The GirlAlive Blog

A Survey

I stole this survey from John Green’s blog. It was in a post back in 2006. (I was looking through his old blog posts, hunting the elusive Yeti.)

Anyway, on to the survey.

1. FIRST NAME? Alana.

2. ARE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE? Yes and no. My parents had a friend named Alana, but they didn’t give me the name because they worshipped that friend as much as they just thought it was a good name.

3. WHEN DID YOU LAST CRY? Maybe a week ago?

4. DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING? No.

5. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCH MEAT? Ham.

6. KIDS? No. Unless rodents qualify.

7. IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU? Probably not. I mean, most people on earth are not my friends, so statistically, I’m not likely to be friends with me.

8. DO YOU HAVE A JOURNAL? Yes and no. I have a blog. I also have a file on my computer with the word “diary” in the name, but none of it is true.

9. DO YOU USE SARCASM A LOT? Me? Never. (Note the sarcasm.)

10. DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TONSILS? Last time I checked.

11. WOULD YOU BUNGEE JUMP? Probably not.

12. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CEREAL? Reese’s Puffs.

13. DO YOU UNTIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF? No.

14. DO YOU THINK YOU ARE STRONG? Not really. I used to be.

15. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ICE CREAM? Cookie dough.

16. SHOE SIZE? US women’s 9.5, UK 8, EU 42.

17. RED OR PINK? Red.

18. WHAT IS YOUR LEAST FAVORITE THING ABOUT YOURSELF? I wish I was either as smart as I was as a kid or as stupid as average people. I’m not smart enough to be a genius anymore, but I am still smart enough to be completely aware of how much brainpower I’ve lost.

19. WHO DO YOU MISS THE MOST? I’m going to have to go with my husband’s best friend David. He passed away last year and it has made everything seem a little out of tune.

20. DO YOU WANT EVERYONE TO SEND THIS BACK TO YOU? No. Steal it and post it on your own blog if you want.

21. WHAT COLOR OF PANTS AND SHOES ARE YOU WEARING RIGHT NOW? I’m wearing black sweatpants and argyle socks. No shoes.

22. Who is your favorite writer/book/movie? Writer: Terry Pratchett. Book: Anything beginning with “Harry Potter”. Movie: Serenity.

23, WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW? A Ford commercial on the Discovery channel. (Mythbusters)

24. IF YOU WERE A CRAYON WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU BE? Cornflower. I always loved how translucent the cornflower blue is.

25. WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITE SMELLS? I only have about 20% of a normal person’s sense of smell, so I don’t smell things the same way you do. But I do like pumpkin pie.

26. WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU SPOKE ON THE PHONE WITH? My parents. I don’t do phones much.

27. THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE YOU ARE ATTRACTED TO? Eyes and hair. Eyes tell a lot about a person, and I’m jealous of people with good hair.

28. DO YOU LIKE THE PERSON WHO SENT THIS TO YOU? John Green? Yeah. He’s pretty cool.

29. FAVORITE DRINK? Bubble tea.

30. FAVORITE SPORT? Robot combat.

31. HAIR COLOR? Brown.

32. EYE COLOR? Brown with hints of green when I’m really tired.

33. DO YOU WEAR CONTACTS? Nope. I had laser surgery.

34. FAVORITE FOOD? Peanut butter cups.

35. SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDING? Horror comedy?

36. LAST MOVIE YOU WATCHED? Borat. It was on tv and it seemed like a fine opportunity to see Borat without paying money to see it.

37. COLOR OF SHIRT YOU ARE WEARING? Camoflage.

38. WINTER OR SUMMER? Winter, I guess.

39. HUGS OR KISSES? Hugs.

40. FAVORITE DESSERT? Chocolate cheesecake.

(Questions 41 and 42 removed because they annoy me.)

43. WHAT BOOKS ARE YOU READING? I’m reading “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” and on deck to be read next I have “The Truth” by Terry Pratchett, “Fragile Things” by Neil Gaiman, “Paper Towns” by John Green and “Holy Fools” by Joanne Harris.

44. WHAT IS ON YOUR MOUSE PAD? Do they still make those? I have a girl mouse that does not require a pad. (Girl mouse = no balls)

45. FAVORITE SOUNDS? Hamster squeaks. You have to really pay attention and really annoy them to hear it.

46. WHAT DID YOU WATCH ON TV LAST NIGHT? Glee

47. ROLLING STONES OR BEATLES? Beatles

48. THE FURTHEST YOU’VE BEEN FROM HOME? From my current home: Seattle. But Seattle was my home at the time that I was there. And the furthest I’ve been from Seattle is Moscow.

49. DO YOU HAVE A SPECIAL TALENT? Not really.

50. WHEN AND WHERE WERE YOU BORN? I was born at the end of 1976 near Canada. But not in Canada.

A thing of beauty

I know I’ve talked before about Twiglets and how they are made of Satan’s poop (also known as Marmite). Additionally, there has been a fake feud going on between Justin Bieber and Conan O’Brien, which has been hilarious. Like, I normally would hate a teenybopper Canadian like Bieber, but he is actually kind of funny (his music is cheesy pop crap, but he seems like a nice kid). So this video made me all kinds of happy.

Conan + TBS = Awesome

Conan is going to TBS. I’m sure you all expected to say something about this a lot sooner. First, let me say that I love this decision. Conan gets ownership of his own show, and he has a 5-year contract and TBS will give him the freedom to do whatever the heck he wants on his new show. What gets me is the responses from other people on imwithcoco.com. (I would do drawings of the angry commenters, but I’m tired and it’s getting late.)

WHY WOULD HE GO ON CABLE? CABLE IS CRAP.

Um, no. Cable is about the same as network tv these days. Cable channels make their own shows and people watch them, just like network tv. Ever hear of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert? They do okay with late night shows on cable. Is it really a step down to go from the worst network to a pretty good cable station? I don’t think so.

WHY DIDN’T HE SIGN WITH FOX?

Fox would not give him show ownership or a nationwide audience. They were dragging their feet and making it very difficult for Conan to trust them. Fox has a habit of the same kind of random show cancelling as NBC, so I don’t think it’s a bad thing that he’s not going to Fox.

OMG! I DON’T HAVE CABLE! I’LL NEVER SEE CONAN AGAIN! I HATE HIM NOW!

If you’re posting on Facebook, there’s some compelling evidence that you have an internet connection. If you’re in the US it’ll likely be on Hulu or on TBS.com. Or you could always get cable. It’s not like it’s that difficult. Craig Ferguson isn’t broadcast in the UK, yet I see his show pretty much every day on YouTube. If you’re panicking because you don’t have cable you’re either a luddite or a drama queen.

CONAN’S A HYPOCRITE! HOW COULD HE STEAL GEORGE LOPEZ’S TIMESLOT?

You cannot steal that which is freely given. Moving to 12:00 was George Lopez’s own idea, and Conan did not agree to even talk about TBS until George Lopez himself called and talked him into it. George Lopez has been struggling to pull in a small fragment of the late night audience. Even with a move from 11 to 12, Lopez will probably see an increase in his ratings once he has Conan as his lead-in. He genuinely wants to move to 12 to make room for Conan. It’s a whole nother situation.

In short, if you’re going to call yourself a fan of Conan you should remember that he told you to work hard, be kind, and stop being cynical. If you’re not enough of a fan to remember that, maybe you at least remember him telling you, “Keep cool my babies!”

I wish I was able to go to his live show. I’ve seen a few clips and it looks completely awesome. If it is a hint of what is to come on TBS, his new show in November will be like all the very best stuff he did on Late Night and The Tonight Show.

The Epic Tale of the Evil Death Spider

After I finished college I moved to Seattle to look for a job because there weren’t any in Duluth, where I lived before. I lived in a teeny tiny studio apartment in the Capitol Hill area of Seattle. It was a crappy and overpriced building, but it was in a great location. Anyway, just after I moved there I went into my bathroom one day and I saw a spider!

But it wasn’t just a spider in the bathroom. I had seen spiders in bathrooms before. They have those in Duluth. But in Duluth, they are pretty small because it’s cold there. The biggest spider I had seen there was about an inch across. But this was a whole nother kind of bathroom spider. It was three inches across and hairy and gross.

It was a giant spider of death and it was in my bathroom and I lived alone so I couldn’t make someone else go kill it. I either had to kill it myself, or accept it as a new roommate. Since it didn’t look like it was going to help with rent, I had to get rid of it. So I ran to the other room to look for something with which to kill the evil spider of death. I grabbed a newspaper and a can of bug killing spray from the other room and on my way back to the bathroom I saw what was on the tv.

It was a news report about a deadly new kind of spider that was being found in Pacific Northwest homes! Holy crap! I’ve seen this before! There’s always a news report about a monster on tv while the hero is battling the monster for the first time. I’m in a horror movie, and it’s not a very good one! As soon as I go into the bathroom I’m going to be set upon by hundreds of spiders, or the one spider is going to grow huge and bite my head off! Holy crap! I’m totally going to be killed horribly in my crappy small apartment!

But I’m still stuck with the matter that if I don’t go into the bathroom and kill the beast, it will forever be in my bathroom and I’ll have to move because I won’t be able to pee or shower ever again. So like the stupid girl in every horror movie I keep going into the bathroom to face my enemy. I’d like to say that I fought an epic battle and barely got out alive. But actually I sprayed the spider with poison, smooshed it with a newspaper and then flushed it down the toilet. Because it turns out I wasn’t really in a bad horror movie.

Then I washed my hands and had some ramen noodles. Cause that’s what heroes do after they destroy the evil.

The End.

Insomnia

I had to get up early this morning for a doctor’s appointment. I normally lay in bed sleepless for several hours and then finally get some sleep between 6 and 10 in the morning. But I had to get up at 7. I’ve been having an even worse time sleeping lately because I have a sore throat and laryngitis and a muscle spasm in my back that only seems to show up when I lay down.

So this was my night last night.

I had the scan this morning and I have nothing to report. I have a tumor on my right ovary, but I already knew that. Looks like another dermoid. They’re also known as Cystic Teratomas. Teratoma means “monster growth” because they’re full of all kinds of random tissue, including teeth and hair. My last one had a parathyroid gland too. I have started calling it “the ovary monster”. I guess I’ll find out what’s going on with it later after my main doctor gets the report from the ultrasound department.

In other news, last night was the UK premiere of Castle. Hooray! I love Nathan Fillion. I’m pretty excited about finally getting to see it after hearing little bits and pieces on his twitter feed for the last year.

I think I might need to go for a nap.

Alana

Hamsters

When I did the last post about guinea pigs, I promised that I’d do one about hamsters too. But then I got sick and then I lost the pen for my drawing tablet and then my husband found the pen but I was still too sick to draw anything. But now I’m a little bit better. I have laryngitis and a bad sore throat, but it seems to be getting better.

Anyway, our primary hamster is Jayne. She is named after the character of Jayne Cobb from Firefly. But that Jayne is a guy, and our hamster is a girl. We purposely got a girl hamster because we heard that they’re more active and that they don’t stink as much as boys. (Plus, our previous Syrian hamster Binky had a disturbingly huge scrotum, and he used it as a beanbag chair, so we wanted to avoid that.) Jayne is bright orange. She also drinks (water) constantly. So we refer to her as “Irish hamster”. She climbs the walls and begs for peanuts. Also, she has never figured out how to use her wheel. She stands on the raised area of the cage and paws the wheel with her front paws instead of running inside it. She’s already lived longer than Binky, and she still runs around and climbs the walls like always, with little sign of slowing down.

Our other hamster is a Chinese dwarf hamster named Dru. She used to have a partner named Fred, but they eventually started fighting, as evidenced by the fact that Dru is missing half an ear. Fred passed away when she was only a few months old, from birth defects. Now Dru has a big luxury cage to herself. She used to hide in her coconut house almost all the time, but lately she figured out that if she climbs the front of the cage early in the morning, my husband will give her peanuts. She loves burrowing under the bedding. She also doesn’t get taken out of the cage much because she’s a bit bitey. She is convinced that fingers might be edible, if anyone would ever let her keep chewing. She’s over 2 years old now, and she also shows no signs of advanced age.

Both hamsters love peanuts. They climb the sides of the cage and beg for them. Dru will take half a peanut and then run around the cage looking for a place to hide her precious treasure. Jayne, on the other hand will immediately stuff the peanut in her cheek pouch and beg for more. She looks at you like, “I didn’t get a peanut. Where’s the peanuts? There’s nothing in my pouches. I need a peanut.” She’ll keep doing that until I stop or until her cheek pouches explode.