That's bull...

This is a breed of dog called a bull mastiff. It is huge. We live in a condominium. Many of the people living in our condominium building own dogs. Some stupid people living in our building own a bull mastiff. I've heard that bull mastiffs, while huge, have a very low energy level. That would make sense. The people that own the bull mastiff appear to have low energy levels. In fact, I rarely see them walking the bull mastiff as much as standing with the bull mastiff. In their defense, it does not appear that the bull mastiff very much enjoys walking either. The people that own the bull mastiff are miserable. I know this because they confronted us about not picking up our puppy's poop. Who has time for that when they are happy? Also, they complained to a board member that we were not picking up our puppy's poop after they confronted us and we started picking up the poop. Now when I see them out standing with the bull mastiff, I stare at them. I am hoping that someday I will catch them not picking up the bull mastiff's poop. That day will be better than Christmas.

A busy week indeed....

so here we go:

1.The number one piece of advice given by therapists to adult children of those with Borderline Personality Disorder is END THE RELATIONSHIP.
ADDITIONAL FUN FACT: Sadly, there is nothing fun about this.

Oh whatever. I don’t even feel like coming up with things right now. I’m so tired. Pretty sure this new job in marketing is going to kill me. (Well at least training for it while I work my other job while still trying to impress with the new one will.)

Please excuse this short and sorry excuse for an entry but I think I have enough on my plate.

And what did you learn this week?

Let's see... I gave this one some thought today, but couldn't think of anything really... okay, here's one-

1. George Adamsen of Born Free fame (also author of his autobiography My Pride and Joy) was killed by an African poacher in 1989. George specialized in adapting lions that had been raised in civilization back into the wild.
ADDITIONAL FUN FACT: The most well-known lion adapted into George's tribe was Christian the Lion of YouTube fame. Christian was purchased and raised for the first year of his life by two Australians living in London in the 1970's. Check out the famous YouTube video of Christian greeting the men who purchased and raised him after one year in the wild with George. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVNTdWbVBgc

2. The drug Zolpidem (which goes by the popular name brand Ambien) is commonly used in 10mg amounts per pill.
ADDITIONAL FUN FACT: I don't take this drug, but for one of my other classes, I'm writing a short piece on a girl who overdoses on it. Obviously, I had to know how much is usually prescribed per pill so I could say how much the coroner found in her bloodstream. (FYI- 200mgs)

3. Naples, Italy is renowned for having the best pizza in Italy, which of course has the best pizza in the world.
ADDITIONAL FUN FACT: While I had read this in the best-selling novel Eat, Pray, Love, I recently had the opportunity to confirm it with Italian customers Giovanni Mambia and Enrico Prosperi who visited our office from Florence. I'm going there later this month and I'm very excited to try it.

Funny and informative....

Okay, so new blog idea that might make this a little easier. Unless we are given a topic, my entries from now on will list three things I’ve learned that day. While this exercise is pretty easy when you’re say… five years old, it’s a bit tougher at 26, when you mostly do/talk to/watch the same things every day. (Oh, and current events and things like “my brother has a headache” don’t count. They have to be things I’m just now learning while the info has always been available. For the sake of you, reader, I’ll try to make sure that they are also interesting, but it’s not a rule that they have to be.)

Since it is only 12:45pm right now, I’m going to list things I learned yesterday. I should at least get the benefit of having a full 24 hrs to learn three things, right?

1. While you can go to this site:
http://casesearch.courts.state.md.us/inquiry/inquiry-index.jsp
and search the first and last names of any resident in the state of Maryland for anything they’ve ever had to appear in court for, Maryland is the only state that provides this info in such a fun and easy format. PA does not. Boo.
ADDITIONAL FUN FACT: My mother is on this site multiple times under her numerous last names/combinations of both. (She pretty much marries, and divorces, someone new every few years, hence the multiple aliases.)

2. If your vehicle is registered in, say, your mother’s name, (or one of her multiple aliases), she must be present for you to renew your tags. On that same note, if your tags expired in December and it is now, say, March, you cannot renew online.
ADDITIONAL FUN FACT: It would pretty sad if I was 26, married, and still driving a car registered in my mother’s name. I learned this valuable lesson with the help of my 17 year old brother.

3. Recent studies have shown that there are over 320 genes linked to fertility or lack there of.
ADDITIONAL FUN FACT: I did not learn this because I am currently trying to get pregnant. Every morning at the gym, I do one hour on the elliptical. While I do this, I read one entire magazine. As my gym happens to be women-only, you can imagine that many of the magazines there contain this sort of information.

And I think....

that blogging would be a lot easier if I was writing to an audience that I didn't know. Because then its not as if people would be forced to know about it... In fact, I would prefer that the people who did real by blog, if it was indeed a blog-by-choice, would find it only by Google. If they Googled something I happened to blog about, and they liked it, so be it. I would than attract followers that weren't necessarily a hodge-podge of people with different interests that I happened to have class with, it would probably be people who actually had the same sense of humor as me (because I would like to think that my blog-by-choice would be funny.)

For instance, today someone asked me where I planned to put something very large. I said, "In my glasses case" because I have huge eyeballs. I think that this is funny. I also commonly say that my contacts are size extra large and cost extra because of this. I also think that this is funny. Lately, I have found making fun of myself really funny.

See how stupid this is? I suck at this... but I'm a good writer I swear! This format is like open mic night for writers!!!

A Story of Hands- As It Is Now

So what I've come up with to work on in class today is this idea- my narrative will be told through objects found hidden within a fist. The reader will choose which fist, and since the objects in the fist propel the story along, the reader will ultimately be in control of the path of the story.

I made a list of objects, typical things you might expect to find in someone's fist. A quarter, a book of matches, a piece of candy, two Advil. I decided that time would also propel the story along, but by months. Each time the reader choose a new fist, three months would pass. The story would start at the beginning of the relationship, and, giving the reader four opportunities to choose over the course of the narrative, end at one year. Would the couple still be together? Married? Breaking up?

Since the only available hand model I could find in such short notice was my husband, I decided to tell the story from the woman's perspective (I guess it also helps that I am one!) I got Mike to pose (fists look so funny with nothing else in the shot, like little gremlin hoofs, I told him) just one good shot of the fists that the reader can choose from over and over, and then shots of alternating hands open while the other remained in the fist, displaying the various objects. I've decided to write the story organically as I go, to capture just how organic the feeling of a relationship going right or going wrong over time can seem. Already I'm excited for this. The incorporation of hypertext is pushing me in a direction I never would have gone before and I love it. I hope that it also makes me write something I never would have written before...

A Story of Hands- It Continues

After more thought on what we talked about in class in regards to the current idea for my project, I decided to change things a little. There were a few reasons for the change, not having a clear way to show the reader that the poem was continuing among them. However, I would have to say that my main reason for changing up the idea of the narrative was the fact that I didn't want to use a poem. Frankly, I wrote that poem six years ago, when poetry was still something I was mildly interested in. Now, I don't aspire to be a poet and I can't believe I ever did. I realized I couldn't feel good about the project unless I felt good about the writing at the heart of it, and it didn't matter how easy using something I had already written made the project for me.

I decided to rework my idea. I knew I still wanted to use the hands idea, incorporate some of the ideas that Adam and Jenny had brought up in class, but add elements of time and somehow, I guess because when I think of hands, I always picture my husbands, also add the element of a relationship...? I kept thinking about how....