This week has been a stressful one. Not only have I taken on full responsibility for a rabbit while family members were out of town (Okay, the rabbit is cute and very therapeutic), but I am supposed to be going out of town myself. The rabbit goes home tomorrow, but I still have a five hour trip in my near future. I have several concerns clogging up my brain.

My first fear happens to be slightly irrational, yet not impossible. In my area it seems that I wake up every morning to a beautiful, clear sky. Around noon the clouds start developing, and by supper time they are grey and ominous. Usually we get a brief interlude of heavy showers, sometimes hail, and obnoxious thunder. More recently tornadoes developed over our town, but thankfully none dropped down. I am deeply terrified that my car will be thrown around by a random tornado while driving.

My second fear happens to be very rational. I am a young female traveling alone. I fit into the classic stereotype; I don’t know how to fix a car. So if I am stranded on the side of the highway I have no way to escape or protect myself from a random person(s) who decide to stop and harass me.

My third concern ties into the second thing. If something happens to my car, then that means money. I have bills coming up with no pay check from now to then. I can afford the trip and my bills, but not my trip, bills, AND an auto bill.

TMI Alert, but did I mention I am on my period?!

I have voiced my concerns to my boyfriend in hopes that he would give me encouragement regarding my worries. All he told me was not to come down if 1) I was worried about my financial situation, and 2) If I wasn’t going to have a good time.

All I have to say to that is, I AM NOT A FORTUNE TELLER; however, I am an over-analyzing woman who happens to be visiting with Aunt Flo. So excuse me if I am just a tad bit worried and stressed out.

Right now I am getting the vibe that it would just be better if I stayed home =/

Filed under: Rant, Road Trip by virgospl
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Today I did not work. I had one thing on the agenda that took approximately an hour, factoring in driving time. I got some laundry done and watched a television show. The truth of the matter is, I have this itching need for something that I just can’t satisfy.

I had a cup of coffee, ate a candy bar, cleaned my room, worked on graphics for my quotable life, sang improv to the rabbit I am babysitting – nothing prevailed. I even wandered around Wal-Mart with Rebekah. The clock nears midnight as I type and this feeling still lingers.

So I thought about it. There are certain people who have shaped me into the person I am simply by being in my life at my times of weakness and vulnerability. They picked me up – play doh – and molded me. Who I am is not a direct reflection of the mold, but more or less the result of breaking out and learning lessons. I keep flashing back to those moments.

Right now my life is in a limbo of change. I just want to grab onto something so familiar and not let go. I need an old friend to reminisce with. I want to find somebody I have been out of contact with. But the thing is, nobody is dying and life is going on. Nobody has time to stop for me. Everyone is out living life while I sit here in a tiny town and type my thoughts out to maybe one person. Oh, hello and thank you for reading this kind sir. Er, ma’am? I don’t know. I could just use a friend, somebody who will talk about the good old times with me instead of complaining about everything going on right now. Something simple.

Filed under: Thoughts, myquotablelife by virgospl
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I went in to get a hair cut the other day. My hair dresser, Missy, started out with washing my hair like she always does. Then she cut my hair and styled it and sent me on my way. Well, she also sent me with a bunch of random hairs that stayed in my hair. It never fails. Every time I get a hair cut she styles it beautifully, only for me to be left to destroy it by taking a comb to it excessively or jumping in the shower if it’s bad enough. I understand that some hair dressers prefer to cut hair while it is wet, but why not spray it with water, cut it, AND THEN WASH IT? After that you can style my hair all you want and I will leave your salon and even keep my hair the way you styled it. </rant>

On a brighter note, I made a second website over the weekend. I compiled some of the old quotes I used to have up and even ventured out and found more. I am also going to have graphic quotes, so basically it will be like my photography and all the quotes I found mated. Some quotes are up, but I have a ways to go before everything is the way I want it. So go check it out here.

Filed under: Rant, myquotablelife by virgospl
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This morning I woke up with a throbbing headache. I dragged myself through my morning routine – brush teeth, wash face, get coffee. If I didn’t mind feeling totally disgusting in the morning I probably would start off with coffee. At the first sip of caffeine I felt my headache slipping away. I have been drinking coffee since I was four years old. I don’t drink an excessive amount, just one cup in the morning and maybe a cup of decaf in the evening. If I don’t reach my daily caffeine intake I develop a headache, I become cranky, and I feel lethargic. I thought to myself, “I wouldn’t be able to give up coffee, even if someday it was discovered to be bad for my health.” And in that moment, for the first time in my entire life, I understood why people can smoke despite the health risks.

I have seen many old cigarette ads and laughed at how gullible people were back then. Cigarette companies used many persuasive, bandwagon tactics in their ads. Some ads even listed the health benefits. Now I am not speaking about the young smokers when I say what I am about to say. I remember sitting through numerous anti smoking campaigns throughout elementary school. They used scare tactics and statistics to persuade me that it was not a good choice. It even got to the point where I would throw away my mom’s cigarettes in the middle of the night and make posters and signs with statistics and hang them around the house. I am old enough to smoke, yet educated enough not to make that decision.

Back to my main point.

I doubt that coffee will ever be considered detrimental to one’s health, but for the older generations still smoking, my horizon has been broadened as to their choice. They weren’t informed of the health risks. Instead the advertising media bombarded people with reasons to make the decision. But to the young people still making the decision, I will have no sympathy for you when your habit deteriorates your health for the simple fact that you know better.

Filed under: Health by virgospl
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Due to the Fourth of July holiday I didn’t have time to explore it as much as I would have any other non-holiday time of the year. I am just now getting around to looking at things in depth.

The Specs
- 15″ screen
- Intel Core i5
- 4 GB memory
- 320 GB hard drive
- SD card slot
- Built in battery (8-9 hours)
- Intel HD graphics
- NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M with 256 MB

The specs are straight from the apple website. Maybe some of this means something to you, but to me it looks mostly like geek speak (okay, that’s an exaggeration).

The built-in battery bit of this computer concerns me. This computer is supposed to last me for four years in college, and because I paid so much for it, I expect it to go even beyond that. I’m no genius, but I do know that the battery life of all electronics, whether it be a computer, cell phone, or MP3 player, decreases its hold over time. It doesn’t so much concern me now, but I hope there is some way of buying a replacement battery in the future.

Right now I don’t have all of the programs I would like and/or need on here, so I cannot speak of its performance in that area. But compared to my windows laptop, the loading speed and Internet speed are slightly faster. It’s not so much faster that I would recommend changing your windows computer for a mac, but I figure it’s worth mentioning. Keep in mind there aren’t any programs on here to slow this machine down.

The biggest adjustment from a windows to a mac laptop would have to be the track pad and keyboard shortcuts. For instance I am used to pressing “ctrl” + “enter” on my windows laptop to get a “.com” automatically added when I type in a website. On my mac I have to press “command” + “enter/return.” I also had to change my settings to enable right clicking. Before I had to press “control” and click, which got to be too much of an annoyance.

There is also no task bar. Instead mac has a “dashboard,” which consists of programs you can automatically have there and whatever you have open that is minimized. This took me well over a day to figure out. I cleared the majority of things out of there and dedicated that to my “task bar.”

If I had a decent photo editing program on here I would take screen shots and post them on here so you could know what I am talking about. Maybe I’ll figure something out like that for another day. As for now it’s off to work for six hours.

Filed under: Review by virgospl
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My cousin Tabby (passenger seat) spent the night at my house on Sunday. Monday morning we woke up hungry with nothing to do for the entire day. I said something along the lines of, “I wanna eat at Qdoba!” And Tabby had no idea what that was. Well long story short I was all down for driving to Brookings to eat there and experience the awesomeness. We decided to be nice and let Katie (Tabby’s sister, my cousin, little kid in the back seat) come along.

Just an FYI, Tabby took all of these pictures. I’m not one of those dumbasses who operates electronic devices while driving. I’m too picky with my camera settings to be able to do a quick shot. Or maybe I’m just too blonde to be that talented.

Katie was very good through the entire trip. If she wasn’t making weird faces in the background of all of Tabby’s photos, she was either sleeping or singing along to the jams.

I don’t believe I blogged about this before, but when I was in Brookings for my college visit I went into the Wal Mart there. It was set up completely backwards from the one in Huron. With this fact in mind, I still walked into the bathroom without reading signs. Needless to say I found myself in the center of the men’s room, slightly embarrassed. This time, however, I was very careful to go into the correct facility. My little cousin looked confused when I did and Tabby mentioned that it felt like she was going into the men’s restroom (I had told her the story). 

In a week or two Tabby and I are going to be driving to Aberdeen so we can eat at IHOP and go to Target. In the mean time hope you all enjoy your Fourth of July and stay safe =]

Filed under: Food, Road Trip, photos by virgospl
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Earlier in June I went to Omaha, Nebraska to visit my lovely boyfriend. I absolutely could not leave that city without visiting the Henry Doorly Zoo. I have heard that one must take two days to see everything. We were there for one very hot day. None of the water fountains worked and buying bottled water was like highway robbery! Point being, we didn’t see all of the animals. That was fine by me as long as I got to see the cats.

Point being, I finally got a good chunk of free time to be able to put some of the pictures up on the site. I’m sure you’re smart enough to look at the side bar and click on the link, if interested.

Also, here are some pictures of Levi and I at the zoo and of the ginormous, nameless contraption we went on. I also included some pictures from the bird’s eye view.

Filed under: Update, photos by virgospl
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Well, you are looking at the all-new design of virgosplash. Sometime in the next week or so I will tackle the task of putting back all of the general content and all new photography. Keep posted =]

Filed under: Update by virgospl
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