The Medallion Calls

This be the tale of a landlubbin' crew that be innovative
and chock full 'o entrepreneurship.

Grab some hearty rum, scoot over a nearby keg
and sit yer peg leg down as I tell ye the tale of

PIRATE INK

Ye see, it all started in a deep dark pit near

the Island of Social Netwerkin' in the city of Twittargggh . . .

And as a response, yers truly, Peg Leg Shenanigans

has created a shiny new design for Pirate Ink!

So ye be sure to stop on by when the rum's gone an' my

team of scalliwags will put a nice little ink stain on yer bones!

Ye may be wonderin' who some of our high profile clients are, and since yer so curious, you can spot some of them in this here video:

Santariffic

Who's excited for the Christmas season? 

Well I sure am! I seriously spent the day after Thanksgiving decorating for Christmas; and I pretty much listen to Christmas songs year-round. Don't get me wrong, I celebrated Thanksgiving with tons of love and thanks and turkey, but there's just something magical about Christmas.

It's comforting knowing that my friends are EQUALLY (if not more) excited about the Christmas season as well. And so, today, I wanted to share with you some words of wisdom from two amazing friends of mine.

David Atkins & Kat Crosby

David was part of MCA and one of my students when I was the Media Director there. I loved having him on my team and I loved hanging out with him all over the ATX. He's funny and he's put up with so much of my shenanigans—for that, he should get a Nobel Peace Prize! What's more, is that he found an equally amazing woman to share love with. Her name is Kat and not only is she one of the cutest, sweetest, and completely lovely women I know, but her genuine love and care for people encourages me so much! It means so much to me to have friends in my life who not only understand me when I'm letting my freak flag fly, but who also know how to join in the fun! They are such a wonderful couple and I look forward to spending more quality time with them when I go home for the holidays.

Speaking of holidays, 

here is a step-by-step tutorial courtesy of Kat and David of

"HOW TO TAKE
A PICTURE
WITH SANTA"

well, kids, I hope you learned something today ;)

Stadium Arcadium

Last night I had dinner with the Irwins, but before we sat down at the table, we were watching the World Series. The fact that at first I didn't know which team was Texas and which one was San Francisco tells you just a little bit about my knowledge of sports. It wasn't until one of the Texas players turned around and I saw the big TEXAS across his (ugly, might I add) jersey that I realized who was who. That said, it made me think back to the time this summer when I played softball. I mean, we're not major league YET . . . okay, or at all. But it was genuinely fun—not because I knew what was going on, because most of the time I didn't—but because it allowed me to spend time outdoors having fun with friends. Today I finally got around to editing my softball photos.

And looking back on all the fun I had, I'd like to dedicate today's post to

TOP TEN REASONS WHY
I WILL NEVER PLAY IN THE WORLD SERIES:

10. Odds are more likely that I'd get my cleat stuck in the toilet while changing before the game.

9.  I don't even own my own mitt. Legit.

8. Converse shoes don't really have great traction for running bases.

7. They say "batter up" and I ask what flavor they're offering.

6. Baseball pants don't come in electric blue.

5. They don't allow you to wear beaded necklaces in the big leagues.

4. When catching a ball: "I got it! I got it! . . .  SQUIRREL!"

3. My idea of a pop-fly involves Thanksgiving and some old jeans.

2. They chant "Be the ball," and I curl up in a ball and scream "DON'T HIT ME!"

1. I actually confessed to someone this season that I thought that Ken Griffey Jr. played baseball with Babe Ruth and was a baseball legend.

. . . so yeah, all of these—plus the fact that I don't want to, have never trained for the position, and a ton of other factors. Oh well, at least I know I'm prime for a short-term softball league! And really folks, that's all I need! :)

GO RANGERS!!

GO GIANTS!!

GO WHOEVER IS GONNA WIN!!

We Didn't Start The Fire

As a young girl, I was lucky enough to learn the fine art of using a hot glue gun  to decorate knick knacks with fake jewels. My hot glue gun skills were  rivaled  only by my ability to weild a bottle of puffy paint. For the longest time, I was sure my hot glue gun skills would lay waste and never come in handy. Today, that all changed.

It's getting a bit colder here and though I tried my best to brave the elements, I resorted to turning on the heater in my office. About 10 minutes later, our IT guy came into my office and asked, "What is that smell?!" I took in a whiff and said, "Hmm. It smells like hot glue gun. That's weird."

So after moving my desk and searching all over my office for the origin of the smell, we discovered that a pen had fallen into the heating grate and was melting onto the panels. I think it's safe to say we were mildly worried. After turning off the heater, thus preventing more toxins burning in the air, we aired out the office and retrieved the melted pen. We then decided that until we get it fixed I should either use one of the office space heaters or invest in a triple-layer Snuggie.  After hearing that temperatures are going to be dropping significantly next week, I'm contemplating moving my office to Hawaii. ;p

I've also taken the liberty to change my office name from PUBLICATIONS OFFICE to THE FIRESIDE LOUNGE. I think I'll redecorate with jewels outlined in puffy paint. And of course, I'll apply the jewels with a hot glue gun.

The moral of the story: There's never a dull moment in my office. Also, only you (and a combo of tweezers, tongs, and scissors) can prevent office fires

What's This?

K— is ready for Halloween!

It's getting closer to that magic hour . . . Halloween. My housemates and I have already decorated our house for Halloween and we're planning our Halloween party and a trip to a haunted corn maze.

I keep jumping the gun and suggesting we decorate for both Halloween and Christmas. Ka— suggested putting snowflakes on the windows, to which K— adamantly vetoed. I suggested we all take a trip down to California and chop down a redwood tree to decorate as our Christmas tree. K— seems to think we wouldn't make it out of the park, but only because she isn't aware of my childhood klepto skills. Jk. I won't steal a tree . . . unless it's one of those Reese's chocolate trees . . . okay but maybe I wouldn't steal those either.

One thing that I have set as a goal for this month is to learn the Thriller dance. K— is mandating that I perform it for the house on October 30th. Wish me luck guys!

It's In Your Blood

I think if I was a Care Bear, I would choose to be Playful Heart Monkey. And just FYI, I totally count the Care Bear Cousins in the generality of "Care Bears," so Playful Heart TOTALLY counts!

Like Playful Heart Monkey, the world is my playground!
Take today for instance.
You see this bear?

Yeah. This one.
Well, today, this bear was my accomplice.

Every Wednesday, I attend a staff meeting at work. We usually go over all the basics: Buildings and Grounds, Publications, Computers, Office, and Appreciations. Appreciations is a new category we recently added to our meetings. It gives us an opportunity to share a short, sweet appreciation of someone on staff for something great we've noticed.

Today, a small number of other staff members and myself arrived to the meeting early and we were sharing some fun banter. Generally my co-worker H— sits in the same seat for staff meetings, but today I dared him to sit in a different spot just for fun and to shake things up a bit. After he moved, we laughed and then we all noticed the little bear you see above. It was just randomly sitting there, chillaxin' on the couch. So I schemed with my other co-worker, S— to coerce H— into "appreciating" the bear when it came time for the Appreciations category in the meeting.

The meeting was fun and light, and so when it came time for Appreciations, I looked over at H— and gave him the raised eyebrows hinting look. He looked at me, eyes wide, and then I motioned with my eyes toward the bear and he looked at it, looked back at me, and broke into a bright-eyed chuckle. Well after that, it was all over for me, I LOST it and started laughing and snorting. I just kept imagining what he would have said about the bear—how quietly it was sitting, how attentive it was, how even though it was blue it was seemingly happy. We dismissed shortly after that, and even though the bear never got its due appreciation, we laughed all the way out the door!

I LOVE staff meetings and I LOVE that I work with people who know how to have fun!

She Paints Me Blue

If anyone would have tried to convince me that rooms have minds of their own, I would say it was rubbish and they need to get their head checked. But after spending the majority of the day painting the new youth room at Westside, I may have to agree with them.





Yesterday H.Stubbs and I started priming the walls of the youth room and oh man it was wild. From trying to keep the tarps from getting snagged on furniture, to paint tape falling out of windows, to accidentally backing into painted walls, laughs were in full effect. We finally got done taping around 5:00 and got a little bit of the priming done by 6:00 when I took her home for dinner.

After dinner, I headed back to Westside to try to finish up. I didn't realize that in the time I had been gone, the room was taking time to scheme a plan to make sure I didn't finish painting it. As I started where I'd left off, some of the tape began peeling in various places (I'm guessing from the heat) so I had to go to those spots and press the tape down firmly. Then, as I was dragging the tarp to a new section down the wall, the bucket of Killz ran into something (I'm still not sure what) and the bucket tipped, causing a bunch of the Killz to fall onto the tarp. At first I was panicked—"How in the world am I going to get all of this cleaned up? And now how am I going to have enough primer to finish the job?!?" So then I did what anyone would do. I made the tarp my new paint tray and used all the primer I could before moving on to the rest of the bucket.


As I continued priming, I noticed there were drips on the previous paint that I hadn't noticed before that must have been from a milk challenge or something from the previous youth group era. The primer did not like the drips and kept leaving the lines on the wall so I had to go over those ares with more primer. Finally 10:30 p.m. rolled around and I called it a night. Despite a few minor setbacks, I'm really glad this painting is underway and I'm even more excited to see the end result!

This week, my evenings will mostly be spent in that room trying to get the paint job finished. I'm hoping that somewhere along the way, the room and I will see eye to eye and it will accept that its getting a new coat of paint!

Pride and Joy

At my job, we have a meeting every morning where we all gather in the main office and say one good thing that happened the day before or that morning. We also have volunteers that join us. For the past couple of weeks, I've had one of the volunteers working with me in my office. It's been hilarious and we've exchanged banter about our hometowns—she's from New Mexico, I'm from Texas. In fact, she calls me "Texas." It's quite humorous actually. Yesterday I wore my UT shirt to work.

She kept making jokes about the hideousness of the shirt and it was so funny seeing her make faces when she saw the shirt. Well today in our morning meeting, she said that after seeing my shirt yesterday, she decided to "fix" the shirt and wear it in my honor:

It was hilarious! I wasn't completely offended, but it definitely fueled my feisty fun side! So in further creative retaliation, here's what I'm doing:

I printed out 2 pages worth of these suckers and right now I'm coloring them and I'm going to put her name in the center of each of them and stick them up in random places where I know she'll be. I'm also going to decorate her mailbox in the office with some fun UT paraphernalia. I've also downloaded the UT Fight Song and Deep In The Heart Of Texas to play really loud from my computer speakers every time she walks into my office.

The funny thing is, there's another volunteer here from Texas who has agreed to team up with me in the shenanigans and at first she asked, "What is the symbol for New Mexico?" and I was like, "I dunno. I never knew they had one." Then we both cracked up because we realized neither of us really gave enough thought about New Mexico to know more than the fact that it was a state. But man oh man, these office shenanigans are gonna be hilarious!

VIDEO BLOG: Send In The Clowns (Vacation Recap)

Sarah, Honest Abe, & Me

Once upon a time, I wore a pair of snowflake pajama pants for 24 hours. True Story.

Saturday, July 3rd was my best friend Sarah's birthday. It was ALSO the day of the Dundalk Heritage Parade. I woke up at 4:30 that morning to help prepare breakfast for Sarah's family so that Ms. Shelley (her mom) could get some rest and recover from the hectic day before. I was MORE than happy to do it . . . my body on the other hand, demanded rest after breakfast was over.

I knew we were going to be watching the parade later that morning, so I went upstairs to download my photos from the day before. The funny thing is I don't even remember falling asleep. Sarah's friend Liz came to wake me up just 5 minutes before the parade, and as I was wiping the sleepies from my eyes, she asked me if I would do her a HUGE favor and put on the outfit she was holding and help her with curbside commentary to entertain Sarah's dad during the parade. I was MORE than happy to oblige—I was barely awake, but still happy to oblige. I was under the assumption that I was going to be sitting by her dad making funny remarks. What ended up happening was that someone handed me a megaphone and told me to go out into the street and get the neighborhood excited about the parade and give some commentary.

I tried to get each commentator break on film, but was only able to get some. I'd like to think of that as an act of God. ;)

I can't even begin to describe what supernatural force of energy overtook me, but it was POWERFUL. You guys, I HADN'T EVEN HAD COFFEE! I don't even remember half of what I said, I was just going off the cuff the whole time. Neighbors asked if I would go on a comedy tour (no, I won't), others asked if I was related to the Warners (only in heart & soul), others invited me back next year (for sure!). It was overwhelming and fun all at the same time. I think the best part was leading the entire neighborhood in singing HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my best friend!

Here is a video of the shenanigans:

And here are some photos from the day:

Liz and I -aka- Martha May and Connie Constantine

One of the Dundalk "Hons" marching in the parade
They're called "Hons" because they always call ya "Hon"

I got to enjoy the parade with Beethoven

After the parade was over, I got to give Sarah my birthday gift to her: 2 skeins of her favorite yarn! I had sneakily purchased them in New York at Seaport Yarn, which was this little yarn shop she fell in LOVE with! It was tricky hiding it from her, but I managed to get away with it and she was SO excited to get her yarn! And she loved the birthday card I gave her, which was from Plain Jane's Cards. And I got to sing the "Make New Friends But Keep The Old" song to her. It was the perfect day to celebrate my best friend!

Under Control

I've been working since 7 a.m. and I'll probably be working LATE tonight to get deadlines met, which have been moved up by 2 days! Let me just say that working on 3 journals simultaneously with 2 of them having major deadlines before I fly to the east coast in 9 days is INSANITY! But I agreed to do it and I can see the end of the deadlines drawing near and I CAN DO IT! I may not get much sleep in the meantime, but the way I see it, I can sleep on the plane right? Let's just hope I don't sleep through my connecting flights ;)

I'm in need of some humor today, so I'll just leave this here:

PS: this is only the beginning of the ridiculous that is sleep deprivation . . .

Tell Me Something Good

Okay so these past couple of days have been filled with so many verbal highlights!

Here are a few I will share with you.

1. Apparently, my accent is confusing. Let me first state that I don't think I have a "typical" Texas accent (whatever that even means). Also, I've been surrounded by friends from all over, and my vocabular has an incredible ability to adopt different phrases and intonations. This wouldn't seem so weird if most of my friends were from a specific region, but as it stands, they're seriously from all over—Baltimore, Atlanta, East Texas, Louisiana, California, etc. So as I was on the phone with my best friend, Sarah, who I'm going to be flying out to see in 2 weeks, I said something and she just starts laughing. And I was like, "Dude! Are you laughing at me?" and she goes, "Yeah. How close ARE you to Canada? Earlier you said something and you were like, 'I should, eh?' and just now you said, 'I think I'll probably fly in to BWI, yeah?"" Needless to say, I did it subconsciously and we both laughed so much after that.

2. Let this be a warning to you all. So I went out to dinner with some of my small group friends, and we ate dinner at Saffron Grill before heading out to go see a movie. And I gotta admit, I may have had one too many cups of chai. The jokes were seriously just pouring out of my mouth and there were a few moments I was laughing so much that I switched into silent laugh mode! Then towards the end of the meal, my friend Stephanie said something along the lines of, "Amanda, I think our other small group was safer for you. We didn't go out in public as much." This, of course, only made me laugh more . . . cause it's SO true! People, you gotta realize—when you take me out in public with you, you're taking a pretty big risk for a multitude of shenanigans to ensue.

3. Movie watching is a commentator sport where I'm concerned. After dinner, we went to The Crest to go see CLASH OF THE TITANS (which I will forever lovingly refer to as "Clash of the Titians") And me and Laura McGreggor just kept making ALLLLLL sorts of commentary throughout the movie. Okay to be honest, it wasn't great, so it warranted some Mystery Science Theater interruptions. But I think I realized just how prevalent it was during a scene where Perseus is sent a Pegasus down from Mount Olympus as a gift, and I couldn't restrain myself as I belted out loud, "Wait! How come he gets a pony?!? For crying out loud! I want a pony!"

I realize that my little quirks may dwindle down my relationship pool, but let it be known, that no matter what happens or where I go in life, I will never cease to be entertained. And I'm okay with that.

You're So Vain

So originally I was going to write a post about my new haircut that I'm absolutely in love with! However, last night was filled with all sorts of Twitter shenanigans and I'd feel like I was cheating everyone from truly enjoying all the best parts of my life if I didn't feature it today.

So I'll just let you know that last night I got my haircut at VAIN here in Seattle (for $15!!) and I'm in love with my hair!



And now we'll get on to the real highlight—cause let's be honest, my hair will be cut again, but the conversation you're about to peek-in on won't be repeated. I mean, maybe it could, but that would just be silly. In any event, enjoy these shenanigans!

I've been lucky enough to make some awesome friends on Twitter. So much so, that I have a tentative meet-up planned as soon as my travel dates for my Baltimore/NY trip is confirmed. :D Two of my newer friends are @Pandabear2442 and @parachutefancom! They are both fellow fans of Parachute and one of them runs one of my favorite sites ever: PARACHUTEFAN.COM! So, Parachutefancom asked me this question on my Formspring yesterday:

(click image to enlarge)

I then tweeted about it (via Twitter—for those not familiar with the lingo) and then the shenanigans ensued!

(click image to enlarge)

And that link leads to this>

And so we carry on . . .

Then all of a sudden, my web browser crashed!

And for the record, I really DID submit this form just as you see it here

Jenny's link>

Jenny knows the perfect way to cap off the night!

And what's better than a funny Twitter conversation? Enjoying it the next morning!

Who knew indeed? ;p