People

Last week I promised I was trying to be better at not complaining.

I am still holding true to that promise . . . at least in person.  But here on the internet I can be as grouchy as I want and most people just find time to find it somewhat amusing.

With that being said, there is only one thing I have to say today.

You know it's been a day when you start considering the upsides of the plague.

Random Update

I frequently complain about my job.  It's not a good quality.  I accept that.  And while you may not believe it, I am trying to change it.  Being a Debbie Downer is not a trait that people are attracted to.  And if it irritates me when my coworkers do it, I probably shouldn't either.

On that goal oriented note.  I am mad.

People . . . in case you hadn't noticed it is legitimately raining outside. And there is a good chance lightning might be coming forth from the heavens in a show of fury only to be rivaled by my fury at you coming to my place of business on a Saturday night. Go home. Snuggle up with your loved ones. Don't go out in this weather. Good grief.

That is one of the few things I can't stand at work.  When I go thinking no one will come because its raining or storming or is in all other ways completely miserable and then they do.  And they want all the bells and whistles that accompany coming to the Gardens.

These people are legitimate pains in my butt.

But enough complaining!  I am unshackling myself from the burden of care and am going to talk about something else.  And if you have read this far, you are going to listen.

While work has been an all consuming pit of despair, other parts of my life have been moving along successfully.  Financially I am in a better place than ever. Of course, being in a better place than broke isnt all that hard to accomplish. 

My brothers are back in school which means more quiet time around home for me. 

And of course- the weather has been nice and gloomy. (That was a sincere statement. No sarcasm at all. (There was none there either . . . Stop laughing.))

Anyway, have a good week people of the Internet. It's on the house. 

Paradox Space

Paradox is defined as; "any person, thing or situation exhibiting an apparently contradictory nature."

This being said; my life is currently the epitome of "paradox".

You see, I work in Customer Services.  I get paid to work a front desk where people come, pay me to get into various places on property and go on their merry, or not so merry ways.  However, the paradox comes into play when one discovers that I really, really don't like people.

It's not that I don't like ALL people.  I have friends.  And I could even make more if I felt so inclined.  (Luckily I don't.)  But when it comes to nameless people that I have only the briefest of contact with.  I really don't like them.

Now, you may be asking yourself; "Madison.  If you hate people so much, why'd you WILLINGLY get a job where you would have to deal with a wide variety of people and be exposed to some of the worst the human race has to offer?"

Excellent question.

The answer is . . . well- I did it because I have a hard time interacting with people in general.  I've blogged about my introvertedness on more than one occasion.  And the blog itself is named "The Hermit Files" for goodness sakes.  I thought that if I took a job that not only forced me to interface with co-workers, but random pedestrians as well, I would be able to interact on a normal "social" level which would no doubt advance me through the ranks of my peers and ultimately help me succeed at life.

In a way, this job has done just that.  I have been finding it easier and easier to not only interact with people, but read the subtle clues imbedded in their body language to the point that I secretly refer to myself as; "the people whisperer."  On top of that, I've been gaining more control over my own body language and have been using it to my advantage.  For example, when dealing with an obstinate guest, my tone may be pleasant, but if they're smart enough, they can see the raw fury bubbling just under the surface.  Sadly in most cases, they aren't clever enough to discern it.  But it's there nonetheless.

In conclusino- in a lot of ways, it has been very good for my personal growth.

However, it has also been just a tad detrimental because ultimately, it's made my opinion of people in general, which we've already established as being particularly low, do an olympian style dive off the deep end and down 20,000 leagues under the sea.


And on that note, my good people, concludes my rant for the week.  Savor it.  I know I have.

Segway Surprises

Gift giving is not one of my strong suites.  It's hard to come up with brilliant ideas that people will love. But every now and again I hit the jackpot.

Lucky for me, with my mom's birthday just around the corner, I was able to come up with something great.

One of the perks of Thanksgiving Point Gardens (where I work), is that they rent Segways out for people to ride.  While you do have to sign your life away to ride one, it's totally worth it when you start cruising around like an insane person.  Everyone in my family has wanted to do this since we found out about it.  Sadly, you have to be 18 to do so.

Lucky for me, I've been 18 for awhile.

And so my mom and I traveled back to work to ride on some of the funnest things since Golf Carts.

Here's some video of our merry misadventures.

It was one of the funnest days I've had in awhile.  And I can guarantee, I'll be back to do it again real soon.

Social Musings

I'm not a morning person.  My family can attest to that.  Quite often, it takes me at least a half hour to fully wake up and be alert enough to hold an intelligent conversation.  If you try to talk to me before then . . . I'll make like its prehistoric times and the best you'll be getting out of me is a series of grunts and sighs.

Because of this distaste for mornings, my job has been both a blessing and a curse.  I love it to pieces but it begins at 8 AM . . . far too early for me to be "pleasant company" but at the same time, that doesn't matter because for two hours I'm virtually all alone in the museum.  This means that I don't exactly need any social graces.  I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but the dinosaurs don't exactly care.  However, this all changes at 10 AM when the museum officially opens for business and for two hours I have to be consciously aware of the fact that my natural face looks like I'm about ready to murder someone and then keel over dead myself.

After five months of working, I'm proud to say that I had gotten in the habit of smiling at everyone.  In fact, sometimes I will be at the store and I will stare someone down with a big smile on my face until they, sensing the creepy smiling stalker, look up and smile in return.  But this all changed when, for about three weeks, I didn't have to wake up at 6:30 in order to get to work on time.  I was sleeping in till almost 9:00 for almost three weeks and it was absolute bliss.  But then tulip festival ended, and my hours at the gardens got cut back.  I'm back at the museum (which I have absolutely missed) and have found that my smiling habit have all but disappeared.  In fact, I'm almost so out of it with the return to the morning schedule that I seem almost robotic in nature and thought.

Here is a tidbit of something that legitimately ran through my mind only a few days ago.

I was walking through the Discovery Room to get to the back where the cleaning supplies are kept.  A woman was walking towards me with her son in tow.  She was a happy, cheerful sort of person and so of course she was smiling as she walked closer.  Time seemed to physically slow down as I processed the scene before me.

"Okay.  The woman is smiling.  What do I do next?  Proper human reaction is to smile back.  Ah!  Smile."

And so I smiled, time sped back up and I went on my merry and robotic way.

I swear.  Some of my most insightful and enlightening moments occur when I'm half conscious and wandering through the museum.

On that note, here are some fun creations I've found at work.  The museum's great for kids, but sometimes I think that parents get just a tad bit bored.

Random Stories Revival

In school, one of my favorite things to do was write random stories.  It was a fun way to interact with my friends and it definitely relived some of the dismal boredom otherwise faced in the hallways of horror.

My friends greatly appreciated my overabundance of wit and creativity and and ultimately encouraged me to continue writing them long after my juvenile days in public school were over.

This leads me to today.

As a result of my friends encouragement, I have continued writing these stories.  Luckily, they have gotten a little more mature and a little less . . . stupid . . . over the years and as a result, I feel comfortable sharing them with you.  As a result, I'm creating a new page (you can find all my pages under the Page Tab on the right side of the screen), on which I will post some of the newest additions to my Random Story collection just as soon as I find one not completely and utterly embarrasing.

Hopefully, I will also be able to convince a few of my friends to help me with this new project I'm dubbing "Operation Random Smiles" or "Operation Epic Tales" (name subject to change), and it will be even better than before.

Until then amigos, enjoy your day, night or time zone.

YouTube Shout Out!

Today's post is a post about something very dear to my heart.  Something that has made me smile, and in some cases downright laugh lately, despite the stress of finals looming over my head.  It is, without a doubt, one of the best kept secrets of YouTube, and I'm about to share it with all of you.

About a year ago, a video game called Minecraft hit the charts and quickly became one of the most talked about and played games in America (or at least my little part of America).  It seemed that everyone got into the strangely addicting awesomeness that is Minecraft (obviously, I did too), and all kinds of things just sort of exploded from here.  One of the things I've found across YouTube are videos of various people playing this fantastical game with their own commentary on its wondrous nature.

One such group of people are friends of mine who just happen to have what I personally believe to be, some of the funniest commentary on the game ever.  But don't take my word for it.  Here are a couple of my personal favorites.  And at the bottom is a link to their channel.  Please check it out.  Subscribe.  Get them to keep making these gems of the internet because they really do make my day.  (Wow.  That last part sounded a little selfish . . . of course it totally was.  I want more videos!)

Dropper Part 1





Survival Games; Frodo is Not Our Friend







Episode 2; Try Try Again




CLICK ME to see more epicness!

Jurassic Manor Part 2

Finally!  The Long Anticipated Part 2 is up and running!  Aren't you all just so excited?

Regretfully, this post is not as climatic as the last.  But never fear.  A special guest star pops up in this;

THE SECOND HALF OF MY JURASSIC PARK DREAM.

Let us begin.


When we left off, our hero (namely me) was hiding behind glass cases as a T-Rex stared into it.  No doubt this part of my dream comes directly from the one scene of the real Jurassic Park that I've actually seen.  (Shown below).

At any rate, this scene happens in my dream.

I'm hiding behind glass cases and a T-Rex leans down and peers through them, seeming to stare into my very soul.  Yes, yes.  I know.  Glass cases aren't exactly "the best" hiding place in the world.  But keep in mind that I'm in some kind of gigantic manor house, surrounded by the crashing waves of some beautiful looking ocean that I can't find it in myself to swim through.  And so I hid.  I hid behind these woefully inadequate glass cases and prayed.  All-the-while knowing that the beast gazing in at me with its eye of death could smell the fear burning brightly in my chest and was preparing for the kill.

Then suddenly, and without warning, I find myself being sucked through a deep, dark, abyss-of-a-hole and into the lobby of the Manor House and far, far away from the killer Tyrannosaurus Rex.


Now this is the part of the story where everything gets thrown out the window.  I'm not sure what happens to me from this point forwards.  The last thing I remember is me, running for my life through the lobby as a few Velociraptors have gotten loose and are chasing everyone down.  (Luckily that old adage is true (If you are being chased by a bear you don't have to outrun the bear, you just have to outrun your friend.)) and I find myself more or less safe because I'm always the most athletic person in the room in my dreams.  Unfortunately, from here, my story is lost to time and the remainder of my dream is focused on our mysterious guest and her wonderfully random antics.

Meet Aubrey Hepburn.  The heroine of the remainder of my bizarro dream.

After losing sight of myself in the manor, my dream perspective shifts to the front of the house.  I can only assume that the Doctor Who phrase; "It's bigger on the inside" rings true in this case, because I don't see how else you could fit an entire world within this average sized manor house.

It is exactly at this point in time, as I'm contemplating Doctor Who within my dream, that I see something rather unexpected.  A car, that looks an awful lot like a large toy car, crashes through the front of the house and squeals away towards the freeway, ignoring all the panicked pedestrians as it plows through anything that gets in its way.  Moments later, a massive Tyrannosaurus Rex plows through the remainder of the front of the Manor House, once again bringing the question to mind; "How did they fit an entire world into such a small space?"

However, my mind can only focus on this question for a moment before it's focused on the high speed pursuit occurring between the compact car and the gargantuan dinosaur.

The compact red car makes for the freeway with everything its got.  It's speed is only barley enough to keep the car from being squashed under the massive feet of the giant lizard desperately trying to kill it dead.

My point of view now transitions to the front of the car.  It is here that I see who has been madly driving the vehicle around the twists and turns of the freeway.  It's none other than Audrey Hepburn herself.  Beloved actress of the mid-to-late 1900's.

Miss. Hepburn is desperately driving, both hands on the wheel, speeding away from this deadly beast that seems oddly single minded in its pursuit of our heroine.  And thus the chase continues.

Forever and ever it would seem as it is from this point that our story ends.  I wake up.  Life continues.  Reality sets in.  And you shake your fist at the computer after reading such an anti-climatic story.



I guess it's only fair that I post this story on April Fools day since it seems like such a joke.  But it wasn't my good people.  This is the dream I dreamed as far as I can remember it.  Enjoy the rest of your prankster day.  I will see you again real soon.

Jurassic Manor Part One

Let me start off today's post by saying this; I have REALLY weird dreams.  I don't know what my subconscious is up to at night, but clearly it likes to get drunk somehow and then have a wild party because why else would I dream about things like Darth Vader wrapping himself up in Saran Wrap and then blasting himself off into space via a School Bus shaped like a rocket or finding myself being through into a different dimension where I was suddenly extremely personable, didn't mind dating, and ultimately ended up becoming queen of said new world?

That being said, I recently had a dream to end all other dreams on a scale of randomness.  And I'm going to share it with all of you.

For the past few weeks, I haven't remembered any of my dreams.  I've been so stressed that when I fall asleep at night, I'm completely unconscious for however long I sleep.  When I wake up, I know I've been dreaming, I just can't remember any of them.  Which is really sad for me because, well, my dreams are pretty hilarious and/or awesome when I can remember them.

Anyway- I've been feeling really sad about this.  I love pondering my psycho dreams on a more philosophical level and you can't do that if you can't remember them.  But then this dream happened and it is just to ridiculous not to share.

So here we go.

The setting is some kind of restaurant in the underbelly of this giant manor house me and my companions (we'll get to who's who in a minute) find ourselves at.  As in all dreams of mine, there is a certain amount of things that just don't work in the real world but make total sense while I'm dreaming.  The fact that this restaurant and basically an entire county can fit in this manor house.

But moving on.

My companions and I find ourselves in a restaurant (again- in the seedy underbelly of the manor house).  I am, for no reason I can tell, pretending to be blind.  I'm very good at it.  We order non-alcholic drinks and sit down and wait.  When our drinks are delivered (I didn't order one), two of my companions start scarfing theirs down and then begin to feel odd.  I, being the good friend that I am, check the list of ingredients that just happen to be on label and discover that Sugar is the main ingredient.

Now normally this fact wouldn't be problematic.  This is actually one of the few facts that coincide with a real life fact, but in the Manor House world we lived in, none of us ate/drank sugar.  It was not allowed because it seemed to cause the same kind of side effects that drugs would.

Upon revealing this fact to my companions, they immediately stopped drinking their soda's.  Unfortunately, this fact did not go unnoticed by our server who was trying to drug us on sugar.  He came over and asked what was the problem.  My companions made up some ridiculous excuses which he nodded at despite not looking very convinced.  I was still acting blind.

The Server then proceeded to begin walking down the stairs just to my right.  He paused partway down and reached towards me as if he was going to poke my eye out.  Of course I flinched (wouldn't you?) and immediately everything around us froze.  "Finally."  he said menacingly.  "I knew it was you."  (I don't know why I was hiding from people or why I felt being a blind person would be the best disguise but my cover was blown now.)  "Well," he continued, "I don't suppose it matters now.  We only have until 10:57 and then we're all dead anyway."  And with that ambiguous statement with its random time limit, he left.

My companions turned to me after he was gone.  I was already on my feet weaving through the tables and chairs in the restaurant.  "What's going on?" they called after me.

"We have to go now!"  I called back with a whole ton of urgency in my voice.  "We don't have much time!"

And with that, I took off running.  I won't lie, I was in AMAZING shape.  I was booking it faster than I've ever booked it before and I was only just out of breath.

As we ran, my companions wanted to know why we seemed to be running for our lives.  I nodded at some of the plastic statues as we passed them.  "See these dinosaur statues?"  I said.  "I'm pretty sure that at 10:57 they're going to come to life and we need to be long gone before that happens."

Needless to say, my companions sped up as we raced through dense forest.  Everywhere I looked I could see giant statues that were going to come to life.  Some were less terrifying such as the giant cricket or the dead frog, but let's face it.  Even these, if big enough, could do some serious damage to human tissue so we ran.

We ran for what seemed like an eternity and then we reached the sea.  (Yes.  We are still in the Manor House because I remember thinking in my dream state; "Where is the exit to this stinking house?")  I knew we needed to get higher so that the T-Rex's around us (and there were tons) wouldn't be able to get us.  With that in mind, I took a flying leap up something that looked a lot like this;

And prayed for the best.  Unfortunately my flying leap literally sent me flying far above the tip of the rock and I became suddenly very concerned for my life.  Luckily one of my companions had jerry-rigged a mechanical pterodactyl and came flying to my rescue just in time.  I landed on the hard lizard and quickly looked down to see how my other companion was faring.  My other companion, who at the restaurant had been female through and through, had suddenly morphed into the grandpa from UP and was jerry-rigging another pterodactyl.  The companion who had saved me, and I landed our lizard and rushed to Grandpa UP.  "I'm gonna need more time."  He said somewhat frazzled.

"You don't have it."  I said, glancing up at a wall that had suddenly appeared and just happened to have a clock on it.  "By the looks of it, you have about two minutes."

Now this part is a little hazy.  I don't know if dreams can make adrenaline shoot through your body in real life, but if it's possible, mine was doing that at that moment because my heart rate seemed to increase and time seemed to stand still and yet those two minutes flew by because the next thing I knew, I was ordering everyone to hide.  The T-Rex's were waking.

And on that cliff-hanger of an ending, I leave you.  But don't worry.  Part Two will be out really soon.

Stress-a-palooza

Well it's happened world.  I suppose it was bound to happen sooner or later now that I've entered the "Adulthood Zone" but I didn't expect it to come quite so soon.

What am I talking about you ask?

I just heaped a second serving of responsibility onto my already overflowing platter of frustration.

That's right!  I just scored myself a second job.

It's going to be epic and I'm really excited, don't get me wrong, I'm just also concerned for my well-being as this will be a second job on top of an already tiring job on top of a full semester of online classes on top of my Sunbeam calling in Primary on top of all the other responsibilities I somehow got wrangled into.  No offense mom, but I'm calling you out.

Why'd you have to go and raise me right?  Not cool.

So, fair warning, you may not see me for the next eon and a half.  Do not be alarmed.  I'm probably still alive . . . insane, but alive.

Good luck to you, and as the internet has taken to saying; "May the odds be ever in YOUR favor."  Although in my case let them be ever in MY favor.

Let the Games begin.