Week 34: Taxidermy lamps, A Kayaking Adenture and A Contest

I work in retail, and in my particular retail department we sell lamps. We sell a wide variety of lamps, but today I would like to talk about a particular kind of lamp that we have sold in the past.

At this point I can’t remember exactly what the name of the lamp was, but it was essentially a taxidermy lamp. The base was made out of a (rather large) glass jar, and inside was a diorama featuring a taxidermy bird.

I know there was one that had a Quail in it, and I want to say that there was one featuring a duck…

So anyway, the other day I had a customer who was looking for floor lamps that my store carried aside from the ones that I actually had in store. I pulled up our website, and as I was browsing for floor lamps I noted some of the rather… odd lamps that we currently have to offer.

Later in the workday I mentioned some of the lamps to a co-worker, who recounted a customer having recently come in seeking the taxidermy lamps that we used to carry. Since we can no longer get those, she offered to search Google for possible leads as to where they could potentially seek out a taxidermy lamp to complement those that they already have.

Have you ever Googled “Taxidermy Lamp”?

Probably not, because let’s be honest, why would you? But let me tell you, some of the results are truly bizarre. So I have told you all of this, so that I could show you this, because quite frankly now that I have seen it, how can I possibly keep the image to myself? That would be selfish of me.

Now that I’ve, in all likely-hood, horrified you completely I’ll tell you about today’s completely awesome adventure. Despite initial fears that the lovely Michigan weather would once more annihilate our plans, several friends from work and I finally got to go kayaking, and we had a blast.

I actually turned out to be a gorgeous day out on the river. Because none of us had been out on this particular river before, and two of us hadn’t ever been kayaking before, we took the shorts trip, which was about an hour and a half long.

Once we’d paid for the trip and signed the necessary paperwork, we loaded up in the of the parks vans and they drive us to the launch point. After having us strap into life vests the staff gave us a hand getting into our kayaks and we were off.

Not too long into the trip we were joined by a rather friendly duck who was content to float along-side us. She stayed close to Sarah for quite some time… We figure she probably thought that we had food for her.

We kept a pretty leisurely pace, chatting and taking pictures and just generally enjoying the scenery. At one point we noticed what was either a Crane or a Heron hanging out over by the bank, and near the end of out trip we spotted a swan.

The first swan sighting wasn’t too bad, since that one was a ways away from us. The second one was hanging out under a bridge that we had to go under to finish our course. It was a little close for comfort, I think for both us and the swan. But everyone (including the swan) kept cool and there were no swan incidents… so that’s a plus.

The tail-end of the trip was probably the toughest, because though the water was really fairly clean, the water near the landing dock really wasn’t. The water there was full of these plants that made it super hard to paddle. It was a real work out trying to navigate through them!

All in all it was a lot of fun, and next time we go we’ve got to take one of the longer trips because it was over way too quickly this time around!

I rounded the day off by entering a contest over at Claire Legrand's Blog to win “Steampunk”, an anthology that a lot of totally awesome authors contributed to. If you are so inclined you should definitely check it out!

I’ll talk to you soon.

Week 33: Vivacious Lady

My weekend was amazing, largely because I did absolutely nothing. It was nice to take a few days to just kind of relax. I didn't leave the house much, I read a few books, and I watched a movie or two. It was bliss. Pure and simple.

I spent much of Saturday reading "Eona" the sequel to "Eon" by Alison Goodman. Oh. My. Goodness. SO GOOD! There really aren't words to convey how engrossing, and just generally amazing these two books are. I was completely captivated by the first, and was hard-pressed to put the second one down. If I were to describe these two books in one word it would be Epic.

If you're looking for something new to read I definitely recommend this duology. It's absolutely fantastic!

It was near noon or so when I originally sat down to read. The house was completely quiet since the rest of the family was out and about for the morning. It's not often that I get the house to myself. So just out of curiosity I flipped on the TV and shuffled through a couple channels.

This is when I ran across the Turner Classic Movie channel. It just so happened that this month they are featuring a different star everyday, and Saturday they were featuring James(Jimmy) Stewart. When I flipped to the TCM channel the 'Vivacious Lady' was just starting, and within the first few minutes of the show I was hooked. What a cool movie!

This trailer that I found on YouTube gives you an idea of the film if you're not familiar with it:


I watched that, and then returned to my book. By the end of the day I finished reading "Eona", and once again I want you to know I was blown away. I mean, what are you doing? You need to read this book! SO GOOD!

Having finished my book, and yet too caught up in what I had just read to even think about starting another book right away, I began obsessively searching the Internet trying to find 'Vivacious Lady' on DVD, or maybe even on netflix. As it turned out this was no simple task.

I couldn't find it anywhere... until I finally did late Sunday night. A copy is now on it's way to my house. I'm excited! In between searching for this DVD and beginning a new book, which I may talk about in a later post as I haven't formed too many opinions of it yet, I watched 'Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation' on netflix.

Again it's an old black and white James Stewart movie. It was a cute/funny movie and I thoroughly enjoyed it. That put's my current James Stewart movie count at four. In addition to the two that I've previously mentioned here, I've also seen 'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" and "The Shop Around the Corner", each of which are absolutely delightful.

So that's what I've come away with this weekend, a handful of book/old movie recommendations. Have you read/watched anything particularly great lately?

I'll talk to you soon.

Week 32: Missing Flash Drives and Memory Lane Therapy

After a week of working 4am's, getting a full night's sleep last night was heavenly. I don't know how people that regularly begin their day at 4am do it. They say your body adjusts to it, but I don't know... not mine I guess. All I know for sure is that there is no way I could work that shift long term.

as you may have ascertained today was my day off, and if you didn't, well now you know I guess. It was a glorious day of doing absolutely nothing, at least nothing that I had to think too much about. Sometimes it's nice to just be able to sit back and not have to think. You know? Am I right?

It's been quite a while now since I moved back home from my year at MSU. A little over a year in fact. I distinctly remembered bringing three flash drives home with me in the move, but of course could not recall where I had stowed them upon getting home. Let me remind you, more often then I'd like to admit my memory fails me. The point here, is that I've been missing these flash drives since about the time that I moved home, but I knew that they made the move with me because I distinctly remembered packing them to make the trip home.

I have remembered them off and on over the course of the past year, vaguely noting to myself that I was sure that they were here, and also that each of them was loaded with information that I wasn't really interested in losing. You know, stories and poetry, essays, music back-ups, photos... those sorts of things. The drive I was most interested in finding was the one with all the things that I have written/am in the middle of writing.

There are YEARS worth of writing on that drive. It would be no small tragedy for me to lose it, because stupidly, that data isn't stored anywhere else.

So yeah, I cared that I hadn't been able to locate these drives, but determined that I didn't care enough to go to the trouble of really undertaking a search for them. That is, until today, because what the hay, I had the day off.

Early this afternoon I began my search.

I began by sifting through the boxes at the top of my closet, which to be honest, I should have known that would be a fruitless search because it wasn't all that long ago that I went through and organized them all. Had these drives been in any of those boxes, I would have found them a couple of months ago. But I looked anyway.

This of course led to me coming across a box full of cards that I have received over the years. Birthday cards, Christmas cards, Thank you cards, Thinking of you cards... I have a plethora of cards. Is this strange? Do you hold onto the cards that people send you?

Even though I don't often look over them, I still like to keep them, just in case I might ever like to look at them, because sometimes I do. Sometimes I like to lose myself to a moment of nostalgia, to take a moment and reflect on where I've been in relation to where I am. When I find myself feeling like I'm stuck in a stand-still it's important for me to look back to see how far I've come in order to remind myself how far I have to go. When I was younger I used to feel stuck in a stand still a lot, so when I start to feel that way now I can remember those times and remind myself that it takes time to move forward and I just have to be patient even if that hard to do, especially when that's hard to do.

So, right. The flash drives where not in my closet. So I moved on to my filing cabinet. This has a ton of stuff that I've filed away from Elementary-High school as well as the mission trips that I have participated in. Once again, it was time to take a moment to traverse memory lane. But like I said, for me, moments like this are therapeutic.

Going through my "files" also gave me an idea of what to do with all of my cards. At one point in time, for some purpose now unknown, I bought a mini binder and mini plastic sleeves. I unearthed this bind in my hunt for my flash drives and it just clicked, that binder is the perfect size for cards!

At some point in the fairly near future I plan to organize my cards into binders. A kind of card scrapbook/ memory thing. It's a step up from storage in a box at the top of my closet anyway... Searching through my closet and filing cabinet took most of my afternoon, and though I wouldn't call it completely fruitless, I did not find what I had ultimately been looking for.

Rather than search further though, I took a break, and I told you all of that, so that I could tell you this... I FOUND THEM! About a half an hour or so ago I decided it was time to sit down and blog, and that I was going to tell you all about my failure to locate these flash drives, but before I sat down to write I took a second look at a cabinet I have hanging near my door. I had looked at the tin that I have sitting in this cabinet earlier today, and considered looking in there for the drives, but then discounted that idea. Why would I have put them in there?

Indeed, why did I put them in there? I have no idea. I will never know, except that I did and that is where I found them. My advice? Never make assumptions, if you think you put something somewhere, check it out no matter how crazy you think it would be for you to have placed it there, because that's probably where it is.

Oh, and just to dispel the elephant in the room, no I did not blog last week. Yes, I was supposed to, and I have no excuse for not following through last week. I will try to do better in the coming weeks.

I'll talk to you soon.

Week 30: A recap, a return... no excuses.

One might perhaps call my long absence an epic fail as far as my blogging goal this year… and I am not here to disagree. I am not even here to offer an excuses, because I happen to abhor excuses. But perhaps I may renew my attempt for what remains of the year, and begin that renewal by relating to you what exactly I’ve been up to in my absence.

It would be pointless, for one to even attempt to recount point by point my time spent away from blogging, not to mention boring. However, here are the highlights, the cliff notes version if you will.

There was a span of roughly a week that I spent in Texas. It was a spur of the moment trip that I took for work. I was asked to travel there to assist a new store in opening. It was a quick turn around in that within only a few days after to agreeing to it I was boarding a plane an on my way.

This was my first time flying, and I must say that I was initially super nervous about it, but it wasn’t bad at all. Each flight went really smooth, and ultimately I really enjoyed the experience.

While the hours we worked while we were down there were long, it was a lot of fun to be able to help a store get ready for their open. I really enjoyed working alongside the people that would be working down there, and giving them ideas as to how we run things in our own department here in the MI.

Plus the weather there was gorgeous! The locals thought we were a bit crazy, because for them the temperatures were a bit cold, but considering we took this trip during the first week of April, their weather was much preferable to our freezing temperatures.

The next notable event of my absence was the All Time Low concert that Sarah and I went to at the end of April at The Filmore in Detroit. It was so much fun, and such a great show! All Time Low was the headliner, but The Summer Set, Hey Monday, and Yellowcard were also at that particular date.

There just aren’t words, I’m telling you…

I took a photography class this spring.; it lasted ten weeks, and just ended two or three weeks ago. It was a lot of fun to finally take the time to really learn how to use my Digital SLR camera. I bought it when I graduated (4 years ago, can you believe it? I can’t!) and just haven’t taken the time to really play with it.

I mean, yeah I took a photography class my senior year, but a manual camera is a lot different than a digital. More so than you would think… But ultimately I'm glad it's over. It was a bit much taking a class two days a week, considering I had to fit it in with a full time work schedule. I'll finish my degree, eventually.

I have all the time in the world after all.

But really, at this particular point in time, the most exciting thing is that I went and saw the final Harry Potter movie last Friday. I can hardly believe that it’s done, that the final movie has come out…. Let me tell you, it was SO good. I loved it from start to finish.

I didn’t find it quite as emotional as the book, but I’ve never found the movies to play on my emotions the same way that the books did. That’s not to say that that is a completely bad thing, it just means that there is no way to really accurately compare the books to the movies. It’s best to consider them to be separate entities.

Anyway, this is my lack luster reemergence into the world of blogging. I’ve taken the moment to give you a brief catch-up, if you’re out there, what have you been up to in my absence?

I’ll talk to you soon.

Week 9: Rainy Days

My wish from last week may be coming true as I type. It's been raining steadily for the last few hours. Perhaps by morning there won't be anymore snow in sight? One can only hope...

Although, the absence of snow equates to mud everywhere. We are still in for a bit of snow according to reports, though nothing substantial. Winter is finally starting to give way to spring. It's a slow, steady transition.

For tonight it's raining, and there are rumors of potential thunder. I love a good thunderstorm. The rain is calming to fall asleep to. At least in my opinion.

I need to get into better blogging habits. Every week when I sit down to blog I can remember times earlier in the week when I had ideas of things to write about, but didn't sit down then and write, or even take notes on my thoughts. Then I sit down to actually blog, and wouldn't you know it, I have no idea what my ideas previously in the week were.

Ah, the life of the absent minded...

Week 8: Snow, Snow, Go Away

So I've had about enough of all the snow we've been getting. Although, honestly I'm not a big fan of snow to begin with. I could do without it. Snow may be pretty, but it is also cold and a real pain to drive in.

Snow is certainly better than that ice storm that we got at the beginning of the week though. The majority of the ice has melted by now, and thankfully those who've been without power have gotten it back. Thankfully we never lost power, although we were without the internet for a couple of days.

Now, I've gone without internet before. It's honestly no big deal... unless you're forced to go without it without any warning. Then it's kind of a big deal. Just sayin'.

I know tonight's post is kind of lame... but I think I'm starting to catch a cold, and I'm super tired, so really I'd like nothing more than to get some sleep.

Week 7: Life Is Good

Do you ever have weeks where it just seems like things are all coming together? I feel like this week was very productive.

I'm really excited to have to just re-launched my book review blog. However, I change up the format of it, so I suppose with the implemented changes it's now more of a blog dedicated to my commentary/analysis of what I am presently reading than it is a review blog.

You can check it out here. I'm hoping to get the first part of my first 'commentary' up in the next day or so. It's already kind of written, so it's just a matter of going over final edits and getting it posted.

It's been a full and busy week, but really I wouldn't have it any other way. Aside from the blog re-launch, I also offered and accepted a new position at work that I had put in for. Plus I got some great news concerning my student loans.

Right now, life is good.

Week 6: I'd be a Champion

If there were an award for forgetfulness... I'd be a world class champ. I very nearly forgot to blog this week, which just so you know, would make me feel like an epic failure. It's not so much the fact that I almost forgot, as it is the fact that I forgot multiple times.

I did in fact remember that I still needed to blog this week, on several occasions. The only issue with my remembering is that not one of those times did I actually sit down and write anything. I didn't write down a single word. So I'd remember, then consider what I wanted to write about, and promptly forget again by the time I was anywhere near my computer.

Now, I know what you may say, I don't really need my computer in order to write. I could easily hand-write something and then re-type it for the purposes of this blog. But be that as it may, I failed to do that too. So, instead of whatever it was I considered writing earlier in the week, and honestly at this point I have no idea... you are left with this sorry tale of my forgetfulness.

Although really this post ties in perfectly with my week, or at least yesterdays Facebook status, which I kid you not read, :"is wondering why I can remember useless information, but can't remember where I parked the car!"

That status by the way, so true!

Week 5: I'm a Gleek!

How is it that the end of the week gets here so quickly? Several times this week I've thought about sitting down and writing SOMETHING out, and yet haven't managed to. Or haven't taken the time to more aptly.

At an rate, it's been a little bit of a whirlwind week. In the matter of just a few days I have gone from never having watched an episode of Glee to having watched the entire second season. Next week I plan to tackle watching the first season. What fun would it be to watch it in order, after all?

I am a gleek. It's all because of this video really.

After watching this video I was reminded that Darren Criss recently joined the glee cast, and he is awesome. I mean, seriously, if you've ever seen A Very Potter Musical on YouTube then you know this, and if you haven't then you need to drop what you're doing and go watch it. Now. Seriously. It's AWESOME!

So after watching the previously mentioned video, I searched "Darren Criss- Glee" and YouTube and watched a clip from glee. From there I immediately watched the glee episodes available on the Glee website and then rented the rest from Season 2 that were not available.

It's official. I'm hooked.

(Seriously... go watch 'A Very Potter Musical' already)

Week 4: About School... Sort of

My intention was to go back to school, at least part-time, this semester. That lasted for all of two weeks.

As it turns out, the folks in the transcript office just got around to looking at the transcript that I had sent in from MSU. I had been under the impression from the conversation that I had had with a counselor previously that none of my classes would ultimately transfer back. Apparently, this was a false impression.

The lady from the transcript office called me the day before the refund date to let me know that the Intro to Journalism class I had enrolled in for the semester correlated with a class that I took at State. She had just noted on my WCC transcript that I had already taken and passed the class.

At that point I had two options. The first of my options was to drop the class that day and get my full refund. The second option was to retake the class and have her wipe the record of having already completing the credit from my transcript.

Having no desire to retake or repay for a class that I had apparently already taken, I dropped the class. There was a moment in which I contemplated finding a class to fill that gap so that I might remain a part-time student, but that was going to be trickier said than done nearly three weeks into the semester.

At any rate, one other class transferred in as well, so now I am only six classes away from FINALLY having a degree. Of course I am still enrolled in my ridiculous computer class... but thankfully I should be finished with that in the next few weeks. Really, it is most certainly the most ridiculous class that I have ever had to take. I guess it'll be worth it in the end though... maybe.

I will commit to nothing.