Crunch

When you work in a shared office space, you  get to spend a lot of time with other peoples eating habits. From the smelly to the crunchy, food becomes a shared experience in an office whether intentional or not.

I, myself, am not blameless. It's not uncommon for me to feel it necessary to apologize to those sitting nearest to me about the smell of a hard boiled egg, or the loud crunching of celery sticks. I think my worst offense so far was my brief stint with microwaveable bacon. That won me many enemies as the smell drove people wild with jealousy and cravings. Though I miss the candy of meats, I chose friendships and office harmony over the occasional blt.

Besides the foods I've already mentioned there are a few others I try to avoid in the office. Anything with a strong odor such as fish, or anything with a really loud crunch, such as popcorn. In fact, popcorn, it seems, is one of the loudest foods out there and can make people around you feel like this:

Not that I've ever felt that way.

What are some foods you prefer not to have a shared experience with?

Partyin' Partyin' Yeah!

I used to love Fridays. And of course, I thought my love of Fridays was impenetrable. I mean, what could ruin Friday!? The last work day of the week - the start of the weekend! But one girl is trying her hardest to get me to dread Fridays. Who is it, you ask? I bet you already know. HER:

She's not the devil. But her song is. It's been proven.

Yep, Rebecca Black. Yesterday I was feeling excited about how today is Friday and that wretched song came into my head. I started thinking "yesterday was Thursday. Today it is Friday..." I mentioned it to Justin and he said, "I've never heard of it." I thought he was kidding, but he wasn't. So of course, I made him listen to it. If I'm going down, I'm going to drag him down too. That's what friends are for. After the first 30 seconds he said he couldn't take it anymore. I then made him watch two parodies of it.

I'm sure some day I won't think about it when Friday rolls around. I'm starting to get worried though because I first heard that "song" several weeks ago and it's only growing stronger. Maybe I'll try to replace it with something less annoying, like the Macarena. Or Who Let the Dogs out.

But today is not just any Friday! It's the royal wedding! At my office, this is how we are celebrating the special day. By looking at Kate and William every time we use the bathroom.

Someone at work decorated the generic male/female forms on the
bathroom doors to honor the special day.

How are you celebrating the royal wedding? And confess: who got up at 4:00 (or stayed up till 1:00 or 2:00 if you're out west) to watch the wedding? That would not be me. I need my beauty rest. As for me, I plan on congratulating them every single time I use the bathroom. Well, Kate, anyway since I doubt I'll be heading in Will's direction at any point.

What about you? Do any of you care about it?

Wednesday Thoughts

You know what's on my mind today? Buds. Leafy tree buds to be precise. This is the time of spring I most look forward to - when the leaves come back. It's one of the few things I love about spring. As far as ranking the seasons goes, my list looks like this:

Yay!

1. Summer
1. Fall
- summer and fall are tied because they're both awesome-
3. Spring - I don't trust it.
4. Winter. In last place, obviously.

But the thing spring really has going for it is the leaves. Winter in Michigan is so bleak at times. By March, we are aching for green grass and green trees again. This week I've finally started seeing buds on all the trees and it is making me so happy!

In other Wednesday Thoughts, yesterday my co-worker, Justin, and I had an interesting conversation. I turned to him while he was trying to work and asked, "Justin, if you knew you were going to die tomorrow, what would you want for dinner tonight?" After discussing the pros and cons of various foods and meals, he settled on a BLT sandwich and potato salad, with ice cream for dessert.

I chose pizza for dinner with chocolate cake and ice cream for dessert. Pizza isn't necessarily my favorite food ever, but I love it and I always feel guilty about the calories. In this case, that obviously wouldn't be a concern! For lunch, I'd have soup and crispy bread. And for breakfast, eggs and hash browns. It all sounded so good that by the time were done discussing all our options, I said to him, "Dang, I wish I were dying tomorrow." He made me take it back.

What would you want for your last meal(s) if you knew you were going to die tomorrow? Just pretend you were in some kind of alternate reality where dying tomorrow was no big deal and you still totally had your appetite. Otherwise this question is super morbid.

Lastly, I saw Insidious earlier this week. It was pretty scary. I wrote about it over here (link) if you'd like to read my review. I thought I'd start a little movie blog. To be honest, I don't see myself updating it too often, but you never know. I go to great lengths to avoid exercising sometimes.

Happy Wednesday!

Floating away

I like crushes. This is no secret to you guys, I'm sure. I'm kind of a flirt, I like men, and I get crushes from time to time.  I've even blogged about my love of crushes in the past. What I don't love is when a crush passes over into the "feelings" zone without any warning. I like when things happen in the natural order:

1. Girl meets boy

2. They go on a date

3. Crush forms

4. They get to know each other

5. Feelings develop

When things go in that order, it's awesome and exciting. What I don't like is when I think I just have an innocent crush, but realize I'm actually (unexpectedly) experiencing "feelings." I'm walking along, thinking everything's under control, then suddenly I think about a guy and my heart starts racing with lovey dovey feelings? Um, not cool!

It's kind of exciting, but it's mostly really scary. Here's an illustration:

One of the last times this happened to me, that's exactly what it felt like. Powerless. Luckily, the guy did something kinda jerky the next day and the feelings/crush balloon deflated, bringing me safely back to earth.

Do any of you single readers feel this way?

No lectures on how I need to get over this if I ever want to get married, please. Condescending comments will make me raise my fist to the computer in rage and mutter under my breath which just makes me look like a crazy person. And that's not good for anyone.

(Nor is it moving me any closer to marriage, let's be honest.)

Note: Because a couple people asked, I wrote my distinction between a crush and feelings in the comments section. Please feel free to add how you would define them if you are interested!

Not that Elizabeth Downie

When I was a kid, I saw a terrifying movie called Anna to the Infinite Power. It was about human cloning, a concept that has always given me the heebie jeebies.

In the movie, a girl named Anna finds out that she is a clone and that her parents had always known this. She also learns that there are five other Anna clones out there. She discovers this after she sees one of them on the news talking about a plane crash that she had survived.

As a kid, I hated this movie. Not only was it creepy, but it bummed me out that Anna wasn't her own person. She was afraid of fire because the original Anna was. She was good at the piano because the original Anna was, and so on.

I guess it's always been important to me to be unique, which is why when I first joined Facebook and searched my name to see if there were any others, I was disappointed to see sooo many Elizabeth Downie's listed. Luckily, a cursory glance assuaged my fears of being part of a cloning experiment since none of them looked at all like me.

I actually met another Elizabeth Downie once. She went to the same college as me. After talking for a few minutes we realized that besides having the same name, we really had nothing else to talk about. I think she was still holding a grudge against me for for canceling her dorm housing when it was accidentally mailed to me. Other than that, she seemed like a nice girl.

Recently, however, I found out about an Elizabeth Downie who is undeserving of the name. The way I found out about her was from an email I received from someone in Melbourne, Australia, who reads my blog. I responded to his email and asked him how he stumbled upon my blog. In his response, this is what he said:

"Unfortunately I stumbled across your blog while researching a story on a woman of the same name who killed her husband last year in Melbourne."

He found my blog because a woman named Elizabeth Downie killed her husband.

Please tell me none of you found my blog the same way?

Oh, and PS, I'm not that Elizabeth Downie.

Peep Show - Diorama Style

You may remember this from previous years, but every year my family does a Peep diorama competition. This year I decided to base mine on the viral video "Bed intruder" from the Autotune the News guys. I've always had a moral conflict laughing at this video, so please don't judge me. Admittedly, the topic isn't funny at all, but the autotune guys made it quite a phenomenon last summer!

In case you haven't seen the video, here it is:

In case you were wondering, I didn't win.

Happy Easter!

Would you rather

Take a truth serum and spend an hour answering questions from a panel of random people in your life (chosen from among your family, your coworkers, your ex boyfriends/girlfriends, people you know from church, people who don't really like you all that much... You have no say who's on the panel.)

or

Let those same people see you naked. (No streaking.)

Things to consider:

That thing you did
That one time
That thing you're afraid of
Your real weight
Your real age
That guy you like
That weird growth
That show you like
That non-funny embarrassing moment
What you look like naked
Who might be present

Which do you choose, and why?