Pick a future. Any future.

One of the things that I hate most about my birthday is the thought that I'm going to have to figure my shit out really soon. I'll be celebrating my 27th birthday, which can be scary to a lot of people. After this I'll be 28, then 29, 30 and before you know it my demon spawn will be leaving the nest to go to college so they can gain vast knowledge necessary to take over the world. I'll a need a way to figure out how to pay for my mortgage and multiple car payments and insurance for everything and everyone.

Perhaps this post should be called "When Freak-Outs Happen" instead.

It's hard not to be slightly concerned every once in a while about the direction your life is going. As the ever cautionary individual, one might be more prone to take their time and ease into situations so they can best judge if this was the right move for them. The spontaneous individual might be much more likely to jump in head first with everything they've got and deal with the repercussions later. But what would the spontaneous individual do if they found themselves turned in to the cautionary individual? Burned too many times to count and a little more hesitant to take the leap, what is the spontaneous individual to do when faced with the decision of fight or flight, of will-they's or won't-they's.

When it comes to most decisions in life, we are not so lucky to have the time to think things over and make the best decision based off our conclusions. Sometimes, we have to just act and hope for the best that our gut reaction didn't lead us astray. Do I take this job or that? Is this the best major for me, or should I do something different? Should I stay with this person, or take my chance with trying again? If I move in with this person, do I have a back-up plan should it all go wrong? Should I go redhead or blonde? Do I write about fluffy things like fashion and food, or do I take a chance and get real with my readers?

It's difficult, the decisions we must make. I've never been quite good with it. Ever the procrastinator, I'll wait until I'm down to 5 seconds left on the clock, and even then I have a hard time differentiating between my head, my heart and my gut. I have to remind myself that, at 27, I'm not supposed to have all the answers. Hell, I should be lucky to have at least 20% of them. My biggest fears is that it'll take me another 10 years to realize the decisions that I've made today were the worst I could have possibly made for myself.

Do you ever feel like this? What was a decision you had to make that was difficult to conclude to? How did you handle the outcome?

There's no sense in nonsense, especially when the heat's hot.

Safety Not Guaranteed is about a writer and two interns on a mission to discover the truth about a man who placed an ad for a companion to travel through time with. Aubrey Plaza (Parks and Rec) plays Darius, the intern who is the only one of the three who can get in with Kenneth (Mark Duplass, The Mindy Project), the aspiring time traveler they're writing about. Darius, Jeff (Mark Jake Johnson, New Girl) and Arnau (Karan Soni, The Neighbors) follow Kenneth as he gathers parts, out-runs the government, puts Darius through training and makes his plans for the big launch.

It was not at all what I expected to see, and I'm really glad about that. Aubrey Plaza is such a great actress, and I loved how she and Mark Duplass interacted together in the movie. They were just so damn cute throughout the entire thing. I hate that I'm so terrible at review movies and such, but this movie instantly became one of my favorite movies of all time. It's available on Netflix and a great movie if you want to see something with TV stars you're familiar with in a cool setting with some comedy, suspense and a great ending. Seriously. You know what? Don't even waste your time. Go buy the movie right now.

What the hell am I still doing here? Peace bitchez, I'm gonna go buy this movie.

Vertical Horizons

Here's some food for thought today: Milan will be housing the first vertical forest! How crazy is this?!

For the life of me I can't find the original blog I found this on, but the Huffington Post is all over the World's First Vertical Forest to open later this year in Milan, Italy. This is Milan's response to the growing pollution that's been taking over the city, and making it the most polluted city in all of Italy. So, rather than taking it and accepting the consequences, they have been implementing Stefano Boeri's amazing architectural design that combines vegetation with housing. The buildings are actually apartment complexes that will house something around 400 residents. The vegetation that is being planted all around the towers are also supposed to help the residents with (of course) clean air and shade. According to HP, the vegetation is supposed to be equivalent to around 10,000 sq. meters (or 107,600 sq. ft. for us Americans). Could you image if we built 5-10 of these babies in every major major city in the world?!

Damn, I wish we had something this cool.

Say Goodnight, Gracie.

I love this novel. In the 7th grade, I somehow managed to get into the accelerate reading program. My teacher, Mrs. Graf, loaned me her copy of Julie Reece Deaver's "Say Goodnight, "Gracie" to check out. It was a personal favorite of hers. After learning that I fancied stories with more emotional pull and that I had danced for several years, she knew that this was a story I had to read at least once. This was a story that I couldn't put down and couldn't get out of my head. Even now, nearly 15 years later, I think of it whenever I think of the books I've read in my life that have touched me.

The story is about a girl named Morgan, who has to cope the death of her best friend, Jimmy, in a tragic vehicle accident on his way to pick her up from a dance audition. This story was extremely well-written and one of my all-time favorites. It's definitely not my usual romantic comedy go-to, but I related to it. I was best friends with a brother and sister from my dance class at the time. I couldn't imagine what I would have done had I gone through something similar to what Morgan went through. Their friendship was something to admire and I wish I had a friend that I was that close with growing up (minus the whole them dying aspect, of course).

I was so excited earlier today when I found the 20th anniversary edition available on Amazon and made no hesitation to purchase it. I had been looking for it for years. When I read that it had stopped being reproduced, I was devestated. Why I never thought to check sites like Amazon and Half by eBay I'll never know. I'm glad I thought to check today, though. I can't wait to reread the book once it gets here!

Incident Report

Image c/o Google Maps

Too be completely honest with you, I'm still not sure what the hell happened last night.

So, I'm driving past this park to get to my friend's house. I'm the dot and arrow in lilac up there. I see a guy on a bike (in the red dot-X) and up ahead is another car (grey dot and arrow) who is about to turn onto the street we're on to go the opposite direction. The guy on a bike was very close to the curb closest to the park. What I see happen is the other car turn onto the street and the bike go flying across the lane and almost hit the car. The other appeared to drive away and the guy just sort of stands there in the middle of the street. I'm stopped a good 2 or 3 cars away from this fool because I don't know what the hell is happening.

The guy on the bike proceeds to pump his arms at me in a "You-Wanna-Fight-Me-Bitch?!" fashion. Now I'm real fucking confused. Shit just got real and I'm convinced I'm going to get shot because this is what happens in Stockton at a park at night. The guy grabs his bike after a minute and starts walking it back to the curb and proceeds on his merry way.

Jeff calls me as I'm turning the corner to get on the street I needed to be on and is all, "OMG DON'T DRIVE PAST THE PARK BECAUSE A DERANGED MAN JUST THREW HIS FUCKING BIKE AT ME FOR NO REASON AND SCREAMED AT ME!"

I tell him that I was the other car and he starts screaming about how crazy that all was. WHAT ARE THE ODDS THAT WE WOULD LEAVE THE BAR IN DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS TO END UP AT THE SAME CROSSROAD AND DEAL WITH A CRAZY PERSON TOGETHER WITHOUT KNOWING ABOUT IT?!

FURTHER MORE, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH SOME OF THE RESIDENTS IN THIS TOWN?!

The new joke is to watch out for guys throwing bikes.