I get up in the morning, oftentimes around 10am and immediately count the hours until I have to be at work. Then I decide when I will shower, which most of the time is around 1 so that any kind of outdoor chores that I may need to do can be done. If there has been no mention of chores by my dad or mom, I go upstairs and get myself a bowl of honey nut cheerios, which I bring back downstairs so I can enjoy them while checking the 9 or 10 websites that I check daily which are QC, SMBC, Khaos comic, Garfield Minus Garfield (y u no update?), The Oatmeal, Poorly Dressed, The Superficial, Regretsy, Gmail, and Facebook. Sometimes I even go on tumblr but I tend to draw a blank when searching.

So right now it's 10:22 and I've been up since 9:41. So far I have checked my e-mail and those other sites, filled out my online time card for my job, checked my bank account and spent a good 15 minutes trying to figure out what one of the payments was, which ended up being my health insurance. I checked blogger to see if anyone had posted anything, which Kelly had so I read her post. So far, I feel like I've accomplished some things but at the same time I wonder why I didn't get out of bed and do something. You see, dear readers (if there are any of you), I am now so accustomed to getting up and going to work/doing chores that I cannot sit still for long. The internet is now officially boring. Yeah, I am disappointed too. I think I might have to go back to 4chan just to keep the spark alive.

Last night after work I went over to The Oasis (local hipster bar in New London) and got to visit with my sister, her husband, and two of her friends. I walked in and sat down next to Amanda and proceeded to get the look over from these two very gay men sitting to my left. They asked Mike who I was, and I was like "uh, hi, I'm megan..." and I shook each of their hands. They shook my hand like their hands were fish. I don't think I have many pet peeves, but a weak hand shake is one of them. So I find out they're visiting New London from California. I didn't get the story of why, but that's besides the point I guess. They decide that Amanda and I are so fashionable they must have a picture of us with them, and it turns into a large group picture with the rest of our compadres. Long story short, they get kicked out for some confusion over a shot and it was probably for the best because they were getting really riled up. It was a monday night and there were maybe 20 people in the bar so they were in the wrong place if they wanted to get too crazy. But as I was visiting with my beloved sibling and her husband, I was told they were coming over today to do some kind of gardening/something. So far they are not here, but it's only 10:29. I'm trying to figure out what I feel like wearing to work and if I want to wear tights. It looks bleak enough outside where I could get away with tights.

I've been battling a very uncomfortable sore throat for the past three days. I mowed the lawn on saturday morning and I am allergic to grass. All those great teen movie scenes where the girls all lie on the grass and talk while looking at the clouds? yeah, I would need a blanket and a bottle of calamine lotion. But I am a good daughter and I mowed the lawn for my parents since I am very good at mowing the lawn. But breathing in all of that grass pollen does a number on my ability to breathe properly so there were a lot of water breaks. My dad tried to convince me to do the sensible thing and wear a respirator but it was so hot I knew I wouldn't be able to breathe either way. I wish I had worn the respirator. Since then, I've had a wicked sore throat that unless I am drinking water/tea/coffee constantly, it only gets worse. Waking up after being asleep for 8 hours is especially painful since I, like all nerds, am a mouth breather. I had an irrational fear that if I breathe only through my nose I will suffocate, so I breathe through my mouth when I sleep. This is great, except I wake up and my sore throat went from being tolerable to feeling like I have the sahara in my esophagus. Needless to say I've been drinking a lot of tea. Smoking doesn't help either, I suppose, so today I'm going to see if not smoking helps it.

This past sunday was mother's day and I played outside in the garden with my parents, amanda, michael and lara. This is probably a little known fact about me, but I really enjoy being dirty. I don't feel like I've accomplished anything outside unless my clothes and hands and feet are filthy. So basically I'm like a small child. But I know how to use those hand held snippers. I got good and dirty on sunday, but am paying for my enthusiasm. The violets invaded my mom's flower garden like it was Poland in 1939, so Amanda, Michael, Midnight and I did a lot of violet extermination. Midnight isn't much of a digger, but she tried (this is my sister's dog...). Anyway, I used my bare hands because at the time it seemed like the thing to do, especially if I was going to accomplish my level of filth goal. I now know how it feels to have carpal tunnel, I think. I didn't realize hands could get sore and stay that way for more than a day. Lesson learned!

This has basically been a stream of consciousness entry in the hopes to fill the empty space that has accumulated. I was wondering to myself "do I have anything to say in my blog if it's not some kind of challenge?" and I guess the answer is "kind of". I'm not going to re-read or edit, but I imagine there's a lot of whining. I was actually voted "class whiner" in the senior year superlatives. Part of me still resents that, since I don't recall ever voting for that superlative...CONSPIRACY THEORY. I'm sure at my 5 year reunion I'll ask. Or just whine even more to show them how much I've grown.

Toodles,
Meggy

Pain is Beauty

As cliche as the subject is, it's totally true in regards to today! I woke up at dark o'clock (7:15am) to be at my beloved sister's home at 9am this morning so I could accompany her to the salon. Today, she got herself a full fledged afro.

The reason that pain is beauty in this case, is that the solution used in perming hair smells like "a dirty fart, or an egg salad sandwich left outside in the sun" (amanda's words). I would say it smells kind of like what sex panther probably smells like. Either way, it was gnarly. I was at least 4 feet away from Amanda and had a hard time not gagging, so I don't know how she managed to do so.

I took a lot of photos, but only one was ok'd by amanda for posting online in my blog, so here it is!

So what's going on here is that she's had her hair rolled, and then the perm solution was put on. The cotton around her face is to protect her face from the solution that might drip down. The clear bag is to hold in the heat of the chemical reaction that's ocurring from the solution which makes the hair curly. I don't know how that actually works in a scientific way, I just know that the solution was self-activating and the heat caused by the chemical reaction made it so amanda didn't have to sit under one of those head heater things. The entire process of rolling, setting, rinsing and then styling took about 3 hours. It sounds like a really long time, but Tanya and Amanda make for very entertaining company.

Besides that fabulous adventure, amanda and I got lunch at the village bakehouse in Groton. Their chicken salad is omgamazing. the only thing that was better than that was....

This! It is called a "chocolate log" It's puff pastry with chocolate on the inside and MORE chocolate on the outside. Mmmmm tasty.

Once all this goodness was over, it was time to go to work. Thank god for diet coke and coffee.
<3
MeggyB

A nature adventure!

Meet Zeke, my friend Katelyn's amazing dog. He is the poster child of "nice and playful and lovable and adorable, NOT scary" for the whole pitbulls are not agressive monsters campaign. Seriously, how could you not love that face? But I digress, since the point of this post is that he, his mommy and I went on a walk at Bluff Point in Groton today. For some reason whenever Katelyn and I get together it rains...strange. Having been cooped up in a hospital, my room, or my car for a few weeks it was really nice to go and be surrounded by trees and green things. I didn't get pictures of our walk since I was busy walking and trying not to trip over Zeke, who likes to run right in front of you. He's sneaky (but not mean!)

Once we got to the trail that led to the cliff area, we stopped and sat on the decaying wooden bench to get some lovely photos of the scenery (and Zeke of course)




This is what you would see if you sat on the bench and looked straight ahead




This is what you would fall on if you tripped over the edge of the first picture. Awesome!



I like this because you can see a storm was afoot (it started raining right after Katelyn mentioned that. I blame her!)


I think this is a photo of where the Groton Airport and other stuff is. Maybe.


Zeke! It took several tries to get him to stay still and let me take a proper photo.


Katelyn and one of the attempts to get Zeke to pay attention to me. Also in the photo is my delicious skinny vanilla latte which was way better hydration than water (IT'S SO HOT. MILK WAS A BAD CHOICE!)

SO yeah. It was a lovely time, and now I'm in my warm toasty pjs, listening to some Cold Cave and figuring out if I want to make some new ringtones for my phone. I think the answer to that is "yes".
<3
MeggyB

I like being literate most of the time.

Hi Everyone! This post isn't going to be very interesting unless you want to suggest books for me to read. I decided I should keep a running list of the books I've bought to read and have yet to actually read. Sooo, yeah. If this doesn't interest you I'm sorry! If it does, leave suggestions in the comments and I'll add them to the list!

In no particular order:

-Pox Americana
- The Passage
-The Search for Wondla
-The Road
- Fledgling (i've started this but got distracted)
-One Day
- Aurora Teagarden series
- Wuthering Heights
- The hours
-The Snark Handbook
-Me Talk Pretty One Day
- In Cold Blood
- The True Story of Hansel and Gretel
- the rest of my monstrous Sherlock Holmes volume
- The Road to Serfdom (I swear I'll read it, really!)
- Holy Blood, Holy Grail
- MAUS I and II
- The Tales of Beedle the Bard
- Let Me In (i'm in the process of reading this!)
- Crime and Punishment
-The Beautiful and Damned
- Madame Bovary
- Mr. Darcy's Diary
- Frankenstein
- The Picture of Dorian Grey
- Sense and Sensibility
- From Barbarism to Civilization (yes, this is a textbook. don't judge me!)
- The Tale of Gretta Von Ratsinmeinhaussen
- House of Seven Gables
- Scarlet Letter (reread)
- Northanger Abbey (reread)
- Mansfield Park (started this but got distracted by sherlock holmes)
- Paradise Lost
- The Vampire Armand
- The Gulag Archipelago

So yeah, clearly I should stop reading fanfiction >_>
<3
Me

Young's Double Chocolate Stout, a beer for champions

Hi there readers!
I'm a member of a group on facebook that is all about enjoying delicious beer and sharing reviews of said beer. Today, when I was in stop and shop for cotton balls and maybe some kind of chocolatey treat I happened upon a most glorious sight. There was a rack full of big huge beers at the end of an aisle. Forgetting my desire to consume my weight in peanut butter m&ms, I stood in front of that rack and stared. Immediately I knew that I would probably only like 2 or 3 of the options, since I don't know anything about beer and what the hell a heffeweisen is. I'm not even going to google it to find out until after I write this blog! Anyway, I saw on the shelf that was at eye level, a bottle with a purple label and the word "Chocolate" on it. I didn't care what else was inside, but chocolate beer sounded AMAZING. So, after picking up my pint of Young's Double Chocolate Stout (i read the rest of the label) I got some peanut butter m&ms anyway, and checked out. Worry not, I did remember the cotton balls!

So, I got home and put the tasty beer in my fridge and went to do something else, which is work on a project that I've had the idea for for a while but haven't bothered to start. This project is called the "RH Super Secret Planning Project" or RHSSPP for short. Anyway, there'll be photos of this project in this blog entry, that's why I'm telling you.

Finally, 5:30 came and I decided it was time to enjoy this chocolate beer beverage. I even took pictures for those of you who would like to see!


The empty glass next to the delicious stout, as yet unopened!


First pour. As you can see there's lots of bubbles :3
First Taste: OMG THIS IS FUCKIN DELICIOUS, i said to myself. So, I guess on a scale of 1-10 for tastiness it's a 10.

I moved myself from the table to the floor where my work was, and took a photo of my activities.

As you can see, I am hard at work with my delicious companion.

As I drank my first glass of this delicious stout, my integrity as a historian got worse You probably won't be able to read all of the notes, but I just summed up the Schlieffen Plan in a paragraph and then wrote "OBVIOUSLY, This didn't work :(".
But I soldiered on, and eventually poured my second glass...


Look at how tasty that looks! I just wanna lick my computer screen! Anyway, I'm enjoying my second glass as I type this because although the beer is only 5.2% alcohol I guess I have a very low tolerance when it comes to double chocolate stout.

My notes suffered as a result! These notes are about the technology and then the results of WWI. it says "results for Germany: They get FUCKED". I am so good at history.


Anyway, I guess I'm supposed to rank some stuff about the beer itself. Sooo,
Tastiness: 10/10 (you must try this if you like beer)
Sweeetness: This beer isn't sweet at all, so if you were worried about that, don't be...-0/10
Smoothness: 9/10. It almost doesn't feel like I'm drinking beer except you get that beer flavor. i am comparing the smoothness to water (or coors light)
Appearance: 10/10 the bottle is made out of brown glass which is great since it keeps out those nasty sunbeams that erupt from the florescent bulbs of the stop & shop. the label is pretty and i love contrasting color combinations, so the orange and purple makes me happy. The beer itself is a really really dark brown, and it looks just beautiful in that there clear beer glass!

I hope that this is an adequate review and that people enjoyed reading it!
<3 I gotta do this more often,
MeggyB

It's Friday, Friday, gotta get down on Friday

As many of you (those who read this) know, I've got a weird new obsession with this new meme song. It's pretty horrible.

on a totally different note, I said that this post would be about glitter and...something else. I'm going to write about the awesome parade that I went to today instead.

Today was the Mystic St. Patrick's Day parade and it was pretty cool. I got some sweet bling and had tasty beverages with my family. We went down to John's (a bar down the street) and had some shots of jameson and some tasty smithwicks (i think that's how you spell it) and watched the mass of people in the bar. I had a loverly time and it just cements for me how happy I am to have my sister and her husband as part of the family.

Dina moved up to new hampshire yesterday, and my parents and I went up to check out her new home and help her get her stuff in the apartment. Steve's place is really nice and it seems like she's really cozy and happy there. We went to the red arrow diner in manchester new hampshire. Amazingly delicious food and pie, but seriously cramped and the wait for a party bigger than 2 is really long. we wandered around downtown manchester for a while and checked out the shops and eateries and stuff. it looks like a great place to go out. The drive up and back was really long though, and honestly I have no idea how dina did it at 11pm, because I was tired after the drive up and I still had to drive back to CT. seriously, people who drive 2.5 hours anywhere (especially to visit me) got newfound respect because I would just say "make me a teleporting device!"

Anyway, today's parade was great. I had too much jameson and had a nice nap, then tasty steak for dinner. Now I'm just waiting for Big Love to come on, and I'll watch that with my parents. It's been an awesome weekend, and would only have been made better if the people I wanted to see lived down the street so I could just be like hey, let's go out tonight!

Next week I'm house sitting for Amanda and Michael which I'm really excited about. I also start my new job! It's going to be wonderful! Expect some kind of blog post about it :P
<3 til next time (when i've got something more important to say)
MeggyB

Thoughts of a college graduate

It's been a while since my last post, mostly because I forgot I had a blog and partly because I've been doing stuff.

I got my diploma in the mail a few weeks ago, and it was really exciting to receive my proof that I spent the last four and a half years working towards something tangible. I have all of my notes from certain classes and almost all of my text books (i'm working on getting rid of the ones I will never read again) and so I do have tangible evidence of my being there. But my diploma was like the final stitch in the college quilt. Or the last chocolate chip in the pancake (i think that one's better). But even though I have this diploma, and even though I was told "you'll have jobs waiting for you when you graduate! don't worry!" the job market is total garbage. I'm not going to spend this post whining, because I just got a job on thursday! After two months of really searching (and applying anywhere and everywhere that I thought might accept me) I got a phone call from the temp. agency that I went to, offering me a job at a hospital. Awesome! I get to work 3-11:30 monday - friday. This works to my advantage since I'm more of a night person anyway and all the fun bar related stuff only starts happening around 11 on friday anyway!

All that aside, my experience as a college graduate thus far has been ideal. Obviously I am very lucky because my parents don't charge me rent and I'm more than happy living at home. I'm also lucky because I don't have bills just yet, so really I've just had to look for a job and enjoy my free time. I never believed that I would be tired of free time, but I was getting pretty tired of it. There's only so many hours of harvest moon I can play before I wish I had something to do that made me appreciate that I could spend 8 hours pretending to be a farmer. I've really enjoyed the social benefits of having no obligations, since that means lots and lots of going out, late nights, awesome coffee and lunch dates, and killer hangovers.

If I boiled down all the experiences/thoughts/feelings of the past 3 months, it would all spell out "although you might have a plan, it's also great fun to go with the flow and see what happens". That's not to say I don't have a plan (world domination) but a road trip isn't any fun if you don't stop at the world's biggest ball of yarn on the way.

Next post's topic will be glitter and dr. seuss books.
<3
MeggyB

p.s: i reread this post (i generally reread before posting but didn't do that this time) and I'd also like to point out that college is definitely worth it because you learn all kinds of useful stuff besides just what you're taught in class and I can say I've made some truly wonderful friends both in and out of class. I didn't learn to not write run-on sentences though. <3