Hello! Goodbye!

For anybody paying attention (basically Anna) I'm officially moving to Tumblr. I added a follow button over there -------> and I won't be posting here anymore. On the bright side, I'm massively more active on Tumblr, so I'm worth following ;D I'm even taking the name and my special banner with me, and I'll be moving some of my posts over too. If somebody wants my url I'm not sure how it works but I can try changing it!

Stress and Shopping

In my opinion, shopping causes more stress rather than relieving any. Just sayin'. I've been incredibly stressed out the last couple of week, mainly because of homework and finances. There were multiple misunderstandings and miscommunications about when my financial aid was going to be available, so a lot of the things I planned to do with the money didn't pan out. In a way, this was a really good thing, since I was able to continually review and refine my wishlist until I knew exactly what I needed, and what was just extra fluff. But at the same time, it was intensely frustrating to see sales end and items go out of stock as each day passed and the money still isn't released. The combination of this frustration and the fact that I overloaded myself with 15 credits meant that I became deeply depressed last week. I don't mind admitting that I don't have the best control over my attitude at all times, but it does make me sad that I can't really take care of my husband when I get into a funk like that :( 

If only it was as fun as this looks...

And back again...

I'm starting to be really okay with my sporadic posting habits. If I don't feel like posting, I just don't post: nothing wrong with that. I do feel bad that I never got around to writing about Dracula, but I have a partial draft saved so that I can make sure I post it at some point :) In the mean time, I will try to get this blog caught up on everything I've been doing for the last month! For starters, one of the reasons I didn't feel like posting any sooner was the fact that my lovely music widget has been shut down. I came to my blog a couple weeks ago to see how things were doing and maybe write a post, but found that all the hard work I put into that playlist was wasted because the entire company was shutting down!! So that's a sad thing :/ I may work on making a playlist on youtube and embedding it somewhere, but since I don't have access to my old Mixpod playlist I don't really feel like starting from scratch....

Quick report on... things.

So I have two posts that I'm in the middle of, but a couple of technical issues (besides life in general) have kept me from finishing+posting them. I'm trying to figure out how to get pics off of my extremely buggy phone, and I have to figure out a way to fix my tunes. I will be posting soon!!!!! Soon is just an indefinite measurement of time :O

Laziness and other stuff

I'm putting off the Dracula post yet again, for two reasons: first, I really want to do it justice and write the best post I can; and second, I'm just tired :) I worked 15 hours this week, for the first time in well over a year, so I think I have a right to be slightly lazy this weekend. But in lieu of talking about a book, I do have some awesome crappy photos of my nail and hair fails! I attempted a version of a French tip manicure, and, since I don't have the steadiest of hands, the result was kinda awful... I used some of my favorite polish (Sally Hansen Hard As Nail Xtreme Wear) in three different colors: Gunmetal for the base, Black Out & Disco Ball for the tips. Great color combination, but quite poor in execution. However, I found a really nice tutorial that has me excited to clean them up and try again tomorrow. Unfortunately, I didn't find this video until after I finished the tips the hard way, so this was the result:

I Vant You To Read A Booooook...

So, Google just let me know that it's Bram Stoker's 165th birthday! I'm too lazy to do it tonight, but I wanted to let everybody know that I'll be doing a review/fangirl moment for Dracula tomorrow :)

Velcome!

Widget Gadget

I've gone widget happy. Or gadget happy, whichever you like :) I knew I liked my widgets on my phone (I have a Droid, until I get an upgrade soon) but nobody told me I could have them on my desktop and my blog! I have a total of five blog widgets now, two desktop gadgets, and I don't even know how many on my phone. I truly don't know about my phone, though, because it went and freaked out at me. I had to do a factory reset, and haven't had the heart to try and reinstall all my old stuff when I'm just going to get a new phone in a few weeks. But anyhow, you can see I've added music to Epic Things, and in an effort to keep the appearance clean I stuck it at the bottom of the page. I felt that this was a little cruel, though, because I hate sites that make you search for the source of the noise that suddenly starts playing when you go to the page. I could just turn off the autoplay, but then would anybody really give my music a shot? :) That's why I added the text ticker, just to give you all a heads up about where the player is, and it should be gone soon. My dad says scrolling text "went out with IE 3" so I'll probably take it down after about a week. 

At least my blog doesn't look like this!

The Redesign

As anyone who follows my blog will have noticed, I've been working very hard on the appearance of Epic Things in an effort to make the site more worthy of its name :) And since I did work so hard on it, I wanted to share a little about how I went about it, and link to some of my resources. It was a little frustrating at times, but I think it was well worth the effort I took to find the "baby bear" look :D This is hopefully going to be helpful to anybody trying to design or redesign their own blog, but it's going to be a long post, so stay with me!

My First Webinar

I feel like the title of this post should be in chunky letters, possibly primary colors, to go along with the whole "my first, etc" theme :) I am, however, currently attending my first ever web seminar, or webinar! There's a bit of a problem with the speaker/presenter's internet; so while I'm waiting for the thing to actually begin, I thought I'd get started on today's post. I'm pretty darn happy with myself for getting up at 7am today, but before anybody gets all impressed I should mention that I will probably take a nap later XD At any rate, it's progress, right?! Which is good, since I have less than a week before I will have to be at work by this time... Yes, that's right: I have my work schedule finally! I'm not sure if it's my permanent schedule, but it looks like I work Tuesday evenings, Wednesday afternoons, and Thursday mornings. A bit of a mixed bag on that, but I do appreciate that my work days are all in a row :)

Until now, my schedule has been wide open.

An update, in general

A few things have happened since my post-before-last, besides that super fun party I mentioned :) In particular, I finally have a job! For anybody that doesn't see this blog via facebook, I have an orientation tomorrow morning for a page job at our local library: yay! I'm super excited about finally working in a library, and I think having a set schedule every week will encourage me to get more done when I am home. At any rate, I'm looking forward to finding out what my hours will be like, since it's just 15 hours a week. I'm hoping for three 5-hour shifts in the afternoon :D I'm also looking forward to having a little spending money!

...says my brain.

God makes the grass grow!

I went to a very nice birthday party last night, and it reminded me of the wonderful fact that God actually makes the grass grow :)

so pretty...

I'm sure I'll need to back up a bit here and explain what I mean, but first I want to describe a little bit of the kind of day I had before the party, and even a bit of my attitude all week. You see, I'm pretty sure that the devil was trying to prevent me from going to the party. In the two weeks leading up to last night, I had to arrange to get a ride to the party, figure out what I wanted to make/take for the birthday girl, and dig up a few items for an "accessory exchange" (awesome idea for a party, honestly! I scored the cutest purse :D). It doesn't seem like all that would be hard to do, especially in two weeks, right? I find it incredible how small and sneaky the enemy is...

Noom, LRU, and other stuff

My goals seem to be all over the place lately... first off, I know I was going to post every five days, which was two days ago, but I didn't get around to it Monday, and yesterday I kind of avoided it because I felt obligated to mention 9/11 if I wrote a post on that day, and since I didn't have anything to say (and I hate feeling like I'm being forced to do something), I just put it off. Ironically, I'm mentioning today, but I'm going to just see that as my own choice :) Also, sorry about that run-on sentence...  I'll try again to be on a schedule, but since I'm really just not that uptight about being punctual for myself, it probably won't happen XD Another side note: typing with bright pink-red nails is very distracting and feels mildly retro somehow.

Little bright spots that draw the eye...

A quick break from the books...

I'm almost neurotic about posting now, after being gone for 2 months (I realized I lied in the last post, when I said a month and a half or so: it was exactly 2 months!). I think 5 days is a nice number... It's not a specific day of the week, nor a week apart, but it does mean "once or twice a week" if I'm consistent :) Still just working on forming good habits, I guess... But that applies to every area of my life. Did you know, I consider myself very easy-going, but I've found that a few things have sprung up lately that make me realize that I still need to work on my temper and having patience! I suppose it would be a bit foolish to think I was done growing in those areas, but the extent of the problem (or the shortness of my fuse) really surprised me. Stay humble, me!

We now return to our regularly scheduled... um... hmm... what is this, anyhow?

Well, I've had longer sabbaticals, so a month and a half or so isn't too bad! I have been busy, too, so although I can't really see myself picking up where I left off (with promises to tell about my trip to Seattle, etc.) I do have lots to talk about :) First off, I do have to apologize to whoever was getting used to my semi-regular posting. I know I dropped off the face of the blogging planet, and the main reason for that was a mean bout of depression. Multiple rejections and dead-ends in the job search just started to get to me, so I went on an anime binge and didn't come out of it until we found out we were moving. My bad, completely :S In my defense, I also spent a couple weeks packing and moving and unpacking, so it wasn't all avoidable... right? :)

Treats from my favorite pastry shop in Seattle

eep.... I was AFK!

Soooo, I went to Seattle and had a lot of fun, and then totally didn't post about it or anything after that. I've been gone for over a week: sad face!! I haven't gotten a lot of complaints about the lack of posts (none, actually: isn't anybody paying attention? lol) so I haven't been too stressed about it, but I have been making mental notes of what I want to talk about when I get back to blogging, especially how topic-less I seem to be. I don't mind blogging about everyday stuff, but I'd like to have more of a focus to this, and I'm having a hard time coming up with material along those lines... So bear with me, I'll get back to posting on a semi-regular basis and keep trying to promote my blog as much as possible :) As always, some feedback would really help me decide what direction I should go with this!!!

For now, I'm going to leave this short and sweet, but in the next few days I'll post about Seattle, my job searching, and whatever else I can think of :D

Job applications and cover letters

I just turned in the application, resume, and cover letter for my dream job :D It took me almost a week to do it, because I worked so hard on perfecting the wording and researching everything I needed to get it all right. Whew. Part of me is just glad it's done, but the other part of me is kind of feeling like "holy crap, what have I done?!?" It's hard to describe... I really, really want this job, but I have minimal experience in the required areas (besides customer service) and it's super competitive in the library field right now. People with twice my education and 3 times as much experience are having a hard time finding a job: why should I get the first job I apply for?

Seattle Public Library - my future?

I hate school...

I don't know if I've mentioned it lately, but I do: I hate school so much. Learning is fabulous, but grades, fees, deadlines, and the innumerable rules, are disgusting. This vent has nothing, believe it or not, to do with the fact that I finished finals yesterday. It does have to do with the fact that I have loans, and I don't even have a 4-year degree yet. My mom, life-giver and teacher that she has been to me, had to bring this up today, just when I was feeling really good about the future. Now I have doubt: not because that was what she was trying to do, but because she's usually right >.< And trying to find another school is the last thing I want to do right now.

Done with finals!!!

Yep, finished with school (as far as I know)!!! Now for the check-my-grades-every-two-hours portion of the school year XD but until then....

Woooooooo! I didn't get everything done that was on my to-do list for today, but the homework and movies with my husband was the really important part :D I'll post tomorrow about the whole job-application thing I mentioned on Twitter, and I have a pic of my business cards to show off! Hmm, was there anything else I needed to mention?  Nope!!!!

Finals are hard... Bunnies are cute!

I'm almost done with finals!!! But until tomorrow night, please enjoy this short playlist of super-cute videos about a kitty and a bunny :D

Pretzel Dogs (pics or it didn't happen!)

I've been making these a lot lately: three times in the last two weeks! They're very easy, and while it does take a while to make them, about half of the time is just waiting. I'll totally be making these when I have kids: they can help roll out the dough, or "practice" with some playdoh :) I would have just posted a link to the recipe, but I changed enough things that it's really not the same recipe anymore. Besides, I took a bunch of pictures! Hope it makes you hungry >:D

Pretzel Dogs

Makes: 16

Prep time: 90 minutes

Cook time: 20 minutes