missed it by that much

i was recently asked to be in one of those crazy radio contests. you know the kind: they're giving away this really amazing car, but to get it you have to stand with your hand on the car for as long as possible to prove that you're the most worthy of winning the car.

i always thought that radio stations had some prequalified list of nutjobs out there who are willing to give up their precious time to stand with their hand on a car. come to find out that if the prize is good enough, regular citizens like me will actually be crazy enough to sign up for something like this! yes, the candidate pool really does come from that large anonymous crowd of average joes (or josies).

now i know you're asking yourself, "self, what prize could be so good that julie would actually sign up to do anything so weird?" ok... the details:

my favorite station, 94.7, was holding a contest to win two tickets to see the police in atlantic city and spend the night at the borgata. the police... their own show... atlantic city... the borgata... just me and honey... you get the point.

the deal was that you had to be willing to sit at mattress discounters with your hand on a mattress and outlast the competition. the last one with his/her hand on the mattress would win the tickets and the hotel room (and, i'm assuming, the mattress.) i was on the 94.7 website, and, as a lark, i signed up to be entered into the pool of potential contestants. this is definitely worth the pain and boredom.

i never win anything, so i didn't give it another thought. fast forward to last week, when my phone came back from the sprint store after being out of commission for a week (that's an entirely different story). i charged it up and saw that i had a voicemail. it was the promotions guy from the radio station calling to see if i wanted to take part in the contest!!!!! woah!!! unfortunately, the message was a week old! he called the day after my cell phone died, and i didn't know about it until the following week!

aaauuuggghhh! i called back immediately and left him a message saying i was interested. i'm sure by that time they had already written me off as a no-go and filled their contestant pool, because the contest was last weekend and they never called me back beforehand.

bummer. i could have won!

true colors shining through

i took the "true colors" quiz for the first time today. strangely enough, despite my love of quizzes and personality tests, i had never seen this one before. anyway, for those who aren't familiar, it's similar to the myers-briggs personality test in that it divides the personalities into four groups. however, it's a much simpler format. you're either an orange, a gold, a blue, or a green. it gives you your total score for each, and some people can be a balance of all four. i'm primarily a green, with a score of 12, blue came in a close second at 11, gold followed at 7, and then orange at 6.

what this supposedly says about me as a green is:

"I am conceptual. I have an investigative mind, intrigued by questions like, "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" I am an independent thinker, a natural nonconformist, and live life by my own standards.

I like to do things that require vision, problem solving, strategy, ingenuity, design, and change. Once I have perfected an idea, I prefer to move on to a new challenge.

I value knowledge, intelligence, insight, and justice. I enjoy relationships with shared interests. I prefer to let my head rule my heart. I am cool, calm, and collected. I do not express my emotions easily."

i do relate to the green description (and the blue too, although i won't post it here), but i feel that my inner orange has been underrepresented. i really enjoy being with others and doing things, and i thrive in a party situation. i love to be the hostess with the mostest!

perhaps my results lean heavily away from orange because i'm taking this quiz from the perspective of a mother? i feel like i'm a very different person when i have to set an example for my child, as opposed to who i am when no one else's well-being depends directly upon my actions. when i know it's not hurting anyone else, i love to let go and just be carefree... but when i know there's a little one depending on me, i have to judge each of my actions carefully. i guess that's where my "cool, calm, and collected" green leanings come in handy. i can think of my tasks intellectually and determine what needs to be done instead of acting first and thinking later.

go figure... being a parent really does change things.

can i go back to college now? where's the keg? who lost the twister spinner? anyone know how to make a woo-woo?

i would be REALLY good at this game!

a friend at the office emailed me about this youtube video...
my first thought was to brace myself to keep from falling out of my chair.
my second thought was that i would be REALLY, REALLY GOOD at this game!

seriously, can you think of anything i could be better at? this is totally for me!

tetris

what's going on

sorry, folks! it's been a while since i've last posted... i've been spending most of my spare time trying to race through harry potter and the order of the phoenix (reading aloud to my stepson) so that we can go see the movie on friday.

we're not too far from the end now. two more nights of reading should do it. i wish i could read for longer at a stretch, but reading out loud for too long makes my throat hurt! i guess it might help if i didn't try to do the voices, but liam has a lot of fun with those.

hagrid is particularly tough, but fun. harry, hermione, and ron end up sounding a lot like the movie actors. my favorite, so far, has been umbridge. i just love doing a sickeningly sweet, breathy voice that evokes a girlish mask for evil! i'll be interested to see (hear) how she is portrayed in the movie. from the stills i've seen, she doesn't look a whole lot like rowling's description of the character, but perhaps her voice will be like the one in my imagination.

other than pottering, i've been reading watership down (to myself, not aloud) because that was what the bluepyramid.com book quiz told me i am, and i've never read it! i've also been planning a small fete for saturday night, running a bit, and taking care of all the usual errands. oh, and working. can't forget that one.

after the harry potter bum rush is over, i'll probably post more often. i'll also work on my other blog- a creative piece... it's an experiment for now, but i have good feelings for it.

oh, and i want to do some posts about my four cats, because they are fun and interesting!

yes, there are four, and yes, we are a crazy cat family. you got a problem with that?