Exotic yet ordinary

Just play like it's Sunday and that I don't put everything off til the last minute.

After three weeks of involuntarily bursting into song, I somehow managed to finally rid my personal daily soundtrack of I Feel Pretty... only to suffer a (temporary?) set back. While I was in the bathroom getting ready for work, mom plopped down at my computer and announced she has something to show me. "Mm?" "Yeah," she says, giddy with excitement, "I saved something for you when I was online the other day." So I poked my head into the room, and I'll be damned if she hadn't loaded the Nike commercial. I'm working on trying to replace it with something more suitable, like Hollaback Girl (uh-huh, this my shit).

Twenty-six things is a photographic scavenger hunt that has taken up most of my time for the better part of the last coupla weeks. I stumbled across this exercise while poking around at another blogger's site and, not one to overlook an opportunity to cart my camera around a bit more, decided to have a go at it. I used Shell's list of twenty-six, which was an archived set from September 2004: frame, glass, arrow, numbers, small, open, fruit, wheel, plastic, cover, natural, saturday, multi-coloured, home, shadow, sticky, clean, foot, sport, round, group, man made, half, path, full, the end.

The following slide show has all twenty-six shots (in order, starting with frame), of which I am in exactly zero. If you don't count my fingers in small. The set can also be viewed at Zooomr.

I have a hugemongous crush on this video.

Saturday afternoon, Justin took little girl to the park to play while I stuck around the house for a rare and much appreciated snooze. When they got back, Justin woke me up to fill me in on the day's adventures. Maya met some other kids at the park and had a grand time playing with them. Or alongside them. Anyway, after a bit, the parents and kids all made the inevitable drift over to the swings. One little girl kept asking her dad to push her higher and higher. She would lean waaay back, legs stretched out straight, between pushes. Unfortunately, one time she leaned back too far and scraped her head on the ground below. The dad scooped up his daughter and rushed her to the car. Maya became really quiet as they hurried across the park. As the dad slid the injured girl into the car, Justin reassured Maya that the girl was going to be just fine. Another silence. As the car drove off, Maya turned back to Justin and said, "The end."

Tonight I watched The Exorcism of Emily Rose, and while this may not be the scariest movie I've ever seen, it turned out to be creepy enough to keep me awake well past my bed time, even with all my stupid, distracting jokes and the frequent pauses to shield Maya from the more disturbing, scary parts. Usually when I am afeared, I flick lights on that normally aren't (at least not all at once) and cuddle up with the television to watch something light and think happy, non-haunting thoughts until I'm okay enough to hold my breath and tip toe back to my bedroom, or am just too damn tired to care anymore. But now I have to navigate an entire hall to get from the t.v. to the safety of my room. So instead, I've decided to cuddle up with the internet until I have just enough consciousness to scurry the whole five feet to bed. Only it's not going nearly as well. My feet have both fallen asleep from sitting on them so long. The low hum of the computer is not drowing out any of the spooky noises or helping me ignore our spastic cat who, mind you, keeps appearing suddenly in the doorway just long enough to hunker down all crazy-eyed before springing back down the hall... likely to perch atop the television for a good laugh.

I watch Days of Our Lives most every day on my lunch hour. It has always been my mother's soap opera of choice, so I've been watching Days since I was a tot-sized Nanda... with a brief hiatus in college - I refused to watch after Marlena became possessed by the devil, only to get lured back in a few years later when Mom started watching Maya and Days was the noontime viewing.

For the last few weeks, NBC has been running this Nike commercial during Days, and I must say it has one of the most annoyingly infectious songs ever. It's one of those songs that you don't necessarily realize you've been carrying around with you until you find yourself humming or singing it hours later at your desk. And then you start a discussion with co-workers about the lyrics because all this time, you thought Maria felt pretty and witty and gay, but in the commercial they sing pretty, witty, and BRIGHT. And when you're in the middle of singing the first bit for someone for the umpteenth time that day, hoping they'll be the someone to finally put this mystery to rest so you can go about your day (la la la la la), the phone rings and it's a client and when she asks how you're doing, you still have that song swimming in your head so, naturally, you reply "I feel pre- *pause* fine."