how to internet

I am SO TIRED of seeing excessive amounts of recipes on Facebook.  Yes, I can scroll past a few but more than 2 and it gets REALLY OLD, REALLY QUICKLY.  Let me break down how the internet works for those of you who only use your iPhone/MacBook as a seriously overpriced Facebook machine.

Facebook is for keeping up with friends and family and sharing articles or witty commentary.
Twitter is for self absorbed bitching.
Reddit is for cats and boobs.
Tumblr is for fandom.
Pinterest is for recipes and DIY shit that you will never ever actually do.
Instagram is for photos of your food and your beer.

I'm not judging you for HAVING any of these accounts.  I have one of each myself, but I use them in an appropriate manner.

P.S.  If you want my username for any of them just let me know.

Carry on...

Happy Saturday or something...

SPRAAAANG BREAAAAAK FO'EVA

I spent most of the day revamping my Twitter, Tumblr, and this blog.  I'll get to my other sites on another day.  I had Spring Break the first week of the month and spent it hanging out with my girlfriends, going to see Spring Breakers, and celebrating Josh's birthday.  It was the most fun I've had in a long time.  I got to turn my music up insanely loud, I got to see one of the best movies I've ever seen, I got to be silly and drink wine and just sit around talking and eating junkfood with some of my favorite people.

Going back to school on Monday was a real drag and Wednesday NO ONE was feeling it.  In fact I was one of the last 3 people in class and I ended up leaving 30 minutes early thinking I'd read outside on the benches.  That didn't happen due to the disgusting amount of pollen floating into my face but I tried.  That night I got 2 of my best friends to finally sit down and watch the first episode of Game of Thrones with me.  I think they liked it.  YAY!  Then Thursday Alden had a playdate and it went well all things considered.  Two autistic children on a playdate is never ever a dull event.

Today as I said was spent most of the day finding new layouts I liked and tweaking them to get the look I want.  I'm currently too lazy to code anything of my own, especially since that's what I do at school all day long.  I finished my Dreamweaver class 3 weeks early because it's easy and boring and I figured I'd just get it out of the way.  One of the women in my class said "Your kid must be better behaved than mine!" and I just sat there for a second before replying with "Oh, I don't have the program at home. I can't afford it, I just work during class the 4 hours a week.  If you want to trade kids for the day I guarantee you'd take that back anyway, because my kid has autism."  She shut up pretty quickly after that.  It was hilarious.

During Spring Break I managed to get tickets to see one of my favorite authors, Neil Gaiman, on his last book signing tour.  I am SO excited. I met his beautiful wife (and a personal hero of mine) Amanda Palmer last year on her tour.

I was sad that 2 of my other favorite authors posted their tour dates on the following consecutive days, but this is Neil's LAST signing tour so I made the right decision financially.  If I was rich I'd go see them all!

Here are the other authors I want to meet :
David Sedaris
Augusten Burroughs
Chuck Palahniuk
Alan Moore

We have tickets for Father John Misty next month and then tickets for Dropkick Murphys the following month so maybe I'll get to meet those lovely folks too.

I hope this finds everyone well.  I hope to post more once finals are finished and I only have online courses so I'm at home and stuff.  Going to finish this drink and hit the hay.  Goodnight!

but the Dark Side has all the cookies!!!

You might remember this post and this one, today I'm here to tell you anther one.  Today I was sitting on the couch with Alden and we were playing with his iPad (specifically teaching him to care for his new Tamagotchi) and there was a knock on the door.  I wasn't expecting company but I got up to peek out the window.  A gray van.

Sidebar: Why are they always in vans? Does Jesus prefer them or something?

I don't know anyone who drives a gray van (as far as I know) so I tried to discreetly peer out the window beside the door.  All I see is someone bent over wearing a really long wool coat. Thinking this is really strange/creepy I tell Alden to "be quiet".  My initial thought for some reason was not "IT IS EASTER WEEK AND THIS IS ABOUT THE LORD" but "this person is coming to shoot/rob me, so of course I open the door like a dummy.  I opened the door just a crack and I had my left hand on my baseball bat ready to grab swing if need be.  

I look up and there is a little old man, probably in his 70s.  He is wearing the aforementioned long black wool coat, a button up shirt, and a black bowler hat.  He looked dapper, he looked British, and he looked like he probably wasn't going to murder me or rob me.  That's when I realized he was going to attempt to evangelize me.  I want to point out that he was the nicest Bible Thumper that's ever come to my door.  He was very friendly and not in the least pushy or even interested in having a debate or discussion. He just genuinely wanted to invite me to his church's events over the course of the week.  Then he handed me this...

Which in itself is not funny.  Unless you have seen this,  which I had, only a few weeks ago on the web.

It took absolutely EVERYTHING I HAD IN ME NOT TO LAUGH IN THIS OLD MAN'S FACE.  I was really proud of myself for being able to hold it in and just smile while he told me that "all the races are represented at the bottom of this photo because Christ our Lord loves everyone. People of all races are invited to these events because we too love everyone."   

I thought about pointing out that Jesus' appearance was never described in the bible and that his race was also up for debate.  I also wanted to ask why Jesus didn't have his usual hippie hair.  But like I said he was just an old nice man and I was just seriously trying hold it together and not laugh while imagining the future of this photo, in which I draw Obi's blue lightsaber in his hand & put it on my fridge.

Anyway, I did a lot of smiling and nodding and he told me to "have a lovely day" and he left.

In conclusion if anyone wants to go to a Star Wars party, I think they are having one in my neck of the woods tonight. I assume they are going to watch all 6 movies and then have a discussion.  There will be a nice old man there probably wearing his bowler hat.  I bet his favorite character is Jar-Jar Binks because he always gets left out.  

And now I'm gonna go eat Girl Scout cookies.
*because I'm from the dark side*

school's not out for summer...

I registered for my Summer and Fall courses yesterday.  I also switched from a diploma program to a degree program.  I ended up having to take a bunch of math because frankly I suck at math and so it's probably going to take about a year to finish up.  Before you tell me you are awesome at math/a math teacher/a motherfucking numeric sorcerer, let me explain that I have been tutored pretty constantly in math my entire existence and I don't get it.  I actually have two learning disabilities, dyslexia and dyscalculia.  I had lots of help overcoming my dyslexia because if was apparent from a young age.  For instance I was mirror writing, so there was an obvious problem, we addressed it, and now I feel like I have a pretty decent grasp on reading and writing.  However, the dyscalculia was something I had never heard of until a friend suggested I might have it after explaining my severe struggles with math, money management, telling time on an analog clock, and anything involving numbers in general.  So there is an actual medical reason that I don't "get" math. Blah blah blah, I'm stuck in dumb dumb math for a bit.  I'll get through it eventually.

So for summer I'm taking
Math 98
Composition and Rhetoric
Web Graphics I

Which reminds me, if anyone has a copy of Adobe Photoshop CS6 they don't mind parting with, please let me know.  I don't really have $600 to shell out for the entire program but I also absolutely have to have it for summer & fall. (Plus, you know, $600 more dollars for the insanely overpriced books for the classes).

All my summer classes are online so that I won't have to juggle finding a ride to and from school and a sitter for Alden.  So it's awesome that it worked out that way.  In the fall I'll have to go for 2 and the other 2 will be online. Hopefully, I'll have a car that's running properly and a license by then, I guess we'll see...

In Fall I'm taking
Math 99
Web Graphics II
Sociology 
C#

So that's what I'll be up to the next two semesters.

After that I will have
College Algebra
Web Development II
Music Appreciation 
and an Internship

Then I SHOULD be finished.  So YAY for that!

I didn't get sucked up in the storm yesterday, but I want to thank everyone who was calling/texting/tweeting/etc at me to make sure I was not blown to the land of Oz.

Today I filled out my first Nielson TV survey, I guess if it's interesting enough they'll send me more?  If they are wanting "things I actually watch on TV when they are on TV" they are going to be sorely disappointed, because I watch a whopping ONE TV show a week when it's on TV.  If they watching count TV 'online' then they are in for a serious treat because I watch ALL THE THINGS (that don't suck).

Anyway so far so good this week.  Next week is Weeman's spring break and mine is the week after that so we're going to have to find something fun to get into.

Everyone have a lovely rest of the week!

I've decided to become a professional student...

I've pretty well talked myself into staying in school to get my associates of applied science degree specializing in IT Specialist/Web Design. Right now I'm in the diploma program for the same thing so everything will transfer. I'm having a hard time deciding about some of these electives though and I'd love some input.

These are the CIST options and I have to chose one:
Visual Basic I
C# Programming
PHP Programming
Java Programming
Mobile App Development
Web App Programming
OpenSource Web App Programming
Interactive & Social App Programming

The problem is that I am really not that interested in app programming. I would rather do one of the languages, but is that the right thing to do? It feels like everything is moving into an app based direction. Would I be stupid to pass those up to take something old school like Basic?

The Arts electives I have to chose from are
Art Appreciation
American Literature
Intro To Humanities
Music Appreciation

I am leaning toward music appreciation because I've gotten to where I don't really listen to music much anymore and when I do it's all 90s & 70s. While I don't think there's anything WRONG with that (especially since everything on the radio is crap) I feel like maybe it would help me branch out a little bit.

The Social/Behavior Sciences electives I have to choose from are:
Principles of Economics
Principles of Macroeconomics
Principles of Microeconomics
World History I
World History II
U.S. History I
U.S. History II
American Government
Introductory Psychology
Intro to Sociology

Obviously I am leaning toward the last two because the others all sound like hell on earth. I have a slight bias to Sociology but basically everyone has said I'd have more fun in Psych.

HELP ME?

I am, infact, alive (or I'm a zombie who is feeling much better since coming back)

My body has been trying to defeat me almost the entire month of February. I have rarely gotten off the couch, called into school once, and been to two doctors appointments.  (If you are interested in all the gory details just ask).  I am finally starting to feel like my old self again.

In my down time I've had lots of time to think about random crap. Especially since the meds they have me on make me slightly manic and unable to focus on pretty much anything like reading or an entire movie.  These are some of those random thoughts...

I have discovered the perfect job for myself.  I just need Kathy Lee or Hoda to either quit, retire, or add a third person to their early morning shenanigans.  There was a segment where they drank wine and then threw things at people.  I've basically been training for this job my entire life.  I just had no idea!

I have also decided that Tina Fey & Amy Poehler's next project needs to be a Statler and Waldorf-esque show where they just sit around and make fun of everyone.  Tell me you wouldn't watch that religiously?

I did manage to watch some documentaries (pausing them pretty much every 15 minutes because I'd get distracted by Tetris on my phone or Tumblr ) and developed a crush on Louis Theroux.  If you have the time I beg you all to watch this segment he did on living with autism.  It says part 1 of 2 but it's just one big video.  I assume that caption is because he's probably planning to go back and revisit them later which he often does a few years down the road.  This is seriously the most accurate portrayal of autism that I have ever seen.  It gives a great look at meltdowns, the struggle for control, and just how broad the spectrum truly is.  Anyway if you have a bit of time please watch and share.  People need to see this.

That's all I got in me for today.  I hope everyone is well!  I'm off to shower, eat some mexican food, and then  go out for my first Ladies' Night in FAR too long.