M.O.A.B.

M ost these people are tourists, including me

O utdoor adventures abound

A whole heap of fun and super nice to see my parents

B umfuzzled about the difference between a natural arch and a natural bridge...

   

Words we should all start using immediately

A while back I went on a date where this guy told me that I used big words and it was intimidating.  It struck me as funny, because the word I had used was "crotchety", which is not that big and not that unusual.  What followed was a goal to start using more of new and exciting words and it kind of turned into an obsession.  Like, I have a dictionary in MY CAR so that if I get bored, I can look new words up.  Side not, this is how you know you're a nerd.

Now, I'm not as creative as Taika at coming up with words on the spot, but what follows is a list of words that are some of my favorite finds.  I only wish more people knew them, because every time I try to use them, people give me a weird look and ask me what that means.

Bumfuzzle - confused, perplexed, or flustered

Malarkey - insincere or foolish talk

Flummox - exasperate

Lollygag - messing around or wasting time

Snollygoster - someone who does things for their own advancement and doesn’t follow their own principles

Bibble - when someone eat or drinks noisily

Pauciloquent - a person of few words

Bloviate - a person of too many words, and who likes to embellish stories to make themselves sound better

Lickety split - as fast as possible

Codswollop - foolishness, nonsense, balderdash

Kerfuffle - nonsense or balderdash

Fard - face paint or make up *sidenote - no women would want to wear make up if it was called fard

Goombah - an older friend who protects you

Skedaddle - get a move on

Ineffable - Indescribable

Sycophant - suck up

Paradoxically - self contradictory

Quixotic - idealistic, romantic

Obsequious - obedient, servile

Curmudgeon - bad tempered old person

Uncouth - lacking sophistication

My new job is...repetitive toilet flusher?

So, the other day we were having some weird issues in our super legit and definitely haunted boiler room.

Apparently the problems were connected to the plumbing, so a couple hours into my shift, the manager asked if I could go into the bathroom and keep flushing the toilet until someone came and told me to stop.  Which led to me standing in the bathroom and repetitively flushing the toilet for almost 15 MINUTES. 

As I stood there, I thought, I'm literally getting paid to flush toilets, which makes me a professional toilet flusher!  And how, oh how, can I put this on my job resume because every potential employer should probably know how varied and diverse my skill set is, including my astounding ability to continuously flush toilets.

Eventually my fifteen  minutes were up...but this experience led me into a super long and amazingly time consuming search on the internet of all the weird and crazy jobs in the world.  Including and not limited to these gems:

Why have one, when you can have four?  And why keep them simple, when you can make them AWESOME?

I'm especially intrigued by Rasputin impersonator...

If you ever need to consult anyone on proper kidnapping technique, you should immediately dial this guy's phone number.

Brides beware!  This guy might be coming for you.

I kind of want his life.

Gosh, he probably spends all day cuddling with baby penguins.  I'm officially jealous.

Apparently you can add "ologist" to any word and it makes you an expert in that field.

This should probably be the title of every single teenager out there...

Can you imagine going on a date with this guy?  Hi, my name is Jackson Galaxy (epic) and I'm a Cat Behavior Consultant (hold up...what?).  Oh, and I have this fantastic facial hair that I shave in new and bizarre ways to keep my life even more interesting (I already know that I can't even hang with this guy...it's too much awesome)

The guy you wish would come up on your Tinder

Can someone actually try calling this to see what happens?  Because I might be interested in this, as long as the evil genius is charismatic, provides witty one-liners, and has a sure-to-fail plan for world domination.

I mean, everyone's gotta die sometime, right?

Again, has anyone contacted this person and is the position still vacant?

I can bring weapons and I can blend into ANY time!

Just so we all know who to call when we get confused about those confusing origami instructions.

I'm surprised it doesn't just say "Bearologist and paperologist" to be honest.

Definitely legit.

I wish job hunting was this simple nowadays.  Lets get rid of LinkIn,
CareerBuilder, and Indeed and go back to good old fashion sewer grates.

Other job gems I found:

Ice Cream Taste Tester
Coffin Salesman
Teen Exorcist
Bread Expert
Armpit sniffer

Raccoons

Radiolab podcast did this episode all about these "special" raccoons in Guadalupe.

Of course, everyone who is anyone knows that all raccoons are special.  I mean.  Just look at these guys:

Can you say adorable?

Which brings me to the internet rabbit hole of the day: me looking at pictures of raccoons and happily discovering that there's a real trend for funny raccoon pictures, particularly raccoons with cats...and I am LOVING it.

Act cool, act cool...nothin to see here people.

Diet starts Monday?

I don't even have a better caption to add to this...

What everyone says when I show to a Halloween party
and no one else is in costume...

Stephen Hawking

RIP Stephen Hawking who died earlier today.

If I'm being 100% honest, I actually didn't know a lot about him, but an article caught my eye and that led me down the rabbit hole of research about this man.  I've thus concluded that he was a spectacular human being and here are some inspiring quotes I found from him:

"It would not be much of a universe if it wasn't home to the people you love."

"Life would be tragic if it weren't funny."

"We are in danger of destroying ourselves by our greed and stupidity.  We cannot remain looking inwards at ourselves on a small and increasingly polluted and overcrowded planet."

Also, it's been raining all day, but the sun just came out anyways.....and it looks absolutely stunning outside now!

Welcome to GOTCHA

So it's Valentines Day and Hulu sent me this "Valentine's Present" of a Free Month Trial.   I thought to myself that this was optimal timing, because the Olympics are on and I had just read that you could stream them online with Hulu. 

*Side note, I don't have cable, so I've spent pretty much every night bumming on my friend's couch and watching the Olympics.  This may have been as much a gift to her as it was to me.*

Anyways, I was pretty stoked that Hulu was giving me a free month because I basically thought they were giving me the gift ofthe Olympics (BEST GIFT EVER).

And then it all came crashing down.

Because the free month is their cheap plan and apparently that doesn't cover the Olympics and I just signed up for a month of NOTHING.

Also, I'm pretty sure they probably sent that "gift" to about a million people, so now not only do I feel angry that they're Olympicless, but I'm also peeved that there was no originality in their gift.  Who wants to bet that Hulu is run by a man?

Travel Expo's - the Good, the Bad, and the...wait, what?

Let's get one thing straight, I've never been to a travel expo before a couple weekends ago.  Further more, if you had asked me to describe what I pictured a travel expo to be like, I probably would have described something very similar to Comic Con vendors along with my own personal fantasy touch of a gladiatorial stage where all the trips I've been dreaming about battle it out to see which one should be my next.

Needless to say, that's not quite how it went down on Friday.

First off, there were a variety of people there, so my initial plan to wow all the vendors by being the young, cool kid did not go as planned.

If anything, I think they found me to be more of a space hogger (taker-upper?  Apparently hogger isn't a work...but you know what I mean).

And I'm not making this up.  The prime example is that at one point during the night, my friend and I stopped at a stand to look at the tours they were offering, the lady smiled at me, but when an older gentleman stepped up next to me, she stood up and started telling him about all their offers with superfluous eloquence.  And there I am.  Right next to him, trying to eavesdrop on the advertising spiel that I myself, did not receive, and she ends up asking me if I'd mind stepping to the side so she could show him one of their safari trips in AFRICA.  The safari trip that I was looking at 5 seconds earlier!

I walked away feeling like a spurned girlfriend.  Was it my age?  My hair?  The fact that I showed up wearing workout clothes?  Why didn't they want to advertise to me?

The most ridiculous part of it all is that I don't even like being advertised to...until someone is purposefully advertising to me in favor of someone else.  Then all the sudden I start feeling like I'm missing out.  I get FOMO big time when I can see that other people are getting something I'm not getting.

Which, actually, may be a really great place for travel agency to go with their advertising.  Do this now, because otherwise you'll never get to do it and you'll be the odd man out for the rest of your life.






Not bad, travel expo.  Point you.

However, I still prefer my gladiatorial battle of the trips.