Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Dirty Little Secrets?

So I feel sad for actually admitting to this, but I have a new obsession in the form of a stupid ABC Family tv show. First, let me talk about ABC Family. Since when does, like, half of the content its spurs out onto the broadcasting channel qualify as "family" stuff? 

I mean, I had a friend torture me with The Secret Life of an American Teenager episode, and the only thing I understood from that singular episode was that it was okay for a 14 year old to get pregnant because apparently everyone is sleeping around with everyone else, and you might turn out to be half related to your neighbors somehow. Oh, and apparently if you look like an 11 year old, you can still work as a bartender to help make money for your family when your parents are too busy having affairs and your sister, who's not much older than you, has a child on the way. At least it was believable that most of the main characters were actually playing characters their own age, unlike a 30 year old posing as Dawson. 

Whatever. Anyway, so there's this new show called Little Chicks That Lie or Dirty Lies and Liars or something. I swear I actually don't remember the title.

Ok, just Google searched. So useful, that Google! Pretty Little Liars, where there are no babies...yet, but affairs rampant (maybe) and pretty little students who lie and get to skip high school classes whenever. Oh and coffee and cell phones are a big deal!

I know what you're thinking.  If I made such a big rant on ABC Family shows earlier, why, pray-tell, am I bothering with this. Well, Holly Marie Combs happens to be a favorite actress of mine and I randomly spotted her appearance on this show. Trying to watch a clip, I somehow managed to watch an episode in the middle, and couldn't stop. 

It's inexplicable but I can't help it. There is something terribly addicting about it, and I'm starting to wonder how it's all going to end. I hope it's worth this stupid little obsession! 

Do you watch it? Or do you have a show that you helplessly tune into? What do you think?

Monday, November 29, 2010

Bunnicula Slopes

Just logged into Facebook, after a day, and immediately found an event invite staring me in the face, from the right side of the screen. I usually get excited about these things.

But this event, all by its lonesome, was definitely not what I had in mind.

"[Friend] has invited you to Hit the Slopes - Private Event - Saturday, December 11 at 12:30 PM..."

So I have nothing better to do on this particular Saturday, but I really don't want to go skiing. And here's why:

Fourteen years ago, I lost my skiing virginity. I signed up for a class trip with the Ski Club (yes, we actually had one of those) because I figured I might as well try it. Some friends of mine were with me at the time, and we signed up for the whole package, with skis, poles, shoes, and lessons. (On a side note, why would people sign up for packages without some of these components... like getting skis without poles?) What my friends neglected to tell me until we got there was they were already somewhat experienced skiers. We can totally skip the lessons, they said. We'll teach you everything we know, they said.

You can already tell where this is going.

First, I fell off the ski lift. Fortunately, there wasn't too much of a distance to fall at that point. And then the ski lift seat decided I was in the way and pushed me until I fell down into the fake snow. Great start already!

Somehow I got up and slowly walked (as best as beginners with skis can walk) around to face the bunny slope ahead. And stopped and stared.

See, my "friends" never actually planned on teaching me anything they knew, and I should've foreseen that from the way they didn't help me get up from falling off the damn lift. So I watched them all slowly go down, only having time to yell out, "It's easyyyyy!"

Except when I shrugged my shoulders and proceeded to push off, I had no idea what the hell I was doing. I managed to get down the first hill of the 3 part slope before
"WATCH OUT!!!!!"

I had collided with a snowboarder. "Oh, I'm so sorry!" The snowboarder barely uttered an "it's okay" before going off again, leaving me to figure out how to get up. Somehow I managed to get up to my knees before I started to go again, this time unplanned.

WHOOSH. I slid right next to another woman sitting on the ground. Without looking up at me she asked, "First time." "Yeah," and we sat in silence, pondering the color of the sky and the artificial snow. Her husband/boyfriend/significant other/friend approached to persuade her to get up and start enjoying herself, until he spotted me, just sitting there awkwardly. We re-established that it was indeed my first time, and went over a few details to confirm this was in fact the case. Finally he helped me up and gave me the lessons my "friends" never could.

Once up, I thanked him and moved down. That was the glorious part of the evening. Until I paid more attention to my feet than my direction and had to plop down again. This time I was too close to the edge and had no choice, unless I wanted several bad injuries.

Unfortunately, the nice gentleman didn't teach me how to get up, so I spent what seemed like 20 years trying to figure it out myself. In retrospect, I would've loved to see how this must have looked to an ...onlooker. A young girl sitting down on the ground, focused intensely on moving her feet around and around, as if doing so would somehow make her fly to her feet. Or something. Whatever, it was probably amusing.

But being the adolescent that I was, I soon found some of the popular kids from my grade approaching. Thinking all too quickly, I busied myself with the scene behind me, as if trying to look for one of them "friends." Why I would be sitting down looking for them still escapes me.

When they walked away, I turned and finally spotted one of those "friends" on the lift. I shouted her name as loudly as I was capable of doing, and she squinted her eyes and blankly waved. After another brief struggle with my skis and feet, I spotted and yelled out another "friend's" name along with the word help until she began to clomp over.

This is the best part, so keep listening.

I was probably down for about 20-30 minutes. There was a lady in yellow standing near me the entire time, occasionally giving me the glance-over. When my "friend" began to clomp over, this lady came over and asked, "You need help?" and got me up in two seconds.

Lesson learned: Never go skiing again.

Or should I? What do you think? Think I could've done things differently? Let me know below.

Sunday, November 28, 2010

New & Improved

I never did understand where that phrase came from. "New and improved"? How can something be both new and improved. Improved implies that it was something likely dated that needed some fixing up. And new means that it was just created, and probably doesn't need to be improved...yet. So...what does it mean anyway?

Well, for our purposes, I'll just give you a brief introduction, and where I hope to go. My name is Florence and I was the co-founder of Penception, a blog site where writers posted daily and wrote such things as movie reviews, sports game recaps, and even such things as male vs. female debates. We sat down and planned everything about Penception, ever since the idea was born some time in late 2009. After running with it for awhile, we worked through designs, setting up accounts, and seeing if anyone was remotely interested in hearing what we had to say.

Unfortunately not every good idea is successful. We ran into a few problems, eventually leading to a shut down of the site, and only a few remaining members still on board. Finally, after much thought and consideration, I was still itching to write and wanted to do something about it, even if I may not get the audience we initially wanted.

So that's where we are now. Maybe this won't be a full time thing, or maybe it will. Maybe I'll have 100 followers...or just one. Wherever the path leads, I don't care. I'm writing for the sake of writing and I'm going to put in my best efforts to keep it updated almost daily.

So what is this blog going to be about? I have no idea. Maybe I'll do the same thing I tried to do with the other site, or maybe this will just be my thoughts. I guess I'll just have to see where this leads. And hopefully if you've read up to here, you will too!

So first thing's first. My name is Florence, and this is my blog. Thanks for stopping by! Enjoy!