Britta, you put one wash-away blue streak in your hair. I lost an arm.

  I really love the idea of dying my hair but in actuality, I'm far too lazy to keep up with it. The last time I dyed my hair was before I got married, and that was at my mom's urging. It was fun, though! It was kind of red because spending my formative years watching The X-Files made me YEARN for red hair.

That was like two years ago, though, and my hair hasn't seen a drop of dye since, as evidenced by the gray hairs that peek through whenever I pull my hair into a ponytail. I kind of like them, though, all streaky and silver, so I haven't really felt any need to cover them up. I do like the idea of a complete makeover, though. I mean, aren't those the best part of any reality show ever anyway? YES. (Yes is the correct answer, don't argue with me.) So I found this website (completely addictive, as all the best websites are) where you can try on different hair colors and styles before you totally ruin your hair AND IT IS SO MUCH FUN.

Here is me but like Three Years Ago Me not Now Me. The problem with this website is that you need a full-frontal (hee), normal picture of just your face and I have, like, zero of those.

Bleep bloop.

Scully me:

That's completely illogical, Mulder.

Blonde Curly me:

Country music star!

Cher Hair:

Or whatever.

What I will look like once all of my hair turns gray (fingers crossed!):

I've gone Total Rogue!

Tami Taylor!

Hey, y'all!

Is this my worst post ever*?



*yes

Excuse me, would you mind not farting while I'm saving the world?

It's not an issue of the curtains matching the carpet; the problem is matching the curtains to the... I don't know, valances? Because left unchecked, my eyebrows would rival Eugene Levy's for Supreme Overlordship over Planet Eyebrownia. My eyebrows, they are like giant face caterpillars perched above my eyeballs. What I'm trying to say is that my eyebrows are conspicuous. And since I'm not pretty enough for this:



I end up looking like this:



So no, I cannot pull off another hair color.

I could take away the salt from your eyes

  My hair goes swoosh swoosh swoosh when I run. From shoulder blade to shoulder blade it swings back and forth, forth and back. I cover pavement, dirt, clay, grass. Last night, I accidentally stepped into a six-inch deep dark murky puddle. Swoosh swoosh swoosh.

It's brown hair. I don't know what other color to call it. It's not dark brown, so I guess it's light brown. It doesn't have highlights, so I guess it's plain. It's only been dyed once. That time it was dark brown. Or dark red brown. Or dark red black. It was dark. And it was hard to maintain.

I want it out of my way, out of my sight. I want it back in a long pony where it catches the sweat and protects my neck from the sun. I don't care what color it is, though I assume all this running will turn it light brown. Or light, light brown. Not the color of pavement or dirt or grass, but maybe the color of clay. Swoosh swoosh swoosh.

And I'm a huge fan of the way you lose control and turn into an enormous green rage monster.

This week's Collective topic is: Could you pull off a different hair color.

And my answer is: We're about to find out.

'Cause, y'all, at the tender age of 33, grey hairs are starting to take over my head! I saw the first one on my 28th birthday, and I was like, "LOL, that's cute!" And then when I was 30, I was plucking out a couple of them every month. And now I'm this age and every time I look in the mirror, it's like they're manning an assault on my skull. People keep telling me to stop ripping the hairs out of my head, but they weird me out. I guess I could get my hair colored or something, but then I'd have to get it re-colored and re-colored and re-colored and frankly I'd rather spend that money on comic books.

Huh. I guess I'll stop this hair nonsense and only start worrying about getting old when I'd rather buy groceries instead of Avengers Legos.

All this has happened before and all this will happen again.

  I live in (and am from) Dayton, OH. People like to shit all over Dayton (literally...OK, not really that I know of, except for birds and stuff) but it's not that bad. Like a lot of manufacturing towns, Dayton was hit hard by the economic clusterfuck of the last few years, but things are getting better. In my view, anyway, which ADMITTEDLY is narrow. But whatever, Dayton is home of:

Paul Laurence Dunbar

I write poems and stuff!

The Schuster Center, which is pretty and shiny:

Oooh, reflecty.

The Victoria Theatre, which has history coming out of its ass:

AND IS HAUNTED.

The Dayton Dragons...some people like baseball!

People will come, Ray.

Bart Simpson Nancy Cartwright...hey, my mom went to HS with her!

Whatever and stuff!

West Wingers Martin Sheen, Rob Lowe (well, raised in), Allison Janney (AND CJ Cregg!)

FUCK YEAH SAM SEABORN

John Dorian, friend of Turk Turkleton, choreographer of the greatest dance of our time:

AND FUCKING FLIGHT:

So dapper. And aerodynamic.

So. You know. We've got that going for us. (Other stuff, too, probably!)


Why yes, I have written something very similar to this (but better and with more effort) before.

Also, I because I grew a zucchini.

Ah yes, hometowns. Mine is small, barely more populous than the small university to which I ran away an increasingly long time ago. It's a town, yes, but it never much felt like home. Wikipedia tells me it's "a sweet place to kick back and just lax," but that's never been my experience.



I have a new home now, so that's nice. Mostly because these guys live there too:

there and back again

When I'm in New York I don't walk fast enough or talk fast enough or avoid enough eye-contact. I say way too much "please" and way too much "thank you" while I hold open doors and give up my seat and pass money to every panhandler. I can't make a long "i" sound. I drop all every "ing." Even my posture is Southern. Back in the South, I am too quick with words, too swift with reason, too far from the straight and narrow. I'm cynical below the Mason-Dixon, hard around the edges, calloused from battling everyone else's Bible. A hillbilly there, an abomination here. A Took clan kind of hobbit.

My hometown isn't "home" so much as it's "town," but these woods and these streams and these mountains, where I've crashed my bike and scarred so much of my body — that is where my heart is.

this is completely off topic and makes very little sense because apparently the change in season makes me CRAZY

I feel like I got completely cheated out of my favorite seasonal change, that is, the moment frigid, stupid winter turns into beautiful, frolic-through-the-field spring. Not that I mind that we didn't get much snow or ice, but I feel like now I'm just taking the nice weather for granted. I mean, I appreciate the nice weather, I do. But am I appreciating it enough? There's something about that first warm day after months of below freezing temperatures. That thrill as you walk outside, feel the warmth on your skin, like you've just arrived on the planet, and blinking, you step out of your spaceship and into the sun. You feel like there's more to see than can ever been seen. More to do than can ever be done...THE CIRCLE OF LIIIIIIIIFE.



Ahem. I just ripped off both The Lion King and Doctor Who, I think!

 

[WARNING: the random nonsense below contains Doctor Who spoilers through series 4ish. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.] 

Can I tell you about the Doctor Who dream I had the other night? Please? I know that writing about your dreams is breaking, like, Blogging Rule Number One and if I keep going, I might get kicked out of the Bloggers Alliance* or something, but just pretend it wasn't a dream and it really happened (that's what I'm doing, since it involved making out with David Tennant) and that should make it more interesting, OK? OK, so, I was me and yet not me, if that makes sense. Well. Even if it doesn't make sense, it's still true. I was not really me, obviously, because I wasn't married and I was in space with fictional characters. DUH ANYWAY. I was on my way to a party at a really rich girl's house, but she lived on another planet (like rich girls so often do) so I needed my friends the 11th Doctor, Amy and Rory Pond, Rose Tyler, and the 10th Doctor Clone. DON'T ask me how Rose and the Clone Doctor got out of their parallel universe because I DON'T KNOW.

So we got to this party and everyone hated us for some reason. Maybe because we were from the wrong part of The Universe. Or because I was hanging out with two Doctors and they were jealous, which is completely understandable. I somehow got separated from all of my friends (MY SPACE FRIENDS) and ended up wandering around the party, running into people like Beyonce and Martha Stewart, who are so obviously aliens, it all makes sense now THANK YOU, BRAIN. Also, this girl (whoever she was) had such a massive mansion that there was A STORE INSIDE. What? That doesn't even make sense, BRAIN, I revoke my earlier gratitude!

Eventually I found the Clone Doctor and we fell in love. It all happened very quickly and yet made total sense. Like dreams do. And I felt really bad about it because I was friends with Rose Tyler and I didn't want her to be sad, but I ALSO didn't want to miss out on the chance to make out with my favorite Time Lord (WE WERE IN LOVE), so WHATEVER, fuck you, Rose Ty-lah! So Clone Doctor and I walked around the party looking for a private place to make out but we kept running into the 11th Doctor, who took a picture of us kissing and texted it to Rose. WHAT AN ASSHOLE. I don't remember anymore because I woke up the end.

The most disappointing part of all of this (aside from not being able to find a private room in this GIANT MANSION) was that the 9th Doctor wasn't there, I guess because even in my dreams, Christopher Eccleston is so totally over Doctor Who. I told Joe about my dream the next morning and how my brain was writing fan fiction (that my body can't cash) and he said that I basically had a dream about Gossip Girl but cast Doctor Who characters in place of Gossip Girl characters. I like to think that I at least cast myself as Blair. A girl can dream, can't she?

Driving in the sun

  I go camping twice a year to the same place: a canyon by a beach right outside Los Angeles. It's fireside and ocean side and city side and it is my favorite place. When I go in September it's 70 degrees with a chill at night. When I go in January it's 70 degrees with a chill at night. The seasons don't change here. I live in paradise, every day.

So I walked across that Grain Belt Bridge into a bright new Minneapolis.

This year is not like the others. There are no cold beers to drink or pools by which to lounge, no trips to the beach to await eagerly. The season is changing or so I'm told, but really all I feel is... nothing much, actually. A certain numbness has pervaded my waking hours and in between bouts of panic over this pain or that, all I've been able to muster is a vague sort of regret for the winter we didn't have.

I'm pretty limited in what I can do these days both on order and in ability. Best I can do is putter around my "garden" and live vicariously through Hold Steady albums, go to bed early and often. It's not a life I'd recommend. BUT! At least it's possibly only temporary, right?


Future zucchini.


Future tomatoes.


TWO KINDS of basil.


Lettuces that I'm not allowed to eat.


Parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, etc.

And lest you think life is all misery and woe...



I still have my playoffs tickets. (So sometimes life is EXTRA miserable and woeful.)

Oh, look, Indiana Jones and the apartment of perpetual viginity.

This week's Collective topic is: What does it feel like when the seasons start to change? Which is a pretty ironic question since the changing of the seasons is the reason I'm posting almost two full days late. See, because when spring starts rolling into summer, two very wonderful things happen in my life: 1) Amy gets out of school. 2) It's mountain biking weather. Basically that means I spend every non-working hour playing outside with my best friend and riding my bike around. So, like, the changing of the seasons essentially feels like Peter Pan Syndrome. Even worse than usual, if you can believe it.

Here's a pretty photo I took on a ride on Saturday.

I took it right before I crashed so hard I almost broke my face.

That's also what summer feels like to me: OUCH!

She calls it a MAYONEGG.

I tried and tried (for real this time) to think of something that creeped me out and came up with pretty much nothing. Nothing that hasn't already been mentioned, anyway, because that Flickr thing is creepy as hell.

This, however? Makes me gag. Egg Bland Ann Veal is totally creepy. In the best way.

 

Also, I'm a little creeped out by how long I played this game:

I CAN'T HELP IT, I AM RIDICK-U-LUS.

That is all.

What creeps me out?

My 29-year-old sister has the Tumblr of an emotionally unstable 12-year-old girl. Homework is haaaaaaaard! I'll be alone and miserable foreeeeeever! Manga! Instagram! Boys! Boys! Boys! Emo self portraits! Gotye lyrics! Boys!

Someone really needs to get a grip.

  A lot of things gross me out. Lotion, beans, sponges, cockroaches, getting wet, babies, etc., etc. Not a lot of things creep me out. I have little-to-no stranger danger and I find shifty individuals entertaining.

But I have a flickr account (that I used to use) and there are these CREEPERS that CREEP THROUGH old PHOTOS and FAVORITE them. Which do they favorite? Super weird fetish related things. My pictures never seem weird (just me and my girlfriends being funny and/or drunk) until I get a CREEPER favorite it and then I see the picture with whole new eyes. Like, I mean, I guess I shouldn't have posed with that stack of hangers at Ikea.

And how do I know it's a creeper? When you click on their profile and all their favorites are hanger pictures. What the hell. HEEBIE JEEBIES.

I used to be an adventurer like you, but then I took an arrow to the knee.

 

The first time I got married in Skyrim, I was an awkward, blundering warrior-mage looking for a place to rest my head and store my gear in Whiterun. I met Uthgerd the Unbroken in The Bannered Mare throwing bank a tankard of Black-Briar Mead and hankering for a brawl. She insulted me, challenged me to a fist fight, and when I bested her, she noticed my Amulet of Mara and offered her hand (and house!) in marriage. I accepted. We were wed at the Temple of Mara in Riften within the week.

Things were fine at first. We traveled the land raiding bandit camps and defeating dungeons full of Draugr. But pretty soon I had enough gold to buy my own house in Whiterun. Uthgerd moved in with me, of course, but so did my housecarl Lydia. And that's when things got dicey. Lydia was constantly in my bedroom. When I woke up, there she was. When I returned from battle, there she was. When I unloaded my loot into my treasure chest, there she was. "Honored to see you, my thane!" "Long life to you, my thane!"

Pretty soon I decided to take Lydia questing and let Uthgerd have a break. For one thing, Lydia's sycophantic blabber in my house was making me nuts. Out on the open road, she was a sarcastic, impatient warrior who sighed and huffed when I stopped to buy supplies, and when I'd ask her to hold onto some of our loot, she'd go, "I am sworn to carry your burdens." And for another thing, she'd happily wear the fancy armor I smithed for her, unlike Uthgerd, who seemed determined to get burnt to a crisp by dragon fire in that pedestrian steel outfit.

But things got sour on the road with Lydia after a couple of days. I was a master of sneak, you see, wielding my bow and arrows in the shadows for double damage, but at the first sign of trouble, Lydia would go barrelling into forts and caves and ancient ruins shouting, "I'LL KILL YOU IF I HAVE TO!" So of course I had to follow after her or risk hitting her in the head with one of my glass arrows from afar. But once I got into actual combat, I had to spend the whole time chasing Lydia around casting healing spells at her because she was constantly almost dying.

Last week, in real life, I got myself some strep throat AND a peptic ulcer, which meant I was confined to my bed to be miserable and chew on bread occasionally. I decided to while away the time by starting a new game of Skyrim and not get married until I was good and ready. After like 20 hours, I settled on Mjoll the Lioness as my constant companion, because: a) She has her own high-level weapons, b) She'll wear whatever armor you smith/enchant for her, and c) She has the most unique dialogue options in the game, so when you're out on the road, she doesn't just huff and puff; she talks about how her mom trained her in swordsmanship and how she's been wiping out bad guys her whole life and stuff. She's a little insufferable — "I've NEVER been a sellsword!" — but then, so am I (IRL and on PS3), so we're a pretty great match.

EXCEPT! When we got married, her roommate followed her into my house! All he does is talk about how he rescued Mjoll this one time and she's done nothing but make his life the greatest life in all of Tamriel and how he wants to move away with her and blah blah blah. He's always there! Day and night! Following Mjoll around! I've pickpocketed him, punched him in the head, taken away his house key, but still he keeps coming back! And then! Last night! When I came home from ending Skyrim's Civil War, after weeks and weeks on the road, he was standing in my bedroom watching my wife sleep! It was the creepiest thing I have ever seen in my life!

Also, this asshole keeps perving on me when I'm in my own damn house changing armor!

I can't bring myself to kill him with a sword, but I'm seriously thinking of replacing the Nord Mead in his backpack with some paralysis poison.

Actually, my favorite part of my whole hatred is how I Googled "What the fuck, Aerin? Skyrim." And found these AMAZING forum posts:

I followed Aerin out of the city, took out my bow and an iron arrow -- he's not good enough for anything better -- then I put an arrow through his knee. I dragged his body over a fire and left him.

*

Eventually, Aerin will walk out the door. (If he does not, exit/re-enter the house.) When he leaves, follow him out of Whiterun until nobody can see you and kill him. You should get no bounty and Mjoll will not know this way.

*

I went out and did the Azura's Shrine quest to get the refillable black soul gem. Then I went out and bought the Soul Trap spell. I waited around in the Whiterun house until his sorry hide showed up. He went about his business watching Mjoll and being creepy, I waited, spell at the ready. When he finally left, I followed him. Once we were safely outside the city, I snuck up and cast soul trap, then SLOW MO DECAPITATED HIS ASS!! Now I'm going to get my smithing/enchanting to 100, and create one heck of a helmet or something with his soul. Because we were safely outside the city and such, there was no bounty and Mjoll isn't ticked off at me in the least. Everything is business as usual.

This week's topic is: What creeps you out? And my original answer was: Aerin from Skyrim. But now that I've written this whole post, the answer is: Me.

If Laughter is the Best Medicine, Why Does Jennie Have a Cold?

[Obviously the responsible thing to do when you haven't posted in a billion years is to get someone else to do it for you (in this case: Joe, because he is my go to guest-poster) and have him write something about how awesome you are. I only asked him to post for me, though, (on account of how my brain is muddled with cold medicine) I didn't ask him to say nice things about me. Anyway. Here is his post.]


Laughing is awesome. I think there are studies and stuff about how laughing is good for you. Seriously, look it up. It’s on the Internet somewhere, and if it’s on the Internet somewhere, it’s true. There is no denying that I have what can kindly be called a boisterous laugh. A few weeks ago there was a comic convention in town, and from across the crowded room a guy I know knew that I was there because he heard me laugh. I’ve been told that my laugh is great, and that it’s annoying. If I could change my laugh to be more appealing to those people, I wouldn’t, because screw them, but also I don’t think it’s even possible to change your laugh. That’s probably something else you could look up on the Internet, but I don’t feel like doing that right now. The most recent person to comment on the volume of my laughter is Jennie, and she should know because I laugh constantly when I’m with her. This will not come as a shock to any of you, but my wife is hilarious. Her non-sequiturs are legendary, usually involving replacing words in songs with ‘poop’ or making fart noises (which have always had a direct line to my funny bone), and the resultant laughter is usually a mixture of amusement and WTFness. I cannot even begin to imagine what goes on in her brain sometimes, but if I had the chance to experience it myself, I most definitely would want to go to there. I go to Jennie when I need a laugh, and even if I haven’t specifically gone looking for one, she always delivers. And if Jennie’s not available, I watch this video.



Or this one.

   

Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeoooooooooow.

What's brown and sticky?

Mine was not a laughing family. If humor is genetic both branches of the old tree were bereft, not a single shimmering leaf to be found glinting in the jolly sun. And yet despite this lack of natural propensity I must have my share in the conversation, if you are speaking of humor. There are few people in the world, I suppose, who have more true enjoyment of humor than myself, or a better natural taste. If I had ever learnt, I should have been a great proficient. Indeed, I often tell young ladies, that no excellence in humor is to be acquired, without constant practice.

Sadly, no one taught me, no one attended me. Without a governess I was neglected. My mother should have taken me to town every spring for the benefit of the masters, but I suppose she had no opportunity. I always say that nothing is to be done in education without steady and regular instruction, and nobody but a governess can give it. So, though I am not yet four and thirty, I seek out humor where I may find it. And without fail, I find it in Camilla and the Chickens.

Two Things That Always Make Me Laugh

1. This blog post. It gives a little perspective into life suckingness and working at Chuck E. Cheese.




2. This blog post that I wrote drunk. There used to be a lot of amazing comments, too, before we lost all our old comments. Someone had edited the pic above by adding "i wanted some little diebbie oatleaml cream pies but riete aid didnt hae tehm." LOLcat style. It was epic. And accurate of almost all my sentiments all the time.