I have a blog. Sometimes I update it.
Month: May 2014
I’ve decided to put this blog on hiatus. The time and energy I spend on it would be better spent on other things (like finding a job). There are other considerations as well, but the basic gist is that I need to stop blogging for a while.
Lord willing, this hiatus will be short. But who knows. So thank you for reading my blog. I hope you’ve enjoyed it; I’ve certainly enjoyed writing it.
Until someday.
This week has been weird. It just has. Anyways…
I’ve been compiling stuff in my Reading List for weeks but haven’t done a Friday list in a while so I just did some culling because I don’t want my list to be too long. Some of this stuff is a bit old so I apologize if you’ve seen it already.
Every single time I actually do one of these anymore it feels like an accomplishment. Go me!
Until tomorrow.
This is a great time to be alive.
Brand New announced three Florida shows in October on Tuesday. Including one in St. Pete. I found out about these shows 15 minutes after the presale tickets went on sale. But the presale had already sold out. Not to fear, though, because I had nearly 48 hours notice of the general ticket on sale today at noon.
Then my dad came home at 11:40 and asked if I’d go pick up Five Guys if he ordered it online. I said sure because I figured there was no way he’d be ready to order it before noon (plus, I mean, it’s Five Guys). Less than five minutes later he asked what toppings I wanted on my little cheeseburger. And a minute later the order was submitted and the website said it would be ready at 11:53. I kinda started to panic but I had the Ticketmaster app on my phone and the last time we ordered Five Guys online it took longer than the website said it would to get the food.
Not this time, however. I got to the restaurant a few minutes late (the 25 MPH speed limit in my parents’ community is such a pain in the ass) and still managed to walk out with the food at 11:59. At this point I had two choices: hang out in the parking lot a few extra minutes or drive home and then attempt to buy tickets online by which time they probably would’ve sold out. (In fact, people on Facebook are claiming the St. Pete show sold out in one minute!)
So, yeah, I stayed in the parking lot. And since I was logged in to the app it took practically no time for me to buy my ticket. The hard part is refreshing the page at just the right time to claim a ticket. I don’t consider myself a particularly lucky person, but I have the fucking Midas touch when it comes to Ticketmaster; I’ve never failed to get tickets to a Brand New show that was sold through Ticketmaster. It’s not the best superpower ever, but I’m fond of it 🙂
Today was a good day.
Until tomorrow.
Having moved in with my parents, I’ve turned what were once their living and dining rooms into a Kristin warehouse. In an effort to take up as small a space as possible I started repacking things. The ultimate goal is to get the boxes ready to be loaded onto a moving truck and hauled up north as soon as I have a job and a place to live. (Apparently my brother thought I was going to find a place to live and then get a job, but I just don’t see how that’s feasible.)
Because I don’t always make the best choices I decided that the first thing I should tackle is my Big Box ‘o Barbies.
The problem with that choice is that as soon as I opened the box I wanted nothing more than to play with my Barbies. But I (pretty much) managed to ignore that temptation. Until, that is, I opened the red plastic bag that’s even with all the Barbie furniture in that picture.
You see, the contents of that bag were truly outrageous.
That’s right, I found my Jem dolls! They’re slightly weirder than I remember, actually, due to their shoulder and wrist joints. But still, Jem! I may have taken a minute or two to change Jem’s clothes 🙂
Unfortunately I had to put everything back in the giant green tub because my parents were expecting a contractor and I couldn’t very well leave the Barbie Explosion out. It was still the highlight of my day, though.
Until tomorrow.
This has not been a great day.
First, I did a less than fabulous job dying my hair. I don’t know how I managed to keep large parts of my hair completely dye-free, but I did. My hair kind of looks like a fuzzy caterpillar. Or a weird faux ombré. (None of this is to say that it necessarily looks bad; I may decide that I like it and want to keep it. I’m just bummed at the totally shittastic job I did.)
Then I got an email from the company I applied to yesterday that said I had not been selected for an interview. Phooey. I am positive I could’ve kicked ass at that job.
And now Cliff Lee is going on the DL. Boo!
Until tomorrow.
I got the refund check for my recalled Fitbit Force today. It came with a letter from Fitbit’s president or CEO or some such thanking me for my loyalty. Yeah, good luck with that. I’m totally going to put that money away so I can use it to buy whatever you come out with that replaces the Force. I’m totally not going to use it for an Amazon shopping spree. (Actually, that one is true. That money’s going to end up going towards my credit card payment. I wish I could spend it on Amazon, though; I could get so many things I want with 140 bucks.)
Thankfully my birthday’s only a month away. My birthday wishlist is like an Amazon shopping spree only with an element of chance: I include all the things I would buy myself if I could afford it and I have no idea which items people will actually buy until I unwrap my gifts. (I’m being very literal, by the bye; there’s almost no difference between my Amazon wishlist and the birthday wishlist I have in Evernote.)
In other news, I applied for a job that would be perfect for me today. If you have any positive vibes you’d care to send in my direction, I’d really appreciate them 🙂
Until tomorrow.
Why yes, yes I am referring to the Billboard Music Awards. How did you know?
I watched because I wanted to see 5 Seconds of Summer. (Don’t judge me.) And I kinda wanted to see the “historic” Michael Jackson performance (which I ended up missing due to the far more important FaceTime call from my niece). As far as I can tell they used the Hologram Tupac technology to bring us Hologram MJ, right? I’m surprised it took this long for that to happen.
Things I was not expecting: performances from Shakira, Ricky Martin, and Jennifer Lopez. It’s like time-traveling back to my senior year of college and being forced to listen to my roommate’s shitty music all over again. Also, heard Florida Georgia Line for the first time ever; I had to mute the TV five seconds into the performance because I was afraid my ears were going to start bleeding from the awfulness. I know I’m no country music fan, but that was terrible by country standards. And people actually like that band? Yeesh.
I probably shouldn’t be surprised that Lorde, Katy Perry, and Miley Cyrus wore hideous fashion crimes against humanity, but I kind of was. (Okay, Lorde wasn’t as bad as the other two, but it was pretty bad.) I enjoyed the subtlety of the big balloons over Katy’s tits; wait, I’m sorry, that was the opposite of subtle. And Miley: I have no words. I wish the Rolling Stones would sue her for copyright infringement.
Speaking of clothes, I get that 5 Seconds of Summer is a legit pop-punk band and good for them. But when I saw the dude rocking the Misfits shirt I couldn’t help but wonder if he’s actually a fan of the Misfits or if the band’s stylist told him to wear a Misfits shirt. Same goes for the dude who I’m pretty sure was wearing a Pink Floyd shirt. I’d rather they wear Blink-182 and All Time Low shirts if those are their real influences.
At any rate, I enjoyed 5SoS’s performance (and appreciated the fact that it didn’t feature fat people stripping down to their underwear). I also enjoyed Katy Perry, as much as I bitched about her outfit; I’d really like to see her live someday.
Until tomorrow.
My mom and I saw Divergent this afternoon (but more on that in a minute).
I always accompany my mom to the concession stand when we go to the movies, both to help carry her purchases and to make sure that I get what I want. This shouldn’t be difficult, but it is. Because heaven forbid the kid working the concession stand at the AMC Theatre actually sell me a fucking small soda.
I literally have trouble carrying any of their sodas bigger than a small and even the small is ginormous. But no, they don’t want to sell me a small soda; I must upgrade it. And it’s even worse because my mom is a member of the AMC Stubs program, which provides free upgrades for popcorn and sodas. So I end up practically having to yell at these kids that I understand I could get a larger soda for the same price, I just don’t want one. I literally told the girl today to stop trying to upsell me. (This was after her second attempt to coerce me into upgrading my soda.)
I understand that your manager has drilled into your head that you must always upsell, but at some point you should respect the customer as a human being who knows her own fucking mind. I mean, when I worked at the record store we were always supposed to try to get the customer to buy more than one item. And I’d suggest one of the dumb things we had at the register (disc repair kits and whatnot) if somebody came up with one CD. But if the customer was already buying multiple things I’d keep my mouth shut; I was getting my multi-sale so why harass the customer.
Hiccups at the concession stand aside, it was a lovely trip to the movies. Here’s a thing I hadn’t known going in, though: Divergent is a long-ass movie. And it felt even longer. I don’t know how they took such a well-paced page-turner of a book and turned it into a plodding movie, but they did. I think my mom liked it more than I did. (I think it helped that it wasn’t Hunger Games-level violent.) There were parts I really loved, even during the boring parts of the movie (most of them involved Four, because duh). But then there were things where I thought, “that’s not how it happened” (most of them involved Jeanine Matthews – I guess if you get Kate Winslet for your movie, you use her as much as possible). And there were things that I expected to see because they come up in the other books that weren’t in Divergent at all. So I don’t know how that’s going to be resolved in the other movies.
One thing that really bothered me was that I couldn’t tell Will and Al apart. This is not a problem I had reading the book. And the more I think about it, the more I wonder why they bothered including Al; they could’ve saved a few minutes without him and the film wouldn’t have been materially different.
I know I’m mostly complaining about the movie, but I really did like it. I just think they could’ve done better. And I have no idea if my opinion matches the Internet’s general opinion because I haven’t bothered to see what people thought. At the very least it’s good to know that it was one of the nine films this year that passed the Bechdel test.
One last thing about Divergent: my mom kinda didn’t believe me when I told her that Four was played by the same actor who played Downton Abbey‘s ill-fated Mr. Pamuk 🙂
Until tomorrow.
No list this week because I want to focus on the very serious threat the FCC (y’know, the government agency that is supposed to protect the Internet) is posing to Net Neutrality. If you’re unfamiliar with the issue, this website has some great information. But basically, the giant cable companies (and you know you love them) want to offer you Internet service the same way they offer cable: in packages. You hate the dumb cable package system, right? Do you want the Internet to become that? I didn’t think so. Sign petitions, write emails, and do whatever you can to keep the Internet open. There’s a petition on the site linked above that takes less than a minute to sign.
This is important, guys.
Until tomorrow.
I received mail from my mortgage lender yesterday. I’m pretty sure they owe me, like, a thousand bucks, so I was very excited to open it. But what did I find inside? A promotional letter informing me that I should contact them to refinance the loan before I go and refinance with some other lender.
What?
I sold the fucking house, you morons. You sent the letter to a different fucking address. Why did you think this was a good idea? This is nowhere near as bad as today’s Shutterfly fiasco, but it’s pretty bad. Your algorithm has some serious problems if it can’t separate the customers who sold their homes from the customers who refinanced. Yeesh.
Until tomorrow.
kristininprogress 