Crazy Tea

So, the other night (or very very early morning, I'm not sure) my cat decided to try to jump across my face as I was sleeping peacefully. Well, she landed on my face. Now i have a little scratch on my nose. Thank you very much, cat.

A while ago, I was cleaning out the cabinets of my apartment when I stumbled upon a box of tea that had been sitting there for ... God only knows how long. I mean, I've been in this apartment for two years, and cannot remember getting this tea. Anyway, it's a box of apple-cinnamon spice tea. And after being stored for so long, it's almost fermented or something. What?! Crazy tea?!? JACKPOT!!! It's PUNGENT! That spice really kicks, now! I opened the box just to see if there was any tea left, and it was like getting kicked in the face! I staggered backwards and bumped into my fridge. That's some powerful tea. So i decide to make myself a cup of this super-human-tea.
I grab my nice little teapot, and pull out a mug from my cabinet. I filled the mug with tap water and went to pour it into the teapot (If i don't measure it out, I always underestimate, and then get all disappointed and frustrated.) So, I'm pouring, right? Apparently, this mug doesn't like to pour, because the water runs down the side of the mug, gets all over the counter and the outside of the teapot, I jerked my hand away - which only made it worse. Now i have water all over my counter, and because my apartment is very old and has "character" my counter tops are not exactly what you'd call "level" and so the water is spilling onto my kitchen floor.
Well, this is easy enough, right? Get some paper towel, soak it up, it's only a mug-full of water. But you know, once something is spilled or dropped, it like goes rogue and multiplies and suddenly there's waaaaay more than you started with? Yeah, about that. So i run for the paper towels, right, but here's the problem: I don't have any. At some point, I can picture myself using the last piece of papertowel, (probably in a very similar situation) and thinking to myself, "Dude, I need more papertowel." And that's probably the last time I thought about it, until now, in my tea-water emergency situation.
So, you ask, what did I do?
I let it sit there. For two days, I ignored the puddle in my kitchen, and walked around it. Now, it's either evaporated, or soaked into the floor, or maybe the cat licked it all up.
We will never know.

Deer in TARGET!

Oh man, has anyone else seen this?
My sister is a designer for Target, and the offices tend to circulate a bunch of weird emails, which she often forwards to me. Well, I got this one the other day. Simply Awesome! You MUST click on the link below! Now!
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061108/NEWS/311080012
Apparently, an 8-point deer ran through the automatic doors of a Super Target in DesMoines! He was running around in there for about 20 minutes! Holy awesome crap!

What? Funny animals in silly places they don't belong?! Jackpot!!!

Can you imagine a deer prancing (or slipping?) around the clothing racks of your nearest Target? Oh, that brings such joy to my heart. The best thing is that the article has pictures of this whole escapade from the security cameras. I love it. Stuff like that makes me so happy that I'm almost tired. Like, I could go for a good nap right now. Awesome.

I learned a lesson today.

I had a ten-page research paper due this morning at 9:30. So, of course, I didn't start a single iota of work on it until last night. I sat down at my laptop and wrote the whole excruciating thing, then went to print and, ooops, my printer was uninstalled and I couldn't fix it. So i'm sitting there at like midnight staring at this masterpiece of a last-minute-paper on my screen, and I realize that I, A) cannot print it, B)have no floppy disk on which to save it and print from another computer, and C) do not even have the internet, so i couldn't even email it to myself or anything. I was kind of frozen in time. Or, more accurately, in shock.
So i went to my friend Jess's apartment at some horrible i-dont-even-want-to-know morning hour, armed with my laptop. I re-typed the whole miserable thing (yeah, the development of evolutionary theory from ancient greek philosophy to darwin, loads of fun) and, since she also doesn't have a printer, emailed it to myself so i could go waste money printing it at school (ten cents a page?!?!?! Don't they bleed us enough on tuition?!?) So, yes, it was fun. And I learned a lesson.

But, while I was slaving over this paper for the second time in a six-hour period, I was blessed with the presence of, you guessed it, kitties.
What? KITTIES?! JACKPOT!!!
Jess has two kitties, one older and one really really little and cute and fuzzy. (In fact, we call her "fuzz ball" -- as far as i know, that's her real name.) The kitties were chasing each other around Jess's apartment, jumping on the desk, playing with my hair, it was great. Animals are so healing. The kitties healed me of my anguish, almost.
I once got to sit on the grass and play with a bull mastif puppy for twenty minutes, it was the greatest thing ever. And in the office underneath my jiu jitsu school, there's a little golden retriever puppy named Ruby who will come bounding out the door to meet me every time she hears me coming down the stairs after class. She gets so excited that her body gets all wiggly, she'll roll onto her back so i can rub her belly, but then she just gets so worked up and excited that she jumps up and licks my face until i practically drown. I love it!!!

Ok, by the way, something that belongs to Jess, is it " Jess' " or "Jess's " or what???? When i journal, I always end with "In Jesus's name" but i'm afraid that I'm spelling it wrong. I don't want to offend Him. Although i suppose that my spelling errors shouldn't be of as much concern as, say, all my sins. :)

And, back onto kitty names, this is the evolution of my cat's name. Her real, official name is "Isabelle" but I'm pretty sure i've never acutally called her that. She's "kitty" when she's behaving well, and "cat" when she's being naughty. And my family has this weird thing where we call all animals "Peter" -- my sister started it when she spontaneously names all the random deer in my parent's backyard Peter one night a few years ago. So any deer, squirrel, dog, cat, lizard, etc. is Peter. So, naturally, my cat has been called Peter a number of times. Lately, I've been putting a little accent to it, so the "r" isn't pronounced. This turned her name into "Pita." And this recently evolved into "Falafel." I guess I might be a little obsessed with food??? :)

"What?! Jackpot!!"

There is a comedian, Dane Cook, who does a hilarious bit that he calls "the nothing fight," about couples that seem to hate each other and the silly, ridiculous fights they get in. He tells a story of how he was once in a grocery store when he heard a nothing fight starting a few aisles over. So he gets all excited, and acutally leaves his grocery cart to go watch. This is a meagin-rendering of the next part of this bit:

"I'm so excited, I acutally leave my grocery cart! You never leave your cart! God forbid, somebody walks into the store and wants exactly that crap! They'd be like, 'What?! Jackpot!!! This is everything i wanted!'"

You really need to hear it to truly, fully appreciate it. I've been inspired by this. I find myself walking around, saying "jackpot!" all the time. It brings me joy.
My jiu jitsu instructor, Chris, was fixing my laptop (because he's an amazing super genious) and, knowing how much love i feel for that bit, he actually downloaded a sound bit, so that the noise my computer makes when i start it up is, you guessed it, "What?! Jackpot!!" I love it.

Anyway, I am so busy and overwhelmed with, well life, that I need little things to make me happy. Little things, like Jackpot, bring a quick smile, no matter what modd i'm in, how tired i am, how stressed out i am, or how many dozens of pages this research paper needs to be. So, my new little blog, ideally, will be filled with little things that bring me joy. Hence, Jackpot.