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Showing posts from December, 2008

Chitter chatting.

I'm sitting in Crispers on my brand spanking new laptop, surfing the web and listening to some of the employees chat while they're on their break. Four girls, two guys. It's almost closing time and it's dead in here. They've already mopped the floors behind the counter even.  They've gone from talking about terrible customers, to what they're all bringing to their apparent company holiday party, to the white foamy stuff that builds up in the corners of their mouths when they sleep with their mouths open. It's kind of cute how smoothly their conversations transition. You can tell they're not just co-workers, but friends too. It's making me smile. Actually, it's making me smile for a number of reasons. This is my first opportunity ever to people watch and blog at the same time. I'm entralled.  Alas, I have to go to the market and pick up some things for my party before I go home tonight. Le sigh. It's time to go. I love this baby alread

A New Year's Something or Other...

I'm so burnt out on parties. Isn't that warped of me to say? I am sick of planning them. It's New Year's Eve tomorrow and, this is going to come out wrong, but I'd cancel all my plans with friends to curl up on the couch with J.M. and watch Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffin on TV if I wouldn't look like a total bitch for it. It's just that last weekend I got a brutal taste of what it feels like to go unappreciated and that thoroughly burns me. But I'm moving on from that as best I can. I just don't feel like working for this fiesta at the ONF House. I don't want to put in any effort. But as shitty as this is going to make many of my friends sound, I can't count on them to provide the things any party would need -- like food. Every time we get together I request that people bring things. No one ever does. Every time we get together the party's at Angela's apartment and her food gets eaten, her drinks are had. And I'm the only one w

Resolutions.

I always set resolutions for the new year, but rarely ever follow through with them. This year is going to be different. I'm spearheading the 365 Photo Project in my circle (or perhaps polygon) of friends. Some of my friends and I will be participating -- taking one photograph every day for the entire year and publicly posting it on 365photographyproject.blogspot.com (a blog I set up). If it goes the way my mind's eye perceives it going, we'll all be able to teach each other a thing or two about photography. And even better than that -- at the end of year, we'll be able to look back at all 365 of our photos and see how our photography skills and eye for the visually pleasing have transitioned from the start of the year to the end. It's going to be a very difficult, but very rewarding experience. Please check the blog for updates. And PLEASE, if you're interested in participating, let me know. I'll add you to the authors list. Another resolution I'm set

2008: wrapped up.

The year is over in less than 48 hours. This blows my mind because I clearly remember the hay ride, the bonfire, and the kiss from last year's New Year's party. I'm asking myself how it's possible that an entire year has gone by. And myself has no answer. Fiddle sticks. Let's think back... We started the year off by having the party at the ONF house, like we usually do. Big bonfire. Fun hay ride under the stars. It was perfect weather for ringing in the new year. New Year's Eve. Later in January my birthday happened, but I don't remember what I did, so apparently it wasn't anything cool. WAIT! I do remember. And it was cool. I went bowling. Right? I went to Golden Corral for dinner and went bowling with my friends. Detra was still pregnant so I know it had to be this year. Birthday Bonanza! In February I joined a program called Interpals and started meeting pen pals from all over the world. All of which I still keep in touch with, although not as regula

three lives in acronyms.

Straight from Timothy McSweeney's interesting blog. What Could Have Been. BY COLIN PERKINS - - - - The Life My Mother Planned for Me A+ NYU Ph.D. HMO IRA The Life I Planned for Me NFL L.A. ESPN MVP VIP Double D USA! USA! USA! The Life I'm Living ADD GED DUI IHOP SOB WTF

The Gift of Giving.

Christmas generates a collective spirit; enlightening people to the understanding they should express their love and compassion toward one another. Christmas Spirit, the fantastically contagious holiday epidemic, causes uncontrollable happiness, compassion, and warmth generated from within. It also causes love to spew from the lips of friends and family members at delightful rates – rates which we do not see any other time of year. Christmas Spirit awakens the heart. I didn’t have the money to do much in the way of gifts this year, but I did have the creativity to make some things for the people I will be seeing. I don’t believe Christmas has anything to do with spending lots of money. What I aimed for this year was giving people things I made myself – it’s going to be a sort of one-of-a-kind artwork Christmas. I had been struggling to taste any semblance of Christmas Spirit on my tongue and in my heart this year, but after heading to the beach in nice 80 degree weather for the we

Creating Traditions

Ever since I was too young to remember, my family has had one significantly exciting tradition. We're not too big into over-the-top traditions, but we do things like family dinners and family game night, the occasional backyard barbecue, a New Year's party, whathaveyou. But when Christmas time comes, the family favorite tradition gets refreshed, hidden in plain sight, and then hunted for. Each Christmas every member of my family (including Kelly) goes on a treasure hunt for one of their gifts. It's a fun and free way to take the emphasis off tearing open unnecessary paper, and gleefully go through present after present of items we might not ever use. So we treasure hunt. We treasure hunt for the gift we wanted, nay, longed for the most. And, aside from being with family and feeling warmth and happiness seep from every body, it's honestly become the part of Christmas I look forward to most. (yes, it trumps fresh-baked Christmas cookies.) But I've been feeling like st

Reminiscing.

Yesterday I was given the charitable task of finding a new home for an old overhead projector that still works. My obvious first guess was a school and since I have personal ties to North Marion High, I called there first. The woman who answered sounded more like a child and she put me through to the librarian, Pat Conlon. Mrs. Conlon's assistant patched me through to her after asking my name. Then Mrs. Conlon picked up the phone and said this: "Oh my goodness, I can't believe it! Is this really Alison Scott? The Alison Scott of Alison and Susan Scott from Future Educators?" We proceeded to have a nice discussion about how our lives were going, how Susan was, how the school was, and whatnot. Then she suggested I try some other schools in the area because she already had three spare projectors. Luckily I found the AI-1000 a home at Anthony Elementary with the librarian there, named Mrs. McRae. McRae being the last name of a middle school friend of mine. I'm taking

A Difficult Lesson Learned.

The submissions on PostSecret are quite relatable tonight. This one, so much so that I deemed it my PC desktop. Life is tricky. The world never offers an easy solution. Altruism is hard to capture these days. And even the light of the firefly is unreliable. But like the light of the firefly, just when you start to believe hope is lost, the mason jar world is illuminated again. --A.Scott

With a fist full of change, but no sense.

Tonight I find myself with a list of names, 61 cards to make, and no motivation. Where is my Christmas spirit? Maybe if I sat in the room with the Christmas tree and music playing... I might try that tomorrow night when nothing else has piqued my interest. I have friends (hence the 61 cards). Thank God. And like all the people in the world at one point or another, some of my friends have fallen into rough patches. Rough patches, I say that include anything from relationship crap, health issues, car trouble, accidentally throwing something into a dumpster that you shouldn't have, financial problems, school trouble, losing a job, lackluster lifestyles... whathaveyou. I always want to be available to listen, but sometimes it's difficult for me to simply be a human diary for a friend. This stems from my unexplainable passion for finding solutions. Perfect example: Susan called the house tonight and, with a very snarky laugh, said "I threw the cupholder for my car into the dump

Technologies.

I like comics like this one. It's not that far from realistic. These days, technology's growth rate is far quicker than I can certainly keep up with.

Recurring Dreams

While on the phone with a friend the other day, I randomly recalled a recurring dream I had as a child. My family and I were evacuating (a place I understood to be, but looked nothing like) home. But we had to drive through flooded plains and strange, desolate, almost war-torn environments. It was like the National Forest had been burned and then flooded. There were ravenous starving animals lurking, stalking the car. All kinds of animals -- things like cougars, alligators, bears. They had no shelter, so they were all out, exposed on the plains. We were driving a station wagon (?). A very low one. Each time we ran out of dry ground, my parents had to decide if the wagon would make it through the giant puddles of flood water of if they were too deep to drive the car through. At which point, we'd have to find another route. We had a bunch of our stuff piled on the roof of our station wagon (?). At one point, a piece of luggage tumbles off the roof and gets mauled and devoured by alli

Winner, winner, chicken dinner.

I never have seven people to tag for these things, but I do them regardless. Laura tagged me. (http://iamarefinedyounglady.blogspot.com/) Here're the rules! * Link to the person that tagged you, and post the rules on your blog. * Share 7 random and/or weird facts about yourself -- make sure they're ones you didn't share last time. * Tag 7 random people at the end of your post, and include links to their blogs. * Let each person know that they've been tagged by leaving a comment on his or her blog. I'm not particularly good at keeping secrets about myself, but some of my qualities do go unobserved by most people. Here're mine. 1. This first one is one I've been slowly leaking out people. I read OneSentence.org. Actually, when I say I read it, what I mean is I've read it in it's entirely. I can't even remember how I discovered it, but I'm glad I did. I read every sentence from the newest to the oldest archives and now I tune in every couple of

sex and guns.

This is my default picture on Myspace currently. And it's getting some mixed reviews; although most people find it sharp and powerful. One of my good writing friends *(Jessica) left a comment regarding how she never pegged me for a guns type of person. I can see how that would be the common perception, what with my typical 'peace, love and compassion' persona. However, things are never that cut and dry, especially when it comes to me ... you know this. I'm not claiming to be a pro-gun person, or an NRA freak. But -- surprise, surprise -- I do have an opinion. I view guns control the same way I view sex ed. That's right, I said it. Just because the "adults" ignore a topic -- an elephant in the room, even -- doesn't mean it's not blaring it's trumpet nose right into your ears, singing 'try me, try me.' So, in case you're wondering, no I don't believe in teaching abstinence. Just like they portray the angel and devil on the carto

Life: Updated.

Well, life has a funny way of sneaking up on you when you think everything's okay and everything's going right. 1. I created a budget yesterday. It was kind of eye opening. I'm not saying I won't be able to afford to move, but I am definitely saying I'm going to be much more strapped for cash than I've ever been. I guess that comes with moving out, eh? It's good though. Because Angela's current lease is binding, we cannot move until the end of March/beginning of April, so I've got four months to continue saving my pennies. And that starts yesterday. I'm actually sticking to my recently instilled rule of only eating lunch out once a week (which literally saves me a minimum of $40 a week!). Socially, this is the biggest change for me, but also the best money saver and it must be done. I'm also getting serious about selling my photography. I know I've said this before, but it has become a necessity at this point. My parents have a great out