Is it just me?

I have a confession to make. Sometimes the little things set me off. It doesn't even have to start with one of those sneaky hate spirals that Ali wrote about on Hyperbole and a Half-- it just springs up out of nowhere. Someone will say something totally innocent and probably not even think when they're saying it, and I'll get kind of ornery about it.

Do you get like that too?

The Nerak is with me often enough so she could probably gauge if I'm overreacting on this, but this is the one that usually gets me.

 And in my head, I'm ALWAYS like: 

I don't know. Some people are more sensitive than others so maybe I'm over-thinking it... I mean, I'm not ornery, am I?

Scrabble Fail

It was the busiest summer this year.

In lieu of writing a gripping yarn about what I did this summer, I thought you would prefer an incredible montage of "snapshots" from the summer. 

This is exactly how it happened... more or less.

Monica's boyfriend got her the new iPad for her birthday.

I have no idea how to draw countless hours on the internet scouring reviews.

After reading every review out there and putting my hands on every kind of tablet on the market, I decided the best thing for me was the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. 

* Actual pick-up line that was actually used on me once.

Turns out, I can doodle and I can make Blogger posts, but Blogger won't upload pictures from the tablet. That's insanely inconvenient.

But what isn't inconvenient is ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING ELSE!!

A lot has happened since I got Sam. I've only been on Lappy about 5 times in the last two months, most of them in the last week, but we're all still friends here. I didn't get Sam with the intention of replacing Lappy. It kind of worked out that way but some things are just easier to do on a computer with a keyboard.

So what all has happened, you ask? What hasn't!

Back to the snapshots of summer:

1) NKOTBSB concert with Tiffany and Angie

2) The Getty Villa in Malibu was awesome.

Hercules and me! 

3) I went to San Francisco

Ok, so this one MIGHT be Photoshopped...

4) Foster the People concert with Sara

First we were like this:

Then this drunk lady dove in and grabbed Sara's wrist and the wrist of some dude and this happened:

Sara couldn't escape.

5) Our intern Steve (from New York but goes to school in Kansas) was talking about heading back to college with our former high school intern Jesse (a 2011 graduate.) This was awesome, but neither of them look anything like this.

Jesse's not mean. That's his thinking face.

(Also, Jesse has lots of hair and Steve has hair and a goatee.)

Publish Post

6) I doodled this on a train.

7) I went to Warped Tour and saw these guys again.

Yeah, they did the same crazy stuff, but this time it was endearing.

8) I discovered Netflix after years of thinking it would be wasted on me. I was able to confirm that my attention span for movies is almost nonexistent, but TV shows? YAAAAYYYY!!!! I've also learned that I've become a serious binge TV-watcher.

That's BBC's Robin Hood. AWESOME show.

9) Speaking of TV shows, my tablet is named for my favorite TV character: Sam Winchester (from Supernatural). I also tend to name things like a 3-year-old (eg. Coby the Cobalt, Lappy the Laptop) so Sammy the Samsung wasn't much of a stretch.

The Nerak emailed me this picture to be my first wallpaper. 

"Real" Sam has luscious, luscious hair.

10) I also became obsessed with Cracked.com and started spending an unhealthy amount of hours reading articles. Hey, I'm learning things here!

Now, I know how utterly geeked you are that I've started blogging again. For your benefit, I'm including a diagram of how to do The Happy Dance. Basically, you move your hands up and down in front of (but not touching) your stomach, like a spastic robot. Hands must be flat with palms toward your body. You can make your own techno music if you want but it isn't necessary. Also, every five hand wiggles or so, tilt your shoulders the opposite way (ie. toward the right or left.)

I even included an overhead shot. 

You're welcome.

NKOTBSB

Back in June I went to my fourth New Kids on the Block concert. To say that I loved the NKOTB as a kid would be a pretty tremendous understatement-- I had everything from tacky rings to bedding, dolls to clothes-- but back in those days, there was no internet to click and buy a ticket. My parents were never going to stand in line outside for hours/days on end to get me tickets to see them and when the guys split up in '94, I knew I would never get to see them play live.

When I was in college at MSU in 2003, my friend Tiffany and I attempted our own New Kids revival. It took a while but in 2008 the NKOTB announced their comeback. Tiffany had our tickets about .32 seconds after they went on sale. We went to a show in October (the greatest day of my life), then one in April, and I went with Jamie in June. It was bit excessive - even for me-- but each show was super different.

Over this past winter, the NKOTB had a new announcement: an upcoming tour with the Backstreet Boys! Incredible!!! Needless to say, our ever-vigilant Tiffany had the tickets right away again. Things were going to be epic.

Our friend Angie came with us-- she was at the October show with us in 2008. Angie and I have a little tension in our friendship because we're both totally in love with Joey McIntyre, but fortunately this time around she was distracted by the BSB so it all worked out in my favor.

We got to the venue and had to do the obligatory chick thing and take 800 pictures of ourselves. (We also stopped at the restroom and laughed our butts off because the Men's Rooms were converted into Ladies' Rooms on account of no respectable guy going to an NKOTBSB concert.)

Although the concert was beyond amazing, my favorite thing of the night happened before the music started.

We got to our seats and tried (unsuccessfully) to take pictures of ourselves when the lady behind us offered to take our picture. We turned around, she took our picture with the stage behind us, and then we sat down. Tiffany-- precious, precious Tiffany...-- started looking through the pictures on her camera and stopped at one we had taken just inside the door when we got there. Angie and I were standing like normal people, and Tiffany was bent to the side like she just jumped in the picture at the last minute.

It looked kinda like this:

Then this happened:

PS: The night before the concert, the Boston Bruins won the Stanley Cup. It was super awesome to see the boys come out in their jerseys.

The Most Confusing Concert Experience Ever.

Last week, Jessica scored some last minute tickets to see Panic! At The Disco. It was a sold out show so she got them just in time, and it was a pretty stinkin' awesome show. We didn't really know much about the opening bands, Foxy Shazam or fun., but I think it was unanimous that the music of all three bands was pretty much fantastic.

The only thing we didn't really get was the performance by Foxy Shazam.

And by didn't get, I mean we were flat out confused. And made uncomfortable. And generally in shock.

It looked like this:

The bass player was balancing his bass upside down on his hand and walking around. The trumpet guy was throwing his trumpet in the air then putting it on the ground and humping it. Keyboard dude would dramatically stand on his keyboard after every song and randomly during some songs. The guitar guy was just standing there playing with this ridiculously huge afro when the lead singer jumped on his shoulders and started humping the dude's head, then he (the singer) was running around the stage like a monkey on his hands and feet and doing sommersaults all over--- The drummer was the most normal dude out there and that's probably just because he was hiding behind the drumset.

To say the very least, it was stimulus overload for Jessica and me. We were like this:

~ UPDATE ~

Upon reading this, the Nerak laughed about how old Jessica and I appear to be in this post, us complaining about the music of today's youth and their wild ways and all.

I said, "Well, we WERE the oldest people there besides the parents who brought their kids... The kids in front of us were like 12!"

So now, I think we must've looked more like this at the concert:

Getting old is sad.