Autumn at last...

Good evening,

Today was one of those perfect autumn days. The kind of days that occur far more frequently on the pages of a book or in one's memory than in actuality. Those are the days that I, as I'm sure you know by now, adore the most. It was nearly painful for me to be inside at work all day, although I'm not all too certain what I would have done had I been let loose. Most of the leaves are still firmly attached to the trees here in the Twin Cities and, although they are slowly turning their beautiful shades of crimson and gold, the piles on the ground are far too small for frolicking. There's something about the autumn that makes me smile. I realize that it is quite odd... that a mere season could produce a physical reaction within me, but it's the truth. There's something about combining cool air with warm colors that I will always love.

I was hoping to approach the computer tonight with something intelligent or inspiring to write about, but I fear I have nothing of the sort. What I do have, however, is a headache and I think the best remedy for that is the cold side of the pillow.

Goodnight friends.
Until next time,
Tempa

Comedy at it's finest....or something

Hey Hey! It's been a while since we've last talked... and by "we've last talked"... I mean I've talked and you've listened. But, in my defense, I do have a good excuse. Between work, my best friend's upcoming nuptials, all the new fall activities starting up, AND somehow contracting bronchitis... I've been swamped. But... luckily (or unfortunately, however you want to look at it) for you... I have found just enough time to type out a small, yet meaningful, blog entry tonight before my weary head hits the cold pillow that awaits me in my bedroom.

Tonight, I went downtown with a friend to the comedy club. Now, for those of you who know me... you know that I love to make people laugh and more than that, I love to laugh myself. So, a Saturday night with friends at a comedy club is pretty much perfect. Add in a cold glass of raspberry iced tea and a tall, dark, and handsome man who happens to call me his lady and you've got yourself my personal utopia. But I digress...While watching Paul F. Tomkins (of 'Best Week Ever' fame) do his stand up routine, I thought to myself "Self, that must be an AWESOME job!" Just standing up (no pun intended) and talking while making people laugh so hard they very nearly wet themselves. I would LOVE that. This comedy club has an amateur night every Monday and I am kind of considering trying that out. Granted, I would go see a few first, but I think I'd do Ok. People laugh at what I say. My whole life people have told me I was funny and although the smart-ass's usually follow that quasi-compliment with "yeah, funny looking", I can still make them laugh. I know exactly what my bits would be about to. Let me outline them for you...

I would definitely gear most of my stand up act to people in my peer group. Those 35 and up need not attend. First, I would talk about all the different kinds of drunks one encounters during the college years. You know... the "flirtatious touchers" who start a conversation in a chair across the room and somehow end up with their hand on your leg while playing with your hair. Or there's "Mr. Philosophical"... who, while intoxicated, is able to speak eloquently about any and every topic. The one who is dumb as a rock and sleeps during class, but, due to a few too many bottles of Rolling Rock, is somehow able to have in depth opinions about politics and religion. Then... the worst of them all... there is the "close talker". The reasons I hate this drunk are two-fold. A-This person more than likely has silently sat behind you in Biology 201 for the last 5 months, but only NOW finds it necessary to start up a conversation....B- She finds the need to have this incredibly pointless conversation while placing her mouth at a maximum of 2 inches from your inner ear canal causing one whole side of your newly washed hair to inevitably reek of Budweiser. Damn, that close talker!!
I would also have some joke about how my generation watched FAR too much television as children; telling the story about how my sophomore year roommate and I had a 45 minute conversation ONLY using quotes from various episodes of 'Full House' as a prime example. Somehow, after that ridiculous (but sooo true!) story, I would transition into how we had some crazy messed up toys as kids. I mean, think about it. The toys we held most dear are CREEPY as hell when you look at what they really were. Teddy Ruxpin- a small, fur-covered, plasticy teddy bear in which cassette tapes would be inserted into his belly in order for his mouth to move and tell a story. Basically... a forest themed version of Chucky. Also... the "Glow-worm"... whose dumbass idea was it to give their kid a giant slug dressed as Rip Van Winkle that lights up when you hug it. That is creepy. And, of course, Popples. Look Johnny, my soccer ball turns into a small creature with devil eyes and a horse tail! What did you get for Christmas?!?
I'd somehow transition that into talking about computers and talk about the idea of different fonts. Like.. the whole reason there are fonts in the 1st place is to attempt to convey emotions and attitudes through your writing. That is all well and good, but what if we talked in "fonts". I would, of course, pick some of the most known and funny fonts to convert into words and probably make myself laugh faaaaaaaaar harder than anyone who may be listening.

Ok... well, that's pretty much my stand up routine in a nut-shell. I realize it is much funnier in my head, but at least I know I'd be laughing. Now that that took much longer than I thought it would, that weary head I mentioned earlier is much wearier and that cold pillow that awaits me is currently the perfect temperature. Maybe when I get there I'll dream about that tall, dark and handsome who happens to call me his lady :)

Goodnight all,
Tempa

50 things you didn't know about me...

Three days in a row!! I think I'm going for some sort of blogging record here! Ok, I thought it was about time for another list... we all know how I love lists :) Without further ado.... 50 things you didn't (or maybe did) know about me....

1. I have lived in 6 different states
2. I'm not good with money
3. I'm in love with the idea of love
4. I like to write
5. I don't like my handwriting
6. I taught myself how to play the guitar
7. I get annoyed when people have the victim mentality
8. I am very afraid of fog, heights and insects with stingers
9. I am really interested in the holocaust
10. I drive at least 10 over the speed limit
11. I don't always shower everyday
12. I sing in the car... no matter what
13. I don't do my laundry until I have nothing left to wear
14. They say that you are drawn to people of the same "attractiveness" level. My best friends have always been very attractive.
15. I don't believe what 'they say'.
16. I don't fear death
17. I have never seen the Sound of Music in it's entirety
19. I could spend all day in the scrapbook store
20. I don't always know how to carry out good ideas.
21. I am right handed
22. I'm 'right-brained'
23. I don't like being the "funny one"
24. I use too many commas
25. I watch TLC far too much
26. I love the smell of coffee
27. I want 3 kids... 2 boys and 1 girl
28. I think Jason Mraz is the second best male musician in the world
29. Second only to Harry Connick, Jr.
30. My room is very very messy right now
31. My favorite colors are chocolate brown and pink
32. I suck at all sports, even bocci ball.
33. I'm 5' 8 1/2"
34. I like straightening my hair, but it takes to long
35. Celebrity Gossip is my vice
36. I've never been in love, but he has and sometimes that makes me angry
37. I am awed by medical mysteries (autism, alzheimer's...etc)
38. I would fill my house with fall scented candles if I could afford it
39. My parents used to call me "peachfuzz"
40. I like to vacuum
41. I wish I was far more artsy than I am
42. I like thunderstorms
43. I have never been to the movies by myself
44. I buy new gym shoes every 6 months
45. I played Dungeons and Dragons one time in high school
46. I am not yet OK with the fact that I may never be married
47. I think Chili's has the best Chicken Fingers
48. At Starbucks, I always order a "grande iced caramel mocha with no whip"
49. I work with the elderly, but wish I worked with children
50. I have been to Europe 3 times, but have never been west of Iowa

Here's to that,
Temp

Katrina, Growing up, and Gospel

Good evening friends,

First of all... Yes, I did just blog yesterday evening, but when a girls got things to say... she's gonna say them!! Second of all, may this be your warning that I am typing this tonight in a very 'television off-melancholy music on' kind of mood and we all know what that can do to a blog! Read on, my friends, but exercise caution... for I do not know what awaits us...

After watching the relief concert and a few news reels of the happenings down south... my tear-laden eyes have had about enough. I am ridden with an odd combination of helplessness and guilt. I watch the footage of people being rescued from broken attic windows and nomads walking the once populated highways. I want to do what I can to help those people... people who are inevitably exactly like me in some way or another... but I convince myself that I am barely scraping by. Ironically, I somehow find enough to support my ever increasing media habits (3 for $20 DVD's from Blockbuster are hardly "scraping by") and don't think twice before programming my TiVo to record every episode of Big Brother 6 just in case I have to go out when it airs. I, along with many of us, am pretty hypocritical when it comes to giving of what we have earned... or in my case... giving of what we have been given. I'm not really a fan of celebrities who use their status as a platform, but at least they are doing something...at least most of them (Kanye! Quit it with the victim mentality and start doing something about the problem!). They are donating their money, they are speaking out, they are giving of their time and some are giving even of themselves. You don't need a summer blockbuster or a chart-topping album to do the same. I guess what I'm saying is that I'm gonna help, at least I'm going to try, and I think if we all did the same something amazing could take place.

Ok, moving on to something else that has been on my mind. No, smartass, not being single. Lately, I've been thinking a lot about being an adult, a full-fledged "grown up". Growing up is hard, yet everyday we seem to do it a little more. Every discovery, every mistake, every triumph, they tell us how to be older. They, in so many ways, tell us so many times across the span of our childhood that, suddenly, we wake up one morning and that childhood is gone and all we are left with is our confused adult self. It's funny how when we were kids the world was a tough place. Some bully at recess stole the teatherball court or your mom didn't get you a cookie at the grocery store. Small problems for small people. Sure there were tougher times for all of us- braces, divorces, broken bones, friends move away...etc. But here, in Adultville, there's still all of that. The difference is we understand it now. We know why our parents fought and why our best friend had to move Philadelphiahia and we are content in knowing. There are car payments, rent payments, break-ups, make-ups, credit card bills...the list goes on... and our little kid-selves now have to go out and confront it all, head on.

This is terrifying, really.

I mean, I was always up for a good adventure, but by adventure I never meant trying to find a second job or sorting out relationship problems. I meant going to the creek and catching tadpoles with my toes while snaking on Chocolate Dunkeroo's. No offense or anything, but whoever invented this whole 'growing up' thing sure should have thought it all out first :) Oh well... such is life.

Ok, the last thing I want to talk about tonight is music. Not the melancholy-filled acoustic riffs I am treating myself to this evening...I want to talk about gospel music. Down-home, southern comfort gospel! There is something so soulful about it. 'Give me Jesus' sung in the thick, sorrowful voices of gospel artists can honestly bring me to my knees. It's gorgeous in it's roughness. Gospel music, to me, is beautiful tragedy wrapped up in black and white keys and smooth bass. It's the kind of music that you find yourself experiencing. You do more than just listen, you feel it and it's that kind of music that moves me. It makes me want to pick up a guitar and do all I can to make something even remotely as inspired.

In fact... that's what I will do. Moods like the one I am in now can not go to waste.

Blessings, my friends.
Tempa

Autumn

There has always been something romantic about autumn. I thought, at first, it was the newness of it all. A new school year. A new climate. A new start to something that once was. I realize now, as time passes, that it is not the newness, but the sadness of it all that draws me in. There is an element of despondency when summer finally gives up her fight. Maybe it's the way the leaves slowly change from green to red or how we can smell, in the air, the departure of warmth. Nature changes with the seasons, but I think it is in this change- between summer and fall- that we are changed as well. Children leave behind their summer frolic for the anticipation of the upcoming academic year. The warm scent of pumpkin spice (possibly coming from the many autumn scented candles already inhabiting my one bedroom apartment) can bring together a family apart, and lovers are drawn to one another in the chill of the evening air. Even the coldest of hearts can be warmed by the approaching autumn. It's ability to change not only leaves but hearts is part of it's splendor. I am changed by the autumn and somehow, in it's sadnesss, it brings me joy.

In this season of burning leaves and high school football, I wish for you the same joy that is brought to me. I wish for you the joy of a brand new American Eagle hoodie, the peace of watching the small tree outside your window slowly turn from green, to yellow, to a vibrant orange and the hope in knowing that those leaves will be green once again.

Happy Harvest~
Tempa