Just when you thought it was safe to fly again

My son has a thing (by thing I mean obsession) for sharks.  Not really a reason for a blog post, but it does explain how I ended up buying this DVD:

If you'll notice the shark has an airplane in it's mouth. 

When I first saw the cover I thought "That's an interesting piece of artwork showing how mega this shark is."

Except it is a literal interpretation of what actually occurs in the movie.

A giant shark leaps out of the ocean, 30,0000 feet into the air, and snatches an airplane out of mid-air.

Don't believe me?  Proof:

Looky What I Got

Thank You to CLR at The Slow Dripped Life for awarding me the Kreativ Blogger Award.

As these things go there are a few things the recipient has to do:

1. Thank and link back to the awarding blog.
2. Answer the 7 questions.
3. Provide 10 random factoids about yourself.
4. Award the 7 more deserving blogs.

Let's start with the questions.

What's you're favorite song?
I don't have any favorites.  15 years ago it was Bohemian Rhapsody.  This week I'm kind of stuck on Lippy Kids, by Elbow, Sealgopur by Sigur Ros, and Somebody I Used To Know, by Gotye (which I like to pronounce Got-Yee). 

What's you're favorite dessert?
If it has sugar in it I will eat it.

Which do you prefer:  White or Whole Wheat?
Whole wheat bread, white for any other grain based food.  I've tried the whole wheat/multi-grain pasta, the texture-to me- is not worth any health benefit.

What do you do when you're upset?
Go to sleep.  If I'm really upset, the only thing that makes it better is to sleep.  I usually feel better and think much more clearly afterwards.  If that's not an option (like I'm at work) I'll go for a walk, but that is usally only a short term solution.

Which is your favorite pet?
If we're talking what type of animal, that will have to go to cats.  If we're talking which cat is my favorite pet, it will have to go to Jerry.

What is your biggest fear?
Awfully personal of you to ask that, so I'm going with a joke answer: people with disproportionally small hands.

What is your attitude, mostly?
First off, this question is worded weirdly, just getting that off  my chest.  Second off-spacey.  Is spacey an attitude?

Ok, now 10 random factoids:

1. My left foot is smaller than my right foot.  I ususally don't notice it unless I'm wearing shoes without laces.  Then the left shoe is looser than the right.
2. Additionally the whole left side of my body is just stupider than my right side (I'm right-handed).
3. I've lost 50 pounds in the past year.
4. I can crochet a baby blanket in a day.
5. I'm so slow at knitting that it can take me a week of very diligent work to do a scarf in garter stitch.
6. I'm looking at the Kreativ Blogger Award and wondering why "Award" is in brackets.  Is it a design choice?  Is it supposed to be sarcastic?  Also, there is no "e" at the end of Kreativ, and though I can accept that it starts with a K, the missing "e" I can't forgive.
7. I will correct other people's spelling, grammar, and sentence structure, but never see my own mistakes.
8. I am a comma abuser.  I've become so concious of this that I agonize over whether to use a comma in a work email even though 99% of the people reading the email won't ever notice it.  It's the two people who will notice that I want to impress.
9. I'm intrigued by the semi-colon; but I don't think I ever use it properly.
10. I'm bad at coming up with random facts about myself.

Now for my awardees:

Hektor Karl at After Troy-Hektor Karl
Ermie at Just Ermie
Rhi at Weird and Important

--and I don't have anyone else.  I'm going to do like Absonditus Creations of Art Of A Hidden Heart and open it up to anyone who would like to self nominate.   Just leave a comment and I'll make sure to add you the list.

So for your entertainment, my countdown of Doctor Who's companions from worst to best.

Now for anyone who wants to pick at this list, a few caveats:

• I'm only including the companions that appeared from the Ninth Doctor onwards. The only pre-Eccleston doctor I ever saw was the Sixth Doctor, he looked like a clown, the production design wasn't even cheestastic, and I had no clue what was going on.
• This is not a comprehensive list. This is kind of a swiss cheese recap thing, because I know that I should probably include that dude that Nine and Rose picked up in Dalek, who tried to send future ideas back to himself. That's all that's going to be mentioned about him.

So, on with the countdown:

Amy Pond
I really wanted to like Amy Pond.  I really tried to like her, and I even kind of do a little from the 1st season she was on.  By the second season I couldn't stand her.  It might be because she never wore pants.  Doesn't she get cold?












Mickey Smith
Mickey was kind of an accidental companion who got mixed up with the Doctor just because he was trying to keep his girlfriend.  He was all right.  I did like how he evolved into a more badass character.  Until he married Martha.  Why Russell T. Davies?  Why?



Martha Jones
I should have liked Martha better, but they really screwed her over making her the rebound companion after Rose.









Rory Williams
Rory is awesome.  Too bad he has to be married to Amy.








Rose Tyler
I don't know exactly what to say about her except I like her better than most.  Maybe because I associate her with the Ninth Doctor.  Billie Piper did something to her teeth somewhere between the end of series 2 and series 4 that was really distracting.  Not that that has anything to do with anything, but just figured I'd put that out there.





Donna Noble
I love Donna because she was the only female companion who was not in love with the Doctor, or tried to seduce him in a bout of pre-wedding cold feet (looking at you Amy).  She was just his friend, and she was awesome.

Captain Jack Harkness
Because he's Captain Jack-freakin'-Harkness.



Bonus:

Last 3 Doctors from best to worst:

9
11
10

Saturday Night Wrap Up

I feel bad that I haven't been posting so much since A to Z ended.  Without the pressure of a challenge forcing me to post everyday I have gotten a bit lazy.

So I'm going to do what I did last week and post some stuff that came up this week.  I think I'll try to make this a regular thing-post every Saturday at least.  And maybe once more during the week.  I don't know.  Definitely Saturdays though.

Anyhoo,  I heard this song this week.  People always have something to snarky to say about it, but how did it become so popular?  Hypocrites.  Also, I just realized, 20 years later, that he talks about getting shot at.

At work, one of my new duties is to send out a report to the floor with a list of available work.  Background: I work in a call center for a credit card processing company.  You know when you run your credit card or debit card at the store?  We are the middle man that transmits the information from the store to the bank.  My department makes outbound calls to reprogram credit card terminals to a new processing platform (not going into details, it's kind of confusing, and probably proprietary information anyway).  Well, I send out a report that says we still have 250 merchants to call who haven't been called yet that day.  People start FREAKING OUT because I didn't give the correct number.  Whatever.  The ONLY reason I send this report is because about 50% (and I am not exaggerating this number out of frustration) of the phone agents figure someone else will do the work and don't bother to look for it on their own.  One of the other Team Leads comes to me and says "So, uh, the wayward children (that's what he calls them) are a little upset because of the report."  My response: "If they did their jobs, I wouldn't have a chance to screw up my own."  I am SO tired of hearing people bitch just to bitch at this point.  And that turned out way more ranty than I planned.

On  a lighter note, I got 90 minutes of Community this week.  Sadly they have only been renewed for 13 episodes next year, and I guess the fired Dan Harmon, the show runner, so I don't know how those last few episodes will turn out.  And now 4 minutes of Troy crying:

Ten-year-olds are gross

Why tell a kid to wash his hands before making no bake cookies, when he's just going to stick his hands in his arm pits IMMEDIATELY after washing them?

I have had a week where I really didn't feel like blogging.  My duties at work changed so that I sit in a cubicle all by myself, staring at a computer all day; doing reports, updating spreadsheets, writing procedures.  It's not hard work, just time consuming so most nights I don't feel like being on a computer.

So, just some random things that happened this week.

Just this afternoon I was at Walgreens when I heard behind me-in one of those thick accents that make people outside Kentucky think creepy banjo music-"Ma said they was selling licker up here now!" I am purposely misspelling "liquor" to make a point here. "How much is it here! She said it was supposed to be cheaper!" The exclamation points aren't hyperbole.  This man was actually shouting like the person he was with was hearing impaired.  "How much is that bottle of Jo-se Cuer-vo?!  Sixteen dollars?!  I ain't payin' sixteen dollars for Jo-se Cuer-vo!"  I don't know, maybe you had to be there. 

They also had wine in those little cartons like chocolate milk come in, which I found...odd.

I heard this song on the radio one day on my drive to work.  It reminded me of highschool since it came out at about that time.  A walk down auditory memory lane.

It was my brother's birthday Friday.  I didn't forget it, but every birthday reminds me of the Flight of the Conchords song "Hurt Feelings" where Jermaine says "The day after my birthday is not my birthday, Mum."  I crack up everytime I hear that, probably because of the New Zealand accent.

Oh, and I saw this on the internet one day.  I don't recommend it for everybody, because even I was a little afraid that I might have come one step closer to insanity after watching it.

Reflecting on the A to Z Challenge Reflections Post

I heard about the Challenge back in December of last year, and debated whether I was going to do it.  This site had existed for about 6 months and I was having problems getting into the blogging thing.  I finally made the plunge and signed up for it.  I was at first daunted by the task of posting once a day, mostly because I can go a little overboard when I start writing and just keep going no matter how far off point I get, so the suggestion of keeping posts under 500 words definitely helped me to keep length under control.  Also I didn't feel so bad when I had nothing to say.

I did learn some things though.  I learned that ubermensch is a word. I learned that I CAN think of something to put down even if it was just a YouTube video with a description.

Easiest post? Luck, a piece of fiction that I thought up in a few minutes while laying in bed one morning.

Hardest? V-Day.  I had already gone the route of just listing words that start with U, and I didn't want to repeat myself.  So, I just rambled on for a while about words that start with V.

Best part of the Challenge?  Getting to visit some great blogs.  I didn't get through the entire blog list.  Sorry, I only have so many hours in my day.  I did find a few that I enjoyed visiting daily.  I also loved receiving visits from others to my blog and I got really excited every time I got a new comment on one of my posts.  I am, however, a bad visitor in that probably 75% of the blogs I visited I didn't leave a comment.

So, overall I would call this a complete success.  I am notorious for starting things and not finishing them so I'm really proud of myself.  I went ahead and added a page up there at the top with a list of all my A to Z posts, in case anyone wants a walk down memory lane, or in case any stragglers come by and want to see what I did last month.

Special thanks to all my followers and for everyone who left me comments.

And a final note:  During the Challenge I did 5 posts of fiction.  I remembered that I really liked writing fiction.  So, I decided to start a second blog called A Creative Exercise that will be devoted to writing.  I'm one of those insane people who plan to keep more than one blog running.  So, hop on over to my second home. I've already posted my first message to the masses.

Image courtesy of here