"September" or, "An Increase of Chlamydia"

I usually look forward to the turning of the calendar, but tonight, as I turned the page to September, I could only think unpleasant thoughts. September? September? Where has the time gone?

And, because of my calendar fetish, I had to have that same experience three more times!

Sigh.

September ushers in the start of Cal Poly. Which means, for me in my current work situation, the beginning of a bunch of clueless, pathetic, lost souls bouncing, strutting, or dragging themselves into my place of employment seeking birth control, std checks, and emergency contraception. It also means an increase in conceited young men and an increase of chlamydia in the area, which of course is exciting, so hooray for September!


On a non-sarcastic view of September, I am actually quite excited. This month is the month of my Mother's birth, and this year we also have the wonderful arrival of my brother and his family to California. Atascadero, to be exact. Hopefully right around the block. We could totally ride bikes to each other's houses! Or, maybe walk, because I don't have a bike.

Saturday

Quinoa harvesting is very difficult. Or maybe I'm doing it wrong.

I have worked on it all week, and it still isn't ready for storage. How do the Peruvians do it?


In other news, I tried to teach my mother (again) how to attach something to an email, I'm on day 15 of the 30 Day Shred, I went to the library, attended an art show, won a game of Ticket to Ride, and cleaned my room.

So, you can see it was a successful day.

The Great Quinoa Harvest

A couple weeks ago I told myself that my quinoa was probably ready to harvest, and come the weekend I should attend to my garden.

Well, I didn't.

Weeks go by, and I see my quinoa leaning more and more, and a greater amount of leaves had fallen to the ground.

This morning I went out to take a look at things and found something horrible! Some sort of bug had infiltrated my quinoa! I almost cried.



It looks like a dust mite of sorts. (I don't have any idea really, I'm just guessing.)

However, I freaked out, and decided to save the remaining quinoa while I had the chance. So, in my pajamas, I began the Great Quinoa Harvest.

You can see I had pulled most of the quinoa off of the plant in the foreground. The red plant was the one with all the bugs. It's still in the garden. I haven't dealt with it yet.

I decided to put it all in a paper bag. I still need to remove the leaves, rinse the quinoa, and then spread it out to dry before storage. I don't know when I'm going to do that. Right now it remains in the bag on my porch for the night. There were little crickets and spidies in there, and they need some time to get the heck out of my quinoa!


However, my quinoa has beautiful autumnal color which causes an excitement to stir within my heart for the advent of scarf season.


In other related news, my peanut crop is doing quite well. I think. I'm not exactly sure when to harvest them. I'm pretty sure that it has been the appropriate amount of time, but I think I need to wait until the plant turns yellow.

I think.

I'm so proud of all the protein I'm growing in my garden this year.

Flaw in the Texting System

While everything is burning up in California this weekend, I would like to turn our thoughts to something less important, but equally troubling.

Friday afternoon I received a text message from a randomish contact asking if I wanted to go bowling.

My initial reaction is no, no I do not want to go bowling. I never want to go bowling. Thank you though.

Now, was this a personal invite, or was I part of a list of 20? If I was on the list of 20, I could easily blow it off. I could safely ignore that text.

But what if that person was reaching out to me? What if that person just wanted some Myriah Time, and I ignored the plea?

Obviously, there is a flaw in the texting system. I suggest an alert on the text to inform you if it is a mass text. This way, I can respond appropriately.

Well, until they fix this problem, Myriah Time requests must be made by mail, email, phone or personal invitation only. No texts. It's too confusing.

Current Streaks

Sometimes on my breaks at work or right before I go to bed I play a card game on my mobile phone. The program keeps track of winning and losing streaks.

I just finished playing a game.

I lost.

A new screen came up and I read:

GAME OVER

Current Streak: -78



Yes, I'm a loser.
I'm also apparently not doing anything with my life. Seventy-eight games? Get a new hobby!

An Update

An update:

The YSA Conference was superb.

The YSA Conference had Red Vines.

I got my official crown put on my tooth today. It's very slick. I like that.

My sitting posture has improved.

My buttocks is shaping up very nicely, thanks to a new exercise routine.

The Nerd Test

I have an acquaintance who will never let you use the terms Nerd, Dork, or Geek in any haphazard fashion. She will always correct you if she feels the term Nerd was more applicable than the term Geek.

I have always thought this quirk was endearing, but mostly endearing in a "oh, this is just more ammunition for my mockery" sort of way.

Anyway, anytime she would try to explain herself I would just tune out.

Tonight I came across a blog that gave great definitions of the differences between the terms. I thought it was extremely enlightening, and as I'm sure you would never want to appear uneducated, I will include the link: http://thenerdtest.com/tnt/

Now all the Nerds, Geeks, and Dorks on "Saved by the Bell" make sense.

July

I had captured some memories of July in photographic form and didn't post them in July. I'm not sure what the hold up was, but I figure I should at least try and keep up with my meticulous record keeping, so here it goes:

Early in July (around the 4th) I ate this cupcake. It was delicious.

A few days later the family went camping at Sunset State Beach on the Monterey Bay with my brother, his kid, his wife, and her parents. The point that I'm trying to reach is that I ate this:

It too, was delicious.

This campground was positioned between this

and this

Yeah! That's the ocean! I love the ocean. What I did not particularly like was the smell of that dead whale. Yes, look again, you will find a decaying whale in that picture. Miraculously, the smell didn't reach farther than 100 yards, so we never really smelled it except when we walked that stretch of the beach.

Seeing how we went to Sunset State Beach, it was natural that we should view a sunset or two.

This one hit me in the eye, and I haven't quite forgiven it yet.



Audrey and Paul walking on water.

Audrey's Grandparents.

Her Aunt, doing yoga on the beach.

I love the mother-daughter matching. I'm in full support of matching, but this was not always the case. I have vivid memories of pure hatred when Mom would make me wear matching clothes with her. I remember one Sunday sitting in Primary absolutely fuming because Mom and I were wearing similar dresses. Sorry, Mom, I don't think I meant to be a punk. If you want, we can go shopping and find matching shirts. It'll be great!


Marissa's Mom has some excellent braiding skills that she whipped out the last night.

Once we got back to Atascadero, I gave Audrey some broccoli to gnaw on,

and we checked out the garden!

Strawberries,

grapes,

purple peppers (green on the inside),


and my first carnation!


My cosmos went wild,


I found a peanut blossom,


and my quinoa is doing swimmingly!

Bonus points if you can find the spider.
The same day that we got back from camping, my other brother showed up! It was a weekend of brothers, and it was great! The day that Paul and Marissa were going to leave, Mom suddenly had a panic attack because we hadn't taken any pictures as a family. I had just rolled out of bed, and suddenly it was photo shoot time! Who doesn't like a good photo shoot?

I love that picture.

After the sibling shot, I was setting up the family photo.

Here we have Mom practicing, and Brandon bonding with Audrey.

This next picture really just captures the spirit of our home, so I had to post it:


And the real deal!


Oh man, I'm exhausted. You must be, too.
Go get some electrolytes or something.

Red Vine Posture

Seeing that it is after midnight, it would make sense that I would be getting ready for bed.

Somehow or other, I ended up eating a Red Vine a couple of minutes ago. After that, I knew I needed to wait a while before I could really brush my teeth. I'm pretty sure this is a main law of nature, but I'll try to explain it a bit better.

You know how when you eat certain things, like Red Vines, or anything artificially flavored and colored brightly, it's a bit pointless to brush your teeth right away? You have to wait for that stuff to dissolve on its own, or you will just be spitting out red or blue colored toothpaste.

Anyway, while waiting for it to dissolve I ate another Red Vine.


Then another.


And another.


I stopped at four because that is the recommended serving size.

So, here I am, waiting for the corn syrup, wheat flour, citric acid, artificial flavor and red 40 to make its way past my tongue...


This obviously looks like a good time to discuss posture.
I have decided to work on my posture. My sitting posture. But where does it start? Should I focus on keeping my shoulders back? Should I focus on a straight spine? Should I try to tighten my abs and put my shoulders back? I hope you are trying to figure this out as you read this. Is it bad for me to focus only on my shoulders and not on the rest of my back? I don't know. All I know is that I often find myself slumped over at my desk and when I'm driving, and that just seems silly.