My librarian's spicy under-layer.

Damnit, I don't wanna cheer for Omaha!

I was informed today by Alicia Teaze - aka one of the managers of the awesomeness that is the No Coast Derby Girls who also happens to be a librarian at the university - that my favorite (well, everyone's favorite) skater Flash Gloria has transferred.

Not only did she transfer, but she transferred to the enemy.

Damnit.

All my favorite jammers leave...

First there was Busty St. Claire - she opened a flower shop.

Then it was Lt. Slamher - she went overseas for the army.

But I knew I could always rely on Flash because she was MVP every year and we were dominating so why would she ever leave?

Our record is like 59-17 for gods sake, WHY WOULD YOU LEAVE?!

It's giving me physical pain.

Damnit, I don't wanna cheer for Omaha!

I know this may seem over-dramatic to you, but it's really not. If you knew how big of a fan I am you'd understand.

Is it weird that my favorite sports are roller derby and ice hockey?

When did that happen?

I mean, I'm head over heels for Husker football, that's always been there and always will be, but when did roller derby and ice hockey beat out basketball and baseball?

And then the only sports I play anymore are softball and golf.

Though golf isn't really a sport and technically I only do it like twice a year so it doesn't count.

We're well-inebriated for most of it anyway.

Where was I?

So yeah, Flash is leaving. Left already, actually. There's a bout tonight but I couldn't stomach going.

Totally bummed out.

Damnit, I don't wanna cheer for Omaha!

Okay, distract me. What else was I gonna ramble about?

Oh, inservice!

Every year all of the libraries in our system shut down for a day and we have a staff training day we call Inservice.

This year's was at the hospital - which meant I got to jam out with Juwanna afterward, woohoo!

It was alright, not my favorite, but it had its moments.

Here are a few of my favorites:

"I know about your librarian's spicy under-layer....let your freak flag fly."

"Never underestimate the power of a slightly inappropriate book...Captain Underpants is my gateway drug."

"Think about how much time you spend managing your boobs." *all of the men's mouths drop after viewing a particular slide*

"Do anything to combat that stress?"
"I'm drinking more....running, drinking, not at the same time..."

"Banning? This happens at the library?!" *room erupts....no our patrons are all perfect angels*

Oh and we also learned that if you vary your clapping speed it makes it sound like there's more people in the audience. Apparently a tip our director picked up after attending many of her late husband's gigs.

Our table had fun. Basically the same group as last year. I sat between the Queen of Awesome and the Queen of the Known Universe.

Talk about feeling inadequate...they're queens and i'm like...not.

This year's focus was all about health and wellness - hence the hospital location. We talked about physical and a little bit of mental stuff and how our health affects how we deal with patrons so we should always be at our best, etc. etc.

A bunch of us went out for Mexican at lunch. Had a big table. We counted the vegetables so we didn't feel so bad about that whole day of health awareness thing. Does cactus count as a vegetable? What is cactus anyway?

After all the lectures and our director's speech I met up with Juwanna in the entryway - introduced her to a couple of the essentials, Queen of the Known Universe and Superwoman. They wanted all the dirt, but she's smarter than that cause I have dirt too.

Was cool to catch up, we're gonna have a girls night soon.

After that Queen of the Known Universe and I hit up Barnes and Noble. She had to pick up a movie and I had to buy Attachments.

Have I rambled about Attachments yet?

I'm pretty sure I have but you're gonna get it again.

Attachments by Rainbow Rowell.

It's about a dude who works in IT at basically the Omaha World Herald and it's his job to flag personal emails and people who are gambling and all that and he runs across this series of personal emails between these two women - Beth and Jennifer - and gets caught up in their story so he doesn't flag them. Then Beth starts talking about this hot guy at work and it turns out to be him so he joins a gym and all that. It's just hysterical.

Beth is me.

You roll your eyes but it's true.

She talks like me. She says stuff I've said and would say in situations. She acts like I do in situations. She's in love with a guy works the night shift. Etc.

I'm pretty sure Rainbow Rowell just followed me around a took notes. A fact that I tweeted her about and she favorited it!

So who knows, maybe she did. She is a local.

Nebraska Pride.

Anyway, I keep reading sections of it over and over cause I'm hooked.

But that's a problem with me, I get so hooked on fictional characters and once they're gone I get totally bummed out and need an immediate replacement.

Luckily I have a bunch of editing I can do to fix that.

I always get hooked on them.

BUT READ ATTACHMENTS. It's fantastic. And it's available at your local library so you don't even have to pay for it.

Alright, gonna skim through it again for the 100th time then get back to my editing and crash.

It's been a long weekend and it's only Saturday.

Songs of the Day:

I'm starting a new music segment called Why don't people know this song?

It will feature fantastic songs - probably made up mostly of indie music - that people should know but they don't know.

Here's a classic.

Stuck in the Middle With You - Dawn and Hawkes vs. Josh Murley


Originally by Stealers Wheel and featured in the Tarantino movie Reservoir Dogs but not nearly popular enough. Some describe it as Bob Dylan-ish but I love it.

BTW Dawn and Hawkes may win the battle but Josh does get stolen by Shakira.

Speaking of The Voice, my top twenty are still kickin' butt. Let's take a look.

Voice Top 20

Christina Grimmie - Adam

Bria Kelly - Usher

Sisaundra Lewis - Blake 

Dawn and Hawkes - Adam

Brothers Walker - Usher - eliminated in battles

Cierra Mickens - Shakira - lost to Emily, stolen by Usher
Clarissa Serna - Shakira 

Audra McLaughlin - Blake 

Cary Laine - Adam - eliminated in battles

TJ Wilkins - Usher 

Alaska and Madi - Blake - eliminated in battles

Delvin Choice - Adam 

Ddendyl - Shakira 

Sam Behymer - Adam 

Paula Deanda - Blake - eliminated in battles

Kaleigh Glanton - Blake 

Jake Worthington - Blake

Madilyn Paige - Usher

Emily B - Shakira 

Kat Perkins - Adam

Rockin' it.

Alright, here's another Song You Should Know and then I'm out.

Everything - Michael Buble


not as well known, but excellent melody and lyrics

"What do you call people who mouth the words when they read?" "Nerds?"

These are the conversations I have with Queen of the Known Universe at work... What else would you call them? Is there an official term that I'm not aware of?



Today rocked.

I feel so clean.

Even after a hockey game.

Woke up semi-early, which to me is 9, and spent the whole day cleaning.

Well, most of it.

I swept, I vacuumed, and I CLEANED OUT MY CLOSET.

For serious.

4 bags full of clothes for Goodwill.

That's how long it's been since I cleaned it out.

Plus I organized the shelves and got rid of a bunch of boxes so now it's not only clean, but also organized and I have room for more stuff.

Which apparently is a girl thing, we can never have too much stuff in our closets.

After all that fun the boyfriend and I hit up the hockey game where we dominated Des Moines 7-4. It was awesome, if we score 5 points everyone gets free milk from one of the grocery stores here in town, you just have to show them your ticket. Anyway, we had 4 points and all the sudden the crowd starts yelling "We want milk!" and I swear, mid chant we stole the puck and scored.

The crowd went nuts.

Oh and they fired our head coach. We have a new general manager and that was the first thing he did. Granted we aren't doing so well this season so I'm kind of glad. Our Assistant Coach rocked it tonight.



And as awesome as tonight's game was, it still wasn't as awesome as last week's game. We played Team USA Juniors. They were up 1-4 at the end of the first period. I scored first and then they got 4 straight so we were like crap, this is gonna suck. Then we came back and scored 6 straight.

6 straight.

And also won it 7-4.

It was awesome.

Tomorrow is another game - my last of the season cause the next one I have Bubby's play instead.

It's sad that it's over already.

I'm thinking about getting them again next year. Just have to email the guy and ask about parking passes, cause that got expensive.

Anyway, what else have you missed.

Work is good. Tomorrow for TAB we're having a Murder Mystery party. Which was awesome cause I found a good one and I had it all cast and then a bunch of other teens RSVP'd so I had to write in new characters.

Which I hope don't totally suck.

The only problem with this one is that it doesn't have a master script, just like accusations and rebuttals so I don't know when I should be prompting people or who I should be prompting or if I should be prompting...

I just hope they don't think it's lame.

Remember the web series we were working on? Did I ramble about that yet? Some idiot (me) decided it would be fun for our TAB to film a web series to promote the library and its events. Which SOUNDS like a good idea, until you have to actually film it with a bunch of teens.

I thought we'd be done after one meeting, we're going on three and still have seven scenes left to film.

We may do a bit more tomorrow if the Murder Mystery thing finishes early.

What else?

The boyfriend and I are good, I already rambled about Vegas...I did say he wants to go ring shopping right?

Which he told me at a hockey game and I attempted not to like jump for joy or pass out or ask him to repeat himself cause I clearly didn't hear him correctly...anyway, I'm excited.

Apparently everyone and their dog thought he was going to ask in Vegas.

Not me.

But everyone else.

He says he'd rather do something local instead. Fine with me. As long as it happens. Sooner rather than later.

What else?

OH so remember when I was reading Silver Linings Playbook and I turned into a total nerd and read like a paragraph a day so it would never be over?

Found another one of those books, but said screw it and had to finish it early.

It's called Attachments and it's by Rainbow Rowell.

Yes, that is her real name, her parents were hippies.

And she's Nebraskan - from Omaha - so it's set in Omaha.

It's basically this guy works IT at a newspaper and his job is to flag people for inappropriate computer use - gambling, personal emails, all that - and he runs across this series of personal emails between these two women and he gets caught up so he doesn't flag them. Then one of them mentions this cute guy at work and it turns out to be him so he hits up the gym, etc. etc. Anyway, it's fantastic. 9/10 on the Scale of Awesome, I loved loved loved it.

Mostly because the main female character is me.

No, you have no idea. I'm convinced that the woman followed me around and took notes because she says stuff that I've said and she acts like I do in situations and then the guy is so similar to the boyfriend, it just seriously freaked me out.

Queen of the Known Universe said it must be the Twilight Zone.

So, what do I do? I tweet the author about on Twitter and she favorites it.

Take that world.

#NebraskaPride

Although not so much #Nebrasketball pride, that game was brutal, we got hosed.

For those of you who aren't aware our men's basketball team made it to March Madness for the first time since like 1998.

If we would have won today we could have played Creighton next.

That would have been awesome as they are kind of the in-state rivalry.

Oh well, I think our women have a fighting chance, but they're always good.

Hmmm...I'm thinking.

I don't usually have to think when I post it just comes out.

It's been a while so I don't know what I'm missing...

Oh, The Voice is back on. Scroll down and you'll see my Top 20. So far so good in the battles. I think all of mine are still alive. No, wait, my number 5 - Brothers Walker - is out. And Paula Deanda. She was good but Blake put her against Sisaundra and anyone against her is doomed.

Alright, on to the music. A new one and an old one.

Love Me Again- John Newman


his hair style is weird but his voice is solid. love this one. why is the chick wearing gloves? wait a minute, what just happened?! did he actually end it that way?! that's just  mean.

Tomorrow Never Comes - Teddy Geiger


yes i'm aware it was a horrible movie, but the soundtrack is excellent, look into it.


you spin in circles around the sun, but tomorrow never comes.

Voice Season Six Top 20

Okay I'm posting this before I watch any of the battles so it's official.

Yes they started last night but I waited so I could watch them all at once and fast forward through commercials. 

Voice Top 20

Christina Grimmie - Adam

Bria Kelly - Usher

Sisaundra Lewis - Blake 

Dawn and Hawkes - Adam

Brothers Walker - Usher - eliminated in battles

Cierra Mickens - Shakira 

Clarissa Serna - Shakira 

Audra McLaughlin - Blake 

Cary Laine - Adam 

TJ Wilkins - Usher 

Alaska and Madi - Blake 

Delvin Choice - Adam 

Ddendyl - Shakira 

Sam Behymer - Adam 

Paula Deanda - Blake - eliminated in battles

Kaleigh Glanton - Blake 

Jake Worthington - Blake

Madilyn Paige - Usher

Emily B - Shakira 

Kat Perkins - Adam

Vegas Take Two

So, remember how the boyfriend surprised me with tickets to Vegas and a suite at the Luxor for Christmas/my birthday?

After I drug him all over that place last time we went cause I'm obsessed with ancient Egypt?

We went and it was awesome.

DAY ONE:
::"Move your little Versa!" "Oh my god would you people just drive."
- Okay, so my boyfriend rarely drives the speed limit. When I say that you assume that means he drives like a crazy person, no, he drives 10 UNDER the speed limit. It's a gas mileage thing, I don't know. However, when he's forced to drive the speed limit cause we're running behind his road rage is hysterical. Excellent way to start off a trip.

::Some planes, no trains, few automobiles
-The first flight was from Omaha to Denver and it was fine, the second flight out of Denver to Vegas was a completely different story. While in the airport I heard this kid screaming and jokingly said something like, "they're gonna be right next to us" and was horrified when I was right. Not only were they close by, they were directly behind us and the screaming kid was bouncing on the tray table the whole ride. Pretty sure the dad heard a few expletives throughout the trip.

::Landing
-So, I learned the best way to fly is to not check your bags because once the flight lands you're free and you don't have to wait for anything. This was beneficial because we landed at six and were going to a concert at seven. Turns out, the doors only opened at seven so even though we landed at six, ran to get a cab at 6:15, arrived at the hotel at 6:30, checked in at 6:45 and made it to the House of Blues by 7 we still had to stand in line for half an hour, and the concert didn't start for another hour after that. All that freaking out about us being late and missing stuff and it was all for nothing.

::Pentatonix
-The concert - once it got started - was awesome. But as mentioned, the line to get into it was huge, almost around the entire outside of the inner hotel. Fortunately we met a nice local who advised us on what to do and what to avoid. They sang some awesome stuff, but my favorite was their cover of Lorde's Royals, scroll, down, it's fantastic.
We got out of there around 10 - apparently if you have kids until 16 at the concert there's some sort of curfew that it can only go so late. Was fine by me, I was exhausted, though not as much as the boyfriend. He had been up for almost 40 hours already.


DAY TWO:
::Hoover Dam
-Originally we were supposed to go on a hot air balloon ride that morning, however it was cancelled that day (and the next because of weather, meaning we're going back in the fall to redeem our tickets) so instead we decided to rent a car and go out to the Hoover Dam. It was awesome, we had the best tour guide who had actually taken men who helped build the dam on a tour so he had a bunch of anecdotes from them as well. And of course, there were the dam jokes. "Did they tell you about the camera policy?" "No." "That's cause we don't have one, take all the dam pictures you want!" Hilarious. After touring the dam we walked all over - I drank some dam water out the fountain - and took a ton of pictures.








::Walmart
-Apparently when driving a rental car this is the appropriate way to park.

Or not. Smooth. But at least we didn't get door dinged. We stopped by cause he needed swimming trunks. While we were there we picked up some snacks - bugels, beer, flavored water, chips and salsa - and then headed back to the hotel.

::Hot Tub
-Did I mention how awesome our room was?



It even had a hot tub. Which was perfect after spending all afternoon walking all over the damn dam. After jamming out in there for a while he konked out on the bed. It was humorous cause it was like 9 and he was dead. But as mentioned, he hadn't exactly gotten a lot of sleep that week.


DAY THREE:
::Buffet
-So, when you're in Vegas, hit up a buffet. They are fantastic. This one wasn't as fantastic as the Wynn buffet - holy crap, read last time's post - but it had a ton of food and I could only eat like half of my plate.

::Walking through the desert in the rain
-Of course the day we decide to walk the strip it rains. In the middle of the desert. But it was okay, we just toured a bunch of the buildings to avoid the major pouring. Although so them pouring is like sprinkling in Nebraska. While we were touring we ran across Big Elvis - he was in fact very big and dressed like Elvis so it was a fitting name - and I drug him in circles around Caesar's just to find this massive mythology fountain.
Ancient Egypt isn't my only obsession, I'm also a Greek Mythology fan as well.

We also hit up the M&M's factory, and the Coke store. Have you been in that M&M's place? It's crazy!

Those are all M&M's in those tubes.

::More Hot Tub
-You can never spend too much time in a hot tub. Well, I guess, once you get all wrinkly then it feels weird, but we decided once we get a house we're getting a hot tub. Okay, I decided, but I'm sure he would support that.

::The Mix
-As part of going to Vegas I wanted him to take me out somewhere fancy. Packed a skirt and everything. Before Vegas he even went shopping to get new clothes - tie included. He picked the Mix which is one of the top 5 restaurants in Vegas (inside the Mandalay Bay hotel). The scenery was incredible,


view included:

I had chicken, he had cod, we agreed it was the best food we've ever eaten. My only complaint was that it was packed super tight in there so we were literally less than a foot away from the people sitting next to us.

::Zombieland/Castle
-After dinner we headed back to the hotel and I crashed because we had an early flight in the morning. He konked out in the hot tub - again, would totally have support in getting one. I turned on Zombieland and made it through like five minutes before I was out. Aside from Zombieland we watched a ton of Castle. It was on during the plane ride out there, then that night after the concert, then the next day when we were in the hot tub, and now the boyfriend is hooked. Or I claim he is anyway. The last one we watched there ended in a cliffhanger - they were stuck in the freezer - so when we got back I put in my DVD and we watched the next episode.


DAY FOUR:
::4AM wakeup
-Flying out earlier in the morning is cheaper, but it sure isn't as fun, however, neither flight involved screaming or jumping children in my vicinity so I was okay with it.

::Home
-As soon as we got back we stopped at Amigos for food, he picked up this model train he was waiting on, and then we just slept the rest of the day. Very relaxing.


So that was Vegas take two. Hopefully take three will happen some time this fall cause hot air ballooning sounds awesome. Lots of fun, though it was nice to be back and not have to put on makeup every morning...


Song of the Trip:

Royals - Pentatonix


awesome harmonies