Peppered Thought – The Spice of Life

While watching Law and Order: SVU a while back, they kept bringing up people’s “rap sheets,” so I got to wondering where that term comes from and if it is ever used anywhere else.

Rap Sheet

Could mean a rap on the knuckles and what have you, but the formal police slang comes from the abbreviation for Record of Arrest and Prosecution. Easier to find out than I thought.

Very interesting tidbit…

I was reading Sarah Wilson’s post about taking this test and realized it had been quite a while since I had taken one myself, so I figured it would be fun to see if my world view had changed. Want to take it yourself? Go here.

Answer: it has, but not very much. I am more questionable of what happens after death, but almost everything else is the same.

I would have to say I pretty much agree with my 100% result of Universalism, but there is much room for interpretation. There are different kinds of Universalism (Christian, Sikh, Hindu) and each has a slightly different belief in the all-encompassing Universalism name. So I like the idea that all the religions of the world are true and flow to the same mighty Answer, but I disagree with a lot of other ideas that brings along with it.

The bottom of my list is Catholicism and Jehovah’s Witness. In my mind this is due to the somewhat true but sensationalized stereotypes of these two religions being extremely strict, and having no fun. No celebrations of birthdays, the jokes of “mourning for your faith” instead of celebrating. I’m not the kind of girl who goes spouting off about religion (even though I have taken so many religious/anthropology classes I could have a degree in the subject), but I find that I get really panicky when people talk about right and wrong in terms of beliefs.

So, that’s my out-of-left-field religion rant.

Oh, one more thing: I do believe that more beliefs and ideas about conducting your life should include revering Nature.

Although as I grow older and summers aren’t as big time – wise (three months with no obligations?! Sign me up!), They still have their moments of utter contentment. But I just thought I would write about some of my favorite summer memories today, as the kiddies toddle back to school.

•  Spending a month with my Nana in Prescott. That was always a major highlight, because of all the possibilities. My relatives would come and bring me things (I still have The Secret Garden book my aunt gave me when I decided to hang out with her instead of go to Mass with my Nana!), I would get to help my grandma in a garden that would actually sprout things, and all my cousins were here so if I ever got bored by myself (which rarely happened), I could go and freeze some soda for a summer slushie with one of them. Yes, my cousin Muffin and I used to freeze soda into bowls and sit on the stoop and scrape away at our ghetto slushies.
• Swimming for hours upon hours with my dad and sister. My dad lived in an apartment with the best pool ever. It went super deep, was always clean, and we would never want to leave. I remember on more than one occasion my sister and I would be begging my dad to stay just a little bit longer, and our lips would be purple it was so cold in the pool.
• Making summer foods. Besides the above Soda Slushies, my cousin and I would also get as many fruits as we could round up and slice them all up into mounds of fruit salad. My favorite were the blackberries and bananas, which there were never enough of! My dad would also encourage my sister and I to think up fruits to put in popsicles, but we usually just stuck with strawberries. I also recall making lots of pudding and being impatient for it to fully form in the fridge. That pudding was always amazing because the wait was so excruciating.
•  Nothing. I am truly in awe thinking about the time of my life I didn’t have to do anything, with the exception of the odd-job (cleanup the house, wash the car). Summer was all mine. Discovering hobo castles in the wash behind my house, reading until my eyes crossed, trying to entertain my sister by playing dressup with my mom’s Stevie Nicks’-inspired outfits. Or, just lying around, listening to the fan spin madly. Truly magical.

What are your favorite summer memories?

My glass is always half full.

So, with my love of lists and extreme optimism on my part, I have started thinking about things I have wanted to do. I decided that some of these things would never be done if I didn’t have a deadline, so i decided to make a list of things I have want to do before I turn 27. I have started a little late, considering I only have about 9 months left of being 26, but I am a sucker for procrastinating and working well under pressure. Without further ado, the LIST:

1. Another tattoo, or a beautiful touch-up of my existing ones

2. Get down to ideal weight (including some killer muscles!)

3. Make a vlog

4. Start a photo-folio

5. Begin writing my screenplay

6. Help out at a women’s shelter

7. Successfully grow a garden

8. Sew my own dress

9. Babysit

10. Take pictures in photobooths with all my closest friends (though maybe not all at once)

11. Do something for my mom she has been putting off doing herself

12. Having a significant amount of clutter released from my house and into the wild

13. Stay in an historic hotel

14. Have a girls night out

15. Road trip!

16. Have written a short story everyday for at least 3 months

17. Get all my craft hurricanes sorted and organized

18. Bake at least 3 new desserts and 3 new dinners

19. Photograph lightning

20. Watch a meteor shower

21. Bike to a destination (work, gym, store)

22. Not get into debt over Christmas

23. Visit friends in another city

24. Visit and help my grandma with yardwork and cleaning

25. Get my car running in tip-top shape (mostly) by myself

26. Shoot a short movie

27. Read a classic I have never read before

can’t remember where I found this.

So, as a follow-up to yesterday’s post, here are my findings of a day off the computer:

1. I do work a little better when I force myself off the computer (imagine my surprise.), but then I find other distractions. Sundays when i should be doing home chores like laundry, all I want to do is GoogleRead. On days I have all the computer time in the world, I start to scrub walls. Whatever, motivation center of the brain.

2. Continually flipping records to play certain songs gets tiring when you get really into working on something.

3. Something always happens to disrupt my process. It’s usually lunch with friends or family. Which I celebrate, but when I get back, the last thing I want to do is clean up my morning mess.

4. I really do love letter-writing, I just have to have a pile of letters to write to get in the groove. But it is so much fun to pack envelopes full of fun stuff!

5. I need to stop making the computer an excuse and set my legs aflame to get stuff done!

Grabbing the Brass Ring

photo credit

When I heard this expression, it was from a really cool Canadian visitor at work. I had no idea what he was referring to. He was talking about how he wanted to buy a winter home out here and finally “grab that brass ring.” I thought it was some random Canadian expression (they have brass rings as gifts when they buy a house? They win houses grabbing a brass ring?), and as he left, I immediately headed to the internet to investigate. Turns out that brass rings were a prize when you rode a carousel! Imagine, one of my favorite li’l kid things to do to this day, and I had never heard of this expression!

This is how it goes: You ride the carousel, fancy free, and you get a chance to pull an iron ring out of this dispenser as you ride around. At some, you can try and throw it through things to get a prize, but for most of them, the person who got the brass ring won a big prize. It was usually a free ride.

The expression came to mean ”living life to the fullest” and what it is normally used for today.

It makes me feel all generous and kickass. I want to help everyone get out there and grab their own brass ring!