It took me an hour to write this

Last night I was about to crack open The Great Gatsby and finish reading the first chapter. I have already read it and I really liked it so I wasn't worried about the suicidal feeling that usually accompanies the reading of my school books (When we were reading The Grapes of Wrath I was 50 pages into one chapter with 30 more to go and I started crying and threw the book across the room because I hated it so much). But I didn't get around to actually reading until much later, because Madelyn turned on Criminal Minds. Usually I could multi-task and read/watch at the same time, but this one was SO GOOD. It started with the team running into a house, JJ was unconscious on the floor. They start looking for Reid, but he is gone! Turns out he was kidnapped by some crazed murder who has 3 different personalties, one is the real him and he is nice, another is his crazy, super religious father, and the other is an "angel" which is the personalty that kills all the people! Then he started giving Reid drugs and beating him, then he has a seizure and he is apparently dead!!!Then the nice personalty gives him CPR and he is saved!! In the end they find him, Reid shoots the guy, and all is happy! But then, Reid goes back and takes the drugs the guy was giving him! ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod WHAT HAPPENS NEXT!?!?! I couldn't stop watching them! I watched all of the following episodes to see what would happen with the drugs, but there was only 2 more then this crappy show that Madelyn likes came on and I went to bed.
You see, I am addicted to crime dramas. CSIs mostly. I occasionally dabble in Law and Order, but that is usually equivalent to an hour long nap. I have seen every single episode of CSI: Las Vegas, except one, which I decided not to watch one day and then I just got tired of looking at it on my DVR so I deleted it. But literally, that show has been on for like 11 years and I have yet to come across an old episode that I have not seen. One year I spent the ENTIRE summer watching CSI reruns.

I know them all so well that they are pretty much my family. I cried like a baby when Grissom left. I really never got over it. I have refused to accept any new characters. If I met William Peterson, George Eads and Eric Szmanda I would gladly throw away the rest of our list and be the happiest person in the world (p.s. those are their real names. They are much too boring and hard to pronouce for a show, I mean Szmanda!? and how would you even begin to pronouce Eads?). 
But, my devotion was not true, because there were other CSIs out there that I was not watching! How could I miss out on all that murder, blood and gore? Simple answer: I could not. Set DVR to record, select every rerun you could find: I was hooked on CSI: NY.



this picture is adorable. <3

  Not only did it have Lieutenant Dan, I could match each character to a person in Las Vegas, but they were significantly less nerdy and consequently more BA. Plus Det. Don Flack (third one from the right) is totally dreamy. Danny (third form the left) was pretty cool until Lindsey (demon in brown next to him) came and they fell in love and had a baby and now they just generally annoy everyone. Stella (in pink) left but I didn't really like her and her replacement in comparable in annoyness so it isn't that bad.
So now I was getting my fix twice a week, but that was still not enough. Introducing CSI: Miami.

They have had like a million cast changes. Probably due to its extreme popularity for a while and overly dramatic drama. This is the infamous sunglasses show. If I could be granted one CSI-related wish it would be for Natalia Boa Vista (far right) to die in some sort of firey explosion (and stay dead), so she would stop whining and putting my future boyfriend, Ryan Wolfe (next to her), in danger.
So I have all my CSIs, but THEN, one day, I saw a commercial for a NEW show. ABOUT CRIME! I couldn't be bothered with crap like NCIS or Hawaii Five-O, (which they are attempting to bring back for some unknown and stupid reason and replaced CSI: Miami with on Wednesdays and moved Miami to Sundays, whatevs), but this show was looking awesome. And of course, I was right. Make way for: The Mentalist.

Dashing Australian guy (You know how I feel about Australians) coupled with a cast of mudfences to make him even more attractive and one guy that looks like Michael Buble? I'll take that! Plus the main character, Patrick Jane is MEAN! And it's awesome. He has that whole cynical, hating the world outlook that I occasionally adopt (I mean he has a reason to, his family was murdered by a serial killer, but still), so we could totally hang out. He used to be a "Physic" and he would fake people out becasue he was actually just really observant, and he now tricks people into admitting they committed crimes. It is really a fantastic show and you should totally watch it.
For a while, those were my only shows, but, as you already know, I am now hooked on Criminal Minds. I usually didn't watch this show, because it made my mom mad because she thought it would scare me, but after 6 years of CSI, it takes kind of a lot to scare me (Although I will admit to being scared occasionally). But, as mentioned earlier, we only got like 3 actual entertainment channels in Georigia, so we watched a lot of A&E, which shows Criminal Mids reruns!

Which you know because it is actually really really scary. But then, you will stop and wonder, Cayla, you are telling me about all these crime shows, how am I supposed to know when I flip to a channel whether or not it is Criminal Minds? You will know because of this guy:

This is Dr. Spencer Reid, he's really smart and can read super fast. So he is just like me! (totally kidding, he is an actual genius, I am not) Who I was talking about wayyyy at the beginning of this blog. He is the most recognizable character on that that show, or at least I think so. Whenever I would switch to some random channel, I would always wonder which of the 152456286299 crime dramas I was watching, then this kid would pop up and I would always know its Criminal Minds. I still never found out what happened with him and the drugs. I guess I will just have to watch it again tonight :) :) :)
So there you have it, all this time you were thinking that I only have an addiction to the internet and I am healing through the power of God's wrath. But no, much longer ago, through the power of DVR, I had been sucked into the world of crime drama. But, do me a favor, next time one of these shows is on, and you have nothing to do, watch it, because I know you will love. But seriously, check the info on the Criminal Minds episode before you watch it, especially if you are about to go to bed, that show can churn up some pretty terrifying fever dreams, trust me. I'm off to go watch a new episode of CSI: Miami! yayy

Cheers,
Cayla
Future Crime Scene Investigator

that awkward time I almost forgot a huge thing in my life

Right now I'm sitting at the bottom of my bed with my feet at the top on the pillows, hair pulled into a pony tail, listening to some indie music. I should probably glance out my window at the buzzing, glowing city below and reflect on my life, and blog something like "And that's when I realized that it's not the things that we have that make us happy, but the things that we strive for. And if there's one thing that New York City has taught me, it's to never stop striving until you've reached your dream." (This all of course would be read aloud in a voice-over as I smirked in contentment of a lesson well-learned.) Then I would hit "post", shut my computer, and crawl under the blankets. The camera would pan out as I turned off my light and fall asleep smiling about how great my life had become because of dramatic but comical experiences. Then as the camera glided out the window and showed the cityscape, the credits would start to roll as some inspirational but upbeat song played.

Am I right?

I was thinking that I hadn't written anything lately, and when I pulled this up that's what I thought of. Do I watch too much tv? Yes. But as Cayla and I were just discussing, if we're going to write a book about our lives and still be young enough to play us in the movie adaption, we need to take notice of things like this. So if you're watching our movie in about five years and it ends like that, now you'll know why. By the way, I'm not actually in New York, but that's where all inspirational comedies about young women realizing their worth and talents take place, so I thought it'd be a nice touch. 

Alright that's all I have to say, especially since typing is kind of a challenge with a wrist brace. omgz whaat wrist brace?! lolz. okay bye

cheers,

lauren

OH MY GOD. 

i almost forgot this until I said cheers. 

THE BURIED LIFE. ASU. THURSDAY.

cayla & I can now die happy. just kidding, because we still have 700 things to cross off our list. but we'll be pretty close to being okay with dying at anytime after thursday. this is getting a little morbid. all I'm saying is that it's going to be AWESOME. epic/amazing/cool/sweet/sick etc. I am now going to stop before I say anything creepy, and once they meet us & become extremely interested in our blog we wouldn't want to scare them off. time to delete some old posts... just kidding. but srsly, I can't believe they're actually coming. I don't think it'll hit me until we're actually there, and I'm also going to ignore that that last sentence was a super that's what she said sentence. 

alright for real this time,

cheers, lauren <3

oh my lanta!

over spring break I went to atlanta:

we stayed at a hotel in the cnn world headquarters:

view from our balcony, which was indoors

and madelyn fell in love with anderson cooper:

we also went on a tour of the cnn headquarter, but it was not really that cool. We went to the georgia aquarium and we saw a whale shark!!! remember me talking about that? here it is:

soo sweet!!

we also saw penguins:

close encounters

they had this crawl tank and you could crawl through the tank and see the penguins up closee!

they also had a touch tank:

<3 <3 <3

we went to the world of coke! it was really sweet!

we tried tons of different sodas from all the different continents!

some were not very delicious:

like this one: 

Beverly is a demon drink created by demons

But I have big news! On the way home from Atlanta, I wanted to die (that is not the big news). I had a terrible cold, I was exhausted, I have to write a paper for school and I seriously wanted to murder every member of my family. So my dad decided to make it up to us! Number 73 off the list!! We flew first class!! It was so lovely, having all that elbow and leg room and food! It is weird considering I have like a million pictures of everything, but I actually didn't take any pictures. I guess I was just really tired! But that is the highlights of Georgia, I'm not going to bore you with all the boring details of this "awesome" vacation. So I will just leave it at this!

Cheers,

Cayla

WHALE SHARK!!!!!!!!

#3: Be A Published Author

Hooray! Number 3 has actually been crossed off since I was in fifth grade, but I forgot about it until I ran across the book while cleaning out my closet. Yes, I published a poem in a (legit) book of poetry when I was eleven. I'm not making any promises that it was a good poem, but apparently these little publishers thought it was good enough. here's a picture of my name in the index:

COOL.

and no, I'm not going to post the poem because we all know no one wants to read it anyway. but YAY for another thing crossed off!

cheers,

lauren

maryland.

it is officially here, spring break 2011!

Instead of choosing from one of my ideas in my other post, Sydney & I decided we would take a little jaunt across the country to Washington DC. I've been here a thousand times because of all the family I have in the area, but Sydney had never been to the capital. We decided that we'd rather do something productive and useful with our time off instead of gaining weight from cheap beer and getting pre-mature skin cancer from too much sun exposure, so we booked Saturday-Saturday tickets to DC.

here are some things we've learned:

1. this city is AWESOME

2. the metro always takes longer than expected

3.  it's freezing.

4. it is possible to spend an entire day in one smithsonian

5. sydney & I should have our own talk show

5. maryland SUCKS

as most, or some, or at least one of you know, East Falls Church is in Virginia and not Maryland. but it all makes sense once you hear this WONDERFUL story of our adventure to DC.

March 11

11:00 pm: We leave for the airport. Our flight leaves at 12:40, so we decide to get there at least a little early. Sydney & I chuckle at the sign that says "The nation's friendliest airport", but little did we know that this fact was about to be proven even more wrong by the lovely Sky Harbor staff. We get up to security and this girl decide to load her 300 bags onto the table but not wait to push them through the x-ray machine. I line my stuff up behind hers, and the guy on the other side of the metal detector is urging me to walk through, so I leave the table. Then an extremely pleasant TSA worker comes up to me and asks "do you want to keep your stuff?" I answer a confused "yes?" and she tells me that I better stay at the table and push everything through or it's not going anywhere. I stand next to the table, pushing everyone's stuff through until my bag finally comes into view. Sydney, who had already passed through the metal detector, was looking for me, so I said "apparently I work here now." TSA was not pleased. I had to go through that new stupid little xray machine, and then since I left my license in my pocket had to get a pat down. really, sky harbor?

March 12

12:30 am: begin the longest. day. ever. After being denied the seats that we chose when booking our flight that were next to each other, sydney and I ask some girl to switch seats with me since the flight attendant at the booking counter refused to help us. We settle into our seats, and the man next to sydney in the aisle seat falls asleep almost immediately. The next 4 hours go by excruciating slow as we try to "sleep", which is impossible to do in the tiny little seats they give you.

6:50 am: FINALLY we get off the plane. we dash to the nearest dunkin donuts and get some breakfast and lots of coffee. we try to find a bus to take us to the AMTRAK station. we finally find the right bus, and head to the station.

8:50 am: we arrive at the AMTRAK station and find out that the first train to Union Station doesn't leave until 9:40. after we die a little on the inside, we buy our tickets and sit down across from these two people that are dressed exceptionally fancy for sitting in a train station. we actually saw those people on the metro yesterday on our way downtown. they were dressed very fancy again, and something about them made them very intriguing. sydney & I decided the most reasonable explanation for this is that they are vampires. ANYWAYS

9:40 am: we get on the AMTRAK train. it's extremely roomy compared the the airplane, and we can finally stretch our legs. the train ride is supposed to be like an hour, but it seemed shorter. now that I look at the text messages I sent at the time we got on the train and the metro, it probably did take about an hour on the train. maybe since my legs finally had circulation the time went by a little quicker.

10:30 am: the AMTRAK train drops us off at Union Station, finally in DC. we figure out the tickets and subway lines we have to take, and find our way to the first train. we get off at our first stop, and change lines to our final destination.

11:00 am: we get on the final train and find out that the track is closed a few stop down, at East Church Falls, as seen in the picture above. we're supposed to get off the train, onto a shuttle, and then back on the train at the next station. Sydney and I really want to die now.

11:30 am: We arrive at East Church Falls. we stand outside and FREEZE, but thankfully my cousin comes to pick us up so we don't have to take the shuttle and more of the train.
12:00 pm: We get to my aunt's house in Vienna, Virginia. Yes, THIRTEEN hours after we left my house the night before, we get to our final destination. We hadn't slept in over 26 hours. basically we don't remember anything that happened that day because we were the walking dead.

so overall, we really hate maryland and east falls church. sydney and I decided that after we survived that horrendous day together our friendship can now definitely handle anything, and we aren't going to kill each other. thankfully, after that fabulous day the trip has been super exciting! we got suite tickets to a wizards game, and have seen a ton of smithsonians and monuments. yay for the nation's capital!

cheers,

lauren

I just watched Aladdin

I honestly don't remember ever seeing this movie, so either I have never seen it at all, or it was such a long time ago that it has been wiped from my memory. It was made before I was even born! Isn't that so weird! The voice of Aladdin is DJ's boyfriend Steve from Full House. Also weird. But I was excited because it is an awesome movie! People (namely me) always say that the best Disney princess is Belle because she sees through the Beast's ugliness and falls in love with him anyway. But, she is also as stupid as the rest of them because she agrees to live in a house with a ravenous beast and talking furniture.

what is she on? 

So, we could come to the conclusion that the only smart princess is Jasmine, because she wants to escape palace life, she likes Aladdin when he is just a "street rat," doesn't fall for Prince Ali's tricks, but then falls in love with him when she realizes that he is actually Aladdin, and finally still loves him even though she finds out he is poor. I mean, it all happens a little quickly and it's kind of shallow, but the movie's only like an hour long.

Plus, she has a pet tiger. Which is the coolest thing ever.

Don't even lie, you know you want a pet tiger.

Cheers,

Cayla

p.s. I faltered a little bit yesterday and went on awkward family photos. But only for a little, and then I finished reading my book. I'm trying very hard.

oh hello

I understand we haven't spoken in a while. That is because I have been off writing a research paper, redoing my room and generally avoiding accountability. But anyway.. tomorrow is Mardi Gras! WOOOO GO CRAZYY! Which means that Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, which means my mother will most likely drag me to a 2 hour long mass that is only supposed to be 15 minutes like last year. This means Lent is starting on Wednesday as well. Lauren and I thought for a while about a good thing to give up. We decided that we were going to give up being mean. After a few days we realized that this would not be possible, and instead of failing midway through, we went off on our own to pick our own things to give up.
I decided I was going to give up websites that make me unproductive and eat up hours of my precious young life that I will never get back. I know you are all thinking facebook, but I really don't see the point of not going on this website, because I would just think about it all the time and then finally freak out and check it, or countdown the days until Sunday until I could go on. Now, I'm not saying that I am addicted to facebook, because I have gone entire vacations without even thinking about facebook (and really not missing much), but I just really don't want to give it up. I don't feel the need to explain myself to you, blog reader, and I really don't think you care anyway.
But back to what I am actually giving up. There is this annoying website, where you essentially dress-up these little dolls. And for some reason I have been addicted to it since I was a little kid, before lifetime bought it and it was still in korean. It is kind of relaxing, but it is useless and takes up me time. So that is definitely going away. Now onto the pure evil website that is currently the bane of my entire existence: stumbleupon.

Now I know what it feels like to be an addict

If you ever want to eat up an entire afternoon, please, feel free to hop onto this website. It will take over your life. It will take you to websites like http://www.cracked.com/ (which has kindly provided that picture and is not a drug reference) and you will go from article to article and you can't resist reading the next one and the next one because they are all so alluring. (FYI I put that link in there to test your will power DO NOT CLICK THAT LINK!!) Stumbleupon is addicting, I want to kick it so bad, so I'm thinking that the wrath of God is good motivation to stop going on it every 5 seconds. Plus I haven't given something up for lent in like, ever, so now is probably a good time to start? I mean it might bring me cute pictures like this 

SO CUTE LITTLE MOUSE!!



 But it is preventing me from reading for my history test, which is BAD! I will keep you updated on how this goes. It will be interesting.

Cheers,

Cayla

p.s. found this too, hilarious stuff!

p.p.s What did I just tell you? Do not go to that website, what is wrong with you?

UPDATE: It is day 1 and I have nothing else to do. I came home, held Apolo, watched Freedom Writers and edited my research paper. Then I came downstairs and typed up all my edits for my paper and made a title page. Then I checked for Spanish homework (which I never do). Now I have nothing else to do and it is only 7:20. I guess I will go take a shower and read....