28

Jul

Week #30: Watch me now

“There are three things which the public will always clamor for, sooner or later: namely, novelty, novelty, novelty.” – Thomas Hood

So the 2012 Olympiad has begun & eyes across the world are fixed on all sorts of sports & similar activities. Now gymnastics, track & field, swimming, or equestrian events are crowd favorites (maybe I’m the only one who fancies the equestrian events). But there are some sports that just seem to be novelty sports, like 1992’s solo synchronized swimming or race walking. Now, I’m not saying either of those aren’t sports, I’m just saying let’s stop & think about what this entails doing in public. People will do crazy things for glory, fame, & little shiny circles on the ends of ribbons.

But I shouldn’t really comment because this week I’ve done something almost equally ridiculous in front of a whole lot of public & I’m not sure if the reasons were any better. The interns at the company I work for decided to put on a flash mob for the teen girl magazine that we produce. They organized the entire thing & so all I had to do was learn the dance (choreographed to Christmas music) & show up with a friend.

Our group hit up Union Station with a vengeance; composed mostly of the SUSIE staff & local readers (though a few gentlemen were in attendance as well), it reached about 35 members, but felt like 50. It was exhilarating to have that 007 secret agent feeling & I kept wondering if the people I saw walking around were in on the flash mob or not. When the music started, I was pumped & ran into position, ready to go. My face was stuck in a huge, albeit nervously twitchy, smile. In a twirly section of the dance, I got distracted by the guy behind me in business attire & couldn’t help but laugh. Flash mobs really are great equalizers. At the finale, we struck our poses & then dispersed. Mob managed, awesomeness achieved. It was nerve-wracking, brilliant & one of the most rewarding things I’ve done in public. Take that, Larry Young.

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21

Jul

Week #29: The best kind of thanks

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Silent gratitude isn’t much use to anyone. – G.B. Stern

As a girl, chocolate is one of my favorite things. As an artist, color is one of my favorite things. As a 20-something, the Internet is one of my things. (Un)fortunately, there’s something that feeds all of these addictions; it’s called Pinterest (or as my mom says, “Pin-interest”. In case you’re not familiar, Pinterest is a wonderful, horrible black hole of creativity & awesomeness that can make an hour go by faster than a scared cat. I love it 🙂 Lately, I’ve been trying my hand at some of the recipes that I’ve pinned & have been pleasantly surprised at the results. 1,000-layer chocolate chip cookies, lazy cake cookies & Nutella cookies have all fallen before my new found prowess, muah ha ha.

But the downside of learning you have baking as a new semi-secret power is that then you have a huge amount of tempting goodies lying around calling out to be eaten. Sooo, to quiet tiny cookie voices, I decided to give them away. To whom?, you might ask. Why not me?, you might also ask, but I think I chose some worthy recipients—members of the Olathe Fire Department. Especially since they had to go out on a call today when the high was 98 degrees F.

I had first thought to take something to the police, but upon consulting Google, I discovered they aren’t allowed to accept anything not prepackaged. With that in mind, I decided to call the fire station before stopping by in case they had similar rules. The man who answered identified himself as Anderson & when I asked if I could bring something by, he responded so enthusiastically, it just made my day. After trying to make sure there was enough variety (I used all of the recipes listed above, though the lazy cake cookies became blueberry cake cookies, & also made peanut butter cookies), I drove over only to find that they were out on a call. A second try worked & the men of station 4 were super sweethearts. They laughed at my bad jokes as I experienced of one of my rare shy spells. This was my first time ever taking something to our public servants & it’s been one of the best experiences I’ve had all month. Thanks, guys!

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14

Jul

Week #28: Curse of Thinking Ahead

“No reason to stay, is a good reason to go.” – Unknown

Do you ever fall asleep in a car, only to wake up & feel like you’ve been run over? That’s one of the things that I did this weekend (that’s not my new thing, I’ve done it before :S). I also tried to learn to whistle with my fingers. I say ‘try’ because while I got closer than I ever thought I could have, I was not successful in achieving a whistle. So what did I do? Well, about a month ago I didn’t anticipate having anything to do this weekend, so I agreed to accompany some friends to one of their friend’s weddings. Before today I’d never been to the wedding of someone who I don’t know. (It’s kind of an inside joke now because I also attended his college graduation & my friend forgot to introduce me to him). It was interesting, but somewhat awkward, especially going through the ‘Greet the bride & groom’ line. I realized too late that it would have been awesome to do an accent & pretend that I didn’t speak English or say I was someone I wasn’t, but aw well. I didn’t tell them my name, so they still don’t know who I am, but I did sign the guestbook, so they’ll have fun figuring that out.

I’m sorry that such a weary weekend resulted in a rather lackluster AN52 thing, but thankfully, a friend gave me 2,001 Things to Do Before You Die this week, so yay for the plethora of ideas 🙂

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08

Jul

Week #27: Un poco pico

“Mexican food is my weakness. Thank God I live in Washington where it’s horrible. They [combine] tomatoes and bell peppers and call it salsa!” – Lynda Carter

I’m celebrating getting halfway through the year (week-wise) by missing my blogpost deadline. Sorry to all of you who were waiting with bated breath, but here it is & happy half a year of new things!

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My friend’s husband recently showed us a video of a guy interpreting dubstep music. (If you aren’t familiar with dubstep, it’s something like this or something like this.) It’s funny because it shows how we as people perceive things or the parts that make them up & then reinterpret them with almost totally different outcomes. Like me & food.

I know I’ve already had a food project for AN52, but I like food a lot, so here’s another one. Pico de gallo is one of my favorite foods that I’ve never attempted to make. It’s pretty simple & when I looked up the recipe, I thought, OK, this will actually be good; I can do this!

Actual results weren’t too bad, but I think I added a bit too much lime juice & not enough salt. I didn’t really grow   or have this great, epic experience, but sometimes you just need something to feed yourself 🙂

12 years ago Short URL Comments

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