i'm baaaaackkkk

for a little while at least. i was just reading my old posts and realized a. i haven't written anything for almost a year and b. this is a good way for me to keep track of the many trivial events and thoughts that occur in my life.

bullet point list of what is new with me. its short i swear.

•greg and i broke, up and then got back together again. i promise you this is completely not like an annoying teenage soap opera where people do this all the time. at least i hope its not like one of those annoying teenage soap operas. i'm done talking about this now.

•i've accepted an offer from ohio state to enter their Master's program in Counseling psychology this fall. which means...i'm finally leaving pittsburgh. i dont hate it here, i swear. in fact i kinda like it. but anyone who knows me ever a tiny bit knows i'm a midwest girl. and no, despite claims, pittsburgh is not a midwest city. the midwest is flat. and traffic here sucks.

•i still am very much in love with wisconsin and madison and that will not ever change.

that is all. see, i'm boring.

more randomness later.

like golf? vaca to sheboygan

props to my hometown for scoring a position in 7th on trip advisor's best WORLDWIDE golf vacations list. yeah, i bet people are reading that list saying to themselves, "sheboygan? wow, that sure is a fun word to say but where the hell is it?" and then maybe they'll remember that 2 years ago the PGA championship was there, and a few years before that the WPGA was there. and then yeah, suddenly sheboygan is the next hilton head. hilton head with some meth labs thrown in there for kicks anyway.

and this brings me to what i am still trying to grasp about my birth place: why the hell can't it just develop into something already?

its all there. we have one of the coolest marina's i've ever seen with miles of prime lake michigan beach front. 45 minutes from downtown milwaukee. amazing golf. kohler is right up the road and there is a kickass design center that has every one of their products on display. there's even an indoor waterpark. but it just can't seem to do anything productive with its old fashioned self. i'm beginning to think its aquiring all the problems of big city life (meth, burglaries, murder) without any of the benefits (tourists, nightlife, decent public transportation).

so if you like golf, go visit my home sweet home of 50,000 on the lake. and then go kick every single one of the city officials and tell them to try harder to market it dammit.

I ...

...because its friday and i'm leaving for the airport in 1 hour to see my 2 best friends in the windy city.
...because it seems i never update anymore (i'm actually in the process of working on a new blog, details to follow when my thoughts are more coherent on the matter)
...because PW and Trouble are doing it which means all the cool kids are.
...but mostly because this blog is all about helping me procrastinate and this my friend is the most tell tale sign of procrastination:

I AM: amazed at the places we end up in life and how different they are from where we thought we'd be when we were kids.

I WANT: to know what i want to do with my 'life', where i want to go to school, what program i want to apply for, what type of job i'd be satisfied doing the rest of my life.

I HATE: that i get irritated at just about everything at any time and i hate how it has affected my relationships with people who i care about very deeply.

i'm also with trouble on this, "I'll also add on hate, bigotry, narrow mindedness, misinformation and the disability to try to understand the world"

I MISS: wisconsin, not necessarily the state though it is glorious, but my family and friends and the life i led when i lived there. not to mention the cheese. i miss CHEESE!

I FEAR: getting pregnant before i'm financially ready to have a child.

I HEAR: you when i want to hear you. but sometimes when you stop talking i hear you most.

I WONDER: if everything i've been taught in school is a lie. it seems experience tends to teach me otherwise.

I REGRET: that i can honestly say i've lost tough with the majority of my close friends from high school and college.

I AM NOT: a greenbay packers fan

I DANCE: always. when the music hits my soul i have no choice but to move.

I SING: a lot. i used to sing well. i'm afraid i don't anymore. i sing out loud in the car and at concerts. i sing the correct words to songs...most of the time.

I CRY: during almost every movie i see. and during the season finale of greys anatomy.

I AM NOT ALWAYS: a good friend. in fact sometimes i downright suck.

I MAKE WITH MY HANDS: scraves. its about the only thing i'm capable of knitting.

I WRITE: in all lowercase letters often times with minimal punctuation

I CONFUSE: effect and affect and all those stupid words that sound the same but are spelled different and have different meanings. the english language is a pain the ass.

I NEED: to trust in God more.

I SHOULD: floss daily but sometimes i forget.

I START: the coffee maker on a daily basis. and then i drink 3 cups of coffee. and without it i have terrible headaches.

I FINISH: when i'm good and ready and not before. yeah, that's a lie. i finish fast if someone is bugging the crap out of me to do it.

tagging ali, margy, and jessi. only if you have time and enjoy procrastinating much like me.

sometimes i lose my faith: reasons why meth sucks

remember the days when trips to state parks used to be fun family activities? was it this way for you? my family was crazy about the state parks, for hiking, camping, swimming, picnics, and other miscellaneous activities. but i can assure you that one of those miscellaneous activities was not meth labs. i can't even tell you how disgusted i was by reading this article. its bad enough that these people do this crap in their homes in close proximity to their neighbors, nay, its bad enough that these people do this at all, but now they've infested some of the areas i go to in an effort to seek solice and peace and some good old fashioned fun? i remember as a kid, riding my bike up to the state park near my house (kohler andrae, then terry andre for you wisconsin people). i'd park the bike, and walk for miles on the trails feeling safe as a kitten drinking its mothers milk (i made that up just now, not sure where it came from). back then the only thing i was worried about was poison ivy. and suddenly now you are telling me that i need to be concerned about accidentally happening upon an explosive meth lab? people suck!
At one park, hikers found three bottles of drain cleaner, an empty gas can and a container with ammonia residue, police said.

who does this stuff? where does one go wrong in life to actually say, "hey, drain cleaner and ammonia sound like excellent things to ingest on a routine basis." the one thing i never understood about addictions is how people will willingly forgoe the basic human needs (food, shelter, water, etc.), things that are innate in most people, things that many people do not have but would like, in order to feed their addiction. and meth, well meth seems to take the cake of all addictions. and then mexico goes and does something that legalizes possession of drugs but not the selling of them. this makes NO sense to me. and please do not come to me with your ravings about how you believe that ALL drugs should be legalized in the US because things like meth are evil evil things and trust me, no matter how you fix it, drain cleaner and ammonia will NEVER agree with the insides of the human body so spare me your 'regulation' argument, this isn't coke we're talking about, its meth. you wanna see what this stuff does:
before 3 years later

Photo source: Oregonlive.com there are many more faces here if you are curious.

i'm not yelling at any one of you readers in particular. unless you use meth. in which case you're and idiot. this is mostly just an emotional vent about how trashed i think the human race is sometimes. trashed.


*i'd like to point out that at the top of the kohler andrea website it says "naturally air conditioned. see entry immediately below.

the woes of miss mandakay

just taking a minute on this sucky sucky friday (i think it should be illegal for the weather to suck this much on a friday in may) to complain about all my ailments. i don't really care if you care, this is my personal therapy...

1. massive canker sore in my mouth that REFUSES to respond to treatment. this is my own fault. i bit down extra hard on my bottom gum last week while eating and whammo! canker appears. then because my stupid mouth isn't used to such deformities within it i keep biting the canker sore when i eat. thus its going nowhere anytime soon. i try to use orajel on it but i want to scream every time i put it on. cleaning it with peroxide and baking soda is also a death sentence. really, this small evil ulcer is putting me in a bad mood all around.

2. my hips, knees, thighs, and feet hurt. i decided to join the gym on saturday (before i heard about wonderful steven vaught--see below) because i'm .06 over the normal BMI for my height. i feel like i'm a lot more than .06 over because if you had said i was .06 over i really wouldn't care. but i feel like i'm 100 over and i'm tired all the time so i thought perhaps a little bit of aerobic apparatus might make me feel a bit better. so this is me: for about four days i run for about 10 minutes straight, walk a couple minutes, run for like 4 minutes then walk a couple minues. greg says i should increase my time by five minutes every 2 weeks to build endurance. but since i sometimes think i am god (i don't really think this christian friends of mine) i decide yesterday that i'm going to amp up to running for 19 consecutive minutes. no walking in between. because i am a rockstar thats why. and so i pay the price today with my whole body aching. to which bff amy says "that's good!" because apparently being in gut wrenchign pain from a workout says that you actually worked. a little pain, good. mandakay's pain, sucky.

3. have i mentioned the canker sore in my mouth yet?

4. i'm cold. i'm pretty much always cold though so this is nothing new. when i was little my mom thought i had anemia. i didnt know what that was, i thought it was some infestation that was taking over my body. i never got tested. so i might have anemia, i might not. my guess is not. if you ask me, rather than climatize to the cold wisconsin winters of my youth my body just stored up all that cold and releases it constantly. currently i have on a short sleeve tee, a hoodie, a jean jacket and a tee shirt over my feet (because i'm smart and know that most heat escapes your body through your head and feet). i hate air conditioning. absolutely hate it. window air conditioners i can stand, but central air really irks me. this is why: i like my air conditioning set at 74 degrees. that way it hardly ever runs which is great not only for the environment but also for my wallet. this means if its 92 degrees outside the air will run but if its 65 i can open the windows and enjoy nature's air conditioning. when i was growing up my family did not have air conditioning. most people did not have air conditioning in wisconsin. my mom always said the lake was the best form of air conditioning and it was free. i learned to love the light breeze as it entered my house and blew the windchimes haning in my window. i liked listening to the birds and smelling the flowers from outside. and i never got headaches. air conditioning gives me headaches like no other. it also makes me really sick as jumping from extreme climate conditions will do. suddenly though everyone has air conditioning. they pretend like this miami or dallas, or pheonix and we have summer for 12 months out of the year. this is pittsburgh for crying out loud. and yes it gets hot, but thats for like a month, maybe. the 'unbearableness' that you people percieve summer as is not heat, its humidity which coincidentally enough if one of the things air conditioning does relieve. but a dehumidifier will do the same thing, and not blow cold air on me all day long.

i do not by the way have air conditioning in my apartment. i use a fan in the window at night to keep me cool. its amazing how easy it is to keep a place cool if you do things like shut blinds and windows during the hot day and oopen them at night.

5. my canker sore still hurts.

thank you for listening.

walk forrest, walk!

I get angry sometimes. well, lets be honest, i get angry a lot. i tend to yell at people and inanimate objects even though i know they can't hear me. driving is a whole separate issue and there have been multiple times where i've debated trading in my car because it seems like public transportation makes me less angry than driving. i stress myself out about things that are so trivial compared to the finer things in life. and then i read stories about Steve Vaught. Steve has lived one of my greatest nightmares...killing two elderly people with his automobile 15 years ago. i often wonder how people deal with something like that. Steve chose to eat. so much that he gained 150 pounds in the first 3 years after the accident. he went from a muscular marine to a morbidly obese 410 pound man who could not walk across a department store without getting winded. 15 years later Steve decided to do something about it in order to lose the weight and get his life back. he took 6 months off of work, meaning 6 months of no pay while his family struggled to make ends meet. his goal was simply to walk across the country. starting in oceanside, CA and ending in NYC. well it took a little longer than expected and 13 months later and over 100 pounds lighter Steve arrived in NYC. Steve did something that most of us are unable to do, he stopped feeling sorry for himself and did something about it. and now he has the priviledge of saying "yeah, i was feeling pretty bleak, but that walk across the country sure did wonders for me." Steve reminds us that life is about the risks, taking them is the only way we grow and move on. Steve reminds me that getting angry and annoyed about the small things is just dumb and that maybe i should use that energy toward something more proactive. i mean after all if a 410 pound man can walk across the country in a little over a year i'm sure i too can redirect my minor problems with everyday life (but i would like to add that i still think emersing yourself in a human sized goldfish bowl is a waste of energy).

On Wisconsin!

a woman from madison.com emailed me yesterday and asked if she could have my permission to add my blog to a blog index on the website. i told her of course she did but was slightly confused because 1. my blog is not that great. 2. i live in pittsburgh now and was born in sheboygan and while i love madison with all my heart i only spent the most glorious 4 years of my life there and no more. 3. how did she find me?

so my dear longtime readers this means that i may need to step up the wisconsin banter. which shouldn't be too hard. madison.com rocks by the way. its like a one stop shop for all the city's news and events etc. ah, hell i'll spread some propaganda love: check it out...then go visit. its more than cheese and cows, i swear.

but speaking of cheese and cows. did you know sheboygan is known for the 5 'c's? yup, cheese, chairs, churchs, children, cows. y'all are like 'what the hell is sheboygan?' ahh, another story for another day folks.

so many fun things to post about today

and the crazies keep on coming...

paperback writer, have you seen this craigslist add placed in the 'housing wanted' section yet?

have you ever noticed how a great majority of oddly enough stories come from the 'burgh?

its like a book discussion only about this article...

1. (courtesy of kelly) who would kill a dog?
2. who would name a dog pimpin'?
3. do i really live in this city?
4. confused the dog for a person?
5. what would you dress your dog in after you bludgeon it to death?
6. one more time, do i really live in this city?

Random thoughts on a random friday

can someone please explain to me why its cold out in the morning again? i have no desire whatsoever to turn in the flip flops again and the cold weather really isn't doing much for the cause.

on a happier note Pitt commencement is Sunday. Yay! i don't care about them graduating. plus the speaker kinda sucks. i care that they will all be done with finals and out of my way by monday. no more crowded bus, no more annoying undergrads romping around on the sidewalk. i hate how undergrads think they are sooooo cool all the time. and on another happy note after being here for 2 years i have just NOW realized there is an einstein bagels on campus...2 actually. so much better than brueggers. i really dislike breuggers and their $125 mugs.

i'm going to columbus this weekend. haven't been there since i was 16 probably. i debated wearing all my wisconsin garb. but i thought that might be mean. but then i remembered that its not like wisconsin is michigan so maybe it wouldnt be mean. oh, ohio state. buckeyes. what the hell is a buckeye anyway? (don't answer that. i know what a buckeye is. its a nut, or a tree, or the stupid mascot thing named brutus. people at ohio state get really defensive about this. i would too if i was up against the likes of the wolverine, bucky badger, and the hawkeye. at least goldie the golpher and the boilermaker make the brutus look a little tougher. i'm off topic aren't i?) when i think of ohio and say it in my head the only way i can say it is if i say it like the end of the drew carey show song 'cleveland rocks OHIO!' or like in the middle of the fifty nifty united states song. Oh-Hi-Oh... have you all heard that song? oh man, i can name all 50 states in alphabetical order in about 25 seconds thanks to that song.

i am apparently a year away from being 'old.' this line comes from a 17 year old who informed me yesterday that you have to celebrate your teenage years because once you turn 25 you're old. i remember when i had thoughts like that. of course given the choice now i can honestly say i'd rather be 25 than 18. you?

and speaking of old...sometimes grandmas rock! well grandmas rock all the time but these grannies are exceptionally cool.

and on that final note i'm out.