Life Plans

For the past few days, I've been trying to figure out how to word this post. I don't know that I came up with a solution but I hope you'll understand my point anyway. This was never my life plan. Don't get my wrong - I am very happy with my current life and there isn't much I would change. But this was not how it was "supposed" to be.

Back in my high school and college days, performing was my life. In high school, I was an active member of the elite concert choir, all of the school plays, and I was in one of the first classes when the school rebooted drama class. When I went on to college, I majored in Theater Arts and was very active in the Theater department. (My mother insisted I major in something "responsible" so I ended up with a double major in Communications.) My goal was to get a job in theater, preferably backstage, even though I knew I wouldn't be swimming in gold or anything.

Things changed in my second year of college. While I still adored my time in the theater, there were things outside of school that drew my attention away from my studies and I ended up dropping out. Unfortunately, that pretty much signed the death certificate for my theater career. I did do some dinner theater before meeting my now-husband.

I fully admit that my life now is much more stable than it would have been if I had stayed in theater. However, it would be awesome if I could quit my crappy bookkeeping job and find a way to get back to the stage. Until then, I will remind myself how lucky I am, even if I can't do what I love.

The language of family

If you could wake up tomorrow and be fluent in any language you don’t currently speak, which would it be? Why? What’s the first thing you do with your new linguistic skills? Since the question specifies "language you don't currently speak," I am taking both Spanish and Japanese off the table. I am not, by any means, fluent in either language but I do speak enough that I could get around each country with few problems.

I would like to be fluent in German. My paternal grandfather's family was from Germany and, while I never knew my great-grandfather, it would be nice to know the language he spoke. Sadly, I don't know a lick of German. As for the first thing I would do? I'm not really sure. As far as I know, my immediate family is the end of the family tree. Maybe I could find some distant family in Germany and visit them, but I find that unlikely. I think I would like to learn the language just to have a connection to my ancestors, even if I never use it.

For a similar reason, I'd also like to learn Hawaiian. That is where my maternal grandfather is from. There aren't a lot of non-English speaking members of my family. These two are the closest I get to foreign languages. A great-grandfather I never met and a grandfather who ignored us for most of my life. That is why I don't actually sit down and learn the languages. I'd much rather spend my time working on my Japanese. At least that might be useful to me one day.

More on the way

Electricity is slowly returning to the region. My workplace got power back around 7:30PM last night. Sadly, that meant I had to drive into the office today. I was hoping to make it an entire week without having to drive in! And there is another, smaller, snowstorm on its way. Winter is fun. My daughter has her first regional competition for her middle school's TSA (Technology Student Association) club. She has two categories she is competing in. Her group category is Water Infrastructure and her second category is a Problem Solving team event with one other person. Meanwhile, both my husband and I will be judges for some of the high school categories. He is judging Video Game Development and I have Career Preparation. Since this is our first year, I'm not quite sure what to expect. I just hope the weather holds out long enough to get home safely after it is over.

Good Mythical Morning

Yes, the weather here still sucks. An ice storm rolled Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, which made everything much more awesome. A lot of places, including my workplace, has no power. Luckily, our house has not lost power. But it means that I haven't really left my house all week. The only time I left my house was when I had to take my daughter to dance class Tuesday night. (Before the ice came, of course.) It's a little good and a little bad.

On one hand, I haven't had to put up with my normal morning hour-long commute. But it's also pretty frustrating that I can't actually get any work done. I like working from home but this may be a little too much. Since my work phone is forwarded to my home phone, I'm still tied to my desk so there isn't much I can accomplish at home either. It's like the worst of both worlds.

At least I still have YouTube to keep me company. Here is Good Mythical Morning, one of my favorite YouTube shows.

The Fault in our Stars

Once again, I am working from home thanks to the snow. This week will be an awful weather week. At least I have some things to take my mind off the snow. One of these is the trailer for the movie version of "The Fault in our Stars." TFIOS is an awesome book by John Green. Both my daughter and I read the book and loved it. Shortly after my daughter finished it, the trailer arrived on YouTube. The movie premieres on June 6 and I can't wait to see it.

Here is the trailer. I highly recommend reading the book. It is a very quick read and it is so so good.

What A Snow

I am not a big fan of winter. If I had a nemesis, it would be Cold. The worst part of winter, besides the cold itself, is the freaking snow. Today is the first of three storms we are supposed to be getting this week. The snow started at about 4AM and, as of 1PM, it is still falling pretty hard. We're up to approximately 7 inches of the stuff so far. And the new reports are saying there is still another 2 - 4 hours to go. Another storm is supposed to come sometime tomorrow, which will be dropping ice on us. As a result, our satellite dish has been out of commission all day. Luckily, we have a ChromeCast that allows us to stream YouTube videos (and other videos that can run in Chrome) to our television. We may have to change over to Netflix soon. I think I'm actually running out of YouTube videos to watch. Any recommendations?

A Few Things About Me...

Welcome to the new Geek Within. To start this off right, I will tell you a bit about myself: Right now, I am 37 years old, which makes me feel absolutely ancient. I have been married to my wonderful husband for 12 years and together we have an 11 year old daughter. The three of us adore animals. We have three dogs, one cat, two chinchillas, a bird, and quite a few fish - both saltwater and freshwater. It can get quite crazy at times!

I love crafting. My newest obsession is jewelry made out of toys. I enjoy science fiction and fantasy stuff. Some of my favorite shows are Haven, The Originals (I'm kinda falling out of love with The Vampire Diaries but I really loved the books), Supernatural, both Elementary and Sherlock, and Psych. I watch way too many shows on YouTube. And I am way too busy for someone so lazy.

That is me in a nutshell. Want to know more? Feel free to ask!

Hello Again

It's been a very long time since I've really blogged here. So I'm going to start over. Sorta. Some things have changed around here. I decided to stop doing paid blog posts. Not only were the assignments very repetitive, they were also very boring. I'm glad I got the opportunity to do it and I was able to make some decent pocket change to allow me to do some other things in my personal life but now it is time to move on.

I've also printed out some prompts to get the writing juices going again. Since tomorrow is the start of a new month, tomorrow will also be the official start of the new Geek Within.

Let me know if there is anything you'd like me to bring back. TV reviews, Favorite Friday, whatever. Tell me what you want to read in the comments and I'll do my best.

Happy New Year!

It's 2014! 2014 will be a great year. My sister will be getting married in September. (I don't think she'll be using wedding DJ Joe Bunn. I think she's having live music.) My daughter is halfway through the sixth grade. My husband is pretty happy with his professional life. And my pets are as lazy as ever. 2014 is starting off as a good year. I know I have been slacking a bit on the blog here. So my New Year's goal is to just post more. It may not be particularly "geeky" in nature but I want to get back on track. I think I might be joining the 30 Days of Lists thing to try to get some more ideas on subject matter. I need to get my Geek back!

Noooooooo

It has been so cold in the morning that I am actually thinking of buying heated motorcycle gloves even though I don't own a motorcycle. My steering wheel is freezing when I leave for work. I don't tolerate the cold very well, unfortunately. My mom gives me hand warmers to put inside my gloves but they only work for so long. GO AWAY WINTER.