The One With Things I Like

Here's my list of things.

Day 06 -- 20 of your favorite things

The timing of this prompt is ironic, because I just read a blog post from some guy who was trying to come up with 1,001 things he hated. Although I'm fairly certain I could give that a valiant effort (maybe not 1,001. . .maybe 101?), 20 of my favorite things is so much more positive. Of course, me being me, I'm not going to be able to just make a list. I'm going to have to make commentary.

These are in NO PARTICULAR ORDER. I say that so, if I put a person on there, they're not like, "You like CHEESE more than me?!!" So, no particular order.

1. Diet Coke
It pretty much ensures that I'll stay awake during the day. I'm officially a (Diet) Coke addict.

2. Riding down the highway with the windows down and the stereo cranked up so I can sing along without hearing myself
Billy Joel? Yes, please. *NSync? Of course. Green Day? Eff yes. Doesn't matter the music as long as it's loud and I know the words.

3. Books
I love reading. I think that much is clear. I love reading, and I don't get nearly enough time to just sit down and read. The last book that I sat down and just read straight through was Audrey Niffenegger's "Her Fearful Symmetry." Weird, weird book. But still awesome.

4. My Blackberry knock-off cell phone
My phone is not a Blackberry. It's an AT&T Pay-As-You-Go phone that LOOKS like a Blackberry. But it makes me feel cool. The downside is that now I'm pretty much incapable of texting on regular cell phones. I've forgotten how.
5. My D
Not going to get all mushy-gushy, but my life is 'more better' with him around. Plus, he puts together a lunchbox of snacks for me when I go to work. Win-win.

6. My sister
Katie and I had a tenuous relationship when I was in high school but came out the other side relatively unscathed. She's in my top 3 favorite people.

7. Foreign films
French foreign films are freaking weird. That's one reason I love them. Another reason is that you can have a murder mystery-romance-lesbian-musical movie in English, and it's weird; but if it's in French? It's AWESOME.

8. Black pens
I don't like blue pens. I don't write with them. But I love a good black pen, with the kind of ink that's a little shiny, but not enough to smear all over your hands? Awesome.

9. Bacon Cheese Fries
They must also have Ranch dressing. There was a bar within walking distance of where I lived in the mountains that had the! best! cheese fries EVER. I think they've closed down now (not surprisingly. . .the owner was kind of a dick to his employees.) but they legitimately had the best cheese fries EVER. Also the best Southwestern salad, but that's a story for another time.

10. Smart Humor
I love a good joke that you have to think about for a second before you laugh. Whether it's a joke or a pun or whatever, I like having to think about why it's funny before laughing. Gross-out humor, I'm not into. Fart jokes are not on my repatoire of Things I Find Humorous. But if you give me a joke that I have to have some kind of knowledge about something to get, that's awesome.

The best example I can think of right offhand is pretty much everything Demitri Martin has ever said. Two of my favorites are, "A mobile home with a flat tire is a home," and "It's funny to me why 'finger puppets' is OK as a noun."

Classic.

11. Making Lists
I love a good list. If you said to me, "Sarah, make a list of. . .food," I'd be like, woohoo! Food list! The only thing better would be if you gave me markers and Post-It notes so I could color coordinate the list.

12. Cupcakes
I love cupcakes. Making them, eating them, whatever. When I win the lottery and have my own bakery, I'm going to have an entire line of just cupcakes. The last ones I made were cherry cupcakes, and it's actually true that fruit is better suited to be put in muffins. They were fine, though. I also made buttercream icing to put on them, so awesome.

13. Concert T-shirts with the tour dates on the back
Whenever I go to a show (which is not actually all that often, contrary to my two-shows-a-week habit of. . .last week), I always want to buy an overpriced T-shirt. But I won't buy said T-shirt unless it has a list of the dates and places the tour went. I did not buy a T-shirt at the Ingrid Michaelson/Matt Morris show, for one, because the quality was crap, but also, because there were no tour dates. The Backstreet Boys show? Hell yes, I bought a T-shirt. And I've evern worn it in public. Once.

14. Blogs
This is. . .not a new development, but recently, I've become fully entrenched in the World of Blog. Reading them/writing them/whatever. I love the whole concept.

15. Shoes
Yeah, I'm one of THOSE PEOPLE. We have this shoe rack that was built into the closet of the apartment. There are. . .5 or 6 shelves on the rack, and each shelf holds 3 pairs of shoes. Originally, D had the top shelf, and I had the rest, but somehow I managed to convince him to let me comandeer the entire thing. So now I have that (which adds up to 15-18 pairs of shoes, all heels), a shoe thing hanging on the back of the closet door (sneakers), that holds something like 16 pairs, 5-8 pairs of boots lined up under my clothes, and a bookshelf (that will one day hold books, if I ever move them out of my father's house) that is currently holding 9 or so pairs of summer shoes/sandals. It's a sickness.

16. Thrift Stores
My sister, for the longest time, refused to set foot in a Goodwill. She didn't like the smell, I guess, and how dirty they tend to be. I, however, love some Goodwill. I justify my love for it with the fact that whenever I clean out closets, etc., I bring it all to Goodwill (unless someone I know is having a yardsale. I've found more shoes and dresses in a Goodwill than I can even count. And it's not just Goodwill. Consignment shops are awesome, too. We're going to a wedding next weekend, and a dress that I bought at a consignment shop in the mountains is what I'm going to wear. It's a $100+ dress that I got for like $20 or less.

17. Profanity
OK, OK. I know it's not very lady-like. I shy away from most profanity while a) blogging; b) at work; c) around children; and d) at my mother's house. I feel like it's a respect thing, combined with a professionalism thing. I don't want someone from a company I'm trying to work for coming across this blog and seeing that I'm calling every other person an m-fer, and I know better than to use it in a work setting. But sometimes, there is truly nothing more satisfying than slamming your finger in a drawer or something and having te ability to scream, "SONOFABITCH!" It's. . .cathartic. It's obnoxious when it's constant, though. Like Kevin Smith movies. Or my ex-boyfriend. Or The Blonde One I used to work with.

18. Being Right
If you know me, you know how much I love being right. If you say "Grease 2" came out in 1983, and I KNOW it came out in 1982, I will make absolutely sure that you know that I'm right. I'm not obnoxious about it, but I'll look it up online and be like, "Well, actually, it says right here. . ." It's another compulsive thing. Sometimes I'm wrong, admittedly, but if I KNOW I'm right, I need people to know that I am. Unobnoxiously.

The only thing wrong with this is when I KNOW I'm right, and someone, despite evidence to the contrary, still insists I'm wrong. When I'm clearly not. An example of this is one of my college BFFs, Kenny. That song. . .I think it's actually called "I Would Walk 500 Miles," has the lines:

"And I would walk 500 miles;
And I would walk 500 more;
Just to be the man who walked;
A thousand miles to fall down at your door."

Kenny INSISTS to this day that the last line is "Five thousand miles to fall down at your door."

This? Makes NO SENSE. He walked 500, and then he walked 500 again. 500 + 500 = 1,000. It does not equal 5,000. And, thanks OCD, this bugs me more than it should.

19. E-mail that's not spam
I love opening my inbox to find I have 12 new messages. I do not so much love opening my inbox to find that I have 12 new messages, 8 of them are spam, 3 are newsletters, and one is telling me I didn't get the job I applied for. I like getting e-mail from legitimate people. D sends me e-mails, and I enjoy the mornings when I get those.

20. Finishing a project
Like this list.

(Note: I typed "pride" into Google to find an illustration for this one, and it came up with a bunch of rainbow flags, men in leather thongs, and parades. Uhhmm. . .not THAT kind of pride.)