Thursday, September 29, 2005

hodgepodge

i've had the greatest urge lately to use my blog as an outlet... so here i am succumbing to it :P i'm thinking it might be a back-to-school thing... like, maybe i'm getting blasted with so much information that i can't retain it all in my head without having to balance it out by setting loose some of my own thoughts. normally i like to keep these thoughts to myself cuz i think they just scare people off, but alas, between my own sanity and the sanity of others, i'm gonna have to be selfish on this one. my apologies :)

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i woke up this morning with a note on my phone that said: "non vocal." i have absolutely NO IDEA what the note is referring to. see, it wouldn't bug me so much if someone else had left me that note, but *I* was the one that wrote it! i probably put the note in my phone in the middle of the night, but i must've been really sleepy when i did it cuz i had no recollection of it the next morning. BUT i can't ignore the fact that i was awake enough to write it. what in the world would possess me to leave myself a note like that? what was so important about the message 'non vocal' that interrupted my sleep just so i could make note of it? or perhaps the most important question is, how mentally screwed up am i that i can't even recall the wakeful moments of last night?? in any case, i'm forced to accept that the message will forever remain a mystery to me.

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i was at walmart the other day and i wanted to buy some mouthwash, so i was checking out the different brands and i noticed that listerine has a new product out that whitens the teeth. same price as the other listerines (orginal, freshburst and tartar control) so i figured i was getting a deal with the added functionality of listerine with whitenol. but i'd never heard of whitenol before, so like any smart shopper out there, i started reading the back for more information. apparently, whitenol is just a fancy name for zinc chloride, and the way it helps whiten teeth is in the prevention of tartar build-up between visits to the dentist. is anyone following me here?? it's not active whitening, it's passive whitening... in fact, it's not really whitening at all because it doesn't actually make teeth whiter than they are, it just keeps it from getting more stained. so i was thinking about this when the other words dawned on me: tartar-build up. whitenol prevents tartar build up. so then what the heck makes it different from tartar control listerine? i picked up a tartar control bottle to compare its ingredients with the teeth whitening one, and LO AND BEHOLD, tartar control listerine contains zinc chloride. same percentage and everything, with no difference whatsoever between the stated ingredients (medical and non-medicinal) of the two bottles. so how did i end up choosing a bottle? tartar control listerine comes in artic mint flavour... a nice dark blue shade to it. new listerine with whitenol is a lighter blue, so it's probably a mint flavour except there's no indication of it on the bottle. i prefer my mint-flavoured products, so based on the probability that listerine with whitenol would not be minty, i chose tartar control listerine.

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i took two personality tests the other day and got really frustrated with them. i didn't think the results accurately reflected my personality. it's funny cuz i always complain about how i'm so complicated... in fact, i'm still trying to understand myself, let alone others who are forever trying to figure me out. the fact that i don't agree with the results can only mean that i know myself better than what any test can say about me. mind you, the tests weren't completely wrong... they just didn't take enough factors into account to accurately assess someone like me. let me give you an example. one of the tests i took was myers-briggs with the four indicator types. what i didn't appreciate about the test was the ambiguity of the instructions. yah, they tried to be very direct and clear, but my case shows that they didn't do so enough. when they ask us to make a choice as to what we'd rather do, or choose a word from the word-pair that most appeals to us, already they're limiting the personality assessment to preference, which is not necessarily the same as (and in my case, almost always different from) what we would do in a real-life situation. in other words, i'm the kind of person that wants to be what i'm not. for example, if i'm analytical but i want to be more compassionate, how am i supposed to interprete the instruction that asks me to choose what is most appealing between the word-pair analytical and compassionate? the first time i took the test, i answered the questions based on what i wanted to be (i.e. what appealed to me)and not what i was, but the end results supposedly told me who i was. how are the two perspectives to be reconciled? well... my conclusion is simply that there just isn't a test out there encompassing enough to accurately assess a personality like mine.


ah well.

Saturday, September 24, 2005

my baby is missing!

no, not my hunnie bunnie baby-cakes...
no, not my cousin shanie baby-poo...

HUMBEE!! BABY, WHERE ARE YOU?!?!

my comfort, my confidant, my companion of 16 years...

I CAN'T FIND YOU!! WHERE DID YOU GO?!?!

i thought i brought her home from the retreat.
i'm SURE i brought her home from the retreat.
i was the one who checked to make sure nothing was left behind.
all this time i thought she was still packed with my blankets and sheets.
i can't accept that this might be it, that i might've truly lost her...

I CAN'T!! LORD, GIVE ME MY HUMBEE BACK!!