CaliforniaSnowflake's Xanga

Happy Days

Wed, 28 May 2008 20:04:07 GMT

I haven't posted a lot lately because I've been really busy, like I keep saying, but I think it's also because I've had relatively little to complain about. Usually I'm posting for the sake of some rant or other, but lately everything has pretty much just been going well.

Mike and I are doing great. We're really laid back, but we have a lot of fun. We've been going to the gym three times a week, and we're on a huge cooking kick. We've made all kinds of stuff, from stir fry to burritos to chicken with mushroom sauce to meat loaf to Thai beef curry. Tonight we had stuffed bell peppers, which it turns out are extremely delicious.

I loved my first semester back in school to the point of severe nerdiness, and I got a 4.0 for the semester. I'm working on a really stupid one-unit online class now, and I start calculus as a summer course in a few weeks.

Now that I'm out of school for a little bit, I've been picking up some extra hours at work here and there while I have the time to make the extra money. Even work is going much better than usual, even though I've been working more often. One of my managers just left on maternity leave, and it has made a world of difference. Throughout her entire pregnancy she didn't do anything at all, and her attitude and weird directions and everything else really just got in the way for me and other people to get anything done. Now that she's gone all these unfinished, way overdue projects are getting completed, and my area of the store already looks ten times better than it did just a few weeks ago. So not only do I finally not have a huge mess over my head, but I'm getting a lot of credit where a lot of credit is due for me taking the initiative to fix all the stuff that she left completely undone. Plus all the tension that this particular person created has been lifted, which has made it a lot easier for me to work with a lot of obnoxious people. They still bug me...a lot...but I can just ignore it now without it getting to me too badly because so much other stress is off of my shoulders.

And so that's pretty much my life at the moment. Oh yeah, and I have a new band...they're called MGMT. Amazon classifies them under "neo-psychadelia," which I think is kind of the best way to describe them. Watch this video...they totally ride around on owls and kitties! And then the guy shoots this monster with a flaming arrow, and it explodes into a sea of dolphins!

The Job Search Continues

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 09:00:06 GMT

So I totally love that all the ads for receptionists and front desk people honestly consider it reasonable to ask for 2-3 years receptionist or front desk experience. Because if I had been a receptionist for the past three years, I would totally be thinking to myself... What on earth am I going to do with myself now? Oh, I know, I should be a receptionist again!

And, really, what exactly is there to learn about being a receptionist in the second and third year that you didn't learn in the first? How complicated do they really think it could possibly be?

Anyway, I'm thinking about waiting tables. I always pictured myself just dropping stuff everywhere if I were a waitress, but when I think about the huge armfulls of stuff I carry around work and up and down ladders while still helping customers in between, I think I could handle it. And that definitely wouldn't interfere with class schedules, and if I worked someplace busy I could probably make similar money to what I make now by just working on Friday and Saturday nights and then just one or two other times during the week. No benefits, though, that would suck. But it's just a thought.

On Being Myself

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 15:11:02 GMT

Last night while driving home after another stressful night of work, I almost hit a rabbit. I didn't hit him, but I almost did. He ran in front of my car and froze in terror at the last second, and I went zooming right over the poor little guy. I didn't realize at first if I'd hit him or not, and when I looked in my rearview mirror and saw him still in the road, standing there just frozen in fear, I freaked out and started crying.

Now, I am a rather sensitive girl who likes animals and has never hit a living thing with her car before, sure. But I don't think that kind of thing would normally get me so upset if I hadn't just finished another seven hours at the lovely Bed Bath & Beyond.

All day, every day, I greet people obsessively and practically stalk them with a ridiculous grin, just about begging them to let me help them, just because that's what that company thinks customers want. The people I work for send secret shoppers in after me to make sure I'm doing what they want, whether real-life customers like it or not. And I'm so scared of getting a bad grade from one of their little spies that I spend my time shouting out desperate greetings to people who pretend they can't hear me even though I'm right next to them, or who yell at me or make sarcastic comments to me because they feel oppressed or harrassed.

If it were up to me, I wouldn't be acting anywhere near the way that I do at work. But, unfortunately, what I'm paid to do is to go about playing this role, and when it upsets people, they don't get angry at managment or at the company, they just get angry at me, even though I'm not like that at all. And then at the end of the day there's this little rabbit in the road that is absolutely terrified of me, and it just makes me feel absolutely horrible because I didn't mean to scare him and I don't think I'm a scary person and I feel like I need to go back and explain that I'm not like that. Really, I'm not.

Anyway, Mike and I just now discovered Metalocalypse, and it's my new favorite show.

A Month in Review

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 11:12:38 GMT

Holy moly it's been a long time since I've updated. For once, I've actually been up to stuff.

My sister came and visited for a week from California.

I've gone back to school and am loving it, but that is the main reason that I am so busy now and never seem to have time for xanga any more.

In the aftermath of my car accident, Mike and I have decided to adopt a single car lifestyle for a while so we can concentrate on saving money and paying off debt before we take on car payments and two cars worth of insurance again. The good part is that we have paid off a massive chunk of debt and are on track to be completely credit card debt free by the end of 2009, and we should have our debt in managable enough condition to get a new car by the end of 2008. The bad part is that I have to get up early to take Mike to work every morning (another reason why I'm so busy now and never seem to have time for xanga), and Mike has to rely on rides home from coworkers a lot of the time (almost all of the time). Luckily he works with a lot of really nice people who are eager to help, but unfortunately I don't think they (or Mike and I, for that matter) really realized at first how long this would be necessary. So we might have to figure something else out pretty soon here, because these people don't exactly live next door.

I got my first tattoo with money that I got for my 23rd birthday in January.

The weather has been in constant fluctuation, producing thunderstorms, snowstorms, ice storms, tornado warnings, winter storm warnings, flood warnings, and highs ranging everywhere from 2 to 59, that I can remember.

I'm apparently getting old, becuase I've become completely addicted to NPR. I'm also starting to drink a lot of coffee. And I recently got a Dyson for super, super cheap, and Mike and I were both so excited you'd think we'd just won the lottery.

Mike is seriously going to kill me when he figures out I put that picture up. But, really, you should have seen him with that vaccuum. He wouldn't even let me use it, he wanted to vacuum the whole apartment by himself. I think he might like the Dyson a teensy bit more than he likes me, even.

Mike's last single friend finally got engaged, and now Mike has to be a groomsman again.

And, as usual, I'm getting sicker and sicker of my job by the day. Again, as usual, it's not my job so much as it is the obnoxious supervisors with authority complexes and chronic laziness, and the retarded white trash coworkers who go around stealing people's money and food and sodas, and eating all over the store and making a mess, and dragging trash bags leaking nine-inch-wide puddles of garbage juice across the entire store, and constantly coming to work in no condition to be working, and getting everyone else in the store collectively punished for all of it. I would give pretty much anything to switch to working part time and going to school full time right now. Hopefully sometime in the future that will actually be feasible, but it certainly isn't yet.

And I guess that's about it. Hopefully I'll be updating again sometime before it's been another month.

Today I Feel: Overwhelmed, Anxious, Pressured, Panicked and Extremely Cold

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 00:16:03 GMT

My Mustang has now been officially declared totalled. And now I only get one more week of my insurance covering my rental.

All I can hear in my head is the loud ticking of a clock.

Also, it was 0 degrees outside this morning when I got up. Yet they're still saying it's supposed to get up to 52 degrees on Monday. Indiana is so freaking bizarre.

Meet the Furbabies

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 12:22:23 GMT

This is a long overdue introduction of a very important little addition to our household.

This is Neko (which means 'cat' in Japanese).

And this is Paka (which means 'cat' in Swahili).

I can't beleive how much they've grown since we first brought them home! Here they are as little babies the day we adopted them three months ago.

And here they are now.

And, most of all, you must enjoy these videos of Paka acting like a lunatic. She's so crazy.

My Love Affair With the Library Part 2

Mon, 31 Dec 2007 00:43:44 GMT

See my post from July 2 for my readings from the first half of 2007.

What I read in the second half:

July

Strapped: Why America's 20- and 30-Somethings Can't Get Ahead by Tamara Draut

The Compassionate Life by Tenzin Gyatso (The Dalai Lama)

August

Eating Mindfully: How to End Minless Eating and Enjoy a Balanced Relationship With Food by Susan Albers

God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell

Jesus Land: A Memoir by Julia Scheeres

One Perfect Day: The Selling of an American Wedding by Rebecca Mead

The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream by Barack Obama

September

Nothing.

October

Nothing again. I got married on September 21, so give me a break. I was busy.

November

Paula Deen: It Ain't All About the Cookin' by Paula Deen and Sherry Suib Cohen

Good-bye, Chunky Rice by Craig Thompson

Flashforward by Robert J. Sawyer

December

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey

I Am America (And So Can You!) by Stephen Colbert

The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby

And here's to another year of good reading in 2008! Cheerio.

How to Live Like the Amish (Without the Buggy or That Whole Outhouse Thing)

Thu, 27 Dec 2007 01:05:19 GMT

I have been playing Guitar Hero nonstop for approximately the past five hours, and therefore what follows is a somewhat brainy entry in order to keep the contents of my head from turning into mush.

A few months ago Mike's hometown of Nappanee, Indiana was hit by an EF3 tornado that destroyed a very large portion of its homes and businesses. After the tornado, it took something like three weeks before Mike and I went to Nappanee again. We had heard about the damage and seen images in the news, and we were expecting to see piles of debris and wreckage. While we did see a few slightly damaged houses, what we mostly saw were brand new buildings that had been freshly rebuilt upon their standing foundations. This was only three weeks after disaster struck. Mike's dad gave us a little tour of the tornado's path, and from what we could tell at least 75% of what had been damaged was already completely fixed.

Nappanee is a town of made up of mostly middle and lower-middle class families. A third of the population works in RV manufacturing. The rest of the residents generally work in other factories or make their livings off of their farms. Also, the town was denied any emergency funding from the government. So how could this reconstruction be?

The answer: Amish people.

A very large portion of Nappanee's residents are Amish, and their organization of the reconstruction effort began first thing in the morning after the tornado hit. A few people handled the organization of volunteers and distributed work, and everyone else just dug right in. And it wasn't just the Amish people from Nappanee who helped; Amish people came in from Ohio and even as far as Pennsylvania to assist their brothers in need. (How did they get there? I have no idea. They can travel in cars as long as they don't drive them, so I guess they can probably ride on airplanes, too.)

Additionally, the Amish did not solely offer their services to other Amish. They gave themselves up to anyone in the community who needed help, Amish or not. Mike has an aunt and uncle whose home was destroyed, and the Amish people came in and just built everything right back up again in a matter of days. Mike's uncle attempted to offer some financial gratitude to the Amish man who had come from out of town and who had been the leader involved in the reconstruction of his home. The Amish man refused. His reasoning?

"All we ask is that if it happens to us, you do the same thing for us that we have done for you."

Now, anyone who hears this story thinks, "Wow. If only everyone else were so kind, so generous, so thoughtful, so selfless. If only the general population had such a work ethic, such compassion and such genuine morality." And I think that conservative people especially admire this act from the Amish community, because the Amish people are simple, moral, conservative people from whom we in the technological world like to find inspiration.

So this is my question. How can we, as modern day, non-Amish Americans really be a more kind, generous, thoughtful and selfless nation? How can we build our ethics and our compassion and our morality? How can we learn from the Amish? Not as individuals, but as a community?

As children we are taught to take turns, to share, and to treat others as we would want to be treated. These are basic principles that few people would deny are essential to being a kind, compassionate, moral person, whether a child or adult. We apply these principles to our personal lives, but when it comes to our country, our government and our communities, we start hearing things about "no free rides" and about how we mustn't become a welfare state. We act like sharing is the same thing as throwing pearls to swine, and we act like compassion is the same thing as encouraging flaws. And we sadly blame the deprived for our social undoings, as though there is some evil inner malice that controls all the underprivileged citizens of our country. What we teach our children, what we challenge ourselves with spiritually, what we know is right in any other context...it all suddenly no longer applies.

I'm sure everyone has heard the U.S.A. compared to foreign governments of a socialist nature. But have you ever heard it compared to the Amish community? We like to admire their simplicity, their goodness, and their laid back lifestyle. But do you ever wonder what community structures allow them to live the way they do?

Amish people do not have health insurance, but they do accept modern medicine. If someone gets injured or sick and their family is unable to pay for it themselves, they turn to their community. Members of the community contribute as they are able, and the medical care is paid for.

Amish people also don't pay social security taxes, and they do not collect unemployment, welfare, social security or Medicare benefits. This is not because they think the government shouldn't help people; it's because they don't think of the United States as their government. They see participation in such a system as a betrayal to their self-sufficiency. When social security was introduced, the Amish thought it unnecessary because they would never turn to American government for their financial needs. They turn to their own "government," not for pennies and scraps, but for absolutely everything they need in order to gain financial stability in a difficult time.

In virtually every aspect of Amish life, these principles of compassion, empathy, generosity and selflessness are central. When they run their community this way, it is admirable. When we try to solve our country's problems in much the same way, it is degraded and thought despicable.

What is the matter with us?

I Am Legend...and by 'Legend' I mean 'Jesus'

Tue, 25 Dec 2007 00:28:07 GMT

Mike and I went to go see I Am Legend yesterday after much anticipation. I will warn you, I am about to give away pretty much every little thing that happened in the movie. So if you don't want to know, don't read this. But if you are interested in hearing my take on some pretty blatant and bizarrely placed religious themes in a zombie movie, read on.

The movie opens with Emma Thompson as a scientist being interviewed on television for her development of a cure for cancer by genetically engineering a measles virus to be good for the body instead of destructive to it. After the cancer-cure announcement, the film cuts abruptly to New York City with an ominous "Three Years Later" subtitle, and it gives us the frightening yet intriguing tour of the City that was shown in all the trailers. Right off the bat, you can see that this movie is preaching a "science=bad," "don't mess with nature," "man can't play God," "look what we've done" point of view.

Also worth noting: one of the shots of the city that is lingered upon the longest is one of several street posters that announce, "God still loves us."

The first portion of the movie introduces us to Will Smith's character, and it's basically just a long version of the previews. Will Smith is presumably the last man alive. We find out through intermittent flashbacks that the virus in the cancer vaccine mutated, creating zombies who killed everybody (but whose one weakness is their inability to be touched by sunlight, which is why they are referred to on occasion as "The Dark Seekers"). We find out that Will Smith is Robert Neville, a virologist, who was working to stop the mutations before they got out of control. Most of the flashbacks are of Neville's separation from his family, during which at one point they oddly stop amidst the phenomenal chaos around them to actually get in a circle, hold hands, and pray formally.

Between flashbacks we go through a ton of day-in-the-life scenes that are extremely depressing. Neville is lonely and still grieving his family and maybe going a little crazy, and he continues trying to cure the zombies with no success. This goes on until Neville's companion dog gets infected and he has to smother her, which in the context of the movie is extremely tragic and at that point you're pretty much just ready to kill yourself. And thus Neville goes out that night for some crazy kamikaze style attack on a bunch of the zombies.

But, alas, he doesn't die...and this is where the movie really starts to get crazy. Neville is rescued by a non-zombie Brazilian woman and a non-zombie boy that is in her care. (The kid never gets a single line, by the way...not one! Pretty much all he does is look around, hide, and eat. At the real height of his role he got to pick up a knife in self defense, but then the lady told him to put it down and he just went back to eating eggs again.) Anyway, these people survived on a Red Cross boat, and they are on their way to Vermont where there is a survivor's colony. Neville refuses to believe that there is such colony, and so he yells a lot about how everybody is dead and nobody survived.

And then the Brazilian lady says that she was sent by God to get Neville, and she says that she knows about the survivor's colony because God told her it was there. And then Neville starts yelling about how "there is no God" and such. Although, earlier, he makes a pointed comment in conversation that "God didn't do this, we did." So it's pretty clear that Neville is (predictably) just angry at God because of what happened, but he'll get over it, since he really believes underneath it all that this was the fault of men.

Shortly after the big God conversation, the house is attacked by zombies. The little group of survivors runs down into the basement where Neville does his research. They lock themselves in a room that contains a sedated zombie on whom Neville was experimenting, and they come to see that his latest experiment worked...the zombie woman is almost completely back to normal. As they realize this, the zombies are gaining ground, so Neville draws a vial of the former-zombie's blood and symbolically gives the blood to the Brazilian believer lady. He explains to her that it is the cure, and then tells her that he knows this was all God's plan after all and that God sent her to him so she could get this cure. He then locks her and the kid up in some special safe room that is even safer than the safe room that they are already in. Once they are locked inside, he turns to the zombies and starts yelling repeatedly, "I can save you, I can save you!" Of course they don't allow him to treat them, though, because they probably don't even hear him. So he uses a hand grenade to kill them all and to sacrifice himself along with them.

Then...I swear this is true, it is not an exaggeration...the screen fades to white, and the next scene shows the lady and the kid approaching the survivor's camp which they have located in Vermont. They are welcomed in with church bells ringing, and the first thing revealed when the big metal doors open is a big huge old fashioned white church with steeple. (The second thing is an American flag proudly waving...Stephen Colbert would love this movie!) The lady is shown sharing the blood cure with the other survivors, and she narrates about how they are survivors and are now enabled by Neville's sacrifice to spread the cure throughout humanity. And at the end of her little monologue, the screen goes black and you hear her deliver the final line of the movie...

"Light up the darkness."

Seriously.

WTF???

Oh yeah, and by the way,

Merry Christmas!

R.I.P. My Beloved

Sun, 23 Dec 2007 04:05:24 GMT

Yesterday my very first car, which has been with me for the last four and a half years, was reduced to this.

Yup. I rear-ended somebody while still moving pretty fast, and the airbags deployed and everything. I don't know for certain yet, but the odds are very, very great, pretty much to the point of certainty, that it's totaled. And it makes me extremely sad.

So, here it is, my dear little Mustang's obituary.

I remember the day I first met my Mustang. I remember using my stern voice to tell the annoying salesguy to back off, and I remember the silly little test drive we took around the Cal Expo parking lot. I even remember the exact outfit I was wearing that day, all the way down to my shoes. I remember filling out all the paperwork in this big car-sales-event tent, and I remember my dad hugging me and telling me how happy it made him that he was able to do this for me. I remember following my dad home in my brand new convertible, with the top down even though it was April and barely spring weather. I shivered the whole way home, even with the heat on full blast, but I loved it.

At this time I was eighteen and mere months away from graduating high school, an exciting time in any young American's life. I was really into The All-American Rejects at the time (just their first CD, that was all that was out then), so to this day whenever I hear those songs I am overwhelmed by those same emotions associated with intense change, progress, opportunity, and joyfully chauffeuring classmates on errands around town with the top down (even though their music is really nothing all that special, I know).

My Mustang has been with me through everything. I followed my parents down to Azusa Pacific University with my sister in the passenger seat. It was a memorable drive, and it was the first of many drives I took up and down I-5 across the state of California, with many different friends and family members in tow. It was in that Mustang that my tire blew out on a five lane L.A. freeway on the way to visit Mandy at Pepperdine, and it was also in her that I got hit by some other L.A. convertible-driver in Pasadena. I drove her to go pick up Mike from LAX the first time we ever met in person, and to pick him up for many visits after that. I remember how excited I was on every drive to go pick him up, and I also remember the overwhelming sense of loss that I felt every time I got back into the car, alone, after dropping him off again. And it was in my Mustang that I packed up my things and drove away from APU for the last time, nine months after my initial arrival.

Of course it was in my Mustang that Mike and I drove across the entire country to get me and my car to our new home in Indiana. I feel kind of guilty for taking her here permanently, like she should have been taken back to California to die. As well as I adjusted to the move, she was always kind of like the begrudged child or spouse who just kind of got dragged along for the ride. I don't think she liked the snow very much. As she required more and more turns of the ignition to start up, and as she began to occasionally refuse to spit my CDs out for hours at a time, and as her front window got knocked a little out of place so that I had to open my door in order to get the top up successfully...it was almost like she was showing signs of her unhappiness on top of her old age.

My Mustang has also been a sanctuary of sorts for me. During the hellhole year of dorm life, sometimes it was hopping on the freeway for no particular reason or driving to some random far-away fast food place and eating dinner alone in my car that would keep me sane for an evening. During the last several years I have routinely taken my lunchbreaks in my car, escaping from the environment of my job to a little place that is exclusively mine to grab a bite, make a phone call, read a little, do some knitting, or whatever.

And, I'll be honest, I've always enjoyed the "You drive a Mustang???" responses that I get from people sometimes. It's something unexpected from me, usually, because people don't think of me as a sportscar kind of girl. But I like it, because my car really is an extension of my personality, but that Mustang part of my personality is not something easily spotted by people who don't know me very well. It's that less serious, more fun, spontaneous and free-spirited part of me that is really fun to express in my choice of vehicle.

And my emotional connection to my Mustang is deeper than that, too. It's not just about how much I loved her as a car. It's also about the connections that she drew between me and my dad, my family, my old friends, my teenage years, and the entire state of California. I know that I have ties to all of these that will never break, but my Mustang was the last really major physical, materially present one that I had.

Even if her final years weren't the greatest, though, that Mustang sure lived a full life. She crossed the Golden Gate Bridge, traveled alongside the ocean on the Pacific Coast Highway, conquered the freeways of Southern California, trekked over 2000 miles of I-80 from California to Indiana, explored Chicago, stayed strong through some trying snowy conditions, and even crossed the border into Canada and saw Niagra Falls and Toronto. And even when she was showing some signs of trouble, she always got me where I needed to go.

So let's remember the good times...

Well, unfortunately, these are the only car-related pictures I can find of me, and they both involve bad haircuts and poor wardrobe choices on my part, and the second one barely even shows my car. But I know there have been many better ones over the years that I just can't find or don't have, so, please, if you have some, send them my way for the sake of that lovely Mustang's memory.