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December 27th, 2003 Howdy, Howdy. I know, I've been a slacker. First things first though....  Samson says "Meowry Christmas". Hehehehe, he loved it under the tree after the presents were gone! Pine needles suddently became lizards to him, and he'd flip them up with his paws. He nosed his way around the base of the tree, either sneaking water from the water holder or trying to find a suitable way up the tree. Such a cutie! I love my cat. We spent Christmas Eve geocaching up near Ormond Beach and Daytona Beach. Daytona was not what I envisioned. It is a very old town, not old as in historic, but old as in run down and needs some renovating. That part of Florida is so different than where we are at. It becomes more hilly, the trees change and overall it is very different topographically. We went to this one state park that had this 400 year old Oak tree. We have pictures and I might upload it to my yahoo briefcase soon. Just a beautiful hammock area that reminded me of Fern Gully to an extent! We knocked out about 19 caches, only because we got stuck on one cache for about 45 minutes. Coords kept taking us to this one wormy palm tree but we looked under saw palmetto leaves galore and still didn't find it. Christmas Day was spent mainly lazing about. We slept until about nine and then opened presents. I had made this sour cream coffee cake the night before so I munched on that while the turkey was cooking. We watched Finding Nemo since my folks had gotten for us for Christmas. Dory is so funny! :) Oohhheeeeeewhooooooohhhaaaaaaaahhhhhhooooooooo....I speak whale too! ;) Yesterday we used a few gift cert's from my parents, lunch at Carrabba's and tried to go to Dillards. I only came out with a new wallet and we are saving the rest until we see better sales. Unfortunately I had to work this morning. It turned into a six hour workday though, and I could have stayed for a full eight hours but I put off entering data until Monday. Ick. Was not very interested in staying longer by myself in the lab. On a Saturday. I've gotta work next Saturday too, but I should get New Year's off even though the plant is up and running that day. Tomorrow we are caching about 45 minutes north of here and trying to get 30 caches. Mainly grab 'n go's, no hiking or hard searching ones. Just trying to up our numbers for now. Oh, my friend Erika got engaged! YAY! YAY! YAY! She finally met the right guy! :) So happy for you!!!!! Just wish I could be around Vinnie more than the one time I've met him! Anyways, her tentative dress is this: Dress. Very beautiful! Darn, why can't we do weddings like every five years for ourselves? Seriously, it's so much fun! LOL, just a small one! ;) December 23rd, 10:51pm update... Just a couple of things... Nader not running on Green Party Ticket So, Nader's not running as a Green. Love ya Nader, voted for you in 2000, but seriously I'm thinking a Dean/McCain or Dean/Nader ticket would be GREAT! Dean/McCain would get a lot of swing voters and Dean/Nader would pull all those Green voters to the Democrat's side. Either one would be PERFECT! And in the tradition of CC (Carbon Copy) the cat...Texas A&M Clondes Deer. Seriously, the article is dumb....it's a KEY deer not a KEY WEST deer. Duh..... December 23rd, 2003 A quick, dumb quiz....  You're Mariane Dashwood from Sense & Sensibility! You are the romantic youngster, also found in Jane Austen's work as Catherine of Northanger Abbey and possibly Georgiana Darcy of Pride and Prejudice. You wander through life like Red Riding Hood in the forest, picking wildflowers and humming a happy song... and you can't see the wolf right in front of you! Ruled by heart and not by head, you are best advised to to learn a little caution, before you are forced into a better acquaintance with the ways of the world. Which Jane Austen Character Are You? brought to you by Quizilla "Rockin' around the Christmas tree"....it's a very Christmasey morning here in the lab! It's also very slow, which is why I'm updating this now. Wasn't a lot to read, just waiting on some gram stains to dry so I can put them in the stainer and then read them. "Deck the halls with boughs of holly"....Tomorrow Chris and I are going geocaching. Our goal is to do about 30. The Geocaching Bash went off well! We had about sixty people show up for the fun! Chris even went snorkeling in the pond and did Towelie. I'll have to post pictures when I get home. It was blistering cold in the morning, though if the wind would have stopped it would have been decent. I had a long sleeved cotton shirt on, a sweatshirt and a jacket on. BRRRR!!!! But, it was great! I hope Chris likes what I got him for Christmas. I think he will enjoy it! :) lol, I couldn't think of anything else to get him other than the usual suspects: undies and socks. I didn't even get things for our folks and grandparents. Couldn't think of anything and also didn't have any $$$. Money---why aren't we searching for a money tree???? December 19th, 2003 Remember me when the west wind moves, Upon the fields of barley, You'll forget the sun in his jealous sky, As we walk in fields of gold, So she took her love for to gaze awhile, Upon the fields of barley, In his arms she fell as her hair came down, Among the fields of gold Certain songs have an appeal to the senses. You might remember memories or a scent or something like that. There are probably 10 songs that always invoke a memory for me. Actually, more than that, but a handful always remind me of the beach. Lost dreams. Lost goals. Lost loves. Fields of Gold is just one of them. I remember seeing the music video back in the early 90's for it. Why don't they play songs like that anymore? Way out here, working on the docks, Everyone sees the long day through, Well what would I do without the nights and the phone, And the chance just to talk to you, What would I do now..., Just to talk to you, A thousand miles away, What I wouldn't give for only one night, A little relief in sight, Or someday when times weren't so tight I remember as a kid, the dreamy-eyed reader I was, putting on mix 102.9 in Ft. Worth on some evenings, usually fall or winter ones, and turning off my lights save one lamp. It always evoked this mystical sensation to me, of some trendy person in another life. I'd turn the radio on and of course the songs I love now were very popular around that time. Often times I'd stare outside the window at the airplanes that were taking off from DFW Airport 20 minutes away and wonder where they were going. I'd pretend that I had such friends and lives as those in the Baby Sitter's Club books. Why couldn't I be a smart Mary Ann-ish person, or the trendy Stacey? I'd write fervently in my wire-bound notebooks, my so-called journals or diaries. Dream of the crushes of the moment, particularly the one that took my up 6th-9th grade years. Did he like me? Did he like my hair cut? Oh, why, oh why....why can't I "go out" with him? Such is the memories of the songEvery Little Kiss. in line marking time- Waiting for the welfare dime 'Cause they can't buy a job The man in the silk suit hurries by As he catches the poor ladies' eyes Just for fun he says "get a job" The lyrics to this song don't equate to these memories at all. Just the fact that it was played a lot during summer vacations for some reason. Visiting Ft. Myers and Sanibel when I was turning 10, running around in the condo and seeing the elusive and very beautiful Florida landscape. A landscape that I was so desperate to study one day. A landscape I now live in and for some reason the beauty and dreams that it held for me 13 years ago have changed. Odd how that occurs isn't it? We drove to Florida that summer, so I saw a lot of the southern countryside. Being out on the water....that's The Way It Is Let's go down to the Sunset Grill We can watch the working girls go by Watch the "basket people" walk around and mumble And stare out at the auburn sky There's an old man there from the Old World To him, it's all the same Calls all his customers by name Another beach memory. Some of my earliest memories are of being at the beach when I was three or four, picking tarballs from between my toes in Rockport and Port Aransas, Texas. Radios played on vacationers towels, and I know my father brought one with him. It was this grey, very dated looking radio with paint splatters on it. It used to sit in their bathroom on my mother's side of the sink under the towel holder. Fuzzy reception that radio gave. But, I know Sunset Grill played from that radio at some point in which it gave me memories of some wonderful moments in my life. Nothing like sun on your face, playing in water and getting all sandy as a kid. "Catching" a fish, playing with hermit crabs in the flats, taking the ferry, getting pens and pencils that if you rubbed them smelled of fruit at giftshops. December 17th, 2003 Today was extremely long. I didn't even finish plating until 3pm and the menial tasks didn't get done. We've had some problems with a line, the 10oz line, and so they are having to put it on hold to make sure it won't spoil. Needless to say there were tons of tests to be done and with the new line they are adding I had even more crap to do. I have a few Bushy-boy comments. Last night I caught the last thirty minutes of his and Laura's interview with Diane Sawyer. I must say, I know why people like him. He's very personable in a down-home since. I can't help "liking" him myself when I do hear him in moments like that. I mean, he seems like a real person, and you can almost believe what he says. Even when the party conventions were on the summer of 2000 I enjoyed watching the Republican one more than the Democratic one. Bush has much more of an essence than Gore did. But then, you go and think of all the dumb environmental things he's done and you just say "No, I can't vote for him, what are you thinking Misti????". Seriously, it would just be easier to check "bush" next year and not face ridicule when we get our asses beaten. But, I must vote my morales and choose the Democrats....Laura Bush is so sweet sounding. I like her, why'd she go and marry that George for???? Oh, one more "bush" thing....Chris said someone had a poll, AOL I think, about which George they liked the best. 1 was George Bush, 2 was George Washington and 3 was George Strait. Seriously, George Strait is MUCH better than the other two George's, come on Pure Country will just show you that. I cross my heart, and promise to...give all I've got to make all your dreams come true... I finally have a few presents under the tree from Chris! :) YAY! LOL, I ended up going to get one more thing for Chris tonight and used the Victoria's Secret gc from my parents. Two bras and five undies later I came out! :) Seriously, I don't really need any lingerie. I was going to buy some makeup or perfume but I don't need that either. Actually, I found this really beautiful gown that was $150. It was this weird vintage thing that I could have probably made myself. Full length, it had several types of cloth and lace, with this ribbon on the front. Very vintage and very sexy. Too bad my parents gc wasn't for $100 cause I would have paid the other $50 for it. ;) Oh well, chris probably wouldn't have liked it anyways. It's cold. GO AWAY COLD! :) I'm gonna live where the green grass grows, watch my corn pop up in rows.... December 16th, 2003 *edited to add*..... Rolling Stone article on the environment and Bush..... Read it. So, here it is 3:14pm. The lab is quiet and I really have nothing to do. I am going to try to leave here at 3:30. Early, yes, I know, but I'm bored and I hate riding the time clock. Last night I sat down and started crocheting a blanket for me and Chris. I wasn't in the mood to drag my scrapbooking stuff out so I started it. I'm not following any set pattern, just really trying to create my own. We'll see how it turns out! I brought it to work today and did some during lunch while watching a Best of Friends Season I tape I got for $3.88 at Wal-mart. The cast has changed a lot since then. Both "Monica" and "Rachel" have gotten rail thin. Phoeb's has stayed the same I think. Joey and Chandler have filled out quite a bit. Ross stayed the same too. I can't believe Christmas is next week. It really doesn't feel like it. Namely because I'm not going home for Christmas, and that we both don't have any plans. Chris also hasn't gotten me anything yet for Christmas, though we are broke so, maybe after I get paid next week. Hopefully he'll like the stuff I got him. I was going to get him one or two more items but I think I'll just skip it. No money. I can't wait for him to get a job, even a part-time one would be wonderful. I really hope (are you reading this Chris???) that he will get one even if it's three days a week and something he despises. I don't really want to be the one working and he isn't doing anything. I worked a crappy job for two months I hated and put up with it because I had to. Ick. Well, we are going to dinner tonight, probably seafood (which I can't eat because of my vow of not eating any) with his Dad. I think we are going to this really cool restaurant that's on the beach and you can sit upstairs and just stare off into the water. The last time we were there it was really foggy and the surf was up from a hurricane offshore so there were tons of surfers. We watched them move down the beach due to the longshore current and then a pod of dolphins came up about 50-100 yards off the beach and just had fun playing in the waves. So, maybe tonight it will be like that. It's always fun just to be staring into the ocean anyways. December 15th, 2003 So, I may be voting Green next year after all. With this boost in morale for the US, catching Saddam, Bush has a really good chance in winning next year. That's not to say I'm not glad they caught Saddam Hussein, I'm just dissapointed that everyone is going to probably base their votes on that and not necessarily Bush's real performance as president. I'm out looking for jobs again. Not a lot of fun, let me tell you. I hate filling out applications. I wish everyone just took a resume. I hope Chris starts hunting soon. Just a few fun tidbits of marine biology humor.... So, you want to become a marine biologist: The Revenge So, you want to become a marine biologist Just some stuff I found while scouring the internet for jobs. December 12th, 2003 Chris graduates with his M.S. in Environmental Science tomorrow! His mom and step dad are in down and his dad will be in today. Should be a fairly fun weekend. His mom and step-dad gave me some scrapbooking things for Christmas which I LOVED! It was these neat circle cutter from Creative Memories as well as some stickers and other embelishments....oh, plus this really yummy smelling Cinnamon candle from Tyler Candles (Tyler, Tx). Will have to burn it!!! Oddly enough I have decided I can handle "black" coffee. Normally I douse it with some sugar/equal and creamer. But, the other day I decided to take a sip of some hazelnut that I had without anything in it and I liked it! Usually I can't stand it because it's bitter. Today I had some regular old Folgers w/o sugar and it was too bitter so I put a half pack of equal in it and it tasted great! So, that helps me and knocks down the calories from the creamer for me! Coffee has like 0-5 calories depending on the flavor per cup, so that helps me out!! Woo-hoo!. I think my whole work out four days a week plan is going to have to start next week. This darn cold weather plus visitors has kinda screwed plans up. Plus, it's get's light too late for me to run in the morning and when I get home it get's dark by 5:50 now. So, if I do work out I have to dash in the apartment, change and flee. I'm not really into doing that as I like to un-wind for a few minutes. The other night I "jumped" up and down for a few minutes while listening to the radio. I figured that kinda worked the same way jumping rope would! I guess I should learn to jump rope so I can just go down to the parking lot and do it. It's just not really fun to do that....plus I might look dumb. I don't think I have anything politically charged today. Other than YAY to Gore supporting Dean, but BOO to Gore not telling Lieberman first. I'm contemplating something but I'm not sure if it is going to work out. The website I built for the HTML Guru's final exam, well I want to take it down. I am not really interested in what I was trying to do, just was trying to think of something easy to build in time for it to be turned in. However, I think I may instead start and ocean/environment related e-zine. It would be non-profit to start and after I see where it goes it may change. Basicially I'd have myself and other contributors contribute poetry, fiction/non-fiction related, and drawings as well as "newsy" articles related to the ocean or environment. It would be like a once a month thing perhaps??? I'm not sure yet. I think I want to learn Photoshop first so I can have some neat graphics for the site. Everything would have to be approved by me, as I would have to check sources for articles that are related to news or scientific type things. I don't want any plagirism or things like that. So, it's a thought....if anyone wants to give me advice, please email me or leave a message in the comment box. I love "Layla".....it's on the radio now....the slow version. December 10th, 2003 I know it's been a few days. Sorry. Been kinda busy and haven't felt like updating. Not a lot has gone on really. Tonight is a big pick up/clean up blitz because Chris' folks are coming into town tomorrow and Friday for his graduation. He sprained his ankle yesterday while finishing a geocache so I'm hoping he is feeling up to it tonight. I do not want to tackle the place by myself, considering the majority of the mess is his. And I've done his dishes the past few nights. Stinky sinks don't sit well with me. I was watching Fox News while at Subway for lunch and they were discussing some remarks by John Kerry against Howard Dean. I really find it so funny that the Democrats are ganging up on each other. I understand they all want to be the Democratic nominee, but seriously. They all (well maybe not Lieberman) can't stand Bush, so why aren't they uniting a bit more???? The debates are dumb because they are all ganging up against Dean. They know Dean is going to win. I was reading an editorial in the newspaper about how the writer was heartbroken when I think Goldwater didn't win. He said he thinks the Dean supporters are going to be heartbroken over this too. I think it'll be a nitty, gritty, nasty race, but I think if Dean can get out there and show the borderline conservatives/democrats the things Bush has done to mislead us on many issues, not just the war. Dean needs to show the holes in the tax breaks, the spending, the environment, the policies that aren't exactly good that has been passed by the administration as good. In other news, I hula-hooped for 30 minutes last night. The abs are sore but not that bad, like I had thought. I ditched the running goals for the bed last night. It was too comfy looking. hmmmm....almost time to go home. December 7th, 2003 **7:20pm...edited to add that today I graduated from Budding HTML Guru's school! :) I added a button under the links to other bloggers, so you can visit and look into it if you are interested in learning HTML. :)** I have failed. I have fallen off of my own goal of not drinking any more Coke's. I craved them, just craved them and last night I succumbed to my cravings and had a Sonic Vanilla Coke. There is nothing better than a Sonic Vanilla Coke. Not even Coke's brand of Vanilla Coke tastes the same. I savored it. Must try to do better next time!!! I have determined, unscientifically mind you, that Cokes are addictive. I think it's the high fructose corn syrup....but ya know, that's just my personal theory. Yesterday we did several caches. We went to one that turned out to be IN a bamboo shoot. These bamboo's were HUGE, tall as trees. The "Yorkey Lovers" had carved out the cache and hid it in the bamboo. Very clever! We then went up to this huge park that has like 10 caches in it and did some that we hadn't done yet. All were fairly easy. Until the last one. It was the most lame one ever. First of all, it was in the southwest corner of the park. There used to be a lot of trails over here but not a lot of people go on them now. So most are overgrown and if you think it's a trail, it'll dead-end into something overgrown. Well, we take this trail that ends up putting us on the road. So we walk along the road for awhile until we see another trail. The entire time we are doing this 200ft radius around the cache. We take this trail that we think is a trail but isn't. We run into saw palmetto's. So, we decide to trek through them. It's never ending. We find "clearing's" but they are surrounded by more palmetto's. We ended up going through some that were like seven feet tall and thicker than, well, I don't know, but they were thick. I felt like the Crocodile Hunter of Jeff Corwin traipsing through a jungle. We finally stumble onto the cache. Took us a bit to find it and then it was time to leave. We though we'd leave on the trail. Ok, there was no definitive trail. It was very frustrating. The person's log on the cache said that there wouldn't be any bushwhacking needed. HA! Good thing we had jeans on or the "saws" on the palmettos would have torn our bodies up. Yeah....so that was our day yesterday! December 5th, 2003 I have a political rant for the moment. It's regarding the so-called Healthy Forests Initative and just passive folks who just blindly accept Bush saying it's "ok" that we do this. Mainly this stems from this topic in which really a uninformed person just doesn't have any defense for herself. Really dumb if you ask me. If you can't come up with anything other than "I trust him" well, you are more uninformed than you really think. Heck, myself and others have presented her with plenty of information that she can research herself and make a better educated decision than "I trust Bush". That's total b.s. I have little tolerance for people such as that. More later. Hola, Hola. Almost Friday! YAY! This weekend isn't that eventful. I think we are going to get a Christmas tree sometime and I need to do some shopping for my Secret Santa on the Forum....and do some Chris shopping. Not really a lot going on. Cooking dinner. It's chicken with Russian dressing and the Lipton onion soup mix and some corn. I swear I have been to wal-mart every day this week. I have to go back tonight to get my prescription (HOPEFULLY!), milk, some drinks for tomorrow for a birthday party at work, and some paper towels. UGH, why can't I think of these things at one moment. I HATE going to Wal-mart every day. I swear. I had my "interview" at work today. Ok, I've been there for a year and a half. Now, it's not that I don't like my job, it's just not how I invisioned myself. I am thinking of staying until the end of summer and then teaching, perhaps. I really don't know. I just can't seem to find ANYTHING and no one wants me. Maybe the sea turtle people will hire me soon. Anyways.... December 2nd, 2003 Starting afresh..... I would have updated sooner but things have gotten slightly hectic. Chris was working on two papers that were due today and the computer crashed yesterday afternoon and he hadn't backed anything up. So....he was working on that all night and today. And tomorrow is his comprehensive exam so he will be studying tonight and tomorrow morning. The place is a disaster, fish tank stuff skewed about because he had to drop things at the hat when things messed up...and the computer desk...HAH! Disasterous! Not really a lot going on. I watched the concert for AIDS yesterday on MTV, the 46664 concert. I was a bit freaked on the whole middle sixes thing and so I finally found out that that was Nelson Mandela's prison number while he was in prison. Anyways, Bono did great and he's so hot. ;) *swoon* for all the forum girls out there. ;) Anastacia is annoying. She sang We Will Rock You pretty well, however her voice just annoys the crap out of me. It's almost as bad as Macy Gray's. Can't people alter their singing voices??? I finally got my own work email today. For the past year and a half I'd been logging on under a co-workers name, but since she left I had to try to catch someone if they would log me on or while their computer was up. FINALLY, I was able to get my own. Let me tell you, when the administrator is on doing stuff remotely, it's FREAKY! The mouse moves and does things on it's on (the cursor, not the mouse itself). The administrator is in Bradenton and we are on the other side of the coast. So, I'm on the phone with him and then he's all doing weird stuff on the computer. But, so very glad that I can log in whenever I want! :D :D :D :D DOUBLE :D :D :D :D Well, it's off to Wal-mart hell. Prescription pick up and chicken and beef and t.p. Things we need. Oh, I'll give you my nice insurance hell story. Two weeks ago I tried to refill my birth control pills. They pharmacy said that the insurance wouldn't pay for it or something. So I called them, they said it should be fixed. So, I go the next week. Mind you I had to refill it because wal-mart puts things back after a week and I went out of town and they wouldn't hold it an extra two days for me. (I understand, policy etc) But, anyways, so I refill it last Friday and they say the insurance won't pay because the Dr has to call and verify I'm on it. I've been on it almost six years now, and the prescription is not new, I've had it since August. HELLO! DUH! It's not like it's painkillers or something which you should go off of after a certain time, it's birthcontrol. It's a year prescription. So, I call the Dr's office and the nurse agreed with me saying the insurance company was nuts. She'd never heard of such a thing. So she said she'd call me back if there was a problem. She didn't call back, so I'm going hopes of coming out with pills. Insurance companies the dumbest companies on the planet, behind oil companies. :) November 28th, 2003 Luckily I wasn't rolling over on the couch having gourged myself with food like my fellow Americans. Yesterday's Thanksgiving meals included: Arby's Beef 'n Cheddar combo for lunch, and then homemade taco's for dinner. We were out geocaching the entire day and had quite a bit of fun. Our first stop was a cache almost to Okeechobee. It was a little nature preserve, really in the middle of citrus groves. We saw a cute little turtle, heard a bunch of things in the bushes and finally at the end saw a huge wasp nest under the information kiosk. Then we had our Arby's and then headed to the Oxbow cache which happened to be about five miles from my work. Very nice multi-cache. Six steps that took us along the St. Lucie River and through what the owner of the cache called "Real Florida". Basically scrub/shrub land with wetland and flatwood forests. Very nice though! The hike near the river was full of hills, up and down, up and down, watch your step or fall in the river! ;) Then we did two short cache's on the way back home. Today Chris braved the crowds at Best Buy at 6am. He was after a battery backup for the fishtank that would have been $5 after rebate. He came back at 8am and I thought he'd gone a few other places. Turns out he'd just been in line for an hour and a half at Best Buy. Really insane! I did a few more errands, getting some scrapbooking stuff and not too much else. Washed the truck. Tomorrow I'm giving blood at Hooters....yes, Hooters the restaurant. I saw a sign today that said they were doing it from 12-5 and it's been six months since I've given blood. It'll be my 5th time. You also get 10% off your meal, so I think we are going to go to Hooters for lunch. Kinda funny...I've never even been there. But, I guess some buffalo wings would be good. Oh, and the Damn Aggies lost. DUMB DUMB DUMB! 45-15 against t.u. HOW DUMB. This is three years in a freakin' row. Actually, it may be four years! FOUR YEARS! I'm almost fed up....usually they win at home. Ugh, and the stupid play in the 3rd quarter by the idiot (i'm sorry, fellow Aggie) who fumbled the ball and let the t'sips have it. That was the turning point. Ugh. Come on. We should have won. Ok.....until next year...then it's Orange Crushing time. :) November 26th, 2003 A few photos from this weekend... Drew and Chris, Saturday squirting whip cream everywhere. Roses from my grandmothers garden. They actually smelled just like the rose oil you can buy! Geocaching with Chris and his dad north of Dallas. Geocaching with Chris, his dad and his brother Neil My mom and Chris after we did a geocache with her that started from Oswald's grave Happy Turkey Day to everyone! :) November 25th, 2003 8pm: Note, added update to exercise section. Whew. The "vacation" is over. Home now. I guess I'll give you a breakdown of what occured. After my dentist appointment we went to visit my friend at her classroom for lunch. Chris and I did a few geocaches and we also went to take pictures at a cemetary of my grandfather and great-grandparents. Discovered Lee Harvey Oswald was like 20 yards south of them. Very interesting. I mean, this isn't any big time cemetary or anything, just one in East Ft. Worth. Anyways, Friday evening we had relatives over for "thanksgiving" dinner. Got to see my grandparents and aunt and uncles. A fun time was had by all. Even took my uncle, brother and brother's "friend" (ie: ex-girlfriend) geocaching in the dark. That was fun, until we came upon a copperhead. We also saw a toad and some rabbits. Came home and watched Finding Nemo. Saturday I was supposed to meet Artchick. Well, I think our communications got crossed because I'm 99.9% sure I told her to meet me at a Barnes and Noble. Even gave her the address to it. We waited until 11:30. Found out later she had gone to a stand-alone Starbucks about a mile away. I haven't had a chance to straighten things out yet. After that we met my friend Erika's boyfriend/fiance. He was nice! :) Wedding bells are for June hopefully! Then had to run to Target with my mom and visited my grandmother for a bit before we finally had to leave to go over to Dallas to "thanksgiving" with them. Didn't get to eat until 7 and I had a terrible headache from waiting so long. That was fun, got to meeting Neil's girlfriend finally. She's been on my AIM buddylist for forever and I've never had a chance to meet her until then. Sunday was spent doing a few errands in the morning and then I drove back to Ft. Worth for a baby shower for a friend. I hadn't told my friend I was coming to town so she was ecstatic. It was so weird seeing someone I know pregnant. Weird. I mean, seriously, we should both be 12 and playing softball still. Before the shower I went to visit an aquaintance who'd had a baby three weeks ago. SO CUTE! Very weird seeing her with a baby, cause I've known her since first grade. Back to Dallas that evening. Didn't really do much. Watched Chicago and then went to bed. Monday we went geocaching with Chris' dad. That was really fun. We knocked out six that day. Texas geocaching is much different than Florida. For one there are hills. And the bushwhacking is so much different. Here there are saw palmetto's everywhere. So, you get cut up all the time. THere, it was mainly brambles and some branches, but nothing too serious. Very different and nice. We had our fill of Mexican for lunch and then again for dinner. And we flew out at 8:45 CST and landed her around midnight EST. Didn't even get in until 2am and was in bed at 2:15 this morning. Exhausted. Little Sam was happy to see us. :D He meowed a lot and wanted to be held and petted. I'm sure he will enjoy being outside today. Oh, THANK GOD FOR WARM FLORIDA! When I left Texas it was in the low 40's. We landed and it was in the 70's. YAY! Warmth......sweet warmth! November 21st, 2003 Well, we are in Texas now. We left Orlando yesterday around 6:15 and took off. I was highly dissapointed when the captain came on the intercom and stated that if you were on the right side of the plane you could see the northern lights. Of course we were on the left side and everyone on the right side had their windows down. Pooh on them. Got in arond 8 to DFW and came home to chill with the folks. The dogs are crazy as ever, poor Sandy is getting more blind, however she stil chases the ball around like she always has. Izzabelle is a grunty old thing. Bounces around like she's dancing, she's an attention seeker. She's a Boston Terrier and Sandy is a cockapoo/peekapoo. The two cats, Red and Yoda are sooooo skinny. I'm used to my "fat" Samson. Yoda you have to search around for and we finally found her this morning. She stayed for awhile but she got all scared by the dogs bounding around. I have a dentist appointment here in a bit and then we are meeting a friend of mine at her school to eat lunch. It's Thanksgiving dinner here tonight and tomorrow night we will be in Dallas. It doesn't feel as if we've had enough time here in Ft. Worth yet. I supposed to be meeting "artchick" from the Avonlea/Anne forum tomorrow at 11. :) That should be fun! Well, I'll update later. November 19th, 2003 It's raining. Supposed to cool off too soon. I guess tomorrow I will get my dose of winter for a few days. I wish it would stay in the 70's for months. Apparently there is to be an Avonlea Convention. Avcon as it is being called, is supposed to be the summer of '04 in Toronto. This would really be awesome. Meet people I "know" on the internet and just be all googlie about Road to Avonlea and all things Anne. *sigh*. I wish I had money to go. Someone is welcome to buy me a plane ticket to Toronto for my birthday next year! :) I'd put a post up about two years ago for a meeting in PEI for 2005 for all the forum folks to meet up. I doubt I will be able to do that but it would be great if it could happen. Anyways, I got two pages of scrapping done last night. It was so nice to sit down and scrap a little bit! I have to scan some photos from my folks while I'm home so that I can use them too. I finished my wedding album. I went back and re-did a few things because I'd used some construction paper that wasn't acid free and then also I wanted to add some journaling to it so that it looked better than my handwriting. I am going to start a geocaching one for all the geocaches we've done and also need to get started on the next scrapbook for the year. My last one just filled up when i put in the picture of an aquaintance's baby. Tonight I'm supposed to go back to the Mary Kay lady because she is going to show us some video on how we can do Mary kay and we can get signed up for $100 of free stuff in a g.c.. We aren't interested, my friend Kerri and I, but we are just going anyways. The lady said it was ok, she just had to share with people this month or something for some goals. Otherwise my goals tonight are to do some laundry, dishes, and get a chunk of the sea turtle webpage i'm doing for the HTML guru's done. I'd like to scrap some too. Don't know if that will occur or not yet. *cross fingers* Hmm, well nothing else of importance at the moment. November 18th, 2003 Hope you enjoy the new look. :) I will write more tomorrow. I have some chores to do and I want to get a few hours of scrapbooking in tonight! Oh, I will add links to people's weblog/pages tomorrow. It's a pain because all the links are over in the other webpage I have and that uses Page Builder and well, it's not easy to just copy and paste. So....I have to go and do each one myself. Ooh, actually I might be able to copy and paste from the Avonlea Green Pages on the Forum. Eh, we'll see. November 17th, 2003 Well, I had a nice weekend! :) YAY! I had to work for a few hours Saturday morning at the lab, but I had the rest off! So nice! I did my Mary Kay thing and only got a few things because Chris' mom called and reminded me that I could get things at cost through her from someone she knows. Anyways, I got an oil mattifer thing and I ordered some mascara. I really wanted the hand stuff that scrubs and softens, and the entire face cleansing set. I contemplated the foundation, but I don't really like to wear it unless it's a special even anyways so I'm afraid it would sit around for months on end and I wouldn't get any use of it. Anyways, the oil mattifer worked alright today. I didn't feel all greasy from not being able to use astringent in the middle of the day. I love astringent. I use it at least three times a day if I can. I feel so refreshed afterwards and well, not so oily. Anyways, after Mary Kay I went to the mall because they just did renovations and I wanted to see it. Plus, I wanted to do some light shopping. Light shopping as in four pairs of undies that were on sale for half off at 5-7-9 and some Victorias Secret perfume and lotion that was half off to go with the Secret 33 that I already have. I got Secret 66 perfume and Secret 33 lotion to go with what I had. Love it! :) We went to see Love Actually on Saturday and I SWOONED! Like I think all the hot, hunky Brits were in it. Liam Neeson, Colin Firth, Alan Rickman and Hugh Grant. AH! Love....I think I could kiss the screen! ;) Ok, Hugh Grant can be my Prime Minister any day and Colin Firth can speak in Portugese to me any day! :) I think I will jump out of my skin watching Colin in BJD: The Edge of Reason next Fall. Anyways, so, that was hunky night! Sunday was spent cleaning and just doing some chores around the apartment that had been slacked on for the two weeks of work hell. Caught up on laundry, cleaned the bathrooms and finished the blanket. Well, tonight it will be complete, I just have the edging to do. I will post a picture of it tomorrow. It looks pretty good if I say so myself! :D Work was super busy today. Double the plates to be read plus like triple the plating to be done. I was busy all day, plus doing an Excel report for some tests they were running on the lines. It's nice to be busy. Tomorrow I will be pandering for jobs to do. Tuesday are always a bore. November 14, 2003 It's our 1 and 5/12'ths anniversary today! :) lol WOOHOOO! :D No nature center job. Pooey. oh well. :( Maybe I'm supposed to get something else. Today was the last day for Michael's. YAY! You may have notcied I have a "title" page now....:D Also, this page will change within the next few days too, i'm going to add frames and do a little rearranging. :D November 11, 2003 Bush makes me angrier. Read on...the man wants to loosen regulations on the Endangered Species Act....what's next, green turtle soup will be legal again in the Keys? Get that man out of office next year people. He's a danger to the environment and society. I had a long post written out for yesterday but geocities decided to log me out. Quite depressing. I had a rant on dumb customers who ask you for your cart even though you are obviously using it and also on customers who don't pay attention at all to things going on around them. But, alas, I let that rant out on the forum instead so now I have nothing to really write about. I found quite a bit of jobs not too long ago, today. I am going to sit down and apply for most of them when I get home from work. I am getting antsy about calling the nature center, I think I will wait until tomorrow, mainly because my phone's battery is dead right now. I had my interview with the consulting company yesterday and it went alright. I have no idea what will come out of all of these positions. I went running Sunday. It was so nice to run again. I didn't have the chance to run last night but am going when I get off work today. I've been out of commission for about two weeks or so due to my lack of interest in running combined with a hurt knee from falling while rollerblading. So, I will be starting to run again. Hoping to reach five days this week. I'm so dissapointed. I thought I would have Saturday off from everything. But, I have to go in to the lab for a few hours in the morning. I have a Mary Kay appt at 1030 that I hope I can still make. I have to pick up a friend from work to go with me too. So, I guess Sunday will be my day off. Then three days next week of work and home for the 20th-24th, work two days and then it's Thanksgiving break. Then after that it'll be December. December. Can you believe it? Maybe someone will give me a job soon. Oh, I found a turtle job! ;) Maybe I can get it. November 8th, 2003 New layout. Dedicated to my cutie pie Samson! He was a bit fussy during the photo shoot... ;) Those darn modeling cats! November 6, 2003 Today you get a taste of my novel. And the only taste until I actually finish it! SO....here you go. Comments on it, including critques are welcome in the comment box. FYI: YOU MAY NOT Steal this....This is my work and all thiefs will be prosecuted! Hey, I have to be harsh. The deer across the street had been chewing that grass for an hour. I’d been perched on the rocking chair that was turned towards the county road and for an hour instead of reading the novel I’d so precisely picked out, I’d watched this deer instead. A car hadn’t passed by for three hours so there was nothing else to startle it. Just the deer and I. It was a buck, this deer. He’d come out of the small forest that was across the street, the only piece of land for two miles that hadn’t been somehow plowed by the farmers who owned the land. In fact, I owned that forest, technically. So meticulously he’d bent down and picked the grasses he preferred, then looking up a bit while he chewed and continued for an hour. I thought he would have gotten full by now, but apparently not. A few butterflies had danced by his tail and he’d paid little attention to those that had silently landed on him for a rest. The sun was shining fairly bright, however there were some clouds in the distance. It was not very unusual for an early summer evening in Texas. Only a few bluebonnets were left, hanging around on the side of the deserted road. This buck of mine was avoiding those. Slowly fading into the summer, the bluebonnets were my favorite flower. A memory of mine from my youth and of the time I’d spent wandering fields with my family and friends. I’d dazed into the left over bluebonnets while watching my buck and fell in and out of reality for several minutes. Flashbacks of the past came forward in a rush that I almost came to tears. The flashbacks brought visions of Jon and I, wandering the fields behind my house. We lived in the Texas Hill Country where rolling hills were part of the landscape. We ran around for hours upon hours during the summer, picking flowers, concocting stories about escapades that we would never achieve in reality. He was going to be King of a foreign land and I was going to be a country singer traveling the world. He wasn’t royalty and I couldn’t carry a tune. So we dreamed away anyway, making goals for the future. Jon moved with his family to my little Texas town when I was two. He was three and our mothers met while getting their hair done down at Beatrice’s Beauty Parlor in the main square of Lily, Texas. I was toddling at my mother’s feet, attempting to eat the blocks she had brought to entertain me when this three-year-old and his mother Annette walked into Beatrice’s. Annette was young, only 26, with long blonde hair that swayed in the wind. Her husband was ten years older and he’d come into some money when a family member died and he’d decided that he wanted to build a ranch and live in the country. So, Annette and Martin decided to come out to Lily where they saw a ranch was for sale. A run-down ranch it was, but over the years they had built it up to million-dollar fortune, producing cattle that went to sale at big beef companies. Jon had saw me and when he walked in that door, probably more enticed by the building blocks I was gnawing on than me, myself, but he toddled over and sat down. My mother, Julie, being a social woman invited Annette to sit down in the chair next to her while Annette got her hair cut. Two lifelong friendships were born that day. One between a shy mother new to town and a small town gossip, and another between a teething two-year-old girl and an outgoing three-year-old boy. I was lost in my daydreams, thinking about the past and how things had changed, the people I’d lost and the dreams that were put on hold. It’s amazing really, how sitting on your porch staring at a buck can throw you into the past in an instant. Everything was truly quiet on this Texas summer evening. Perfectly still. And then the phone rang." I'm currently at 2471 words. I have a looong ways to go. Going to attempt 3500 tonight...maybe. I'm tired. November 4, 2003 Just going for simple here for a few days. Was planning a very neat Samson layout....my cat...but that is not happening until at least this weekend. Too much other things in priority than that. Things happening in the job arena lately. Went to lab job yesterday and found out co-worker is leaving to becoming a manager at another plant. That leaves two options there for me...a: temp all nov and dec with them or b: start working for them. Then I also got October 31, 2003 Happy Halloween! :D Here is an entry in a journal that I really thought meshed my thoughts completly. It's by someone I read through Shelly's journal, a girl named Melissa. Anyways, click on her link and read her recent entry. It's about the felling of trees and the thoughts and feelings she felt watching the destruction. It's much how I feel every time I drive by the new subdevelopment that is going up down the road. I find it really interesting that here are these people buying these homes on property that was once a lush Floridian forest. I also find it interesting that as I was driving down Delray Beach yesterday waiting for my job interview that most of the beautiful houses, these rich houses, had a lot of vegetation. Not only to shelter the house but also for nice landscaping. Now, doesn't it seem to you that a lot of folks would want to keep the vegetation? Doesn't it make sense to keep those trees in instead of having to go out and buy some trees and wait years before they are even the size you will want them to be? Argh. I don't feel like retyping the things I just wrote. DUMB DUMB DUMB GEOCITIES. What the Crap???? October 30, 2003 I. WANT. THIS. JOB. :D I want this job. I want this job. I want this job!!! I went for my interview. I was there two hours early so I drove around town and looked around. I went into an Albertsons and found they have this entire section devouted to kosher stuff. Like a separate kosher deli and dairy department. I've never seen one of those before!!! Weird. Must be the Jewish old folks living down there! ;) Anyways, the interview went well. I would love this job. I was worried that it wouldn't pay enough but it will be a significant raise. I mean, I can't go buy myself a Lexus or anything, but I could pay some bills. They have a shark tank/pool and another fish tank and a bunch of turtles. And they have this huge shell collection. It'd be really neat. I hope I get it. Sending out my thank you letter tomorrow morning! Should get there Monday. October 29, 2003 Murder of innocent dolphins.... If you are squeamish I suggest skipping the link and trusting my description. A sea of blood. Deep red. With a single boat filled with dolphins murdered by Japanese fisherman. DISGUSTING. VILE. REPULSIVE. DEGRADING. IMMORAL. Absolutley unecessary. October 27, 2003 My mom sent me the following yesterday, a forward, and I was immediately repulsed. I wrote her back explaining my qualms about it and she replied back that she hadn't thought of the reasons why it wasn't a very good poem. I told her I would elaborate more here. It's below.... Illegal Immigrants Poem I cross ocean, poor and broke, Take bus, see employment folk. Nice man treat me good in there, Say I need to see welfare. Welfare say, "You come no more, We send cash right to your door." Welfare checks, they make you wealthy, Medicaid it keep you healthy! By and by, I got plenty money, Thanks to you, American dummy. Write to friends in motherland, Tell them 'come fast as you can.' They come in turbans and Ford trucks, I buy big house with welfare bucks They come here, we live together, More welfare checks, it gets better! Fourteen families, they moving in, But neighbor's patience wearing thin. Finally, white guy moves away, Now I buy his house, and then I say, "Find more aliens for house to rent." And in the yard I put a tent. Send for family they just trash, But they, too, draw the welfare cash! Everything is very good, and soon we own the neighborhood. We have hobby -- it's called breeding, Welfare pay for baby feeding. Kids need dentist? Wife need pills? We get free! We got no bills! American crazy! He pay all year, To keep welfare running here. We think America darn good place! Too darn good for the white man race. If they no like us, They can scram, Got lots of room in Pakistan. SEND THIS TO EVERY AMERICAN TAXPAYER YOU KNOW ************************* ; First off, like I said, I was repulsed. I just couldn't believe what I was seeing. I thought, maybe it's just good, old liberal me that is insane. But, I posted this on the Avonlea Forum too and got some interesting remarks from a variety of people. Amazingly enough it was a few of the white folks who thought the poem vulgur but at the same time understood part of what the "author" was saying about illegal immigrants. The entire poem is despicable. Full of bias, it's almost as if we've reverted to the days of Jim Crow laws and other such nonsense. Come on, this poem could be substitued for just about any minority that has walked around this country these past 300 years. Women, indentured servents, blacks, Chinese, Irish, Italians, Native Americans...you name it, almost everyone has suffered under some form of prejudice. With the exception of rich, white men.....of course. Notice I said rich. If you have money you can do whatever. Plenty of poor, uneducated men have been targets of prejudice. But, I digress... As for illegal immigration, well, it is wrong in some sense. Some people abuse it, but what isn't abused in these days? I think it's also not exactly right to pinpoint a certain group, or the illegals because obviously our government isn't doing something right to try to stop it. In the paragraph in which the immigration office refers the illegal to the welfare office, well, you'd think that maybe that immigration office might do a bit more checking up on the person they are sending. Who's fault is that? The illegal who is trying to get food for his family or send money home to his poverty ridden family in Cuba? Or the much more than minimum wage paid worker of the government who didn't check up well enough on the person applying for welfare? Futhermore, this "poem", seems to jump to conclusions that those on welfare or illegal immigrants are breeding machines. Granted, yes, many immigrants comes from religious groups in which having a large family is a custom. What, are we going to get onto the Catholics for doing the same thing???? Oh, wait, the Catholics are already targets of prejudice..... Also, let's look at the amount of Americans who are on welfare and suck dry the tax payers dollars, shall we? I'm fairly sure that overwhelmingly the amount of citizens in this country outweigh the amount of illegals on welfare. Now, some need that welfare. Some are working to get off it, but some aren't. Where's the poem about that, now??? Where's the poem about the crack dealing mother of five children with five different fathers? Basically, I'm disgusted. I still don't understand the amount of prejudice out there. So, we got the crap beat out of us by an extremist group two years ago. That's right an extremist group. Just like there are extremist groups here in America, ie: Oklahoma City bombers, Jerry Falwell, the KKK, Animal Liberation Front, etc etc....that doesn't mean that the people who make up those groups represent the rest of society. Just like it doesn't mean that Islamic fundamentalists don't represent mainline Isalms, just like communist Russia and communist China don't represent Karl Marx's original communism and socialism goals, just like Adolf Hitler didn't represent many of the Germans or Germans today, just like fundamentalist Christians who killed Matthew Shepard don't represent Christians who don't murder. The actions of certain groups should not make people go insane against the entire group. But for some reason, everyone decides to do that. Over and over and over again it is repeated in history. Why is it the few that understand this aren't the one's to survive to stop it from keeping it going? Tomorrow I promise to be more light hearted again. I have an entry from LMM's journal that I want to expound upon. Oh yeah, I got a raise! A $2.00 raise! At the lab job! I was surprised today when I got my papers to start next week! YAY! Makes my $6.00/hr job at Michael's seem really sucky. Really sucky..... October 26, 2003 So, here I am sitting and writing out cover letters and resumes. I found a few more jobs on Friday evening that I wanted to work on applying for and to send out this week. I found one with the Dolphin Research Center in the Keys. Would be fun! Wonder how much it pays!?!? I have an interview on Thursday afternoon with Sandoway House Nature Center. I got the call Friday afternoon! I was very shocked because I had just sent it out a few days ago! The position is for Director of Nature Center. I'm a bit wary as I don't know if I can "direct"! So, I guess I will see, right? Today we went to the batting cages. I'd been wanting to go for awhile and we finally went. It was really fun! :) I didn't take my batting gloves or else it would have been easier on my hands. The first round was spent refreshing my memory, but after that it was fairly easy. Made me want to get out and throw the ball around. :D I despise how it get's dark early now. It is dusky now and it's only 5:38pm! Depressing. It's kinda fun, for fall, but otherwise kinda sad and not at all fun for doing things after work. I just typed that last sentenced while looking out the window to the field across my apartment! I did a good job! :D I have nothing really relevant to say at the moment so I will close with that. October 23, 2003 I'm going home! :) For a few days before Thanksgiving! I'm so excited! That means: Tex/Mex, Freebirds, Grandma's food, and seeing friends, family and pets!!!! YAY! I'm also doubly excited that I will be home for a friend's baby shower and birthday! I am hoping to make the shower but I am not sure how it will work out. It depends on the time it is. I will be home for such a short amount of time I want to see everyone. I wish I could stay for a month to catch up with people! Yesterday I was a complete klutz. I went rollerblading and happened to miss the gravel in this one spot on the way out. But, the way back proved another story. I hit a stray piece and went tumbling. My headphones broke and the cd player went flying and took me several minutes to find. My left knee is totally bruised and raw from bleeding and my right hip is sore and has a spot from falling on it. My hands ached from catching myself with them. I even did this all at a stop light and no one even asked if I was ok. It was embarassing!!!! I lost my cd but luckily we went back and found it. So, all night my knee was aching while sleeping and it was stiff this morning. Doesn't help that it is my bad knee too! And if I laid just right on my hip it started hurting! Ick! So, this crochet thing was being difficult. I've started three different ones so far and it was being such a pain. I couldn't figure the directions out. I mena, I understand the shorthand that is going on, but when they say "turn" they don't elaborate. So, I had been turning and I was getting this circle type thing when I wanted a square. I went back online to look up the pattern I'd found and looked at the picture and realized what I was doing wrong. Seemed so simple now. It's just frustrating. I hope the blanket turns out well...else I will be upset! Samson was being a silly cat two nights ago. He was bounding all over the apartment and being plain silly. Picking fights with us really so we would play with him. I went to bed and was laying there reading a book or something and he comes in with three loud meow's and I thought something was wrong. As soon as I got up though he took off and was wanting to play. He was picking fights. Such a silly little kitty! We went to put out a cache yesterday in this park that I usually park at to run the bridge over the intracoastal and there were bunnies galore! And they sat just like Sam does sometimes. He does this bunny thing, putting all of his legs under him and just looking like a bunny. It was so funny! They even had grass in their mouths too, chomping away and that's our Sam, eating my plants outside! I think he's 1/4 bunny! October 20th, 2003 It's been a few days. Had a nice weekend and enjoyed myself. It cooled down a bit here. I spent Saturday and Sunday looking for jobs all over Florida. Yesterday was spent mostly working on resume's and cover letters in the evening. I'm doing this because I didn't get into school. The letter came on Friday. I knew something was wrong when I couldn't even finish the run I'd started. I came back and checked the mail and there was this frightening, thin envelope. I knew that it was a no. I mean, how many "yes" letters are thin? Chris sat down with me on the couch and I had a little cry and in a way I was relieved. Not that I'm not dissapointed or sad or whatnot, but I'm ready to have a real job that has a future. I want to have a house with a yard, not necessarily a fancy house, just a house that has room. Something of my own. I want a garden, a dog, and a library. Maybe in a few years I'll think about kids. But, I'm ready to move on. I feel so young and dull and stupid working retail. Half the people can't believe that I'm 23...."you look so young". When I look in the mirror I look my age, I think. What do shoppers thing? Oh, that poor girl is married and working here. Oh, she must be so young. She must have three youngins running around at home.... Maybe I'm over reacting. My co-workers are nice. They all seem to be fine...some are in college, some aren't. Some are older and a lot are my age. I dunno. Chris and I put out two new cache's a few days ago. They've already been hit by first to find folks. It's cooling down somewhat here. Still warm but the other day it was nice. Our air is out at the moment. It's been icing up and so it's off. Brooke's blanket is coming along slowly. :) It's gonna take me forever to make that blanket for her baby! I started one but it started curling because I was working in rounds so I undid it. It is now a heap of tangles which I mostly got out, but still. I actually had time at work for my break to read a bit of the book I have. I'm still reading LMM's autobiography. I really like that woman and she must have been an intriguing person to have known. I can't wait to dive into her journals. I actually finished a book the other day. It was called Amanda's Wedding. It's a Bridget Jone's-esque type novel about a gal in London working in a crummy job and having problems with boyfriends. I can see Colin Firth playing the lead role in a movie....who couldn't? *drool*. Michelle...I got your two cards! I will call you soon! October 16th, 2003 A few updates on the job front. I went in to Afterthoughts today to tell them it wasn't going to work out. The schedules between Michael's and Afterthoughts were just going to combine too much and it would have been hard to give them enough time that they needed. The second thing is that my boss from the lab company said that Tropicana wants me back for a week in November and most of December! :) So, I'm excited! I'm going to have to work around Michael's while doing that and if they can't handle that they can bite me! I spent this early afternoon rearranging the "art" desk. The desk was for all the art supplies and what not but it'd turned into a writing desk too. And I was looking for things yesterday for the cache we put out and I found a few things in two storage containers that I wanted to put in it...and then found a lot of stationary. So, I turned the art desk into the letter writing desk and organized it and put all of my paints and stuff into the two storage bins and separated it out with the scrapbooking stuff. So, it is all organized now! Yippiee! Chris is in bed with a headache. Poor guy. Said his right eye hurt too. Weird. I gave him Tylenol. :( I need to go for my run and then come fix dinner. Chris was supposed to be picking up the apartment today but this little headache is deterring him from that. It really needs to get done before his friend comes in from Houston tomorrow, because he'll be fishing all evening tomorrow. I'm tired of trampling over things and dirty dishes. Oh, I set down some rules last night, but I guess I have to let a headache take precedent first. Here is the painting I did for a friend. It annoys me slightly, in that the bottom flower got messed up originally and I had to gesso it and anyways, it's not how I envisioned it.  October 15th, 2003 Today felt like Fall. This morning at 0600 waiting for the doors to open so I could clock in for work, I sat on the side of the curb and realized how cool it actually was. I could have put on a light jacket had I sat out longer. It was a change from yesterday's muggy afternoon. When I left work I noticed how beautiful it was. The sun has moved positions so the sky and overall light effect looks different now. The sky was crystal blue with some cummulus clouds dotting in the horizon. I rolled the windows down on the ride home and let the breeze twist my hair into knots. Truly beautiful! We went geocaching too and put out a cache near our apartment. Last night I was a total dum-dum. I was in bed reading a magazine and I heard my mom (didn't know it was her then) PM me so I get up to dash to the computer. I step on something, felt like a sticker, until I look down at my foot and realize there is a sewing pin lodged 3/4 of the way into my foot. Didn't hurt much going in but it was a doozie getting out! OWWW! Bleed a little and now there is a nice bruise on the bottom of my foot. I can't say that I've had a bruise on the bottom of my foot before! Anyways, it hurt a little today but it isn't too bad. I still made it to run. Just worried that I'll come down with tetanus or something other disease and keel over in a week or two! eek! :D Yesterday was our 16 month anniversary (wedding). Woooeeeee! :) October 14th, 2003 Hello, hello! Yesterday was such a long day of work! LONG! 1-8. Today is 10-5. Ick. It really is amazing. The ad this week had a 50% off coupon for Sunday and Monday and a 40% off for Tuesday-Saturday. I found two ads abandoned in carts because people didn't keep the 40% off one! 40% is a big deal! I mean, it's almost half off and it's a fairly big discount. I now have three! That's good for me because I can think of at least three things I want! lol! I can't wait for the weekend. To relax and do stuff. Going running tonight on the trails instead of on the sidewalk. I think that might be part of my knee pain. At least I hope so...I want to be able to run longer and up my miles to 20+ a week instead of 12-15. My goal this week is to run five days, instead of four. I've promised myself that for three weeks to run five days but it always ends up four days. I really don't have a lot to say at the moment. October 12th, 2003 New layout. :) Anyways, I finally got scheduled some hours at work that are worth working. I was tired of wolfing down my meals in 15 minutes for the required break. Now I can get 30 minutes to eat! I have to clock out, but at least that is a decent time to get something to eat. It was so annoying...I had just sat down at 1:30 to take my break, was cutting up my salad when they page me over the intercom for a telephone call. I'd told my boss lady I was taking a break but didn't go to the front to tell the cashiers. I didn't get up the first time, figured my boss would get the phone since she knew I was taking a break. They paged me again. I answer it. Of course when I'm on my break I get a lady who just wants to keep chatting away asking me questions that I'm not sure of. I mean, I don't know how to do your stupid craft lady, I wanna eat! I didn't tell her that but I was really irritated. Next time I'll know better and tell the cashiers so they don't page me. ugh. I fixed my pillow. Didn't take long to fix. Now I can have a pillow again! I had to dig out a cotton one from my blanket chest and it was alright, but not my favorite pillow. I'm taking tonight off from running. I ran four miles Friday night and three yesterday and my knees were hurting this morning. I will see how I feel in the morning to see if I got before work. If not I'll have to start on Tuesday for the week. Oh, about the new layout. It's not really fall here...lol, it's still summer. It's muggy and warm so that doesn't qualify for much. I imagine some of the leaves are changing down the highway but since I'm not on the highway anymore I don't get to see them. But, I figured it should look a little festive around here. Oh...I can't believe how many people are looking for Christmas stuff already. I mean, we have some out now, but someone asked me today for giftwrap! I was like, um, give us a few weeks! We still have Halloween stuff out! It was a madhouse today. Madhouse. There was a 50% off coupon and I swear the masses were out. I was happy though I was able to help one couple who were looking for something to stand their wedding cake topper on. They didn't want the one's we had with legs and I didn't think we had anything plastic that would work. They went to check out when I remembered we had these little crosstich things that could be used. They were cheap also...and it turned out they thought it would work! It's so frustrating, I'll be helping someone out, looking for something, when I'm on my way to my mission and someone else stops me. And, it never fails I will have at least three people ask me something at a time. Busy. Busy. Busy. Grad school stuff should be in soon. A word of warning....if I don't get in I don't know if I'll get online much for awhile. I'll probably be too depressed and moping and eating ice cream by the gallons. October 8, 2003 Got rid of Tagboard. Bringing in HaloScan in which you can leave comments about every posting! Figured that might work better. This morning came early. And hard. My legs ached from running last night and so the alarm went off at 5:15 I was ready to just not show up for work. Once I got up I was alright, but I was exhausted when I got home. Took a two hour nap, in which later when I woke I found that Chris had "killed" my pillow. My favorite pillow. It now has a gaping whole in it which the decaying feathers are coming out. lol...I am going to sew it up. There is nothing to replace this dear pillow of mine. It has a certain scent, feel and comfort that no other pillow has been able to replace. I'd take it on Survivor if I could! It's really, truly amazing that I can breathe again. I swear, I can't remember when I was able to breathe ok and get a deep breathe. I take that Advair and wa-la. I can breathe! Within seconds. No forcing any deep breaths, no fake yawns just to try to suffice some O2 to the lungs. I'm reading LMM's autobiography right now during breaks at work. I just keep it in my apron everyday with my razor blade, marker and keys. It's interesting though. I was reading today about her and her cousins would go to the shore and pick up snail shells, only she says that she learned they were periwinkles and not snails, which is kinda funny because periwinkles are indeed periwinkle snails. I just thought that was kinda funny. So, two months after I sent off for a death certificate for my great-grandfather on my mom's side I finally got it! Pretty helpful. I need to start doing some more research soon. October 7, 2003 I am soooo excited! I went to the Dr today to talk about my asthma. My albuterol has not been helping at all. I was tight during the day when I was just doing normal activities, tight running and the other day when I ran my 5K I thought I was going to pass out because my chest was so tight. Well....along came a little thing called Advair diskus!!!!! A miracle! Seriously, I took it this afternoon when I got home. I could notice a change within minutes! And with the help of my albuterol before my run I felt great. Just so nice to feel good running for once! It's been awhile! In other news I've had to work 6-11 today and tomorrow. It's not exactly fun getting to work before most people are even up. Though the store before opening is nice and quiet. The only annoying thing is the elevator music that they play. Over...and over...and over. Ick. Not much else is new. Oh, supposed to go get some blood work done Thursday for the Dr's...they just want to check my blood stuff to make sure nothing else is wrong. *sigh*....gotta go clean. October 5, 2003 It's a quater to 1. My heart starts racing. I pull into the parking lot. Others are walking towards the door. I get in "line" and peer inside the windows to the stacks of books that are calling my names. Within 10 minutes the walkway is crawling with people of all ages. People check their watches. Past one on my phone. Waiting...waiting...waiting. They start walking to the doors. Opening the side entrance first. People scoot in the side door, those who have no waited as long as I have. Hurry...hurry. Opening our door. Mad rush of people anxious and excited. Here's your paper sack. Have fun filling it up. Hmm, what book do I want? This looks like fun. My bag is full, brimming over the edges. Too heavy to carry. I get another. There are other insane folks like me. Sweating and exhilarated by the thought of practically free books. My first bag breaks. A kind woman watches my bags. I fill the second. I've been over the place twice and see no more that I want. Wait. I do see more that I want but I have no room for them at last. Walk out to my car with two paper bags full of books, one in each arm. A Biology books decides to crawl out the top of the bag and along comes a lady to help me carry a bag to my car. Finally, they are home. With me. My books. Yummy. :) October 4, 2003 Made up a wishlist...for my own benefit but for others also. :) I take gifts anytime of the year! :D Will write more later...going to a reef meeting with Chris soon October 3, 2003 Library book sale started today! Came out with about 20 books for $12. The bag sale is on Sunday...$2 and you fill the bag up. I'm going to get one for myself and one to sell on ebay! Need money to buy me some scrapbooking and art supplies and eventually some winter running attire. I've been trying to run at least five days a week. I bought some new running shoes yesterday because they were on sale. It was either sale shoes or insoles and the insoles didn't work well. I'd love to have some good $80 running shoes, but no money! The shoes I got on sale were for running luckily. My knee doesn't hurt so bad now. It was hurting terribly. I could tell a difference after wearing the new shoes and then putting the old ones back on after trying them on yesterday. No wonder I'd been in so much pain! Had another phone interview today with the Afterthoughts folks. Not sure how that will turn out but we'll see! Tomorrow is another long run around the neighborhood, about four miles and cleaning the apartment. I'm going to scrub the stains on the floor...it's a mixture of water stains that got dirt trapped in them and puke stains from Samson that didn't come up well. I cleaned half of the apartment today while Chris spent at least 8 hours working on some "busy work" homework. He sat at the kitchen table diligently for 8 hours working on it! I cleaned behind the microwave....disgusting! Ants had died and there was a piece of chicken from who knows when all dried up back there! Night night... October 1 August 30, 2003 It's 8:15 in the morning on Saturday. It's kinda nice being up early on a Saturday. Chris left around 0700 to go pick up his buddies to go diving again. A friend was in town and he doesn't get to dive often so they went diving. I couldn't sleep very much longer than I normally do, so it was up at 0745 for me. My parents will be in town shortly. They are flying into Ft. Lauderdal instead of Orlando because it was cheaper. So for the weekend we are heading down that direction to hang out. Then it's back up here. I'm so depressed. I found out that my last day will officially be this Thursday. That's for work. Ack. I really hope that this job I applied for with the county commissioners comes through. It's called "Technician IV"/"Assistant Land Manager". It's perfect for me. A mix of inside and outside activities. Pays a buck and .02c more than what I get now and I wouldn't have to drive so far. So, cross your fingers. I'm heading to run, get stamps, and the flea market in a bit. Gotta eat some breakfast first....wonder where my Samson is???? Meow. August 28, 2003 So, I ended up going out to buy a new photoalbum. Why, you asK? Well, because most of my photos are in the magentic type albums. And from the websites I've heard on scrapping and preservation of photos you don't want the magnetic albums. Sadly, most of mine are in those. I have a feeling I'll be buying a lot of: archive safe, PVC free and acid free albums from now on. I realized my mistake when I was trying to go through and fix my albums, label pics and all. Yeah, some of them were STICKING. Not a good thing at all. And I was able to pry them off and now I"m worried I'm going to lose a lot of photos. So, my new thing now is going through and writing everything on the back of the pictures. Everyone says so many people throw out heritage albums because they don't know who anyone is. There goes history. Don't want that happening with my stuff. Anyways, I'll show you a few pictures I found: 
 Doing two things I love: playing in the water and reading! :) August 27, 2003 I discovered the genealogy section of the library just now. It is my treasure chest. There are books in there that I KNOW will help me. It's insane. Too bad I have so much other stuff to figure out with genealogy first. I need to actually sit down and make an itemized list of what I need. There are at least three genealogy books that are related to certain family lineages. Unfortunately they are already out of print and in only a select few libraries world wide. When I select few, I mean, like five. Sadly depressing. I have bought several genealogy scrapbooking magazines within the past few days. Since I am a scrap-a-holic I figured why not make a scrapbook of my genealogy and family history. With my parents bringing me oogles of pictures in the next few days I will be REALLY happy! :) So much fun stuff! So, is anyone going to watch Mars tonight??? I saw it about a month ago while "turtling". It wasn't nearly as big or as close as it's supposed to be tonight. It's all very interesting. I've always "wished" on Mars. It is the brightest in the sky and close to the moon usually so I wish on it. Doesn't seem to affect my wishes! :) August 26, 2003 I only had to work a half day yesterday. I was home around 12:30, eating my sandwich and salad, when Chris comes in from collecting his weekly snails. "Oh, I didn't know you were home early!" "Uh, yeah. I only worked half day today," I replied. Then in his most begging voice he starts saying "Can we go diving again?? Please??? I'll do whatever you want me to do". Mind you this entire time I am really wanting a nap and to do some things around the apartment. We had dishes left from Sunday night's dinner left out and they were starting to smell. So, after making him promise to do all the dishes, including unloading and loading (which is my "chore") and doing other picking up around the apartment, we went again. We took off to the beach we go to and got in. This time it was sunny out, with some large thunderheads many miles into the horizon. No worries. We got in and went left along the beach instead of right. After an hour of doing that I told him to surface and we got up to the top and decided to head back south to where we found the lobsters the other day. I had less than 1000psi left in my tank, good for at least 20 more minutes. I thought Chris had around the same amount. Luckily we found lobster. There were some big boys out there! We got six before Chris turns to me and points up and shoots to the surface. He's all out of breath and I ask "What's wrong?". Out of air. Apparently he had only like 200psi left when we found the lobsters and knew he was out of air almost. He barely had enough air to enflate his BC at all. So, needless to say I lugged the bag of six very large lobsters to shore. Two days of lobster diving will wear a person out! But, we didn't get pictures of the critters, as I took a shower and didn't tell Chris to take them. He did say the disk was full though, so no pics this time. :( They were so purty too. :) I went to bed at 7:30 last night. I was so tired from the day. I went with intentions to read Magic for Marigold, which I did for about 15 minutes. Turned the lights out and crashed. I woke up at 8:00 or so this morning. 12 hours of sleep is enough. It's kinda nice being up at 8 without having to do anything. Eat some breakfast. Watch some news. Or cartoons. I caught up on some Rugrats, which I haven't seen in years. Went to the library and Big Lots. Now, just sending off some resumes. August 24, 2003 Went diving....we got these: 
 We did good. Got five. Chris got two yesterday with two other buddies. We saw a ton of them today but I was freezing, though Chris said I was insane for saying that. Some nice sized bugs out there! :) Just hanging out under the ledge, their antennae waving in the current. Poor fellas, they lost some antennae and legs in the process of getting them in the laundry bag. It's a two person hunt....someone has to wrestle the creatures and someone else has to open the bag and make sure no one escapes! Not too bad. Hopefully this storm in the Carribbean won't come this way and we can go again in a week or so! :) Tonight's dinner is one of these creatures! Some rice and mashed potatoes. Yummmmmmy! August 23, 2003 10:49pm All I can say is "Wow". I just finished watching Bowling for Columbine. Remarkable movie. I had been saying to myself to watch it for a year now and I finally rented it the other night. When Michael Moore gave his very loudmouth speech at the Oscars, I must admit I was a bit dissapointed in him. I thought he was being a bit obnoxious. But, I change my opinion. I think it was very right, very accurate and truthful. It's so amazing the amount of brainwashing we Americans are given. Bowling for Columbine talks about the obsession with guns in America, the fear instilled in us. There is some satire to the story, with one cartoon displaying the way America was born and the history of America. It's incredibly interesting to think about the racial fears that are still running so deep in this country. The fear of the black person, the Mexican, the Middle Eastern. We are so afraid, so many of us get guns. Yet, Moore takes a look at other countries, who watch the same movies we do, have a mixture of ethnicities as we do but yet have a much less murder rate by guns each year. He jumped over to Canada where people leave their doors unlocked. Do that here in the US of A? No way. Slums in Canada? Nothing compared to that here. What was also interesting that Moore pointed out was the media's portrayl of the evening news. You don't hear about commonplace activties usually. The first story has to be something tragic. A shooting, a robbery, a fire. Something that will grab the viewers attention. Make them afraid. Make them look twice while walking to the car. While it's all well and good to protect yourself, it almost makes a culture of fear. Michael also brings up the very ironic fact that we tend to place the blame of these shootings to music lyrics, tv, or whatever. An interview with Marilyn Manson, whom I'm not really a fan of, opened my eyes. We demonize the people out utilizing their freedom of speech, making poetry into music, those feelings, thoughts of all the things that occur in life. Yet, all of those things are in the Bible, are they not? And the other ironic thing is the day of Columbine, the US launched massive attacks on Kosovo. We demonize two kids who murdered people, yet we don't demonize the Presidents who murder people? Good Lord, we don't demonize the Presidents who advocated the murder of the Native Americans? The Presidents who advocated the sale, slavery and murder of Africans? We don't demonize the white folks who hold grudges against those people who have different religious beliefs? I don't understand. Where are we thinking we are going with this? Pointing fingers hasn't solved anything yet, has it? If anything, this movie has made me even more of a pacifist. I didn't like the recent "war" in Iraq. I by far don't think war is the answer. Yet, we sit here and delude ourselves into thinking we need more protection from the "evil" peoples of the world. Yes, we should defend ourselves to an extent. But do we need to create prejudice in our own country to accomplish that? Do we need to launch unwarranted attacks because we think there is a possibility someone might attack us? What happened to defending ourselves instead of offending ourselves? This country was built on murder. And frankly I'm quite ashamed. We haven't turned away from it. We situate on pedestals those people who murdered and enslaved. We excuse it by stating it was "the way it was" then. Pssshaw. The way it was my ass. The way it was was wrong. The way it was did not allow equal rights for all. And the way it is now doesn't do so either. I want to move to Canada. I want to change this country for the better. I want people to stop being so damn afraid of their neighbors and come out and play. I want to be able to know that we are helping people out in other countries because we don't have selfish reasons. I want to know that we don't exploit children, women, and the elderly for the niceties of our society. I want to know that the rich SOB's who screw up companies and put themselves and their greed ahead of the rest of the company will be sitting in jail just as the person who robbed the convience store down the bank. I want to know that every person in this country will be able to get medical care without paying for it. (of course in taxes...but that's another story). I want to know that the kids at the elementary school down the block will get a decent meal at home, and not have to rely on the breakfast or lunch meal in the cafeteria to be their main source of nutrition. I want those kids to know that their mom or dad will be home with them that night, that they won't have to pull two jobs in a welfare to work program just to support themselves. I want them to know that they will have a sustainable living wage, one that is equal to the economy of the times. I want the rich to pay their damn taxes and get no more tax breaks or loopholes. I want the damn rich companies to have to sit up and fix their old ass ways of making pollution and clean up their act. I want a lot. Will I get it? I don't know. But, if you don't do your part and vote in this next election, I will personally make it my privilege to come and hunt you down and give you a history lesson on the importance of voting. I will sit you down and tell you about the millions in the world who don't have a chance to vote, who live under a dictatorship, who don't get a voice to say something about the way they live. You have something, you have a gift, you have a voice. You CAN do something with it. And if you don't, well, you have no reason to complain when the politicians don't do something you want. I'm Misti. I'm running for President in 2016. Vote, or your voice is silenced. August 23, 2003 Bush gets my dumbass of the year award again. Wait, make that dumbass of the week. He's always a dumbass. Why, you ask? Read London Guardian article on him and his next debacle. Oh, fun....let's just continue screwing the environment up. DUMBASS. This comes on the heels of ozone layer story . I am seriously sick of this man. I really hope that if for some reason the Democratic nomination doesn't win, that the citizens of this country will rise up and demand an impeachment. He is the most ignorant, uneducated, selfish, idiot to be president. I could back myself up on that but I don't have the time nor the patience to sit down and mess with it. Maybe later. Thank you for listening to that rant. Now, go to my Howard Dean button and learn about him. :) August 22, 2003 Oh, what to say?? I have to work in the morning. Not really interested in working, though. There is a BARS meeting (reef club) down where I work so I'm going in a bit later and Chris is taking me and a few others are going diving with him for lobster while I'm at work. Now, doesn't that seem like I got the raw end of the deal? I've been so tired lately. I came home from work and took a nap. I should probably stop staying up to watch "I love the 70's". It's funny, I wasn't even born in the 70's. I can still relate to a lot of it. I mean, Lite Bright came out in the 70's but that was one of my favorite toys growing up in the 80's. We rented About Schmidt and Bowling for Columbine. Chris refuses to watch Bowling for Columbine because he thinks Michael Moore is an idiot. About Schmidt was good. A bit on the sad side, with a tinge of boring scenes every now and then. One of the better Jack Nicholson movies I've seen. What happened to August? Seriously? It's gone. I mean, it seems as if it was just June. And I had the whole summer ahead of me. I don't know what I thought I'd accomplish this summer. I didn't lose any extra weight that I wanted to shed. I did get some headway done on genealogy. Read Harry Potter. Didn't do any art. Didn't start my award winning novel. Did write some poems. Did begin to work again on journaling. I don't know. Where did it all go? I'm beginning to like Fall and Spring more. I mean, I like them generally, but not like I like summer. But there is a difference in Spring and Fall. The way the light is situated in the atmosphere. The smells. Everything. I wonder how long our pumpkin will last this year. We had our pumpkin until almost Easter this year. It finally started to rot. We decorated it for each holiday after Halloween. Quite funny. I think that's it for now. I really need to do the dishes and get to bed. Chris is grouchy anyways. August 21, 2003 I wish Tag board was working. It is really annoying having it out. I actually would prefer having Enetation back. That way people could make their own comments to each post. The bathroom at work always smells. Men decide they want to use the women's restroom, so it gets messy quite often. Yucky pee on the seat. Just overall nastiness. Now, when I started it was fairly clean. There was an air conditioner in there, a wall unit, and they took that out. I think it is connected to central air now. But, it's also connected to the breakroom so at lunch you get this stale mixture of various foods along with the mixture of normal bathroom smells. Rather nasty. So, I brought in a car-jar thing to stick in there. It was a Dollar Tree brand one, not a fancy Yankee Candle one, but at least it smells flowery now. Next stop: getting the men out of the bathroom. I try to think of interesting things to write in here. I don't want to get into things that go in my paper journal or anything, cause, then what would I have to write? But, I feel like my normal daily routine type of entries get a little on the dry side. So I will throw this thought out. Does anyone ever get the fleeting moments of thought, between wake and sleep, of the past? Of things that occured or of people you know you won't see for a long time in the future? Time for me just seems to fly by faster than it used to. I mean, college blew by me and now I've been married for a year. Soon it'll be two years and I just won't know what to do. Someone on the Avonlea Forum brought up in the 20 something topic about kids. How, each year they keep saying "Oh, in 5 years we might have kids". Then they mention how each year passes and for some reason it always seems like a future thing. I feel like that. Not neccessarily with kids, but with everything. "Oh, in five years I hope to do such and such". And with kids too. I mean, I'm only 23. I don't want to be 35 having a newborn. (ewww, 35.) But, I don't want a newborn now either. I don't know what I want. I'm waiting to hear about grad school in October. I keep trying to figure out what kind of job to get when Chris graduates in December. Heck, he's gotta find a job too. I keep going back to this teaching thing, but I don't know if that is what I really want to do. I want a marine biology job. *sigh* Back to work September 30th, 2003 Happy Birthday to my Dear, Cute, Loveable Husband! :) *he's 24* I have a gripe. Why is it that people do not know how to let people use the crosswalk at Wal-mart? I ask because I was going to cross the crosswalk and this pale green mini-van comes up from the left and doesn't show any signs of stopping. I am continuing walking but kinda hesitant cause it looks like she isn't going to stop. Of course, she keeps going and I look right up at her, throw my arms up and say "What are you doing??". I also said a few choice words to her as she turned down another aisle and passed. She didn't see me mouth those, but she threw her hands up in the air to my hand throwing too. There is a HUGE, neon yellow sign that states to cross and a HUGE, red stop sign too. I was just waiting for her to run into me in the store because I would have said something to her. Some people have no manner whatsoever. I should have just kept walking into her car! Maybe I could have sued her for negligence. I do need the money. Work is getting better. At least so far. The past two days I've been on the floor, which is 10X's better than cashiering. I don't like the stress of cashering. I do enjoy being on the floor with the stuff and stocking and helping people out there. It's less stressful, you can be in your own little world and there are no weird people demanding things of you. Unfortunately I'm going to be back cashiering tomorrow. Ick. September 27th, 2003 A few bits of news before I get into an entry... ~And you thought octopi were just damn smart....they're horny too! ~Evolution and anthropogenic changes in fisheries in action ~Another disaster from global warming... Acid Oceans I almost quit work today. Yesterday went fairly well. I was thrown in to everything at first, but was able to go to a computer simulator for an hour to learn how to do things. I mean, that was nice and all but not enough. Usually places train folks, put them with someone who knows the ropes. Nope. Not this time. And it doesn't help that this is a crazily busy store. This morning was incredibly frustrating tears came to my eyes. I tried so hard not to let them fall. I succeeded but if I'd let myself continue thinking about things I know I would have broke down even harder. Ok, returns are a pain in the ass. Give me anything else, but returns. For one, you have to have a key and only the front end manager on duty has it, or a few others but they are usually around the store. So, I get like five returns in a row it seems and it's hard because I can't remember exactly how to do it and I messed up once giving cash back when it was a credit. Debit cards get cash as well as cash payments but credit's get credit. Oh and then throw in a return that didn't have a receipt. Ack. It wouldn't have been so bad if I'd had been working with someone my age or someone who was more friendly than the lady who was FEM for the morning. She seemed very moody and I hated asking her questions. You know how you never know if people are mad at you or if that is how they normally act? Well, that's how I felt. Oh, and then no one even taught me how to answer the phone, use it or whatever. And that phone rings constantly. By the end of my shift I was answering the phone but good grief....enough already. I'm so thrilled I will be on the floor next week stocking and doing things like that. So much better. I really hate customers. I hate the stressful feeling. Ok, I don't mind working with public if it's a good situation or something else like that but being a cashier is a pain. They don't pay people enough to put up with that kind of stuff. And then people come in asking me questions and I have NO CLUE! I mean, I've been in the store but I can't tell you where things are. We went to El Chico tonight. It's the only Mexican restaurant in town that resembles anything like those in Texas. We hadn't eaten out in over a week, save the Little Caesars pizza we picked up on Tuesday for $5. Trying to save money and all. But, Chris got some birthday money from his uncle and Mexican sounded good. For some reason when I go into a good Mexican restaurant it reminds me of home...or Texas really. I miss Texas but I came to the conclusion the other day when someone asked me if I wanted to move back to Texas, that I really didn't want to. I mean, I do in a sense, but there isn't necessarily anything there for me. Most of my friends are scattered around the state and my family is there but there are no jobs where my family is. So, I would still be away from them even if I lived in Texas. It's weird, a part of me doesn't want to get into grad school and a part of me does. The part that doesn't is mainly because I am ready to start a real life. Well, I mean, I have a "real" life now, but you know. I'm ready for a house with a yard, a dog, real jobs that have significantly more income than we get now...you know...paying bills but with money to spend! The flip side of this is that I really want to be in school. When I had an interview at a junior college earlier this week for a lab coordinator position I was really happy to be in a school again. There's something about schools. The smell, the atmosphere. Just the whole sciency feel of it. I want to be back in school. I want to be someone with a higher degree. I guess we will see here in a few weeks. As of now I've told myself that I won't be dissapointed if I don't get in. I know that will probably change if I get that sad letter...but I dunno. We'll see. I hate acrylics. I love oils. I HATE ACRYLICS!!!! lol....i'm painting an acrylic now, mainly because I was running out of mineral spirits for the oil painting. I'm wishing I"d just bought more mineral spirits...... September 26th, 2003 Man, I miss the lab. Customers stink and handling dirty money for $6 an hour isn't my cup of tea. Read this really funny Aggie article written by the Utah Chronicle.... 25th, part trois Yet again, another addendum.... ~Dixie Chicks interview with Speigel ~Letter from Natalie about all the rumors, lies and propaganda against them Two must reads....enjoy... 25th, continued... If you haven't read the post for today, this will not make much sense. The Drudge Report has plastered a lot of stuff about Gen. Clark and his ties with the Republicans...even praising the Administration....for more info read here: Clark speech from two years ago. Fairly dissapointing. This man will by far NOT get my vote. September 25, 2003 I finished a painting last night. In fact here it is:  It was done in oil. I started it Tuesday and finished it last night. I'm not sure how well I like the stems though. It's so frustrating. LOL...Anyways, what do you think? This is for a friend...kinda a late birthday present. I really want to read Al Franken's new book. I saw him on "The View" this morning and they were showing clips from yesterday in which Bill O'Reilly was on. It's so funny. How do people even believe Bill? You can tell he's lying and trying to cover his ass when he speaks. He has nothing to back himself up usually. Anyways... I'm not sure I like this Wes Clark person who has entered the race. I'd heard rumors about him since Spring but didn't really know what he was about. I still don't even know what he is about. I try not to watch too much politics on tv but there seems to be some hoopla about him. I think he's a fake. I don't like him. For some reason, he seems to me to be a kind of Clinton-esque type person but slightly intwined with a bit of Bush in him. I mean, he's got a military background and he is an investor of sorts too with a company. This report from FAIR shows that Clark isn't exactly what he's cracked up to be. I don't believe for a second he's anti-war....come on, a General??? It's so frustrating. I really want Dean on the ticket. I think it'd be wonderful if he ran as Green. The Greens would get their 5% of the vote by far if he ran. Oh, and apparently I've read that Michael Moore is supporting Clark. Which I find strangely odd. Maybe his thoughts are that any candidate but Bush. Hell, I feel like that too. I mean, I'd love to vote Green again, but in Florida (where Gore really won!), your votes count. Unlike last election in Texas where voting for Nader was fine, voting for Nader again won't be fine this time around. Ok, just went to Michael Moore's website to see what he had to say about Clark and there is a nice little "Mike's message" on the front page of the website. It had an interesting revelation that I think most of you would enjoy. You know, for the past year or so I've been thinking how much this administration resembles the "administration" in the Left Behind series. The lines between government and media have been blurred, just like in the LB series. Rupert Murdoch is so friendly with the Bushies, but Rupert also owns a crapload of media outlets, including Al Ja Fox News. I dunno, doesn't it make you wonder? Doesn't it make you think....Chris thinks I'm insane, and I'm sure half my readers think I'm insane or just too crazy, but seriously. I think there is more than meets the eye. And for those people who don't think the government is capable of doing things like that and that it's just stuff for the movies....I'm sorry but I'd say think again. Governments can have amazing control over their populace....it's happened before September 23, 2003 I got more undies today! :) Ok, so I should explain that. About a month ago or so I got this chain letter type thing from my mom. It's not really a chain letter, doesn't tell you that you will have bad luck or anything, but basically it was started so that everyone got 36 pairs of underwear! :) How, you ask? Well, this letter, you send to six friends and there are two spaces for peoples names. Your friend doesn't send the undies, but each of the six friends send it out to six of their friends and those friends send you undies. So, yesterday I got my first pair. I was a bit taken aback by the address because I didn't know who it was and then I saw the underwear! They were cute Sanrio boy short type undies. I've never worn them, but they were alright to wear---just don't try running in them, you'll get a wedgie! Anyways, today I got another pair, a cute pair from my friend Stephanie F's friend. They have "heheheheheheh" and on the front is a cute little witch. Must be Halloween underwear! :) Hmmm, just waiting for 34 more pairs! ;) I just went running. I did two miles yesterday, running the bridge ( that'll work those glutes!) and I just ran about two miles today around the neighborhood. It might have been a bit more than two, maybe 2.5 miles. It felt good to run. When the days are right, running can be wonderful. I mean, you feel as if you can run forever, just letting your feet pound the pavement. On those days I don't really want to run, it's such a chore. I usually try to do another aerobic activity on those days, just to keep me sane. On a more serious note, I thought this was interesting: ~First Detection of Human Enteric Viruses in Coral Reefs. Now, that is fairly interesting. I had thought for a long time that it was already known that there were human related causes to coral reef diseases. I am also really interested in that and I hope that if I get into grad school I will be able to eventually study something like that. I finished Magic for Marigold finally! Such a good read. If you are an LMM fan, I highly suggest it. Only wish LMM had wrote a sequel. September 22, 2003 I have this habit of turning my movies in late. I don't know why. I borrowed "The Shipping News" from the library about two weeks ago. It was a DVD so they are supposed to be back in in two days. Yeah, I turned them in like five days late. And they have this ridculous fee for late rentals, $.50 a day. I know that is better than Blockbuster or something, but you know...it still stinks. So, I was at the library today because a few people on the Avonlea Forum were talking about the American Girls collection, a collection of books about various girls growing up in different time periods of American history. I'd read them when I was in middle school and loved them. So, I was a dork today and decided to check the Samantha series out again. So, here I am in the children's section of the library. While peering at all the cool young adult novels I spied the Babysitter's Club section. I'd stopped reading them I dunno, when they got into #50 or something. I picked one out to read also. Then I also got Switching Well, a novel about time travel. I read it a long time ago and fell in love with it. Two scrapbooking books came home with me also. Of course I still have to finish one book I'm reading. I have officially ran out of scrapbook page protectors, so scrapbooking is on hold for the moment. I've now moved on to working on an oil painting for a friend and then next I am going to watercolor some bookmarks for my friends too. September 20, 2003 It's banned book week.... How many of these books have you read? I'll be back with what I've read....Meanwhile, click on the ALA link above the About Moi section....read more about book banning. September 19. 2003 Hello, hello! How is everyone? Haven't written in a few days. Been busy...well, not really. I mean, how busy can a person be who doesn't have a job? Oh, well, I have a job but it turns out they only want to give me 8 hours next week. 8 hours....Yes, a measley, 8 hours. What is up with that? I thought I'd be having to get up at a decent hour, go to bed at a decent hour and you know, actually work for once. Turns out I don't even get to work until next Friday and Saturday...for those measley 8 hours. On the up side though, I got a call from the community college about a job I'd put in for. Science Lab Coordinator. It was only part time but I think it paid alright and it had part time benefits if needed. So, I'm going to interview for that Monday. I was sitting here worried that I'd have to work Monday and have to rework my schedule so I called Michael's first to find my schedule out and lo and behold I'm working some measley crappy hours. That's just retarded. I could go to McDonalds and get more hours than that. I may just have to do that. My parents sent my old journals yesterday! Well, they sent them Monday but I got them yesterday! There are some good laughs. I was so boy crazy it wasn't even funny. If I can find a funny one to post I'll post it. I was bitterly dissapointed though...there was one diary I was wanting to look at. It was this little, pale yellow diary that had a rainbow on the front and said "Diary". Complete with lock and key. Key has since been misplaced, but Chris picked the lock for me. Well, it turns out a younger me must have ripped the pages out. Why? I have no idea. But I know I had started it sometime in elementary school because I remember writing some weird stuff in it, trying to pretend it was haunted or something....mind you this was when I was reading the Babysitter's Club books and reading about Dawn's haunted house. So, I have no idea what I was doing. Tucked in with the stuff they sent was an old schedule from Hallmark....at least I got the hours I wanted there! I also found a few poems and papers for some highschool English and history classes. There were some funny things in there! :) September 15, 2003 Ok, I've got some pictures to share with you today! My Kitty Walking through a sea of grass A softshell turtle A cool pond Through the forest... Crossing the "River" Cute duckies in our apartment pond More cutie duckies Most of those pictures, except for Samson and the Duckies, are from our eight miles hike attempting to find a geocache yesterday. no such luck. Took the wrong trail and got some blisters to boot! September 13, 2003 Nyquil really does make you sleepy. It also has a nasty taste. I had forgotten the nastiness of it when I took the 30ml's I was supposed to last night. Yeah, it's weird, I think "they" are secretly trying to convert us to the metric system, slowly and surely. I mean, usually on the little cups they say "2 tablespoons or whatnot" but, no this is all in ml's. So, I had to look on the little sheet, which oddly enough you had to "tear" apart from the other label to even get a dosage amount. Weird. Last week I laughed at Chris while he took his dose of Nyquil and made funny faces at the taste of it and last night he gave me an "I told you so". I really thought I had evaded getting sick. He was sick a week ago, coughing, sore throat, head congestion. You know, just a basic cold/flu type thing. I had felt it a bit last week, but dutifully took my vitmains and just kept on trucking. I woke up yesterday feeling horrible and this morning I rolled over on the right side of my neck only to move off it the second I felt pain in my glands. We were planning on going out to this 3 mile cache for geocaching, one that we didn't get to do about three weeks ago. I wasn't about to go hiking around the way I felt. I got up today about 10:15 and I went right back to bed around 11:30 until 1:00. I only got up because the rumblings in my stomach were waking me up. So, I have a "job". If you can call it a job. It's at Michaels, and it's part-time, half of what I was making, half of the hours. But, I guess it pays and it'll work. I just hope my boss at the lab company will come up with something better soon. Or that the county commissioners will call me and be all in "love" with me and want to hire me. Oh, I have a bone to pick....well, not with you kind folks, but with the USF folks. Argh. Yesterday I get this email from the Biology department admissions lady. She has this little "form" all filled out stating that she needed a reply or confirmation that I had gotten it. In it stated that for some ungodly reason they had not recieved my three letters of recommendation. AND they had my maiden name instead of my married name as my last name. So, that threw me off. What makes me angry is that I KNOW that they got those letters because I got confirmation emails from the people who sent recommendations. AND I sent the correct address to send it to them, not the normal graduate school office, but the biology department office because they have a direct receipt program. So, I wrote back and explained to them the problem. What makes me angry is that they could have done this a month ago...deadline is October 1st. So, if for some stupid reason they misplaced them, I have to email all of my contacts again and have them send it. It is really messed up and I'm furious at them. What is even weirder is that I logged onto the websites little thing that you can check your status and I logged in and it has my real last name, not my maiden name listed. So, I don't know where this lady got messed up. September 11, 2003 Did you know that you can type with one leg over your arm? I am currently sitting in my nice cozy chair, my body turned slightly to the left, left leg up in the chair, laying down against the arm of the chair, my right leg standing up with the right foot under the left foot and my left arm is under my right leg. Can you get that picture??? lol! Yeah, you can type like this. I wasn't sure whether to acknowledge today or not. I haven't really acknowledged it most of the day. I flipped tv stations when I saw any memorial type service, changed stations on the radio if someone was talking about it, just overall didn't really focus too much on it. Mainly because two years ago was just horrible. I mean, that day screwed my entire semester up. Seriously. I blame my nasty grades that fall on the 11th. I mean, no one could focus and it was just all out craziness. So, basically, Osama bin Laden is to fault for my bad grades! All the more reason to find him and his posse. Then again, where is he, two years later? I don't really feel threatened anymore. I don't think I really did after six months. I mean, I don't think anyone can go around being scared like that forever. If something happens again, it happens. If not, well, then runnning around scared for so long will cause you to lose time that was precious. So, basically, remember those killed and move on. Oh, and something else that bothers me? I know NYC is a great place and all, but people seem to forget the two other cities/states hit hard by this mess. Pennsylvania and DC took hard hits and those people are equally important. Moving on now...I finally got all of my photos done. Just need one more photoalbum. I started working on my scrapbook, not the genealogy one, but the normal one and am trying to catch up on it before I start my genealogy one. I'm going to get Chris to cut the wood tonight and tomorrow I'm going to start sewing the fabric on. I hope it turns out alright. I will make sure to post pictures when I get a chance. And thanks to lovely Robin I'm going to get MORE scrapbooking supplies! lol, you are a doll! I really don't need anymore, because I can't decide what to use as it is. I guess I shall have to take over the kitchen table now! hmmm, i wonder if i can wade through the mess that's on it now??? August 19th, 2003 Ohhh, so tired. Got up around 09:30 and didn't do a whole lot. Chris was perturbed because we were going to go diving but I wasn't really in the mood to go. I just didn't feel like wasting the day away doing that....I mean three weeks ago we tried to lobster dive off the beach here but the water was too cold and the visibility was horrible. I don't like low viz and I don't like going when I don't know how things are going to be. I think we are going to try for Sunday now. Not to mention I don't like just having to decide on something the night before. I'd rather have a few days in advance to plan things. So, we went Geocaching instead. We tried to do two down in Sebastian. Got one done, and it was great. Nice park, good trails. Mosquito's were the only bad thing. Then the other one...we drove FOREVER trying to locate a route to get to it. Didn't have any idea where the park was. Funny, on the way out of town we stumble across a road to a preserve that looks like it'll go that direction. Sure enough it does. We were worried we'd have to hike it for four or five miles though, but the road did pretty well. Yeah. But there was a massive thunderstorm chasing us from the south and by the time we got to the trail head, the GPS still said 2.9 miles away. I told Chris I could run the three miles in thirty minutes if we wanted to go ahead and go. We get about a half a mile down and we come upon a stream on steroids. Due to recent rains it had gotten quite large. And since more rain was on the way we decided we'd hike it in later on. It's fun to do the hiking ones, but good grief, you really have to hike it in. And if you want to be in the middle of nowhwere, well you can certainly accomplish that! ~Misti August 18th, 2003 Added more links to the side. Hoping I'll be able to have everything up and ready in a few days! :) Not much else to add. Well, there is but there are things to do now. August 17th, 2003 Slowly coming along now. Chris and I went out to the Triple N Ranch between here and Kissimmee to put his cache out. We hid it pretty well and since it was a multi-stage cache we had to go and put the steps in. We were all done when Chris remembered he forgot to take the combination off the back of the lock! So we had to walk all the way back to the original location, which realy sucked. I was tired. Hungry. And in all we probably walked around three or four miles. It isn't bad, but there wasn't a lot of shade where we were at. I think my shoulders are sunburned. It is nice being out there. No one around but me and Chris. We did happen upon a couple on our way out, which was odd because the sign in log at the front gate shows maybe one person every few days. I'm sure during hunting season it is full of people. I'm realy lazy. I think I'm taking after my mom in that I am becoming a list maker. She would have her list on the right side of the cabinet, on those little colored notepads and she'd cross things off daily. Ha. I started doing that about two years ago when I finally got my act together and bought a planner for college. I'd make lists like crazy. Now, I sit at work when I get bored and make lists of things I want to do. I have a small little calendar for my purse but that doesn't do a whole lot for me. Good for writing in doctor's appointments and such, but not for long list making. So at Dollar Tree yesterday I found a good calendar/list making planner. Here I come---I'll be pumping out the lists from now on! Well, that's all for now. ~Misti August 16th, 2003 Ok, I've got it working now. Alright, for now you guys will just be able to get to read this but not really much else. I'm working on getting enetation back up and will slowly be working on the side tool bar! Thanks Neil for helping me with this! You are a life saver! LOL, ok, so you really didn't "save my life" but you saved my journal! If you all could have seen the moving tables every time I viewed it on Notepad. It was quite funny. Table here, table right, table left, table moved everywhere! Chaos! I just got a Dummies book for learning Photoshop. That's my next stop. Photoshop so I can learn how to make a nify banner for this place. Eventually I'll make my own backgrounds too. But for now I'm here. So, you can read, and hopefully every day I will have added something new! ~Misti August 15th, 2003 Testing out this blog. Testing out HTML. Not sure how it will work out! I wonder how much it will let me type before it will reset itself and make a new paragraph. I think that is my problem with this running into my other table and forcing it farther down. Just need to see how much farther it'll wrap. |
