Happy Halloween!

Every Thursday at the swing dancing event, there is also a side room with a different style of dance or music. Last night, in honor of Halloween, it was an 80s side room! You had the option of learning part of the Thriller in order to do a performance later in the evening. You know I did it. You KNOW me.

Here's the YouTube video of the dance ^.^ It was entirely too much fun.

So, costumes! Last night I was a gunslinger (an evil one - I had the black hat...and as we all know, bad guys wore black, good guys wore white). Tonight for blues dancing, I'm going to be a My Little Pony.

Nostalgia

I used to have this shirt that had a picture of the state of Missouri on it - and it said "Missouri Loves Company." I really miss it.

Aside from wanting to complain about the lack of sleep I got last night, I have very little else to say!

Stupid Phone Voice

I just recorded the automated message for the company - I sound like a dorky little kid! =[

In better news, a group of us went to DinoLand in the Austin Botanical Gardens over this past weekend. If you're so inclined, you can check out the pictures! They're all lovingly captioned.

Work: The RPG

So I was thinking what life would be like if my job were an RPG-style video game.

The unlikely troop of heroes:
Scott, my boss - The leader of the group, also the witty, light-hearted one. Probably a Cleric.
Tony, the body-building financials consultant - He'd be the fighter type, of course, with great demolitions skills. Every RPG team needs a burly fighter, and we're doubly blessed as this one is smart, too!
Tom, the IT guy - Probably our black mage as he has little tolerance for people. Snarky to the max. Spells are fueled by pent-up IT guy anger.
Josh, our database guy - Most likely to get cast into the elven ranger role. All parties have to have an elf, right? Plus he's tall and blond.
Me, of course - I'd probably get cast in the lovable rogue/assassin role. Also, token female. ^.^

The villains:
Level 1 Boss: The Insect Brigade - This swarm of centipedes and giant cockroaches uses special drop-from-the-ceiling and crawl-out-from-dark-places attacks. The Brigade's defense techniques involve hiding behind framed pictures that no one wants to break and being so gross that no one wants to get too close.
Level 2 Boss: The Cranky Mailman - His signature move is stuffing everything imaginable into the mailbox so it rips when you pull it out. He uses his knee-high black socks with shorts combo as armor - an effective defense technique as you spend more time laughing hysterically than you spend attacking.
Level 3 Boss: The Emo Bathroom Scorpion - Defends itself by hiding behind the toilet and comparing its soul to a raven or other object associated with darkness. Signature attack involves scuttling across the tiles in a menacing manner. Not very subtle.
Final Boss: The Lecherous, Overly Touchy Coffee Distributor - The most evil of all! His signature attack is arriving on unscheduled dates in order to surprise the unwitting party combined with unsolicited touching of token female (that would be me). Defends himself by being the only coffee distributor in the area, thus making him an un-defeat-able boss. =[

A New Phone Cometh!

I'm getting a new phone! I'm also switching carriers - we're porting all our cell phones from Sprint to AT&T at work, and since I'm on the corporate plan, I'm going along. I'm in charge of the phone accounts at work, and believe me...AT&T is so so ever-so-much better than Sprint. Yes. So I'm getting a Razr ^.^ A *pink* one.



Don't be jealous.

Mmmmmm, Autumn.

It's starting to get colder. Now, for Texas, that means temperatures are in the 80s during the day and the 60s at night. This is a MASSIVE improvement from the daytime 100s and nighttime 80s...I'll take it.

For whatever reason, despite having lived in Texas my entire life, I don't get cold - and I despise the heat. (I'm the shorts-sandals type of girl regardless of the temperature.) The beginning of a Texas autumn is like a beacon of hope that maybe, just maybe, the heat will go away forever. Alas - I'm still waiting for that. ^.^

The meteorologists are predicting an especially cold winter this year - that would be very welcome considering our wretchedly warm one last year - no ice days at all! None! So instead of box-sledding down the street, we played in the pool. Lame. Oh, and I caught the flu for the first time ever - I'm absolutely blaming that on the heat. Stupid Texas.

Anyway. Enjoy this lovely video from January 2007 of the box-sledding extravaganza. For you Northerners, snicker at the amount of ice/sludge that shut our city down for THREE DAYS! And yes, that's me speaking. *shudder*

Dreams About Death

I like to remember my dreams. I'll write down the really nutty ones or the ones where specific details are so vivid that they feel important - things people say, the way strangers look, locations, etc. You never know what you'll get out of your dreams anyway. For example, most people don't know that the phrase "Salt the Holly" was born from a dream I had. Yup. February 11, 2007. Basically, we had done something to make someone angry...and I said, "We sure salted his holly, didn't we?" I asked around, Robert Google-d it...but that phrase didn't exist anywhere. So it is MINE! Mwahaha.

I should seriously keep a dream log.

Anyway, what brought all this up was a dream I had a while back (January 3, 2007 to be exact...why do I remember these dates?) - and it popped into my head again and has been replaying for a couple of days. I remember it so clearly that it feels as though it's actually happened to me. Thought I'd share and then ask YOU to share a weird dream you've had.

Jess and I were in San Francisco - apparently on a vacation, but no one knew that we were there. We were in my car, but I can't quite recall who was driving. As we're driving along, I saw that we were about to be in an accident, but I never actually saw that part. I saw that the accident was going to happen, and then the next second, Jess and I were sitting on a ledge in a sewer-esque place. Didn't smell like a sewer or have sewage in it, but the area had that layout. There was a ledge that you could walk along on either side of the tunnel area, and there was a shallow stream running through the center. There were multiple tunnels leading off to the left and right. Behind us, there was a dead end, and straight ahead was a large doorway with light spilling out of it. All the bricks were a dark, dark blue that I've never seen before.

So we sat there for a while with out feet dangling in the stream, and we came to the conclusion that we were dead, and the shining door lead to the afterlife. You know that story where all these souls are sitting around a well - and once you jumped in, there would be a flash, and the soul would go to Heaven or Hell. Most of the souls were afraid to jump in since they didn't know where they'd be going, so they preferred to sit around in a purgatory sort of place. Well, that's how we felt about the door with the light, so we sat around for a while talking about our options. Time seemed to flow much more slowly in the tunnel, so I'm not sure how long we were there, but it seemed as though a day or two had passed in the real world.

Since our families didn't know we were in San Francisco, we decided to go tell them what had happened before we entered the door. Jess and I split up at that point, and I don't know what happened to her.

I went to my house (where I lived with my brother and my parents), saw Mom, and told her what had happened. Despite being dead, I was able to hug her. Robert (my brother) and Dad weren't there. I had a really nice laptop in my room, and I moved it into Robert's room - apparently, I figured he'd know what had happened because of this. At this point, I started to get really tired, and I knew that if I let myself fall asleep, that would be it for me. I would die completely, I guess - or just cease to exist at all.

After talking to Mom for a while, she told me I should go to a specific address - I don't recall the street, but the address was number 100 of that street. I remember standing at the intersection of two streets, looking for number 100 - it looked like a postcard - it was all foggy with streetlamps like glowing orbs. Very eerie. I saw a church up ahead - it was number 91 of whatever street, and I headed there. I saw my pastor's wife Carolyn outside, and she asked me if I were okay.

I walked up to her and was going to tell her everything that had happened, but when I got closer, she got a really good look at me and freaked out. I explained that I was dead, but I needed to see Donnie (my pastor). While I was waiting for her to get Donnie, I saw myself in a mirror. I looked sort of green and my cheeks were sunken in - my left eye was looking permanently to the left (but I could see just fine). The weirdest part was that I looked as though I were underwater - my skin rippled, and my hair was flowing all over the place. Very creepy, but not altogether gross.

And then I woke up! Creepy creepy. Dunno why I wanted to share that so badly, but there you have it ^.^ Your turn!

A FollowUp to the Previous Post

If you'll recall, in the previous post, I had killed a scorpion. Jess and I had an Instant Messenger conversation regarding that, and I'm just now getting around to posting it. For background, you should know that Jess had lost her voice at this point due to incessant coughing, so she couldn't speak. And now, I present to you...our IM conversation!

Amanda: i killed a scorpion! i have never seen a scorpion in the wild before. it was really weird
Jessica: so, you've only killed domestic scorpions before? how cruel
Amanda: only the ones with aprons and families
Jessica: all baking little scorpion cupcakes for their scorpion babies.
Amanda: yup. helping their scorpion babies with scorpion science projects
Jessica: GONE! You just shatter their hopes and dreams.. break up that little scorpion family..
Amanda: MWAHAHAHAHA
Jessica: no more scorpion scholarships for fancy scorpion colleges. just scorpion drugs and alcohols and parties and sex from here on out..
Amanda: scorpion escapism
Jessica: a little early death, a little dispair.. and you create emo scorpions. that.. now, that's just wrong.
Amanda: cry into your poisonous barb, emo scorpion. maybe they carry their tails in a manner that covers one eye
Jessica: it just throws itself in your raid/air freshener
Amanda: squeaking little scorpion suicide threats. but who will lament the scorpion death of the emo scorpion? who will write angsty scorpion poetry?
Jessica: no one.. its voice is silent. kind of like mine. *sobs* am I... a little emo scorpion?
Amanda: you are, jess. you are the reincarnated spirit of an emo scorpion.
Jessica: NOOOOOOOOOOOO
Amanda: yes. embrace your new destiny. write poetry. dooooooo it.
Jessica: *crawls under a rock, just like a scorpion, just like an emo kid, just like an emo scorpion.
Amanda: come out little emo scorpion spirit person. scorrrrrrrpion...come out and pla-ay!
Jessica*clang clang clang*

Momentous Occasion

You know how people always talk about seeing scorpions in their homes or garages, etc? I couldn't quite comprehend this as any scorpions I ever saw were alive in glass cages or dead in paperweights.

Well, that changed today! I didn't see one in my apartment, but in my office I saw a live scorpion...in the "wild" so to speak. It was fascinating. A small, reddish-brown one. I just watched it crawl around for a while until it occured to me how stupid was not to kill it immediately. So I performed the tried and true "SMASH-flush" maneuver.

Tonight is the weekly swing dance event - in the sideroom, they're doing a blues lesson, and I'm going to try that out. I've been horribly HORRIBLY nervous about it for days now... for no apparent reason, even! Stupid nerves.

Also, I had a nightmare last night. For a bit of background, every week at the dance event, they have a Birthday Dance. People who have recently celebrated a birthday go to the center of the room, the DJ plays a song, and people dance furiously with the birthday folks, switching partners constantly. So, in my nightmare, I went to the center of the room to do the Birthday Dance, and NO ONE danced with me. The entire song. I was just standing there and everyone was whirling around me - if you've ever seen the opening credits to "Dirty Dancing" where people are dancing in slow motion and everything is sepia - it was like that.

Upcoming Events: Game Night on Saturday; Game Day on Sunday.