Whitewater trip!

Yesterday we went whitewater rafting with some coworkers. It was my first time and I was psyched but also pretty freaked out. I've never been comfortable with water. Yeah I know, I took swimming lessons as a kid, but I cried my way through them. (All I really remember was the first day, having to jump towards the instructor who was like 2 feet away in 3 ft deep water...and the instructor was wearing pretty tight speedos....so I don't know what freaked me out more, the water, or the speedos...) And...I always felt in the back of my mind that my ultimate doom would involve water somehow. Or a car. Or some sort of hungry wild animal.

One of my coworkers was telling me the day before that if you fall into the water, you're supposed to stay there and DON'T TRY TO STAND UP. I was thinking, that would be my first instinct I'm sure, I'd get my head out of the water and try to stand up or tread water. It was more clear why when the whitewater dude was telling us when we were standing around in our stinky PFDs (personal floatation devices) and dorky looking helmets.

"If you put your legs down and try to stand up, you might get them caught in a fallen tree trunk or something and the water will probably pull you down and we'll have to take like all day to cut you loose and the entire trip for everyone will be cut short. Just remember, if you fall in, LIFT YOUR LEGS! Then look around for help."

I was trying to imagine what I would do if I fell in. How would I remember to lift my legs?

Halfway through the trip, we were "surfing" in a hole, the water pulling our raft down lower and lower and filling it up completely with water. The next thing I knew, I was in the water! The rapids were definitely pulling on my legs and on the oar that I was gripping really tightly (I guess I should have been holding onto the raft instead). That's when I remembered, oh duh! Lift my legs! So I lifted them up and soon enough, I was pulled back onto the raft. Whew!

The rest of the trip zoomed by. But it was definitely worth it.

Get the latest Blink 182 cd and listen to track 12. The dude from the Cure sings it. I kind of like it better than any of the songs on the latest Cure album, which I must say is somewhat disappointing. Is it ever safe to think that an album is automatically going to be good because the artist has had good albums in the past?

personal space and buffer zones

I find it pretty annoying when people don't maintain a buffer zone between themselves and you. I've noticed when you're standing in some sort of line and you have a backpack on, that backpack is apparently part of the buffer zone. So the person behind you is allowed to stand close enough to you that she is touching your backpack. I hate it when my backpack is touched. I feel like my backpack is part of me, and there should be a buffer zone outside of the backpack where people need to stand behind. I mean is it necessary to stand so close?

People in cars are pretty inconsiderate of the buffer zone also. I hate it when I see someone behind me in my driver-side window. You should never see someone in there, unless they're in the next lane or you're going around a curve. But people do that when they want to pass you I guess, or when they're just freaking jerks. Or they don't know how to ease up on the accelerator to slow the car down. Most of the time it happens as I take the exit off the highway to get to work and I find that the jerk behind me violating my buffer zone is someone also going to the same workplace as me. That always starts my day off on a sour note. >:-S

found this the other day...

One thing leads to another...

So I was reading a friend's blog that had a link to this: Lego Spiderman vs Doc Oct...

...and the end of that had a url to the creators of the movie: Spite Your Face Productions...

...which linked off to this funny site: The Atlantis Mantis...

...which had a link to this bizarre ninja thing: Real Ultimate Power!...it's funny how when you read something, you read it in your own voice...and I felt like such a dork reading this site, cause it said things like, "These guys are cool; and by cool, I mean totally sweet." Just go to the site and read the first page to yourself...I guarantee you'll giggle. I know it's a joke site, but it was pretty lol. Hmm...I'm going to start using that as an adjective. So if people start saying that, I'll know that I started the trend. How lol. (that's pronounced "low-l", not "lah-l" or "L-O-L")...

...and finally I get to this site linked from the ninja thing: I know where Bruce Lee lives: The Ultrainteractive Kung-Fu Remixer. It's amazing what you can do with Flash.

Anyways, that was my web surfing for the day.

Do people actually watch this crap?

There are so many programs on tv, and with some of them being so bad, I wonder how they make enough money to stay alive. It's probably dumb people like me wanting to see how stupid the program really is that I watch it one time and find out that it is REALLY stupid, and I can't wait to tune in tomorrow to see if they can top today's stupidness. (The appeal of the Jessica and Ashlee Simpson shows on MTV.) But how do tv shows make money anyways? I mean, they don't really know that I'm watching, how do they figure out ratings? I've heard of that Nielsen rating thing, where some people are part of that special set of people whose tv sets are rigged with a device that transmits back to the tv people what shows you watch, so you can figure out the ratings for the top watched shows. Who are these Nielsen families anyway? I figure at least one person I know must be part of one of these Nielsen families. But no one I know is. I watch a ton of tv, but why am I not a part of this major device of tv programming?

According to the Nielsen research website, "The heart of the Nielsen Media Research national ratings service in the United States is an electronic measurement system called the Nielsen People Meter. These meters are placed in a sample of 5,100 households in the U.S., randomly selected and recruited by Nielsen Media Research." There are 293 million people in the US (and growing). I'm assuming most of those people have access to a tv somewhere. And they are only polling 5100 people? That's less than 0.002 percent of the population...not really a good measurement of the general. I guess that's why "Everyone loves Raymond" is always number one. And why the CBS network is always the top network.

I hardly watch CBS. Sometimes in the morning I'll watch the Early Show, but that's because I hate Katie Couric and there's nothing else to turn to when Good Morning America has commercials. But the show that comes after the Early Show on CBS really takes the cake. It's called "Living it up! with Ali and Jack". I haven't actually sat through a whole hour of it yet, but I just can't because the hosts are so darn ugly I have to turn away. The woman has really baggy eyes, I guess she can't afford plastic surgery or something. They aren't funny either, so if I don't actually watch but just listen, I'm never amused. I don't know what kind of people watch this show or what kind of people pay these ugly turds to be on tv, but if I were in charge, I would never put people like that on tv. Maybe radio. Late night radio. But never tv.

A little run-in with the law...

I got pulled over for the first time today! AARGH! Speeding. 75 in a 65. Can you believe it? I know you people do this all the time, and I did too, but I got caught. I feel like such a criminal! Everyone was going fast, I just happened to be the unlucky one in the herd. Or stupid one. Carelessness, that's what it was. I saw the fricken cop but I didn't slow down in time. It makes me mad that I wasn't able to outsmart the big man of the law, you know? I'm usually pretty good about it. I've been driving for four years (I don't count driving in high school with my mom in the passenger seat) and I haven't gotten pulled over or been in an accident, I'm like an insurance company's nightmare, I'm so dull. But not now. Now, I have a police record. So watch out.