On A Chain, On A String

Phoenix shared this little reminder today:

...and directed us to Sur La Table to get our own little chained chalkboards.

But I've got another idea.

Have you heard of chalkboard paint? (And its sister, dry erase board paint?) It's a type of paint that you can add to most flat, clean surfaces like cardboard and wood to get that chalkboard (or dry erase board) finish that functions the same as its mother idea.

With this paint, you could make your own mini-chalkboards - chain them, string them, make them any size and shape to fit your desires and needs. The possibilities are endless!

Ode to the Indie

(via A Cup of Jo, downstream from Oh?)

Don't Stop Believin'...

When people say that life is a journey, they really mean it. It's been 5 years since I started my college journey and I've learned a lot about life, love, friendship, and, most importantly, myself. But even with everything I have learned, I've still got a lot to learn. Even with a direction to go in, I still don't know exactly what I want to do or how to get there. We never stop learning, never stop finding out new things, and never really finish becoming who we really want to be.

And no matter how tough things get, sometimes there is nothing we can do except keep chugging along because not moving forward means moving backward. And sometimes we have to take a step back, because leaping forward may require a running start.

You don't always start where you want and you don't always end up where you think you will. Either way, that's okay. That's life.

As Danette's mother says, "This, too, shall pass."

Giant Pocky

I went to Mitsuwa today with Sage and found something amazing.

Giant. Pocky.

Each stick almost the size of my forearm.

I should have taken a picture with the box but I was too eager to eat them all as I found them to be actually more delicious than normal Pocky! Luckily, there is always the internet:

(via RoG at i-mockery)

Thanks, internet, for helping my demonstrate the size of the giant Pocky. A quick Google search showed that Amazon.com also carries Giant Pocky. You know what would be the best thing ever? If Costco carried them in bulk.

Cleaning, Packing, Moving, Part II

I am sleeping on an inflatable mattress right now, as I have (or rather, Clement has) already disassembled the bed and arrangements have been made to sell it.

If you include moving in and out of the dorms, this is the 7th time I've moved in 5 years. Needless to say, I am tired of moving. I am tired of trying to clean out my stuff every time, putting things in and labeling boxes, playing Tetris with everything I own, and having the thought in the back of my mind that I'm probably just going to be doing this again in a matter of months.

In an attempt to comfort me, my mom was telling me that the year she was pregnant with me, she and my dad moved a whopping 6 times. In one year! That certainly puts some perspective on this move. After all that, my mom was adamant about them buying their own house and no longer having to deal with all that crap. (Boy, do I ever understand about housing drama but those are many tales for other times.) My parents are still in the house I grew up in and it's been almost 20 years since they last moved.

I hope I'm lucky enough to have no more than 2 or 3 more moves in my lifetime. I'm kind of envious of my friend Tammi, who just became a homeowner (and has been out of commission on her blogs for nearly a week) with her husband, but I'm reminded that she has a 5-year head start on me as far as establishing a household goes. I'm really looking forward to seeing the pictures of her new abode!

This week, I'm continuing to clear out the furniture via Craigslist and looking for/interviewing potential replacements. Hoping to have almost everything packed after this upcoming weekend and living out of a suitcase while sleeping on an inflatable bed in a nearly empty room. Heh, when you put it that way, packing almost sounds fun.

Also, I'm realizing that I have yet to write anything about relationships even though I was planning on having this blog geared partly in that direction. I will address this sometime this week as well.

Que Sera, Sera

Inspiration

What I took from this video isn't that whole "determination will overcome any obstacle" thing, but the fact that it really made me think "why do we let things stand in our way?" Just because we can't do something the way it's usually done doesn't mean we can't find a new way to accomplish something and possibly be even better than people who do it the "traditional" way.

I have to admit, when I first saw the title of the video, I didn't so much admire the fact that he wanted to play guitar despite having no arms as I was just plain curious as to how he did it. That was really the message for me -- people are remembered for what they have done but it's how they did it that really speaks to who they are.

5 of My Favorite Cute Animal Videos

Digging through my favorites list on YouTube, I rediscovered some gems I'd like to share. Here are 5 of my favorite cute videos of animals!

#5: Mama Cat Adopts Baby Rabbit

#4: Buenos Aires Zoo - "Together"

Ok, this one is animated, but still cute animals!

#3: Otters Holding Hands

#2: Tiny Piglets

#1: Ocelot Kittens

There you go! A big heaping dose of "awww" to take you through your Monday. =)

Cleaning, Packing, Moving, Part I

Packed up 4 boxes of stuff related to the computer and "home office," as I've dubbed it... all the standard stuff like blank CD's, stapler, etc. The spindles of blank, or filled, CDs and DVDs alone were nearly their own box. Granted, I'm using boxes that are on the small side, but still. 5 spindles seem like overkill but this isn't really the best time to go through them and see why exactly I have that many of them.

Tomorrow I have the only events management class I decided to take this summer - Wedding Decor! It's a hands-on class so I'm really excited about it and look forward to sharing it on my events blog later this week.

Tomorrow night, I'm going to pull all my clothes out of the closet and only take home the ones I frequently wear. The rest will probably go straight to Goodwill, but I may consider trying to sell them as part of my moving sale.

One of my FaceBook friend is apparently in the state of moving too, since her status was talking about how liberating it was to sell all her furniture and have no food in the fridge, drinking out of the carton and sleeping in a sleeping on the floor. And even though moving is a pain, I have to agree that there is something extremely refreshing about an empty place. In fact, I'm looking quite forward to selling the furniture in my place and sleeping on the inflatable mattress for a while.

Maybe it's just cleansing to purge and live on not very much. Heaven knows we get bogged down with our material possessions. I hope that with the things I've experienced over the last few years, I will be someone who has very little useless, cluttery, pack-ratty stuff in the future. My favorite time in any living establishment is right before we move in and it's just completely empty and clean. Maybe it's a clean slate thing - the possibilities are endless because nothing is set yet. Once you set things in a place, it's hard to break out of a routine or a mindset.

Haha, the more I clean, the messier the place actually looks. But that's okay, because I know I'm making a lot of headway. I just... uh, have to watch where I step. =P

Intoxicated Cleverness

Yesterday, at a family gathering, the "grown-ups" had a bit much to drink...

Auntie Ada: "I'm OK!"

My dad: "Hahaha, you are KO!"

Baby Piggy

Nevermind the owners/filmmakers and their annoying baby-talk, look how tiny and cute this little pig is!

No One Understands Emo Bunny

No one understands me! I'm going to write in my LiveJournal while listening to Fall Out Boy and try to let my eyeliner-stained tears ruin my skinny jeans.

(via CuteLoad)

P.S. How adorable are those tiny ears?

Declutter

Between the hundreds of blogs I RSS to but don't have time to read and comment on, and the excess of just about everything in my apartment, I'm really starting to wonder why exactly do I have all this?

I've always been a packrat and it's hard to change a person's mindset but not impossible. It won't be easy to get past the mentality of keeping something "in case" but the clutter is, well, bad. Really bad.

Simpliest way to declutter must be to just throw out everything you don't immediately answer "yes" to in response to this question:

"Do I ______ this?" (read/wear/use, etc.)

Gah, too much stuff!

"Optickle" Illusion Kitteh

...messes with your sensation and perception. Yay, psych 105.

The Simpsons ripped off Disney??

To have some background noise/music, I popped in The Little Mermaid while I cleaned. Do you remember that scene where Scuttle (the seagull) and all the other animals help to stall the wedding when they realized that it was Ursula the Sea Witch in disguise? After she falls into the cake and gets sprayed by dolphins, Scuttle flies over to squawk in her face and she actually grabs him by the neck, shakes him, and says, "Why, you little --" in a way that is reminiscent, nay nearly identical to the way Homer strangles Bart in the Simpsons!

A quick search on Wikipedia turned up that The Little Mermaid was released into theaters on November 17, 1989 and the Simpsons debuted on December 17, 1989. A little more digging gave:

"Homer's extreme strangling of Bart first originated in the Tracey Ullman Short "Family Portrait". Often before strangling Bart, Homer will yell 'Why you little...' [...]"

That particular short aired on the Tracy Ullman Show March 6, 1988.

Ha! I guess the Little Mermaid ripped off the Simpsons! I can't imagine anyone on the Disney team taking something from Matt Groening though... the movie is so beautiful and elegant whereas the Simpsons is especially crude in its first year, both in art and story. Or maybe it was just one big coincidence and they happen to sound EXACTLY THE SAME while doing EXACTLY THE SAME THING.

On a tangent, how hard is it for Eric to have a father-in-law who is the ruler of the seas?

June Gloom

Truthfully, I'm glad it's kind of dark and gray. If it were bright and sunny, then I would really feel like I wasn't seizing the day. This way I feel at least a little more justified staying in all day.

Finally going to get started on cleaning up and maybe doing some packing today. It was a hard decision to move back home but it's the best for the time being. Granted, it's sort of the obvious decision but it was a big emotional strain to make it.

I'm not used to not having Clement around all the time so I've been feeling kinda lonely the last few couple of days. I miss his company but I'm also finding that I really don't like to be by myself this much. If I wasn't unproductive before, I certainly am extremely unproductive now!

Stormtrooper Picnic

Too cute, this picture is:

High-resolution version

TinyChat

TinyChat is amazing, amazing, amazing. It's a web-based chat platform that doesn't require a sign-in. This means that if your friends don't all have AIM or gchat or yahoo! or whatever, you can still all chat in a room together! One person creates a room and then sends the url to whoever he/she wants to invite to the room. Of course, being the forward technology minds that the creators are, they have also provided links so you can share it to FaceBook, Twitter, and MySpace.

I just tried it out with some gals from my EMP class and they loved it. It was really simple and straight-forward. I can't believe how easy it was to get everyone into one room like that.

Super amazing brilliant idea. I love this!

Insecurities About A New Blog

It seems like every time my friends turn around, I'm talking about a new blog -- either launching one or an idea for one. Because of this, I'm hesitant to announce Shanna Suburbia right away even though this is something I've really wanted to do for a long time.

I suppose I'm also hesitant about putting too much information out there. I really admire my friend Tammi, who is my biggest inspiration for this blog, because she is always talking about her kids and husband and home. Really, I want to do what she's doing except from my own angle.

The reason I chose the name Shanna Suburbia, aside from living in sunny suburban California, is because I don't want to get tied to my last name when there is a possibility it may changed in the next few years. I don't want to get tied to either name because being Shanna goes above and beyond that. I wanted something that was somewhat domestic even though, like I said, I am neither a housewife nor a homemaker, because I'm hoping to take this blog the distance.

At any rate, I really hope you'll stay tuned, check out my other blogs, and leave me lots of loving comments!

Why Am I Writing This?

The first time I ever had a "blog" was my freshmen year of high school. Some of you may remember the now-defunct TeenOpenDiary, a sub-division of the still running OpenDiary. It is pretty much what it sounds like -- a portal into a realm of teenage angst, rants about parents and school and relationships or lack thereof. My "TOD" was pretty much the same. Even looking back at my old Xanga or LiveJournal entries (both of which came several years downstream from TOD) makes me pretty embarassed about my writing, both from quality and content. I also used to keep a paper-and-pen journal, which got pretty angsty too. A couple years ago, I essentially quit the online writing communities and took up actively participating in the growing social networking phenomenon that was FaceBook.

Last year, when I decided that I wanted to take my future in the direction of events management and wedding coordination, I decided to start writing a professional blog about the topic. Now between my events blog and my "romance" blog, I'm finding that don't have places for everything I want to say. I'm missing having a personal blog. I'm inspired by blogs that are built around a person and his/her ideas so I want to try that out for myself.

Thank you to my inspirations -- Tammi the Tornado Chaser, Joanna Goddard, and Seth Godin.

Shanna Suburbia

When I was younger, my mom was always telling me that I needed to learn to cook and keep house so that one day I could take care of my husband and kids. In response, I told her the family could just go out to McDonald's every night and I could just hire someone to clean the house.

At the time, I really resented that being born a female meant I was destined to domestic duties. And even though I always had tomboy tendencies, I never felt like a feminist fighting to liberate women from such domestic duties... I just always thought that it wasn't fair to expect them out of a woman just because she was a woman.

As I grew to take on adult roles, I found that I really do enjoy the more nurturing roles in an adult relationship... In fact, I would be pretty content to let my significant other be the bread winner who works the 9-5 while I feed all the needs of the home. I do, in fact, enjoy cooking and packing lunches and being there to greet him when he comes home. I daresay that I would enjoy being a stay-at-home mom in the future as well.

But that doesn't make me a housewife, though I neither have a house nor am a wife, and that doesn't make me a homemaker either.

Like everyone else, I am many things. I am a recent college graduation who doesn't know where her future is taking her. I am an aspiring event planner. I am a girlfriend of (nearly) two years to a wonderful man who just moved to take an accounting job in this flailing economy. I am someone who has succeeded and struggled and will continue to do both.

I have a lot of thoughts and opinions and things to share and I would like to experiment with being a writer. I am Shanna Suburbia.