Alright so because Crystal couldn't answer her Challenge she also wasn't able to post my challenge. So being the annoying monster I am I demanded she email me my challenge so that I don't have to miss my day just yet. Here is what she sent me:
Here it is: Hey Tanya – challenge time. Because I’m technologically impaired this week and am forced to limit my actions online, I can’t post my own entries. I guess I could, but it would be missing all of the bright and shiny gifs. And let’s face it, it’s the gifs that make me funny. I look forward to a semi-dreadful challenge to do next week to respond to my tardiness :DI won’t miss out on YOUR challenge though. I’ve read your posts from the beginning and from them (and being your best friend) I know a lot about your current life. What I don’t know a lot about (lies) are your memories. So your challenge is this: Write to your readers about your top 5 memories. Good or bad, your description has to say why it was important to you/lasted with you all these years and whether or not it’s shaped the way you view things. Hopefully this is what you’re looking for! See ya later! DFTBA CrystalCHALLENGE ACCEPTED! (not that there is much of a choice)
I am going to try to do this by just memories I have without prompting them for pictures or home movies or anything. So I don't know how this will turn out. They likely won't be in any order of importance or anything and probably not as profound as her wording makes it sound like it should be - because let's be honest her I don't know if I am even capable of profound realizations. LETS GIVE IT A TRY !
Memory #1 - FIERCE. (this is the longest memory ever I apologize - its so damn long I suggest you skip this if you have things to do)
Fierce is a book that Crystal and I wrote together I think three years ago now. It is among the weirdest stories to ever have been told in the written word. And here is how it happened. Crystal and I were wondering around a mall doing some Christmas shopping. I think it was mid November or something, I like to get it done early. I love me some Christmas. So we got into HomeSense, this fancy store that has all this home decor shenanigans and we are wandering around looking at all the stuff we want but can't afford when I come across this horse statue. It was the angriest looking horse I have ever seen. I picked up the horse statue and snuck up behind Crystal and made a ghoulish gowling noise behind her waggling a horse in her face. She laughed it was great. We then left he horse there and moved one, while continuously making that noise at each other the rest of the day. We also joked about how we should get the angry horse for my sister Sandy, who is obsessed with horses. We couldn't really figure out if there would be any way to explain to Sandy why her Christmas gift was an angry horse statue so we just left it. I recall getting home and just not being able to get that stupid horse out of my head. I just kept thinking of all the things that I could see that horse doing in my head and they were all so hilarious that it just needed to happen. I then approached Crystal and insisted that she take all her time to help me with this. Because I am inconsiderate I guess. I convinced her that it would be so much fun and we would write a story about what would happen should Sandy fall through some weird portal into a parallel universe and meet this giant angry horse who would be named Fierce.
The absolute best part was the writing of this story. We went to Crystal's fancy apartment and had a laptop and a some paper. First we went through the list of weirdness that this creature would do, who they would meet and stuff that would happen. Because it was a story for Sandy we made it all inside jokes and relevant references. The basic story is that Sandy falls into a place called "Imaginariation Land" and anything you imagine there can happen. The problem is Sandy's imagination doesn't work properly so she has to have the help of a genie T-Pain who speaks in auto tune. She then loses her genie (I can't remember how I haven't read the story in a while) and she has to go find him. Then she encounters LOLcats, Neil Patrick Harris, Britney Spears, Jack Sparrow, Tim Curry, and last but not least, Crystal brother Kris who is a villain called The Primary Obstacle. Anyways its a ridiculous creation that is amazing for the four of us because we like to laugh at our own weird lives.
Anyways writing this story was the most hilarious experience of my life. It would involve long stretches of silence while one person typed madly away on a laptop while the other plotted stories in their mind each chuckling quietly to themselves. That was how it started at least. Once around 11 pm rolled around and I got to the chapter about the LOLcats I lost my shit. I was making myself laugh so hard with the stupidest of sentences. I think it was a mixture of caffeine, pizza, and crazy but I was practically in tears over one sentence in particular. I made Crystal wait until I finished the whole chapter and then made her read it. She joined me in the crazy land and we laughed. I think we wrote until 2 or 3 am, I can't remember if I stayed the night or went home but it was intense to say the least. We wrote almost the entire thing that one night. We had I think three or four more chapters to finish which we did another night of the same thing, pizza, caffeine, and especially crazy.
Then came the part when I had to take the cover photo. It was probably one of the weirder things I have ever done in my house alone (up until that point, since then I have
probably done weirder things). I had this horse that I had went back for a few days later so that we could give it to Sandy with the book, just assuming she would understand the whole inside jokes, and I needed a nice cover picture. I had found this website (
www.blurb.com) that you can make your own bookstore quality books and only print out as many as you need. So we were going to do that and order each of the four of us a copy for Christmas. But I wanted the book to look amazing so I took out this giant horse statue that I had tucked away and grabbed my fanciest camera and wandered around my house taking probably about a hundred pictures of an inanimate object. And it wasn't to be funny, I wanted it to have the best cover ever. I am one of those who often judges books by the cover so it had to be perfect. So I got the picture, edited the picture, and then surprised Crystal with it. I am pretty sure she liked it but I don't remember.
Then we sent the stuff in and waited patiently (pronounced anxiously) for it to arrive. When it finally came I literally danced in the post office. Which is incredibly awkward because it is also our convenience store in my tiny town and everyone saw as I flailed over a package. I opened it and immediately texted Crystal a picture of it and we were so exited.
Then came Christmas Eve. Us 4 cousins always get together on Christmas Eve (without fail I might add, since tradition began when Kris and Sandy were I think 17 or 18 we haven't missed one yet!) and then came time for Sandy to open her gift. I had wrapped it so that the giant horse would be on top of the book. Sandy like the ever diplomat she was picked it up and was like "ohhhh this is nice" because Crystal and I had been taunting her about how very excited we were for her to open her gift. So I think in her head she was thinking "wtf guys, a statue?" but as she was saying her confused thank you I pointed to under the horse and she pulled out our tiny novel (well around 100 pages) and she looked at the majestic cover art and clicked that that was the same horse, and then she saw the by line that said: By Tanya and Crystal. And she was all "You wrote me a book!?" and then she cried because she was so offended that we thought she would like it. No I am kidding. She was laughing and happy and loved it. And then we got Kris to open his and Crystal and I pulled ours from where we stashed them and Crystal and I spent the most embarrassing 2 hours reading out loud to them our weird pizza-fever book that was written in the middle of the night. I must say, everything is funnier in the middle of the night, but it held up and was still funny to them.
So that's that memory. It is so damn long. The rest will be shorter I think because this is like half a novel right here. But why it was important to me was it will forever be the first novel I wrote. If in some stroke of luck I ever become a well-known author or if dreams come true and I'm a New York Times bestseller, the first book I would have written (outside of the picture book I wrote in grade eight) will be a book in which T-pain was a genie. No one can take that away from me. It was amazing and probably one of the most fun times I have ever had in my life over the course of a month and a half. PS - one of my favorite parts of this was we knew Sandy wouldn't know who T-Pain was so we had to make her watch a few music videos of his to understand. She wasn't pleased when we put a bunch on her facebook wall because her students could see.
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This is it! No you cannot read it.[/caption]
are you still with me? I am so sorry about that. If you skipped it I will hold nothing against you. I just skipped it in editing and I know that's a bad plan. It's just so damn long.
Memory #2 - Burger Belly in Niagara Falls. These will be so much shorter I swear! This happened when I tagged along on a road trip to Niagara Falls with my Aunty and her girls Chels and Colleen. We got there and were staying in a hotel over looking the falls and it was awesome. We then saw the ferris wheel and it looked pretty close so we decided to walk there instead of drive adn have to worry about parking. We started walking and it just kept being so far. It was like a good hour - two hour walk. . Anyways so we walked and did all the fun stuff liek teh wax museum and they did a haunted house while I drank frozen lemonade and listened to Colleen scream from outside. Then we went for dinner at the Rainforest Cafe. Now I am sure classy people will be all "that so not fancy" but to me it is probably the best place ever. It is so fun. There are robot-animals and delicious hamburgers. I am sorry but there is very little else I need in the world. Anyways I think we all got burgers, but as we ate them Chels and I got full. These burgers weren't even that expensive but just the knowledge that they don't have them in our city, and the fact that they cost money and they are just about the most delicious burger in the universe we forced them down. We were both so full and it hurt so much. We were in so much actual pain it was ridiculous. And we also knew we likely wouldn't be getting back down to the views we were at so we had to take a bunch of pictures in front of the falls while we had burger bellies. We took the best sad picture ever but it is on my other computer that is currently broken. Then we had to walk the forever length walk back to the hotel with the full bellies. At least by the time we got back it started to settle but I still to this day have never been that full.
Was this a good memory or a bad memory... not sure. Why has it lasted... well because I like to eat a lot and its a problem. So I often like to remember the times when I was so dumb and kept eating until I almost exploded my body. This memory is in no way profound.
Memory #3 - Driving Lessons with DadSo I have a bit of an unconventional story of learning to drive that is very long that I won't really get into now. Let's just sya the first vehicle I drove was a piece of heavy machinery. Anyways, a specific memory I have of learning to drive real cars was when my dad used to take me driving on all the back roads when I was I think 14 or 15 before I had my license. We went back out to this dirt road that my friend lived on that followed the edge of a river. My dad made me put my hand at "12:oo" on the steering wheel and close my eyes. He then would direct my driving by telling me what hour to turn my steering to. I obviously didn't go that fast because I knew if we got out of control we would be swimming in a gross river but in all honesty I wasn't so scared because if there is anyone in the world I feel safe in a car with its my dad. anyways, I should mention I am an impeccable driver. And almost always do it with my eyes open now.
this was a great memory. I spent hours driving around with my dad back then and it was so fun. I learned a lot of the back roads really well and learned how to backup using only the side mirrors going 80k on a gravel road. Why its important is I always loved spending time with my dad and its stuck with me because it seems like everyone tries so hard to be such a grown up and its exhausting. Anytime I want to be around someone who is just a giant man child in the best possible way I go see him and have the best time.
Memory #4 - Wedding Burgers and chipsApparently my mind is really set on burgers today because the next memory is going to be really quick but again relies around burgers and chips. Alright so my mom used to be a wedding photographer and I was her assistant. I went to probably over a hundred weddings between grade eight and the summer after grade 12. almost every weekend some summers I would go to a wedding with mom and help as she took pictures. The most important parts of going to these weddings were as follows: A good bag of Lays regular chips, and Lunch. The chips were always simple, a bag of chips that would be gone likely before we even got there which was always impressive because neither of us would remember eating that much. The tricky part about Lunch was sometimes the weddings would be happening around lunch time. When your working at a wedding there is hardly any time to eat, especially if it was happening around eating times. So sometimes we would find it being like 10am on our way to a wedding and we would know we would have zero time to eat until 7 or 8 pm. This is how we learned Wendy's opens early and doesn't bother with breakfast. It got to the point where the lady at the drive through window at Wendy's knew us. That's a new low. Or high... depends on your opinions I guess.
This was my job for all of high school. It was a fun job and I always enjoyed it once I was there. Sometimes you would get overwhelmed and have taffeta nightmares but those have passed. It sticks to me this day because I am really hungry and really want one of those Wendy's Pretzel burgers super bad.
Memory #5 - FezzI had this cat that came with the house my parents bought when I was ten. He was the most gross creature I have ever owned and I loved that thing so much. He was a very sickly cat, he even had to go live with our family friend who was a vet who brought him back to life as he was half dying. I really don't know why he was so sick, although I have read things that cats are often times allergic to hay so that makes them get all sneezy in barns. Either way I loved him so much. He was pretty much mute even though he would still try to meow all the time. He was always full of matts and burrs and just in general did not take care of himself. He was the laziest creature and was basically like a living rag doll when you picked him up. He would always sit in the window and stare at us from outside (he was a barn cat) and if you put your hand near the window he would try to rub his head on it thereby hitting his head every time. Also he had this sneezing issue and would sneeze all over the glass of the windows so they were constantly needing to be cleaned of Fezz-boogers. Anyway he was gross and awesome and the best cat ever. I don't have many good pictures of him because he was not photogenic and also because my computer with all my pictures is broken but I have one that is in the good ol fashioned format of paper so hold I will take a picture of it now!
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Grossest most amazing cat to ever sneeze in your face.[/caption]
He was a great cat as gross as he is. I am starting to think Winston might just be Fezz reincarnated. without all the boogers... Although he does sneeze on me sometimes. Anyways Fezz is important and will always be. He was technically my first pet! We had one cat before and other dogs but they were never just mine. Fezz was "mine".
Alright this has gone on long enough. It is over 3000 words and none of your are paying attention anymore and if you are... why?
CRYSTAL REFOCUS HERE! Your challenge will be lengthy. You see, you still owe us a list of 15 things about yourself to introduce you to us. That is important and I would like that to still happen first. Secondly, you require a punishment for missing your deadline for challenge day. That will come in a minute. First I will explain your Second Challenge
CHALLENGE #2: you must pick one member of the backstreet boys and write me a short biography about them. You must include their basic facts and information about their career. Then you must tell us WHY you chose this particular member of the backstreet boys and then include your favorite music video (if possible or at the very least a link to said music video) that highlights them in some way. Insightful right? Told you I am not profound.
PUNISHMENT#1: For your punishment you can choose between the following:
- OPTION A- post an photo of yourself as a young lady. It can't be an adorable picture because we all know you were the cutest child, you would have to post something awkward.
- OPTION B- you would have to answer the challenge you gave to me (provide 5 memories good/bad and tell us why they are important)
- OPTION C - take a picture or yourself with a post-it stuck to your forehead that reads as follows: I AM UNTIMELY AND I APOLOGIZE.
So I want all these things by Monday! If you want to post tomorrow to catch up on your Challenge#1 / punishment you can, Challenge 2 is for Monday though. also I don't think your internet is fixed yet anyhow.
Sorry that this post is a billion years long. Next time I will try not to waste your time so much.
Bye Crystal! DFTBA!
You know how I alluded to the fact that I should bring a blanket with me on the bus, that is how little I am home to sleep? Yeah. Instead of napping like I probably should be I read. If I were to chose one thing I could do for the rest of my life, it would be reading. Don't ask me my favourite book, I never know it. It depends on the day; it depends on the mood; it depends on who I'm with at the time. Books are great because you can take yourself anywhere you want to go. People who know me well know for a fact that I will have a library in my house (I'm well stocked already) and it will be magnificent. 
(Pre-zombie-virus)
Yum.
