I've always looked up to Amelia Earhart...

I have a new career desire! And if you think my career desires don't go anywhere, think again. I wanted to be a mechanic and became an oil change tech. Not the same thing? No, you're right, it isn't. However, being an oil change tech showed me I probably wasn't going to be keen on the whole mechanic thing. For one, that's back to school. For two, you mess up a car and it costs hundreds to thousands of dollars, and for three, I thought cars fit together like a puzzle with everything in the right spot, but it turns out as often as not either the engineers designed something that no sane mechanic would ever design or the piece rusted on or there are like five other pieces in front of the one you want and you have to remove them all to get to it. Basically, cars end up being a pain. And I discovered this without having to go to school for it, and learned to change my oil and replace my wipers and air filter to boot.

So, now I just need to figure out the halfway step for my next career desire, which is... flying! Yes, I might want to be a pilot. Might cause I don't know. I like flying well enough, although customs get annoying after a while. The starter place for this is a discovery flight, which is where you pay a little airplane service like Hap's Air operating out of a little airport like the Ames one. You give them fifty bucks, they take you up, tell you a bit about flying, and maybe let you touch the controls. If you think this is epic, you try to find a way to pay for additional lessons, and if you hate it you don't come back. Not as many benefits as oil change, but not as much commitment either.

Now before I get into this, I might want to address an issue that would be a deterrent from liking to fly. No, it's not air sickness. No, I'm not afraid of heights  No, it's not if they let pilots have dreadlocks. Granted, I've never seen a pilot with dreadlocks, but the TSA will accuse you of something if you even look at the pilots these days, so I can't say I've seen quite enough to draw a dreadlock conclusion.

The possible deterrent to me liking to fly is that I hate to drive. Now, people who fly know it is nothing like driving. I figure that means it doesn't control like a car and I get that. But is it enough not like driving that I will like instead of hate it? I'm not sure. To be fair, it isn't the act of driving that I hate so much, it's driving around other cars and traffic lights and signs. There have been times I've enjoyed driving and they usually involved heading south on a 55mph highway with no other cars in sight and my radio blasting. And I think maybe flying will be like that. Although I wonder if you could get rock stations in the air. Or if they let you play them.

Granted, I am deathly afraid of taking off and landing. I've seen enough movies to know that can be rough if not deadly. Maybe Die Hard isn't a good thing to base flying experiences on. But that is where they teach you things. I have an inherent fear of being expected to do something I don't know how to do and failing as a result. Well, they wouldn't give me a pilot license if I couldn't land a plane. I hope.

So am I going to run off and be a pilot? And forge checks and date flight attendants and become the James Bond of the skies? Not yet. And probably not the second question. Catch Me If You Can makes being a pilot seem glamorous.

You know what seems glamorous? This picture from Hap's Air website.

Grocery Stores

Does anyone else find grocery stores intimidating?

Oh, it isn't all grocery stores. HyVee is so wide and bright and has a huge frozen food section. But as I don't frequent grocery stores... well, try to avoid frequenting grocery stores... I'm not entirely comfortable in them. Now, back when David and I first moved to West Des Moines, we would try to go grocery shopping once a month. As we both hated it, we'd go together so neither of us got stuck doing it alone. And the "once a month" thing was really more "we haven't had food in the fridge for a week and should probably stop eating out to make up for it" thing.

So on Sunday after church, we'd drive to ALDIs and pick up everything we could imagine. ALDIs is a no-nonsense store with lots of cheap off-brand stuff and some cheap off-brand stuff. What they lack in selection, they make up for in bulk and price. It's like a Sam's Club thrift store. But in ALDIs, everyone has their cart and they start at the beginning and slowly cruise through all the aisles, picking up everything as they go to finally get to the end where they check out, all in a no-nonsense fashion. I easily get bored with David scanning the eggs and milk section and run down to see if I need tortillas or not. But really, the only thing intimidated about ALDIs is getting in the way of all the other no-nonsense people who are there to get the price, although some don't think it's worth the wait at the line. ALDIs is so no-nonsense that they only have like two employees, so if there is a spill, you're down to one register. And then the people in line start to shuffle and think that waiting in line is nonsense and the single cashier is trying to get them through line so fast you practically get launched out the other end.

Hope you brought your debit card, cause they don't take credit. Try to pull that one and watch the person behind you explode.

Well, now I don't go grocery shopping. The few times I rouse myself to think up something for supper, I just go and get the few things I need. I have surprisingly no imagination when it comes to cooking. You may think that odd about an imaginative individual like myself, but just remember that when I eat out, I eat pretty much the same thing every time. Like if we went to Noodles and Co, I'd get steak strogonoff. I don't even have to look at the menu, I know that. McDonalds, I'd get a chicken sandwich. Ok, yeah, there are a few options, but I'm still getting a chicken sandwich. I am the same person who ate a quesadilla at the dining center every day for lunch my entire first semester of college.

So, when I finally decided what to cook, and those being the days that I didn't close at Valvoline, I'd stroll down to HyVee, or just stop there after work. They were right across the street. Now, while ALDIs is cheap, HyVee is probably one of the most expensive grocery stores I know of. However, HyVee was down the street and ALDIs was like a twenty-minute drive. And HyVee has like everything. I'm not sure how a grocery story can seem inviting, but you walk in HyVee and you see Starbucks and their little sitting area, and fruits, and fresh-cut flowers, or the other side with their colorful displays and the wood trim of their organic hippie food section. Or even the other entrance where you walk in and see every type of alcohol you can imagine. Inviting! Also, HyVee has crazy deals. I once bought two half-gallons of 1% milk for 25 cents a piece. And, like I said, they have everything.

However, we have now moved to Ames and the multiple HyVees here are not in walking distance. I no longer have a job, so I'm at home while David has the car. And when I figure out what I need from the grocery store, I am limited to my bike. And a backpack for storage space. And the closest grocery store to my house is Fairway. Bum bum bummmmm...

Pros: Fairways have decent prices and actually stock hard cider. Also, if you like this sort of thing, they bag it and load it for you. And I don't know for sure, but their meat section people look very professional.

Cons: Fairway looks like it started with much less stuff in the store, and as they got more stuff, they made the aisles smaller and smaller to make up for it.

Also, the people there drift about with their carts, eyeing things like sharks eyeing toes in their water. They aren't moving fast or anything, just slow, leaning on their cart handles, looking at those frozen goods like they might be trying to get away with a deal without telling the customer.

And then there's me who scurries around with a basket, sliding in between people twice my age and trying not to get run over by the drifters.

Shopping carts need blinkers or something so you can tell where they are going. Turn signal to turn, no turn signal to go straight, and hazards for when you plan on parking in an intersection and abandoning your vehicle. I'll just scoot past that one.

P.S. Something Happy

After last post, I went back to YouTube because I saw that Lindsey Stirling had posted a new video. I felt like after the question "Can we be feminine and feminist?" I wanted to share something I liked with you by a girl who is very feminine, talented, cute, and all without being sexual.

I first found Lindsey Stirling because David had me listening to "Party Rock Anthem" by LMFAO and at some point a Lindsey Stirling video popped up on the side labeled "Violinists can shuffle too." It was a cover of that song, and the thing I noticed (other than I liked it better than the original in some ways) was that there was a happy, cute girl in a skirt doing the shuffle with a violin.

Through YouTube links, I found more of her music. She does a lot of covers and violin versions of fun songs like a Phantom of the Opera medley and some computer game music, like Skyrim, Zelda, and Assassin's Creed III. She normally plays violin while dancing. It's awesome.

Spontaneous Me by Lindsey Stirling

So I just want to say, "Way to go, girl!" Makes me want to take up violin.

Warning: Reflection

So yes, this might not be a funny post. Come to think of it, I'm not actually sure I am a funny person. I mean, I amuse myself, but it seems most of us can do that. So maybe you'll find this post funny?

I want to briefly touch on the issue of feminism. I say brief because you could write books, or extensive Wikipedia articles on the subject. I am grateful for the feminist movement. I don't think there has ever been a time where more rights existed for women. Thanks to the movement I can vote, get a job, run for president or Congress. Are there still a few inequalities? Probably. They talk about the glass ceiling and things like that. We've never had a women president (although I would never vote for someone just because of their race/gender/sexual orientation/etc.) and there are fewer women in leadership positions than men. But there are women in leadership positions and we have had females run for president. It's only a matter of time I think before we actually have a good one to choose.

As to the inconsistencies, I think gender equality should be treated like racial equality. We need to be colorblind. No laws saying you have to hire a certain amount of minorities, no discriminating because of the color of their skin or their origin. People are people. And if should be the same with women and men. If the person involved can do the job, then let them do the job. If they are the better candidate for the job, hire them. If they are not, don't. It rather baffled me that women in the military have to meet a lower fitness standard than men, and they can keep their long hair. If the men's fitness standard is the minimum for men, why should women have it easier? This is the military and you have to be prepared. Is it harder for women to meet that standard? Yes. But should we lower standards so women can join the military and call it equality? I don't think so. Why can't a guy keep his long hair? At this point, the military is just enforcing gender identities as well. Women don't want to be degraded by having the military buzz? Maybe they shouldn't be in the military. Equal is equal.

There is one side of feminism that gets a bad rap, but it's also not what I want to talk about today, so I'll just mention it briefly as well. There is the "guy-hating" version of feminism which seems to think that in order to raise up women, they have to debase guys. Yes, in history guys have often been viewed as stronger and have often been in charge. But if you have to bring others down to lift yourself up, I don't think you are worthy of being lifted up. It's like what Atlas Shrugged says that if you have to destroy your competition to be good, then you don't deserve it. However, if you are so good you wipe out your competition, that is just succeeding. Man hater feminism is what often makes people cringe when they think about feminism and makes me not want to identify as a feminist, even though I am all for women's rights. In a libertarian fashion.

Speaking of libertarianism, I am all for women's rights... as stated above. I don't believe in women getting free contraceptives and total abortion rights. In the first instance, I don't believe in free drugs... for anyone, man or women. That's just another instance of a too-big government. In the second case, I believe the fetus is alive and counts as life... so abortion is murder. I'm not going to touch on the "incest-and-rape" cases because too many people use the extreme to justify death-on-demand. And the birth control pill is nine dollars from Wal-Mart. I don't see why so many people need that somehow included in their health care plan when we spend more on fast food.

But, on to what I actually wanted to talk about today, and that is a strange and different form of feminism. I'd even say it's rather backwards. That is the form in which women are super sexy, provocative, and that gives them power and makes them "strong women." You want an example? Watch "Run the World" by Beyonce. "Girls. We run the world." That's the whole theme. But it's not "We run the world by making smart business decisions, informed policies, and holding government positions, getting into politics, influencing local decisions." It appears to be "we run the world by shaking our chests and sticking our butts in the air."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought feminism was about being equals, not sex objects. But music videos like this and things like Charlie's Angels (I'm thinking the recent ones) have us as only having power over others through our use of sex. At least Charlie's Angels has some firepower when that fails. It's the Marilyn Monroe sort of craze, the idea that we need to be strong women by being sexy women. Why are we going back to this? I'd rather have my mind and be respected by others for being smart or witty or competent... more than being respected for being sexy and having a nice body.

But maybe that's it. Women want men to find them attractive and be at the mercy of the power of their sex. So I think somewhere the message has gotten confused. Some women might decide that they don't want to be respected for their mind but for their beauty. They gained some equality and missed have sex power. But where it really seems messed up is when they use sex power and think that it's them being strong women. Like the guy staring at your butt you're waving around is going to turn around and respect you as an equal for it. Like maybe we have some respect, but it doesn't mean much to us unless we're beautiful too. I don't know how much Marilyn Monroe was respected, but she's currently a girls' icon for how to be desirable and a strong woman. She was self-confident, I'll agree. Self confidence in a girl can be very attractive because so many don't seem to have it... and then feel they have to wear tight clothes and wave things in the air to get attention.

What do we, as women, want? Our quest for equality and not being seen as a sex object seems at odds with our desire for others to find us attractive. How do we resolve this? I don't think it's by seducing men and then claiming we're better than them because we got them to want us. Men are wired differently. Or here's a better question: How do we keep what makes us female while trying to be equal? Can two genders so different exist equally? Can I be respected by others and still be most resoundingly a girl? And I don't mean wearing tight clothes or anything like that. Is this really such a man's world that we cannot be equal women within it? What, exactly, do I want?

Adventures With Hair

I am continuing on my quest of putting seed beads in my hair. Episode Three! Or so. I can't remember how many posts I have on it.

Speaking of Episodes, did you know Disney bought out Star Wars? And are planning Episode 7 for 2015? And Lucas won't be directing it? My first reaction is "don't ruin the thing I love!" but if Episodes 1-3 didn't ruin Star Wars for me, I don't know if Disney will. I just wonder now if they'll stay near the canon (in which case they'll have to find people to play Luke, Leia, and Han Solo... though I can't imagine Han Solo not being Harrison Ford), or if they'll go crazy and branch off and make sequels until they ruin it... hey, Disney has a bad habit of doing that. Classics like Cinderella shouldn't have sequels.

All I'm going to say is they better not wreck it. My childhood was built on Episodes 4-6.

But back to the beads. I went to Main Street in Ames during what I have taken to calling "The Comedy of Errors" which wasn't funny and was about us buying a house. I'll write another post on that some other time. But I'll try to make it funny, for you. So, Main Street when we had some time while in Ames. I had purchased the bag of dubiously colored seed beads at Hobby Lobby and was now looking for a hair place that was willing to try doing something that strange. I'm always rather afraid to walk into a hair salon with my dreadlocks, for fear some overeager hair technician will assume I am here to get them chopped and will come at me wielding a pair of scissors, complete with horror music and snipping sounds.

So I go into a salon and tell them what I want. The lady thinks about it for a second and then sends me on to the generically named "The Salon." "They do trendier things like that," she informs me.

I am now trendy. Or on my way to being trendy.

In search of my trendy brethren, we set off down the street. Have you ever been to Main Street? It is like the hidden sacred grounds of hair salons. I've seen at least six, just in the western part. Odd thing is, I had never been to most of them. I went into the Turning Heads salon twice: once to get a "consultation" which you still have to pay for, and once to get the hair I was consulting about for my wedding. But now that I rarely need a hair salon, I am discovering their secret breeding grounds, or something. I could've gone to a different salon every time, instead of constantly gracing MasterCuts with my presence.

At the Salon, the people there did indeed look "trendy," in the way you expect from hair salons. Generally, everyone has short hair because they can't resist cutting it, and often strange colors or styling. But they style hair for a living, so it makes sense.

They listened to me, looked at that little bit of deviant hair, and looked at my seed beads. It was actually a person in a chair who seemed to be giving the orders, so I assume she was one of the employees, just getting it dyed because she was bored. They had a tool which was just a bent piece of pliable plastic that you'd stick through the thing you wanted to thread and stick the hair in the other side. Like those things you use to thread needles if the licking-it-and-sticking-it method isn't working. Their plastic thing would not fit through my bead, but they assured me they'd find something that would. Even if they just had to buy a wire and jimmy-rig it.

Just in case, I went back to Hobby Lobby to see if I could find anything similar to the seed beads, but with larger holes. Did you know that they have books that will teach you Chinese brush painting? Although, I have to wonder if the Chinese actually sketched things out with a pencil before hand. And if that is an important part of it, why isn't a pencil included in the Chinese brush sets? Maybe they're just trying to save you money. And I didn't find any better beads.

So today, I dropped the beads off at The Salon, and they are going to try finding a wire that works tomorrow. We'll see if we can get this done. Though, one person said it might need to be two strands... that might be a little too trendy for me.

What I learned at Hobby Lobby

And so I return to Hobby Lobby during another day I must be in Ames and have the car, but nothing yet to do. Trying to decide if I want more frogs in my hair is better than nothing.
You know, Hobby Lobby is a weird place. It can't seem to decide if it wants to be a hobby place or a decorating place. Or maybe I can't decide. Or maybe decorating is a hobby.
Anyhow, I returned to those seed beads that failed to consider all their primary colors. This time, I asked someone, "why does this so-called multi color pack not include red?" Her answer was, "it does."
I look again. I am still unable to pick out a red bead.
"See, here's one," she shows me in the corner. I examine said red bead. It still looks orange to me. Maybe a different shade of orange, but orange... ish? I keep staring, letting the power of suggestion work over my senses. By the end, it appears red...ish. Close enough.

To pass more time, I wandered through some of the aisles, looking at crafts (and decorations) that I would probably never buy. Knitting with a loom looks severely complicated. Rubber stamps are out of style. I did find a whole bunch of office bling. As in, things for the office that are covered in colored plastic "gems." Isn't that like an anti craft? If your keyboard already has bling all over it, you don't have to do anything to glam it up. And with that attitude, you might as well drive to Target and just buy a sweater instead of looking at yarn.
The most interest aisle was the science projects for kids. I never had a real ant farm even though they fascinated me. And catching black ants and putting them in a jar only works so long... But basically, kids science stuff is the coolest stuff ever, back when the world of science seemed filled with dinosaurs and carnivorous plants and tigers and explorers. My kids are going to love science. And if they don't, I'll just grow all their crystals for them.
But even the science aisle needs checking. I found a plastic wolf labeled lioness, and even further inspection wouldn't surrender that judgement. Also, if you are going to call them "Real Bug Marbles," you should probably explain that spiny spiders and scorpians, while cool, aren't actually bugs. Knowledge gaps of that kind are the type that will get your child made fun of in school by more enlightened children that also tell your kid, "Your epidermis is showing!"  to watch your kid scramble to figure out what is poking out of where.
Don't let your kids be vulnerable to that sort of cruelty; educate them on bugs.

Fitness

So, I have a video for you to watch. It is based on a game called Assassin's Creed and while, to be honest, I actually know very little about the game, the video is pretty sweet. Last I checked, Assassin's Creed was based in medieval times around this assassin. One of the interesting mechanics of the game is the ability to jump off of really high buildings, climb walls, and do crazy acrobatics. It also has beautiful graphics. This video is someone with parkour capabilities dressed like the character from Assassin's Creed.

Have you watched it? Really? I know I skim over videos and look at pictures instead, but this is cool, darn it! I'll have to tell you about the Piano Guys next.

But anyway, did you SEE that? Jumping over things, down things, up things. It's like special effects, but the guy is actually doing it. You've heard of Parkour, right? Parkour is a strange sort of sport that involves building climbing. Or, to quote Wikipedia, "Parkour is a training discipline that developed out of military obstacle course training. Practitioners aim to move from one place to another, negotiating the obstacles in between. The discipline uses no equipment and is non-competitive."

Intense though. I jump around like that and my non-slip shoes slip and I land on my butt, or I land on my feet and hurt my ankles. How does he not hurt his ankles? I'd probably run face-first into a granite slab.

But my question is, can I do that? With lots of practice and so on? No, I don't want to take up parkour. People tend to not like you climbing on their buildings. But I've just accepted the concept of my body being more or less the way it is. I've considered trying to lose weight or pick up Zombies, Run! app for jogging incentive, but the grand goals of these are things like, "run a marathon." Not that I'm making fun of people who run marathons, especially since I am currently unable to run anywhere. But instead of aiming for marathon running, which, let's face it, actually sounds awful, could I aim for something more... elite?

At work, people my age will moan when they have to squat to fill tires and say, "I'm too old for this!" Ok, especially at twenty-five, you shouldn't be too old for it. If you think you are, you are letting yourself down, in my opinion. You are making the choice to move slower, to favor legs or knees... but if you pushed yourself, they might last longer. You're letting yourself get old.

So, to the reverse. Instead of getting old, could I pick up something intense? Could I train my body to the point where I could climb buildings? Do a martial art? Box? In a game I am currently playing they have a monk class. They roll, kick, punch, do stances. It's way cool and reminds me of what little I remember of Tae Kwon Do. Could I learn enough of a martial art to actually be able to use it for something? Is it possible to be anything like the movies? Well, not stuff like Hero and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. That's just insane. But how much awesomeness is possibly somewhat obtainable? Could I hone my body until it is a tool instead of something more like a pet that I take care of and hope it turns out ok? Do I even really want to do it?

I'm moving on Saturday. Moving always makes me think of all the opportunities possible with starting at a new location. And I've had thoughts like this before, switching between a mild "feel good about myself" level of exercise and "go for gold" ideas of exercise (and, admittedly, where I'm currently at of "I don't want exercise to look at me").

People I know and people on Facebook are running. I hate running, but I want to be ABLE to run too.