Happy Monday

Well, it's never really a happy Monday, so here are some goofy-ass pics to make your day a little more fun. When D and I were in Vegas a while ago, we visited Madame Taussaud's Wax Museum, which was a major dissapointment. There weren't nearly enough famous "people." I kept wondering who the heck everyone was. Whatev. Just so you don't have to spend the $50 (rip off!), here are the highlights:

Two feisty redheads:


My rockstar baby:


I don't know what that face is supposed to be...

I heart Tim McGraw!

This is my "I hate W" face--just for you mom!

I don't think that's helping...

OMG! While at the gym yesterday, I witnessed the girl on the machine in front of me seriously crack open a Pepsi while she was working out. And...there was a jumbo candy bar perched on the display, too. What are you even doing?! It was so bizarre. At least she didn't have like a box of doughnuts of something. Then I would have had to go steal one.

Words we make up

One of my all time favorite games is Scrabble. I’m good at spelling and vocab, and before I met Dustin, I always won. We don’t play very often, but when we do it’s always very fun. We like to play until absolutely all the tiles are used, and we usually refuse to turn in our tiles for new ones. This mostly results in some ridiculous words and word cop-outs, like adding an “s” to the end of a word. Here’s our latest: adding an “er” to the end, i.e. “taxer”—one who taxes, “axer” one who axes. What? That’s a word right?
Here are some others that have come about without the aid of Scrabble:
Ranch Sauce:
(Noun) aka Ranch Dressing
This is Dustin’s creation since I think ranch is disgusting and would never eat it. Somehow, he thinks ranch sauce sounds more appealing than ranch dressing.

Skankily:
(adverb) Trashy, slutty. As in, “that girl sure was dressed skankily.”

Crunchy:
(adverb, adjective, noun, whatever) Used to describe any of several things or traits associated with being overly into nature, sporting activites and disregard for personal hygiene. Often applied to persons seen shopping at REI, wearing Tevas (with or without socks), sipping coffee in Sugarhouse, perusing the dried goods section at Whole Foods, driving a Subaru, or sporting dreads in a carefully crafted attempt to appear socially apathetic (belied by their $500 backpack). This one is mine, and I wasn’t even aware I made it up. I just thought it was commonplace.

You know...

...sometimes I just want to eat the WHOLE box of banana flavored Teddy Grahams. They're just. that. good.

God Bless America aka VOTE

I almost didn’t vote. I just couldn’t decide. I felt so overwhelmed and underwhelmed at the same time due to the complete lack of logic the nation displayed in choosing their candidates—and then the candidates choosing their running mates. What a mess.

With the rise of news media and the internet blaring “election updates” 24/7, I just couldn’t get away from all the hype—or the fact that I couldn’t wholeheartedly endorse either candidate. Every comparison I saw for months held the candidates at virtually the same level on most political issues, the only clear division standing on civil matters.

I was accused of being jaded (thanks Mom), but I can’t help but feel that it won’t matter who becomes elected because the heart of their policies are so similar that by the time any act is dragged through Congress and “porked” to death, we will end up with virtually the same watered-down mediocre policy without any major change. People get all riled up about the “liberal news media” and name-calling and whose funds go where, but all candidates engage in the same dirty, nasty, underhanded behavior regardless of which party line is drawn.

So I researched and researched and made my tick marks on a piece of paper, going back and forth and back and forth until I could form my own logic where the logic of the nation had failed me. After all, you can’t depend on rednecks clinging to their guns and religion, the “liberal news media,” your husband or your mom to formulate your opinion. I did vote. I voted early, and I was proud of my decision and my fulfillment of civic duty. If you haven’t already, please vote—be proud of your decision, too.

Reading

A looong time ago, I posted about starting to read the Twilight books. With the release of the movie approaching, I thought I should mention that I actually finished all four of them about a month after I started reading. I promised that I would let you know what I thought, but I ended up being fairly disenchanted by them, so I neglected to mention them any further. It’s not that I didn’t like the series—if anything it was a very fun read and a good distraction. Nothing too heavy (or realistic for that matter) and a little silly. I kept having to take silliness breaks. Like, that’s not really happening is it? She’s not really going there, right? She can’t be serious, can she? But, of course, the answer was always yes, and it really was that silly.

With some incredulity, I waded through all four. I did not become seduced by Edward, but I found Jacob to be quite attractive—what can I say? I like big, broad-shouldered guys with inordinate facial hair (love you babe.)

I think the biggest disappointment was Bella. She had the opportunity to be such a strong character, but ended up a little flat for me. I felt like her entire self-worth was based on a pattern of male affection, either from Edward or Jacob, and it was more than slightly off-putting for this Gender Studies thesis minor.

One thing I did love about reading Twilight, though, was that it reminded me how much I adore reading. I mainly read magazines now (which I love, love, love) because I don’t feel like I have time to sit down with a whole story, but I’ve been making time lately, and it feels good. After a couple other wholly unsatisfying book reads between Twilight and today, I finally finished a very good one last night: The Book Thief. Amazing. Read it. Thank you Markus Zusak, for restoring my faith in good writing, and my re-found desire to read more, more, more.