Thursday, October 30, 2008

Log Out. Always Log Out.

Phew! That's so much better. I thought that pink and blue background was going to burn my retinas. I'm liking this seasonal and pleasant background. For now, anyway.

Well, I guess Ali is harder to please than I thought. Now she wants music. Sigh. Okay, Ali, I'm working on it. Gimme a little breathing room, would ya? Geez!

Okay, I'll admit it: I'm kind of excited about the music thing. I just have to figure out how to do it. I will. Really, I will.

On a more embarrassing note...

My friend Craig, husband of April was checking his Facebook at our house last week. The next day when I went to Facebook it was already on Craig's page! He didn't log out! I laughed my evil laugh (Mwa ha ha!) and got to work, first sabotaging his profile. I put his interests as ogling, overcompensating, posturing, and I forget what else, changed his favorite books to the Twilight Series, changed his schooling, degrees, job title, religion (Sikh), political party (Boston Tea Party -- it's real! I looked it up!), and etc. Then I wrote on people's walls, posing as Craig, of course. I told his son to stop going around telling people I had a big hole in my underwear, I told his brother I didn't want to be brothers with him anymore due to his being too "high maintenance," "emotional," and "uncoordinated" and said I'd decided to be brothers with Matthew McConaughey instead because he was more fun and likes to be nude a lot. Which is true. Which I didn't really think through. Which could be taken wrong. Which Craig didn't appreciate.

If I were to name the funniest person I know, it would be Craig. No contest. He can throw a punchline before the end of your sentence. He can be intelligent funny, dry funny, and goofy funny. He can be both laugh-with and laugh-at funny. You can count on some gut-wrenching laughs when Craig's around. In fact, April keeps trying to get me to write the embarrassing story of when Craig said something funny while I was drinking a Lime Rickey at Arctic Circle and I coughed, spewed, gagged, and subsequently THREW UP Lime Rickey all over my tray of food. We didn't know Craig and April very well at that time, but after that bonding moment we knew we'd be friends forever. Did I mention I was exceedingly pregnant? Did I mention I also peed my maternity pants? Good times. (And now you don't have to bug me about it, Apes.) But I digress.

Craig is also extremely serious. He's all smarty pants and stuff. He's a JAG officer in the Air Force. He's always in some leadership position in church. He's a stickler for the rules. I don't really see that side of him all that often, and I'm not a big fan of that side of him, either. Don't EVER make him mad, especially if his family is involved. I've seen it. It's not pretty. Admirable, yes, but NOT pretty.

Let's move on back to the Facebook story, shall we? I didn't hear anything for a day or so, so I texted his son, "Tell your dad to check his Facebook." Tee hee hee! It was going to be so funny when Craig saw my handiwork. Yeah, he was just going to change everything back to the way it was and explain to his brother and stuff, but it would be SO funny! Then nothing. And some more nothing. Finally, I called April and told her, "Has Craig seen his Facebook yet?"

"YOU did that?" she said.

"Well, duh! Who else would do that?" I said. Turns out Craig was convinced that someone had hacked into his page and planted a virus and is stalking his family and is a terrorist and is going to assassinate the president. I went back to reevaluate whether anything I wrote was over the line, but there was no page. He took it down! The whole thing. Grrrrr! I was so irritated that THAT Craig had emerged! I wanted the funny Craig to have found it. But no. So then, after stomping around and cursing "serious" Craig's lack of humor for a while, I called him to apologize. Of course he was totally nice, we're couple BFF's, after all. He explained about his professional and church related reputation and specifically mentioned the Matthew McConaughey reference. That's when I realized it could be taken differently than it was meant, which was supposed to be innocently funny. We worked it out and mutually apologized. He said it wasn't as bad as when baby Tanner threw a brass llama (camel, if Bob's telling the story. But Craig bought it in Peru and probably knows what it is, don't you think?) at baby Brach 15 years ago. "Really?" I said, "That was worse?"

"Kimi. He tried to kill my son."

Oh, Craig. You're so funny.

Monday, October 27, 2008

Techno-Genius

My Sis-in-law/BFF, Becky, calls me a techno-genius. I'm so not. If I was I wouldn't have deleted an entire entry just trying to put a little picture on my blog. Seriously, I'm still hesitant to add pictures because of the painful and, of course, embarrassing fiasco. Also if I was a t-g I would have made my blog cuter a long time ago when a helpful young friend told me, with the best of intentions, no doubt, that my blog was boring. "Not the stories! Just the background," she said. I've been shaking in my boots trying to figure out how to cuten up my blog without deleting it or something. The only thing that makes me appear to be a techno-genius (and may I say, no offense intended, that in order for one to think I'M a techno-genius, one would have to be either techno-clueless or have never seen a blog before or something) is that I will usually at least try something. And the more you dare to try something, the better you get at it.
Up until now I haven't dared try to cutitize my blog. Today I dared. I know it's a little...well...brightly colored, but it was a first attempt. I'll make it even cutier another time. Something a little more...me, perhaps. After I figure out what "me" would look like. These free backgrounds are way too put-together and creative to represent me very well. Something a little more clumsy and/or goofy and/or trying-hard-but-not-quite-pulling-it-off would be a better fit, I think. I probably won't find anything like that. Maybe I'll pick something that represents what I'd LIKE to be if I weren't such a doofus. Mmm, yeah, I think I'll go with something like that. Tune in next time to see what I've found that someone else came up with that I think is an adequate representation of what I'd like to look like, scapbookingly speaking, if I could actually create something like that on my own - which I totally can't.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

To do:

I do NOT have time to be writing this right now! I'm leaving for China in two days! My list of things to do has 21 items on it and I keep adding to it every few minutes. In fact, I'm spending more time managing my list than actually doing the things on it.

Here's what I do: read through the list. Try to decide which things are most pressing. They are all pressing. Put an asterisk by the very most pressing. Think of something else to put on the list. Add it. Look through the list again to see if I can check anything off as "done." End up choosing a task that is not very pressing because it seems easier to do, therefore whittling the list down faster. Cross that task off my list and read through it again. Try to decide which things are most pressing. They are all pressing. Go to the computer and look through the lists and instructions I'm leaving for my mom. Rinse. Repeat.

I know what's going to happen. I'm going to keep this up until the last day when I am forced to cross most everything off my list as unnecessary and let my mom just deal with it. I know that because I've done this many times before and that's what I do. But maybe this time will be different. Maybe. Maybe not. But Maybe. Geez! I don't have time to sit here writing! I've got stuff to do. Let me just read through this list real quick...