Traveling Thoughts

NaNoWriMo and NaBloPoMo (times 2). I’ve got to be completely crazy. It really started as NaBloPoMo on my diabetes blog (Ride to Remedy), I have so much to say over there about my diabetes but then I don’t, so I thought that if I did NaBloPoMo that I’d have to say stuff, but then I cheated because I’m participating in Diabetes 365 on Flickr, and it quickly became a scape goat for NaBloPoMo because all I’d have to do is post on a daily basis my Diabetes 365 images on my RtR blog…but then In a moment of complete insanity I decided that NaNoWriMo was what I needed to write about my diabetes…ok, cool, fine, dandy, I then felt guilty, guilty that Traveling Thoughts just might suffer. Now I’m doing NaBloPoMo on Traveling Thoughts as well…Am I crazy?

For the first time ever, I started watching Dancing with the Stars this season. I guess I was drawn to it because Jane Seymour was one of the stars and I had watched her in Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman when I was younger (Every Saturday night that’s what I did until it was no more). And all season, I thought that Cheetah Girl (that’s what I call Sabrina, cause I can’t always remember her name) was the best. And last night, my heart broke. I had been thinking that AMC star Cameron Matheson needed to be voted off for some time now (even though he’s been improving). But Cheetah girl, what is wrong with America. She could dance. I mean…grrrrr…it’s just so sad. It just goes to show that obviously America’s voting pulls more weight than the judges scores…and even though Carrie Ann Inaba has no history in ballroom dancing (she’s got pop dancing history) at least she knows that she’s looking for in dancers. I have no history with dancing, I’ve never taken a dance class in my life, but I can tell a dancer from a non-dancer and Cheetah girl could dance. I guess I’m kindof outraged…outraged and sad…totally emo…Now it’s up to Scary Spice and Helio in my opinion…

I’ve read the books by James Patterson and was beyond ecstatic when there was a TV show coming to ABC based on the books. The problem, it’s on a Friday night, out of 3 shows they’ve aired, I’ve only caught 1, last week’s. To make matters more impossible, ABC doesn’t have the episodes online. Which really sucks, because if I miss a show on TV (and the only channel I watch is ABC) then I go to ABC within a couple days to watch it. If it’s no available online. I’m screwed. Women’s Murder Club is one of those shows that I got screwed on. Talk about depressing.

After a lot of time of searching the web, I found an outlet, a place to watch Women’s Murder Club actually. And to make it even better, no commercials, it plays straight through from start to end. It’s bliss.

So, go watch Women’s Murder Club online. Catch up with me…you might be a few episodes behind.

It’s probably not so much as stupid clothes as it is stupid human that somehow grew out of them, but this morning was awful. It’s cooling down here and I wanted to wear a button up shirt. Last fall I had spent a grand on new shirts and pants, just because I could. If there was any direction my body was going to head, it was going to be into that of a smaller size, not me needing to go into a bigger size. But ever since I got out of the hospital, I’ve had trouble fitting into my clothes, and it sucks. They’re tight and I’m uncomfortable. I’m still bike riding, I shouldn’t be having problems fitting into my clothes, it really just shouldn’t be an issue. But it is. My pants are tight, my button up shirt was busting at the buttons and I was not so impressed.

I don’t want to have to go buy new clothes. I definitely don’t want to have to go buy clothes that are a bigger size. It totally sucks. It so sucks.

I take it back, something has changed, I’ve not been to kick boxing since my visit to the hospital two months ago. Even so it’s not like I’m pigging out on crap food and sitting on the couch, I go for walks while I’m at work, I get out on my bike, not as much as I was, but I do get out…It just sucks…I don’t know what else to say…It just sucks…

So, mom was giving me a hard time last night about my Christmas list and how I hadn’t turned it in yet. So I quickly wrote it out and turned it in just to get her off my back. But then my aunt made a comment about she was just going to get her person whatever she wanted (because we had draw names). Which really just irked me because I didn’t want crap that the person that drew my name wanted to give me, I wanted what was on my list, because if it’s on the list that means that I can’t go buy it until after Christmas when I know if I got it or not. So lame.

But then I realized that I can’t be irked, because I have dad’s name and he’s not getting the sweaters out of the Cabelas catalog that he requested. It’s just that sweaters, seriously, at Christmas time it’s usually the sweaters we all avoid. So dad’s getting something better, something I know that he’ll enjoy, plus, it’ll kind of be a treat for my mom (who’s name I didn’t draw).

Mom and dad are like wine connoisseurs. They’re always trying out new wines, going to wine tasting events, coming home with new wine glasses to go with the new wine they picked up. They enjoy going to vineyards when they’re traveling. They have a whole area in our kitchen cabinets that has a wine rack and god forbid if you put something in there other than wine.

They’ll open bottles and they’ll sit on the counter for an hour before they pour a glass because the wine has to “breathe”. They have their chocolate flavored dessert wines, they can tell what kind of barrel a wine was aged in. It’s all far beyond my little brain’s capacity.

Here’s is what’s not beyond my brain’s capacity. They are red wine drinkers that are open to trying out new wines. This is where I tie their love for wine into dad’s Christmas present. There’s a Wine of the Month Club. And I can choose what kind of wine (red, white, or both) that they’d receive, which of course I’d choose red.
How long they’d receive it for (3, 6, or 12 months or seasonally), at which point I’d start with 3 months just to cover my butt because there’s always a possibility that they won’t like the wine’s that they receive and if they do like them then I can go in and purchase more months for their drinking pleasure.

One of the benefits (that I see) of this particular Wine of the Month Club is that if there’s a particular wine that they fall in love with and have to have more of, they car re-order it. So, this is a win-win situation right. I feed their love for wine, dad it’s a cooler than a sweater Christmas gift, mom get’s to join in, and I feel cooler because I didn’t buy dad sweaters…the only way this backfires I suppose is if dad really wanted those sweaters.

I have only a few weeks to think on this, I guess I need to drop hints and find out if he really wants the sweaters. I guess I could go to mom and ask if they’ve ever thought about a Wine of the Month Club. If I’m gonna act, I have to act soon because the wine is delivered the last week of each month so I’d have to get on the boat and get Nov’s wine, because Dec’s wine won’t come until the week after Christmas…or will it?

I just have to take a moment to give some love to an application called Restoration. What happened was I was an idiot. Instead of ctrl-clicking files that I needed to delete, I made a mistake of shift-clicking. And in the midst of that shift-clicking were some files that I didn’t want to delete (like the horse photo in my horse of the apocalypse post)

I was panicked, I really really really wanted to blog about that horse today. It was what consumed me this weekend, a project, a golden project, it even gave me nightmares last night. So, I deleted the glowing horse and had to recover it. Thank God for Google. I found the Restoration app and was able to recover my photo and was ecstatic about it. In fact, there was like 25 photos I could’ve recovered.

So, I spent the better part of my weekend (after I got over yesterday’s boredom) working on my horse for my bicycle for my bike ride on halloween. Of course, this project sent me on a mission for LEDs for the eyeballs and when I couldn’t find what I was looking for I settled on glowsticks. I turned the glowsticks into the horses eyes and it’s turning out to be pretty cool.

My mom actually gave me a pretty good suggestion, and suggested that I make the horses mane out of glowsticks, which is so totally possible. I can’t take a picture of that until Wednesday on Halloween because I don’t want to be wasting glowsticks, they’re not cheap you know.

So, since we’re on the whole horse thing for my bike’s costume, the latest suggestion has become that it be one of the 4 horses of the apocalypse, which really only leaves me to be the horseman of famine (because I painted the horse black). It would’ve been way cooler to be the horseman of death but his horse is pale. *rolls eyes*

Yeah, the horse is almost done, and me, well, I still dunno what I’m going to be…

I was bored, and I was surfing sites, and what started with a picture of Paris and the statement “I would live in Paris” sent me to a BrainFall.com to take a quiz to find out what I should live in.

What City Should You Live In?
	You should live in New York City. America’s largest city will ensure that you will blend into the crowd. You are the brooding type–introspective, creative, and eccentric–and NYC’s cutting-edge, individualistic culture and ambience will appeal to you.
Find Your Character @ BrainFall.com

But then because I was bored, I went and took a million others.

Which Pixar Character Are You?
	You are Nemo. Your are the rebel in the group. You do things differently, not because you think they should be done that way, but because your Mommy told you not to do such “bad” things. This is cool if you ask us, and we are pretty sure your friends agree.
Find Your Character @ BrainFall.com

Which College Major Should You Be?
	Your major should be part Engineering. Logic is your friend. With enough work, you can find a solution to anything… Unless it involves dating or parties.
	Your major should be part Computer Science. You like nothing more than spending long nights with friends in the computer lab… which is a good thing since that’s exactly how you’ll spend the next couple years.
Find Your Character @ BrainFall.com

Which Disney Princess Are You?
	You are Pocahontas. You defy convention and sometimes do what is considered taboo. Unfortunately, others do not always appreciate your differences, so it’s good that you are so strong-willed. You are loyal and you believe in fate. Your true love will find you one day.
Find Your Character @ BrainFall.com

What Car Would You Be?
	You would be a Stretch Hummer. You are as big and bold as they come. You get what you want, when you want, and you can run over old ladies without even knowing it.
Find Your Character @ BrainFall.com

What Kind of Guy Will You Fall For?
	You would fall for the geek. If you’re looking for love, consider spending a little more time studying up in the library. To you, there’s nothing more attractive than intelligence, shyness, and kindness; your future love may have four eyes and zero social skills, but he’ll make up for it in brains and heart.
Find Your Character @ BrainFall.com

And then I got even more bored. And I stopped taking quizzes…there were just too many questions…answering them got tedious

We all know I have a spending problem (and if you don’t know that I have a spending problem, you can read all about my spending problem). Today was no exception, I went and I spent. Well, I take it back, well, I take 2/3 of it back. I had a big fat purpose for 2/3 of my spending today.

I went out, and I went to the pet store. At first my only purpose was for bird food and dog food. I know, boring right? But then, I decided that this year, I got to do the honors of getting the dog his Christmas gift. Every Christmas little Doodle Bug gets a stuffed animal for Christmas. And God help him if he rips through it before the year is over. Dad or I will patch up the creature (the Christmas stuffed animal) for as long as we can but when Doodle Bug rips the life out of it, that’s it, the end of the creature, it goes to a new home (read: the dump). Some years the creature lasts the whole year (stitched here and stitched there) and doesn’t go to the dump until the next Christmas and some years, the creature doesn’t survive and thus ends up at the dump prematurely. That was the case this year. I came home one day and the frog with rope legs that I had taken the time to stitch a heart over his belly was gone. Dominic (aka Doodle Bug) had ripped his heart (the frog’s heart) to shreds and the frog went to froggy heaven (read: the dump).

So today while I was at PetCo (which I really don’t like but they’re the only store that sells the food that the very picky parakeet that is mine will eat) I got Dominic’s Christmas present. A stuffed duck, which long wings so that Dominic may grab it and treat it like a road runner does a lizard and smack the life out of it. I guess it’s a mallard, is a mallard a duck (I think so, but I’m not exactly, totally, 100% sure)

My next stop was at the craft store (read: Michaels), so that I could get foam board, poster board, black paint, and glossy mod podge (in a glossy finish) so that I could make the horse costume (read: horse head) that my bike will be wearing for Halloween. I however am still indecisive as to what costume I’ll be wearing on Halloween. All I know is that I’ll be riding a black horse.

That was the 2/3 of necessities that I obviously needed, hello, pet food, Christmas present, Halloween costume…okay, maybe I didn’t need the Halloween costume, but at least I’m working on making it instead of buying it straight out…

The last thing I cannot classify as a necessity (even if I did need it because it’s the next book in the latest series that I’m currently reading). I stopped by my favorite bookstore (read: barnes and noble) with my 15% off coupon (which is 15% beyond the normal 10% off that I get being a member) and bought The Sea of Monsters (which is the second book in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians Series by Rick Riordan). I bought it because I’m just about done with The Lightning Thief which happens to be the first book in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians Series (read: I’ll be done with it tonight).

So yeah, purposeful spending for 2/3 of what I needed and totally me spending for the other third of what I bought…

Up until today I wasn’t excited about Halloween. I’ve not been excited about Halloween for years. But this year, there was a reason to get excited. The cause for excitement is a Halloween bike ride. We dress up and ride our bikes from Nob Hill to Old Town…It’s a couple mile stretch down Route 66.

But now, I need to look at all the various options among the Halloween costumes and find me something and then find my bike something. I know it sounds silly, but not only do we dress up, we dress up our bikes as well.

So, I have two ideas. Mainly because I want to turn my bike into a horse. Preferably a black horse and I want to put LED’s in for his eyes and have them blink (that way I can be seen).

So, since my bike is a horse, I have a couple options (in order of what I’ve thought about so far):

1) Cowgirl

2) Headless horseman

3) Zorro

4) Roman Soldier(ess)

So right now, I totally all for the Roman Soldier. It would be awesome to be riding down the road with the red mohawk down my helmet (horse hair crest thingy ma-bob-ber) and armour and a sword. That would totally rock. Of course, as you can see I’ve changed my mind on several occasions so far, so between now and Wednesday, my mind could change again…but whatever it changes to, my bike will be a horse.

I guess I kindof gotta make up my mind soon though…because if I decide on something that I definately will be in need of buying a halloween costume for, I gotta get on the ball and buy it.