Two for One

Ah the last day of July....  I'm not exactly sure where July went as the last thing I remember was being home in New Mex for the Fourth of July, but I guess it had to have gone somewhere since it's now just a few short hours away from August...  Ah well.  I've had a couple thoughts in the past week that I thought I'd share/get input on.  And they're completely and totally unrelated but I'm too efficient (read: lazy) to put them in two different posts.  So.  Two for one special aisle five.

Gaming:  I was playing games recently and a friend of mine mentioned that her husband has a theory about people.  That when it comes to 'games' they are either the kind that lose and never want to play again, or the kind that lose and must play again.  This got me thinking about which type I fall into.  Now, I'm a competitive person.  I like to be good at things that I undertake.  And I like to win.  Secretly I like to beat people into the ground with my superior skill in wit, athleticism, and all around awesomeness.  But despite that, after consideration, I fall into category one; the type that will lose and doesn't care to play again.  Here's why.  I figured that when I really care about the game that I'm playing, I'm putting as much effort into is as I have at the time, and if (big if!) I lose, I really don't want to play again because I already put in my effort so I'm done.  This is not a defeatist attitude trust me, it's just me saying 'okay, I did that, didn't win, and I'm okay with that'.  If I don't care about the game then I'm probably playing to appease others and if I lose I'd rather do something I can win and pound people at then go another round at the game I didn't care about in the first place.  So even though I'm competitive.... I'm okay with losing and then being done. (*note, this does not apply when I am learning a game, then I want to play as many times as possible until I feel I am as good as I can be.  Prideful, I know but there it is.)

Music:  It's funny to me how some senses are completely tied to memories.  Specifically I can hear a certain song and it reminds me immediately, for better or worse, of a certain person or exact instant in time.  I can recall perfectly every emotion and detail of the memory or aspect of the person I'm remembering.  This happened the other day because I decided to go to an old school playlist on my ipod for a run I went on.  Every song I listened to made me think of something like this.  For example, "Let It Rock" by Kevin Rudolf reminds me of living at my sisters house in Gilbert and driving home late at night from Sonic just blasting the song with my open windows, then pulling into the driveway and just sitting and listening and feeling so happy about my situation.  It was so significant because my sister had just moved to this house they rented and we painted it and moved in and it really felt like a home.  That is also the house I got locked out of and instead of calling my sister at one in the morning I slept in my car.... I was a loser.  But a happy loser hahaha.  I have so many other scenarios like this it kind of baffles me.  I have a strong relationship with music and my emotions so maybe that is the reason for the correlation but even if it isn't I love the little memories that are randomly triggered without my invitation or permission.  Even the bittersweet ones.

Blinkers

On the whole, I find blinkers really annoying.

I fully realize their usefulness.  Don't get me wrong.  They inform people of your intended direction which is incredibly useful.  Unless of course you have forgotten that your directional indicator is currently operating and you don't actually intend on turning.  But that noise, inside my own car, is juuuussssttt repetitive enough to have me looking around for a hard surface to bang my head on repeatedly.

Yesterday though I saw something that made me wonder.

I saw one of these.  Not a shelby, I would have been drooling, but a new mustang.  See the tail lights?  When the blinker is on, only one light goes at a time, like one of those annoying traffic signs that tells you to merge lanes.  It was possibly the weirdest blinker I've ever seen.  I've seen weird blinkers before, like ones that go ridiculously fast, but this one had me confused.  Is that pattern tested to be more appealing to other drivers?  Or people realize even faster that the person in the mustang is turning....?  I'm just confused.

I can't say that I've ever seen why my blinker actually looks like from other people's perspectives, but I feel safe in saying it doesn't do what this mustang does.  But is my blinker also confusing?  I'm just not sure.

Take me to the movies

Last night I went to go see Despicable Me.  Super cute movie, I love the little minions and I was laughing a lot.  I would totally recommend seeing it.  But I had a few thoughts about movies and how they kind of annoy me.  This most likely sounds like blasphemy because anyone who's talked to me for more than 5 minutes probably knows that I am a downright movie whore.  I love to watch movies more than almost any other activity and I do it very often.  So these annoyances won't ever deter me from seeing movies, they're just pet peeves I guess.

First the preview four years in advance.  Okay, four years is a little extreme....but really, I don't want to see a preview for a movie (in this case a Smurf movie which I have many more thoughts on) that doesn't come out until next summer.  Do I really need to know about this now?  No.  I don't give a flying flip about it.  And it's just going to annoy me every time I see the preview that it's still 12 months away.

Second, the obsession with 3D.  Can we be done with this yet?  I fully submit that movies can be completely fantastic without making me sick or wear nasty dirty glasses in the process.  Let's take Step Up 3D....  I do not need to see these dancers in 3D.  I'm already going to feel like a loser because I can't dance this way, I don't need to "feel" (and I use that term waaaayyyy loosely) like they're dancing up on me too....  I really feel like we need to step back and look at movies for what they originally were.  I went to see a Hitchcock movie recently and this genre of horror was so different then.  He made you really think about this and he paid attention to the ambiance and really pulled you into the story.  He didn't need fanfare or 3D to make you feel like you were there.  Seriously I just want to be done with 3D and even worse, it's $15 to see one instead of $10.

Airplanes, Airports, and Traveling.

Every time I travel I have the same thought.  I wish always that I had someone to travel with me.  I wish that not only because it would be nice to not be alone, but mostly because I have many people watching thoughts.  I mean many thoughts.  And not just about people I guess, for one I have always wondered about my luggage.  These people look so haphazard when they're dealing with my luggage and yet somehow it always arrives through the correct transfers.  Amazing.  Yesterday I dropped my phone.  I'm normally very wrapped up in myself I guess you could say.  I'm normally with my headphones on also reading a book so I was surprised when this very nice woman pointed at me and said, "Oh I just gave it to the lady."  I was very confused at first because I hadn't noticed my phone being gone yet.  But it was really nice to know that people are nice.  I also just like to watch people.  What they're wearing and how they interact with other people.  It's all so extremely fascinating.  It also fascinates me how mean people can sometimes be when you're waiting in line to get on the plane.  Honestly, does it matter if you are one person up in the line or one person back?  No.  It doesn't.  We're all going to the same place anyway.  But still just lots of fun and makes the trip more interesting.