Open the Floodgates

So I finally got my Antje Duvekot CD's in the mail ( "Big Dream Boulevard" and "Snapshots") and I'm listening to them. Between Antje and Alanis I'm just in angry girl music heaven.

I have the house to myself this weekend, which is actually doing me a lot of good. I'm very inspired and writing lots of different stuff. I don't know if any of it's going to amount to anything special, but we'll see I suppose.

Other than that, there's really not much to report. I'm reading The Tale of the Body Thief by Anne Rice, and when I get tired of that I break into Scott Smith's The Ruins, I Am Legend, or one of the many short stories I've been meaning to read. Junot Diaz has a great narrative voice, Mary Gaitskill's got great friction between characters, and Alice Munro's just awesome. I won't ramble, because I'm starting to, so I'll stop myself now.

I am officially on a reading rampage, which is super sweet because it's causing a writing rampage.

8 Easy Steps

After the longest 3-hour work day of the summer so far, I'm sitting here watching an episode of Daria and sipping a coconut iced coffee while pondering my next storyline. Today I worked with someone who has the charismatic, magnetic personality and all the ambition of a towel rack. So I spent the day running out of coffee and looking around for my invisible towel rack co-worker while simultaniously running out of change and wittling down a never-ending line out the door of customers. My hands shook. I spilled copious amounts of sticky beverages on myself, and burnt my fingertips.

Seriously. Wtf?

In between and during all of that, I came up with this. Enjoy.

How to Piss Off Your Co-Worker in 8 Easy Steps:
1. Talk on your cellphone. Always. If you're not talking, be texting.
2. Take your time. With everything.
3. Don't wear the required uniform in the required way so your co-workers look like shitheads.
4. Wait until there's an overwhelming amount of customers to tend to. Then disappear.
5. Invite your friends to talk to you during work. And then forget you have a job to do at all.
6. Find something important to clean every time a difficult regular shows up.
7. Ask what kind of music your co-worker hates. Then tune the radio to precisely that type of music.
8. Punch out before all the work for the day is done, leaving your co-worker with the rest.

This is all the shit I've had done to me, and have in turn started to do to the ones who deserve it.

I'll teach you all this in eight easy steps
A course of a lifetime you'll never forget
I'll show you how to in eight easy steps
I'll show you how leadership looks when taught by the best

A Home In the Dunes

So I'm in kind of a crappy rut. I'm anxious a lot, I'm worried about a lot of stuff I shouldn't be worried about, and I'm restless. A lot. My dad seems to be going through something similar, although he has a lot on his plate rather than the worrying randomly thing.

I really need to get some positive energy going. I'm not sure how. I've tried meditating and exercizing and writing and reading and video games. Any form of escape and healthy me time. And it works sort of, but not really because it only takes one tiny thing to bring all the negative back. Which isn't good because it means my inner energy is off balance in a bad way.

I have had a few awesome days with Mom and with Kim. And my new music is really making me happy. I try to listen to it as much as possible. And for some reason Alanis Morissette has sort of set off a creative spark and I'm writing like crazy. I keep getting frustrated because I have to interrupt my creative flow to go to work, which should be a goldmine for characters but it's really not. Maybe it will be someday when I'm reflecting. Right now it's just annoying.

I think I need to do more nature-oriented things. I want so badly to go kayaking on the lake like every day it's not raining. But we have to move the kayaks to nana's house so we can launch them from her side of the lake... which we need the truck for, which is still out of comission... and I need someone to carry them down with. Maybe I can rope Kim into it once we transport them... I also will probably rope Dad into taking walks with me or hiking or something. I think that would be good for both of us.

Look at us break our bonds in this kitchen.
Look at us rallying our defenses.

Swimming In Your Stomache

Alright, folks, here's the good news. My size 8 shorts are too big. Wooo! I also decided to treat myself and get some CD's. I ordered 2 Antje Duvekot CD's off www.cdbaby.com and am patiently awaiting their arrival. If you haven't heard of her you should check her out. I'm friends with her on MySpace. I also had a good day with Mom yesterday. We went to the Mall and I got the 2 newest Alanis Morissette CD's. The Collection, which is made up of her most recognizable songs and her "favorites". I also got her brand new one Flavors of Entanglment, which I love love love. It's got the same emotion and some of the same style as her earlier stuff, but it's also been tweaked and sort of updated. It's a good different.

Now here's the bad stuff. Well, not really bad, just things that are worrying me that I should probably put out there. Somewhere.

As the whole country knows, our economy sucks lots right now. And I'm very worried that I won't be able to get a student loan for the fall. VERY worried. A few weeks ago it looked like even if we couldn't get a loan (because our loan company was one of the ones that decided not to do student loans or something) we'd still be able to get the money. Now it looks like no. We got a letter from our loan company saying they could offer us some other type of loan, but we won't get details on that until next month. So we won't even know if we can apply until then, and if we do apply there's no guaruntee we'll get the money.

So I'm very upset about that right now. Mostly because the thought of hanging around the house working where I work now possibly long-term makes me want to punch a puppy. Well, not really. But it makes me very very sad and angry. I'm intelligent, dammit, and I have dreams. I will not have them squashed so early. I'm not going to be a coffee pourer or a server for the rest of my life. I did not go to a good high school and work my ass off for an education to not finish or to pour coffee and deal with people's bullshit. "I wanted 7 and a half sugars, not 8. and I wanted a bacon egg and cheese sandwich, not an egg cheese and bacon. And is that croissant toasted? What do you mean you can't toast it because your toaster will catch fire?? And can you be a dear and spread the cream cheese on the bagel for me?" NO! I CAN'T! As you can see, I work with a bunch of fucktards for the most part and the manager can't even write out a schedule without fucking it up. So NO, I will not put fucking non-fat blueberry cream cheese on your goddamn low-fat toasted bagel. Do it yourself, it'll be good exercise! By the way, don't bother doing lowfat anything if you're eating at Dunkin Donuts, asshole.

*Sigh* I feel better.

A Harmonic Connection Between All Living Beings

This isn't so much a blog post as much as it is a list of all the CD's I want to buy before the end of the summer, plus a bit of celebrity gossip discussion.

First, the music. I know, who buys CD's anymore, right? Apparently I do:
Copenhagan by Chris Townsend
Don't Look Away by Kate Voegele
Antje Duvekot (whatever I can find)
3 Doors Down by 3 Doors Down
Colbie Callet
Sara Bareilles
Coldplay
Course of Nature
Tyler Hilton

I don't know the titles of the last 5, but I want to get them nonetheless. Tyler Hilton's isn't out yet, but I'm keeping my eye out.

Now for some celebrity stuff. First of all, Sharon Stone, wtf were you thinking? The earthquake in China was KARMA??!! And you're surprised people were offended. Tsk, tsk. And, not to be Chris Crocker, but why is every magazine I pick up knocking Britney's body? Is she as lean and toned as she was when she was 18? No. But she looks damn good, especially after having 2 kids. It just bothers me.

That's my 2 cents for now.

What I Got

Is a job. Good because I could use the cash, but not so good because I've discovered I don't really like serving food products to people.

I've also been watching some movies. There's a bit of a lull in our netflix queue, so we've rented Halloween (Rob Zombie style) and National Treasure 2. Before that it was Nancy Drew, which I wasn't too keen on watching, but we did anyway. Not bad. Before that it was a few 8 Films of Horror selections. One was so forgettable I can't remember the title, and the other was Tooth and Nail, which was predictable but not too bad. Yay for Rider Strong and underground horror movies.

I've just discovered, thanks to Melissa Joan Hart's MySpace, the band Course of Nature, which I actually really enjoy. Check them out at: www.myspace.com/courseofnature

That's all I got for now. Sorry it's not very amusing.

Home

Funny how one 4-letter word can be used to tell everyone what's going on. Just "home." That's all that's necessary. We'll just skip the part where I had to fit my whole life into 2 trashbags and a storage bin... and use a bunch of little grocery bags for the rest. And we won't mention that I'm trying to sort through it all and put it away when there's really nowhere to put it all.

Ahh, college. Hopefully I can go back in the fall. Stupid loan companies.

Oh, something worth mentioning in this post: I went to Nick's last play at my old high school last night. They did such a good job. Nick, you were an awesome insane, angry Dr. Frankenstein :)