Operation CHEER: An Introduction

Greetings Blogspot. I thought I would just post this pre-even-beginning-to-think-about-the-holidays-for-most-people because well, I have already begun to think about them. That's right. This is the start of many Christmas blogs to come. Mainly this post is to inform you about Operation CHEER! Inspired, of course by the great Maureen Johnson, Operation CHEER is a three part prank I will be playing on my siblings this December. As you may know, or not, I have started pranking my eldest sister Megan in the office of the Family business we both work at. The first one I did was called Operation Michael Jackson in my Co-Worker's Ceiling where I did just what the title implies. I waited for them to go out to lunch for one of their meetings, snatched the ladder from the store room, snatched the worlds longest, GREENEST and most attention drawing extension cord from the bathroom/store room, some old computer speakers I had found a couple days before, and of course my iPod. I made all the necessary technical connections of the equipment and started to work. Up the ladder I went, moved the ceiling tile to the side, placed the speakers up there, threw the end of the extension cord 2 offices down so that I could reach it from that ceiling and get it to a corner of the room where, despite it's greenness, would hopefully not be noticed in the corner. Then I put an alarm for my iPod to start playing Michael Jackson's Thriller through my sister/co-worker's ceiling at exactly 15:23 at which point I would be out of the office on important "errands". Replaced the ceiling tiles and ladder and continued on filing until they got back and I could leave.

I so wish I could have been a fly on the wall for that. I actually set up a camera in my sister's office to try and catch the reaction but unfortunately the camera decided that it would go off after 2 seconds of recording an empty desk and chair. So I just had to settle with them re-telling the story. And re-tell it they did. Many, many times to many different people. There was a lot of searching for the source of the music. My sister was going crazy. Hahaha. I would have loved to see that. She picked up her purse, computer, presser her ear against the filing cabinet to try and find out where it was coming from. Apparently my other sister even got up on the desk to try and see if it was coming through the ceiling some how ; ) I actually probably could have stayed because they didn't assume it was me for a long time. The hardest thing would have been keeping a straight face though. I don't know if I could have done it. I mean I'm pretty good after extensive training from my roommate Sarah, but I'm not that good. I don't even know if she's that good.

I haven't really done anything since then except for stuffing almost all the chairs in the entire office into her office. That was kind of spontaneous as I just walked by and saw it unattended and thought I should do something about it.

I'm hoping to spark some sort of desire to get back at me in her. And ideally I would like her to team up with the other siblings so that they could do something really un creative and lame to try and get me back so that I could have real incentive to carry out Operation CHEER. I mean besides the obvious of it just being amazing to hear their reactions. I think after I do that it will definitely spark something. SO! Moving right along...

The Plans

Megan's House: I'm going to purchase some really inexpensive wrapping paper (Walmart will probably have a really good special or something) and wrap everything in their house. I mean EVERYTHING. Including their CAT! Every item in their house will be gift wrapped!! CHEER!

Whitney's House: This needs a bit of backstory. My sister Whitney HATES those inflatable Christmas lawn ornaments that people put in their yard and is also VERY particular about her Christmas lights. They have to be white and they have to be perfectly straight. So naturally, after her husband Jamie gets up all the decorations to her liking I will... re-decorate. Starting with the lights. They will be replaced with coloured lights and depending on how many are needed I might splurge and by the ones the twinkle. These will be put up both carelessly and crookedly. Then I will put some of the aformentioned inflatable lawn ornaments that my parents purchased for the front of the Family business in their yard just to add even more CHEER!

Liam's House: This is the most complicated and daring of them all. First I am going to switch all the light bulbs in their house to red and green ones. Then I am going to set something up so that when they come in some confetti or fake snow falls on them. Both easy. Then I am going to try and rig something to their light switch so that when they come in Let it Snow starts playing. That's the hard part. My friend Joel gave me the idea for the light switch. He's really smart and good at that stuff so I believe him. I just need to get him to explain it to me better. He said you can just take the switch/face part off of it, switch and maybe add some wires and then it'll work. I'm thinking about using my old iPod mini so that it doesn't ruin it or something. Or an old stereo or something. That is if my iPod mini works. One day it just decided it didn't want to be an iPod anymore and deleted my whole library. Hopefully it'll work again after a 3 year sabbatical. To see how this might work I undid the light switch for my closet to look at the wires and stuff. It's a bit confusing but I think after some google help I should be OK. I did get shocked a bit though. I accidentally hit the switch to turn it on at the same time touching one of the wires that was wrapped around a screw in the side of the switch and got a bit of electricity. It was weird. It didn't really hurt but my finger still feels a bit tingly. It was quite shocking (lame) more than anything, really.

So yeah, those are my plans. I do have a slight problem however. I am debating whether or not I even want to pull one over on my elder brother because he, as Mario Puzo (author of The Godfather) puts it, "He is a man of respect". Not that he's a violent gangster but I mean he is the only one who could really get me back. And since I'm the younger sister he won't hold back. Especially after I've gotten him so good. Then again, not doing something after I've done something to all the other siblings may show a sign of weakness and he may peg me as a scared, easy target. I think I'm going to do it. If I can dish it out I have to be able to take it as well I suppose. And I have a couple pages in my notebook of potential things I could do. One of them involves the ransom notes that I got from the dollar bin at target. They literally read "I have _____. Please leave ______ by the ______ if you ever want to see _______ again. -Master of the Seven Seas". Awesome. I was really excited when I found those in my closet.

So that's pretty much it. Let me know what you think or if you have any suggestions. : ) I'll be posting more about this in the future when the time comes to actually pull it off.

Pace

I'm back, Baby!

It appears that my blog went MIA from everyone's reading list. I thought this most curious in the beginning (like 2 days ago) and it caused me quite a bit of stress. I mean, I LOVE hearing from you guys. However, I found the source of the problem and fixed it. You see after my post about the crazy roommate I went a bit paranoid and privatised like everything about this blog, except I thought for you guys. That is, I made it impossible to be found if you searched on google, changed the url and a few other things that I can't even think of. The culprit, it seems was the URL change. So I found out what my old one was and VOILA! It was FIXED! So let that be a lesson to you, DON'T. EVER. CHANGE. YOUR. URL. EVER. Unless you want people to not be able to read anything you right. It's just such a relief that I found out there was a problem because I thought you all had abandoned ship and thought my reading so atrocious that you didn't even want to blog yourselves anymore! Haha. Speaking of which, I have a dunk ton of posts from the past 5 months and I guess I'll post more about the trips and stuff. I'm so behind! I understand if you don't want to read them because when I write blog posts I tend to write epics and catching up with 5 months of that might make one physically ill. So yeah, basically you really don't have to unless you feel like it. -OR- I could re-post one every day and that could be my last half of the month BEDA (which might mean I could break some of them up and make them shorter. You can choose that too. Make them shorter or keep them long?)! Which do you prefer I do?? I'll leave it up to you.

Really though I have Elisabeth to thank. Thank you so much!! If you hadn't brought the problem to my attention I would have just gone on commentless and sad until I just deleted the whole thing! So thank you. That was very nice of you. : )

So normally I would say: now that we've had our Blogspot.com lesson for the day, let's continue on with our normally scheduled blog post shall we? but that's actually all I have for you. Sorry. Basically just an explanation on what happened and asking you what I should do about all the posts you missed. Well it was refreshingly short at least! Leave your answers in the comments! : )

PS. I've missed you guys.

Life of Adventure

In the interest of going with the trend that Emily and Elisabeth have set of updating their blog for the first time in a long time I am going to tell you about my newly updated FUTURE PLANS! It involves the mafia. Heheheh. And you were about to close this window. Got your attention now! Hopefully.

Anyway, I basically want to do a lot of things with my life. Which means that I have to get out of school like now. Or two years from now at least. After uni I'm thinking about getting a student work permit and heading to the BIG BRITISH CITY of London. There I will work at a desk job as a travel agent. I know it probably seems weird to aspire to work at a desk but for some reason I just want to do this for a while. A strange part of me wants to experience work in an office (like real office work. Not the temp stuff I'm doing now at the *Family Buisiness). I don't know why exactly I want to do this. Maybe it's from watching The Office, or from watching the Travel Channel since I was **7 but I really want to do this for at least a year and a half. And just living in London and having a normal person job in like the Financial District or something and getting to take the Underground into work every day sounds absolutely fascinating to me. I can't wait to do it.

After London I suppose I'll go to culinary school in New York City or something. Right after culinary school I really want to volunteer to be a Sea Shepherd. Like on Whale Wars. I'm not even kidding. I started watching the show and it's amazing. Maybe I could be a cook on one of the boats!! I mean who doesn't want to fuck with a whale killing harpoon ship?!? That just sounds awesome! I just had a rather irritating (understatement) conversation with my brother-in-law about whale wars and he asked me if I was a tree/whale hugging hippy. So I asked him if he was a whale killing fiend and he said "hey, whatever it takes. Animals were put on this planet for a reason." I'm hoping he was just being an arrogant prick to piss me off instead of actually believing what he said. My sister hit him on the leg and told him to shut up. I wish my dad had been there. He may be conservative and stuff but he's seen the show and totally agrees with what they're doing. He definitely would have put my brother-in-law in his place and made him look like an idiot. The problem is that when I get angry I can't really process my thoughts and witty remarks quick enough for them to still be relevant by the time I actually come up with one. I freaking hate that! Since he's such a bible hugger I would have brought up Genesis and how the first time an animal was killed at all was after the apple was eaten and was FOR CLOTHING! It never mentions animals being eaten in the Garden before then. Fuck. Why couldn't I have thought of that?!! That made me think again about vegetarianism. I think I want to do it. At least I'll see how far I get.

Wow, that was a tangent. Anyhow, I want to do that for a campaign or two and then do the chef thing. Perslaps the chef thing will take place back in London.

Now lets talk about long term. This is where the plan changes from what I had always planned on before. Before it involved living in London forever and ever, amen, but now it actually involves New York. I don't like this because it's still America and I'm pretty ready to get out of here. Also, and this sounds horrible, so horrible actually that I'm not going to mention it. Never mind. Anyway the new plan involves opening a restaurant, which is something else I had always been against. My previous thinking was that I wouldn't want to have to deal with all the management shit and that I just want to cook and work in the kitchen. Now however, with this idea I don't think I would trust anyone else to do it. I want to open an Italian restaurant. Now I know you're probably thinking very sarcastically that NYC DEFINITELY needs more Italian restaurants but mine would be different. It will be legit and GENUINE Italian! It will have legit and genuine pizza (it's been so freaking hard to find real Italian pizza in this stupid city that I live in), REAL cappuccino and espresso. REAL Italian bread and pastries that will be made ON SITE by a pastry chef. There will be NO Chicken Parmesan. That isn't Italian. It's American and there won't be any of that crap in my restaurant unless you happened to bring it in from outside which is rude and as owner and chef I would have to kick your ass. Or just kick you out. Whatever. There will also be live music every Saturday. Also art like all over the restaurant. Like copies of really famous works of art by famous Italian artists. Can you tell I miss Florence?? I miss being able to go to the Uffizi whenever I wanted (and for free!).

I will call this restaurant.... Ciao Bella! That's what the forward Italian men (in other words ALL ITALIAN MEN. Not that I'm generalising or anything) say to you when you walk through the San Lorenzo market. We will be famous for our wonderfully genuine Italian menu and our brick oven pizza! And all the pizza will be legit Italian kinds like *Margharita and diavola!

So since this restaurant will be in New York and since it will be Italian I bet it will be a favourite spot for some very wealthy Italian families, if ya know what I mean... (the mafia. I'm talking about the mafia). Here's what I picture (daydreamy music. The following narrated in a New York accent): It's a typical Saturday evening. The restaurant is bumpin. There's a line out the door and we've just started having to turn people away. The usual. I get called out of the kitchen because someone wants to meet me. Despite being busy, I love this part so I go. The waitress, young but professional and charming, leads me to a quieter back table. There's an older but still hansom man sitting at the head with a rather large family. The older gentleman greets me with a unique take on the Italian accent. It's not warm and friendly like I'm used to hearing. It's got a certain coldness to it that I pick up on immediately. Like this was a man who demanded respect. A man with a belly, both literally and figuratively. He told me that he greatly enjoyed the food and that I was a good business woman and that he planned to make this his Saturday night spot and that I should reserve this table for him. That he would make it worth my while. He says he understands that I'm a busy woman and probably need to get back to my work and dismisses me, but not before standing up to shake my hand and giving me a toothy, business-like smile. For a long time he never misses a Saturday. Then there's rumors in the news about a possible mafia war breakin out. He misses a few Saturdays in a row and then comes to me with a business proposition. He asks me if I would be willing to build a tunnel from his mall (that's what they call the string of houses the mafia family lives in) to the restaurant and that he would fund it, of course as well as pay me and the restaurant generously for our troubles. I agree and we end the meeting with a handshake from him and a sly smile from me.

Ok, that's the end of the New York accent part. Unless you really want to carry on. Who am I to stop you! Now obviously I will need a way to get around the city, what with my secret partnership with the most powerful Family in the United States, so what better than a little adorable, Italian made Fiat 500?! I mean is that not the cutest thing ever. And what will I name it, you ask? Vincenzo. That's right.

Sorry for that last part. That was like Car and Driver porn. I got a little carried away... I should also probably mention that I'm currently reading the Godfather. You can probably tell what that last part was inspired by now, huh? I should also ALSO mention that I know this is far fetched and crazy. The last part of this post is just one of those crazy what if day dreams that was further embellished and that I felt like putting into words. I know it won't happen, but hey, it would be cool, right?

In other news, I'm going to the restaurant supply store tomorrow on my work errand to buy a PIZZA PADDLE!!! I'm so excited!! I've always wanted a pizza paddle of my very own!

Oh yeah, I have a Twitter, by the way! I suppose I'll link this blog and post my twitter account on here or something. Perslaps that way people will actually read both of them!

*See what I did there?? In the Godfather Michael Corleone always capitalises Family Business when referring to his mafia family. I started doing the same with my familie's swim school business.

**True story. During the summer when it was too hot to go outside and since I was never really a cartoon watching kind of kid I used to watch Great Hotels with Samantha Brown every morning. I also loved staying at hotels when I was little. I was a weird kid. I also had this line up with my mum every night. After dinner we watched Emeril Lagasse, Unwrapped, and Good Eats with Alton Brown on Food Network before bed.

***The Italian restaurant I went to yesterday with my mum gave me a caprese pizza when I asked for margharita. I mean come on! They didn't even have caprese on their menu which just means they don't know the difference. This is also the restaurant where I started formulating my plans for Ciao Bella.

Wow, that's the most fun I've every had writing a blog! Perslaps I'll do it again soon!