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let me check the Googles. February 18, 2008

Posted by Abby T in : (pointless) humor, fun with google, rants & raves , 1 comment

My favorite thing about checking out the “Blog Stats” area of my dashboard is seeing what search terms brought people over here. So, in honor of my 683rd pageview, here are some lists of things people have Googled to get to my blog, in various orders according to various criteria.

Most Searched

Coming in first is the phrase “you are my brother forever” with a whopping fifteen hits. This is not at all surprising. When I was writing the series of entries about American Idol’s Renaldo Lapuz I figured it contained about a zillion buzzwords that would bring traffic to the post. Sort of a cheap trick, but hey, it worked, and it was mostly unintentional.

This key word beats the runner up on my list by 11 hits. There really aren’t any others worth mentioning in this category, so I’ll move on to…

The “What Were They Thinking?” Searches

Ladies and gentlemen, these are pretty good. We’ll start off with my favorite of the Weird Search Terms: “can you get sick eating dead lobster”. One soul searched this and scrolled through seven other results to get to me. What gets me about it is this: this person is Googling the effects of eating dead lobster as if he or she were accustomed to an alternative. That alternative, I can only imagine, is eating… live lobster? I personally have a thing about eating food that remotely resembles what it looked like while alive, but I’m fairly confident I’m not the only one who would think twice about eating a live lobster.

From way out in left field comes “make lobster on keyboard decisions”. I’d go on about this but I really can’t for the life of me figure out what it means. And here’s the interesting thing: my blog doesn’t show up in the first 20 pages of Google results for those terms. Somebody felt strongly enough about these key words to go through more than 200 results to find me. That’s dedication, whoever you are. That’s the type of person I like to have hanging around here. Come back any time, you, who are so concerned about making lobster on keyboard decisions!

Other choice items from this category are “underwater theme dental”, “recipe bacon prune loaf”, “tie clip, lobster” and “one off tractor”.

Hopefully the next 683 (read, arbitrary number, until I feel like doing this again) pageviews will provide me with more delightfully odd, delectably random search terms. Until then, I recommend that nobody make any lobster on keyboard decisions until we can get this issue solved.

-@

my new calling. February 12, 2008

Posted by Abby T in : (pointless) humor, rants & raves, ye olde sporte , 2 comments

I’m going to try out for Rockstar Curling.

From the article:

The show would involve U.S.-wide tryouts starting this year, open to anyone 18 or older. A panel of coaches will select two teams – five men and five women – to train for six months, all expenses paid, at Lake Placid, N.Y.

They would train eight hours a day under professional coaches before going to regional playdowns for the 2010 U.S. Olympic trials in February 2009.

If they win, they’re off to the Vancouver Olympics, unlikely as that may seem.

From TheStar.com, found via Dave Barry’s blog.

-@

I’ve seen fire and rain January 29, 2008

Posted by Abby T in : games & systems, live theatre, rants & raves , 2 comments

Holy crazy start to the week, Batman!

To pick up where I left off yesterday: I’m sick, but not dead yet. My ears aren’t infected but there is fluid present. The doctor irrigated my right ear which I must say was the coolest thing ever! It was like a warm bath for my eardrum. It felt great. I was out of the doctor, Sudafed (with pseudoephedrine, none of that sissy on-the-shelf-at CVS stuff) in hand and bloodstream, in time to make my last class, which was good.

Then the onslaught started. I’ll spare you all the details but suffice it to say that stage managing two different shows, one of which is trying to last-minute schedule impromptu callbacks while the other is having a personnel crisis and having to cancel its first rehearsal because one of our leads dropped out, is pretty taxing.

The good news?

I bought Endless Ocean. For the uninformed:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54NICtS6oKQ&feature=related]

I haven’t come across a blue whale like the one in the video yet, but I did make a dolphin friend (I named him Jeff, God of Biscuits) and hang out with some sharks for a while. That was pretty cool. Endless Ocean is a pretty great game once you get over the fact that all you do is swim around. I mean, sometimes you have objectives - take a picture of a certain kind of fish, explore a certain area, take a foundation bigwig down diving with you, whatever - but you don’t even have to complete them. You can just swim around.

It’s the best soothing, bedtime game I’ve ever seen.

-@

keepin’ it streamlined January 28, 2008

Posted by Abby T in : rants & raves , 1 comment

I chose the worst possible time period to get sick.

I had to run auditions and callbacks and crap this past week and I have the First Rehearsal for my winter show tonight.

I started feeling crappy on Wednesday and it’s been a steady decline that I’ve been trying to ignore ever since. Ignore, that is, or cover up with massive amounts of Dayquil, Nyquil, Advil, Advil PM, Tylenol Severe Cold & Sinus, whatever else is in my medicine cabinet. Blegh. Blegh!

When I woke up this morning, though, all the stuff in my head was affecting my hearing. I hear everything at about 85% volume and higher-pitched things are distorted and tinny. It made playing the piano a rather hilarious event, and my cell phone ring tone is downright creepy.

The good news, though, is that when I discovered what my cell phone sounded like it was because the university health services people were calling me back. I’ve got an appointment for 10:30. I have class from 10-1 today but the 10-11 one is missable. The 11-12 one isn’t really missable but if I go, I’ll have nothing to contribute to the discussion and I’ll just sit there and be cranky and unable to hear for an hour. The 12-1 one is only missable if there’s no reading quiz but even if there is I don’t really care. My TA loves me and she’ll make it better.

Bitch, bitch! Moan, moan! I may well take this down once I’m well again and read it with a clear mind. This is like sneezing on the Internet for all to encounter. Gross.

-@

minimize interruptions January 22, 2008

Posted by Abby T in : kitchen adventures, rants & raves , 2 comments

I realized something just now - something my mother would love to hear, and which will make just about everyone else go “um… duh? Okay, whatever.”

I realized that I really like cooking.

For starters, it’s a really great way to eat up (no pun intended) as much or as little spare time as you’ve got lying around, plus it has clear benefits after the fact in the form of leftovers. And if it’s low-impact, easy cooking, you can do it while doing something else - watching seventeen episodes of Scrubs, for example, not that I’ve done that, or listening to music.

I realized this on my walk home from class this morning, when I was stressing a little bit about how my evening’s going to go. I have a meeting at 5:00 followed directly by auditions at 6, in which I have to sit for a good five hours. I was thinking about how much work I have to do (because I was right about yesterday, I didn’t get anything done) and how I’m barely going to have time to eat (I used to be able to eat dinner at 4:45, but now that I’m out of the dining halls, dinner time is much closer to 8:00 for). Then it dawned on me that I can make use of the five hours sitting in auditions by reading (because I don’t actually have to make any casting decisions. The whole process is quite mindless for me).

And once I was hip to the concept of multitasking in auditions, dinner followed quickly behind.

So I was standing in my kitchen cooking up a pot of rice (that awesome dirty rice mix from a box, a brand that starts with a Z, Zatarain’s, or something) and making chickie dickie (this is a family secret, I have just decided) and slicing stuff up for a sandwich for immediate consumption, I realized that I was having a really good time.

I wasn’t doing anything particularly complicated - I think the highest degree of difficulty I ever attained was stirring the rice and eating my sandwich at the same time - but I really did enjoy it. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that my kitchen/living room wall is basically made of windows, and I have a really nice view. It isn’t of anything special - just the alley and some parking lots - but my building is on the west side of the block and I can see all the way to the southeast corner. It’s not a great view, but it’s a long one, a sweeping vista if you will, which makes it seem all the better. That coupled with the fact that the sky is a gorgeous blue today and with the fact that I’ve got a great set of speakers for my iPod in the kitchen made the whole time a great experience.

And now I’m happily full and I’ve got a dinner all packed to bring to school tonight so I won’t have to spend eight bucks on something nasty at Norris.

This gives me an idea for a future post, too, about my favorite cooking music.

I’ll save it for later.

-@

it has to be done January 21, 2008

Posted by Abby T in : games & systems, rants & raves , 1 comment

I’m going to stop feeling guilty about doing nothing but posting links to other stuff on this here blog o’ mine. You know why? Because the Internet is a really big place and there’s a lot of really cool stuff out there, and if certain things end up chewing up a lot of my spare time, or making me laugh really hard, then darnit, I’m going to share them!

And by “them”, here, I specifically mean The Fancy Pants Adventure World 2. I never played World 1 - which refers to the first Fancy Pants game, not the first stage or world like the Mario games talk about them - and I discovered World 2 the other day through… something?…  and boy did it eat up my time. Between baking muffins and a zillion hours of running auditions over at school, that is.

Here’s how the game works: you’re a stick figure with fancy pants and a bunny steals your ice cream. You run through worlds trying to get your ice cream back, and also playing a little shell soccer to get yourself new colors of pants to wear. It’s really simple, but what’s so fun about this little flash game is the physics and the movement. Just click the link and wait for the credits to go and jump around the opening menu a little bit. I could do backflips in there for hours.

Also the music’s really great.

Between Fancy Pants 2 and finishing Super Mario Galaxy, I have a hunch that I’m not going to get all the reading, laundry, apartment-cleaning, exercise, and email-writing done today that I meant to originally.

Not that I’m complaining.

-@

you are my brother, brothers forever January 16, 2008

Posted by Abby T in : rants & raves, wish list , 2 comments

For starters, I just saw the best American Idol segment ever. I can’t even describe it, but I laughed for four straight minutes. “You are my glory. Simon.”

What I was originally getting at, though, involves the fact that I walk by a Pier 1 every morning on my way to school. Every morning, I see this awesome display of stemless wine glasses, and every morning it catches my eye. I’d drink everything out of those glasses. I’d drink my morning coffee out of those glasses. With a straw, so I wouldn’t have to touch the ridiculous hot glass. But still! I’d eat cereal out of these things. I love them. See them here, at Crate & Barrel because Pier 1 has the most misguided website in the history of the world (part 1).

I figured I’d write this entry to get myself warmed up and psyched to write in my “blog” for one of my English classes. I have to write about my homegirl the Wife of Bath, from the Canterbury Tales. Instead, I’m zeroing out my Google Reader checker counter thingy and watching Sanford & Son at Jill & Clare’s.

Productive.

Super duper productive.

-@

two best things ever January 15, 2008

Posted by Abby T in : kitchen adventures, music & concerts, rants & raves , 6 comments

Guys.

Are you hip to silicone baking cups?

They’re the paper things you bake muffins or cupcakes or whatever in, right, only they’re made of silicone so you can wash and reuse them, plus if you spray them with Pam they peel right off your muffins like nobody’s business. Maybe these things are super old and I just never knew about them? I made muffins with them tonight for the first time and seriously, I now swear by them. The coolest thing is that not only can you put them in a traditional muffin tin, but also you can (allegedly - I haven’t tried this) sit them by themselves on a regular cookie sheet and the result will be the same. Ladies and gentlemen, I ask you this: will muffin-baking ever be the same?

In other news, have you ever been asked what your all-time favorite song was? I have, and I’ve never really been able to answer it until tonight when my answer came down to me from the god of iTunes shuffle. This is my answer: “Like a Prayer” by Madonna. It really just doesn’t get old for me. I wouldn’t say Madonna is my all-time favorite artist, but that song has been sitting on top of my list for at least five years now. It’s catchy and upbeat, but it doesn’t get stuck in my head. It’s singalongable. It fills me with energy. If I ever get a speeding ticket, it will be because I was listening to this song while driving.

As far as Madonna songs go, the runner up for my favor is “Express Yourself”, with honorable mention going to “Borderline”. As far as artists who have songs that give me a rush like Madonna’s do go, the runner up is - for now - Bon Jovi for such delicious adrenaline-rushes as “You Give Love A Bad Name” (is there a better first few seconds anywhere in music? I think not) and, of course, “Livin’ On A Prayer”.

In doing personal research for this mini-feature, I have noticed that iTunes has downloaded not one, not two, but ten new Lin’s Bins for me from the XRT podcasts I’ve subscribed to. Hot dog! For the uninformed, WXRT is a Chicago radio station that I listened to - thanks to the wonders of streaming radio - even when I was on the East coast because I really haven’t ever found anything better. Listen here. You’ll be glad you did?

In other news, my back hurts for no good reason and I am about to take a crowbar to the car outside my window whose alarm will not stop going off, and today may or may not be Charo’s birthday, depending on whether you trust the Dlisted birthday list or IMDb. Me, I can’t decide. I’ll just have to celebrate twice!

In other other news, life is a mystery. Everyone must stand alone. I hear you call my name, and it feels like…

… home.

-@

life is unfair to the midwest. January 12, 2008

Posted by Abby T in : rants & raves , 2 comments

And by “life” in the title, I of course mean “the world of television”. When an ad for an upcoming program comes to an end, the splash screen thingie reads: “Next Tuesday night at 8 (7c)!” or whatever. Something similar. We in the Midwest are relegated to parentheses to determine the times of our programming.

Unless.

(Unless!)

The announcer of the ad gets excited, or the end is pressed for time, or some similar case, in which case all we get is “TUESDAY NIGHT AT EIGHT!” and we poor, oppressed Midwest-dwellers have to translate the time in our own heads.

Life, she is le difficult.

-@