I declare thee a Rage Friday!

Rage Friday, it has been so long since I've seen you!

I didn't realize it, but not working Fridays has seriously diminished the possibility of a Rage Friday. I'm sure a Rage Friday could happen on a non-work day, but I'm not exactly certain what that would entail (for details on the origins and descriptions of Rage Friday, please see this).

Now, you can't cause a Rage Friday, but I'm pretty sure I encouraged this one. I woke up a little late and decided to treat myself to a coffee shop stop instead of oatmeal and French Press coffee at work. I hoped the shop would be open (one of the drawbacks of living in a college town when the students are gone is that while it is nice and quiet around town, some businesses aren't open as much). Not only was the shop open, but they had my favorite bagel and bananas to boot (I do love an alliteration)! "I wonder," I wondered as I walked to my car, "Does this constitute the beginning of a Rage Friday? It's a Friday starting with a treat." I also factored in that while I will not be ending up at the Bird tonight (as is traditional on a Rage Friday) I will be at a show watching a friend's band and there will be drinking. "Yes," I thought, "If the circumstances get weirder once I get to work, today just might be a Rage Friday."

When I got to work, another coworker had brought in donuts, there was a TON of weird work to do that shouldn't have occured for a couple more weeks AND it's window washing day meaning that every so often there is a guy starring in at me through my second story window.

Happy Rage Friday everyone!

Happy Thursday!

May your weekend be this exciting.

(When I first saw this movie, I watched this scene at least three times in a row because I frequently sing to the cats and in the shower and around the house to songs I don't even like and it's good to know I'm not alone.)

It would be nice to have a weekend of nothing to do but dance around the house, but at least I have fun things planned like a concert and a trip to see a friend and a knitting class and visiting my grandma. But maybe soon I can have a whole weekend of nothing. Not in August or September, I can already know that for sure, but maybe sometime in October I'll plan a nothing weekend. But whether you're doing something or nothing, enjoy your weekend!

Happy Sharky Thursday!

I gotta say, I was a little overwhelmed in trying to think what to post for Happy Thursday. It's the second happiest of all Thursdays because it's Shark Week Thursday (the first happiest Thursday of them all is Thanksgiving). AND it's the President's birthday AND it's payday (well, for me its payday, and I hope it is for you as well!)! What's a girl to post about that could possibly encapsulate that much happiness?! Well, here's a whole bunch of happy and shark related stuff that hopefully does the trick. The cat video at the end has nothing to do with sharks, but it's the best thing I've seen all week. The language is EXTREMEMLY foul, so you've been warned. Don't watch it at work and don't watch it if you have delicate sensibilities regarding the f-word.

On to the happy sharkiness:

At my shark week celebration tomorrow, we will be eating:

-Windmill cookies :more for nostalgia reasons as my cousin recently remembered our grandma serving these to us with cranberry juice. But it will be fun pretending to be a shark big enough to eat a windmill.
-cranberry juice: blood red like the blood that attracts sharks! (also, see above for nostalgia).
-Swedish fish: for sharkily obvious reasons.
-Sourpatch kids: for similar, grosser, sharkily obvious reasons.
-chips and salsa: I plan to sing the jaws theme while navigating my dorsal fins (chips) through the ocean (salsa).
-Wine: red, for the same reason as the cranberry juice. (We will hold off until later in the evening to break this out though, I promise)

Some famous sharks here.

Cool shark crafts! And even more!

And now a hilarious cat video:

Jaws: The Sharky Beginning

I remember the day it all began. My parents were pretty strict about what movies I could watch when I was young because I was their first child and a huge wimp. My mother once had to make up some magical powers about a teddy bear that I could squeeze to make myself invisible to bad guys because I refused to sleep after sneaking out into the living room and seeing a scene in a Sherlock Holmes episode where a guy is killed in a very unscary way. But still! Death! Murder! I was a huge baby! (I've since gotten over that and love scary movies (even if I do watch them through my fingers sometimes) as well as Sherlock Holmes. But I digress. Back to the sharks!) My dad loves movies and scary movies in particular; he would get really excited when he felt I was old enough to handle the next level of scary movies. On this fateful day, I was home from school with a cold or the flu and my dad had the day off. He asked me if I wanted to watch a movie and when I said yes he got out The Book. (side note: My dad loves movies so much that he has a book that lists each movie he owns in various lists sorted by title, genre, and actor. Why all this work, you might be asking. Because my parents have so many movies that they are numbered and stored in rubbermade drawers in a closet and it is impossible to find the one you want without The Book. I have bolded and italisized this so that you know what kind of crazies I come from. Not all of my collecting and OCD organizing tendencies are my fault.) He flipped through The Book and asked me if I wanted to watch something scary, which of course I did because I wanted to impress my dad. I remember the excitement in my dad's eyes when he asked me, "Do you want to watch Jaws?"

My dad lay down on the couch and I sat behind him with my legs dangling down over his. The movie started. The first attack happened. I tucked my legs behind dad just in case a shark could somehow sneak into the living room and sat transfixed for the rest of the movie. Jaws was the perfect scary movie for me because I could be terrified of the shark without having to worry about it actually getting me (despite my unwillingness to dangle my legs), unlike other monsters who could (in my imagination) creep around my bedroom as soon as my parents said good night. Free of any impending attack, I was able to appreciate how totally rad that shark was: sharks are real which ups the scary factor over something like vampires or Frankenstein's monster. They are real and fit into an ecosystem and are a reminder that nature can still mess humans up even though we've done so much to control our environment and protect ourselves. And they just look awesome, like torpedoes with teeth and black eyes.

And so my love of and fascination with sharks was born.

It's the most wonderful time of the year

Shark Week is here again! I have been obsessed with sharks ever since I first saw Jaws; I'm scarred of them and in love with them so what could be better than a whole week of TV dedicated to them?! I remember coming home from high school and watching hours of Shark Week that my dad had recorded on VHS tapes in the olden times before DVR. Two years ago, I hand addressed my sister's wedding invitations while watching Shark Week. Oh, the Shark Week memories!

This year, I don't have cable and have been trying for the past couple of weeks to not panic about missing Shark Week. "It's only TV," I kept telling myself, "and not even the new season of Mad Men, or anything." But in my heart, I was sad. Miss Shark Week? NEVER. Luckily, my cousin is willing to let my other cousin and I use her DVR for the week and we have set up recordings for some of our favorite Shark Week events including the Mythbusters and Dirty Jobs episodes. We both have Friday afternoon off and are going to gather up some snacks, some wine and our knitting and watch as much Shark Week programing as we can jam into one afternoon. I'm pretty sure it will be the best day of my life. Especially because as a grand finale, we're going to watch Jaws (which my dad gave to me last year as a Shark Week present. Because he is the best dad ever).

So be prepared for all kind of sharky links and Shark Week stories this week. Enjoy your Shark Week!

Just in case...

You know sometimes late at night how you can't sleep even though you're exhausted? And everything you're worried about or everything bad you've heard about or every sad thought you've thought comes alive and creeps up on you in the shadows? And you're all alone in your room and your house and you worry maybe you're all alone in the world?

A text from a friend will make those creepy thoughts and sad musings start to back off. But if you still can't sleep, allow me to recommend:

Happy Classy/Inappropriate Thursday

I really like what little I've heard of The National and as soon as I get that old cd unstuck from my car stereo, or a DVD player that works or my computer fixed or bring that stereo up from the basement (I have some technical difficulties and how!) I plan to Interlibrary Loan all the cds of theirs I can. In the meantime I am in love with this video: the song and the imagery and the light sixties/Don Draper feel of it (Or is that just me?)

Isn't that lovely? The only problem I have with it for a Happy Thursday post is that it's a little poignant for a happy Thursday. It's excellent, but it tugs on the emotions a bit (or at least it did for me). So to make sure you leave a Happy Thursday post, well, happy, here is this next video. Be warned, it's about...um, a kid visiting his grandma, which is nice. And, well...drugs, a little bit. But funny!