This blog has been hacked!

So, today I got to my blog and noticed I was locked out. At first, I thought of going to the blog locksmith, assuming I had lost my blog keys because I'm often clumsy and stupid like that... until I realized the lights were all turned on. I'm not very athletic, or anything. In fact, I'm pretty damn lazy, but I did my best to climb to a place where I could see inside and I noticed Danielle there, running around the place, playing with my crayons and my sheets of virtual paper!

I felt an immediate rush of rage. It wasn't just a normal rage... it wasn't the sort of rage you'd want to keep inside your house... a rage that needed to be released... it was an outrage!

Disregard the terrible pun... the point is I was aggravated and mad, so I decided to get back at her, and I came over here for payback while she played around in my blog. Luckily, the blog door was unlocked, and I looked around with an evil grin on my face, thinking what to break first.

I approached the little dandelions that decorate the background, you know the ones...

I took a deep breath and blew hard enough to blow a motherfucking brick house, but the dandelions didn't move.

I took a closer look and noticed the dandelions were made of a strange polymer. So yes, in case you were wondering, they are strictly decorative dandelions.

Frustrated, I walked around the place to see what else was around, and much to my surprise there was only one place to go:

One room... I suppose you could say this place is a loft-blog. That's cool, keepin' it simple...

Anyway, I went to a wall where she had pictures of all her followers. I took out this pen I always take with me to make penis funny drawings on bathroom stalls and drew mustaches on all of them:

Ha!

After walking a little I noticed the floor was no longer green, it was brown instead. I figured that was the bathroom and wondered how the hell I got so far, and it took me about half an hour to find my way back to the dandelions. I was unhappy with my lame attempt to desecrate this blog, so I took one long look at the title, wondering if there was some way I could defile that before I took off.


I was sort of happy now, so I went back to my blog. She wasn't there anymore, and I was able to go in. I looked around the place to see what she had done with the place, and I found nothing out of place. Then, when I went to the front page, I noticed this awesome post, already written, and a note that said "you work so hard, I figured you could use a day off."

I looked at the other side of the note hoping she added something like "there's spaghetti leftovers on the fridge", but that's all there was. Still, I felt bad for taking things so far without knowing for sure, so I grabbed a bucket of water and soap and came back here to undo my misdoings. 

In retrospect, it was a terrible idea, since there was a faucet on this blog so there was no need to carry a heavy bucket full of water all the way from my blog... but yeah, I guess that explains why you just caught me here red handed with soap on my face. As for the not wearing pants, it's damn hot here in blog-Canada. Wait, what was the question, again? Anyway... I'm done cleaning, so I'm gonna head off now. Before I leave, I'm gonna stop by the subscribe button. You should too, it's over there on the right. Bye!
Oh, and don't tell Danielle that you saw me...



ACK! MY BLOG! Well, at least he cleaned everything up. In all seriousness though, go check out our guest blogger at his bog, Award Per Day. You won't regret it. In fact, you'll enjoy it. Guaranteed.

Told you I was a klutz

I'm not sure if that's something I should be bragging about.

Yesterday I got the privilege of seeing my brother's apartment that he just moved into last weekend. I unfortunately was not around to help him move in, so everything I knew about it was second-hand information from my parents. All I had heard was that it was really nice and that it was a 10 minute walk from his work. Yesterday also happened to be the day that my boyfriend flew back to Ontario, and I had to drop him off at the airport at 7 in the morning. Which meant waking up at 6. Not to mention, it had been an exhausting week. So once I dropped him off, I went home and took a nice, loooooooong nap. A 4 hour nap, to be precise.

When I woke up my sense of time had gone a little wonky, and before I knew it I was running late to meet my brother and I didn't even know his address yet. Once I got that figured out I rushed down there as quickly as I could. I parked my car across the road, hopped out, and set off at a brisk pace towards his front door. There was a slight zig-zag in the sidewalk which I approached without a second thought. I cut the corner a little to closely, and suddenly my little toe, totally exposed to the elements by my flip flop, collided with a nice big rock. Hard. I took a few deep breaths until the worst of the pain passed, then prodded my toe gently to make sure I didn't dislocate or break it. Satisfied that I should be okay, I headed up to check out the apartment.

While my brother took me on the official tour and caught me up on life away from our parent's house, I gradually became more and more aware of a throbbing pain in my toe. For the most part I ignored it, briefly calling attention to it only to amuse my brother with the story of how the injury happened. After chatting for a while he asked if I would like to go for a walk with him down by the water. Why not? I thought, sliding my flip flops back on and being very careful to walk on the inside of my foot. This turned out to be not such a good decision. Soon after we left my whole ankle was starting to hurt because I was not walking on my foot the way nature intended. When my brother asked if I was okay walking in flip flops I informed the shoes weren't the problem; rather, my potentially broken toe was causing my trouble. Given that I was still happily walking beside him, he came up with what was likely the best answer he could think of. "Huh," he said, then tactfully changed the subject. We walked a little farther before agreeing to turn around, after which I promptly headed home and stuck some ice on my toe. Too little, too late.

This morning I attempted to gently slip my feet into my runners so I could ride my bicycle to work. After approximately 1.75 seconds it became painfully clear that closed-toe shoes were not going to be an option today. I dug through my closet and pulled out my only pair of work-appropriate sandals that I could find, which happened to have a strap that crossed right through the middle of my bruise. They were better than the runners though, and my only option. Overall they did fine most of the time, except when I forgot to walk on the inside of my foot. And when I kicked a chair with the same toe. That hurt even more than when I kicked the rock.

Of course, being a klutz, injuries like this are not exactly rare. I still have bruises and bumps on my shin from two months ago when I tripped and bashed my leg on a stage, and I have a few random bruises whose origins are a complete mystery, even to me. I like to tell myself that being a klutz is beneficial; after all, I've never broken a bone despite my best efforts. The years of bashing have strengthened them and made me nearly indestructible. Heck, I could probably be a superhero.

...in my dreams.

Can I help you?

Some days, I'm a little bit special.

Right now I'm staying at a hotel with my boyfriend. The hotel is about a 15 minute drive from where I actually live, but as he's only visiting for a week I want to spend as much time with him as possible. However, both of us are still working. I finish my day about 3 hours before he does, which I rather enjoy because I have some time to get stuff done before he shows up.

Yesterday we were invited to have dinner with my parents. The boyfriend and I agreed that when he finished work he would stop by and pick me up so we could head to my house together. I got back to the room after a long, exhausting day and decided to have a quick nap. Two hours later I woke up with just enough time to shower and get ready before he headed over to get me. I jumped up and got ready as quickly as I could, then headed off to wait for him outside. I got in the elevator and casually reached over to press the button for the main floor at the very bottom of the panel on the left-hand side, forgetting that the button was actually a few rows up. Instead I press the emergency call button.

Immediately, panic starts to set in.

First, I press the button a few times to see if I can turn it off. No luck. As the phone starts ringing, I glance up at the floor indicator to see if the elevator was still moving or if I managed to get myself stuck. All I saw when I looked up was a big "X". Not good. Finally, someone answers the phone and, very calmly, says "Does anyone there need assistance?" Quickly turning beet red, I admitted what had actually happened and I was assured that it was no problem.

Later I found out that the elevator ALWAYS says "X" at that point because there is no second floor, and I'm sure that I'm not the first person to press the wrong button. But every time I get in the elevator now I double check which one I'm pushing before I actually push it.

An explosively good time.

I love living in Canada. I would not trade it for the world. However, I'm actually a dual citizen because my mom is a landed immigrant from the States. She moved up here to be with my dad, but all of her family is spread out more or less between South Dakota and California. Every once in a while we go down to catch up with these relatives. The family in California we visit for Christmas, but there's no better time to go visit the rest of the family than during the yearly get-together for Independence Day. Not only do we get to hang out with relatives we rarely get to see, but we get to blow up some fireworks.

After this year we're not sure when we'll be able to come back, so my parents brought down a bigger budget for explosives to make sure we got as much enjoyment out of it as we could. This year also ended up being quite eventful. On Sunday we all packed into the rental car, realizing for the first time that we had NO idea where the seatbelt was for the middle seat in the back. My mom eventually bit the bullet and just told my dad to drive safe as the store wasn't very far away. Thankfully the drive was perfectly boring.

Walking into the fireworks store is kind of like walking into a candy shop when you're a kid. There's so much choice, and you want to get as much bang for your buck as possible. Last year we got a "power pack" and really liked it, so I made sure to grab one. It's a fairly large pack, so the owner came over and tried to take it and put it behind the counter. I quickly declined, I didn't want to pass up one of my few chances to carry large amounts of fireworks just because I could. After some deliberation, we managed to agree on a sizeable number of packages and individual pieces that should put on a good show. After loading them all into the back of the car we climbed back in, and my younger brother reassured my mom that not having a seatbelt was a good thing because in a crash she "would be safely ejected from the vehicle...BEFORE it explodes."

The next day we not-so-patiently waited for the sun to set so we could put start blowing things up. We used the excuse of  "getting rid of the lame stuff" to set off a few spinners and bottle rockets in the middle of the day. As night approached though, we noticed some storm clouds forming just north of us. We had a beautiful sunset as a backdrop, and soon enough lighting started up off in the distance to add a little something extra to our display. We decided to just get started, and my family, along with a few other relatives who had bought some fireworks of their own, got down to business.

At first it was fantastic. The next-door neighbour, on the opposite side from us at the thunderstorm, was setting off some impressive fireworks that added to our own show. The lightning to the other side sometimes made it hard to focus, but also gave us something to look at in those lulls when we were waiting for the next one to go off. The clouds in the background were turning shades of pink, accented by rays from the setting sun. The view couldn't have been more perfect. About halfway through though we realized the lightning was getting a little closer, and saw a tornado trying to form off in the distance. A few people got nervous, but most of us didn't give it much thought. When we were about 2/3 of the way through our supplies the wind picked up. Then the wind got cold. Everyone there knew this meant that the storm was coming towards us, and suddenly it was a rush against time to set off all of our fireworks before the rain hit. Safety was tossed out the window as we set our fireworks as far away as we could and watched nervously as the sparks were blown over our heads. Just as the rain started to pick up, my brothers and I managed to set off our last firework. Not long afterwards, the rain was coming down so hard that you couldn't set foot outside without getting drenched. The drive back to the house we were staying at was exciting, surrounded by pounding rain and constant lightning. Arriving there was less exciting, as we realized the power was out. A few candles solved the problem though, and gave a surprisingly peaceful ending to a crazy night.

I'm not sure when I'll get back to South Dakota. I do know that, as cool and exciting as this was, I hope next time Mother Nature calms down a bit and lets us blow stuff up at our own pace.