Get Your Geek On!

Today is Geek Pride Day, so naturally, I'm getting my geek on! Geek is defined as either an unfashionable or socially inept person (yawn), or a person with an eccentric devotion to a particular interest (a.k.a. me). Only problem is, there are so many types of geeky interests! 
There are Superhero geeks, Trekkies, Star Wars geeks, Harry Potter geeks, Whovians and more! How can a girl decide which geek side to get on when she loves more than one!

Today, I choose to honor my inner reader geek. I love reading. Give me a book for a present and I'll love it. But this wasn't always the case. I used to hate reading, and I mean HATE reading. I dreaded everything about it. I was never in a high English class, I was a slow reader (still am), and I dreaded reading out loud (still do actually). 

Until this one person came along who has given me the gift of loving to read. That person is my 9th grade English teacher, Mrs. Vlasis. 

I remember that one time early in the school year, she assigned us to read a book of our choosing and write something up or do something assignment like that. We went on a 'field trip' to the school's library. I wandered about aimlessly, not liking anything, as everything was a book. Then I found the Stephen King section and something about one of his books called to me. I'm not sure if I just liked the name of the book, the color choices or what, but I ended up checking that book out. For the first time ever, I couldn't put the book down! Something that was a new concept to me. I loved reading that book and now love reading lots of books.

Thank you Mrs. Vlasis for showing me how great a gift reading is. Today, I get my geek on for you. 

Live Long and 42 On!

Bucket List

Most people my age that I know don't have a bucket list. Why would you? You have the rest of your life to take on new adventures, to see the world, to discover yourself. But how do you know if you are accomplishing what you want to do. That is why I have a bucket list. 
I have roughly 90 things on my bucket list and have already crossed off some of them.
I've earned my Gold Award through Girl Scouts, I was part of a flash mob, I donated my hair, I published a book, went to a Packer game with my dad, did the Polar Bear Plunge, Dirty Girl, Half Marathon and Tough Mudder with my mom, and I graduated from college...but I still have lots to go. 

Some of places I want to visit include Alaska, Ireland, Italy, the Arlington National Cemetery to see the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and to throw a dart at a map and travel to where ever it lands. 
I want to go hunting with my dad, to continue to give my mom flowers for no reason except that I love her. I want to send a message in a bottle, and to make someone  who is less fortunate have a fantastic Christmas. I want to ride across the country on a Harley and write about my journey and the people I meet. 
Currently, I'm learning Morse Code and am working on getting my Masters. 

If you don't have a bucket list, things fall through the cracks. How will you know what you want to do with your life if you don't stop to think about it every once in a while. 

You're only given one life, but one life is all you need. 


To see my full list: http://pinterest.com/bauerno2/bucket-list/

Double Standards

I hate double standards. 
One of my professors, let's call her Dr. Smith, is the queen of double standards in my life currently. When we, the students, have something due for her class, she will not hear any excuse from us if it's late, and pretty much just throw it out, not grading it. 
Well, yesterday she said she would have our book report grades up. (I'm in grad school, doing a book report? Yeah, didn't make much sense to me either). Anyway, all of yesterday came and went and the grades are still not up. The seven students in Dr. Smith's class all have a combination of other classes, jobs, families, internships, and God-forbid ~ a life; yet any excuse doesn't matter to her. Why should she get extra time to grade our book reports (when it's her job) but she won't give us any extra time (not that I needed it, it's just the principle of the thing). 

Fantastic

Yesterday was simply a fantastic day. I woke up in the morning and the sun was shinning. Something it hasn't done for a week plus in Wisconsin as it was raining and snowing (yes, this is April). I finished my book report, nothing extremely exciting or challenging, just productive. Then Mike came over and we went for a ride on his bike to a pancake house and ate some really fluffy pancakes. I had class which ended early and then attempted to visit an old professor of mine that wrote a wonderful letter of recommendation for me to get into grad school. Sadly his class was still in session (I'll have to try again next week) so I went home to read over my book report again to catch any mistakes (finding very few). Mike and I walked to our bar around 9. As we walked in the door, the bartender waved at us as we are regulars and he knows us. We played pool (exceptionally well) against two other guys and watched car shows on one of the TVs for about three hours before finally heading home for the night.
It was a simple, yet fantastic day. 

150

150. A simple enough number. Divisible by 3 to make three even stacks of 50. A good round number. Not scary at all. Unless...they are days.

Do you know what you are going to be doing in 150 days from today? I bet over half of you don't even know what day that is. Well I'll help ya out. It is going to be September 7th, 2013. It'll be a Saturday. Now most of you are thinking, school has begun again and it's the first weekend off for the semester. Sleeping in, then hanging out with friends during the day and maybe hitting a few bars at night to watch some bands play and catch up with old friends, or hanging out with the family. It doesn't sound scary at all. 

Thankfully, that will not be how I will spend my Saturday, September 7th of 2013. I imagine to spend my day something like this: wake up early and get in the car with my mom to drive for an hour or two to a still unknown location. There we will eat our oatmeal as the excitement builds up within us as we duct-tape our shoes to our feet. We will hear the roar of the crowd and the music blaring getting us pumped. Then, it will be our turn. We will scale walls, crawl under barbed wire in thick mud that will pull at our shoes, go swimming (not the leisurely kind with noodles and other floating toys), run through a thick white smoke from a straw fire where we can barely see the ground beneath our feet, go swimming in what feels to be water from the arctic with ice cubes covering the surface, climb cargo nets, jump over and crawl under logs of wood, and make our way through a mile of mud that eats shoes for breakfast, all to end with getting shocked all over the body by 10,000 volts. 

In 150 days, I will be doing the Tough Mudder. What will you be doing?

 






http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuxQgOgVEG0

Happy 3.14 Day!

Many people know that today (March 14th) is Pi Day. Pi has an infinite number of decimal places. The most I know is 3.14159265358979323

How many decimal places do you know? Well the band After The Burial knows 100 decimal places of pi and wrote a song for it called Pi (The Mercury God Of Infinity)...which they play live. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2ZLV-aYvB8

Less known fact about today, it is also Albert Einstein's birthday. 

My friends and I decided to celebrate pie day in the best way we knew how...by eating pie, drinking and playing cards against humanity. 

On Tuesday I baked a strawberry/raspberry/blackberry/blueberry pie:

And had a little dough extra so I made mini apple pies:

Then yesterday after class I helped my friend Mike make his first ever pie (and it's a damn good thing I was there to help because who knows what would have happened otherwise. He wanted to put apple filling in along with apples). 

So go out today and eat some pie!

One of those days

I'm just having one of those days where no matter how careful I am, something is bound to go wrong. For lunch I decided to make carrot fries (chop up carrots in 'fry' shape, drizzle with olive oil and then add some salt, paprika, cayenne, red pepper and garlic and bake for 25min at 350). Well I grabbed the paprika and thought I was going to sprinkle some in. Turns out I opened the wrong end and dumped a LOT in and had to scrap it off with my fingers.

Glad that was only paprika.

Despite all of the paprika, it was still good.

Besides my carrots, my car almost got stuck in layers of ice and dropped my phone (not broken).

Do I dare ask what is next to come in the 11 hours left of the day?