Shopping: every girls hobbie, our Kryptonite

One thing Erica and I share hatride for....shopping. My gosh I would choose to do anything in the world over shopping....even watch golf or tennis (which I find rather boring to watch). I have no idea what it is about the act of shopping but when I go to the mall with my two best friends I find myself wanting to bang my head against a brick wall or punch the nearest baby. Heaven forbid if there was a baby nursery in the mall and I would just so happen to be walking past it, I would end up going on a baby punching spree (dane cook reference). I dont understand why I hate shopping so much. Maybe its the fact that I'm one of those people who if I dont need something I wont buy it. I mean I'm fine with not having the brand new season of clothes from American Eagle...if I have clothes to wear I will not go out and buy new ones. End of story.

Anyway the other day, actually yesterday matter of fact my best friend June and I went to Annapolis Mall. Now normally I wouldnt mind going there because it tends to be filled with Navy men :) (some thing Erica and I love...men in uniform) anyway so the first hour goes by and everythings fine and we are going to stores that June says she needs to stop in to buy some stuff. After the first store I find that her definition of "needs to get" means "I have coupons for this store and I just got paid so lets go buy stuff that I dont need with the money I could be saving up because I'm in college and I am going to have bills to pay". So after I learn this my mood goes from "having fun hanging out with my best friend" to "omg I want to kill myself, does anyone have a gun or a pocket knife" (no I am not depressed or ever had a thought of suicide just for the record). We spent not 1, not 2, not 3...but 3 AND A HALF HOURS at the mall. Oh and did I mention I was starving for some food...the combination of shopping and being hungry = Allyson has her grumpy suit on. When we got out of our soon to be last store and her shopping and my misery was finally brought to a close due to the fact that (A)the mall was closing in 5mins (B) June ran out of coupons and (C) I was starving and made a run to the food court. So on our way out I got 5 Guys fries which made it a little better. And as you can see I am alive. :)

Polympics, the Polymer of sports!

I am a Biochemistry major.  I have a love of DNA that is massive!  I also have the propensity to be able to misspell the simplest word but be able to spell some of the most complex words correctly, such as amygdala.  It's how I roll.  It could be because I am left-handed, or because I march to the beat of my red vuvuzela, but regardless it is a little know fact about me =) 

That and I like to add smiley faces to things!

So I mentioned in my first post that the documentation of our spelling misfortunes began circa June 2008.  The summer of 2008 was one of great discovery, great change, and the great summer Olympics, headed by Michael Phelps and his 8 gold medals.  It also marked the beginning of Allie and my fantasy sports journey (she failed to mention that I won in the baseball league last year, beating her in the finals, just thought I would put it out there ;))

For those unfamiliar with the events that lead up to Michael Phelps ultimare success~ in the Olympics, let me fill you in on another little known fact about me.  The French irritate me.  Now don't take it the wrong way, I am not racist against them and I don't openly dislike all French people, I am just saying that the nation of France has a way with irritating American people, but we do love lady liberty.  This is what I am talking about.  Before the swimming events the French team said they were going to "smash" the Americans.  Ummm...did they miss 1940s history class?  You don't poke a sleeping bear, we will crush you!!!  And, we did!

Well what does me being a Biochem major and the Olympics have in common?  Biochem majors study cellular processes, especially proteins which are part of a class of molecules called polymers.  Notice how POLYMER and OLYMPICS look similar, I think you know where I am going with this one...

Throughout the whole Olympics, I would type Polympics, it was like the sports loving part of my brain and the science loving part of my brain where fighting like a really bad couple, you know the ones who you ask yourself "Why are they together?!", but eventually ended up on a compromise.  I would do this so subconsciously that I believe that I had convinced myself this was the correct way to spell it.  Kinda like how you type a word so much it doesn't look right, well the opposite of that feeling.

And now I leave you with a beautiful photograph of none other than DNA:

Fantasy Sports and Ultimare Success~ & Epic Gailures

Why hello blog readers, this would be Allie speaking. So this would be my very first blog post ever. Exciting right?...yea not really but hey you bet your boots its pretty cool :)

(you bet your boots: a saying i use quite often to express definites)

So anyway on the subject of fantasy sports. I personally have only been involved in football and baseball; the two sports i follow the closest to have the slightest clue who players are and such. Every football or baseball season we have normally the same group of people that gather in to the RSC League (Red Sox Chat...most of us are/were frequent visitors of the site). My very first season I participated in fantasy football was a very very long and dreadful season. Needless to say I came in last....not just any last but I dont think I won but 2 match ups against the fake team that had all injuried/and or bad players on it because we needed one more team in the league to enter the draft. Theres a little box under your team name where you can "talk smack"...in other words for you facebook users its like updating your status...one match up my team did absolutely horrible half of my players had like barely one point and my defense had like negative points so I entered "epic gailure" into my talking smack box. No its not a type-o...well it was then but not now. Any way I didnt notice until Erica (Jung-fu) had said something about my epic gailure match up and I simple was like "what the heck you talkin bout" and she had me go look...sure enough my talking smack said "epic gailure". Needless to say failure is never an option for us...but gailure is!

So football season ends and here comes baseball season and what is my first fantasy baseball season. I can honestly say I was not looking forward to this season of fantasy sports what so ever after my fall/winter epic gailure. I ended up fielding a decent team and was actually winning match ups...amazing huh? I got really excited when I was in third place and was rubbing it in to Erica how good my team was doing. I told her instead of being an epic gailure my team was an "Ultimare Success~". No not ultimate...ultimare. oh and another thing we dont use exclamation points we use ~ instead. Simply because we like the spanish language and the fact it uses those little wavy lines above some n's...or its because I am the most frequent type-o typer in the world.

Fantasy Count:
Epic Gailures: 1
Ultimare Successes: 1.5 (theres one in the making)

Anyway I figured I'd chime in on two of my most famous type-o's for my first blog post ever. You bet your boots I'll be back :)

P.S. It wouldnt suprise me if you who is reading found type-o's in the following post.

Oakland: An intense feeling of dislike

Some background information: As a Red Sox fan, Red Sox nation "dictates" that I am to hate the Yankees (and everything associated with it) with every fabric of my being. Well two things:

1. I refuse to hate someone solely based on their baseball team of preference. One of my best friends is a Yankee fan and if I had followed the rules of the nation I wouldn't have gotten the chance to know the person beyond the Yankee hat. Someone I consider to be wicked awesome!

2. I don't believe people should act a certain way bc it is what society "dictates". I consider myself to be very conservative when it comes to politics, but I also fully support stem cell research, which according to these "rules" of being on the right, I am not supposed to believe in, but Nancy Reagan supports it as well and I don't think anyone wants to fight with us!

I was going to leave the story of "hatride" for a rainy day but The Red Sox just lost to the Oakland A's after a promising start. Jed Lowrie was back and hope was renewed that the dismissal of Marco Scutaro would be imminent. Jed walked in his first at bat which would result in a run scored. He also drove in a run with a bloop to center field. That's where it ended.

As is quite obvious, I march to the beat of my own drum (or if I had my choice, it would be a vuvuzela), and in my mind, if there is any team to dislike it would be a team that thinks they are awesome even when they aren't, have obnoxious fans, and are from a city that is absolutely trashy, and with that I give you OAKLAND, CA. OK so if anyone reads this from Oakland and gets offended, please understand that 1. I am not the only one who feels this way, and 2. Acting like an idiot when your team is down 46-0 by halftime is going to give your town that kind of reputation. And don't say Boston is like that because we are a bunch of Irish, Italian and Portuguese people, drinking is our thing, it's not nice (or politically correct if you like to play that card) to make fun of one's culture. Now, I am all for being a great fan when your team is just going through "transition years" but if you're going to be abusive, take it out on your own fans. Patriot fans go to (I honestly don't even know the name of the field/stadium [you know your town sucks when you have to share a baseball/football field]) because it's cheaper and it gives us a chance to see the nice parts of California (I'm talking vine country, etc...not LA).

Anyways, Oakland won, and that got my blood boiling. And since I am trying to be a good Health and Wellness student instead of drowning my sorrows in masked potatoes or ice cream, or taking out my anger by throwing things as I usually do, I indulged in NCIS and than listened to some music when California on my mind came on, perfect song to reflect on how I felt about Oakland, and thus the decision to introduce one of the most famous misspellings was made.

Now we all have our little quirks, and one of my good friend's quirk is that she is the self appointed grammar police. So I take it upon myself to privately (we have a private message button) make it aware to my friends so they can fix the problem before she does. However; sometimes in life there are spelling errors that just warrant some, OK fine, a whole lot of laughter. The game was against the Yankees and unfortunately for us they were losing. Allie took this as an opportunity to explain her hatride for the Yankees. This was just an opportunity no one could pass up, not even the masked potato queen herself! We must have laughed about this for a good few minutes. But what made us laugh even harder was when she asked "Isn't that how it's spelled?!" Hatride?!

And for a final thought, Allie is like myself, we are both science nerds. It explains why I can't type a word that begins with Oly without wanting to begin it with a P (future post!). We can spell words like Amphoteric, and juxtamedullary without a problem, but a word as complex as the two syllable hatred, well ummm, can you please pass me a dictionary?

Take Me Out to the Ball Game!

Those who have debated with me know that I am a very passionate person. I will not debate with people on a topic I do not know because I do not like to look like an idiot, I do that enough on my own, especially today when I fell into a hole in the swamp. There are such topics that can get almost anyone going: abortion, the war, the BP oil leak, global warming, but none so much as the dreaded topic of domed stadiums.

Let me fill you all in here. I hate domed stadiums, and the ONLY time I think they are acceptable is when the weather conditions are too hot, THAT'S IT! I absolutely do not condone the use of domed stadiums in football what-so-ever. Some people, however; feel much differently.

I am a regular visitor of a site called Redsoxchat.com and we like to keep things very light, however; there are times when we do get into some serious debates (note: at this time Allie and I are on mic giving our usual very colorful color commentary). What went from a discussion about dehydration went into a discussion about the atrocities of domed stadiums. You see, we have a couple of Colts fans in chat, and well, yeah, I won't say anything mean, but you can see how they would feel.

Anyways, one of the chatters decided to cut the tension by mentioning one of Allie's favorite players, Coco Crisp. This would prove to not be a good idea, as it just regenerated all the "hatride" (that misspelling is for a future post, stay tuned!!) Allie had for not only domed stadiums but a specific team that plays in a dome in which Coco Crisp got into a fist fight with. This team if you haven't guess it is the Typa Bay Rays!! Yes, that's right, move over Tampa Bay, there's a new team in town!!! In her defense, she did catch herself midway through with a Typa....Tampa Bay, but it wasn't a good enough save as I caught on and made note of it with laughter. We're all friends, if you can't joke with us, who can you joke with?

In case anyone was wondering, the Red Sox won 2-1 and Dice-K actually pitched good. 6 games back, don't count us out yet!

Masked Potatoes-Zoro's favorite food!

So I mentioned that I sometimes will type a word wrong repetitively without realizing it. Here's prime example number one.

Back story: I had just been informed of Joe enlisting in the navy and had a plethora of emotions about it. I was happy, a little scared, and a touch selfish because I was afraid of losing a good friend. Some people do crazy things at times like this, tattoos, piercings, join cults...me? Comfort food, most specifically mashed potatoes. Not only is it quite possibly the best food (I'm Portuguese and German btw) but it's quick to make and awesome comfort food.

Allie and I were discussing the best type of comfort foods when I told her that I liked masked potatoes. She than responded that she liked them too, to which I told her that masked potatoes were also part of my favorite food of all time, sheppard's pie. She than realized my constant misspelling and said she didn't even know what it was. I was shocked and asked her "How can you not know what masked potatoes are?!?!" and that was when I was made aware of my spelling mistake. We both joked about how masked potatoes were like regular potatoes but with masks on them and all I could think about was a potato with a Zoro mask on, the black hat and cape. I also thought of the episode of Full House where Joey found the potato that looked Joe Pesci. Weird. I am almost positive this was the birth moment of our documentation of misspellings. Circa June 2008.