The Dangers of Texting

So I'm sure your mind went straight to "Don't Text and Drive." Yes. We all know that one. But I'm talking about real dangers of texting. The dangers that lurk deep in the shadows. The dangers that only come out when in a public place. Ok - I'm talking about the dangers the teeny boppers face from me while I'm in a public place and they are walking and texting and running into things and me and my friends and have the audacity to get angry at ME. Yes. Those dangers.

While at Cedar Point this past Tuesday (yay!) I had to submerge myself into the world of all age ranges yet again. This doesn't happen often, as I was recently in College, and everyone there is the same age, now I'm working, and everyone is around the same age (minus me and 2 other people :D), but when I go to amusement parks, the movies, a festival, etc, I am exposed to the entire range of homo-sapiens. Yes. From newborns, to 30 year-olds, to the elderly. And the only age group that gets on my nerves 100% of the time? Yes you guessed it -- the tweens and teens. I don't remember being so obnoxious when I was that age. Maybe I was, but I know for a fact that I didn't dress, text, or be so blatantly rude. No I was scared of older people. My parents could ground me, my grandma could spank me, and my sister could beat me up. No I respected those who had been on this earth longer than me.

So anyway, back to the texting. While walking around, I don't think I could go a foot without seeing some teenage girl walking blindly with her group of friends and texting on her QWERTY keyboard. Now I'm all for texting if you need to get a quick message to someone, or are somewhere you can't use your phone, but if you are with all your friends, and your parents, and your cousins, and your boyfriend, and your dog, who else do you need to text?! Oh yes, Text L-O-V-E to 69691 to find out if you and your boyfriend were destined to be together. Only $999.99 a text! UGH.

After getting thoroughly annoyed at being bumped into by these thumb crampers, my boyfriend said "we should just hit the phones out of their hands when we see them." Heaven forbid their phone is detached from their limbs. While the thought of smashing their phones on the hard concrete did enthrall me, I didn't want to be hit with the teenage verbal venom that would follow. So I'd just dream about it and hope when I had kids they wouldn't be this way... man oh man.

Well, throughout the day, I got less and less concerned with the walking texter teen. Which was good because they seemed to multiply! It wasn't until we were back at the hotel in the hot tub did another flame of fury creep up inside of me. We were chilling relaxing in the hot tub, after a long day of walking around, only to be bombarded by 15+ teeny-boppers, all with cell phones, because common, if you are 2 years old without a cell phone you're a total loser!; Well they decide to get into the hot tub ... WITH THEIR CELL PHONES. Like come on! How dumb do you get?! I wanted one of them to drop it soooo bad. But we left before they did. Which was good because my teenager quota had been met for the day.

I guess the moral of this post was:

A) to vent about teenagers and
B) to PRAY that my kids don't turn out this way.

A Week of my Life

Well it's finally FRIDAY! Yay! I love how on Monday I can't wait for Friday to come. It seems so overwhelming, a whole week of work to get through before the glorious weekend. But when Friday comes, it takes for-ev-VER. Yes. You know what I'm talking about. Here is how my week goes:

Monday: Wake up and realize it's Monday, so I have to go to work. Hit the snooze button once, but unable to fall back asleep as the cat is scratching at my door waiting for her food. Dumb cat. Get to work, down 3 cups of half-caf half decaf coffee, check my emails, and start looking around for the projects I didn't finish the week before. I get dragged into a project that takes me through till noon and I rejoice as it's time for lunch! After lunch I work on a few more little projects until the end of the day, while updating Twitter and checking out industry news. 5pm - go home!

Tuesday: Wake up before the alarm goes off or the cat is up. Debate going back to sleep for a few minutes, but quickly decide to just get up and start my day. Maybe today is the day I have time for the newspaper AND a bowl of cereal. It's not. Rush out the door at 7:55 am and get to work at 7:59 (yes, benefits of living close to work). Spend the first few hours of work checking up on industry news, researching new technology for the CU, and just brainstorming ideas that I may get to talk about sometime in the future. I usually check the clock once an hour.. waiting for lunch.. then waiting for the end of the day. 5pm comes faster today, although I have checked the clock. Maybe all that counting of seconds made it speed up?

Wednesday: Pretty much like Tuesday, however, since it's hump day, after noon, I feel myself sliding on the downhill part of the week. Woo afternoons go quick!

Thursday: This is the second hardest work day to get though! I wake up, hit snooze 2 times, put the cat in the bathroom so she'll stop mewing at me and skip breakfast all so I can gain 15 extra minutes of precious sleep. Good thing I keep granola bars at work :) Get to work, and have a project that has a morning deadline, so I get to work straight on that. Finish that, take a late lunch since the project took longer than expected and return sleepy and full from the delicious food I went out to eat! Since I'm in this food coma, I tend to just do mind-numbing work during this afternoon, such as stuffing and folding letters if I can. That takes all of 20 minutes, and I spend the rest of the afternoon fixing up projects that aren't quite right, perfect, make sense, etc. It's 4:57 and it's time to log off and go.

FRIDAY: "I don't wanna!" is my response when my alarm starts screaming at me to get up. I hit snooze 3 times, or halfway through the night I set my alarm to 7:20 or 7:30 just to sleep in. I get up eventually and throw on the outfit I laid out the night before because I know I don't get up early on Fridays. Get to work, and get busy. Fridays usually go fast because I have so much work I have to get done before the weekend begins. I work on any and all projects, sometimes doing half of one while simultaneously working on 2 others. I get more done if the sun is out, because I know getting caught up in designing a flyer/webpage/insert makes time race by. Lunch comes and goes without much regard from me. And once the 2nd half of my day comes, I hit a wall. It's 3pm on a Friday! Why do I have to work? This is when I start wondering what it would be like to own my own business and work from say 10-3 on Fridays, just because I can. And then those little logical men in my head say "oh but how would that be convenient to anyone but you. what about the customers? They need your products on Fridays too." So I try to put it out of my mind. Doesn't work. At least it killed 30 minutes of time while I was re-organizing my email inbox. I check the clock. 3:45. 3:55. 3:59. 4:12. 4:13. 4:28. Ah so close now. I feel my feet itching to get up and walk around. Take a stroll around the office to get the blood pumping so I don't clot up on the way down the stairs. 4:39. Ok time to organize the desk so it looks neat and clean on Monday. 4:45. Are all of my programs open? Did I get everything done that was due today? Double checking on that. 4:51. Send out a few emails about having a good weekend. Wash out my coffee cup. 4:58. Ok. Grab my purse and GO!

That's my typical week - give or take a few things. I sometimes work events, which totally changes my schedule. Now don't get me wrong, I L-O-V-E my job and what I get to do and the fact my schedule is so flexible. I like designing things and re-working them until I have 5 versions of the same thing. It's what I do. I just thought it would be interesting to let everyone get inside my head on a slow week. Not every day at work is "wam-bam thank you ma'm" filled with things to do. Sometimes you have to create your own work - like researching the competition, monitoring new websites for potential member segments, viewing other artist's work for inspiration, and much more.

Sure I may look at the clock a lot, or really enjoy when a week is over, but I also like the journey to it.

Naming a Kid? Try nameing a BLOG!

You know, I've had Xanga, LiveJournal, and Facebook, but never an "official" blog. It's that time now!

So picking a name for my blog became the hardest part of this whole experience. I know I have random stuff I can write about, as my life is totally interesting.... right... but a name to sum up everything I will be talking about? Harder than you think. I was amazed at how hard this task really became. I used name generators for inspiration, looked all around my cube for random words I could put together, and came up with squat. I wasn't sure if I'd ever get to blog at all since you can't blog without a good blog name!

In a last effort I posed this question on my G-Chat Status: "I need a name for my blog. Suggestions welcome." and within 5 minutes I had several responses from my friends. YES! What great friends - who instead of actually working at work decide to hang out on G-Chat all day and answer my status questions. Yes. Great friends indeed. :)

A few of the failed names include:

• Monka Bang!
• Random Encounters with my Brain
• Monica Bean
• Rhythm in my Shoes
• The Boring Blog
• And more...

Then, finally, with divine inspiration, my friend Joe or Chinchilla, (see left), came up with the genius name I now call blog home -- Moni-logue. Now for all of you slow thinkers out there, it's a play on the words Monologue, as the long speeches given by a single person in a play, much like what this blog will be to all of you - the theatrical view of my life.

So thank you Joe for naming my blog - as I take no credit in coming up with it. You rock. Now go roll in some dirt.



**EDIT** I was told Chincilla's roll in dust not dirt. Sorry about that Mr. Joe.