenirs, I suppose, though I still find it a little bit weird. Then, we passed a bunch of guys, late teens or early twenties, who had obviously been and still were drinking heavily (no open container laws in Germany), one of them peeing on a wall. "Entschuldigen, madchen!" Excuse me, girls! he yelled, as they all laughed. That is most definitely against the law in Germany, and I'm pretty sure you can be fined. Anyway, we continued on our way.

After doubling back a few times, we finally managed to find the Ampelmann restaurant. Sadly, it was less kitschy than we'd hoped; the signs on the bathroom doors, the umbrellas on the patio, and the names of the children's meals appeared to be some of the only Ampelmann-esque things in the place. They could most definitely have done a better job. It was otherwise a typical semi-Italian restaurant, and thus very disappointing. It was also located directly underneath the tracks of some train, the S-bahn I think, and as such rattled every time a train passed overhead.

Our food took forever and ever to come, and we entertained ourselves by creating a wax sculpture out of a partially melted, dripping candle on our table. We apparently have the maturity of five-year-olds, and no responsible adult to stop us from what we were doing.

When we finally left, Ampelmann promotional matchbooks in our bags (one of the more exciting features of the restaurant), we discovered something very interesting about public toilets in Berlin.

We cut through a riverside park to get back to the U-bahn station, and for some reason, I decided to stop and read the sign on the side of a coin-operated public bathroom. If you've ever been to pretty much any European city, you know the type: just a little box by the street that you put some coins into. I think it sprays some sort of antiseptic after each person, so it's pretty clean, I guess, most of the time, and a decent idea because you don't have to close them after a certain hour, like the public restrooms in an actual building downtown in the city I'm from.

Anyway, it was pretty typical, instructions on how where to put the money, etc., until I reached the part about a time limit.

Yes, a time limit, enforced on a bathroom.

Apparently, you get twenty minutes. If your business takes any longer than that, your naked butt is going to be exposed to passers-by. A warning sounds after nineteen minutes, and then the door automatically opens. If you're handicapped, and have whatever is used for validation of that (some sort of magnetic card, I think), you can extend that time to forty-five minutes. And then, no matter what, the door still opens and shows your ass to the street.

Isn't that exciting?

I'm posting this as a warning to you all: if you ever need to use a public bathroom in Berlin, watch your time! If it's going to take you longer than twenty minutes, I suggest finding a restaurant or something. Buying a sandwich to use the bathroom is worth it, if the alternative is having the door of the bathroom open up on to the street.

While wandering and people-watching, we remembered that the Holocaust memorial had some lights in the ground, and thought it might look cool with some of the rows lit from below at night. We headed back that way. The memorial, in case you don't know, looks like this:

You can wander in between the stone blocks, all varying heights, on paths that go up and down. It's pretty cool. Contemplative, and it makes for some neat pictures from within.

Anyway, we got to the memorial, and realized there were fewer lights that we'd realized. It was empty, as far as we could see, except for some people sitting and drinking on some of the shorter stones at the edges, but we ventured a little ways down a lighted row.

And then heard horrible screaming. And ran. As far out of the endless dark paths as we could.

After that, we just wandered the streets a bit, people-watching, and then went back to the hostel, where I had to sit in the lobby to charge my phone because I couldn't find an outlet in the dorm, and because we were sharing it with a girl who was asleep every time I saw her.

On our second and last day in Berlin, Sunday, we had to catch our bus back to Bremen around 3pm, I think. So we got up early to do what we could with that half-day.

It was nearing election time in Germany, and the various political parties were campaigning all around Potsdamer Platz. There was even a stage with live music going on, that I'm assuming had something to do with the various campaigns, but, as I don't speak German, I don't really know. We also saw parts of the Berlin wall in Potsdamer Platz, which was really interesting, a piece of history out on the street like that. There's so much more history in all of Europe than in the US, and it's so much more commonplace; the best example I've seen is the command center of D-Day, in London. It's now used as storage for some company, and there's not even a plaque explaining what it is. You just have to know. The only homage to its history is the name of the building; it's named after General Eisenhower.

I also gave in to a donut craving that day. I got a donut from a Dunkin Donuts. There is sadly no such thing as Krispy Kreme in Germany, and all the Dunkin Donuts I have ever seen there would be serious health code violations in the US. I picked the type of donut whose tray seemed to have the fewest bugs. It was one of those chocolate-iced, custard-filled ones, sadly mislabeled as creme filled, which I much prefer. It wasn't that good, either; Dunkin Donuts is always a disappointment to someone who knows the joy of Krispy Kreme! My Massachusetts-born best friend says my Krispy Kreme loyalty is due to my being a Southerner, but I say it's just good taste in donuts.

Anyway, after wandering the streets for awhile, we decided to visit the Berlin train station, the central station (the Hauptbahnhof). I like train stations, anywhere that has a lot of people coming and going, actually. Airports, too. They're nice for people-watching.

The Berlin Hauptbahnhof is not just a train station, though. Like all train stations, it has stores and restaurants in it, but in this case, it's like putting the Mall of America (where I've never been, but the point is, LOTS of stores and restaurants and stuff and it's just humongous) inside of a train station.

It's pretty enormous.

But the best part is, there's a Pizza Hut!

I'm not all that excited about Pizza Hut in the US, but it's definitely pretty amazing to find the stuff you love from home when you're thousands of miles away on another continent. In Germany, they mostly serve the crispy-crusted, probably way more authentic and Italian type of pizza. Nothing even attempting to be deep-dish Chicago or oily New York pizza, both of which, while of course less authentically Italian, are a thousand times better than any pizza in Germany.

And, okay, Pizza Hut's only just maybe a hundred times better than German pizza, rather than a thousand, but it was pretty amazing at that particular moment in time.

Sadly, after enjoying non-crispy pizza, it was time to head back to the outskirts of Berlin, to the bus station. There was a lot of the city we hadn't seen, but I'll see it someday; my second trip to Berlin, which you'll learn about in a future post, didn't really include any sightseeing. It was under much different circumstances than this spontaneous adventure.

But that's for part four of the stories of the times I went to Berlin.

To be continued....

Somebody famous once said....

2009-12-14T01:47:00.001-05:00

I'm too lazy to look up who, but somebody famous, Albert Einstein maybe, once said that insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results.

In that case, a large chunk of the population is certifiably insane.

Nobody's life is easy. Okay, I wouldn't mind swapping with, say, JK Rowling--writing talent and gazillions of dollars?? who wouldn't want that?--but even our idols, who ever they may be, have gone through some really hard stuff, at some point. They've screwed up, they've been screwed, and they've had days when the world seemed out to get them.

But even when the world sucks, we keep on living, we keep on hoping, and we keep on dreaming.

We look at tomorrow and say, it's going to be better then. It'll all work out.

And then it doesn't, some of the time, but we keep hoping.

We keep hoping that we'll win the lottery, or find true love, or write a New York Times bestseller. It doesn't work out, but we keep buying lottery tickets, going on sketchy internet dates, and sitting in coffee shops pounding out words on our keyboards.

And you know, that's what keeps us sane. As crazy as it might be sometimes, it's hope that keeps us sane, and keeps us going. Keeps us living.

So we keep on doing the same things, and hoping for different--better--results. And if that makes us crazy, then so be it.

Waffle House (A Blast From The Past)

2009-12-13T00:06:00.001-05:00

This is something I posted on an old blog about a year ago. A lot has changed in the past year; I feel like a year ago, I'd experienced nothing in life, and since then, well, I've had a lot of life experiences. To remember that, I'm posting this, about the first time I ever went to what became a frequent hangout spot. Here you go:

I’d never been to Waffle House. I’d heard that it was smoky and dirty and “totally sketch,” to use the words of one friend, especially after midnight.

It was 12:30 AM, and my friend was driving me home from a birthday party, when I said, “Let’s go to Waffle House.”

Naturally, this suggestion was met with, “Why?” I answered, “Because it’s an experience. Because I want to have experiences. And going to Waffle House in the middle of the night is an experience. I’ll give you ten dollars. And buy you a hash brown.” And he loves hash browns, and needed gas money, so we set off for Waffle House.

When we walk in, it’s smoky and dirty and full of all kinds of people. The waitress who took our drink orders was all you can imagine: a middle aged woman with a smoke-tinged, southern accented voice, the kind of person you imagine might have a stereotypical waitress name, like “Flo,” and call you “honey,” and know your name if you come in often enough.

The guy who brought our food is young, possibly a little stoned, and with ridiculous hair. He has to keep his head sideways to keep it out of his eyes, and when he asks about the check he says, “Do you want to get together, or separate, or…whoa. Get together. That sounded wrong.” I stare for a minute. Stoned? Or just stupid? I can’t get a good look at his eyes; the hair, remember?

The people in the booth across from us are college-aged, a guy in a hoodie and a girl with a t-shirt with faded Hebrew writing across the front. Not too interesting, until someone who knew them comes in and says, “Wow, you guys have been here for like five hours.” Five hours on a Friday night at Waffle House…Interesting.

Over two booths in the corner, there is a sign that says, “non-smoking section. Every Waffle House in America has a Non-Smoking Section,” however, that’s very nominal. Most people in Waffle House smoke, and you’re not too protected from it by sitting in those two booths.

There is a “Did You Know…” trivia fact on the back of the receipt. It says that in the jukebox at every Waffle House, there are songs written just for Waffle House. One is about raisins in toast. I can’t come up with any change. Too bad. I’d have liked to hear those songs.

We stay in Waffle House for two and a half hours. Many people in Waffle House past 2AM seem to be intoxicated and/or crazy, but you’d be surprised at how many seemingly normal people are spending time in Waffle House in the middle of the night.

We talk about life. We talk about the future and our plans and ourselves. We tell silly stories and complain about how awkward it is when M and W, a couple, hang all over each other in public, and then can’t stand it anymore and go out to the car and we all pretend we don’t know what they’re doing in there. We talk about how all friendships are unbalanced equations; one person always cares more than the other. I’m always on the wrong side, the side that cares too much. I’m on the wrong side with our friendship, but it’s okay because we talk about it, and that makes it more okay somehow. We talk about everything. We watch people, from the group of women in fancy clothes to the gangster-types with bloodshot eyes. We wonder who puts Worcestershire sauce on what at Waffle House. We eat our hash brown and drink our cokes, and it’s an experience.

That’s what I want out of life: experiences. I want to sit at Waffle House for two and a half hours in the middle of the night. I want to get lost driving to the dollar movie theater at 10pm on a Tuesday. I want to shut my eyes, spin, pick a direction, get in the car, and go. I want to see where I end up, who I see, and what happens. I want to watch life happen in weird places. I want to find a hole-in-the-wall Salvadoran restaurant in a strange city.

That’s part of what I want from New York. I want to be in the city that never sleeps because the craziest things happen in the middle of the night. I want the experiences, and I hope that I can find someone to share them with. The friend in the Waffle House story is someone who is sometimes cooperative with my weird desires, but in a tolerant, indulgent way. I want somebody who wants to do these things as much as I do, not because I think anything specific will happen, but because I just want to see what might happen or what I might see or where I might end up. Is there anybody out there who’s this crazy? After mulling it over, I’ve decided that there’s one person who might be: a fellow writer. Don’t we always want to people watch and see what stories come out of it? Don’t we always want to see new places and meet new characters? And don’t we always want to come home and write it down, like I’m doing now?

I can still feel the smoke in the back of my throat as I write this. I’m happy.

To Berlin And Back Again, Twice: Part Two

2009-12-12T21:29:00.000-05:00

Part One can be found here.

The double-decker bus was not made for long journeys. From the looks of it, its original purpose had been sightseeing in some Danish city (all the labels on things like emergency exits were in Danish), and it had been repurposed for longer trips by adding a bathroom and a luggage hold on the lower deck. In the seat across from ours, a large woman snored loudly for the entirety of the trip, starting before we even left the station.

It was a largely uneventful journey, except for my trip to the bus's bathroom. This was a tiny, frightening bathroom, as any two-by-two-foot cubicle with a toilet on a moving bus would be. It was unique, though, in a couple of ways.

First, the buttons. There were three buttons in the bathroom: one next to the toilet-paper dispenser, and two next to the sink. From the placement, I almost assumed it was the button for flushing the toilet. Luckily, I looked a little more closely at the labels: this one was labelled in Danish and in English, and it said "STOP button. Do NOT press unless there is an emergency."

I don't know what that button stopped, but from the sound of it, it could have been the bus. I was just waiting for someone who didn't speak one of the languages on the label to press the button and bring us all to a screeching halt on the highway. As far as I know, it didn't happen, at least on that particular trip.

Second, the door. The bathroom door had a tendency to get stuck. I thought I was trapped in there for a good five minutes. It was rather claustrophobic.

Finally, though, we arrived at the bus station in Berlin. Or, rather, on its outskirts. At midnight. You see, the bus station was a good ten-minute walk from the nearest U-Bahn station, and it was not the most savory neighborhood I could have imagined. I mean, it's Germany, which isn't exactly known for high crime rates (that'd be the US, where, oddly, I'm more comfortable walking around at night), but abandoned convenience stores and sketchy car washes don't exactly scream "safe & wholesome" in any language.

So maybe arriving in the middle of the night wasn't the greatest idea ever. But, we made it to the station, and were then confronted by the ticket machine. We pressed the UK flag button for English, and were puzzled at the options we were given: "Reduced price ticket," and "Regular price ticket." With no further explanation. I assume the German screen had some explanation, or maybe Germans just automatically know which is which, but we did not. My friend speaks German, but she's not from Germany, so we were puzzled. We ended up purchasing the reduced price ticket, figuring maybe as students, we were eligible.

Which, we later discovered, is not true; reduced prices are for children and dogs. We are neither.

We also forgot to validate our tickets, as the train came into the station just as it was coming out of the machine. There are no ticket barriers to public transportation in Germany, just occasional spot-checks, with fines and even jail time if you fail to produce a validated ticket.

Speaking a foreign language and crying works rather well to get you out of it, and between the two of us, we had a couple of languages we could have employed (Kiswahili and Spanish), but luckily, on this trip, we didn't need to use those strategies.

We took the U-Bahn as far as we could toward the center of the city, and then got out at the Zoological Gardens (or whatever it is in German, I forget) station. There was a slightly sketchy internet-cafe-slash-convenience-store there, and we paid for half an hour, and sat down to research places to sleep.

Remember, it was already after midnight. We were also hungry. But first, beds. We jotted down a few addresses of nearby hostels, and hit the streets. In other parts of Germany, nothing's really open at night, but Berlin's a different story entirely; there were people on the streets! There were places other than bars and clubs that were actually open for business after midnight! I hadn't been anywhere other than a bar at night for quite some time, so I was pretty much ecstatic. I'm a night owl, and living in the US, I was used to middle-of-the-night trips to Waffle House with my friends, and I'd been pretty frustrated with the lack of non-bar nighttime hangout spots in Germany.

Anyway, we wandered around for a good half an hour before we found one of the places on our list. It was a little difficult to find, because it was located on top of a giant sex shop called the "World Of Erotic." For people who are so rule-oriented, Germany has a shocking amount of sex for Americans. Sex shops, nude calendars in regular bookshops, and so on.

Anyway, up above the World Of Erotic, we paid for our beds in a dorm room, found the room, and piled our non-valuable stuff on a pair of bunk beds. And then, we took to the streets yet again, at one AM.

We asked the people at the hostel which direction we should go in for places with food that were't Burger King, and were pointed down the street past the World Of Erotic. There was a cheap Chinese restaurant called China Box right next to it, but I'm not a huge fan of Chinese food, so we continued on, while discussing the naming patterns of Chinese restaurants.

"Have you ever noticed that ninety percent of Chinese restaurants follow the same naming pattern?" I asked.

"No, not really...."

"It's true. They start with the word 'China,' and then add some random noun. Random English noun, even in non-English-speaking countries."

This is a true fact, something I've observed in several countries. China Box, China Express, China Garden, China Sea, China Camp....the list goes on. My favorite, though, is China Buffet. Why? Because it reveals another universal truth about Chinese restaurants.

You see, in general, all-you-can-eat buffets are a pretty American concept. You don't find many of them in Europe. If you do, though, it's almost guaranteed to be a Chinese restaurant. Or occasionally Indian. I guess it's a business model that works for the Chinese-restaurant-owning community.

Anyway, back to Berlin. Eventually, we found a place, a bar/restaurant that showed no signs of closing up anytime soon. It was kind of a hole-in-the-wall, and we ate in a tiny back room with an interesting design: the door into the one-person-bathroom was right off the dining room. Which, in my opinion, is sucky feung-shui, but, anyway, it was the most affordable place we found.

It was a nice place, the kind of place where you could be a regular, and sit with a drink all night long, reading a book, and they wouldn't bother you. If I lived in Berlin, I think I might just become that sort of a regular. It was an interesting place for people-watching, too. Plus, they served American-style breakfast in the middle of the night! Just like home, where Waffle House is my midnight hangout.

We stayed there for an hour or so, I guess, and might have stayed longer, except we were pretty exhausted. So we made our way back to the World Of Erotic, and collapsed into bed.

The next day, we explored Berlin. We made it to the Brandenburg Gate, the Holocaust Memorial, the Berliner Dom, all nice sightseeing, got some cool pictures (which I don't have, again, for reasons I'll explain), and then discovered something awesome.

Ampelmann is German for the traffic signal men. You know, the green or red light-up figures telling you to walk or stay where you are, in case you are too dumb to just see if there's any traffic and then cross (very American mindset, let me tell you; random people will yell at you on the street in Germany for jaywalking, regardless of the traffic). In Berlin, you'll find two types of Ampelmann. One is the regular kind, and the other is the Communist kind, the type found in East Germany, and still visible in some places today. The Communist ones are awesome, as you can see here:

Image blatantly stolen from a Google Image search for "Berlin Ampelmann."

When we first saw them, across from the World Of Erotic, we thought they were awesome. It wasn't until later, though, that we discovered they had something of a cult following. And how did we discover this? By coming across a store near the Berliner Dom, a store that is the definition of awesome: The Ampelmann Store!!!!!

!!!!!!!!

Yeah. It needs that many exclamation points.

It may have been overpriced and gimmicky, but that doesn't diminish the awesome. There were t-shirts, books, pencils, keychains, everything Ampelmann that could could think of. I bought a keychain there, the start of my international keychains collection (currently standing at three, but it will grow!), in the shape of the green Ampelmann (yes, it needs to be capitalized; the Germans capitalize all their nouns).

As I was completing my purchase, I picked up an advertising postcard at the register, listing the several locations of the Ampelmann store in Berlin, and--wait for it--THE AMPELMANN RESTAURANT!!!!!

!!!!!!

It was immediately decided that this would be our dinner destination.

Up next in part three: the Ampelmann restaurant, Russian souvenirs, and indecent exposure.

My Best Friend, The Angry Driver (Or: The Tragic Death Of Shamu)

2009-12-12T06:23:00.000-05:00

Since absolutely nothing interesting is happening in my life right now, at least not anything I want to share with the internet, and this blog is new, I'm probably going to be filling it with a lot of stories that have already happened. Since the most that's happening right now is, well, I have two days to decide what to do with my life, and I have no idea what the decision will be, so I'm ignoring it by developing an addiction to Bones. Which, by the way, is awesome.

This is not my most interesting story, but it's on my mind tonight, so I'm going to tell it. I know it's crazy long, but I'd say it's pretty interesting, so please, read! Or at least skim.

There are a few interesting stories that go along with my best friend driving. We spent most of the past summer in her now-deceased car, Shamu (yeah, like the whale--she explained it by saying "it's big and blue," but I'm pretty sure the whale was not actually blue, as it was an orca), while our other best friend was traipsing around Europe with our gay-but-in-denial insensitive Canadian guy friend (the people I know are a cast of characters, you'll get to know them all eventually). There were late-night trips to Waffle House, wild parties, sketchy drug deals, picnics, camping trips, lots of Mexican food consumed--we had a pretty awesome summer, really. Lots of stories to tell.

Anyway, I don't have a driver's license (ridiculous, I know), so she drove. If you met her outside of her car, you'd think she was a really easygoing person, with no temper to speak of, despite being a redhead. You wouldn't be able to imagine her screaming curse words at anyone.

And then, if you got into her car, you'd stare at her, jaw practically on the floor, for the duration of the ride.

If you think you know road rage, well, you don't know it coming from a tiny, innocent-seeming girl. She'll scream at anyone she thinks might have made the slightest mistake driving. I don't think the anger is helped by blasting Nickelback out of the car speakers, her favorite band, whose music, whenever I hear it, now just takes me back to her car on our way to our after-graduation celebration camping trip.

Just picture it. The most innocent person you know, sweet and quiet and nice to everyone, screaming like the most foul-mouthed truck driver you can imagine. It's definitely a sight to see, if you're not used to it.

Once, we were in Shamu, driving away from the high school, headed to Subway to get some sandwiches, and two kids were walking in the road.

"Get out of the road, dumbasses!" she screamed. They got out of the road.

As we were waiting in line at Subway, the same two kids walked into the restaurant. Road rage can come back to bite you, can't it?

Sadly, Shamu died a tragic death, also known as the time we got into a car crash and then hiked a mile through the woods in the dark and I fell into a river.

The story is this: a friend of mine from out of town, who had never been camping, never seen the mountains, came to visit. We decided the way to make her visit awesome would be to go camping.

I think now is the time for nicknames. I don't know if I should be revealing the actual names of all my friends to the internet at large, so I'm going to come up with nicknames for the three other people central to this story. Since I don't feel particularly creative, I used the Random Word Generator to come up with three common nouns. The friend from out of town will be "Inspection." My best friend the driver will be "Enterprise." The other friend I'm about to introduce will be "Epic."

So, after Enterprise and I decided to take Inspection camping, we called Epic. We decided that three girls with little-to-no outdoorsy skills should not go camping in the wilderness alone. Epic was our other best friend's (who the word generator has dubbed "Loophole") boyfriend at the time (and pretty much through all of high school--this is the summer after high school, and they broke up after she went to college), and had become a friend of ours. He's a slacker and major pothead, but a nice guy, entertaining, and good at camping. So, anyway, we call up Epic, and he says, sure, he'll come camping with us. Since he's supposed to be at summer school (which he failed but he hadn't yet told his mom about the failure at the time of this story), we go to his house to get his tent, and have to lie to his mom about not knowing where he is, while he's lying down flat in the back seat of the car in the driveway (I am not condoning any of our behavior, okay? Don't get any ideas. We were not exactly role models for good behavior.). So, we get the tent from his house, a few sleeping bags and firewood from mine, and groceries from Ingles (local chain of grocery stores), and then Epic decides he needs to complete our camping supplies with marijuana.

Again, I am not condoning anyone's behavior. Drugs are bad, okay? But, I'm telling a story, and I'll tell it honestly.

I never smoked pot, which surprises lots of people given who my friends are/were, but, I've never tried it; however, at this time, I had zero problems with my friends smoking it (I have mixed feelings now, but this is not a post about drugs). My friend from out of town, Inspection, had no experience at all with anyone doing anything even slightly not allowed, let alone doing illegal drugs. Epic had asked Enterprise and I if we minded him smoking on this camping trip, and we'd said no, but I'd forgotten to fully warn Inspection; I had forgotten that not everyone had my experience with and attitude towards drugs. I mean, in my mind, pot was barely a drug. Cigarettes are worse, in my opinion (then and now).

So, we went to his friend (who doesn't need a name, I don't think) slash dealer's house. This is not a scary drug deal. This is a high school kid who sells pot to his friends. I mean, it got out of hand later and he was more of a legitimate drug dealer, but when this took place, he was just a high school kid selling pot to his friends out of a suburban neighborhood. Not scary, in my opinion.

But for Inspection, this was a drug deal. Epic went in by himself, and we waited in the car.

"Is he buying drugs in there?" asked Inspection, sounding freaked out.

"Um. Yeah." Oops. I'd forgotten about Inspection being way more in line with the rules and the law than we were. "Do you mind too much?"

"Um....I guess not....It's interesting..."

"Have you never been around anything like this before?"

"No. Never. I mean, I guess I knew people did drugs, but I've never seen any before."

Apparently, I wreck people's innocence. This was not the first or last time. "I'm sorry about that, if I'd thought, I would have told him not to...I'm really sorry..."

"No, I don't mind...Are you guys going to smoke it, too?"

"No, not me, Enterprise maybe, but Epic's just a pothead, don't worry about it...I'm sorry!" I continued to apologize for quite some time.

Anyway, he got his weed, and we drove about an hour into the mountains, parked, and then hiked about a mile into the woods, to a campsite Epic knew. This involved crossing a river. The trail was rough, not too bad in the middle of the day, but lots of rocks and roots and such. This will become important.

We set up camp. Well, Epic and Enterprise set up camp. Inspection and I tried to help. We are not outdoors-people. Inspection had never even been camping before. We built a fire. Epic smoked some weed.

And then it was dinnertime. Rather than doing any sort of cooking, we had gotten sandwich-making supplies, string cheese, chocolate chip cookies, and some Cheese-Its.

"We're eating the lunch of a third grader," remarked Enterprise.

Yes, we were, and it was awesome. Epic ate four peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. It's called the munchies, people. He also drank half the beverages we'd packed, because we'd packed for girls, not a six foot tall pot-smoking guy.

"I think we need more drinks," he said.

"Yeah, we could head to the convenience store, about twenty minutes down the road....What do you say, Enterprise?" I asked.

"Sure," she said. We hiked back to the parking lot, but left all our stuff and didn't bring flashlights--we didn't expect to be gone past dark. And, we were never that great at thinking ahead. Enterprise and I are sort of known for a lack of judgment.

Anyway, we went to the convenience store, got a couple of canned drinks, and were driving back as the sun started to set over the mountains. We actually stopped to watch it for a few minutes; it was beautiful. We were alone on the road, and it was a beautiful evening. It wasn't quite dark yet, and we thought we could make it back to the campsite before it was totally dark. We weren't worried.

Inspection and I were in the back seat, talking about something I don't remember now. Epic was in the passenger's seat, and, of course, Enterprise was driving. I was holding a can of diet coke, which I opened, and that's when it happened. We were way up in the mountains, with solid rock on one side of us, and a 200-foot drop straight down on the other. I don't remember anything except Epic yelling, "Turn the car! Turn the car!," and then blinding pain. Later, Enterprise told me what had happened: the back wheel of the car had slipped off the pavement (there's no shoulder on the road), she'd been going a little fast, and she overcorrected, sending the car towards the drop-off. In reacting to Epic yelling, she'd turned it back towards the rock face, and the car had slammed into it, spun around, and ended up with the back of the car against the rock.

I hit my head twice, my forehead on the seat in front of me, and the top of my head on the roof (I was only wearing the lap-belt part of my seatbelt). I ended up bruised on my head, dazed for several hours afterwards (apparently I was repeating myself quite a lot; there are parts of this I don't remember clearly), and bruises from the seatbelt all over my stomach.

After the impact, I was in so much pain I couldn't see for a minute or so. The first thing I heard was Epic yelling at us to get out of the car. I didn't know if it was going to catch on fire or roll off the mountain or what, so I stumbled out and right into a mud puddle.

We spent the next few hours sitting on the side of the road, first waiting for emergency services to get there (we were in the middle of nowhere), then for the tow truck, and finally, when all that was done, a policeman drove us back to the parking lot near where we'd camped. Our injuries were minor; I was covered in bruises and had a headache for days afterwards (probably a mild concussion, and the ambulance should have looked at me, but they didn't), Epic was fine, Inspection had a couple of bruises, and Enterprise had been hit in the face by the airbag, and her face was all scraped up (she had a bloody nose immediately after the crash, and, since we had no tissues or anything, was covered in blood).

Epic was the only calm one, really, probably due to the fact that he was high. We were all glad he was there, though; we would have been freaking out otherwise.

Anyway, we got back to the trail in the middle of the night. While it wasn't a bad hike in the daylight, we had only a keychain-sized flashlight, and had to go single-file, holding on to each other, with Epic in the front. Aside from a few stumbles, we managed okay, until we got to the river crossing. This requires stepping from one small rock to the next, which is manageable in the daylight, but difficult, to say the least, at night.

Of course, me being as clumsy as I am, I fell in, just as my feet were starting to dry from the mud puddle.

So there we were. Back at the tent, covered in bruises and blood, mildly concussed, soaked to the skin, with no way of getting home the next day, and dead cell phones.

And this is only the beginning of why it sucked.

The next day, we packed up camp, and hiked, bruises and all, back to the parking lot. We sat on the sidewalk and waited, borrowing cell phones from other hikers when we could, calling various people, searching for a ride. I didn't call my parents, because I hadn't called them after the accident, and I figured telling them about it later rather than immediately would make them assume I was hiding something. To this day, they don't know about it.

One of the people we got ahold of was Kate's dad, who had had to deal with the car being towed back to the city after the crash. He couldn't come get us, but we learned some sad news: our summer of freedom would have to come to an end. Shamu was dead, and could not be revived.

That car was our freedom that summer. We went on a three-hour roadtrip to a zoo just because we could. We stayed out until all hours of the night. We did whatever we wanted to, because we had transportation. Alas, it was not to be. Shamu, who had carried us faithfully for two years, had passed.

Anyway, after two or three hours of waiting, Epic's mom finally picked us up. Embarrassingly, our freshman English teacher had seen us waiting, as she'd been going hiking with her family, and we had to explain to her what was going on. I wasn't so much embarrassed, actually, but Enterprise was, having crashed her car for no good reason. Not that there's ever really a good reason for a car crash, but sometimes there are circumstances besides you not being the greatest driver in the world.

We'd been lying in the sun, with no sunblock, and the three of us girls (two redheads, one very pale brunette) ended up completely roasted. Epic, with his apparently superior gene pool (he's pretty pale himself) was a little tanned. We were lobster-colored. I spent the next few days wearing a camisole without the straps because anything touching my shoulders caused agony, and taking a few too many prescription painkillers left over from when my mother hurt her hand. There were horrible blisters and I couldn't even take a shower or leave the house. It was pretty much awful. That, on top of the injuries from the car crash. The most painful week of my life. Oh, and did I mention that we had to help Enterprise's aunt move the next day?

Yeah. Moving furniture in that condition was NOT FUN. And we couldn't get any guys to come with us; Epic's mom wouldn't let him leave the house, and it wasn't until we were a few hours into the moving that we managed to get our friend Loophole's little brother to come and help us (little being relative, as he was sixteen).

I'm not sure that Inspection will ever come visit me again after that; there was a car crash, much pain, drugs, manual labor, lying to my parents.....The only way it could have been worse was if that had been the weekend we slept in a parking lot in hundred-degree heat. But, that's a story for another time, and this one's been long enough.

We mourned Shamu's death as the end of our adventures, but trust me, we ended up finding ways around it, after we recovered. And that, my friends and nonexistent readers, is the end of the story of the death of Shamu.

Read This Awesome Post (Not Mine, I'm Not Calling Myself Awesome, At Least Not Right Now)

2009-12-12T04:59:00.001-05:00

Dealt a bad hand in life? Learn How to Snub Your Circumstances & End Up With a Royal Flush | The Middle Finger Project

^Just click and read.

Google vs Apple

2009-12-11T23:41:00.000-05:00

This Wall Street Journal article, along with the accompanying diagram, would lead you to believe that Apple and Google are big competitors. It's interesting, but I really don't think it's accurate. I love both companies, and in a lot of cases, I think their products and services complement rather than compete with each other. I use a Macbook Pro, with Safari as my main browser, and an iPod as my mp3 player of choice (which of course means iTunes), but what I do with Safari, well, there's a lot of Google involved. It's my search engine of choice, my email service of choice, my blogging platform, RSS reader, and quite a few other things.

The diagram in the article shows five areas where the two companies theoretically overlap. First, operating systems. The claim is that Google's new Chrome OS will compete with OSX, but I think the markets for the two are entirely different. OSX is a fully-functioning desktop operating system, able to run native applications, surf the web, anything, really. Chrome OS, on the other hand, is, as I understand it, supposed to be a lightweight, web-based operating system. It won't run applications that are necessary for a lot of professionals, particularly in the design business, and won't really replace a full operating system like OSX or Windows; rather, it will be lightweight and perfect for portable computing, namely, netbooks. I don't think anyone's going to be giving up the functionality of OSX for Chrome OS; rather, one might have both operating systems, Chrome on a netbook, and OSX on a main computer.

The second area of overlap is music. Google lets you search for and listen to music, and this article claims that competes with iTunes, but, really, the two aren't alike at all. Streaming a song or two is nice if someone gives you a recommendation, but it doesn't replace iTunes' functionality, creating your own playlists, and, most importantly, owning your music, and allowing you to load it onto an iPod and have it anywhere you go!

In the video arena, Youtube and iTunes don't overlap much, either. Youtube is nice if you want to quickly find a music video, or one of the countless viral videos of people doing stupid and possibly dangerous stunts and finding an audience online, but iTunes video is more about movies and TV shows, high-quality, portable ones, which isn't something Youtube comes close to replacing.

Browsers is an area where they might actually compete, with Chrome and Safari, but I'd argue that's not such a big deal; neither browser is the main business of either company.

Mobile platforms are probably the biggest competition between the companies. The iPhone is undeniably awesome and popular, and Google's Android platform smartphones are increasingly popular, too. However, this brings me to a point: Apple's main business is hardware. They sell computers and mp3 players. Google's main business (where 97% of its revenue comes from) is advertising. Much of what Google does is aimed towards earning more out of advertising. Hardware does not enter the picture. It's more about the software, the web applications (and downloadable applications), and the vast majority of those don't compete with anything Apple has to offer. I'd say the two companies can coexist safely, at least for now. Of course, if you disagree, I'd love to hear it!

Traveling At Home

2009-12-11T14:02:00.000-05:00

This is one of my favorite pages on the internet, something I keep bookmarked to look at when wherever I am starts to feel old and stale. I just wanted to share it with all of you, starting with this snippet:

Travel, I think, should not merely be the act of getting way the hell out there into the Himalayas or hitchhiking your way across Borneo. It can be that—but it can, and I would argue should, also be a way of seeing.

Read the rest here.

Squared Paper, College Ruled, and Fountain Pens, Oh My!

2009-12-11T11:09:00.000-05:00

I’m American, but I go to school in Germany, and I’ve noticed a few differences in writing supplies between the two countries.

All through high school, I wrote my class notes in cheap spiral notebooks from Target, you know the type, with college-ruled paper. I didn’t bring any with me to Germany, because I figured, cheap notebooks must be available everywhere! And, sure, they are. But not college ruled. I found only two kinds of notebooks at Marktkauf, the German equivalent of a Wal-Mart or Target: lined notebooks with paper closer to what we call wide-ruled, and notebooks with squared paper. Nothing college-ruled in sight! I chose squared paper, because I have small handwriting, and I have to say, I now actually prefer to write on squared paper. The lines are more my size than even college-ruled paper.

After some discussion with a German friend, we figured out a theory as to why college-ruled paper doesn’t exist in Germany: students are taught to write with fountain pens. I had never in my life used a fountain pen; in America, there are artsy, old-fashioned, or elite people who might use them, but we use cheap ballpoint pens, or pens with gel inks or whatever (or pencils, but I’ll get to that in a minute), not fountain pens. The vast majority of Americans (myself included at that point) would have no idea how to use a fountain pen, but for a German student, it’s normal. They all have correcting ink for when they make a mistake with fountain pens, too! To my German friend, it was unthinkable that one would turn in any sort of official assignment written with the kind of pen that comes in a package of twenty for less than three dollars at any discount store–or, God forbid, written in pencil!

They even write math in ink, and when I did find some pencils at a stationary store in Germany (a chain called McPaper, for some reason), none had erasers. None. Okay, maybe one over on the end, but 99% did not have erasers. In America, fancy artist pencils may not have erasers, but those that the average person writes down grocery lists or scribbles calculations with certainly do! Again, I turned to my German friend, who said : “Why would those pencils have erasers? Pencils with erasers are for children.” Which, in my opinion, is a really interesting statement. It says that in the German mindset, they can’t admit to the fact that they might make mistakes and have to correct something. They do have erasers, separate from the pencils, but those are not so readily available: those do not have the reminder that one might make a mistake staring you in the face as you write. I guess. Apparently, admitting that we’re all human and make mistakes is not the German thing to do.

I still don’t know why squared paper is a normal writing paper in Germany, though. I guess because schoolchildren use it a lot, definitely because it’s easier to do math on, and possibly the teaching of handwriting is made easier on squared paper, the same way we use paper with a dotted line between every two solid lines to teach handwriting in the States.

It’s interesting–something I always thought was universal, stationary, turned out to be far from that!

Originally posted on one of my older adventures into blogging, which I'd prefer not to link to, but trust me, it's not plagiarized--email me if you want verification!

To Berlin and Back Again, Twice: Part One

2009-12-11T06:40:00.000-05:00

Note: when I started to type this up, I had no idea how long the story was, so I'll be posting this in installments. Probably three, maybe four, but no guarantees. Here's part one:

I've been to Berlin, Germany on two separate occasions. Despite my love of photography, I have no pictures of the city, for reasons that will become clear after I tell the story of the second time I went to Berlin.

My first trip to Berlin was spontaneous. I was sitting in my college dorm room in Bremen, Germany with a friend on Friday afternoon. We were both done with all of our classes, and trying to figure out what to do with the weekend ahead of us.

"We could go downtown tonight." That's what we did a lot of nights.

"We could go to Hamburg." Again, not too unusual; Hamburg wasn't too far away. We'd both been there before.

"We could go...somewhere else."

"Anywhere else."

An idea started to take root in my mind. "Pack your bags and meet me at the front door in ten minutes!" I said.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"I don't know. Somewhere else."

This is my brand of adventure, one familiar to my friends, one that occasionally ends in disaster and often ends in awesome. My friend in this situation hadn't experienced many of my "adventures" yet; the word didn't have the same connotation that it does to my longtime friends who have been with me through midnight terror in the woods, trespassing on military property, breaking into Disnelyand, car crashes, wild parties, sleeping in parking lots, or shady drug deals (I wasn't the one driving the car or buying the drugs, though....all stories for another time!). So she said, "Okay."

And, ten minutes later (give or take ten minutes; she's a slow packer), we were out the door!

At the local train station, we met another friend--more of an acquaintance, really, I guess, we didn't know him well. But, we knew him well enough to get on the train downtown together, and discuss our weekend plans. He was on his way to Hamburg, and asked us where we were going with our bags packed. "Somewhere. We don't know yet." His English isn't the best--he's Spanish--and it took a few tries to communicate the idea that we were off on some unknown adventure, but upon finding out, he just laughed at our craziness--a better reaction, we were soon to find out, than we'd get from the Germans we encountered!

When we got off the train at Bremen's central station, or Hauptbahnhof in German, we decided that, if at all possible, we'd like to go somewhere warm--which, for a weekend trip, required a visit to the airport.

Sadly, once at the airport, we were met with confusion and disapproval. Ticket sales, we were told, ended twenty-four hours before a flight left. This isn't true online, we later discovered, but it was true at that airport, at that ticket counter.

So, it was back to the train station for us. This time, we decided to go to Hamburg, where we'd have more options for ongoing trains than we did in Bremen. We spent an hour and twenty minutes on the regional train (rather than the express train, which our student tickets didn't allow us to ride--we found that out the hard way, but it's a story for another time), excitedly discussing possibilities and discovering, over the course of the conversation, that I'd forgotten to bring toothpaste, and she'd forgotten to bring another pair of pants.

At the ticket window in the Hamburg train station, we encountered more bewilderment.

"Where do you want to go?"

"Anywhere."

"Yes, but where?"

"Anywhere. Where are the next trains going?"

Apparently, spontaneity is not a concept that's very familiar to Germans.

After several tries, we got times and prices for trains to three or four cities, but decided to try one more option: buses. It was already seven PM, but we'd see where we could go.

In Germany, there is no national bus company, no Greyhound equivalent. Train travel is the way to go there, and that's what's the norm, well-organized and efficient. After asking directions a few times, though, we found our way to a bus terminal, consisting of counters for several different companies. There seemed to be a lot of buses going to Poland, but we decided to stay closer than that, because of the already-late hour, and the fact that arriving in a place where neither of us spoke the language (she speaks German) in the early hours of the morning might not be the best idea in the world. My best friends at home would have been proud of me for having that much judgment!

At one counter, though, the next bus leaving was in fifteen minutes, to Berlin. There was a return trip on Sunday afternoon, and the price was half that of a last-minute train ticket to Berlin!

We bought our tickets, went outside, found the bus, and found our seats.

To be continued....

Quotable Quotes

2009-12-11T02:53:00.000-05:00

Collecting quotes is a hobby I picked up from Jordyn. I have to say, it's pretty addictive; I'm always scribbling something down, from a television show or website or book, in my notebook, a pocket-sized black Moleskine. In fact, that's my second quote notebook; I already filled a cool one from Paperblanks.

These are words I collect because they reveal truths, in words more eloquent than mine. They evoke feelings, or remind me of the way I want to live my life. They remind me of the spontaneity, joy, wanderlust, curiosity, passion, and creativity that I sometimes have, and always want to hold on to. The fundamental truths of how we want to live our lives are different for everyone, but a lot of mine are expressed nicely in various quotes. They're also just eloquent truths, independent from my values, words that touched me in some way. These are words that inspire people, or provoke thought--words that impact people, like I hope to write someday.

This could be a really long post, but I'll limit myself to ten of my favorite selections from my quote books. I hope you find something in here that means something to you.

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." -Mark Twain.

"No place is boring if you've had a good night's sleep and have a pocket full of unexposed film." -Robert Adams. For me, that would be an empty memory card, but the heart of it's the same.

"All that is gold does not glitter; not all those who wander are lost." -JRR Tolkein.

"Sometimes, seizing the day isn't about yourself at all. It's about soaking in life's beautiful moments, even if they're not your own." -Slice of Lemon.

"I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way." -Carl Sandburg.

"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away." -Maya Angelou.

"Music's the only thing that makes sense anymore. Play it loud enough, it keeps the demons at bay." -Across the Universe (the movie, not the song).

"These are experiences I will never have in Montana. They are stories of a different place, a place I was walking away from. The emotions of that realization bubbled up inside me." -Jon Wick on Bootsnall.com.

"Listen, can you hear it? The music, I can hear it everywhere. In the wind, in the air, in the light. It's all around us. All you have to do is open yourself up." -August Rush.

"Relocating to another continent may not be what our heart desires, but I believe living life fearlessly is. It is fearlessness that allows us to forge the unknown, create new dreams and new possibilities, and confidently reinvent ourselves and our destinies. It is fearlessness that begs us to climb the mountain of 'impossible things.'" -Looking Glass Lane.

What are your favorite quotes?

This is a picture I took behind my high school this past spring. It feels forward-looking and somehow appropriate on this post.

Why Read Fiction?

2009-12-11T00:00:00.000-05:00

This is a college essay I wrote last year, one of my favorite college essays to write, and I thought I’d share it here. (For the record, I got in.)

Pose an original question and answer it. (500 words).

Q: What can we learn from fiction?

A: Most people agree that reading is good for your mind. Many of them, however, also seem to limit that statement to reading non-fiction, and see reading fiction as a waste of one’s time. I would argue, however, that fiction, even when it takes place in a world very different from our own, can be very educational. Certainly, we can learn concrete facts from fiction, about far-off places or historical time periods, but there is much, much more to be gained from reading fiction than what is easily quantifiable by a multiple-choice test.

John Green’s “Looking for Alaska” taught me that everyone has logical reasons and motivations for what they do, even if they just seem irrational from the outside. Alaska, who is as real as anyone I’ve ever known, behaves in erratic, irrational ways, but it all makes sense, knowing the details, and that applies to real life, too; as crazy as people seem, they have their reasons. Fictional characters such as the cast of Siobhan Vivian’s “A Little Friendly Advice” provide invaluable insight into the interactions and relationships between people. Vivian’s book explores in detail familial, friendly, and romantic relationships, and these relationships are far from picture-perfect–they’re true-to-life and messy. It might be impossible to quiz people on social interactions or the reasons for their behavior in reality, but fiction provides us that opportunity.

Harper Lee’s powerful words in “To Kill A Mockingbird” would not communicate her brilliant understanding of humanity half as well if their author didn’t have such skill with words. From fiction, we learn the potency of language and how to best wield that power by expressing ourselves in writing. We learn by example how to articulate our thoughts, hopes, fears, and the stories (fiction and non-fiction) that must be told. We learn to communicate with other people. We learn what methods are effective and which leave the reader bored to tears. Even if one never really pursues writing, the communication skills gained by reading fiction are essential.

Fiction teaches us about possibilities. It teaches us to dream of far-off places or ambitious goals, and not to give up on those dreams, but to reach as high as we can and then leap. Fiction lets us touch our dreams through words on a page, and hope they can be even more tangible someday. I am sorry for anyone who can’t see the value of fiction; I’m sorry for anyone who has lost their imagination. Without fiction, I imagine I would be a different person, a person who accepted what life gave me and never reached for anything more. We are all capable of more than what is handed to us in life, however much or little that is. Fiction teaches us that, and so much more, if only we feed our imaginations with fiction rather than ignoring it in favor of only that which we consider to be real.

Writing Online

2009-12-10T22:32:00.000-05:00

I'm using Adobe's online word processor, Buzzword, to write this post. I don't own iWork or Microsoft Office, but I do quite a bit of writing, so I've spent the past few days searching for the best free word processor out there. I've got a few thoughts to share about what I've discovered. I tried probably a dozen solutions, but I'll just compare Adobe Buzzword , Google Docs, and Zoho Writer in this post, because those are the three serious contenders, in my mind--the only three services that were promising enough, from other reviews, screenshots, and feature lists, for me to even sign up for. I first looked into downloadable software solutions, but then I remembered all the trouble I had when my hard drive crashed on my last computer; I still haven't recovered all the documents I had saved, but not backed up online. So, I decided to focus on online word processing solutions. There are other aspects to all of these programs, like presentation programs, collaboration aspects, lots of things, but word processing is what I'm focused on for now. Everything was tested in Safari on OS X 10.6, on the lowest-end MacBook Pro.

First up, the most well-known of the bunch, Google Docs. My favorite thing about Google docs is that it's from Google, integrated into other Google services. Gmail is my absolute favorite email service in the world, and I also use Google Reader for my RSS feeds. And, of course, blogger! Like Reader and Gmail, Docs is also available offline through Google Gears, which is really useful--the main draw of a desktop app (offline access), with the availability of online access. A document can be downloaded and saved in a variety of file formats, too, making it Word-compatible. The document editor itself is simple, easy to use--not a lot of eye-candy, but it's perfectly functional. One of the most annoying things about it is that, from the home screen, documents open in a new window. As far as organization goes, important documents can be starred, and all of the documents can be organized into folders. I'd have liked to see labels here instead, similar to Gmail, though. And, of course, it utilizes Google Search, which is always nice!

Second, Zoho Writer. It also comes with offline access, interestingly, using Google Gears as well. One of its best features is a tabbed interface, allowing you to keep multiple documents open in one window. It's better organized in that way than Google Docs, but it adds to the overall cluttered appearance of the program. Like Google Docs, there's not much here in the way of design, but, again, it's functional, and simple to use--there's not much of a learning curve with either application, which is nice. Both are also enabled to post directly from the document to a blog, which is far more convenient than saving a document in a word processor, and then copying and pasting it into Blogger. Organization of files here is done by tagging (and the tags take the form of folders), an improvement from Google's service in my opinion. There's also a search function for finding the right document if you've got a lot of them to look through.

Adobe Buzzword is newer than either of the other two applications, and it has a lot of potential. It lacks some of the essential features, like the ability to publish to Blogger, and, most importantly, offline access, though I've heard that's coming, just not here yet. What it lacks in features, though, I feel it more than makes up for with a really nice Flash-based interface. It's far smoother, and way less cluttered, than Google or Zoho. The word count and spell-check features are readily available in the bottom right corner of the screen, and one menu bar at the top, organized by nice-looking icons, has tables, images, fonts, lists, etc., and, one of my favorite features, comments. It's easy to add a comment off to the side, anywhere in the document, which would come in really handy when sharing a document between multiple people. Editing suggestions would be easy, whereas, as far as I can tell, the other two applications would require you to actually edit the document. Another nice feature is the ability to export in various file formats, including a standard ebook format that the other two lack support for--not so useful to me, since I don't have an ebook reader, but it could definitely come in handy if you do. It doesn't have as many font choices yet as the other two services, but, like I said, it's the new kid on the block, so I'm cutting Buzzword some slack. Organization is done collections of files (like folders, I guess). There's a search function, but it only searches titles and tags on documents, not within the document, so it's a little useless when compared to the others. A lot of improvements could still be made, but those I'd most like to see are tabs within the program, ability to export to a blog, and offline support.

Buzzword doesn't yet have as many features as the other two options, but it's a lot slicker. I much prefer the uncluttered look to the clutter of Google or Zoho, but it all depends on what's important to you. If you simply can't go without offline access, blog publishing, or some of those other features, you'll want to go with one of the first options (my personal preference is for Google, but both are good options). If you're in love with a nice interface, like me (and lots of mac users!), and willing to work around Buzzword's flaws (and wait for them to be fixed eventually, I hope), by pasting posts into blogger and saving documents to your hard drive if you want to access them offline, you'll love it. But, really, you can't go wrong with any of these options; it's all about personal preference. I've chosen Buzzword for now, despite its lack of features, but who knows; I might become quickly frustrated with its shortcomings and switch (if I did, I'd probably choose Google, for its less-cluttered interface, and the convenience of it being, well, Google). There are plenty of other reviews online with other takes on the respective features of these and other services, too, a quick Google search should tell you all you need to know! Here's a link to an article that doesn't say much more than what I've said, but includes some nice screenshots of all three programs.

Edit: When I pasted this into Blogger, there were a few issues with the formatting that I had to correct--mostly, the font became huge!

Why Undivided?

2009-12-10T04:44:00.000-05:00

I've always maintained several blogs at one time. My personal life, my love of books, my infatuation with office supplies, my inner techie, my creative side--they all had different web presences.

I've started this blog to be undivided. Here, I'll post about books if I want to. I'll post my personal opinions about life. I'll post about my favorite online office applications. I'll rave about a notebook or a pen that I love. I'll post some of my photography.

Basically, anything goes. All-in-one, undivided.