okay... apparently doing my blogs from my sidekick email doesn't allow for doing links. sorry. be a smart little guy and copy and paste the link. i'll get this all fixed later when i'm near a computer.
thanx
posted by megs at 17:56
okay... i finally got some pictures developed and some were just too funny not to share. i also slapped a pic or two up here from the marlboro race thingy. feel free to check all these pics and make comments down at the bottom. i already think i'm a huge dork but would love to hear it from you too.
*blog*
posted by megs at 17:15
4.19.2005
me--did you feel like you were getting felt up when they buckled you in? huey--no. but i don't have boobs. i don't think they even buckled me in.
my marlboro racing experience was last friday. i had pretty median expectations going into the whole thing and was pleasantly surprised to find that it totally rocked my socks off!! first thing is that you actually get to drive you car into the infield of atlanta motor speedway. i'd walked around in there before when we were there for rockfest many moons ago but it was cool anyways. then they actually put us into fireproof racing suits and issued us our very own racing gloves and head sock thingy. the head sock, when on, reminded me of a ninja. like scorpion from mortal kombat. it was pretty funny. then we got measured for helmets. i was a massive 3x but huey's grape had to be squeezed into a 4x. after that, we stood around for awhile and then were ushered on to the iroc cars.
now from my limited understanding of racing, these were not nascar cars. but they do go around a track very fast. and they have no doors. so we had to climb in and out of the windows which seem about half the size of normal car windows. thank god i'd practiced on huey's car! i got in pretty easy but my massive helmet got stuck. personally i think that it was the neck brace thingy they strapped on us, but a few solid thumps on my head and it popped right in. my driver popped the clutch a few times and the car literally roared to life. we took off and did three laps around the course at 130+ mph right up against the wall. it was so cool it gave me perma-grin. after i akwardly climbed back out of the tiny ass car we headed for the next event.
now these cars actually had doors. kind of. more like half doors. and you still were all akward in the huge helmet and neck gear. and these cars had a weird name. like pazo or something. but these actually went around an autocross course on the infield. the driver would accelerate in about 4 seconds to almost 100, slam it back down to 60 to make a sharp turn then be off again. amazing. but not my favorite. after this we got to take off the stifling suits and just wear normal clothes for the last course.
now, i'd never heard of a drifting course. and i kinda have this general prejudice against mustangs because my big headed hs boyfriend drove one and thought he was so cool. anyways, the cool thing right off the bat about these was that you only had to wear a helmet and there was a real door and normal seatbelt. so huey's kinda explaining to me what drifting is and the first group starts going. basically the easiest way for me to describe it is mario kart power sliding. your front end is pointed one direction and you are sliding sideways around turns. and on straight aways they jerk it around so you are fishtailing the whole way. the whole ride has this "oh fuck! oh fuck! oh fuck! hell yeah!" feel to it. total adrenaline rush. definately my fav part of the day.
so if anyone ever has the opportunity to do anything like this i strongly encourage you to do it. and no, you don't have to smoke. maybe half the people there did so you don't feel weird or anything. and its just generally a cool way to spend a morning.
once i get the doggie bday party pics together i'll tell you guys about that too. another once in a lifetime experience, but in a different way. like seeing identical twin midgets do standup comedy. something you have to at least try once.
*blog*
posted by megs at 15:55
4.15.2005
sooooo.... i'm headed out in a min or so to the racing thing. i'm kinda pumped. and maybe a little worried about the multi page waiver i have to sign. but that's really all huey's fault. he's got me all worked up now like this is some death defying task when really i know that jay probably drives almost as fast as these people are going to be driving us.
so in case i don't make it... i'm sorry for whatever i did. or didn't do. and someone delete this blog for me. it's not what i would want to leave behind. think of me today between 9:30 and 1:30... and keep your fingers crossed!
*blog*
posted by megs at 13:34
4.13.2005
six days... supreme laziness... i know i'm horrible and never update this thing. i am sorry. but its also a matter of being busy. and its not like any of you give me something interesting to read on your blogs. anyway, its been so long that i'll just do a quick run down of things that have been happening.
my busy day off... yes, i do ocassionally have them. instead of sitting around all day marvelling at the puffs of pollen blowing off the trees in my front yard i actually went out. sunday i went house hunting and to the baptism class. the baptism class was boring (go figure) and the house was awesome in the extras but lacked in essentials. the bedrooms were tiny and the bathrooms were smaller than ones i've had in some apartments. no good.
oh, i got the coolest call i've had in awhile... i love weddings. they are just so.... emotional i guess. and i love getting emotional. the only thing better than going to a wedding is getting to be in a wedding. getting to share in someone else's uber special day... well, i just don't think you can beat it. so i was thrilled when holly called me and asked me to be on of her bridesmaids. john's been such an awesome friend of mine for so many years now that it just feels right. i think we've been there for each other a lot during the years so its nice i get to be involved with this too. plus holly has great taste and has picked out awesome dresses. and as a bridesmaid many times over, this is always a huge relief. john's a great guy and he has picked a really great girl. i'm just so happy for them...
in other news, marlboro hot laps is comin up. i can't find anyone to go with me though. what happened to adventure? to being up for anything anytime? i wasn't even sure if i could go at first. it mentioned in the packet you have to be able to climb in and out of a car window. so i had to conduct a car window test. while it wasn't done gracefully, i did climb in and out of the window in huey's car. i'm so ready. just need someone else along. well, worse case scenario i go alone. no biggie....
i am brunette at last. well, i'm my honest hair color. or as close as i can figure that is. i took my roots color, found the matching box, and bam... all the same now. and it is brown. boring old brown. or as someone i knew once put it, from a guy's point of view, i think your hair is brown now. not an ugly brown, and not a dark brown, but some shade of brown none the less. i like it. the darker looks better when its so long. speaking of hair and being ridiculously long... i should probably do something about it. its the longest its ever been now. i'm almost to hippie length...
applying for school while your drunk isn't the best idea. i think this is how i ended up in this situation in the first place. being a 6th year junior... no seventh year. and i may actually count as a senior now. i'm not really sure. anyway, i've applied. and had my transcripts sent over. and did my fafsa. if i could only be so efficient with my taxes.... so, first step out of the way. now i have to wait. no nail biting going on here... i'm sure i'll get in (fingers crossed).
hmmmm.... vanilla mint gum. i love vanilla. but not with mint... in my mouth... in the form of gum. it tastes like i swallowed my vanilla lotion. and then stuffed a spring of mint up my nose. blech. i also went grocery shopping and bought a box of wine. i've never done this before. fear i am turning into my mother. i have planned my trip for the year. i have actually had this trip planned for years but will actually do it this year. i'm going to san diego with angel and diana to see my sister and her kids. hopefully ca will stay intact until july.
this is a ridiculously long post. i will try keep up from now on. i miss writing regularly. i miss being unedited megs. every part of life requires edit. its very tiring. what i wouldn't give to tell half the people i deal with on a daily basis exactly what i thought....
*blog*
posted by megs at 01:18
4.07.2005
do you ever stop to think.... and forget to start again?
oh, just another one of those days. you know, those days. it was kind of nice this morning but i wasn't able to enjoy it thanx to the enormous pollen-related sinus headache and stuffy nose i've had in awhile. we've been praying for rain for days. it's horrible when you can sit in your living room, look out the sliding glass door and see a room with hundreds and thousands of yellow bunches all over it just laden with powdery, nasty, yellowy pollen. and then a gust of wind comes through and it looks like a dust storm. except its pollen. and it gets in everything. i got into the car today and my ipod was covered in a fine layer of pollen. gross....
so we prayed for rain and it came. but now there are yellow streams of pollen running everywhere and its become this yellow, congealed good that has a paste like quality. it hardens to your car and gives it this sickly green sheen. its like my car is naseous. and rain always means a boring day at work. it keeps people off the road and out of the store. and if it rains really hard then it knocks out our radio antennae. then we have to sit in here in absolute silence and it is just eerie. you start hearing phone beeps and whistles from who knows where and get a little twitchy. silence is pretty scary sometimes.
i found another good candidate for a house. in smyrna, 3 bedroom, 2.5 bath, 2 car garage, screened deck, not screened deck, unfinished basement, pool table (woo hoo!!)... pretty awesome really. and only $1250 a month. totally affordable. i think i'm starting to get this househunting thing down. i get a lot less disappointing false matches when i'm searching around. we've also been discussing how long we are planning at staying at this house of our dreams when we find it. 2 year lease? 3 year lease? i don't know. jay says he may just buy a house and then allow us to rent from him. but he also said he's going to put a "no marriage" clause in it to keep huey and i as his sorta single friends.
if things go well with smack dab studios and savannah seems like the place to be, we might even end up there two or three years. huey played his cards right here and i have to applaud him for being so clever. he brought up a move like that and immediately i was like, no way, no how, i want to stay in atlanta. and he said sure, but this would be neat about moving, and being there would maybe help us out, and its so far away its just fun to think about. plus it gives us a reason to visit there a lot now too. since i've never been there and this gives me at least two years to get used to the idea of moving.... well, i'd say he has pretty good chances of getting me into a u-haul.
anyway, i was off the last two days and did a whole bunch of nothing!! it was great! if i coulda grilled out a few times it would have been better. or been near a beach and coulda lounged around all day with a margarita or rum runner or something. that woulda been awesome. but i sat inside, hiding from the pollen, and playing about 16 hours of a new video game. lame, i know, but sooo relaxing. my phone died sometime tuesday morning so i had zero contact with the outside world for two days as well. very cool. but then i was just a little bit disappointed i didn't have any messages on my phone this morning about people worried or thinking i died or was kidnapped. just messages about things people need me to do. what ever happened to people being worried when they didn't hear from someone? i guess i used to be like that and am now more like this. if they wanted to talk to you i guess they'd call... or write... right? who knows. its so hard to tell with some people.
woo hoo. if i close the till i get to go home. and play more video games. there are few excitements in my life... but getting to leave early from work is one of them.
*blog*
posted by megs at 18:29
4.04.2005
testacles, spectacles, wallet, watch....
catholics are so weird that people have to make up stupid sayings like this one just to keep up with all the things we are required to do. yes, i say we because *whispering* i'm catholic!! i know, i know... if you know anything about me this would be hard to believe. because i don't go to church. and i think we are all a big bunch of freaks with our chanting and bowing and kneeling and recitations. yes, recitations. if you've ever been to a catholic service you know what i mean. you are finally getting used to standing up and down with the crowd without looking like you've fallen asleep and have no idea what's going on (because you don't) when suddenly everyone launches into what i call "the script". it really freaks some first timers out. for us, it is second nature.
and no, i'm not a C&E either. i think it would be even more hypocritical for me to only go to church on holidays like christmas and easter. anyway, what kills me are some of the things i've heard in public over the last few days. first off, you have to remember that most of the people i see during the day are adults who can't even figure out the basic functions of a cell phone or rules surrounding a cell phone plan. that is code for ignorant. i've heard numerous non-catholics commenting on the pope's death, about how they are so sad/upset/surprised and saying things like well, he was, like, the closest man to god. uh-huh. that may be true... for catholics. but it really doesn't have anything to do with anyone else. and if they'd paid any attention to the pope in the last coupla years they would have known that he's had one foot in the grave for some time now and that this didn't come as some big, shocking surprise. really, the pope was pretty much the king of the catholic faith. but all this ignorance aside, he was pretty important to everyone because, despite some of the underhanded things that the catholic church does to cover its own ass, a lot of good things are done in the name of and with the full power of the pope. so... yay pope john paul!! you done good. peace be with you.
anyway, that picture up there is my personal pope dot. it was the only first hand experience i had concerning the pope. i went to rome as part of a trip i took in hs and got blessed in person by the pope in st. peters square along with what seemed like a million other people. it was kind of weird... they pretty much made us wait around for a long time, then threw open this window, threw out a tapestry and a white dot appeared. a voice came over a loudspeaker (kind of like a god voiceover actually) and i got blessed in italian, spanish and some other languages i think. so i snapped a picture (while praying along of couse) and got my pope dot. for all i know, that could be someone else completely up there... but i guess you just have to take it on faith.
and speaking of being catholic, i apparently am catholic enough to be my neice's godmother but not to do it without having to go to a class first. you have to have a letter from your parish saying you are a good catholic or some crap like that. and since i don't have a parish i have to attend the crash course refresher on how to be catholic some sunday in april. no big deal, only an hour out of my time... but it still seems silly. huey is all upset because he wanted to be a godfather but can't because he definitely isn't catholic.
oh... and i get to go down to atlanta motor speedway. apparently signing up all those years in the bars with the marlboro reps has finally brought me something useful. i was chosen to go, with a guest, and ride (but not drive) around in a car around the track at race speeds. from what i hear, this is about 130 mph. this is going to be soooo incredibly bad ass. i get to go in two weeks so i'll be pretend race driving to work for the next two weeks i'm sure. apparently they put you in a fire suit and sign a release and everything in case there is a fiery crash. all this seemed to me like just legal mumbo-jumbo to cover their own asses until huey's brother bryan piped up with one of those girlfriend's coworker's sister's cousin's grandmother stories about how someone he doesn't know but heard about died. i refuse to be concerned.
anyway, between that and work i plan on keeping pretty busy. baseball season starts again soon. i'm already planning an outing to that. i just don't know when. i'm glad college bball is almost over. tech did so-so this year, got out of the tourney early and i've been bored with it since. at least they've had the world cup qualifying games on lately. and in HD they look so damn yummy. i missed hockey this year though. ah well... conflict is what sports are all about.
*blog*
posted by megs at 21:50
4.01.2005
if only life were like a movie...
well, then it would be perfect wouldn't it? well, maybe not perfect... but simpler. and with happy endings. and i don't mean the kind you get in asian massage parlors. sometimes after a hard day you just want to come home and have someone pat you on the shoulder and say, everything is going to be okay and then make you dinner and sit down and watch all your favorite tv shows with you.
unfortunately, i usually get home around 9 at night and everyone has already had dinner. or they want me to pick it up on the way home. and then i spend the evening either watching everyone else have fun on their computers or hoping to get my hands on the remote so that i don't have to watch sports all evening. trying to find something to do usually leaves me with something not fun to do, like cleaning or laundry. even the things i thought were fun, like house hunting, are beginning not to be fun because they are stressful. then again, i don't think the brainstorming approach works for this task. us all sitting in our respective corners coming up with ideas and then reconvening at a later date doesn't really work. we never are on the same page and the whole thing usually ends with huey saying "i've got work to do. you figure it out"
in fact, that's how a lot of things end. "i've got work to do, you figure it out" but the point is, i can't really go around figuring things like this out on my own. how can i feel confident in making decisions for two when the other half usually disagrees with the decisions i make? but yet, he's too busy to participate. very stressful. and it really just makes me not care. so then i'm procrastinating. and i hate procrastinating. well, actually i love procrastinating because it lets me do a lot of things i really like. such as watching movies. but then i get nothing important done.
but i have had some good movie watching lately. we have a movie trading company in our area and i think that place is pretty great. if i can walk out of there with 6 movies for $40, i'm a pretty happy camper. and if one of those is the animated classic the last unicorn, well, then i have no room for complaint. walking into this place gets me thinking, "if i could just win the lottery." but not a whole lot... just a coupla hundred. so i could spend it on movies. actually, the more i think about it the lamer i'm sounding. a movie geek... great. and not even good movies... just all movies.
i got a raise at work. 4 percent. not good. not bad. it just is what it is. more money. i'm wondering what yearly inflation is. i don't think that even covers it. plus my personal inflation is about to go up. i guess i couldn't hope to only be paying $250 in rent a month for forever. especially since i didn't expect to be living with four other roommates for forever. its funny how all these little changes seem to go hand in hand. why does change have to happen all at once? butterflies have the right idea... they take their time in their little cocoon. but then again, i guess i am cocooned here. and change isn't going to happen all at once... it's just going to be a lot more apparent when i bust outta here. random metaphors.... hmmmm...
have i ever mentioned before that i own a three bedroom tent? you can stand up in it. that is listed as one of the features. that you can stand up. fascinating stuff. the problem with this tent is that i've never had anywhere big enough to set it up, so it has never been used. and i've had it for about 4 years now. but we are making plans to use it this year. i guess making plans is the first step to actually doing things (or perhaps the first step away from it for me) but we'll see.
oh, and i got a call from katie and charlie wall-tilt. they are in rome. my jealousy is overshadowed only by my happiness for them. but it was really sweet... katie called because they had climbed up to the top of st. peters basilica in rome... and we'd done that back when we were on our trip many, many years ago. so she just called to say hi and see how we were doing. unfortunately i was at work at the time and didn't get to answer (crappy work) but the message was still nice all the same. it's so good hearing from old friends from time to time.... i just wish it happened more often. i miss old friends...
catholics are so weird that people have to make up stupid sayings like this one just to keep up with all the things we are required to do. yes, i say we because *whispering* i'm catholic!! i know, i know... if you know anything about me this would be hard to believe. because i don't go to church. and i think we are all a big bunch of freaks with our chanting and bowing and kneeling and recitations. yes, recitations. if you've ever been to a catholic service you know what i mean. you are finally getting used to standing up and down with the crowd without looking like you've fallen asleep and have no idea what's going on (because you don't) when suddenly everyone launches into what i call "the script". it really freaks some first timers out. for us, it is second nature.