Well, hello. A cursory glance at the calendar has informed me that it's August. I don't believe it, but it seems like everyone else does, so I figured a post was probably in order.
Also! The lovely and talented and absolutely pee-your-pants funny Erin, from Out of Character, tagged me! That's right, ME. Ha! Allow me to gloat for a few moments here.
Erin tagged me, because she thinks I am also hilarious and lovely and talented, etc., so on and so forth. Erin tagged ME because she likes me, she really likes me! Erin tagged ME ME ME because...well, because tagging sometimes can be annoying and she had already tagged everyone she could think of and still was lacking on the tag number requirements so she remembered one of my eighty-zillion comments on her site and thought, oh good, maybe this will assuage her. Or at least make her stop stalking me. Geez.
Ha! It didn't, Erin! I'm still going to leave another eighty or ninety zillion comments on your site, all about how I looooove you and how you made me LOL and ROLF. Well, not that, because I just can't ever bring myself to use those acronyms, even when they are (as they usually are NOT) true, and I truly am Laughing Out Loud. I always feel disingenuous, and like I'd better expound upon the nature of my laughter, what exactly it was that made me laugh. And there is the cornerstone of why so many of you who know me in real life tune me out. I feel the need to expound. Maybe I should just leave it at that. Elise: Feels The Need To Expound.
So, on with the tag. That Erin gave me. Erin! From Out of Character!
The Eight Things Meme (Now, you can use the word "meme" or the word "survey", depending on whether you want to be Internet Superiority Word-User or Normal Person Who Uses Normal Words. Your choice! [That was for you, Kyle]):
"Each player lists 8 facts/habits about themselves. The rules of the game are posted at the beginning before those facts/habits are listed. At the end of the post, the player then tags 8 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog."
1. Cody and I were hanging out with some friends of ours the other night, and the conversation turned in the direction of super scary, awful spiders. Actually, the conversation made it over to super scary and awful spiders after we had exhausted a discussion on horrible and disgusting bugs. So, I guess fact number one is that I don't like bugs at all, nor do I particularly enjoy spiders, but if we're hanging out, I'll be real excited to talk about them. For like, an hour. And Google them! Look at what used to live in my husband's parents boathouse!
2. Also, those spiders can freaking swim, y'all. I know that's not technically a fact about me, but listen to this story anyway. A long time ago, my husband and his brother were in the boathouse mentioned above. They were doing some sort of boathousey things, probably getting life-jackets out or dropping important things down the boat slip and then diving down to find them, and they happened upon one of these hairy monsters. Being the red-blooded males they are, and not some sort of spider-loving freaks, they immediately set forth to kill the giant spider. Clint (Cody's brother) took the swing-wildly-with-a-life-jacket approach, and from what I hear, Cody took the hide-behind-the-boat-and-scream approach. Just kidding babe. I know you probably didn't actually scream. While you were hiding back there. Anyway! Clint eventually landed one of his blows, and the spider fell off the wall, scrambled to the edge of the water, fell in, sucked all of its legs together, and sunk like a rock. Victory! Or so the boys thought. Until the other night, when through some rampant Googling we discovered that those freaking spiders, called Fishing Spiders, can SWIM, and the way they do it is described as such:
"Probably the largest spider of Central and Northern Europe is Dolomedes fimbriatus, the Raft Spider. Sometimes its also called Fishing Spider. In fact, Dolomedes is able to catch small fishes, tadpoles and frogs. Females reach more than 20 mm in length. The spiders need water in their habitats (e.g. small brooks or lakes, ponds) and in spite of their large size they are able to run over the water surface. If Dolomedes feels threatened, it is also able to submerge under water for minutes, by pulling its legs together and "diving" straight down."
EWWWWW!
3. I like hangout sessions that end up with semi-inebriated Googling and laughing hysterically at people's childhood insect stories. Give me a plate of cookies, a beer, and a story about how your best friend in second grade had a house absolutely chock-full of water bugs any day. I'll take your Jimmy Choos, Chloe mini-dress, and trendy bar and raise you some flip-flops, a tee-shirt, and a good giant mosquito story. I win.
4. I'm totally and completely obsessed with my dog. In fact, I have been struggling through this MEME/SURVEY to not make the entire eight points about my dog. What she eats, what she doesn't eat, what she likes to do, the really cute thing she did just a minute ago....but it seems that I've only made it to number four. I can't help it. She's freakishly awesome. See for yourself:
One more? Ok, ok.
5. I am also obsessed with sharks. Did you know that RIGHT NOW, this very minute, it's Shark Week on the Discovery Channel? Did you? Because if you did, then why are you reading anything on the internet at all? You could be watching one show about the Five Deadliest Attacks Caught On Camera and then right after, watch a documentary about how People Don't Understand Sharks; They Aren't Killing Machines; Let's Blame The Media. It's glorious!
6. If you give me a bag of Tostitos Hint of Lime chips, no matter the size, I will eat it. By myself. Probably in under an hour. Sorry! Hope no one else wanted any. Of the family sized bag.
7. I'm a total moron. That may sound overly broad, but trust me, it's not. For example, yesterday I stopped at the grocery store on the way home from work. I needed about 87 more bags of Tostitos Hint of Lime, because someone had eaten them all. Anyway, it was raining (that should be fact number 7, that I live in a rainforest. This is a fact none of us knew, including me, until this summer. But I digress) and I was trying to get the trunk open. I should also mention that I was driving my old high-school ride, the Green Camaro, and I haven't driven it in quite some time. I'll get to that later. Anyway, I was standing in the rain, the bag-carrying guy beside me, trying frantically to get my key to turn and open the trunk. I finally did, but then I couldn't get the key back OUT of the lock. "Umm, just go ahead and load those," I said to the bag-guy, as casually as a rain-soaked, frantic, crazy girl could sound. "I haven't driven this car in forever. Ha! HAHAHA!" I breezily laughed, as I YANKED THE KEY to no avail. The bag-guy didn't cooperate; instead he just stood there, bemusedly watching me struggle and listening to my incoherent and largely embarrassing babble. "Oh, stupid key, I don't know why it's stuck, YOU CAN JUST PUT THOSE CHIPS IN THE TRUNK, AND STOP WATCHING ME, I mean, if you want to....." Finally, bag-guy took pity upon me and said, "here, let me try". He turned the key 90 degrees to the left, and pulled it straight out. Huh. Turns out you have to have the key facing in the right direction. Who knew? Oh that's right, EVERYONE.
8. Speaking of the Green Camaro, Cody and I have been trying to sell that piece for over a year now. The first time around, we had a few takers initially, but everyone backed out when they saw the fender was all messed up due to a parking lot incident I had while in the 12th grade. Turns out when you try and pull between two parked cars through the one empty spot between them, you have to be pointing really, really straight. Otherwise, you rip some of your fender off! Interesting. Anyway, we got the fender thing fixed, which only took about 8 months because it was some favor of a friend of a friend and anyway, now we have the car back, and are trying to sell it. I am driving it because (well, this is only some of the story) any time Cody even LOOKS at the Green Camaro he immediately becomes so incensed with anger that he can hardly see straight. And then he starts spitting blood. He feels that no car should be so difficult to sell, and the fact that Green Camaro has not yet sold probably means that it is an Evil car, and is somehow personally out to get him.
Cody has a similar theory about those people who call your cell phone and their number shows up as 000-000-0000. He thinks they are little phone demons calling, and if you answer one of the 000 calls, the little phone demon will fly right into your ear. I'm not sure what the phone demon does once in your ear, but I'm guessing they don't take up residence in your brain to helpfully organize your To-Do list, or improve your vocabulary or anything. Rather, I bet the phone demons come from the same place as the Can't-Sell-Your-Car demons, and have similar evil intentions. And if that's true, then it's a good thing I'm driving Green Camaro. I answer those 000 calls all the time.
I tag Amy, Cupcake, Nathan, Janet, Kyle, Adam, Fist City, and Katy.
