That Time at Girl Scout Camp When a Horse Tried to Kill Me

I spent a few of my childhood summers at a Girl Scout camp called Camp El-O-Win. They had a variety of activities, including a brief foray into horseback riding. This should have been one of the more interesting parts of the camping experience, considering it was up against 'bracelet making' and 'not getting poison oak'. The only other thing to really look forward to was the one shower you got towards the end of the week.

blissfully unaware of the dangers looming ahead

It was my first time riding a horse (unless you count carnival pony rides or this adorable photograph), so the counselors picked one out for me that would be good for beginners. I ended up with 'Molly', a big brown clunky thing that I assumed would be docile. Gentle. Nice. You know, "good for beginners".

So, that was wrong. This horse was an asshole. I had no idea how to control a horse, but that probably wouldn't have mattered. It completely ignored me, started galloping at random intervals and, about 20 minutes into the trail, stopped altogether and sat down on the ground.

I immediately leapt off the horse. It proceeded to flip over onto its back and roll around in the dirt, kicking its legs in the air while I watched, horrified. One of the counselors ran over and grabbed me, praising me for "knowing" what is, I guess, the correct procedure for not getting crushed to death by a horse.

I still don't know what prompted me to jump off so quickly. It's not like they gave us a class on what to do when your horse decides, "Naw, sick of this walking shit. Imma roll around for awhile." I guess it was instinct; possibly the gut knowledge that this horse was a dick and would totally try to kill me if it got the chance.

never again

I haven't gotten on a horse since.

Halloween Nail Art - Bloody Eyeballs and More

I'm really into nail art and oftentimes find myself drooling over ridiculously detailed and highly impractical nails on various blogs. Due to my lack of desire to purchase and hoard even more art supplies, as well as my need to dress myself and tie my own shoes everyday, my own nails are usually clipped short and decorated with little more than stickers and/or designs that can be achieved using the brushes that are already in the bottles. And here are some of my Halloween themed nails created using exactly those things!

This set of Halloween nail stickers was $1.99 at Walgreens. It's kind of an odd mix of characters, and I'm fairly certain I have a sheet of Japanese stickers with highly similar skull characters on them. I'm really really not sure why there is a giant, non-nail sized sticker included. Am I supposed to stick it to my skin? Cut it up? The package does not answer this question.

I started with white nails. Since there really isn't much of a theme among the stickers (other than general Halloween-ness), I decided I was just going to stick them on randomly.

And stick them on randomly I did. Overall, I like the look. The spiders are especially cool. I wouldn't recommend starting with white after all, though, especially for the skulls. They just looked like little black eyes and disembodied hats!

The Halloween stickers lasted on my nails a total of one day, which was coincidentally similar to the amount of time it took to remove them. While I did like them, I have a feeling the rest of these stickers will be better suited to decorating a notebook or personal electronic device.

I painted my nails black after that. When I got home from the club on Sunday night, I decided to paint some bloody eyeballs on them. They actually looked way better than the photo, but I applied topcoat when the eyeballs were still a bit too wet (you can see the brush marks from applying it.) I looooved having eyeballs on my nails, and I'm totally going to revisit this look (possibly when I'm less drunk and more patient.)

My Sticker Album

I received this sticker album for my birthday when I was maybe 5 or 6. It is easily one of the best gifts I've ever received, despite being an obvious dollar store knock-off. (The fake Woody Woodpecker and Holly Hobbie images are a dead giveaway.)

If you aren't familiar with sticker albums, they are books that have sheets of glossy paper, sometimes printed with some kind of theme, that you can stick stickers to. The idea is that the glossiness of the paper will make the stickers removable (and thus reusable), but that doesn't usually pan out. They may also have pockets for holding unstuck stickers.

My family was never very rich, and the budget for buying me stickers was basically nonexistent. Despite this, I quickly became very obsessed with collecting as many stickers as possible. If I recall correctly, this book also came with a smattering of random stickers (or it's entirely possible the person who gave it to me also gave me a few stickers to start off my collection. I can't really remember; I was 6), but the bulk of my stash came in the form of $1 sticker sheets filled with hilarious puns from the Scholastic Book Fair, the dentist (some kid's dentists had treasure boxes, ours had rolls of big, round stickers), and, as you will see very soon, food packages.

Read on for scans of the entire Sticker Album! Click on any of the pages to enlarge them in a new window.

Fuck Yeah New Re-Ment

I was going to open by saying that my current obsession is Re-Ment blind boxes, but truth is I've been obsessed with them for several years, I just couldn't afford them for a long time. I finally can again, so I purchased 5 new boxes from 4 sets this weekend.

Lolita Birthday Party & Ichiban Kan Haul

Birthday lolita purikura!

A lot can change in 3 years...apparently.

I have been working in my chosen field (graphic design/web design) for the past 3 years, but my first job in San Francisco was at the Westfield Mall in Union Square. I very briefly worked at Zara, but after 2 months I was hired at the tea store across the mall: Lupicia Fresh Tea, a high-class tea boutique from Japan.

Truly Outrageous Birthday Party Fallout

My real birthday isn't until the 27th but I celebrated this weekend, starting with an outing to Kinky Salon for Dungeons & Drag Queens theme night on Saturday, which was really fun. I should have gotten a photo of my outfit, but I didn't!