Divine Intervention

You can try to convince me that there is no God, but I'll never believe you.

3 Hours and counting...

Some people might say that I'm pathetic for sitting at home on a Friday night, eating Dove chocolate and Jolly Ranchers and watching the Disney channel. Lucky for me, I have an excuse! As I mentioned in my last post... BOYFRIEND COMES HOME TONIGHT! I turned in my last poetry essay, took my poetry final, washed my car, got the sparkling cider and champagne for my WONDERFULLY ROMANTIC scheme tonight, and I had RA for dinner :) Today is basically the best day ever!

I do have a moderately exciting story from today as well!

As I'm driving home from school, I come across a small queue of about three cars that seem to be stopped at a green light. I began pressing down on my brake pedal about 100 feet behind the car in front of me and come to a stop a safe distance away. Had I been in a hurry I probably would have changed lanes and avoided having to wait behind the stopped cars altogether, but I was in a good mood, a good song was playing, and I wasn't in any rush. I had been stopped for all of five seconds when I look into my rearview mirror and see a cream-colored '66 Mustang driving full speed towards me. I saw the old man's face as he realized that my car was not moving, and he quickly pulled the e-brake and fish tailed to avoid rear ending me. My heart stopped. I can only imagine what his poor old heart was doing. Luckily there was no one behind him or to the right of him, so his maneuver didn't affect anyone. It's times like those that you realize how lucky you really are. Worst case scenario the man could have slammed into me, causing me to hit the car in front of me, possibly causing any other number of cars to hit each other (yeah, he was going THAT fast) and any one of us could have been seriously injured. I drove away from that intersection feeling even more refreshed than I did yesterday when I had had no "near-death" experiences.

I attribute my good fortune to my safety shell. If you're ever in my car feel free to ask me about it. I'll show you :) It has protected me since I was sixteen (aka no accidents/tickets/etc.)

Good story. I know.

Life should have a "refresh" button.

There has been something about this week that has been oddly refreshing. It could be because of the fact that despite the oodles and oodles of things I've had on my agenda (daily)I haven't felt stressed. I've forced myself to stay awake all day (meaning none of the naps I love so dearly) in order to be productive. I've been more actively engaged in school, my sorority, and my family life this way. It's weird how the busier you are, the happier you seem to be. You would think that a busy person would knock himself out trying to do EVERYTHING and be EVERYWHERE at the same time, and that having a full schedule would be tiresome-- but it's oddly refreshing.

The other refreshing aspect of this week could be due to the fact that Boyfriend will be coming home TOMORROW and I successfully avoided getting sick all week! [I felt the sickness coming on last Friday, so I let myself sleep approximately 30 hours over the weekend to get my energy levels back up. I also have been taking my Esberitox every day, as well as daily multi-vitamins, using the Neti pot, and avoiding milk products.]

It's a weird coincidence but every time Boyfriend is close to coming home either he gets sick, or I do. Without fail. OR on the off chance that neither of us gets sick before he gets home, one of us gets sick WHILE he's home, which is even worse. No matter. This time will be different. We will both be healthy and happy and productive and everything will be wonderful!

But before he gets home I have to write a poetry essay, study for my poetry final, turn in my essay and take my final, finish the part of his belated Valentine's gift that I'm making, buy the part of his belated Valentine's gift that I'm buying, buy a Coke in a glass bottle, buy champagne and some Martinelli's, and wash my car.

::Refresh::

Death by Peanut Butter.

If you've been hip to the latest news, you may be aware that there have been over 400 salmonella-related illnesses in the U.S., and three deaths. What do all of the victims have in common? They have all consumed peanut butter. Now before you run to your cupboard and evict your jar of peanut butter, you may be interested to know that most of the cases involved peanut butter that was distributed from food service providers, not directly to consumers. King Nut and Parnell's Pride peanut butters and suspected to be the culprits. Two years ago, ConAgra recalled Peter Pan Peanut Butter for causing over 650 cases of salmonella food poisoning in almost every one of our 50 states.
I was thankful to find that my favorite peanut butter brand's (Skippy) reputation appears to remain untainted, and I intend to continue eating the Duane ____ Burger as often as possible.
In lighter news, the mayor of Guanajuato has declared Mexico City the "kissing capital of the world." He did not do this to encourage romantic PDA, however. He did it to prove that he had not, in fact, placed a ban on kissing in public as it had been rumored. He set an ad campaign in motion with a picture of a couple kissing that says, "Guanajuato, the kissing capital." This is a sweet idea and all, but couldn't he have just denied the kissing prohibition? Does he need a full-fledged campaign to prove he's not the anti-cupid? Whatever his reasons, it looks like Rome and Paris are being given a run for their money ;p ...or not.

The Funny Thing About the Flu

The flu does a lot of things to a person. There are the obvious symptoms: congestion, cough, sore throat, all over body aches, fatigue, etc.

But beyond the less than pleasurable symptoms of the flu, you may find yourself deliriously hopeful of doing two things: 1) being outrageously productive in the downtime you now find yourself with since you have missed all of your classes for the day or 2) wanting to sleep the day away, turn off your phone and become a complete recluse.

Well I have found myself feeling both extremes in the now three days that I have been sick. Sleeping has, of course, gotten quite old and I daresay I will most likely avoid sleep at all costs for the first week of my improved health. Perhaps two weeks. I also have fluctuated through the cycle of wanting to be productive and rationalizing that I needn't be, because, well, I am sick after all. I have work to do for all four of my classes and I feel that it would be advantageous to my mental health (though maybe not my physical health) to get it done. Advantageous or not, I predict that I will get very little done in the coming hours of illness and I probably also will not sleep.

A third symptom of sickness has suddenly become apparent. The desire to watch endless hours of television while snuggled comfortably in my bed drinking ginger ale and texting all of the exciting folks who are out living their exciting lives on a Saturday night.

The third will reign victorious tonight.

Bizzwords

I got an e-mail from my dad that contained a little snippet from a review of a book by "Mr. Bergman." In it, he mentions a few words that I definitely think should become a part of everyone's daily life when they become part of the workplace.

chainsaw consultant, "an outside consultant brought in to fire employees"
brightsizing, "downsizing by laying off the brightest workers"
layoff lust, "the desire to be fired from one's job"
to Nasdaq, meaning "to sharply decline in value or quantity."
bozo explosion, "a rapid increase of incompetent employees at a particular company" mucus trooper, "an employee with a cold or the flu who insists on showing up for work"
prairie-dogging, "the sudden appearance of people's heads over the top of the cubicle walls when something interesting or noisy happens."
jetiquette, the flyers' code of polite behavior.
clickstream, "the virtual path a person takes while surfing the Web"
Zen mail, "an e-mail message without text or attachments"
Dorito syndrome, dissatisfaction felt after wasting time surfing the Net and accomplishing nothing

"There are also a number of entries whose business connections are tenuous. For example, negative patient outcome (the patient died) is medical jargon. Voluntary simplicity (avoiding luxury and pretense) smacks of New Age patois. And ohnosecond -- "the little bit of time it takes you to realize that you've just made a huge mistake" -- has far too much potential to be confined to the workplace."

My favorites are bozo explosion and mucus trooper. C'mon, you know we've all tried to think of what to call those people that make you gag day after day with their constant sniffing and hocking. Ta-da! Now if we could only introduce these people to another highly used bit of necessary jargon. Antibiotics.

Twilight

I am finally getting around to reading the first book in the Twilight series! I read the second one in the beginning of my senior year but I just now got around to reading the first. My inspiration? I want to have all the books read before the movie comes out (and also because I saw it on display at my school's bookstore for 20% off the display price... only SEVEN dollars!). I really can't stand it when a movie ruins the essence of a book. I find that if you've read the book first and the movie is awful, at least you know that you can always return to the beloved text version of the story. But if you see the movie and THEN read the books, you are often forced to think of all the characters in terms of how they are portrayed in the movies and these depictions more often than not are different from how your imagination would create them to be.

So I am reading the book first! Unfortunately, I know who is going to be playing Edward (the really gorgeous guy who plays Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire!) so I already am starting to envision him in the role. Sad.