I Have a Dream...

Hey. Hey. Hey. Yesterday I thought I would be writing you this blog from Nash, but I'm still at the parentals. Old Nigel (my car and what a beauty it is) decided he didn't want to get out in the traffic today. The engine light came on last night and my dad filled up my oil even though I have at least a month or two before I need to get it changed again (thanks so much Wally World). So I decided to stick it out in O-town one more night. I mean I have a legit excuse, right?

I went to Hanging of the Greens at my church tonight. It was great. Two of the nephews performed. Jack managed to pull out an air guitar in his last performance at church and I missed it. Unfortunately for everyone in the congregation, he did not pull out any tricks tonight.

When we got home after for some reason my mom and I got into a conversation on old stories and poems we wrote. If you know mi madre and me this is totally understandable. So I decided to go pull out some of my old literature (they have bestselling author written all over them...ha!). Anyways, here is one that I found quite humorous...

I Have a Dream...

I have a dream. My dream is to become an entertainer. It doesn't matter if I'm on a tv show, movie, or I'm a talkshow host. This is my dream because I like to talk and be the center of attention.\

I think to make this a reality I would have to practice. I would have to practice on stage in front of people. I would have to do well in school and be in the highschool drama club. I would have to succeed in college and be in their drama club. Then, I would probably have to move to Hollywood or New York City to become an actress or whatever. As a citizen, I will entertain the world.

By: Beth White :)

How great is this? I decided to go through and make a checklist on what I have accomplished to achieve this goal.

1. Practice - All of the time. I remember setting up my stuffed animals and performing for them (please still be my friend). I also did a radio show with my friends when I was younger (again...please still be my friend).
   
2. Practice on stage in front of people - Not so much. I was in showchoir so I guess I somewhat achieved this.
3. Do well in school- Graduated from high school. Check.
4. High School Drama Club - Negative.
5. Succeed in college - Graduated from college (five year plan). Affirmative.
6. College drama club - Seriously? Nope.
7. Move to Hollywood - I know you should "never say never" but I'll make an exception here. Never.
8. Move to NYC - Not on my top five list. No for now. But you never know.
9. Entertain the world as a citizen - Hilarious. I think I have definitely done this. Not necessarily as an actress/talk show host.

I mean I did choose a profession similar to entertainer. En_____er. I just filled in the blank a little differently.

Free Gifts are the Bestest

I took a holiday break and well deserved. My blog goal (and yes I was always taught that if you set small goals then it is more probable they will be accomplished) was to write a blog everyday for the first week (at least)...check. Small goal accomplished 101. So here's something funny that happened this week while on my mini break.

I got to spend tons of time with the fam this week which I loved. We actually woke up and went shopping (around 6:30) on Black Friday. This was the first time I have ever done this, and although there were great deals...I ended up buying a ton for me that I probably wouldn't have bought otherwise so Black Friday may not happen again for me next year.

Anyways, the broseph informed my sister of a used Xbox 360 deal going on at one of the stores. My nephew had one for about a year, and it died since he left it on 24/7. Not the point. So my sister mentioned getting a used one to my nephew. The conversation is as follows:

Sis: What do you think about getting a used Xbox before Christmas (key word before)? You know that way we can save some money.
Neph: But if I get it from Santa it will be free.

Good times. I miss being a kid.

Turkey Day Eve

I made it to home, sweet, home last night after a little over five hours on the road (longer than normal), a sore throat (from singing my heart out to pass the time), and some hair missing (due to me pulling it out while in traffic).

Today was any normal Thanksgiving Eve. I tore up the kitchen Paula Deen style. No, seriously...I made one of her recipes. I played with the three cutest nephews ever and visited with the sis. Believe me, I was just as thrilled as them to play on the trampoline for over an hour...it just never gets old for me, and I've been jumping on it since I was one. I went shopping with the mom and bought some new knitting needles and yarn. The Friday Night Knitting Club is contagious...they should get a percentage of sales for promotion. I have "helped" knit one scarf with my mom and grandmother. Kind of neat since there were three generations of work put into it. Lets be honest though. I knitted about 3 rows and was done.

Anyways, excited about tomorrow. Macy's and then (drum roll please)...THE DOG SHOW!!! Yea!

Hope everyone has a great one!

Check This Out

Got this email from the mom earlier this morning and thought I'd share it.

UNBELIEVABLE PHOTO

This is a beautiful photo of a giant American flag in Arizona. The photo is authentic, untouched and was taken on regular Kodak 35mm film. The person who took the picture couldn't believe the image created by the sun's rays. Nice of them to share it with the world!

How awesome is that?!

Short and Sweet

It's late, so I'll make this short and sweet. I love that 10:25 is late for me now (Beth = 0ld). Anyhoo I sat in on my first face-to-face "professional" interview today, and what's funny about this is that I was one of the interviewers. I guess no experience was needed.

After work I went to Target (which I do almost every night seeing as how I could hop, skip, and jump to Target from my doorstep) to buy some ornament hangers, and I ran into one of my friends from freshman year that lived on the same floor as me. She lives right down the street from me. Crazy, huh? I love "small world" moments especially since I tend to hum the tune to myself after it happens which immediately makes me think of Disney World aka my favorite place ever. You wish you were me. Be honest.

Off to read...Friday Night Knitting Club (my book club book from two months ago). I'm just a smidge behind. Night!

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas...

Since I'm going home for Thanksgiving on Tuesday and won't return until later next Sunday, I decided to go ahead and get a little Christmas decorating done today. I bought most of my decorations last year post Christmas when everything is like 125% off...seriously. The one thing I didn't have though was a tree.

So after church I went Christmas tree hunting. So much fun. I went with the prelit fake which is so funny to me because I totally hounded my parents the first year they bought a fake instead of a real (and that was only like 5 years ago and we had a cat that always turned over the tree each year...at least twice). I found my tree at Home Depot, and it was totally love at first sight. I walked out of that store, tree in hand, grinning ear to ear like I had just gotten the best deal ever...which I hadn't.

It took me all afternoon to put everything up. We have a tradition in my family as far as tree decorating goes. Every year my parents give us an ornament that represents us. I've had a puppy, tennis Santa, and a piano just to name a few. Once we open our ornaments we start decorating the tree with ornaments of old and reminisce on each ornament. And we always had a CD or tape (depending on the decade) playing in the background. I decided to stick with this tradition because I love it.

I turned my TV to the Traditional Holiday Music channel, and even got to break out my "Christmas in America" record. So exciting! So glad I picked that one up a couple of months ago, and it only cost 99 cents (even more exciting!!). And can I just say that everything goes so well with my apple green Ikea sofa and red pillows. In a word, my living room right now is scrumptulescent. I think I might just leave the Christmas decor up all year round.

Don't worry though. I didn't put any of my outdoor decor up yet. I didn't want to be that neighbor.

My smile equaled that of old Charles but my decorations...way better!

FYI: Y'all=You all...not You will

One fun part about working for a big company like Motriola (personally my fave way of pronouncing it) is the array of people that you get to meet. I've met fellow enginerds from Mexico to England to France. I'm sure I made their list as well...seeing as how a) they have a list and b) they probably never thought they'd meet anyone originally from the great state of Alabama.

One guy I've worked with in particular had a pretty thick British accent. He has only been in the states for a few years, and it shows. So when he came down here to work on a project of mine, he found it quite humorous when I sent him a text with the word y'all in it. He loved that us Southern folk down here text the way we talk. I mean, durh, of course we do because we're awesome. So after I had sent him a few texts with the word y'all he decided to try the word out for size. His text read as follows:

"When do you reckon y'all be here? We can wait 10 mins. no problem."

Props to him for giving it a go but lets be honest...didn't work out too great. I immediately laughed when I received this. First of all I was the only one on the way so y'all wasn't even needed unless I have a second personality that I am unaware of. Secondly, the way it was used the "all" replaced "will" which is kind of important seeing as how it is the verb and everything.

So when I met up with him I told him this version of y'all would have been tricky because the way I would have said it would have led to a double contraction...you all will = y'all'll. I'm pretty sure this blew his mind, but I hope that he's stuck with it and is practicing the proper use of the wonderful word y'all.

Thought I'd share this. Please do not be overwhelmed with my exciting lifestyle.

NINJAS!

I won't get into details now about why Google is awesome in every way, but I want everyone to see the wonderful new themes option they added to Gmail. This was added to my Gmail on Tuesday, but I know I talked to some friends who said there's wasn't up and running until later on this week. Anyways here are a bunch of the themes...

I currently have mine set as the ninja theme (third row center) which utilizes a beautiful shade of blue and ninjas lurking around my inbox...naturally. So for all of you Gmail users out there I would highly recommend you put the themes to use...Settings. Themes tab.

It's the small things that make my day, and Google has a great way of making that happen.

YouTube: My Anti-drug

Remember that series of anti-drug commercials? Do they still do those? Not the topic of conversation just wondering.

I'm pretty big on YouTube, so it will definitely play a role in my blog. I'll go on there to watch one (uno/singular) video and two hours later I'm watching a video of someone I've never heard of somewhere I've never heard of. So today I got on YouTube with the mindset of just kind of browsing. You know...seeing what was out there.

I saw this video that I thought looked interesting, clicked on it, and it ended up being the newest video of this girl who's awesome. Julia Nunes. She plays a mean ukulele, and all of her videos are fun. Well I started picking some out that I thought I'd enjoy. Turns out she opened for Ben Folds and has played with him. She's definitely going places, and no I don't mean mainstream America. I went to her website to see if she was coming to Nashville anytime soon, and she had come in May. Turns out it was Nashville, IN...seriously guys?

A few videos I thoroughly enjoyed...

It looks like this was one of her firsts. The beginning is a little off, but she's quick to recover. Love the video for this one. Made me chuckle.

I like her version o' this better.

I mean I even listened to her entire rendition of Survivor, and I don't think I've listened to that song since we performed it in showchoir. One thing's for sure...she's definitely got a new fan.

Beauty Pageants and Beth (Never thought I'd hear those two mentioned together. Ever.)

Two blogs in one day...lucky you. So I'm going to sound like a total dork, but I already have some blogs written. Noone ever told me that you can't blog well...without a blog so while traveling for work I pulled out the trusty old pen and paper and got to work. I thought I would use a font that looked like my handwriting. You don't have to tell me...I know that I'm super clever. I would like to thank my Intro to Engineering course for teaching me the lovely language of HTML (it only cost $400 right?).

Here she goes...

I never thought that I would hear myself say this but...I wish had participated in more pageants when I was younger. And by pageants I mean scholarship programs, and by more I mean any. Let me explain this proposterous statement.

I came to the realization the other day at work that I am not very good with on the spot questions. I was asked a very simple question that I knew the answer to, but I just gave a simple "I don't know. I'm not good with that kind of stuff." Really?!?! I'm not good with that kind of stuff. The "stuff" that I was referring to pertained to my job, my education, and everything that I had studied for the past couple of years. AND I KNEW THE ANSWER.

I have also found myself in similar situations answering questions with an "I don't understand the question" which is such a lie because I totally understand the question.

So this is how I came to the conclusion of more pageant experience being a good thing. The interview and on stage question. These are a huge percentage of your overall score although I could not give you the specific percentage because that would mean I knew way more than I wanted to about pageants (no offense to all of the pageant girls out there).

You go into the interview knowing all of the answers ahead of time. No they don't give you the questions that they are going to ask you, but they do ask you questions about yourself, your experience, your platform (if you have one), and anything else that has to do with you. So you should already know the answers to these questions, but it's the whole "on the spot"-ness that makes this difficult at times.

I know that the safest bet in the dreaded (for me at least) "on the spot" question situation is to take a deep breath and allow yourself to process the question and think of the answer. Easier said than done. And you know what? I think this would be somewhat easier for me if I had a good amount of experience with this which I could have obtained via pageant experience.

Just an FYI...if you had told me that my first nonintroductory (did I just make up a word) blog would be on beauty pageants I would have laughed in your face and probably managed to get a little bit of spit on you while I was at it. But it is what it is. Feel free to enjoy it again and again because I am almost 99.9% sure that I will never write another blog with the main subject being beauty pageants.

Everybody's Doing It

So I've decided to start blogging. Why you ask?...the answer is in the title of this blog. I spend all day on the computer at work, and I love taking breaks to read friends' blogs. I even have the blogs on my most visited list. Since they are kind enough to make my day enjoyable, I have decided to return the favor.I wanted to wait until I got my website up and running, but that was suppose to happen about 3 months ago so we'll see how that turns out.

As for what I'll blog about, it'll be a little of this little of that. I definitely don't specialize in anything (as my friend KK and I put it...we're less than mediocre) so I don't have one topic I can harp on. I've only been in the real world for 5 months now so I have definitely encountered many firsts (like buying a condo!!!). You will also notice throughout my blogs that I skip around a lot. I have the attention span of a five year old watching C-Span...or anyone watching it for that matter. Just bear with me though...mmkay?

A little about me...I'm living in the lovely Nashvegas now. Well actually Brentwood, TN for all of you who are familiar with the area. I interned here last summer with Motorola, and they asked me back so here I am. Enginerding it in the country music capital of the world...which I can vouch for the fact that if you want to avoid the whole country music aspect of Nashville it's a lot easier than you would think. So that's it for now. Welcome to my blog. I'm sure you'll gain a lot of knowledge from this baby (cha right and monkeys might fly out of my butt...any Wayne's World fans in the house?). Wow.

Ciao for now,
Beth