recycling my way to Blogher

Last year I went to the Blogher conference because it was conveniently located in my backyard. This year I would love to attend again, but they uprooted the conference and moved it across the country to Chicago. Thanks to them moving the conference, the cost will be more than just admission; I'll have airfare, food, and lodgings to consider. Today I spent a chunk of time scheming ways to pay for the trip: pole dancing? haven't lost enough weight yet. Not buying new spring clothes? hehe, sure. Selling a kidney on craigslist? They've banned human organ sales. It seemed that for every good idea I had there was a reason why it could never work.

That was until my light bulb finally went off and I saw the solution to my financial woes. Recycling! What?!? That's right folks, recycling is how I'm going to attend Blogher in Chicago.

Here in California we pay a fee, in addition to the selling price, when purchasing beverages in cans and bottles. This was a foreign, confusing concept for me when we first arrived, but now I've grown used to it and am no longer confused as to why my receipt has a CRV line (At first I thought I was slowly making payments towards a Honda). Right now jparks and I throw our recyclables into the bins in our apartment building's garage and let them deal with towing them to the recycling center. By doing this we are losing money, money that we've all ready shelled out simply to enjoy that can of diet coke, but I just wrote it off as the cost of being lazy. I'm no longer going to, literally, throw money away, especially since they've just raised the amounts you can get for bottles and cans.

So, starting immediately, in the Parks' household all cans and bottles will be rinsed and then brought to our local recycling facility. There I will happily collect my handful of change and set it aside for Blogher. The conference is not until the end of July, so I hope to have enough recycling money set aside by then. And I'm not above accepting bottles and cans from folks that are like the old me, way too lazy to bring them in themselves.

Wish me luck!

hey bandwagon, wait up! I'm trying to jump on

Recently the blogging world (note it's not the blog-o-sphere as that phrase sends jparks' into a long winded rant about how he hates the phrase and all that it stands for) has been taken over by the Five Things post that everyone seems to be doing.

What is the Five Things post? It's a meme (don't ask me, I still haven't figured out what meme stands for) where you reveal Five Things no one knows about you on your blog. Miranda tagged me and I am going to accept the challenge of doing this, but I'm not sure what people know about me and what people don't know. So if I'm just stating old news, then oops, my bad.

1. I always wanted to get married, but when I was planning my first wedding (I was engaged before jparks, I know some of you know that, but some may not) I could not picture the actual wedding part of it, the part where my fiancé and I stood up in front of people and said "I do". I encountered the same thing when jparks and I started wedding planning, so I knew it wasn't a cold feet issue. I just couldn't imagine standing in front of a bunch of people and exchanging vows, it seemed too private to share. I could, however, picture us (us being jparks and I) eloping, so that's what we did. It worked out well for us.

2. Some other things I've never been able to picture happening to me include walking across the stage for high school graduation (I came down with chicken pox two days before the ceremony and had to miss it) and graduating from college (that's looking like a long shot right now). I seem to have a solid grasp on what I will do and what I will never do.

3. Most times I cannot picture myself as a parent. I hope I'm wrong about that one.

4. I think I dress like a stay at home mom that never ventures out of the house to that foreign place called a mall. This is sad really, since I love clothes and even have a subscription to a magazine dedicated to shopping.

5. I see nothing in ink blot tests. Nothing. I'm pretty sure this means I lack an imagination, which might also explain why I have trouble imagining myself in various life situations.

I'm only going to tag jparks to do this mainly because I want to know what secrets he might produce.

figures

I managed to survive another trapeze lesson with no accidents. But then today, while working, I fell down some stairs and hurt my wrist.

So let's recap: flying through the air, 30 feet above the ground, while holding onto a thin bar, good. Walking down a flight of stairs slowly, while holding the handrail, bad.

And here is a video of jparks making his catch:


And you can find video of me falling into the net and some pictures of me flying through the air here

p(eeing) is for private

I have this issue with using the bathroom. I absolutely, under no circumstance, will allow jparks to be witness to me peeing. I know some folks view the ability to pee with the bathroom door open as the ultimate in relationship comfort, but not me. I want the door closed and maybe even locked. Also, if possible, jparks should at least be down the hall, out of earshot, but I'm flexible with that requirement.

I'm pretty sure this stemmed from something I read in Cosmo years ago. I don't read Cosmo anymore, since I had a year long subscription long ago, and in that year I read every article they have ever created and are now just renaming for new issues. 35 sex positions he'll flip for! 35 new sex positions you've never tried! 35 ways to make your man melt in bed! 35 ways to get him off while boring yourself to tears!

In one of their articles probably titled "Relationship myths debunked" it explained how most people find peeing in front of their significant other a sign that they are truly comfortable together and that the relationship is headed to a stable, long term place, read as: marriage. But the Cosmo truth behind this myth is that NO! peeing in front of your partner is bad. Almost as bad as cheating on them. Almost as bad as eating the last of the ice cream and putting the empty carton back in the freezer. B.A.D. According to Cosmo, men think women are above bodily functions and watching us pee shows that we are human. The outcome of becoming a human is that he'll never want to touch you in a sexual way ever again. No matter how much he loved you pre-pee, post-pee you'll cross over to "friend" land, never to be a girlfriend again.

Out of all the crap I read in Cosmo, this one little bit of info stuck. And it is so stuck nothing can dislodge it. I swear, if jparks sees me pee I think my world might crumble.

Now I know some men are into Golden Showers which totally disproves Cosmo's theory. But you know Golden Showers are gross sounding so obviously the people that enjoy them are sickos. They probably also like to fuck neutered female dogs. There is no way Golden Shower enjoying people are going to convince me to change my mind.

I never thought I would say it, but Cosmo has changed my life. I'll never lose jparks thanks to urination. I'll keep peeing behind closed (locked) doors, and he'll keep loving me.

nostalgic

You know what I miss? mix tapes. Specifically mix tapes made by friends that were trying to get you to listen to some new bands or their favorite songs.

I know Last.fm exists and is the answer to mix tapes in this day and age, but I'm a bit slow and haven't quite figured it out yet. Besides with Last.fm you don't get the tape or cd cover that your friend personally designed or wrote out for you. And really, that's just as important as the music.

When I was a kid I remember taping songs from the radio for the highest quality mix tapes possible. Or, even better, a friend of mine and I held a tape player up to the radio to record a song, but then her brother came in the room and started talking. We ended up with the song featuring a snippet of her brother talking and then us hushing him halfway through.

Lately I've been feeling like I'm in a musical rut and it's making me miss mix tapes with selections of new musical possibilities. If anyone wants to take pity on me and make me a mix tape (read as a cd since I haven't had a tape player in years) I would love that. If you need my shipping address find the contact button and send me an email. Otherwise, I guess I'll just go back to listening to the same old stuff.