hilarious blog

After laughing out loud several times just today at posts on The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks, I thought it high time to share this with my beloved blog readers.

I think what I love most are the terribly-amusing-but-oh-so-brief comments that the author adds to "clarify" (yes, quotation marks were necessary there, shush) the situation for her hapless readership, hah. Priceless.

I was up in Boston yesterday having a lovely time with Jeanette; I will try to get off my lazy arse and post about that sometime before 2010! :)

xo

(Oh, and credit goes to Bethany for pointing me in the direction of that blog. Thanks!)

Stephenson strikes again

Not that many people will care about this, but, yay, new from my favorite author!

Anathem

Now, if only I could stop the saving-the-best-for-last mentality I have about books (and many other things) and finally finish off his awesome Baroque Cycle trilogy....

xo

sunny day, chasing the clouds away...

Okay, has Sesame Street always been this awesome and I just failed to notice because I wasn't aware of celebrities when I was 5? Or is this a new thing, all of their cool guest stars? In the past month, I've seen Tina Fey (best EVER: "Read read read read / We're pirates who like to read!" - they were the Bookaneers), NPH (who played the Shoe Fairy!), and it looks like today features Will Arnett as a magician (not a far cry from his Arrested Development days, but hopefully he's more successful at it here than he was there...). This is the coolest thing. It makes me, as an adult, just as excited to watch Sesame Street as my 2-year-old housemate Kaelyn is. Awesome.

p.s. How cool is it that entering "NPH" into the IMDb.com search lands you directly on Neil Patrick Harris' page, instead of search results? Score one for Doogie.

Currently Reading:
	TITLE: The Bug AUTHOR: Ellen Ullman
	TITLE: Mating in Captivity AUTHOR: Esther Perel
	TITLE: Bleak House AUTHOR: Charles Dickens

hilarious.

So I recently signed up for YouMail, and I just love the service. It reminds me I have voicemails both via email and text message, which really helps me remember much better who I have to call back. Plus, I have an inbox where I can listen to or delete messages in any order, instead of having to worry about the linearity of normal phone voicemail systems or how quickly messages expire (they don't seem to on YouMail).

But what I am actually posting about is the transcription service they currently offer. When someone calls, they try to translate voice into text, and offer you that so you can scan the message if you can't immediately listen to it. However, voices are so diverse and voice recognition software is not quite yet up to par, so currently it's all just ridiculously amusing instead of all that accurate. But, I don't mind - I'm laughing my ass of in the meantime.

For instance, my sister Sarah called and left a message to call her back. I saw this: "Illuminating hey had a question for you mean column by. Do this."

My friend Kyle called (albeit, with laryngitis) and left a message that started off translated to: "Oh no no. Oh Regina. Shouldn't. Element lotus that's kind of." and ended with "A number isuzu for 6 it's ##### children to that. But producing but." (The number signs were actual numbers, but I didn't want to give away too much of his personal information!)

Yesterday, Ant and I tried to trick the voice recognition, but surprisingly his voice was one of the most recognizable. But we were highly amused when he tried "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" and it gave us "super cal fragile as the x-p-l Delicious" (complete with the capital "d"!). Now I can only say the phrase the latter way, haha.

There have been numerous others, but I won't bore you with them all, haha. (Especially because they are probably funnier when you know what was actually said!) But definitely I'd recommend signing up for this free service! It's been absolutely worth it for me. And not just because of the amusement factor. xo

crankypants

I feel really awful today because I'm being really bitchy, due to being extremely overtired. Which is ridiculous of me, because the reason for me being exhausted makes me really very happy. But unfortunately the happy didn't manage to cancel out the feeling I had of being walked all over by a friend. When I realized that I was overreacting, it was too late, the damage was done. Now, I just am feeling crappy for how I acted, because I realize it was really irrational and unfair. I think sometimes my social anxiety kicks into overdrive, and I lash out because I'm not sure how to be. I know I should be friendly & happy, especially to people I don't know well who have no idea why I'm in a lousy mood, but unfortunately sometimes I even take it out on them. And when I'm tired, I don't always have the energy to put on the requisite super-friendly act. I try always to do so when it comes to complete strangers - people in the service industry, for instance - but I think I can sometimes be terribly unfair to acquaintances who have never had to deal with an angry me before. Sometimes it comes out of left field and really throws people for a loop - because 90% of the time, I can be upbeat and cheerful as necessary. But when I'm off, I'm off - and unfortunately, people pay. I'm sorry.

I'm going to try to catch up on sleep tonight so hopefully I'm not quite so cranky tomorrow, but it'll be hard what with it being Tanya's birthday, and having a friend in from out of town for one night only! xo

Currently Reading:
	TITLE: The Brambles AUTHOR: Eliza Minot
	TITLE: Bleak House AUTHOR: Charles Dickens