This is who I am

The Isle of Ice Cream, or What I Talk About With My Friends When I'm Bored, or It's Too Damn Hot In Texas

[ Posted by Rebecca Wed, 30 Jul 2008 20:05:57 GMT ]

Caroline: Scrubs apparently gives her dog a treat just for going to the bathroom.

Becks: Wow. I can’t believe she gives her a dog a treat for normal bodily functions.

Caroline: Exactly! Her vet told her that her dog is overweight, and no wonder! She always gets treats.

Becks: Haha, same problem with Americans. They are all overweight because they get too many treats.

Caroline: Right. You peed, here’s a burger!

Becks: Or in my case - It’s Thursday, time for ice cream. It’s Friday, time for ice cream. It’s Saturday, time for ice cream….

Caroline: lol, I’m having to stay away from stupid Amy’s.

Becks: It’s tough. I’ve discovered HEB Creamy Creations Chocolate Chip ice cream, and damn, it’s good. And cheap.

Caroline: Oh no!

Becks: Yeah, very bad

Caroline: That sounds amazing

Becks: I’ve pretty much learned that if I even walk into the ice cream isle at the store I will get ice cream, so I have to stay away from the isle.

::Pause::

Becks: aisle. sheesh. But an Ice Cream Isle would be pretty cool. The Isle of Ice Cream.

Caroline: Indeed! I’m imagining it right now….

Becks: I see…upside down waffle cones with waterfalls of hot fudge streaming out of them….the sand on the shore is colored sprinkles….the boulders are scoops of different flavors……what do you see?

Caroline: lol now that you’ve described that delectable scene, it’s all I can think about

Becks: ha ha ha. well, Marci would love it. It would be really cold.

Caroline: The cliffs would be made of chocolate chip cookie dough chunks. So that I can just walk up to them and grab a bite.

Becks: ooooh, good addition.

Caroline: You’re right, Marci would die happy there.

::Pause::

Caroline: Something needs to be made of dark chocolate. The tree trunks? The tree leaves can be mint chocolate.

Becks: I foresee a blog entry in the making….

Caroline: lol, such a refreshing post it would be!

Becks: Indeed.

Posted in Oh, the silliness of me!, Various and Sundry | 2 comments

My Unsolicited Opinion on the Dark Knight

[ Posted by Rebecca Mon, 28 Jul 2008 14:05:22 GMT ]

WARNING: POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT

Friday night Dominic and I went to see The Dark Knight.

My verdict:

Heath Ledger was brilliant as the Joker, and everyone else pretty much sucked.

Harvey Dent was very poorly cast. He came off cheesy through the entire movie and it was obnoxious. He was much more nauseating than the Joker’s magic trick. I pretty much wanted to stab my eyes out with a pencil every time Harvey Dent or his alter ego were on the screen.

Batman talked like he had a cold. I don’t know if it was because he had cotton balls up his nose or what. If you watched him closely when he was speaking, he even talked like he could barely breathe - his tongue didn’t hit the right parts of the inside of his mouth. As a result, he sounded like he needed some Afrin. Way to scare the bad guys, Stuffy!

Gary Oldman did a good job as Commissioner Gordon, but really, no one goes to see a Batman movie because of the dude who is playing Commissioner Gordon, so this is irrelevant.

Oh, the stunts were good.

Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine did well, but they played supporting roles. Pretty much what I said about Gary Oldman goes for these two dudes as well.

Heath Ledger was the saving grace of this flick. If he hadn’t been in it, the movie would have fallen completely flat in my book and I would have ended up terribly disappointed in yet another Batman film (the only two I’ve seen that I liked were Tim Burton’s 1989 rendition of Batman, and Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins).

Still, if you haven’t seen it, it’s worth suffering through the bad parts just to watch Heath Ledger’s farewell role, which hopefully will win him an Oscar. I thought the Oscar business was silly the way people were carrying on about it, but then I saw the movie. Heath Ledger’s performance is definitely Academy Award material, even if everything surrounding it is a glorious waste of time.

Posted in That's Entertainment! | no comments

You know you're a geek when...

[ Posted by Rebecca Sun, 27 Jul 2008 06:23:27 GMT ]

…you spend your Saturday night playing Nintendo Wii in a conference room at Cisco.

I really, really, REALLY need a life.

So do my friends.

Posted in Oh, the silliness of me! | 2 comments

Picture of GMa When She Was Young

[ Posted by Rebecca Thu, 24 Jul 2008 20:02:54 GMT ]

I got her dark hair. My sister got everything else.

Posted in Various and Sundry | Tags Gma | 1 comment

The Aftermath of Grief

[ Posted by Rebecca Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:44:08 GMT ]

One of the difficult things about leaving town to go to a funeral and visit with your family is getting your brain back in gear when you return.

Yesterday was very hard. I had the day off from work but had to ride the bus down to campus anyway to take an exam, an exam for which I felt completely unprepared. (Dang, check out that grammar!)

I remember that my eyes couldn’t focus on anything so I ended up staring blankly at the sky while memories rolled around in my head like loose marbles. Or maybe that was just my brain.

I was able to focus pretty well on the test. The memories were only whispering to me then. But the second I left the classroom, they began to scream, shrieking like banshees.

I slept a lot yesterday afternoon, and spent a little time looking at pictures while my eyes teared.

Today is better. I’m not so teary and edgy. The hard part is that I work with seventeen faculty and twenty-five staff who all know why I missed work earlier this week. They are all being nice and asking how everything went and how I’m doing. It’s nice to know they care.

However, when forty-two people bring up your grandmother’s death to you, pretty much all in one day, it doesn’t make it easy to push the idea out of your head and focus on the task at hand.

Just getting through work email this morning is draining, and incredibly tough because I can’t remember what I read just a second ago.

It is the times like these that I am very glad I work for the state. I can invoke warm-body mode and exist and no one really cares.

Tomorrow will be better. No one will have anything new to say to me. I will have had a full day in the world to remind me that it is, in fact, going to keep turning.

Posted in Feeeeeeeelings, nothing more than feeeeeeelings! | no comments

Memories

[ Posted by Rebecca Thu, 24 Jul 2008 01:23:36 GMT ]

It’s interesting how, in the face of death, people immediately forget the flaws of the person they are mourning.

Of course no one says bad things at a funeral. This is not what I mean.

I heard a lot of people say glorious things about my grandmother after the funeral. I heard people talk about how they must have inherited this trait or that trait from her, and that’s how they ended up being the incredibly fabulous people they are.

Maybe my perspective is different because I’m so young. Maybe it’s because when I was born, my grandmother was already old and crotchetiness was beginning to set in.

I don’t remember a free spirit. I don’t remember a patient woman who only spoke kind words. I don’t remember anything like that because I never saw her demonstrate any of those characteristics.

I heard words spoken in anger. I heard words spoken in jealousy and resentment. I heard conspiracy theories.

This doesn’t mean I didn’t and don’t love my grandmother.

She was an inspiration to me. She had a fantastic imagination and held fast to her opinions. She was the world’s greatest canasta player, and had a wonderfully adorable laugh and smile. She was also incredibly difficult to be around most of the time. At least, that’s how I always felt about her.

I wonder if people only say nice things because they feel stifled by the cloud of death and don’t feel free to say anything different. Or maybe it’s because they want to romanticize the person they lost and paint them in false hues of honor and glory.

I personally would rather remember the person as a human.

The scowl and the smile.

The wisdom and the stupidity.

The love and the hatred.

It’s all beautiful.

It’s all worth remembering.

Speaking of memories, with the exception of the service itself, the time I spent with my family in Arkansas was wonderful. While we laughed and cried over old memories, we created new ones.

Here are some that are and will remain very special to me.

1) Seeing my mother’s tears after she viewed my grandmother’s body. I didn’t know she loved her mother-in-law so much.

2) Seeing my aunt laugh hard and smile a lot. She is more herself now than she has been in recent years and I’m glad to see that retirement is bringing good to her life.

3) Hanging out with my uncle. He’s uber sweet and hilarious, and somehow fits perfectly into our bizarre family. He also has excellent taste in music which made the trip up to Arkansas volumes less somber than it would have been without his tunes.

4) Celebrating the potential of the fresh life that exists within my niece and nephew. Children really bring hope into the world. They lighten the air and make it more breathable.

5) Spending a lot of time with my long-lost cousin who lives twenty minutes away from me but who I never get to see because we both are members of the same family and must stick the family policy of never seeing other family members unless it’s absolutely necessary. It was good to ride back to Austin with him and get to know him better as a human with a heart. He’s forever been that fun cousin but seeing a teeny bit of his emotional side was incredible. I was impressed. I feel like we bonded. I don’t know how he feels. He is, after all, a man.

6) Learning things about my grandmother that I never knew. Like how she was a writer. Really? I never knew this? How did that happen? Oh and like how in the 1940s she flew airplanes. How frikkin’ cool is that? Or like how as a young girl, she roamed the hills and mountains of west Texas on a horse. I never knew she had a horse. I thought she hated animals. Or like how my grandfather sang “Goodnight Irene” to her every night, because her name was Irene.

Memories can be painful and pleasant, but in the end I really think even the bad ones are beautiful. There’s a certain something in the difficulty of the human experience that doesn’t compare to anything else. Maybe it’s because during the difficult times we find out who we really are.

Gma was awesome. She contributed to the creation of an awesome, weird, obnoxious, quirky bizarre family that I’m incredibly glad I’m a part of. I don’t fit in anywhere else on earth, but I will always fit in with my family. It’s a good thing to remember.

Posted in Sweet Emotion | Tags family, funeral, Gma, memory | no comments

Sheesh

[ Posted by Rebecca Fri, 18 Jul 2008 14:32:23 GMT ]

I have three blog entries that I’ve started but haven’t posted yet.

One of them is way too long but I can’t decide what to cut.

One of them is really good but only half way finished. I think it’s going to be long too, and then I’ll have to make cuts.

One of them is too angry and needs heavy editing.

I hope I don’t forget to take care of them so I can eventually post them.

I’m quite fond of them. :)

Posted in Oh, the silliness of me! | 2 comments

School

[ Posted by Rebecca Tue, 15 Jul 2008 21:12:01 GMT ]

School started yesterday. I think my class is going to be really good. My professor has an excellent sense of humor.

I don’t know how this will affect my posting. Don’t be worried if you don’t hear from me for five weeks. I’m about to be buried under a massive pile of work.

Peace out.

Posted in Various and Sundry | no comments