Fresh Air Photos

Reading Shakespeare in the woods. 

"This is my 'one with nature' pose."
- Hannah
(It was about this time that "Colors
of the Wind" was sung.)

There is something inherently peaceful about
 flowing water in the woods. 

Found a cute little bridge.

Like Hannah's awesome hat?
It was custom made by Rachel who can be found at
 The Philosopher's Wife! 

~Sarah

My New Favorite Movie: Electrick Children

I confess, I have a new favorite movie every week, but this one is different.

I watch a lot of indie films, and Electrick Children has been popping up in my Netflix suggestions for a couple weeks now. After finally watching it, and then watching it about seven more times, all I can say is I am a fan.

Here's the summary from Netflix:

An idealistic teen from a devout Mormon family believes that she's been impregnated by listening to music and travels to Las Vegas to find the father.

What could go wrong?

It has the same feel as Donnie Darko, but less creepy and (unfortunately) no time travel. But just like Donnie Darko, you spend most of the movie unsure of which characters you actually like, you can't tell if the main character is insane or not, and when it's over, you wish you could call the writer and have them explain it to you.

Some scenes make more sense than others.

After I finished it I wanted more, so like any other person I got on Wikipedia so I could read the plot summary and try to go on with my life. Unfortunately, Wiki didn't even have a page for the movie. I tried IMDb, but they only had the same generic description as the one on Netflix. As it turns out, this movie isn't very popular. So I decided to dedicate this blog post to it as an attempt to get more people to watch it.

It's a bizarre movie, but its the best kind of bizarre. Even if you're not into artsy movies, it's also full of indie music and beautiful cinematography. Just give it a chance! Let us know what you think of it!

-Hannah

Greaser Photo Shoot

With the weather warming up a bit yesterday, we decided to do a mini photo shoot at the Roebling Bridge.  Here are some of the photos...

Great American Ball Park

We finished off with some deliciously greasy food and Shirley Temples at Johnny Rockets. :) 

~SP

Retail Encounters of the Awkward Kind

When you work any job that requires constant interaction with customers, you're bound to have some weird encounters. Here are four stories from my ever-growing collection.

1. 

(Selling Despicable Me to a customer and her friend)

Me: Oh! Good choice. I love watching this movie with my little niece, she used to call it the Min-on movie.

Customer: (condescendingly) You mean the minION movie?

Me: Uh, yeah. I guess my 2 year old niece had trouble pronouncing minion.

I would have forgotten about it if I didn't overhear the woman tell her friend:  "People like her make me happy I got through school."

2.

While working in the photo department of a large retail store, a man walked up to the counter holding a large poster frame. I asked how I could help, and he irately asked "Why doesn't anyone sell horizontal poster frames anywhere?!”. I asked him if I could see the frame, and upon seeing that it had hooks for both vertical and horizontal hanging on the back, I flipped it onto it's side. He stared at it for a second before sheepishly taking the frame and walking away.

3.

(It’s almost Christmas and some of the most popular video games are sold out.)

Customer: Do you have any NBA 2K14 for Xbox? My son really wants it for Christmas and I can't find it anywhere.

Me: Sorry sir, we actually sold out of that one yesterday. We might be getting more tomorrow if you want to call in and check.

Customer: That’s ok. I’ll just wait while you go tell them to make another one.

Me: Please?

Customer: (very slowly like I'm stupid)  I'll wait here while you go in the back and have them make me another one!

4. 

I used to work for a popular shoe store chain that had a ‘returns anytime for any reason’ policy.

Customer: I want to return some shoes. They fell apart.

Me: Aw, I’m sorry to hear that. Let’s get that taken care of. Do you have the reciept and the shoes?

The customer then proceeded to hand me a receipt and set the box on the counter. I took the lid off the box to reveal a muddy, smelly, well worn pair of boy’s gym shoes. Glancing at the reciept, I realize that it’s over 9 months old. While I'm doing this, the customer is telling me about how her son “hardly ever wore them!” and “These shoes are brand new, and (shoe store) is just terrible!”

I pointed out the date on the receipt and she started yelling at me that clearly it was a misprint, and she had definitely bought those shoes just a a couple of weeks ago.

I was alone in the store, so I went ahead and returned them to get her to go away happy. To this day I’m amazed that someone would abuse the system just to get $14.99 back on a pair of her kid’s ratty gym shoes.

Have you ever had any goofy/awkward/bizarre encounters with a customer? Share in the comments! I'd love to read them. :D

~SP

Why Black Widow Should Leave The Avengers

The Avengers is hands down one of my favorite movies. I love it. I love Mark Ruffalo as the Hulk, and Iron Man's cheesy one-liners, and Captain America's hair, and Loki as the antagonist that everyone is secretly rooting for. In fact, it's safe to say I love every single character in the movie, save one, and that one is Black Widow. It may just be Scarlet Johanson's portrayal of the character, but I highly doubt it since the character's only attributes are tight clothes and cleavage. To be fair, the whole movie has a “Tony Stark and Friends” feel, and nobody contributes quite as much as Iron Man does, but at least the others do contribute.

Bruce Banner does all the mad scientist work until Black Widow and he fall through the floor and he loses his shit (which can possibly be pinned on BW's annoying reassurance that he'll be fine.) He tries his hardest to kill her until Thor and a fighter jet kick him off the carrier. He also got Loki to sit still.

Captain America is the leader and therefore calls all the shots. He can be credited as saving the most civilians since he gave the orders to set up perimeters in the city and rescued all those people stuck in the bank.

Hawkeye spent most of the film under Loki's influence and still helped out by killing Chitauri soldiers with his badass archery. He also knocked Loki off of his Chitauri speeder thing which allowed Loki to be caught.

Thor uses freaking lightning to destroy the Chitauri army as it's coming through the wormhole. He also attempts brotherly love as an angle on Loki.

Iron Man... You know.

In all fairness, she did have a badass moment of hijacking a Chitauri speeder (with the Captains help) in order to get to the wormhole generator and shut it down, but she waited until Iron Man (of course) sends a nuke through the wormhole and stops the army anyway. Also Selvig could have done that himself since he was the one who knew what to do. She does knock Hawkeye out which releases him from Loki's hold, but really. Big deal. If Thor wasn't busy trying to calm Bruce down after she pissed him off enough to turn him into the Hulk, he could have done that. She also helped get the Avengers together, but S.H.E.I.L.D. Agent and All Star Badass Phil Coulson could have done that by himself by facetiming Pepper Pots on his way to Calcutta. Every single contribution she made in this film either is so trivial that it didn't matter, or it could have easily been done by another Avenger. I'm not saying she's bad at what she does, because all she does is look pretty, and she does that very well. I'm just saying that S.H.E.I.L.D. could save some taxpayers' money (they're government funded, right?) by giving her a pink slip and sending her to a modeling agency. 

-Hannah

8 types of Home schoolers

Coming from two homeschooler’s perspectives, here is our list of the most common homeschooler traits, listed on a scale from "normal" to "homeschooler".

8. Normal Kids - the kids that you would never actually guess were homeschooled because they don’t display any strange quirks unknown to the “normal” school crowd.

7. Rebels – Constantly getting in trouble with parents, always grounded. When parents talk about these kids they can’t really come up with anything good to say except that the kid is “independent”.

6. Super Smart Kids - Kids who are way more advanced than they should be. While this is great, it makes introductions harder for normal kids.

Random Person: “Oh you’re homeschooled?! You must be super smart then, right??”

Normal kid: “Umn, well…”

Random Person: "What is the square root of pi?! Can you spell (insert long word here)?."

5. Super Sheltered Kids - Kids who freak out whenever something remotely risque or offensive comes up in conversation. By risque we mean discussing pierced ears or the word “butt”.

4. All-natural home schoolers – These kids come from a family that grows their own food, from veggies to meat and dairy. They only eat organic, and when asked out to eat they pack their own food and order water… They wouldn’t be annoying if they would stop being so crazy judgmental and preachy whenever a person eating a Twinkie crosses their path.

3. Over the top “modest” people – These kids can normally be picked out of a crowd based on their turtlenecks and ankle length shapeless jumpers - regardless of the temperature.

2. “Un Homeschool” – kids whose parents only make them learn what they feel like learning, so kids get away with doing little to no school work.

(This also gives “normal” homeschool kids a bad rap. “You’re homeschooled?! So you like, get to watch TV and play video games in your  PJs all day?”)

1. Wanna be Rebels – These kids are vastly different from actual rebels. They normally come from really sheltered backgrounds, and as a result brag about watching PG movies or listening to popular music because it’s rebellious against mom and dad’s rules, but totally innocent in the “real world”. The behavior can swing between endearing and incredibly annoying in a split second.

So there you have it! If you have anything to add, leave us a comment! If you were homeschooled, let us know if any of these apply to you! (We think most of them have applied to us at one point or another.)