LOLOMG!

This is a neat little musical number.

Staying Up

For the past two nights I've gone to bed at 8:30 or 9 PM. I used two excuses to rationalize why I, a young adult of 26, would want to go to bed at the same time as an elementary schooler. After reminding myself that it's a stressful week and that I have my period, though, my conscience was eased enough to let me doze off.

Tonight I'm determined to break the cycle and stay up until eleven. It's 9:17 now.

I'm so tired.

Y'know, I remember a time when I didn't have to force myself to stay awake on a Friday night. I would be out doing things* with my friends until one or two in the morning.

Man. I feel so old.






* drinking

Picnic Basket

Today I came home from a long, wearing day at work and noticed that finally - FINALLY - after months of checking the bulletin board above the mailboxes in vain, someone had left a UPS We-Missed-You note for me.

I had a package!

I went to the office to recieve my box and found that it was something I'd ordered a few days ago but didn't expect for weeks. My picnic set.

See, every winter my company sends us our holiday bonus - a catalog from which we can select one gift. This year I paged through it carefully, weighing my options. Should I get the hot pocket maker or the plastic food storage set? The foot massager or the decorative glass serving bowl? The air popcorn popper or the Jet Clean power washer? In the end I decided on a picnic set figuring that it would be good for summertime bike rides and hikes.

Well, when I opened it up it was better than I'd hoped. It had insulated pockets for food and a bottle. It had a service for four - plates, utensils, wine glasses and cloth napkins. It had a knife and cutting board. It had salt and pepper shakers. It had a corkscrew! A corkscrew! If that doesn't just shriek class I don't know what does!

Anyway, I'm completely enamored with my picnic set and after May 1st I expect to be taking roughly 60% of my meals in picnic form. I hope everyone I know likes eating outside.

Money Matters

Yesterday I made out a tentative budget and found that if I'm very careful and can put a chunk of money away each month I could go the entire summer without working.

Gasp!

I'd still look for work, of course - it never hurts to get ahead on those bills - but the idea of having an entire summer only working 15 hours a week at some odd job makes me feel damn near giddy. I mean, what on earth would I do?

What wouldn't I do? I could ride my bike to the library and spend the day reading under a tree in the park. I could sit at Barnes & Noble and enjoy a slice of carrot cake and some wifi. I could sit on my balcony and knit. I could sit on Mike's porch and knit. I could sit on the beach and knit. I could go to all the summer church festivals and all the area county fairs.

Oh man.

It's probably a phenomenally bad idea to go three months without working. It's practically begging fate to hit me with some unexpected expense. But it sure is tempting.

Dance Dance Revolution

I've decided to begin exercising again! This is for three reasons:

1. Women who carry their weight around the midsection (like I do) are at a higher risk for heart attacks than women with other body types.

2. I was surprised at how guilty I felt when my doctor recently asked, "Do you exercise?" and I replied, "Uh.....no."

3. I've decided to do a little sunbathing early on this summer to build up a slight tan so I won't get completely fried the first full day I spend in the sun. Sunbathing is tough to do when you're curled into a little ball to hide your stomach.

It was tempting to go down to 2nd Wind to pick up some used exercise equipment, but I bet even the used stuff is pricey. Besides, I have so much sitting around my apartment that I really can't rationalize going out and getting anything else. I'm going to re-inflate my exercise ball for future use and hunt down my 8 Minute Abs DVD, and in the meantime I've been doing aerobics.

Okay, that's a lie. It's not aerobics, exactly.

It's Dance Dance Revolution.

I know, I know, that's not exactly the same. But Dance Dance Revolution is exercise. Go down to the arcade and try it sometime. It's really tough. It's not just pressing the mat with your feet - you have to jump and twist and if you're like me you have to wave your arms around to keep from falling over while jumping and twisting.

I'm not the only one using DDR for exercise. This was the weekly poll on DDR Freak:

Have you lost weight by playing a dancing game?

Yes, but weight loss was not my intent. 41.0%
Yes, as my main aerobic execersise. 25.5%
No. 15.4%
Yes, but as a part of my fitness routine. 9.2%
Yes, but I gained it all back (and then some) 8.9%

Total votes: 827

I've also heard about guys who have lost a significant amount of weight playing the game. In my version of the game there's even a Workout Mode where you can plug in your weight and set up a workout session to last a predetermined amount of time or burn a certain amoung of calories. So I think we can all agree that DDR is a viable exercise option.

But if anyone asks I'm still gonna call it aerobics.

Technological Advances

So, as you have noticed, my blog as moved to unrulyq.com. This was a change brought about by my boyfriend, Mike, who owns Unruly Q. He assures me that this is better in ways I don't quite understand, but he has a trustworthy face so I've put my faith in him. One thing we couldn't figure out* was how to do a forced re-direct, so that when you go to danulai.blogspot.com you'll be automatically taken to my unrulyq.com page. Any help with this would be fantastic.

One interesting thing that he told me was that he has a gig of space on the server. A gig. I have a memory card in my PDA that's a gig, and that thing is tiny...less than an inch long. I immediately became concerned that I'd take up his entire space, and told him that since I blog almost daily that in two years I'd have over 600 entries on his server. He told me that it would be okay. This kind of blew my mind...that the tiny chip in my PDA could be capable of storing that much information.

Sometimes for fun I'll go up to my mom and show her a memory card or a flash drive and tell her how many CDs or photo albums or encyclopedias it could hold, and she just shakes her head and tells me that it can't possibly be real, and that she's going to stop believing in technology. It's the first time I've felt the same way.

Also, for those who were wondering...Danulai is pronounced DAN-you-lie. It's actually a mishearing of the lyric, "Damn your lies," if that helps.




* It was not an equal division of labor to figure this out. Mike's contribution was to sit at the keyboard, think, and type. I sat behind him on a wooden chair and petted his cat.