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And felt like doing an unboxing video! I hope you enjoy it!

  Buying concert tickets is always really stressful for me, but that stress makes me really good at doing it. I am the kind of concertgoer who logs in to the ticket site before the onsale time, and is ready and waiting when they drop. I get really anxious if I can't do this, or if I have to ask someone else to do it for me. One time I bought tickets from a courtroom when I was a court reporter. At my current job, I once strategized my break so that I could run out to my car (the only place I got signal) and use the Ticketmaster app when an onsale time came.

There have been times when I've run into problems. Once when I was trying to get Nine Inch Nails tickets, the website crashed. This was a common problem because NIN tried to stay away from major ticket outlets, and so used the little guys -- whose servers simply couldn't handle the thousands and thousands of rabid NIN fans clicking "refresh" at the same time. I ended up calling the ticket company and purchasing them over the phone. It seems that in this case, the failure of the system worked to my benefit, because if the server hadn't crashed, I'm sure there would have been no tickets left ten minutes later when I finally got on the phone!

My mom has gotten me NIN tickets before, and ended up having to call the ticket company, as well. I think my mom is who I learned this steadfast diligence for ticketbuying from, so she is the one I trust most when I can't do it myself.
Once, I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to buy Garbage tickets, and asked my best friend Shannon to do it. She agreed. I ended up able to do it after all, and the tickets appeared to be sold out within the first minute. The website suggested I keep trying, so I continually hit "find tickets". After about fifteen minutes of this, two tickets became available, and I grabbed them up. It was incredibly worth it to keep trying -- and I was glad that I was able to do it, because Shannon said she would have given up! She is my concert buddy and we love Garbage, so I'm glad we got to go to that one!

  I just bought Garbage tickets today, and it was the same situation -- appearing to be sold out in one minute, but I kept clicking "find tickets". I even called the ticket company while I waited. The woman on the phone was just starting to check availability when the website finally let me select tickets. She kindly waited on the phone with me while I completed my order, just to be on the safe side.

  Buying concert tickets is the one area of my life where my being a control freak and having extreme patience comes in handy. I've seen a lot of great shows because of these traits!

  So, I present to you my tips for buying concert tickets:
1) Find out when they go onsale, and find out about any presales you might qualify for.
2) Go online ahead of time and make sure you can get into all necessary accounts. Some bands require you to be a member of their website for their presale. There are a gajillion ticket websites. Don't make assumptions -- log into everything, to make sure you can. You don't want to be fumbling with your login when the seconds matter. I think it's also good to have the customer service phone number of the ticket company handy.
3) Be online, logged in, and ready to go at least 5-10 minutes before the onsale time. Have your credit card handy. Pull up the ticket-buying page, even though it doesn't have a "buy" button active yet.
4) I usually start hitting "refresh" 30 seconds before my clock says it's the onsale time, just in case my clock is different from theirs. Keep hitting refresh until the page lets you proceed to the ticketbuying platform.
5) Select your tickets, and voila!
6) If you can't instantly get tickets,
  -If it won't let you get 4, try 3. If it won't let you get 2, try 1. If it won't let you get them with a parking pass, try getting them without the parking pass.
  -If it still says there's none available, just keep trying. Many ticket websites have a system that places tickets people select into virtual carts. If someone changes their mind about how many tickets they want, or decides that after the unadvertised $22 in fees they're not interested anymore, those tickets become available again. It may take fifteen minutes of trying, but if you really want to see the bad, it can be worth it.
  -Call the ticket service to see if they can help you out.
  -Try to see if there are still tickets available for another show on the tour that is on another date or at another venue you wouldn't mind going to. (This is my last resort, but it has worked for me -- notably when I got to see NIN on their Wave Goodbye tour).

  I hope you find my tips useful!
  I get the feeling the climate for ticket websites is changing. Today when I bought Garbage tickets, I got on the website about 2 minutes before the onsale time, and the page had a "virtual waiting room". It explained that once you're in the waiting room, you're randomly queued up to buy tickets once they are available. It said that this ensures the fairest chance, but to me it seemed really unfair -- I feel that it essentially moves up the onsale time, and takes a lot of the control out of your hands. As we've established, when I'm trying to get tix, I don't like anything that takes the control out of my hands! The company was AXS. I'll be wary of them in the future.

  Do you have any tips, or stories of epic ticketbuying quests?

As summer winds down, I find I have a lot of energy. I want to take up all sorts of projects like learning how to skateboard, and how to play Magic: the Gathering. I had a vampire movie marathon at my house earlier in the week, which involved lot of thought and planning, and everyone who came really seemed to enjoy it. I've got all these tattoo ideas that my artist seems to be totally on-board with. I recently got collarbone microdermals. I bought a new domain, CoolOnTheInternet.com, mostly because I was amazed that it was available. I've been reading the Watchmen graphic novel, after wanting to for several years

All in all, it's an exciting time to be me. It's also a little frustrating because I don't always have the time, energy, or monetary resources to delve as far into these interests and projects as I'd like, but I'm doing what I can, when I can. Hopefully I can keep up the momentum when school starts in just about half a week. I realized that even though I have classes five days a week, I have a couple of days where I only have one class, either in the morning or in the evening, and therefore have the rest of the day potentially available. So maybe I won't go as crazy this semester as I'd feared, and be able to balance work and school with all my fun things.

Yes, not going crazy would definitely be ideal.

I haven't been as meticulously keeping track of quotes as I once did. These days, when someone says something funny, I ususally tweet it or put it on Facebook, tagging the people attributed. I was able to comb through my Twitter going back some ways, and I found these gems. I will continue trying to search for more quotes to share!

"Cribbage against the machine"
-- My dad

(five or six deer cross the road in front of us, and a hawk swoops very nearby)
"Goddamn National Geographic, up in here!"
--Jay

"You should be in our crew! We're the coolest! Do you have an Instagram? Do you do molly?"
--Overheard at my community college (HCC), a group of three kids trying to invite a girl in.

"Van Gogh... err... Not Van Gogh -- Ryan Gosling. Sorry, I got the two mixed up."
--Overheard at HCC

"I'm too busy watching time go by"
--Nephew Will, at age 9

"...And I'd sue them for FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS!"
--Nephew Will, at age 9

"Is this dubstep?"
"It's CELTIC dubstep!"
--Overheard at Club Orpheus

"Nicki, I wanted to tell you that your car smells like powdered sugar, but I didn't want to offend you."
--Shannon

"Pray the werewolf away"
--Shannon

"We're late, and there was free food, so I ate it."
--Overheard at HCC (and summing up the student experience quite nicely)

I'm enjoying my summer quite a lot, so far. I've been making a point to try to get the most out of it, because come fall, I will probably have to become a hermit.

Last time I wrote, I had just finished up my last class of community college. Since then, I graduated, walked across the stage, and received my beautiful degree in the mail. I also got accepted to the university I wanted to attend, for their social work program. I had my new student orientation, and registered for my classes. Almost all of my gen-ed stuff transferred from the community college, so all I really have to focus on are the classes for my major and minor (which is Gender and Women's Studies). This fall, I'll be taking Intro to Gender and Women's Studies, Intro to Social Work, Intro to Statistics for Social Science Majors, and a very interesting-sounding 300-level class called Unruly Bodies. All of that amounts to 13 credits, and on top of that, I will still need to work three days a week, so... yes, goodbye to everything else in my life, come August 26th. The good thing is that if I can keep up my momentum, I'll be getting my Bachelor's in 2017! But in the meantime... It's probably going to be a lot of all-work-and-no-play.


So I'm trying to have all my fun now. I went camping from July 10th through 13th, with Shannon, Josh, Jason, Robin, and Chris. I camped with them last year in Swallow Falls, MD, and had such a good time, I was very excited to join them again for this year's trip, which was to Point Lookout, in Southern Maryland. It was four wonderful days away from the stress of normal life with very good friends. We spent a lot of time at the campsite playing games (especially on the day that it rained), and gathered around the campfire, hanging out or eating s'mores. One of the nights, I went down to a nearby dock to get a better look at the stars, and saw the Milky Way stretching over me. It was truly astounding -- I just had to sit and stare at it for a long time. We also had a fun day at the little beach that's down there. On the last day of the trip, we visited a really cool sculpture garden called the Annemarie. All-in-all, it was a great trip and I'm already excited to camp again with these lovely people.

Last Friday, I got Mexican food with Shannon, and then went to Sandy Point beach with her and Josh. The water was wonderfully nice and warm -- the air felt too cold, by comparison. We had a lot of fun just swimming and then hanging out on the sand with our umbrella and beach chairs. When we were done with the beach, we went back to their house and ate dinner and I finally saw "Wayne's World"! I hope I might be able to make it to the beach a couple more times in the month-or-so of summer I have left.

Yesterday, I went to New York City to see an exhibit about Alice in Wonderland where they have the actual manuscript of Alice's Adventures Under Ground, and it was so amazing. I will probably make another post just about this exhibit, as I am going again to see it in a week. But after the exhibit, I wandered around a bit, got some really good falafel at a foodtruck (on Madison and 28th, fyi), poked around in an antique store, visited the Chelsea Trader Joe's, and then decided to take the subway down to Prospect Park in Brooklyn to find Peter Steele's memorial tree. When the singer and bassist of the band Type O Negative passed away in 2010, fans pulled together to make this memorial to him. He loved working for NYC parks & rec before going into music, so it is a fitting tribute. It took me a while to get to it, because I'd accidentally taken the subway to the wrong end of the park and had to walk up a good half of it, and then because Google Maps confused me, but eventually I spotted it. I sat in the shade for a while and listened to some Type O songs, including Green Man.
After a while, I had to make my way back to Manhattan to make sure I'd have time to catch my bus. I had a little extra time, so I visited the Herald Square Lush where I got pampered with a hand treatment. Then I walked back to the bus stop and headed home. When I go up to NYC again next week, I hope to visit the Cleopatra Needle. We'll see what ends up happening -- either way, it's not like there aren't plenty of options for fun things to do!

I was recently included in a Vampire: The Masquerade campaign with the same friends I went camping with. I really enjoy playing Vampire (even though I am generally not the most skilled roleplayer), so it was good to get into the game. I play a Malkavian named Irma who was a flapper and was embraced in the 20's. I've only played with Irma once so far, but am looking forward to further game sessions, and hope I can continue to play into the school year.

I've been going to the gym fairly often lately. I've been shooting for three times a week, and for the past two weeks, I have met that goal. Mostly I have done cardio, like the treadmill and elliptical, but have been getting into strength training. When the semester starts, I am planning to cancel my current gym membership, and work out at the rec center on campus instead -- since I'll be there so much anyway, and it's already included in my tuition! And this seems like a nice segue to finishing this post: I need to hit the gym!

I just finished taking my last final of my community college career. I exited the last classroom that I will sit in as someone who hasn't yet earned an Associate's degree. After I leave this building, I will not enter it the same way again. I will enter it perhaps as someone who needs to get paperwork, transcripts, things like that. I will enter it as a volunteer mediator for the mediation center on campus. I will perhaps enter it later on to take another class (like American Sign Language) that is not offered at the university I'm transferring to. But I will not enter it as a person seeking an Associate's ever again.
I feel like I need to commemorate this.
So, a Livejournal post from the computer lab seems appropriate... Just like old times.

I am 29 and just finished my 13th semester of community college. I stumbled, changed direction more than once, discovered a lot about myself, and grew so much. I used to beat myself up, as people I knew in my early 20's were getting their Bachelor's degrees while I was on academic probation from "13th grade". Later, I downed on myself for being "so old" and taking "so long" to get through this, for changing my mind once again, for not knowing what I wanted out of life in general. But when I finally found what I was looking for, in the Conflict Resolution major, it felt so much more right. The fact that I am going to walk across the stage in front of my family and friends next week feels that much more triumphant.

Sometimes you have to go through a lot of things you don't want in order to find the thing you really do want. I think that the way I have gone through school so far has given me a lot of perspective that I wouldn't have if I'd known exactly what I wanted from the moment I first set foot on campus, when I was 17. If I'd been focused on one program the whole way through, I wouldn't have had the opportunity to dabble in such a wide variety of fields. I feel like everything I've learned, from my classes in health, art, horticulture, and criminal justice -- to name a few subjects -- has enriched me so much, even if they ultimately don't count toward my degree or transfer to my university. The people I've met, the friends I've made, and the ideas I've been exposed to have had great value beyond a simple piece of paper.

I don't feel bad about myself anymore, when I say I'm finally graduating from community college, and that it took me a long time to do it. I don't feel like a failure. I don't try to make excuses for myself. I don't need to. I did things the right way for me, and I feel like I gained the maximum benefit as a result. I am more worldly at 29 than I would have been at 19. I know myself better. The maturity I have now has allowed me to be a better student than I could have been as a teenager, as I've pulled myself up out of academic probation and now have a GPA over 3.0, having been on the Dean's List for most semesters since 2011. This maturity has also helped me to take the things I've learned in school and apply them to the rest of my life. I feel like I am a more well-rounded and better person for everything I've learned during my long journey through community college. I used to resent my slow progress, but now, I wouldn't trade it for anything.

To everyone who has stood by me and supported me, I can't thank you enough.
To my friends also graduating as the Class of 2015, I extend my most sincere congratulations and best wishes. We are all capable of great things, and I wish everyone the best for whatever's next.
May we all learn from every experience.

In one week, I'll be back in school. Winter break always flies by. Today is pretty much the last real day off I'll have before the semester, and I probably won't have much in the way of days off after the semester begins, because when I'm not at work, I'll be at school! So today I have a lot of errands to run and loose ends to tie up.

Things are generally going well. We've made huge progress with our room-move: we did get the bed moved into the other room on the day I'd wanted to, and we've been making that room our haven bit by bit. We've still got a ways to go to make it truly livable, but the bed's there, we built some bookcases, and we hung art on the walls, so it's shaping up nicely. We need to finish up this room and start working on other rooms, but I'm afraid that school starting back up will make me lose momentum, so we need to come up with a plan to keep going. It's hard, though, because I have no idea what my workload is going to be like this semester. Once I get a sense of that, I'll know how much time I'll really have.

My friends Nicki and Sean are in town from New York. They're getting married in March (on the ultimate pi day) and I'm one of the bridesmaids! They had their shower (a couple's shower! So modern!) on Sunday, and it was really nice and quite fancy. Shannon, who is also a bridesmaid, said that going to that shower was the most adult thing she'd ever done. After the shower, I went to Shannon's house and watched a great movie called Highway to Hell with her and her husband Josh and his brother Jason. Then Shannon and I went back to hang out with Nicki and Sean, and had a little fondue party and watched The Shining, and then a bunch of game shows. It was a really fun day!

I'm looking forward to Thursday. I'm going to New York City with my parents to see an exhibit at the Met on mourning clothing. Stuff from Queen Victoria will be there. I think it will be really cool.

I'm still off Facebook and Twitter, and honestly, I don't miss them. The only problem is that I've been missing out on major life announcements from friends. I've been finding these things out in other ways -- "... oh, you're off Facebook! Did you hear that blah blah blah?"... but it's still kind of weird. Makes me wonder what else I'm missing. But otherwise, I don't feel like going on or checking them. It's whatever. I'm trying to formulate a plan for returning, so that I don't go crazy and get stuck again. I think I'll un-join a lot of the dramatic high-volume groups I'm in, and make a friends-group for just my close friends and family. This will sift them out from the people I'm friends with on FB who I vaguely knew in high school, or talked to once at a nightclub two years ago and wouldn't be able to pick out of a crowd, or worked with three jobs ago and never actually knew. It will generally make there be a lower volume to read. I've been using Instagram this month, and the reason that has worked is because my follow-list is smaller, so I can get up-to-date quickly, without getting trapped for what seems like hours. Hopefully my plans work.

I have a lot to get done today, so I'd better get rolling on that.

This month-without-Facebook thing is treating me pretty well, so far. I'm getting all sorts of things done. I made a list of things I needed to do and a list of things I wanted to do, and I've been steadily chipping away at each.
Jay and I are in the midst of the project of moving around some rooms in our house. We had our bedroom, and were using the master bedroom essentially for storage. We decided to clean out the master bedroom and move our bed over there, and turn our current bedroom into a living room/den/guest room type space. So we'll have more room for ourselves, to entertain, and for guests. We're making pretty good progress with it, my ambitious prediction is that on Thursday, I'll be able to move the bed across the hall to the other room. That will be a huge step.
I've also been able to do lots of other little things I've been wanting to do. I put glitter on the toes of my pink chucks and I started reading "The Crow", which I've wanted to get around to for years. I've made phonecalls and sent emails and scheduled things and tidied up a lot of little loose ends, which feels really nice.
And I've been writing more. Both general diarism, and creatively. I used to get little one-liners of poems and stuff that would come to me, and I'd write them down, and sometimes be able to later expand upon them, which is how a lot of the poems and lyrics and stuff I used to write came about. I hadn't done that for a long time, but a few days ago, my brain started working that way again. And yesterday, I started writing them down like I used to. I hope this becomes a regular thing again.
This morning, it snowed. Not a lot, but enough to be a shock to my parents when I pick them up from the airport later today. They have spent the last week in Florida. What a way to say "welcome home!"

There are two things I have opinions about today.

1) "Into the Woods"
My coworker Katie H. thought it would be fun if a group of us from work went to go see Into the Woods together. So, today I saw it with Katie, Nicole, and Lori. And, ***Spoiler alert!*** I really liked it. I thought it was beautiful to look at, and the costume design was incredible. I really enjoy fairy tales and the Brothers Grimm and stuff, and I think this movie will be a real treat to people who are up on those subjects. Like, for example, Cinderella had her birds and her tree on her mother's grave, not a fairy godmother. There were lots of things like that, that were closer to the actual folktales than to some of the more pleasant regurgitations of them that may be better-known. I've never seen the musical on stage, but I loved how the story of the movie wove together classic tales. I thought it was an inventive and engaging story line. The cast was great -- wow for Johnny Depp as an incredibly creepy wolf, and double-wow for Meryl Streep as the witch. And I really liked the music! I also enjoyed that it gave me things to think about, like what it really means to be "nice", and how "no one is alone", and even the ramifications of judging others. I highly recommend it, especially if you like fairy tales and musicals and gorgeous costuming. Five stars.

2) "Potato Express" microwave potato cooker
After always hearing my parents rave about this magical red sleeve that makes perfectly-cooked potatoes, I decided I had to get one. I have been eating a lot of baked potatoes lately, so this would be awesome, right?
So I picked one up in the "as seen on tv" section at CVS, and tonight I tried it. "Perfect potatoes in just 4 minutes!", it says all over the package. A chart in the included gourmet recipe & instruction guide informed me that potato-y perfection could even be mine in just three minutes, since I was only cooking one potato.
So I followed the directions for preparing the potato and getting it into the red sleeve, and nuked it for 3 minutes. I took it out, and... still had a hard potato. But it was kinda soft on one side, so I stuck it back in for another minute. It wasn't done after that, or after another subsequent minute. I tried it for two more minutes, and when I took it out of the sleeve, it finally seemed to be done!
Then I stuck a fork in it and split it, and discovered that the inside was still not cooked all the way! The outside was getting so wrinkly, I thought I had over-cooked it, but in fact, after 7 minutes it wasn't ready yet. I didn't really know what more I could do with this potato, so I tossed it out. I grabbed a new potato and cooked it the way I recently learned from Shannon, where I keep cooking it for three minutes and then flipping it, til it's done. It took 9 minutes, but the potato was perfectly and evenly cooked.
At the rate the Potato Express was going, it would have taken it at least that long to deliver me a well-cooked potato, so being that I have another method that I know works for me, use of this product has no advantage, and I'm pretty sure I will be returning it. Such a bummer! Zero stars.