honey, i'm home!

don't all cheer at once now.

so regina was kind of fun. you know, as far as work goes. my hotel room was nice, the bed was huge, someone did all the cleaning and made my bed everyday, i took all the free pens they left out for me etc. the usual hotel stuff. ok, now for the lowlights and highlights:

lowlights:

• going on a tour of "the tunnels of moosejaw". sooooooo lame. it was tacky and hokey and i swear our tour guide was about 15 years old and doing it for extra credit in his high school drama class. it's not a good sign that the tunnels were named as one of the top attactions for southern saskatchewan.
• the moosejaw mineral spa was also disappointing. it just looked like a boring old pool. no soothing atmosphere or anything. we peered in through the giant windows and decided to hit the casino instead.
• speaking of the casino, i put in $5 and got up to a thrilling $750, then lost it all. oh sorry, i forgot the decimal point, i meant to say i was up to $7.50. haha, fooled you
• eating in a crappy mall's crappy food court every day.

highlights:

• driving to Rouleau - aka Dog River - where the show Corner Gas was filmed. we walked into the town bar that advertised souvenirs and were told they only had air fresheners. we also saw the restaurant/gas station set, which was looking neglected and half buried in snow.
• 20 oz pints! almost all the places here in Winnipeg only give chintzy 16 oz pints. at least that's one thing regina does right.
• meeting lots of fun new people from BC to Newfoundland
• and definitely one of the best moments was when one of my new friends said she didn't know my last name and had just been referring to me as "funny amanda". woohoo! yup, that's right, i'm funny.

anyway, i suppose that sums it up. glad to be home. winnipeg may suck, but it's good to be reminded that some places suck more.

hangin' with the cool crowd

ohmygodohmygodohmygod, one of the popular kids mentioned me on her blog! play it cool amanda, play it cool. deep breaths, shrug it off, no biggie, whatevs. no, don't say that, cool people don't say whatevs. do they? shit, i don't know what cool people say!

so i'm surfin' through the blogs i read when suddenly i see it. the heading is "these blogs deserve more attention" and there's only one listed. MINE! eeeek! ok, don't get too excited. clearly this is a trick. i bet a random blog name pops up every time someone looks at her site. so i refresh the page several zillion times, waiting for someone else to get this honourable mention. but it's still me. perhaps she just has some special widget installed so that whoever looks at her site has their own blog title inserted there. how deviously clever. but maybe she's like the pretty girl in can't buy me love and she's going to make me popular by telling people i'm cool! i'll be her patrick dempsey! i can't remember how that story ends, but i'm sure the moral of it was that life is better when you're popular.

this reminds me of a day in high school when the cute boy all the girls crushed on leaned over in chemistry class and said "psst... amanda" and then told me some joke or something. holy crap, i thought, he's talking to me. he knows my name! of course this was a ridiculous thought, we'd been going to school together for years, of course he knew my name.

i've never been cool. as a teenager, i had scraggly hair, scrawny chicken legs, big buck teeth and far too many shirts with snoopy on them. i'm still a nerd now, just with straight teeth and less cartoons on my clothes. but i still get that dorky rush of excitement when someone acknowledges my existence.

so do what she said and pay more attention to me. she knows what she's talking about; she's cool! come on, jump on my slow moving bandwagon! and do it before she reads this post and hastily recants her endorsement.

look how cool snoopy is, with his shades and sweater and thumb.

i mean business

i'm feeling very grown up once again, but this time it's ok. tomorrow i'm going on my first ever work-related trip. woo! off to close a big deal in tokyo? important meeting with investers in new york? ribbon-cutting ceremony in paris? no, not quite... training in regina!! ok, so maybe i'm not a suit-clad, high-powered, influential jetsetter, but calling this a business trip sounds cool, so just let me have it.

i'm gone for 10 days, and i realize it will probably get very boring, but i'm still looking forward to it. at least parts of it. staying in a hotel is fun. i don't have to worry about grocery shopping or preparing meals while i'm away. and it'll be a change from my normal workday, which is always good. of course if i were a real business lady, i'd have a laptop, and then everything would be fine. i could sit in my hotel room and use their free wi-fi to do all my important businessy things. like play on facebook or read and write blogs. but i don't have a laptop. oh my god i'm going to go through web withdrawal! no facebook stalking or playing Zuma or checking my stats every few hours to see with disappointment that i have no new hits or comments (hint hint). what the hell am i supposed to do? i need to be plugged in, online, wired! well, maybe a bit of internet detox will be good for me.

besides, it'll be nice to come back to all the comments that i'm sure will have been left for me, lamenting my absence, and beseeching a speedy return. right? right??

breaking news!!

being a grown up is lame.

i'm so sick of all the boring junk that comes with being an adult. like planning meals. what a nuissance! i loathe having to think up dinner ideas. then go get groceries. then cook the damn stuff. then clean up dirty dishes too!* oh the good ol' days when the fridge always replenished itself and dinner prep consisted of coming downstairs when mom called. now the fridge is half empty, with a door full of condiments we never use, and shelves consisting mostly of fuzzy leftovers from 2010. yeesh, why are those still in there?! why haven't they made their way to the garbage yet?!

as a grown up, i'm expected to understand my own finances. i got a package from the bank, filled with some 70 pages of reading material about investments i made, and a cover letter telling me the importance of all this info. ugh, i don't want to read all that tedious mumbo jumbo. can't the bank lady just give me the skinny and tell me what's best? or mom?

grown-up breaks suck. in my 15 minutes i go to get more coffee only to see that some jerk has yet again left just enough coffee to line the bottom of the pot. apparently if there's a thimbleful of coffee left, you don't have to make more. i make another pot and stare blankly out the window, waiting. 13 minutes later i fill my cup and head back to my desk. what a waste of a break. bring back recess! four square, tetherball, tag... that's a fun 15 minutes.

worst of all, i've lost my perspective on what is exciting. we got 251 airmiles on that last shop! woohoo!! oh my god, buy one get one free salsa, could this day get any better? and the latest thrill? we got a new mat for the front hall! it's the perfect size, and the green colour even matches the sofa in the living room. you can see the corner of the couch from the front door and you can totally tell that they match. it's the most amazing thing in the world!!!

hi, my name is amanda. i'm a grown up, and i'm lame.

the first step is admitting you have a problem, right?

*disclaimer: i acknowledge that blair does 99% of the planning and cooking and grocery shopping. i know if i didn't put this in i'd get an earful about how he does it all. i know i know already! if it were up to me i'd never bother with dinner.

just what the doctor ordered

today i hit the one year mark of being smoke free. yay! this is actually my second time at this milestone. when i left scotland in september of 2003, i kicked the habit for the first time. for over two years i remained a committed non-smoker. i traveled throughout asia but refrained from enjoying a holiday smoke with my beachside beers. i partied with some old pals in australia and new zealand, but didn't slip up with a drunken drag. i moved to china, and was stressed, frustrated, and crying with helplessness - oh god a cigarette would be so good, a pack is only 30¢, just to get me through this first bit - even then i resisted!

then i returned to scotland in november of 2005, where a pack of smokes cost over $10, and i embraced my vice with open lungs. i had a wanton 2-week fling with tobacco and abandoned it abruptly upon my return to canada. but i'd opened that door.... although the addiction didn't immediately suck me back into its yellow fingered clutches, slowly but surely i found myself a smoker again. i felt a little annoyed with myself for losing control of things, but at the same time i had one crucial piece of knowledge that allowed me to continue smoking, more or less guilt and worry free: i quit before, i can do it again. when i'm ready.

i pushed back that quitting date a few times. i mean come on, i'm clearly not going to quit in the summer; that's primo smokin' time! patios and backyard bbqs and bonfires at the farm. nope, not a good time to quit. and i'm not going to quit right after new years, too cliche. plus, i'll want to be able to smoke on my birthday. then a year ago today i took my last cigarette out of the pack. huh, last one. and that was it, i decided. cold turkey.

i'm proud of myself. i think i should be, second kick at the cat or not. i get nostalgic for smoking at times, missing the ritual of it more than the thing itself. i liked relaxed mornings with my coffee and a smoke. and who can dispute the synergy of beer and cigarettes? when scribbling in my journal, imagining i was a brilliant writer, my burning cigarette seemed the perfect prop. but whatever, i suppose being able to run 10 minutes without panting is ok too.

fyi, "just what the doctor ordered" is actually an old slogan for L&M cigarettes. i like irony.

ooh, smoking was so fun back in those days! look how carefree they are, rewarding themselves with a smooth, smoky treat

not quite as glamorous these days

decisions decisions

i am so useless when it comes to making decisions. options stress me out! and yet i always want to know... what are my choices? the problem is, i hate choosing. do i want to order the chicken or the beef? should i buy this shirt in blue or green? etc etc ad nauseum. i don't know! i don't know! usually i buy both shirts or neither. i order the chicken, then run up to the server and change to beef. then possibly back to chicken. and i worry until the meal arrives that i picked the wrong one. it's a disease i tell you.

so this is the decision i'm facing now. stay with wordpress or move to blogspot. i only fell into wordpress because that's what spaces upgraded me to. what's the difference? which one is better? where will i get more readers? i read somewhere that wordpress is better and recommended for "professional blogging", but i'm not a professional. and everyone else i know seems to be on blogger.

heeeeeelllllllllllllp! stupid choices. and of course then there's the actual theme/look of the blog that is a whole other slew of ulcer inducing options.

so i imported this blog to blogger and now have to decide where to make my permanent home. what do you think? please give me some feedback!

http://mandersblue.wordpress.com/

(not sure if this is the look i'd keep or not)

god bless the gentiles

the christian singles, to be specific.

i logged in to my blog today to see if i had any new comments, but alas, there were none. so i went to check my stats, to see if anyone had even been on my site today, certain my visitor count would be next to none. but jumpin jehosephat, i had 30 hits! don't scoff, that's a busy day for me. i'm not one of the popular cool kids, so don't make fun. anyhoo, where was i? oh right, jehosephat. i was shocked. where were these people coming from? time to check out the referring sites that led them to me. one view came from another blog that i frequent, but the remaining 29 came from some weird long link that was unfamiliar to me. so of course i clicked it.

ChristianMingle dot com. with a cute little jesus fish in the logo. what the-? how on earth did people go from being on a christian dating site to reading a sarcastic jewish girl's blog? hmm.... well i did have the word "jesus" in a recent title.... still doesn't make sense. but i don't care; thirty hits, woohoo! so i threw in a little 'god bless' and 'jehosephat' for my new religious pals.

sadly though, my blog doesn't have the same fancy features as ChristianMingle, like christian dating tips, searchable bible, or bible verse of the day. But i will leave you with these wise words:



my secret blog

yeah, that's right, i had a secret blog. i created a brand new secret email address with absolutely no info about who i really was. with my new secret email address i started a new secret blog. i didn't tell anyone about it. being completely anonymous allowed me to write anything i wanted. i didn't have to be clever or funny or even kind. i could speak without fear of repercussions and unburden myself of any troublesome thoughts, emotions, or experiences that weighed on my mind. it had the confidentiality of writing in a diary, but with the occasional comment from total, objective strangers. it was very therapeutic. 

that was about two and half years ago, maybe more. i can't remember when exactly i made my last entry, but the secret blog fell by the wayside. abandoned. forgotten. then today i remembered. i decided to log in to that old secret blog and read over all my old secret thoughts. but it's gone! well, not gone exactly, but it's just a title page. the name and the tag line are there... but no posts, no archives, no evidence that i ever shared a single word. i tried futilely to log in as my secret self, only to be welcomed as a new user. for 45 minutes or so i desperately tried to access my old site and find my old entries, searching through questions and answers, help groups, etc etc etc... all paths have led to dead ends, and i have given up.

i'm sad that my old entries have been lost. my secrets have been swallowed up into some dark void, confined once more only to the private recesses of my mind.

well, at least anonymity won't be a problem.