Day 2: Ban-Fff-Fff

Sorry for multiple posts in one day, I’m trying to catch up.

Day Two: A Room with a View
Today’s Prompt: If you could zoom through space in the speed of light, what place would you go to right now?

“Ban Fff Fff”

Apparently I’m still on motorhome memories spawned by yesterdays prompt. Right now I want to go back in time to a day during that same motorhome trip that ended in the fire. We were traveling westward across Canada and stopped for a day in Banff, which is town in the Canadian rockies. I think it’s a ski town in winter but this was August so there wasn’t exactly powder covered slopes going on.

Anyway, we took a gondola up to this series on walkways, boardwalks really, that snaked through the mountains a bit. It was actually cold enough to wear a light jacket and there was a dusting of snow in some places, as well as some snow caps visible on neighboring peaks. My siblings and I (there are 4 of us) are all in the upper elementary to sophomore in HS ages, but we live in California so seeing any snow made us act like a herd of 5 five years. You know, all goofy, and running from place to place. Hello, there was snow! In August! It’s only ever snowed for ten minutes one winter where we grew up. I was the oldest, but none of my friends were there so heck yeah I was going to act stupid. Is that not why you go on vacation? To see stuff and then act dumb? No, just my family? Whatever, we’re awesome.

The boardwalks themselves were fairly wide, at least 10-12 feet across in most spaces, and made of a lighter wood. Not sure what kind, but it was weathered to the point where it was almost white in appearance. There was a railing on either side, and larger platforms where the views were best. I’m pretty sure that part of it looked out into a valley kind of stuck in the middle of the rocky mountains. I remember giant grey rocks, dark pine trees and a view onto a grassy area. The air was crisp. not quite cold enough to make your nose tingle, but enough to be pleasant and invigorating. There were a lot of squirrels too. The kind of squirrels that are enormous because you know people feed them day in and day despite multiple signs asking them not to.

At one point my Mom snapped a picture of my Dad and I looking out over one of the rails. My mom must have stolen the camera from him because he was taking too many scenery shots. That was a something of a joke in our family; Dad took pictures of scenery and objects, while Mom took pictures of people.

Wait! I just remembered that the photo she took ended up in my HS yearbook. A girl I sat with in history was in charge of doing a page on summer travels and she asked me for something. I just went and found it and I’m cracking up. I’m wearing a mini backpack, and you can only just barely see them, but I’m wearing plaid pajama pants too. Of course I wore PJs up a mountain! I also see that I hand edited the yearbook caption because it claims that I took the photo. Which i obviously didn’t since I’m in it, and my high school self was not going to let that mistake fly! It also reads like we spent the entire vacation in Banff when it was just a one day stop on a month long trip. Anyway, you can see that we were over looking a valley so I remembered that part right at least.

After wandering around and taking in the views, we headed back down the gondola. Our whole family didn’t fit in one of the cars (is that what they’re called?), so my brothers and I rode in one, while my sister took another with my parents. For some reason, my parents decided to entrust the video camera to us for the ride down. Let us get some footage from our point of view. Apparently our point of view entailed using the camera to locate the motorhome in the parking lot, zoom in on it, and giggle a bunch. I’m telling you, my mother had the patience of a saint driving around with us for a whole month.

So that’s what we did on our stop in Banff. Which to this day we pronounce, “Ban. Fff. Fff.” on account of being complete weirdos. I think we also saw some deer by the gift shop. In my brain there is an idea that there is a deer related side story that goes with this particular day but I can’t remember what it is. Maybe there was a herd of them, in the middle of the street or something. Man, I know there is something about deer in strange places but I can’t figure out what it is.

That’s where I’d go. To a fun day with family in which we did some fun things, saw some cool stuff, and generally acted silly. A lot of that trip was like that actually. I’m sure that teenage me did lots of whining in between (in fact I know I did) but it really was a good trip. We have another big family trip coming up in a few weeks. All the siblings, and now several spouses and a few kiddos. My Dad won’t be with us as he passed away a little over a year ago. Maybe that’s why this memory came to me. To remember fun with the whole family as it once was.

Well Hello there

Ive been neglecting this blog for quite sometime. I’ve been focused on my second blog (dustbathbeauty.wordpress.com), which has a beauty focus, but I’m looking to expand it into a health and lifestyle blog as well.

Anyway, I signed up for word press’s Writing 101 course, and am  already miserably behind. Which figures. It’s basically a bunch of daily writing prompts designed to get you writing and blogging on a regular basis. Posting the results is optional, but I figure it doesn’t hurt. I’m putting them here because this blog is more of a personal space without a real focus per say.

Anyway here is the first entry: 20 mins of stream of conscious thoughts

“I’m already behind on this whole writing 101 thing so I”m just going to yell TAX SEASON and leave it at that since it’s my reason for everything I’m behind on these days. That or computer issues. Or my wrist being messed up by me thinking that the time of year where I’m working at a computer the most hours is a good time to see if I can teach myself to knit. Ok, and because of the my little pony app. You play dumb little games but you end up holding the iPad kinda awkward like.

By the way, the wrist thing is my typo excuse for today too. the brace i’m wearing to try and take stress off is a bit tricky to type in. Now I just need an excuse for the other 350 or days days of the year. Truth is I’m just not a great typist. Never have been. I only learned how to touch type when I was 27, before which I was stubbornly committed to the two finger hunt and peck method. I also have smallish hands so I have trouble reaching the shift key sometimes and that mucks me up a lot as well. Between that and the infamous auto-correct, I can come across all but illiterate sometimes.

I probably should have looked at the time before i started. So I’d know when 20 mins is actually up. Oh well, I’ll fudge it. I’m thinking that 20 mins just yammering is going to feel longer than when I end up spending the same amount of time on a comment where I’m really thinking about what I’m saying, and the phrasing and all that. Because those always seem to eat ten times more time than they should. You go in thinking you have a succinct opinion to give and then you end up taking half an hour making sure that what you typed matches what you were thinking in your head, and trying to ward off as many of the ways it could be misconstrued as possible. Which pretty much amounts to a giant unicorn hunt, so at some point you have to just stop yourself, remove about 2 paragraphs from the 2-3 comment you originally intended to write and hit send/comment/return/whatever.

So. things. to write about. I have hedgehog pjs and they are the best ever. I’m wearing them right now. I walked by them at target and they only had maybe 3 and one was my size. It was obviously just waiting for me to get there. I wasn’t even in the pj section it was just across the aisle (just took me three tries to figure out the spelling of that word) where I was shopping for cereal bars. Anyway, next to owls (and chinchillas, and argyle, and the color teal) hedgehogs are one of my favorite things (GUESS WHAT SONG IS IN MY HEAD RIGHT NOW!)((I’ll trade brown paper packages tied up in strong for cardboard packages with Sephora printed on them)). It’s a family thing. My Dad grew up in Germany and hedgehogs used to hide in his basement in the winter. When I was in high school, we took this month long road trip through the middle of the US and Canada and we found these little hedgehog toys at the giftshop at Mt Rushmore. My Dad and I each bought one, and he started collecting them from there.

Side story involving the Rushmore Hedgies; We kept the two hedgehog toys on the dashboard of our motorhome most of the time. On the way back home to california the motorhome actually fire. We had just left a rest stop in Oregon where we’d had breakfast. What happened was that the engine threw a tod that hit the fuel line and set the engine on fire. On my whole family ended up on the side of the freeway watching flames shoot out the windows of the motorhome (and making everyone else late for work, the lady at the car rental was a bit overly excited to have us as proof of why she got in late that AM) until the firetruck could get there and douse the flames. One of the hedgehogs did not survive the fire. The other came out half scorched, and half normal. He became the mascot for our next RV. Because we’re odd like that. Even odder: We named it Sinead O’connor . It was the 90’s, just be glad we didn’t pose it with a photo of the pope.

Alright, it is now 20 ins form the time I remembered to actually look at the time about a paragraph in. I would like to have something witty to say in conclusion, but I don’t.

Happy Halloween!

I’ve been neglecting my blog and youtube channels recently. I have content, but no time to edit properly. Boo. Hiss.

But I was determined to get something up a) by the end of the month, and b) for Halloween.

So here is a brief, and hopefully entertaining post about cookies and an extremely silly video.

Every year I bake pumpkin cookies. It’s a tradition in out family. My grandmother made these cookies every year. Always with M&M eyes, a candy corn nose, and a jelly bean mouth.

I bake with a sweatband on because it gets so hot in the kitchen. No one wants sweat on their cookies.

These days we deviate from the traditional design. This is my scary clown cookie.

And now, let the goofiness commence!

5mins, No Edits: Random Favorites for Aug 2014

Welcome to another edition of 5 mins, no edits. As usual, the only editing done was to add a title and ending.

This one has a five favorites theme, as will the Dustbath Beauty post. Except this video is notably more random.

 

ON TO THE FUN!      

 

Thanks for watching!

 

Baby Alive – A Crappy Review

Here is another review post for Bzzagent.com. This time it’s a Baby Alive Doll. She has some very interesting features. Just watch and you’ll see.

Baby Alive -This the link to the toy on the toys’r’us website. They don’t have the blonde version, though this one looks less creepy somehow.

$40 for a mess you have to constantly clean up seems kinda steep to me. You can buy a “Super Refill” of the diapers and food for $15, or buy diapers or food in individual sets for $6:50 each.

So you are essentially paying for poop. Poop you then get to flush out after every use while your kids are busy making toilet jokes in the next room. Oh, and they’ll never forget to ask for refills since the doll likes to talk about her own bowel movements.

On the other hand, this may be the next great baby shower/white elephant gift.

I don’t think I can give this my kids, but it has tremendous possibilities for adult gags and hilarity.

“Need to liven up your next dinner party?

Want to humiliate your kids at the next family gathering?

It’s Baby Alive! Guaranteed to reduce your guests into giggling teeangers in just two minutes!”

Ok guys, I need to stop before this gets anymore out of hand. Hope you enjoyed our little trip into immaturity, and have a fantastic day!

June/July Personal Update

As the title suggests, this is an update for late June and early July.

I’ve had a tailbone injury for 12 years and every so often it causes extra problems in my lower back. It’s been extra painful lately, and I’d been having sciatica like symptoms, so I had to get steroid shots. The bulk of this video talks about the injury and how the treatment affected me.

Followed by the required goofiness at the end, and bonus chinchilla footage.

Hope you enjoy it!

5 minutes, 0 edits

I’m trying something new. I’m filming for five minutes, and then uploading with no editing other than a title/end photo. (Which explains the extra twelve seconds.)

What do you think?

This way I can get up fast and fun videos on a regular basis.

Let’s Spike a Watermelon!

I recently went camping with some of my family at Mt Madonna in California. I’ll have another post with more details and photos, but first I’d thought we’d start with a camping essential; rum spiked Watermelon!

You can spike a watermelon with pretty much any liquor you like, but all the ones I’ve had used some sort of rum. I’ve had them with Malibu and Sailor Jerry’s, but this time I opted for Bacardi Dragon Berry (dragon-fruit and strawberry flavored). I’d thought about using tequila and midori to make it a great big watermelon margarita, but the store I was shopping at didn’t have midori, so I went another route.

Spiking a melon is pretty simple. All you need is a melon, a knife, a spoon, some skewers, and booze.

Start by cut a circular hole in the rind and pulling out the ‘plug’.

Use a small spoon (I used a teaspoon) to scope out some flesh. One or two spoonfuls will do, you’re just making a spot to pour the booze in.

Next grab some skewers of any type. I used bamboo because they’re what I had handy. Take a skewer and puncture the flesh at multiple angles. You’re making channels for the booze to flow through the melon. Just don’t go so overboard that it turns into pulp, or you won’t be able to slice it. (You can go crazy and then just slice the melon in half and hand out spoons, it’s up to you.) The pics I has of this step didn’t turn out, hopefully you get the jist anyway.

Now it’s time to pour in the party! Pour in your liquor of choice a bit at a time. You want to give it time to flow through the channels and start to sink in. My melon was small so it held about half a cup of rum. The bigger the melon, the more you can pour in.

Once it has reached capacity, replace the plug and let it hang out in the fridge for a few hours or overnight.

Then you’re ready to slice it up and enjoy!

Hope this post was fun (and informative!). Next up should be a life update covering camping, and a bit of a product rant. I did a tour of our yard, but our peach tree fell over today and made me sad. So I either need to refilm, or add on a newer clip. It’s really bumming me out though. Poor tree.

On the radar

Here’s another post to let readers know what is going on as well as what is coming up.

Two reasonably big changes are coming up.

The first mostly effects myself. I have a new camcorder and a copy of Adobe Premiere Elements editing software. So the majority of my videos won’t be filmed on my iPad or edited in iMovie any more. I’m in the process of learning how to use both the camera and the software, so it’s a little slow going. For one thing I can’t edit from bed anymore, it’s all the the PC which feel, odd to me since I’ve been using my iPad for almost all non-work related internet stuff. Browsing, posting, and shopping don’t require a desktop. I’ve also been on a much needed vacation for most of last week, and didn’t have a desktop to work on. My plan is to either watch some tutorials and/or buy a dummies book about premiere. I have a bunch of stuff I’ve filmed with the new camera, so I can practice and hopefully have new content available soon.

The second change is that I’m going to be adding a separate blog and YouTube channel focusing on Bath and Beauty posts. I think I want to keep Jolisblog as more of a personal blog, and have a separate place for all the girly stuff. I could just tag different post different ways but I think it will be simpler for me to separate them, and it won’t isolate reader who come for the random and don’t really want to know what kind of makeup I’ve bought recently. I’ll still link back and forth between the blogs, but it will make it easier for readers to choose the content they want to see.

I have one post filmed for the new channel already. It needs editing (see the first paragraph), and I want the first official post to be an introductory one. Sorry to be so vague but I have something cute planned as a bit of a twist for the beauty channel, and I don’t want to spoil it.

Ideally, once I get the hang of everything, I want to do one post a week and alternate between blogs. It’s possible that this blog might get more text posts vs videos so I can have a little more variety. Life updates are fun, but I’d love to do more of the nostalgia based ones like my childhood horse obsession post.

So, that’s what you have to look forward to. Yay!

(I never know how to do sign offs for posts or videos, it always seems to come out awkward.)

TM-I Give Up

I finally gave up on editing my tmi tag video. I just could not get it under the time limit and still have it be interesting. So instead, I chopped it up into the most random/silly parts.

Here is the video. I’ll be answering the questions in text format just below it.

 

TMI TAG ∙ QUESTIONS:
1: What are you wearing? Pjs -blue shorts, orange top
2: Ever been in love? Yes
3: Ever had a terrible breakup? Terrible, no. Incredibly stupid, yes.
4: How tall are you? 5’9
5: How much do you weigh? 254
6: Any tattoos? Sort of. I have a dot of ink under my skin on my finger from where I stabbed myself with a dirty pen nib in art class.
7: Any piercings? No
8: OTP? Your mom and your dad. Seriously though, I don’t think that much about it. I tend to spend more time disliking fictional couples, than dreaming of them getting together.
9: Favorite show? Of all time? Uh…. That 70’s Show probably.
10: Favorite bands? Owl City, Social Distortion, Foo Fighters, Fitz and the a Tantrums, American Authors
11: Something you miss? Sleeping in on the weekends without being woken up every fifteen minutes by kids running in the halls, or screaming, or whining.
12: Favorite song? Steal my Sunshine -Len
13: How old are you? 33
14: Zodiac sign? Aries
15: Quality you look for in a partner? Someone I can be my incredibly weird, innapropriate and immature self around
16: Favorite Quote? “Life is like a butt, it has smooth parts, but it can fart.”
17: Favorite actor? Staypuft Marshmallow Man
18: Favorite color? Teal
19: Loud music or soft? Usually loud
20: Where do you go when you’re sad? Anywhere I can be by myself, or out for a walk to clear out the brain fuzz
21: How long does it take you to shower? Too long
22: How long does it take you to get ready in the morning? Even longer (hour and a half, two hours if I’m getting the kids up too)
23: Ever been in a physical fight? Not a serious one
24: Turn on? Ask my husband
25: Turn off? Dog farts
26: The reason I joined Youtube? I like attention. I also am on a mission to stop giving a $/-& what people think of me, and putting myself out there is part of that. I’m loud, I’m odd, I go on huge tangents, and I’m a bit socially awkward. It’s also an excuse to play with makeup. Which in turn gives me an excuse to buy it.

27: Fears? Needles/injections, Fish touching me, Frank
28: Last thing that made you cry? Probably something to do with my Dad
29: Last time you said you loved someone? Multiples times to my husband and kids today
30: Meaning behind your YouTube Name? I’m Joli, I have a blog. (And am not very creative. Actually I’ve always hated coming up with names for things. Half the time you don’t know if it feels right until you’ve already committed to it.)
31: Last book you read? Zoology
32: The book you’re currently reading? Allegiant (Divergent book 3)
33: Last show you watched? Hockey
34: Last person you talked to? Russ
35: The relationship between you and the person you last texted? We’re married
36: Favorite food? Varies depending on my mood
37: Place you want to visit? Australia/New Zealand. I also want to take a trip to Philly when the Flyers and Bruins are playing each other because I’ve heard it’s the most obnoxious crowd in the NHL, and that sounds extremely entertaining.
38: Last place you were? The bath tub
39: Do you have a crush? I’m not 13
40: Last time you kissed someone? I just kissed my daughter goodnight
41: Last time you were insulted? To my face? I dunno. I get butthurt over things I think people mean all the time though.
42: Favorite flavor of sweet? Violet
43: What instruments do you play?? I played Flute for two years in HS, sang in choir for four, did one year of jazz choir, and rock out in the shower all the time.
44: Favorite piece of jewelery? I’m not a jewelry person. I don’t even wear my wedding ring because it feels weird.
45: Last sport you played? Air Hockey. No really, I can’t play sports due to a tailbone injury. I walk all the time though.
46: Last song you sang? Bits of “Let it Go” with Maddie.
47: Favorite chat up line? Just watch the video
48: Have you ever used it? No
49: Last time you hung out with anyone? Tuesday night was the end of tax season office part at a high end steak house. Alcohol was consumed.

And then this happened: 

Whatever, they shouldn’t serve cotton candy and still expect people to act like adults.

50: Who should answer these questions next? Anyone bored enough to do so!