This has been the longest week ever. More on that on Monday’s brain dump.

South park spoofs Kanye West – wow, i can’t believe kanye’s response. I love south park
Stray dogs in Moscow – these dogs are smart!
20 most amazing coincidences – definite interesting read
A pasta and sauce guide – i didn’t even know so many kinds of pasta existed!
Wired magazine covers Setters of Catan – Germans, it turns out, are absolutely nuts about board games. More are sold per capita in Germany than anywhere else on earth. The country’s mainstream newspapers review board games alongside movies and book. I should move to Germany!
Are you infected with Conficker? – Never heard of it, but I’m not.
How to score hotel upgrades for free – I’ll have to try these tips next time

Lost…soooo good.

Oh noes. This woman is trapped in her car!!!

woman – “My car will not start. I’m locked inside my car. I can’t open my car. Nothing electrical works. And it’s getting very hot in here, and I’m not feeling well. I need some help”

dispatcher – “are you able to pull the lock up on the door and open the door”

woman – “I’m tryi–oh. Yes, I got the door open”

Here’s the latest blogs I’ve subscribed to:

30 bucks a week – a blog about a couple living in brooklyn eating for only $30/week! they share their receipts, dinner ideas, and recipes. of course they are vegetarian so that helps them cut down on costs but their meals still look pretty yummy! sigh, i can’t wait to have my own place again so I can cook!

Go frugal blog – during times like these everyone is looking for ways to save some money. this blog offers some great tips!

The art of the tote – i love the tote bag. if you do too, you’ll love this blog

Max wanger blog – a wedding photographer who is getting a lot of hype. i love looking at his pictures and inventive poses for the couples he shoots!

For the first time in my life, I’m using crutches! Not fun at all :(

So what happened? Well this is the embarrassing part because …I did nothing at all! I’m a pretty non-physical, lazy person. I was just at work having a usual day when I noticed my knee started feeling funny. This was while I was in my usual position, sitting in front of my computer! As the day wore on, my knee felt worse and worse. By the time I went to bed that night it was aching/hurting and then when I woke up the next morning I could barely walk and my knee was so FAT!!! The worst part was this weekend I had so many wedding errands to run. If you see me, it’s so sad….I’m like an old woman!

So on Saturday, boyrobot finally convinced me to go to the doctor since we thought it was weird that my knee was hurting FOR NO APPARENT REASON WHATSOEVER. But as I suspected, it turned out to be just a run of the mill knee sprain. I even had x-rays taken for good measure. At least my streak of no broken bones will continue. So the doctor gave me a knee brace, crutches, and advice to take ibuprofen, rest and ice my knee. Which leads me to my next great accomplishment….

I CAN FINALLY SWALLOW PILLS!!! In case you didn’t know this embarrassing little fact about myself…I couldn’t swallow pills. Well my boss at work gave me advice, she said don’t use a water bottle…use a cup full of water. Well I tried that, and it worked!! Well I still can’t swallow those huge horse pills, but this weekend I was able to swallow ibuprofen, advil, and alleve!!! I was so excited after each swallow. This is huuuuuuge for me.

So anyways, I’m happy about that but so sad about my leg. It’s so hard to get around and because I hardly have any upper arm strength using the crutches is so difficult. I get tired after a few steps ha ha. And it’s going to be so embarrassing using them at work tomorrow when everybody is going to ask “what happened????” and I don’t have a cool answer. In fact my answer will be the most boring of all….”nothing!”.

Not to mention how it’s going to take me forever to get to my office upstairs. There is an elevator but it’s in the back of the building and it’s big and industrial looking…no one really uses it except for the delivery people. I hope I can find it! I’m contemplating just staying home tomorrow. Yes, I’m that lazy :)

This is for all of the people who don’t know how to drive!! Forward it to your friends as some people are ignorant to the “rules” of driving. Be a considerate driver and maybe we can improve traffic everywhere!! Feel free to add to this list with a comment to this post or share it with your friends using the share button at the bottom.

1. On a freeway/highwway, the left most lane is known as the fast lane, the right most lane is the slow lane. That means if you are slow, move right! If you are in the left lane and the cars to your right are passing by you…that means you are driving too slow! I thought this is common knowlege, but at least a few days a week I see someone making this mistake.
2. If you are going to talk on the phone (illegally in LA at least) while driving, at least PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR DRIVING! I noticed people who talk on the phone while driving, will drive extremely slow. This also goes for people in conversations with the passengers in their car.
3. You can make a left turn on green lights (also known as unprotected left turns). If the light is green and you are turning left, you are allowed to pull out into the intersection and turn when traffic is free. At the very least, you will be able to turn left when the light changes to yellow/red. I’ve actually seen people wait at the light until they get a green arrow!
4. I also hate when people honk when they don’t really know what’s going on. For example, sometimes I am waiting for pedestrians to cross a crosswalk but the car behind me thinks I’m just sitting there twiddling my thumbs or something. No, I’m not going because I don’t want to hit someone! So before you honk, make sure you actually know the situation.

Carpool specific etiquette (I drive in the carpool lane everyday so I notice these things more than anything):
1. If the non-carpool traffic is driving faster, you are driving too slow. This also defeats the purpose of the carpool lane. Please exit.
2. If there is a long line of cars behind you and nobody in front of you, this is also a signal that you are driving too slow. Please speed up or exit as soon as possible!
3. This is a very odd thing I’ve started to notice, especially on the 405. Many times, the carpool lane has no traffic but the outside lanes do. Whenever the outside lanes start slowing down, I notice the carpool lane will also slow down. FOR NO REASON! I am talking about the first car that has nobody in front of them. If you are in a carpool lane, cars do not go in or out except for specified sections. I have actually seen cars in front of me slow down to match the traffic of the non-carpool lanes. It’s soooo annoying!!

These are just the ones that came to me off the top of my head, feel free to add!

Does anybody use a neti pot? how does it work? I just read very briefly about it.

I found out I suffer from allergies and have heard great things about neti pots. I’m thinking I may buy one.

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I can’t believe it’s April 1st! No joke for you today but here’s a link to Google’s April Fool’s Jokes from 2000 til now. Wonder what they’ll pull off today?

and 10 greatest office pranks.

When i saw this video I immediately checked Hakushaku’s favorite website snopes.com. Couldn’t find anything on it. So I guess it’s real? It would be so cool to see this thing in real life!

I just got done running the San Diego Mud Run!!!! I can’t believe it, but it was sooo much fun. Actually up to the start of the race, all I could think of was “why did I sign up for this????” or “what was I thinking!!!”. Now that I’m done….I’m SO glad I did it! In case you don’t know what it is, it’s just an obstacle course filled with lots of mud pits, walls, haystacks, hills, etc. There are also random points where you get sprayed/hosed with water. It was kind of invigorating getting so dirty and not caring. It was hard for me since I’m so not fit, but the race really was not hard at all and definitely doable. It was enough of a challenge for me that I felt so accomplished after. (don’t you love that feeling??) I recommend anyone who is thinking about doing a mud run…definitely do it. So much fun and such a unique experience! There are some things I wish I had known or thought of to do so here’s some tips on running a mud run.

1. Bring a towel. After the race, they usually have these outdoor showers that are just shooting out FREEZING water. It’s a good idea to have a towel to dry yourself off!
2. Wear clothes and shoes that you’re willing to throw away. I went in with a pair of shoes that I haven’t worn in like 7 yrs so after the race I just tossed them. I also tossed my tank top although I think you could probably easily wash it but I didn’t care about it cause it was old.
3. Speaking of shoes, don’t forget to bring sandals/flipflops! You’ll definitely want something like that to wear because the first thing you will want to do when you are done with the race is to take off your shoes which are caked and full of mud.
4. Bring duct tape and tape up your shoes. If not, you risk losing them in the mud pits!
5. Wear shorts and maybe a bathing suit under your clothes. It makes washing yourself off after so much easier.

I saw some people with disposable cameras that took pictures of themselves in the mud pits which I thought was a great idea. There are some really great picture moments when you do an event like this. For now, we’ll have to rely on the professional photographers that were there but we’ll have to wait until they put them up and also pay for them. I am definitely going to buy a picture though!! So worth it!

For the people living in socal who are interested in this, the most famous mud run is the Camp Pendleton one. This year is already sold out but we are thinking of maybe doing it next year. It’s supposed to be a lot more hardcore than the SD one. I think the SD one was a great first step for me so we’ll see!

12 Most ridiculous lawsuits – I was going to single out my favorite but they are all pretty funny
45 ways to reduce your grocery bill – the biggest one for me is pricing errors at the register….how many times have I walked out of a store to realize they charged me the wrong price on my food!!
An article on The Great Zucchini – a children’s entertainer that makes 100K working 2 days a week in the DC area
Ten dead sea tips – I so want to take boyrobot here and see if he can finally float! the boy has no body fat whatsoever
Amazing billboards – wow these are really cool!!