New Month Eve Success!

Remember when I asked you all to help me with NME resolutions for August and wish for warmer weather. Well, looks like it worked. For the past few days I have had to take off my sweater or jacket while I am walking the 4 (or so) blocks from my car to office....in the morning. Now that's something to be happy about this summer.

I'll celebrate my contribution to the world with sangria this evening.

Meet Ramsey

All summer long, my dad has been promising he'd get a new puppy. This weekend he made good on that promise and got this little cutie. This is the calmest puppy you have ever met. And he already loves me, so I know he's a keeper.

Tower of Terror

It's scary right. Very ominous and foreboding. Listen, it scared my mother so badly she refuses to go on this ride, so it must be scary!

The Tower of Terror is a trip down freaky deaky memory lane. It takes you back to the Twilight Zone (which, btw, I've begun renting via Netflix and it's pretty damn good) where bizarre things happen and that creepy music is played. You know what I'm talking about. Typed out it's all "Ne nu ne nu ne nu ne nu"...right...I know, scary.

They really play up the theme on this one, the peeps that operate the ride are even rude to your face. When you get on the ride they're all like "Enjoy your death" and "Wave to your family members, you'll never see them again". I have been stuck in that elevator car with way too many young kids who end up terrified and crying for the first 15 minutes of the ride (yes, it's that long). Then, because the ride's long, they get bored until...HOLY SHIT THE BOTTOM OF THIS ELEVATOR JUST DROPPED OUT!

And down you go. Then you shoot back up. Then the bottom effing drops out again. AHHH! The bastards got me.

When the ride first opened it dropped a couple of times and the second time was kind of a half drop. It continued like this for awhile until the operator peeps noticed that kids were coming off the ride being all like "Bitch please, that was nothing". Then they shook it up and now there are something like 20 patterns that your elevator car could take you on. Sometimes it will hold you up at the top and the doors to the outside open up so you can see the park and you're thinking when is this damn thing going to drop...crickets...more crickets....even more...then it drops a bit and stops..crickets and then BAM! It also goes up and down at least 4 times. That was when my mom said she was done and would never go back on it.

I miss the ride, but I feel like this is one of those where Walt's in his frozen cryogenic chamber thinking "We could've done better".

So, 2/5 stars.

I Need Your Help!

Happy August! No, seriously, it's August. I know that you might think it's May or early June, but it's not. It's August. Summer's almost over bitches.

August is going to be a busy month for me. I'm moving, I've got trips I need to plan, trips I need to take, a charity event to organize, an apartment to paint, doctor's appointments, car issues. I'm tired already.

Speaking of apartment organizing and styling, what do you think of the bookshelf shown in this pic:

I've seen this before and I kind of love it. It's books organized by cover color. Is that too anal?

Don't worry, my complete busyness is not going to detract from my main responsibility of promoting NME. I do need everyone's help, though, in this month's NME resolution. My resolution is to make it warm and sunny outside. I know I'm setting myself up for failure with this one, but seriously. I'd like to not wear my lightweight sweater one of these days. I mean really is something in the 80's too much to ask for?

So, who's with me!! Who will help me achieve success with this month's resolution?

I Can't Make This Stuff Up

A lady showed up for her sentencing yesterday wearing a t-shirt that boldly stated: TALK SHIT, GET HIT! Classy.

What makes this story better is that the tshirt was covering her baby bump.

I Hate Bicyclists

One time a few years back, Grace was living in Seattle and Ro and I decided to pay her a visit. While we were out there, Grace came up with this brilliant idea to visit Bainbridge Island via car ferry. Ro had rented a car and we were going to drive it up onto the car ferry, ship it and ourselves over to Bainbridge, take a leisurely drive, visit a few shops and cafes and then travel back to Seattle for a fancy dinner. It sounds lovely, right? Well, it turned into a royal disaster because of effing bikers.

First of all, the car ferry trip was precarious. We had the luck of the draw and started a new line of cars which meant that our car was the first car parked on the downward part of an incline into the ocean with only an emergency brake and a wooden block under the tires to keep it from rolling right out to sea. At first I didn't know that we could get out of the car and go up to the main deck, so I thought we were going to have to sit in the car staring at death for the half hour ride. Luckily our car made it safely and we drove off the fairy (typo that I'm keeping!) into the beauty that is Bainbridge Island.

Unluckily, there was a huge bike race around the island and there were hundreds of bikers polluting the streets. This meant our leisurely drive turned into a white knuckle scream session. Seriously, the bikers would get into packs of about 40-50 and would surround a car, so that the car could only go as fast as the bikers (which, fyi, isn't as fast as they think it is) and then once there would be a break in the pack and you would think you could get your car around them, they would dart in front of you, causing you to almost hit them and make the rest of the bike pack start yelling at you. It was terrifying.

We finally found this road that had 5 million dollar homes on it and NO BIKERS! It was heaven. And btw, the road was called Toe Jam Rd. Seriously.

Anyways, this weekend, as I was driving the streets of the STP, I noticed many bicyclers and my hatred of them was brought back ten fold. What is it about these assholes that makes them think they rule the road? Is it the brightly colored spandex? My feeling is...I'm in a car, you're on a bike. I win. Get the eff out of my way. When will they learn?

Kilimanjaro Safaris

I will probably have many updates today because I'm supposed to be packing up my apartment. Whenever I have real work to do, I always end up procrastinating and doing other, less helpful things. So, here it goes...another ride review.

The Kilimanjaro Safari ride is at the Animal Kingdom...or the WDW version of a zoo. Only it's more exotic than a zoo because the animals are "free roaming" and they have things like gazelles running amok.

So, you get in this truck and they tell you that your going on a 2 week safari. You ride around the "African veldt" and see things like this:

And sometimes you see this:

It's a baby giraffe! Yay! And if you are really lucky, then you'll see something like this:

It's not the greatest picture, but it's a lion. You almost never see the lions because the lazy bastards sleep all day, but this one was awake and standing...and roaring. Okay, that last part was a lie because he was yawning, but still, I was pretty impressed.

As you can see, this ride brings you up close and personal with the animals. There are hippos, rhinos, zebras, gazelles, these african cattle, lions, alligators, elephants, ostriches AND MORE. It's impressive.

Go on this ride many times throughout the day because the animals sort of move around and feed at different times of the day, so it's always a different experience. The best time to go is right away in the morning. They have just released the animals from their nighttime cages and are feeding them, so most of the animals are out and active. By late afternoon, they are usually over the tourist shit and just laying around like the lazy pieces they truly are.

5/5 stars! It's fun for babies and senior citizens.