Art Land

My Gunne Sax Dresses and one that's not

2010-02-26T16:15:00.001-08:00

2009-12-25T10:29:00.001-08:00

Merry Christmas everyone! Hope you all have a wonderful day!

Comments are getting out of hand...

2009-11-13T20:48:00.000-08:00

And so I'm going to figure out how to enable comment moderation to prevent these retarded spammers from commenting. >.<

On another note, sorry I've not been updating much lately. Too tired to post much right now, but I'll try to get on tomorrow.

Hope you all are well!

Lateness abounds

2009-07-17T10:58:00.001-07:00

Well, I suppose it's understandable, as I just got married!! Wooot!

Wedding Rings and stuff

2009-06-01T19:23:00.000-07:00

These are random pictures of our wedding rings! These are custom done, Matt came out with the initial design and I embellished upon them and then we had Joe at Samuels make them for us :D

Magic Castle fun and excitement!

2009-05-19T11:14:00.000-07:00

Well, we went to the Magic Castle, which, btw, is invitation only so unless you know someone or become a member, you can't go... :(
The dress code is very strict, as well. Men must be in suits, or fancy clothes that are appropriate (see website for details). I haven't found out exactly what it takes to become a member yet (I'd have to be an associate member), but I think it'd be fun. However, I don't think I have enough money ^.^
When we first got there, it was $8 for Valet parking ($3 for members) and $20 to get in, per person. No cameras past the lobby. There are two "secret" bookcase doors in the lobby area, and the one with the owl blinking at you is the entrance (the other is the exit). In order to open the door, you have to say "Open Sesame" to the owl :D
Once inside, you get to roam around, get drinks from the bar (which you have to buy, they aren't free ya know!), watch the shows, etc.
The first show we saw was in the Close-Up Gallery, which seats around 20 people, so it was really up close and personal. Matt's brother, Mark, and their sister Marty's friend Jamie, got picked for the whole show. They had to sit at the table at the front of the room and were picked on by the magician, Allan Ackerman. He does card tricks, and they're really good.
After that, we wandered around for a bit, then decided to see another show before dinner. We went and saw Arthur Benjamin, a math whiz. He certainly was good. He could square a 3 digit number faster than people could type it on their calculators. Matt got to help with that. Then he went with 4 digit squaring, which he was not faster than the calculator, but that doesn't matter. He ever managed to do a 5 digit squaring. He almost got the first one right, but he was 1 number off (359 instead of 360) but then the second one he got perfect. Then his daughter came out to solve a rubix cube in less time than it takes to sing "Modern Major General" and she did it with time to spare.
Then we went for dinner. Matt had himself a half glass of wine, a Pignot Noir, I believe but I stuck to a Shirley Temple. For dinner, they had steaks (gah, I forget what kind!!) you could get in 10 oz., 16 oz., and 28 oz. One guy got the 16 oz. which turned out to be way too much. Matt barely finished his 10 oz. I wanted the Beef Wellington, which had a pastry crust, but they ran out so I got the Filet Mignon with Dungeness Crab and mashed potatoes and baby vegetables.
Oh was that ever so good!! mmmmmm
Then we all had our picture taken, which as soon as I get it I will post it, and then went to the last and best show. Kevin James. He had with him Antonio Hoyas and Sophie Evans as well. First thing he did when he got out was open his big sketch pad, and drew a ball. Then he drew three holes on the ball and wrote Bowling on top of it. then he closed the pad, shook it a few times, and out came a bowling ball!
Though the best part for me was when he made it snow. I can't really describe it, you'd have to be there. Though I am still trying to remember how they did the whole cutting the person in two thing. I was told how once, a while back, but then that was a little bit different... heh, it was great when they moved the severed upper part to the edge of the stage and had a girl feel the pulse. The guy grabbed her wrist and bout killed her with fright :D
yeah I can't remember.
Anyway, good times and I can't wait to go back!!

Rachel

2009-05-14T19:32:00.001-07:00

I'm currently making Italian seasoned Swordfish cooked with white wine served with manicotti stuffed with ricotta cheese, topped with spaghetti sauce and mozarella. And for dessert we're having strawberry swirl icecream with fresh papaya, kiwi, mango, and coconut. If we feel like it, we may add whipped cream and chocolate syrup and cherries... Mmmmm oh and we have a sparkling pink lemonade to go with dinner.

2009-05-10T14:34:00.001-07:00

Happy mother's day to all you out there! It's a lovely day here in sunny SoCal so i hope you're out enjoying this weather. We are, by driving down to Grandma's house. I must say all the idiots must be having a conference on the road today, thought, judging by how many times they tried to kill us already! Hehe, better luck next time. Surprisingly, the swapt meet was full when we past. Thought people would have better things to do today...

2009-05-09T22:27:00.001-07:00

First twitter... Now I'm blogging by text messaging from my phone? What's next? Maybe I'll actually get a phone with internet access so I can check my email rather than just send them.

Wedding rant, pay it no mind.

2009-04-23T10:42:00.000-07:00

For those of you who are unaware, I am getting married. We set the date at June 6, 2009, but are still waiting to find out if we can use the church we want or not... >.<
No one told me I would have to make decision I think are not important but everyone else finds them vital!
Do I want a cake server set, and do I want it engraved? I couldn't care less. I just wanna get married. I don't care what my cake looks like as long as it looks like a wedding cake and tastes goood. I don't care if there are mints on the table, I barely care if we even have food. It was originally going to be a potluck. I refuse to have alcohol at my wedding, but so many people coming drink almost nothing but... on both sides. I can handle having wine better than beer, at least. I refuse, flat out refuse, to have beer, whiskey, rum (any hard liquor or beer). If I have to, wine and sake. It's just for a couple hours, I'm sure they can handle soda, juice, and or punch. Actually, I like the sparkling cider.
I just wish that people didn't put importance on "things" that are just trinkets we really don't need. Well, one reason we can't afford what I would like and I don't like what we can afford. If we gotta have one, let's just go to the 99 cent store and get something that'll do. I really don't like the glasses they have, and I don't want them engraved (doesn't look nice to me). I have a nice crystal set we can use, got it as a birthday present and they chime so nicely :)

*sigh* I guess I'm not as girly as I thought after all. All I want it to get married, and have a family reunion to boot, and after, everyone can go to the concert and watch my family sing while I hide in the bathroom while Matt tries to talk me out of it.
Terrified is a good word.

I guess I just wish people were more laid back about things and didn't worry about having the little things around when it's the big things that matter. Like my best friend might not be able to bring her new boyfriend because it costs $200 for a ticket and none of us can afford that... I would rather have everything else cut so that everyone could come. Because what matters to me are the people around, not some little trinket that lays around waiting to be used.

and if I were to get a cake serving set, it would be with this pattern:

$1200 for a pair of spoons...

Or this:

$1300 on ebay, for just one piece. Click to see the handle, that's the best part!

Because it's beautiful, elegant, and old. They do not make them like they used to and it's so hard to find something I like that is new/inexpensive. As for the glasses, I will indeed just go with mine.
guest book, well, that's easy. They're everywhere and all it has to do is be white. And we can get the pen anywhere. ^.^

and if you made it this far, yay. cuz it's over ^.^

Ciao!

Scintillate Scintillate

2009-04-11T21:44:00.000-07:00

Scintillate, scintillate globule aurific,
Fain would I fathom thy nature specific.
Loftily poised in the ether capacious,
Strongly resembling a gem carbonaceous.

When torrid Phoebus removeth his presence,
Ceasing to lamp us with fierce incandescense,
Then you illumine the regions supernal.
Scintillate, scintillate semper nocturnal

The traveller on lustreless perigrinations
Gratefully hails your minute coruscations!
He could not determine his journey's direction
Were it not for your scintillitative protection.

Does anyone else know this song? My mom used to sing it to me as a child
*hint* twinkle, twinkle...

Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are!
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.

When the blazing sun is gone,
When he nothing shines upon,
Then you show your little light,
Twinkle, twinkle, all the night.

Then the trav'ller in the dark,
Thanks you for your tiny spark,
He could not see which way to go,
If you did not twinkle so.
..........................(then there are two more verses I don't know in geek speak)

In the dark blue sky you keep,
And often thro' my curtains peep,
For you never shut your eye,
Till the sun is in the sky.

'Tis your bright and tiny spark,
Lights the trav'ller in the dark:
Tho'I know not what you are,
Twinkle, twinkle, little star.

and just for fun:
"Three rodents with defective visual perception,
Observe how they perambulate
They all perambulated after the agriculturist's spouse
Who severed their hind appendages with a kitchen utensil
Did you ever see such a spectacle in your existence as
Three rodents with defective visual perception"

Weird dream of doom

2009-04-06T11:56:00.001-07:00

Ok, I don't know exactly where it starts, so I'll just start at the slave camp.

I was driving down the road, and on the left there was a fenced up field. They had big flood lights on and a few buildings. For some reason I knew what was going on there and swung my car around so that the headlights were illuminating a group of children. There were men there and they were holding the children for a dealer who was coming soon. Of course with their discovery, they wanted to placate me. I demanded the small blond girl, but before she was released, a big rig pulled up. The dealer had come, so I tried hiding as best as I could while he talked to the men. I can't remember exactly what happened after, I think I drove away down a freeway. I remember I was heading for Mexico, though why I don't know. Somehow I ended up at an old mountain town where I had grown up.
There were lots of people I recognized up there, but one woman I feel I should have known, I couldn't place. Her name was Takaj Moroni. (This is the funniest part. I looked it up online, it's apparently Croatian for "Such Idiot." wow...)
My dad's mom was up there as well, and she owned a store, sold mostly gardening stuff.
There was also a girl there who had powers, psychic abilities. Apparently there were a few kids like her, but she was on the "good" side. It got really confusing in the war, and somehow we were a lot closer to the ocean. Two of the women, I think one was my mom, the other was Takaj, ended up on a bit of land that when one of the kids with power flooded a river, the bit of land was washed away. Takaj almost got sucked down a deep hole, but the other woman (mom?) saved her. Later, my mom was asking me to find a dollhouse I used to play with as a child. It was in a big pile of junk in my grandma's closet, so I got it out. Takaj wanted a penny that was in the house, so I was trying to find it. Mom and Takaj were standing next to an old pickup truck, blue... I think it was from the 60's. And mom explained to me how I knew Takaj, and it hit me, the memories came back. She had helped me when I was a toddler, babysat me and such.
Then the war part gets a bit... confusing... and somehow we managed to survive and beat the other kids. One was an Asian boy who (yeah this is really weird, but hey, it's my head) had the power to control vegetation, and he made flowers really beautiful and one of them had the microsoft logo on it... heh... When he tried to attack the girl that was with me, (he used the vegetation to try to grab her) some larger boys were able to capture him.
We took him to the store where we thought we stripped him of his powers and set him to work in the back, away from the sunlight. He started freaking out, saying he needed the sun. He start yelling it and I could feel power surrounding him, then the computers flickered and shut off, along with the lights.
I flat out ran to get out of the dark store, trying to find somewhere to hide, but everywhere I turned, I was blocked by a new badguy. A couple older people were trying to help my grandma, who was confused and had no clue what was going on. They were walking very slowly, and sometimes just stood around. I saw an opening for the door and tried to dart out, but two mobsters with guns blocked my way.

that's when I woke up. :(
can't we ever win?

Oh and I should post this one too: A couple nights ago, I had a dream about a strange faraway place that my grandma and grandpa owned in Europe. They had grape vines all around, super rich, had servants even. Well, the boys went off and left me, mom, and grandma to hang out. I think I had ADHD in the dream, because i could not keep still. I kept running around the pillars, up and down stairs, all while Grandma and Mom were talking and I was blathering questions off. Then I tuned them out and noticed a door. It's really hard to describe the setting, but it was down a long flight of stairs. The floor was done up in square ceramic brown tiles, but at the top of the stairs, there was a tile that had a line down the middle.
Thinking I was being clever, I put one foot on one side of the split, and the other on the other side, so that I was facing the door. As soon as my full weight was on the tile, I felt a mechanism click and I sunk a little and the door in front of me, down the stairs, gave a click, and started opening. There was smoke and a red light started flashing and an alarm went off (bwoop bwoop kind). I ran off yelling for Grandma, saying I was sorry, I don't know what I did, make it stop.
Then I woke with a start, realizing that the alarm to wake up was going off... My heart was racing so fast... lol

Steampunking Stargate Atlantis - Zelenka

2009-04-03T23:20:00.000-07:00

I just want to say, I'm fairly proud of this picture. This is Radek Zelenka, a scientist from Stargate Atlantis, played by actor David Nykl. I decided to try to draw all the stargate characters, or at least as many as I have a mental capacity to do, in a steampunk fashion. I've lately been getting into the steapunking, making chokers and whatnot, and managed to get my family back (?) into it. Well, Jacob has been into it for a while and Dad too, but I did get Mom to start making jewelry with me and we're going to sell it on ebay (i hope).
Ok, on to the picture. This was done on printer paper, 8.5" X 11", with a mechanical pencil and a number 9 pencil, and a smudge stick. It took me 3 hours, mainly because I was trying to stick to all the details and because I kept interrupting myself to look at stuff online... heh. Matt wants to use this in his book, but I think I'll change it a little...
Here's the first run,

To the final picture... slightly touched up on the comp, because I used a camera and not a scanner...

And... well, this was my first picture ever for the Stargate steampunking, and I could say that McKay would be jealous that I spent more time on Zelenka... Man I can't believe how much I could have done with this and didn't. I'm sure you can tell I spent a lot less time on this one. I really need to redo it. Really need to. (I hate how much of a perfectionist I am. By tomorrow, I'm going to hate the Zelenka pic too.)

And here's a wedding choker, just for fun...

So there I was...

2009-04-03T12:08:00.001-07:00

Randomly searching the internet in my free time... Out of curiosty I looked up in google, the "Dangers of Fangirls." I came across this article about a guy who said, "Twilight is just a shallow fad that'll be forgotten about in 10 years time. No professional in the literary world considers Twilight a good book, let alone a work of art" in his Communications Studies when they were talking about how classic lit is elite culture. Unfortunately for him, a classmate happened to be insane. After class, he was attacked brutally by his classmate and her friends, all for that comment.
Doing more searching, I came across an entire site dedicated to dissing the book series Twilight called Twilight Sucks. The link will take you to a directory of all reported fangirl attacks. They have done things that make you wonder if the story is true, such as shot a rocket at someone, or thrown acid in someone's face (this story has not been verified and has been marked as Bull, but no proof has been given that it is not true either.) Mostly though, the fangirls just attack physically because they lose all self control.
I myself cannot see why this would spike my interest in such a way that I would actually spend time reading comments posted by both crazy fangirls and the antis, but I have come to a few conclusions.

1) The fangirls who are most likely to attack cannot spell, do not know how to use grammar correctly, and are most likely to rape the capslock. I have in fact found these characteristics to be relatively true to most fans who get upset with antis in general, but it's more prelavent in the crazy ones (and considering that SMeyer, the author, is reported as not being able to spell, use grammar, or commas or dashes correctly, is it any wonder?)

2) Most antis are trolls who enjoy enciting fangirls to either attack or just get mad (the whole purpose of being a troll in the first place)

3) The majority of both fans and antis are actually sane people who get along with eachother, they're just overshadowed by the few trolls and fangirls who keep arguing with eachother

4) The chances of getting attacked by a Twilight fangirl and the chance of getting attacked by anyone you offend are actually about the same. I believe it has something to do with mental stability. Many people have pointed out that if it wasn't Twilight, it would be something else.

And that's a good point, there. If it wasn't Twilight, what would it be? Well, it used to be Harry Potter, used to be Titanic, used to be Hanson, Backstreet Boys, NSync, New Kids on the Block (do you remember them??)... So what will it be next? And why do people have to get so worked up over fiction, over writing, over anything?
I know people who would get furious if you even just told them your political view. The Bible has incited full blown wars and genocides, as has the Koran. The word Terrorist has brought about a new line of racial/stereotypical/etc profiling, while before it was Communist, and before that it was Witch.
One of the biggest problems, going back to Twilight, that I see in the fanbase is that they are ignorant of the other amazing authors out there. I came across an interview in which Stephen King critiques Stephenie Meyer's writing ability and the amazing thing is that these fangirls have no idea who he is. There are way too many comments that emphasize my point for me to even think about quoting, but they're all misinformed trapped in their own little world of Stephenie Meyer is god.
Since when did critiques become of the devil?? How are artists and writers supposed to grow if no one will tell them what's wrong? People need to learn to take criticism and either ignore it or use it to grow. In school, I was actually upset I didn't get more criticism. I was stuck, unable to grow because I didn't know how to fix it.

As for what I personally think of the story? I think it's overused and unoriginal. The characters are one dimensional, and the heroine is a MarySue. The only original point is that the vampires Sparkle. SPARKLE. No. No way in Hell can that happen, hasn't she read Vampire folklore? What would Bram Stoker think of her work?
Oh and let's not forget the abusive and controlling relationship between a 108 year old pedophile and a girl still in high school (first book). It's a sick and messed up relationship that if you saw this happening to your friend, you'd say dump the guy, but since it's portrayed as innocent "forbidden" love (I say "forbidden" because the only person against it is Edward himself and that's because he's too angsty). He's toying with her heart, whether on purpose or not, and that is called Emotional Torture.

And none of the fans can truly come up with a decent reply. Instead they get all flamy and hate on people who actually have valid reasons for disliking the series. People have opinions. You want to be entitled to yours? Let others speak theirs.

I tried to keep this as short as possible, but I still went a ways... heh. Yay for ranting. And to close, here is a rant someone much more eloquent came up with (used with permission):

"twilight is a slap in the face to all that is vampiric, a merciless ass-rape to the name of vampire by a self-important mormon housewife. stephenie meyer took the well-established, time-honored traditions of vampiric legend and went "ok well fuck that. my thinly veiled grab-for-cash is gonna be about a soccer-playing, sun-friendly SPARKLY vampire with a heart of gold and a tortured past (this kind of drippily brooding and remorseful vamp being a character style which BARELY worked on the buffy/angel series, which had much stronger writing). then when they make the movie, they can pick a toweringly effeminate pretty boy to play said gold-hearted sparkler so that all the 12 to 17-year-old girls become drippingly wet and obsessive lustbunnies who will not only sit through this blindingly obvious marketing ploy ONCE, but will pay to see it an additional 5-20 times, thus lining all involved pockets".
i'm sure every word is falling on libidinously deaf ears, but still i'm saying: twilight is nothing more than an endless river of festering, estrogen-laden vaginal discharge custom-blended to appeal to horny teenage girls. if you hormone slaves weren't so lustily hump-happy over the ACTORS chosen to play the vapidly ill-written characters of meyers literary disaster, you would realize that. but you can't see past the pretty faces and airbrushed-on muscles to the crunchy center of absolute shite.
by the by: if you're one of the twenty individuals of meyers fan base who actually just like the story and aren't defending it solely because they are dying to rape a fictional pixie... well i can't describe how emphatically i disagree with your taste in literature, but in any case, consider yourselves exempt from this rant."

A poetic rendition of life

2009-02-23T21:45:00.000-08:00

I have travelled the world and seen many things
I have mingled with the rich and famous, and shared food with the dirt poor
I have befriended young and old alike, and learned many things from both
I have sung with choirs of angels on stages made of gold
I have captured a prince's heart and made him my own
I have travelled the land, sailed the seas, and flown the skies
I have scaled tall mountains, and under deep caves
I have spoken languages foreign to many and heard many spoken to me
I have had my art across the continents, and have seen many wonders
My heart is my home and my heart is with you
My family and friends, my prince

wow

2009-02-21T09:59:00.000-08:00

Sooooo....

I'm Engaged!!!!!!

And I graduated!!!
wow....

heheh. We're still deciding on the date, but we want June 6th, which could be a bit of a problem... Why oh WHY does he have to be so.... Stubborn!!! I mean, June 6th is an amazing date! D-Day! But it's also Kim's b-day, the concert date, and finals for my wannabe-maid-of-honor! :( How can I have her as a maid of honor if she's doing finals? >.<
But Matt doesn't like June 13th... so we're working out the kinks. *sigh*

Oh and here's some pics of the place we're probably going to have to get married at:

It's our mother church, Temple Baptist.
Not exactly my dream place, but I don't think I can afford my dream place! ^.^

I'm also having problems with another thing... it arose yesterday, really... I got my wedding dress, but I'm starting to not like it, as a wedding dress. I think it's mostly because of how I feel about myself and how I see myself in the mirror. My tummy sticks out (almost like I'm prego, but more flubby and not round) and I hate it. When I got to work today, I ran around the library (literally) and up and down the stairs four times, until I was about to pass out. I am way out of shape. ^.^

But doesn't every bride want to look her best for her wedding?

If you want to see my dress:

Random Ranting Aside...

2009-02-05T08:11:00.001-08:00

...My life is about to change...

One way or the other, because I will be graduating in a week from monday. The 16th of February. I will either be getting a new job, or I will have my mornings open... The thing is, I need a new job. I need a full time position that actually pays and has benefits. If I can get one, I'll be able to actually pay for my schooling! And perhaps help Matt out... He may or may not have a job after June.
I do not want him to have to move back with his parents or end up in the trailer in my parent's yard. That would royally suck.

I want to work for Pixar. I would love to even just sweep their floor... as weird as that is. ^.^
I'm just afraid. I really just need to get over that and apply at least. What can they say? No? Well fine, I'll just keep trying, and try elsewhere. And yay.

big fat random rant of doom

2009-01-16T22:20:00.000-08:00

I'm kind of unsure how to write this, though. I mean, my life is great, what more could I ask for? But I've been so depressed lately... It's an illogical thing, you know? Depression... it's just a chemical imbalance in the brain... but it sucks!!!
There's nothing I can do to fix it and sometimes it gets me so down that I can't hide it, and some people don't like that... but I can't help it, so what do they expect me to do? I can't act the way they want me to, I have to be me and if for some reason I am depressed, they should jus get over it and not get all offended.
and that was a bit of a rant I wasn't expecting...
Doggone it, I hate this feeling! I don't know if my self esteem could get any lower! The only way that really helps is by typing, so I hope if this offends anyone, that you can just ignore it and go on with your life because I need to get it out.

The way my mind works is very emotional, but at the same time very logical, and both those sides fight in situations like this. How logical is it to hate yourself and feel like garbage when there is no reason? To suddenly start having paranoid thoughts, or to feel lonely and neglected when you're around people you love and who you KNOW love you back? It is very illogical, but these feelings will not go away!
Unfortunately it makes me so much more stressed about the next four weeks of my life. After those four weeks are up, or even sooner, who knows where I'm going to be? I have been in the same routine for over 2 whole years! And suddenly my whole entire routine is going to be completely dirupted and for someone who is very routine oriented, this is going to be weird. I can only hope the transition will be nice. I mean, I'm going to be thrust into the world I always dreamt about being a part of, but I've been trained to work for the government which runs rather differently!
No asking questions to telling people their designs suck and that you can do better!
I keep spending more and more time online... I need more people to hang out with or something, I almost feel attention starved! lol...
^.^
living with my mom taught me one thing, and that's people do not want to hang around a depressed person. Through experience, I have found it to be true and have learned to bottle up my emotions and to use excuses like, "I'm not feeling too good" or my favorite, "I'm tired."
Person, "So how are you today?"
Me, "Oh not too bad, just tired." sometimes it's true, sometimes I'm really depressed.
But I don't think anyone really knows me well enough to be able to tell the difference and I don't tell people. I hardly ever tell Matt and he's the closest person to me! I need to communicate better so that I can avoid breakdowns... It's just that when I get in this mood I feel bad about everything! Why should I tell people? Why would they care? What good would it do anyway? I don't want to be a whiner! etc.
I just suck and everything is my fault. That's the answer to everything. And why should I share my suckiness? Let everyone else be happy.
And screw you all who say I'm emo. Big difference, and you'd better learn it. >:(

>.<

sorry, I just seriously needed to get some aggression out. If anyone made it this far, thank you and goodnight.

Christmas and stuff

2009-01-11T22:13:00.000-08:00

What happened to Christmas? When did it become such a life sucking experience where gifts are supposed to be given and if you don't, it's a guilt trip.
>.<
oh well, so I guess I should tell what I did with my Christmas money that everyone gave me. I spent it on food and gas. Oh I did buy some wire to make Christmas presents, but that was only $20 ^.^
Though if you want, you can say that I spent that money on a trip to Oregon instead, which ended up costing me more than I could afford due to Matt's lack of funding *grumble* I told him we shoulda slept in the car and taken my car!! lol, that would have been funny! My car is a dinnky little green geo that gets 45 mpg and can barely fit my dad. We would have slept horribly. But we also would not have spent $200 on gasoline!! (O_O) *gah*

So yeah... I failed in buying myself something for Christmas... but I was at least able to keep up with my bills, go to school, and eat! :D which tends to be a rarity for the most part these days >.<
Man, if it weren't for those stupid student loans... I believe they're up to $400 a month now, which is $30 less than I get in a single paycheck. Then gas is thankfully down to $40 a pay period, but it was up at $80 for a while!
And even doing the math, I should be able to do more, spend more, but then there're little things that keep popping up.
Like the week before Christmas I spent around $100 just on the doctor. Then there was the fixing of my car early December which cost over $70, and I still need to get it smogged and registered, but I'm down to -$50 in the bank and I don't get paid until Tuesday, of which I will see none of that money either. >.<

Sorry for the rant, it's pretty late and I really need to go to bed...

Goodnight and hope you have a good day!!

Yeeesh, almost a month!

2009-01-06T12:15:00.000-08:00

I know I know, I haven't been on in a while and that's Because December is one busy month! And now I'm working on finals this week so I may not be able to get on to post a full synopsis of my trip to Oregon until next week... maybe. >.<
I just wanted to show you this really cooooool castle that I want! Um, you kinda have to click the pic to see it all and it may take a bit to load. But it is worth it!! at least to me... hehe :D

oh and I GOT A HARP AND A NEW CAMERA FOR CHRISTMAS AND IT"S SO AMAZING AND YAYAYAYAY!!!

Cult fail

2008-12-11T06:39:00.000-08:00

Failblog.com

Bragging rights

2008-12-09T16:45:00.000-08:00

Everyone loves to brag, right? Well, who better to brag about than family!
I've been thinking lately about how awesome my family is and was making a list in my head. I decided, I should write it down.
(by the way, as I was writing at 4:28 pm Tuesday, December 9th, two earthquakes hit California at the same time. 4.4 in Trona and a 3.6 in Rialto)

My family is an amazing family, and this includes extended on both sides. My mom's side tends to have a little more of a temper, but we're all very stubborn :D We're all very musically inclined and every baby ever born has been beautiful. This is not my pride speaking, but strangers in the street coming up to us and complimenting us on how adorable and cute and beautiful we are. I'm sure before my grandparents, before the first pictures were taken of my ancestors, the babies were adorable.
We are also very intelligent. I do not know of one family member that is not very intelligent. My brother's IQ is 163 (or 162) and my mom's is 164. I'm unsure as to what mine is, but I think it's about 130. I don't know anyone else's, but trust me, they've got quality minds.
As far as being musically inclined, we've either got rythm, great voice, a talent playing instruments, a mixture of them or all three, or more. :D My brother alone can play pretty much any instrument you hand him and he has proven this many times, not to mention his voice astounds people who've never heard it as well as those he hangs around often. He actually has rythm as well! He takes mostly after mom's dad who can also do these things ^.^ They're both bass voices too.
I will add that linguistics runs in the family, whether it's pronunciation, reading, or writing, or the understanding of other languages. I'm uncertain if these talents are with all of us, as I myself am not overly talented in this area... I am, however, above average in the linguistics area, but I blame that on my upbringing ^.^ being surrounded by people who speak/read/write other languages kind of does that.
Artistic people are we as well! From writing, speaking, acting, designing clothing/jewelry/anything, just name it! We are very artistic people! Very creative! Wood working, needlework, beading, leatherwork, paper, graphite, charcoal, acryllic, pastels, crayons, markers, I could go on forever.
You know what else? We're funny. Puns, sarcasm, jokes, whatever, we seem to be able to have a good time anywhere, from funerals to apocolypses! I swear, despite the fact that we were sad when dad's dad died, we had a party! I guess you could call it a wake. It's our way of dealing with things, I suppose.
One thing I've been noticing recently is that we're amazing cooks! It's a wonderful feast at every gathering. Matt and I have become a great team when we cook, and I LOVE to cook!

So that's my family! There's a lot more, of course, but too much to list. All you need to know is that we're awesome :P

and there, that's my bragging right for the year :D

*edit
My dad pointed I forgot one of the bigger things... Der! My family is also good at mechanics. Dad's dad made his living fixing cars and for a while, so did Dad. Even my 3 year old nephew has a knack for taking things apart and putting them back together ^.^

My Generation is screwed up?

2008-11-26T21:21:00.000-08:00

Today :D

I was just thinking, because people are thinking I may possibly have an ulcer? I need to see the doctor to make sure. But come on, an ulcer? I'm 23! I have fibromyalgia and acid reflux, and get anxiety attacks, suffer from depression and OCD, and maybe some other stuff I don't know about yet with chronic sinus infections ^.^
And by talking with me no one would know.
And this sounds somewhat bizarre and weird and not true, but the weirder part is that there are other screwed up kids out there. My friend at school has arthritis (among other things, and she's not the only one) and my other friend has CATARACTS!! He's what, 22? and he has CATARACTS! Aren't these things that older people get? (no offence) ;)

it's raining right now and I really need to go bake those pies for tomorrow ^.^ lol
I love cooking and baking.

Oh and if you want to look at pictures of beautiful clouds and such, check out my picture only blog: Driving Mad Pics

Do you support gay marriage?

2008-11-25T08:11:00.000-08:00

There are so many confused people out there (certainly not excluding myself) who are just very uncomfortable with the whole idea. This is majorly due to the fact that in our society, in human history, this is an act that has been forbidden, frowned upon, a great sin, an abomination, etc. How are we, creatures of habits and traditions, trained from birth to uphold our beliefs, to stand strong for what we believe is right, supposed to just drop our beliefs to accept something that goes against what we were taught?
It would be equivalent to legalizing stealing from the rich, as some people do view it as "not wrong" and others consider it a great sin.

First off, let us look at the number one argument for gay marriage. "Anyone should be able to marry whoever they wish." "Vote for Love."
Whoever? Anyone? Then how come these people who say this have a problem with letting a brother and sister get married? What about four people who all want to marry each other?
One argument I've heard for the incest is that IF they have kids, there will be health problems. So what if they get their tubes tied and adopt? No problem there!

Sometimes I have a hard time commenting to some of these people, such as the one who states, "Support love! ALL kinds of love!" All kinds?? Really... Love of a horse? Bestiality is more frowned upon than... well, a million different things ^.^
What about child love? Are we talking about true love or the love of flesh? Looking at flesh? Pedophiles love what they look at, that's a kind of love, should we all start supporting that?

yeah, I'm being extremely nit-picky today.... I just feel like they're missing something important...

It's so much bigger and broader than people think, while at the same time it's all very specific...

>.<

just wait, we'll be hearing more on the incest if anyone can marry anyone. Slippery Slope and a can of Worms.

Can I take a vacation now, mommy?

2008-11-24T18:09:00.000-08:00

*sigh* I dunno... a blog is here so I can get stuff off my chest, right? To spew my thoughts for whoever deems it interesting enough to devote their precious minutes to read it, whether it only be myself.
I'm getting so many mixed messages concerning my work that I don't know what to do. It seems as if no matter what we do, if we do it right we did it wrong. We cannot seem to get it right. Granted we didn't get yelled at about Halloween, we weren't exactly showered praise and now we're being "yelled" at about planning programs for the library after we just had a meeting where we planned crap for the next half a year! (o_O)
Also, the email states that "Both (coworker) and Rachel were hired to implement youth programs." Which has been pretty difficult but we have been doing it and I wrote a lot down in the meeting about what I want to do for the December programming, and I'm pretty certain I talked to our supervisor about it, but now she went and planned a teen program without even talking to me about any of it! What the crap?
Not only that, but it's a children's project not a teen project, so how are we going to interest the teens?
We're pretty frustrated right now...
not to mention that I sent an important email to someone last week and they just said they never got it (O_O)
I am starting to become convinced that there is a communication monster out there, eating half of the conversation so all we (and they) get are random weirdnesses that confuse and frustrate everyone.
Of course it would help if there was a lot more communication going on. The email states, "Please do not wait to be asked by your supervisor but willingly submit your ideas to her for guidance and assistance."
She never likes our ideas when we do tell her about them (which we do, and I don't think she ever tells our manager that) and just comes up with her own. Perhaps because we still tried to do our own thing (instead of becoming the big library's little shadow) for Halloween we were not praised much. But that there makes me confused about this one part: "Your usage is way down..." Not that I've noticed and having over 100 people in the library at once for a program is considered way down when we've never had that many? Really?

Our job descriptions are not what they seem, but heaven help us cuz we can't figure out what they are due to all the mixed messages! Do we do the planning or does our supervisor? Do we matter at all anymore other than warm bodies to help people?
What can I do when I try to do what they want and somehow, even though I did it exactly, it was wrong? We would all like to know. How can we do something right?

COMMUNICATION GOES BOTH WAYS!

>.<

as far as talking to manager or supervisor about these concerns, we got more rules and yelled at more. wtc.

I'm stilled ticked off about being accused of low-balling.

Long time no write :(

2008-11-14T07:27:00.000-08:00

Busier and busier, that's my schedule! I only have about 44? days left of school! *dances*
bleh... I hate being sick. My whole family is getting over it, as am I, and Matt. People at work, people at school... Yes! It is Flu season! or cold season, as I'm not sure what this is.

we've been currently baking things pumpkin! Everything! almost
cookies, muffins, bread, cake, pie, cheesecake, etc. :D

As you can see, we had fun! er, btw, if you noticed the Ajax bottle next to the food, we didn't use any in the food! We had it out because of this:

Hmph. They are Argentine ants and they won't go away! Matt has taken to spraying them with glass cleaner, but they just keep coming. >.<

I didn't take a picture of the cute little cheesecakes I made, but they look like this (note: if the picture looks cut off, just click on it)

www.sema.go.th
Only mine were pumpkin spiced with dark chocolate shavings :D I brought them to school and they were a big hit ^.^

I can't wait to be able to have my own restaurant, whether it's in my own house for my own family, or in a large brick building with ivy crawling up the sides, fountains, violinists, and everything, for the public.
I love cooking, almost as much as I love 3D modeling ^.^ *HUGS*
I'm so glad God smacked me into trying out 3D animation! I'm a whiz at modeling! Check these out! (again, if they look cut off, please click on them to see them fully)

I am exstatic and so freakishly happy with my work. :D I can't wait until I can get the program, but it's about $4000-$7000 O_O

:(

yeesh, of course if I get a job, it'll pay for itself within the first few jobs, I'm sure! If I charge about $50 an hour, in just 24 hours, I'll have $1200. Some jobs take over four days just to render, which is $4800! See what I mean? I'll just need to save up.

Ok, well, a lot has happened and so I hope you'll forgive me for taking so long to write, and then for writing a ton with lots of pics to slow down your computer! :D

Rachel out :D

Arts and Crafts in the library

2008-10-21T18:35:00.000-07:00

Thought I would share with you my crafts that I did in the library.

Just wrapped orange felt around a purple felt clump and wrapped it with black fuzzy pipe cleaner.

Ain't it cute? This is just tissue wrapped around tissue, tied up with red pipe cleaner and markered with black marker.

I am most proud of him. :) He is just a ghost base with googly eyes and a felt cape, wrapped up with red pipe cleaner.

Meh, it turned out ok, but not that awesome. It's fun to put on someone's shoulder ^.^ Just tissue wrapped with pipe cleaner.

Marriage

2008-10-19T19:26:00.000-07:00

I was pondering some things I heard the other day... I heard people saying that Marriage is Sanctified by God, which is why homosexuals should not marry. So if two pagans get married, they're sanctified by God? Or is it that God only sanctifies marriages of those He approves of? In which case, I'm sure a few "Christian" marriages would not be all that sanctified.
First, we should look at the word "Sanctify." According to a secular dictionary:
Sanctify
1. to make holy; set apart as sacred; consecrate.
2. to purify or free from sin: Sanctify your hearts.
3. to impart religious sanction to; render legitimate or binding: to sanctify a vow.
4. to entitle to reverence or respect.
5. to make productive of or conducive to spiritual blessing.
It is a religious term.

Second, we should look at the history of marriage. The Bible is actually pretty vague about it. It says, "For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh." Genesis 2:24. This is the first mention of an actual marriage. It doesn't get into marriage at all except when referring to Christ and the church. Obviously to God, marriage is between a man and a woman, as it is repeated constantly when talking about how to act in a marriage.
As far as marriage being solely Christian, however, we can believe that because we believe in God who created the first man and woman and believe Him to be the only. However, we cannot impose our ideas onto others, but only present them in a manner that is not bible-bashing. Too many Christians claim to be not of this world and yet try so hard to make the world theirs.

I have never been very comfortable with the idea of homosexuality and as well as it does go against God I cannot approve. However, this is not my world and what they do with their lives is not up to me, but between them and God. A good argument against homosexual marriage is that it's a start on a slippery slope. If we allow this one thing to happen, then what's next? Poligamy? Beastiality? Where is the end?
How can we decide what to allow, when to allow it, and why? Granted, going by the bible is the best bet as the laws are right there, simple and easy, but we have many people who are not believers in the bible. Nowhere in the bible does it say we are to impose our ideas on the world, as the Catholic church has been trying to do for centuries. I'm sure if you look back in history, you can tell what imposing religion on people can do!!

On a secular level of opposing homosexual marriage, perhaps because they grew up in a society that as a whole has ingrained in their brains that love only happens between man and woman. While I cannot fathom actually loving a woman, I can fathom that love can indeed happen. It's an incredibly confusing backwards kinda thing to me, but I can see how it can happen. How can a cheetah mother a baby ape? How can a dog mother kittens? Various strange things have occurred.
I'm rambling now. ^.^

Oh and there's this whole fact on changing the constitution for prop 8?? Just for something as silly as the definition of marriage? There are soooo many different types of marriage...
Say, how come a woman can marry a man for money and benefits, but gay people who are allowed to get married can't get married for money and benefits? Screw the system, it's jacked up.

Sorry for the post if it doesn't make any sense, I'm a bit tired and confuseled. I have an English final to do tomorrow, so I'm saving all my brain power for that.

>.<

Rachel out.
will probably write more on this when I can think of it. If you have any arguments, comments, opinions, or anything, please leave a comment!

Times flies...

2008-10-18T09:37:00.000-07:00

When you're busy, you lose track of time until somehow it's a completely new year! Granted it's only October, but I don't remember passing through September... I barely remember August >.<
lol

I really don't know what to say. I felt like writing on my blog and now all thoughts have flown the coup. Maybe in a bit I'll remember something! ^.^

Well, I could always mention the fact that Mira Loma was not always Mira Loma. They actually changed the name because of what had happened there many moons ago. See, once upon a time there was a nice little place called Wineville. One day, many young boys went missing! Of course the police were all over that and found the man who had tortured, mutilated, and murdered the boys. He murdered them on his chicken farm and hid the bodies, which the police found. They executed him. One woman couldn't find her son. His body was never discovered and so she hoped he was still alive. There was this runaway who wanted a free trip to California, so he claimed he was her son and the police took him to California. She claimed he was not her son and was put in a mental institution until the boy fessed up. She continued to look for her son, never giving up hope. She fell off the face of the earth in 1941.
So because of all the corruption in the police force and the murders and everything, the little town of Wineville was known best for the Wineville Chicken Murders, so they said, screw it, we're Mira Loma now.

It's just me, is all

2008-10-02T20:55:00.000-07:00

The more I thought about it, the more I realized... I hate myself. I actually hate myself so much more than I had originally thought! I know, I know... I shouldn't hate myself and it's true. It gets me nowhere.
But I do.
Why??
The reasons my mind gives me don't make much sense. It says, "You're fat, you can't stop over eating." and other stuff I don't wish to make known just yet ^.^ But I'm not fat! I'm about 155 lbs which is just a little over what I want to be, but still within "normal" or average. And you can't really tell by looking at me because I've been blessed with the fact that my fat goes everywhere, not just to my rear :) (yeah, it even goes to the chest area! annoying...lol)
Well, I have been working out and have lost 10 lbs so far and am looking better (more fit) but that doesn't seem to be enough for my mind.
I do over eat a bit... I don't realize it until I've finished eating and slowly I realize that I ate too much. So to help fix this I've started cutting back on my portions a bit more now.
Even still, I'm constantly bagging on myself about small little things. You know, I've even given myself panic attacks because of it. I didn't used to get attacks until Feb 07 and I ended up getting panic attacks and ever since I've had acid reflux and every so often I give myself a panic attack. These aren't full blown attacks, I am able to dissuade them when they start, but they sure ain't good for me! ^.^

So how do you stop hating yourself, even when you've realized that it's for stupid pointless, illogical reasons?

oh and that's another reason I hate myself! lol
Because I know and can't stop! It ends up becoming such a freaking loop that sometimes I end up having a nervous/mental/emotional breakdown. I am proud to report I have not had one since August! :D
But it was because of self loathing and I still hate myself.

don't worry, I will NOT even THINK about ending life because I actually like living, believe it or not! Despite my past record, I have gotten soooooooo much better.

So, I just need to figure out how to make my mind shut up. If anyone has any input, I would love to hear it! :D
Because at the moment, I am actually somewhat happy, but I still hate myself. It makes no sense, like a purple spotted three headed yellow cow in the Netherlands on Easter in December.

whee.

Rachel out

Full Moon, Blue Moon, October, Halloween, Friday the Thirteenth, Math, and me

2008-09-30T14:33:00.000-07:00

What do they all have in common? Superstition.
October is a month where people get ready for Halloween, or the Day of the Dead. The Day of the Dead is celebrated in many cultures and has been celebrated (or feared) for centuries upon centuries. It has changed quite a bit, at least for Americans. We celebrate it by dressing up and eating candy.
Friday the 13th has long been a day most people still consider bad or unlucky, despite the fact that for some, it has been a very lucky day. There have been many 'Friday the 13th' movies and spoofs, books, and other types of media to hype up the superstition.
Blue Moons happen once every 2.72 years, or 7 times in 19 years. Once in 19 years does it happen in the month of October, with the exception that 1974 to 2001 was 27 years, and 1944 to 1955 was only 11. However, 27 + 11 is 38, or 19 twice, so it makes it up.
Full Moons are easy. They happen every month, except in the rare blue moon occasion where it happens 4 times in a season, twice in one month.
Black and orange are also colors most commonly associated with the month of October, but Black has more significance. Black is most commonly used as a color for mourning, signifying death. It is probably associated with death because death is unknown, in the dark. When we die, does darkness consume us? Lost in a land where we can see nothing but black?
Black really has nothing to do with this post, but I thought I would throw that out as well.

Back to the post, I was just absolutely curious as to when the next instance would be. So according to my calculations, the last occurence of a Blue Moon (full moon on Halloween) with a Friday the 13th in October was in 1944. Unfortunately the next one is going to be in 2191 and I'll be long dead. Maybe.
The cooool part about this though is that these occurences happen every 247 years. I LOVE those numbers, especially in that order! :)

247... they make me happy. XD

742 not so much, 427 meh... 274 feels wrong, but 247 is happy.

Which is the whole reason I'm posting this. :D

And so, numerology, astrology, and whatever other crap there is out there, ultimately means... nada.
Nothing exciting ever happened on the dates in which the ultimate union of supersticious stuffs happened... The only thing I found was kinda cool:

I have something that may interest you. My name is Bill Fowler and I was born October 12, 1944. My Father was a togglier/waste gunner with the 97BG414SQ. I have a RADIOGRAM sent to my Dad on Oct 12 USA time and arriving in Amendola on Friday the 13th European time. This caused a newspaper article about my Dad having a bomb run the 13th and having a son born on the same day. Below is an exert from the article. I don't know what newspaper printed this article but it is titled "Friday the 13th Is Lucky For Bombadier Fowler" By Harry H. Garrett.

"Trouble Pops Up"
""The target for the day." Sargeant Fowler said,"was an oli refinery at Blechhammer, Germany. Blechhammer is a pretty rough one at times, and the fact it was Friday the 13th just made me wonder - though naturally, as a product of the American education system I'm not the least bit superstitious.
"But sure enough" he said "just before the initial point of the bomb run, a mechanical failure developed in the plane.
"The rest of the formation streamed on past us. Nobody knows what it really is to be alone until it happens to him up there, with enemy fighters waiting to pounce on the first unlucky straggler.
He Really Was Lucky
"I say unlucky. That was just it. Somehow the enemy didn't spot us after all. If they had it would have been all over."
Sergeant Fowler terms this "miracle of good luck."
"We made the bomb run alone. Still nothing happened. We were holding our breath.
"Then after leaving the target the plane began to behave properly again. We were able to catch up with the rest of the formation and made the run with no further trouble."" (click the text to see the original post)

There was a little flooding in Denmark and Germany in October 1697, and oh so exciting nothing happened in 1450, 1203, 956, 709, 462, 215, or 32 BC that was recorded. woot.

Next up I'll check out when the next full moon on a solstice is!

hmmmm, not for a while! The next full moon solstice/equinox will be:

September 23, 2010 --> Autumn
December 21, 2010 --> Winter
March 20, 2011 --> Spring

Then a break... and we get new moons in the same pattern

September 23, 2014 --> Autumn
December 21, 2014 --> Winter
March 20, 2015 --> Spring

Then we get a couple full moons

June 20, 2016 --> Summer
March 20, 2019 --> Spring

tada!

ok, so I was bored. I know, I'm bad.

I'll sign off.

Rachel :D

oh and here's a list of all the years a blue moon is in October:

1925 - 1944 - 1955 - 1974 - 2001 - 2020 - 2039 - 2058 - 2077 - 2096 - and pretty much every 19 years after that.

October has a Friday the 13th in a pattern of 6 years, 5 years, 6 years, 11 years. So currently we are on an 11 year run from 2006 to 2017. I won't give a list because there are waaay too many, but if you want I can. It's really easy to calculate yourself, just remember 11, 6, 5, 6, 11. :D 1165611... looks silly.

and yeah, that's it for tonight!

Depression...

2008-09-27T21:39:00.003-07:00

I seem to be living in some weird dream world... a world in which what I think is now, is somehow 30 years from now!!
I have such strange ideas that cybernetics, robotics, androids, etc. are so much more advanced than what everyone is telling me! O_O
I feel like I know, I KNOW, that robotics is so much more advanced. I know that amazing things are possible! Androids with smooth movement, human-like and all... realistic facial features... eyes that aren't quite dead... Oh why are my dreams and hopes sooooo wrong? Or are they lying to me? :(
Or am I just living in the future?

Maybe I should explain one thing first: my dream. It all started a while back when I found out about an ancient hoax pulled by two young girls many many years ago. They cut up a book about fairies and took pictures of the fairies, claiming the fairies to be real.

Called the Cottingley Fairies Hoax, the hoax was not caught for quite a while and even still today, many people think the fairies were real. It even inspired a movie!

I was intrigued by this idea, and came across another image hoax that inspired me even more on my path...
This one is called the Derbyshire Fairy and is indeed a hoax:

It sparked a wonderful idea into my head: what if I could make a completely believable fairy, using only synthetic parts? A fairy that only under severe testing would be considered fake?
However, before you jump to any conclusions about me wanting to trick people, it's not that. My dream is more along the lines of, can I? And they would make awesome movie props! Then I started dreaming more. A full sized human! Completely identical in every way, including tendons, nerves, arteries, bone structure, etc. And through this another dream was born.

It would be made of titantium, synthetic skin, muscle, and hair, the bone structure would be identical, and it would be amazing. This creation of mine would be a fluid, beautiful panther! It would move like a real cat, it would be silent in movement, or as silent as possible...
It should work, if we copy EXACTLY the skeletal structure of a real panther, complete with tendons and everything.

But now it seems I have been dillusional for everything I've found is evidence that my expectation is too high and I need to wait. :(
This makes me highly saddened. At least I can still make my human and it will be amazing, still! It's going to feel really disturbing, as it should feel exactly as a human should, but completely synthetic! No ethical dilema here because it's not an android. Just a movie prop :D

So if anyone has anything that can tell me my hopes and dreams are not far off, I would love to hear it! :D

Thank you and good night! While there is still night...

Rachel

p.s. found all the pics on google images typing in "fairies hoax"

Reading is Fundamental

2008-09-06T10:30:00.000-07:00

Found this really cute bookmark in a book today with a poem on it:

Reading Fundamental? NO!

It's FUN-and-mental like (you know)

The world around you seems so right

When all the words in black-and-white

Keep feeding dreams into your head

And stuffing you until you're fed

With far-ut plans no one can guess

And that's a FUN-and-mental YES!

Curse of Youtube

2008-08-22T18:15:00.001-07:00

I thought this was pretty cool, but yet creepy...

Want

Heh, wish I could be this good!

Remember shadow shows?

People

2008-08-15T13:59:00.000-07:00

A few things that don't make much sense to me... Why can't we allow homosexuals to marry just because we're uncomfortable with them? We let other people we're uncomfortable marry. Once a while ago, a black person couldn't marry a white woman. Even today some people look down on it. Why are we so against people being together?
I may be Christian, but I actually believe we should let "different" people get married if they want to. What job is it of ours to judge? Isn't God the judge, not us? Besides, this isn't even our world. We are ambassadors here on earth to bring God's word to people without judging them. Only God knows their hearts and yet so many so called Christians look down their noses at everyone else with this "Holier than thou" attitude that gives other Christians a bad name.
They got upset because they took prayer out of school, but isn't a public school part of the county it's in and isn't the county run by the government? It's political... so... what happened to a separation of church and state? Why would religion even be in school except to study? It's not the teacher's job to teach our own children about God, that's the parent's job or the friend's job. The only way religion should be in school is as an academic study of all religions, unless it is a private school run by a religious faction.

Religious beliefs have been causing wars since the beginning of time, which is why they decided to have a separation of church and state. They didn't want to be like England who, everytime they had a religious change, had a massacre of everyone who didn't believe them. I'm not certain of the current situation, but in Ireland they had serious problems between the Catholics and Protestants. Why? Because people can't stand other people who don't believe the same things as them.
In America, awhile ago and even today, Christians freaked out when some white person would want to open a school for the colored. Big deal! Whood-de-doo. But they were so afraid of... something... change? that they attacked, viciously, those schools. They threw eggs at the building, yelled racial slurs, threw rocks, even burned them. If you've watched the movie "Holes" you can see what I'm talking about and that was just a kiss.
So why would the Christians act like stupid vicious brutes just because something different was going on that they didn't like? Why do people result to mindless violence when something happens they don't agree with? I have had personal experience with stuff like this, with me and my brother, and it still doesn't make sense. Humans just don't make "sense" and yet we continue to try to make sense of it.
It reminds me of when the pope said that muslims are violent and they retaliate with violence, to prove his point?

The funny thing is that none of these people who oppose homosexual marriages can give any unselfish, reasonable explanation for why homos should not marry. They say it's against their religion, it's a degradation of human society (why, because you don't agree with it?), they just don't like it, it's a bad example for their children... With what's on TV, I don't think homosexuality is any large threat. Down in the Ontario Mills Mall, there's a store called Ecko that sells soft-core porn. You walk past their store and see what's on tv. Beautifully fit young women dressed in the scantiest bikinis they could find, acting like sluts, selling these clothes to young men. I actually saw a crowd of men staring at the tvs.
Or what about that Carl's Jr. commercial they had to edit because of the outrage it caused? It was the one with the "school teacher" and that "song" about flat buns. I know of a community that boycotted Carl's Jr. because of it. My vegetarian friend was certainnly happy to boycott ^.^ hehe.

My theory is that people are inherently selfish and closedminded when it comes to beliefs, whether they are consciously aware of it or not. Of course with some it's not even noticeable because it may not be a belief that comes up much. Such as whether we landed on the moon. It doesn't have to be religious, as long as you believe it full heartedly. People need belief.

Well, this is what happens when I get bored and see some random commercial... so random, aren't I?

This is not our world (not talking about the earth) so why do we have so many strange attachments to what it does?

p.s. don't take me too seriously, I may just be crazy ^.^

Impossible

2008-08-14T07:53:00.000-07:00

Matt pointed something out last night that I find amazingly true. From our experience, we cannot mess up dinner. Even my dessert baking has been perfected, as was proven by that cake I so recently made :D
Last night I made meatloaf for Jacob and Matt, but I hadn't made it in a while so I wasn't sure how much of what I should put in. I knew it had ground beef (duh), oatmeal, and ketchup. I added diced onion and celery as well as some garlic salt and a dash of Italian seasoning and pretty much just experimented. It turned out really nice and moist and surprising. Took longer to bake than I anticipated, so we ended up eating at 9:30. I also made mashed taters to go with it.

I cannot think of a time we messed up a meal. We have this inborn talent for making good food. I think the only time we did mess up, it was pretty much a matter of opinion. We made this cajun salmon dish and used too much hot sauce, so it burned our mouths, but it still tasted fantastic. :D

Here are some pictures of my cake that I made!

Are they not beautiful and perfect?

TaDa! The finished project!

And a Paint Shop Pro edit of the finished project :D

Yay pics!

Roller coasting through life

2008-08-11T17:22:00.000-07:00

Roller coasters are fun, right? They're supposed to be fun, but then you suddenly realise you're riding Cyclone or Flashback and you want off before the ride even starts. Or it's like those spinning cups at Disneyland where you're all having so much fun until a large male gives it a twirl and your guts reject everything you ever ate. But for most coasters, we constantly get back on for more thrills and gut-wrenching action.
It also reminds me of watching those horror flicks, or those horribly depressing movies where you know you're going to start sobbing, but you watch anyway. That is also life. Life can take you on some amazing trips (even without the use of drugs -_O) as well as dragging you through the muck and mire until you think it can't get any worse and then it does. Some of us continue on living while others A: suicide because they can't handle it, or B: dwell in the past, in the dark, morose and morbid. Hmm, that would be like riding the dull train of emo nightmares.

Somehow, despite riding a roller coaster through fire, where you always get burned, we seem to constantly get back on. We even get back on the roller coaster that tries to constantly kill us. Ok, so most "normal" people don't actually try to ride that one (unless they're commuters!). Ah, commuting... isn't that like playing Russion Roulette? Almost... With how crazy these drivers are, I'm surprised daily I've not been in an accident. I expect to see at least 2 head-on collisions a day with the route I take because so many people are passing illegally and going WELL over the speed limit.
This whole weekend was kind of a roller coaster for me. I keep forgetting I have Fibromyalgia and so when the symptoms flare up, I constantly think, "Why am I so stressed and so tired?? And sore??" This goes on for a while and then it hits me, "Oh duh! I gots the fibro!" and it all makes sense I can remember how to help relieve this anxiety and crap better.
So other than not sleeping/feeling well, this weekend was not bad at all. But because I was having flare ups, it was a bit of a roller coaster. I did manage to bake a wonderful cake (of which I will put up pics sometime soon) and I fed some to my friend at school today and she said it was "orgasmic." Actually, I believe her actual words were, and I quote, "Omg that cake is orgasmic!!! Thank you!!!" :D
The cake was a white basic cake, two layers, with chocolate pudding and banana slices in the center. I used white fluffy frosting for the first layer of frosting and used a vanilla frosting with food coloring to decorate it with vines and flowers. Then I added peanuts, whipped cream, and cherries to the top. :D yeah, it was gooooooooood. I made it for my parents farewell dinner. I actually don't remember a time in which they actually went on vacation without us for more than 1 week! They're going to be gone for a whole TWO weeks!!! <:C What am I to do without my parents?? Hang out with Matt. But I still miss having lunch with mommy or talking to daddy on the way to school.

Oh well, such is life... people need vacations from needy people like me! :D

Long time no posting, I know...

2008-08-05T16:50:00.000-07:00

Not much going on and yet everything is going on :D

Currently I'm in finals week working on an Environmental Science research paper, trying to remember math (that final is tomorrow), while being put in charge of volunteers at my library, a task that no one has actually explained and I have not asked as of yet but I have gathered a few volunteers who have nothing to do because our library is that small... I'm also running my first Summer Reading Program for the teens and it's going somewhat fairly well! I've had a total average of 8 teens per program (rounded up...7.833). They surprised me when we had 13 teens come for the Musical Mobiles, which was not that exciting and yet only 6 showed up for the Shrinky Dinks! That was an awesomely fun project :( Even the parents decided to join in.

Also at work we are currently trying to adjust to our new schedules, which we're going to try to have changed because it only has one person opening each day and that person only has an hour to open. Because we are a joint use library, the library is open to the students all day and if anyone is behind the counter, they will "bother" that person, whether it's actual bothering or wanting a library card or to pay fines or check out books. The big problem is that there are a lot of highschoolers after school gets out at 2:30, making life rather hectic. Even when we had two or three working it was difficult, and we would get here sometimes at 1.
So we're really hoping he lets at least one more person open so we don't die. The first few weeks of school is hell. (really, especially in the summer, it does feel like "hell") -_o

One of our e-mail/myspace computers is down and there seems to be some communication problem... I believe someone e-mailed the tech guy about it, but we've not received word on it yet and so I'm wondering if someone actually e-mailed the guy or if someone thought that someone else did and no one actually did... that's happened before. I'll probably send an e-mail out tomorrow.

In other news, daddy's wanting to put in a reeaallly awesome train set in his pond area :D
It will be very similiar to this one I found on google images:

found on Doc and Becky's LGB G Scale Railroad Site
This is mainly because Joseph LOVES Thomas the Tank Engine. Mom has gotten him a large set of wooden tracks and Thomas and Friends models to play with and he loves them so much :D
This is the train I want!

And yes, it is a real working model steam engine!! You can read the original address in the little black bar.

Mom and Dad are currently getting ready to head up to Washington to visit my uncle (dad's oldest bro) and to see my uncle's daughter get married! :D She's the second oldest cousin and the second cousin to marry. I haven't seen her in FOREVER! It feels like literally... not since the '90's? Something like that.

Well, if I can think of anything else to talk about, I will post again!

Anime Expo woot!

2008-07-09T14:52:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone!! We went to the Anime Expo for the first time on Sunday! It was fun, even though it was the last day. Next year we're going to go for more than one day, I hope. Jen and I are thinking about getting a booth to sell our art, if we can afford it.
Pictures! Yes, I do have pictures! Jen was the photographer for most of the pics, except for the pic of Matt, which I took, and the pic of her, which a professional took.

Me and my newly made Gothic Lolita dress, which you might remember seeing the designs for Lolita on DeviantArt

Matt all dressed up. His makeup took about an hour and a half to put on (that includes his elf ears).

Jen, who dressed up as Misa from Deathnote. I must admit I got a little annoyed with everyone because they didn't freak out when Jen was just like this, but as soon as she picked up a Deathnote Notebook, they were on her like ants to honey. One even asked her for her autograph and flipped when she signed it. All it took was a notebook. They didn't care about her outfit at all, it was just the notebook. wow.

This is my seamstress! She's awesome! You can see her other work here www.pegasusmaiden.com and if you want to see any movies of her fashion shows, you can see them here Youtube's Pegasus Maiden videos
I found more pics of her on DA:

These first two were taken by b-b-p-z on DA (second pic here)

This was taken by Nightmareluffy on DA as well.

We had fun there. There was this one outfit that I thought was really beautiful.

Don't you think that's pretty? Found this pic on Photobucket by xsincrossx.
Found this pic of her on DA

Oh and this was waaay tooo cute!

This was taken by Lord of Chaos

So many awesome pics. I may post more soon :D

Dreams

2008-06-23T13:25:00.000-07:00

I figure, what the heck... I'll post my dreams here for once ^.^

Friday night I dreamt that a group of my friends and I, headed by my brother, decided to play a joke on a nice lady who owned an antique store. We had the ability to shape change, so we were going to pretend to be ghosts to scare her. (on a side note, in my dream we had bid $10 on an accordian in her store and won)
It was really fun, shape changing.
I had to get my friends out of high school in order for them to participate and we had to walk down these really really really steep stairs. I ended up sliding on the rail ^.^ We all gathered at the rear entrance of the store where there was a small bit of grass and a bunch of old oak trees and transformed into whatever suited our fancy. There was one person who transformed into a beautiful girl with light blond wavy hair. She changed her basic appearance throughout, but it was always a blond girl with wavy hair. She made a perfect ghost.
Unfortunately, the Intergalactic Space Alliance didn't approve of our actions and abuse of power, so they sent down tentacles or vines and pulled us into their huge ship for a trial. I can't remember the verdict, but I do know I was sent back to Earth where I was trying to find my mommy. She still worked at the library, but it was more of a contruction zone than anything else. I found a guy wandering around the outside of the building and asked him if he'd seen my mom. He said she was by the door and I heard her calling. Took me a little while to actually find her. She was indeed by the door, huddled, wrapped in plastic sheeting with bits of leather stuck to her. She had apparently been in an explosion while wearing a leather jacket and back pack and the leather had been melded to her. She showed me scarring and burns on her arms as we walked to see her supervisor (who was actually Marie, the former manager of the APV library who died) and I asked mom why she didn't just transform some clothing on and she shrugged and did.

Then on Saturday night, I dreamt that I was at Grandma's house. We were just hanging around talking late at night when we heard a noise coming from the bathroom. We went creeping around to see if we could figure it out and there was a man in her bathroom. He didn't see us, so I went to call 911 on a really old phone, but the 911 operators kept asking me questions to verify it was indeed a real emergency and they ended up making me play a computer game (it looked like an 80's game) until I finally gave up and hung up and went to find my cell phone, which I never found. Somehow, throughout this all, my whole family came over and they acted just like my family would as if nothing was wrong. Then the guy in the bathroom stared hanging out with them and he wanted to take me away (kidnap me, ultimately) and my family seemed cool with that... o_O
There was a transition, but I did wake up between these parts...
A bit did happen before this, but it slipped my memory, so I'll start with this.
Nazi Russia was taking over California (yes, the Germans and the Russians united under the "let's all kill the jews" banner, as it was a common feeling in the 1800's and who knows when) and they had this huge, ginormous airplane modeled after a B-17 Bomber. Only, it was about the size (maybe a little smaller) of a star destroyer. It had lights all over it as it ravished the land. The Native Americans were riding horseback and shooting flaming arrows at it. The arrows were doing more damage than I would have given them credit for, but it was still no where near enough to do any good.
My dad was a rebel leader and we had to help protect him from the Russian Nazis, who had taken over pretty much all of California by this time. I had to infiltrate my school, which was a cross between Hogwarts and Platt (so bizarre). I needed a new ID tag, because they had turned it into a parody of my school, so I needed a parody badge as well. There was a girl and a boy there who also needed badges, as they were part of the infiltration group. We didn't actually acknowledge each other, but I followed them to the badge room, right past the teacher's lounge. It was really quiet and dark in school. There was this one kid (reminds me of a character in the Charlie Bones series for some reason) who was an albino, always went to bed early, and always ate fettucini alfredo. ^.^
I didn't actually get a badge, I'm not sure why. After infiltrating the school, I tried to figure out some sort of problem that is really difficult to explain. The Russian Nazis had some sort of ideal, belief, or something having to do with a red card and a green card. The image I saw the red card was on the left and the green on the right, with a blue circle in the center outlined in black on a white background.

Something like that. Dreams are funny. Anyway, what I kept being bothered about was that the Russian Nazi belief, I'll call it, was that the red and green cards were seperate, and in some cases ripped in half and torn asunder from one another. This bothered me because in reality, the cards were never seperate! I kept repeating that to myself and thought, what if I mix them? As I said, dreams are strange. The green was cucumber and I can't remember what the red ended up being, but I made some sort of juice, mixing other ingredients in as well and it tasted very good and the answer to life came to me with that ^.^
Then I got a call on my cell that Rachel was coming out and she needed directions to the school. At this point, the POV changed to Rachel and she ended up catching a "cab." This mode of transportation had a mind of its own, like a horse (there was a horse that I niffed noses with, but only for a few seconds), but these were stilts with a little basket up top that Rachel got to ride in. She had to travel in a jungle like setting (this was apparently in South America now) down a two lan road. There were trees one either side of the road as well as down the middle and the lanes were covered in flowers (hence the stilts). Unfortunately, the stilts hit a bush full of bees and so they started attacking Rachel, who hid under a blanket she had brought. She tried to urge the stilts to go faster, but they could only go so fast. She eventually made it to a small market place where I woke up.

And on Sunday (last night) I dreamt I was a hit man!
Ok, there was this apartment complex, three stories high, beige in color with a teal trim and doors. It had two seperate buildings connected only by two walkways on the second and third floors. There were rectanglular pillars holding the bridges up and parking spaces all around. I was meeting someone at the complex (it could have been mom, Rachel, or some other relative) and I parked my car. There was a man standing by the pillars holding something, so I walked up to him. It was money. He said, "Here, just take it." It was fifty bucks. I was a literally starving college student, so $50 was a big deal for me. So I snatched it and took off wihtout looking back. Then I heard a couple of pops and the sound of a body hitting the floor, but I didn't look back. Later, this young looking girl (she was over 18, that much I know) who reminded me a little of my coworker mixed with a silly-but-smart anime girl came up to me with a proposition, because she knew I knew what had happened to that guy and somehow I had been part of the plan and she paid me $500 for the job! Then she gave me three compact motorcycles (compactable, meaning they could be rolled up into balls to be carried around). I guess they were made out of some titanium and they were so light I didn't have any problems carrying them. I put them in Clifford, the big red suburban. Then the girl asked me if there was anything else I needed and being greedy/silly I asked for $500 more and she was like sure, whatever. (apparently I was really cheap compared to others)
And so since I became a part of this group/organization, they were going to take care of everything, all my bills, my food, everything. I was pretty happy.
The last scene I walked up to a tower in the apartment complex to the highest room they had, carrying with me a sniper rifle and ammo. The last thing I remember before waking up was setting my gun up and eating a donut.

So yeah, those were my dreams for this weekend ^.^ Enjoy!

ANTS!

2008-06-16T18:57:00.000-07:00

We have been infested! There are ants all over the entirety of the library... in fact, one whole row of computers cannot be used due to the amount of fire ants that are crawling all over the keyboards and mice and monitors and counters.... >.< they're even all over my desk as we speak, but I keep avoiding them somehow ^.^ little tiny evil fire ants, imported from...Argentina? maybe...*squish* >:[

I"m gonna go make a mask now.

Father's Day

2008-06-16T16:50:00.000-07:00

Well, for Father's Day, Matt and I decided to try our hand at something a little different. We made my dad steak and lobster. That's right, Lobster. :D
We bought 6 lobster tails and 3 lbs of top sirloin steak ready for the grill. To go with it we bought fresh green beans, potatoes, zuchinni, bell peppers, onions, and lemons. We marinated the steaks in a bbq sauce mixed with Italian salad dressing for about 24 hours and barbequed it over open flame.
We sliced up the peppers, onions, and zuchinni and skewered them on long wooden skewer sticks and soaked them in a garlic butter sauce. I ended up boiling the green beans and made mashed potatoes while the lobster boiled in salted lemon water. Amazingly enough, everything was not only done on time, but at the same time! We were eating by 7 :D
We ate on the fancy Irish china set and had little Japanese bowls full of butter for dipping the lobster in. Turns out Joseph loves lobster! He's such a cute little carnivore :D
And then for dessert, just as we were done eating, the brownies were ready to eat! We had them with ice cream, chocolate syrup, and sprinkles.

So all and all, it was definately a most excellent night! :D
Steak and lobster, man... that was awesome. And Matt wants to make it again for his family on Thursday... O_o It's amazing how poor we are and yet we all manage to find a way to get the good stuff ^.^ God loves us. [heaven knows why tho... ;)]

on a side note, my coworker just broke her arm playing softball, and as she's left handed and broke her left hand, she's having a heck of a time at work today. Don't think we'll get someone else in to replace her, so she's stuck her another 3 hours. Oh well.

I hate being a woman right now.

I've been getting craft supplies ready for the SRP (summer reading program) and as I tape up the boxes, I realize I'm still missing parts >.< So I have to either buy them tomorrow, or see if the other branches already have some, or just forget it and have the other branches make do, because the order isn't coming in for a while.
And we still haven't gotten our flyers done yet >.< It's cram time.

You know what else bugs me right now? The fact that all the electoral crap going on is taking up all the news and so we hear the same stuff over and over again in my government class.
What is cool, however, is the fact that I watched "Mr. Smith goes to Washington." Starring Jimmy Stewart in 1939. It's of course political and it's about how Jefferson Smith gets elected senator and how he's all awesome and clean and everyone else is some dirt bag mobster.

Right now I'm going to go make yarn balls and send them to different libraries ^.^ Hope you all out there are having fun and will talk to you later!

Rachel

Spanish Chicano and everything else

2008-06-11T20:03:00.001-07:00

We watched a movie in class today called Walkout, based on the walkouts the Spanish speakers in the 60's staged for better and fair education. The walkouts succeeded, after many were beaten unfairly by cops. The students were no longer beaten when speaking Spanish in the classroom, among many other things.
Which brings me to another point. I saw a handmade sign on the back of a work truck today that read, "No English, No Service. This is America." Ok, I can understand the frustration he must feel dealing with people who refuse to speak English for stupid reasons, I deal with them almost every day. But what about those who are foreign visitors and have no clue what's going on? I don't remember what kind of work truck he was in, but it was probably one where he wouldn't be dealing with foreign visitors. It still got me thinking, though.
The phrase, "No Nordic or Latin based languages, No Service; Know Nordic or Latin based languages, Know Service." Pretty goofy and discludes Russian, Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, and many many many other languages. But think about it, English is mostly German, which is a Nordic based language, as well as having many words, phrases, saying, etc. in Latin. I mean, the whole music language is in Italian, also a Latin based language. Our country's, California's, and our language's heritages have a lot to do with Spanish. Think about Columbus. What language did he speak? Which King and Queen did he serve? Who were we always fighting certain states and territories for?
I have been a little abused with Spanish, or more specifically, Mexican. I happen to go to school and work in a city where I am a minority and have been racially discriminated against in small ways because I am not Mexican, nor do I speak Mexican. My coworker, who is Mexican but doesn't speak Mexican, was with me one day this one woman came in. She was a heavy set Mexican who apparently had a fine on her card. I explained everything to her and she was indignant as if it was all my fault and would not believe me. She then turned to my coworker and started rambling in Mexican. My coworker can understand it better than me and responded to the woman in English, exactly everything I had just said. The woman was ok with that and went away un-angry.
Thankfully I've not seen any true racism, such as that shown to the blacks in the 1800's America! It's really hard to tell if it actually got somewhat better after slavery was abolished or not, it was different at least. (did you know that England abolished slavery in about 1772? They said that no slave could breathe in England because on the first breath, he would be free)

for some reason I can't seem to understand how some people can't see logically reasoning... they go by how they feel and that's all that matters. What they know is all that matters.

How come people don't talk about how the anti-semitism in Europe was going on about 40 years prior to WWII? It's what Hitler grew up with, so no wonder he went that route. I mean, the guy was crazy. When you're crazy and you grow up with all that anti-semitism going on, and you feel a passion for bringing your country back to its former glory.... why not?
And tell me why we didn't get Henry Ford on war charges? He was apparently good friends with der feuer even during the war. In fact, from many sources I've read, the German Ford company, run by the Americans, actually was not seized by the German Nazi regime but continued to be run by the Americans. In fact, from those sources, it states that Ford actually made 60% of the heavy vehicles for Germany. Oh and they ran on slave labor, as well. >(O_o)<

I'm really tired and for some reason rather stressed. I was put in charge of getting materials for crafts for four different libraries and not much as gone right with it and we only have a week!!!!!!! WHAT THE CRAP! We've not even gotten any fliers... >.< =; bang
I'm not feeling well to begin with, I've had this sinus infection since begining of March and have been on 4 different meds for it, none of which worked, one of which screwed me over and I feel like I'm getting a cold and I keep stressing over little things and even cried over the fact that there was rotten milk. Actually I seem to be crying a lot lately. this sucks. I wish I could just take a break... I've got a couple months left in my probationary period for work and about 7 months left for school, so I can't go anywhere or do anything besides the fact that gas is almost $5 a gallon and the part of my paycheck that doesn't go to my parents/student loans goes into gas and I have to cancel my dentist appointment because I can't afford it and I can't even afford dad a father's day gift. I don't have time or money to hang out with my friends in the little spare time I have, besides the fact that I really only have one friend out here that I can hang with but she lives like 60 miles from me which is still better than where Rachel lives... Missouri! Suck! And my Oklahoma friend is hard to reach just to talk to and Matt is usually playing video games or doing the work thing and besides we don't have any money to do anything anyway.

Believe me, my life really isn't all that bad, honest. I'm just really frustrated and depressed and need to rant a bit.
(I'm PMSing.)

bleh.

I'm gonna go eat.

Definitions that are outdated

2008-06-02T15:50:00.000-07:00

Just playing around with that 1865 dictionary ^.^ It has some neat, cool, funny, and/or hilarious definitions.

Uranium: A metal

Giraffe: A camel-leopard

Nosegay: A bunch of flowers

Goth: A barbarian
Gothic: Pertaining to the Goths; a style of architecture with sharp pointed arches

Organic: Containing organs

Osculate: to kiss (who uses that? Wikipedia calls it an archaic word)

Henbane: A poisonous plant, sometimes used for opium (so if you need to make opium... botanical.com)

Health: Freedom from sickness; sound state of body and mind

Officer: n. One who holds an office; - v.t. to furnish with officers.

Japan: Varnish or varnished work (Japanning is a word originating from the 17th century, used to describe the European imitation of Asian lacquerwork, originally used on furniture - wikipedia)

I don't really have anything to say that wouldn't be repeating myself about some things and then there are those which I do not feel like they should be heard, or those thoughts that I don't think people would want to hear...

you know something funny? I still have suicidal thoughts. Thankfully I'm too curious about life and what God has planned and too much in love with Matt to actually do anything... ^_^

so yeah...

ancient diary of a young girl 1935

2008-06-01T08:15:00.000-07:00

I picked up an ancient Five Year diary where the first entry was January 1st, 1935, which was a tuesday. I'm going to post some of her entries for historical awesomeness :D As far as I can tell, her name is Mable Oliva.
it would be awesome if I could meet her.

Tuesday, January 1st, 1935.
Here starts the "new year." Didn't sleep last night. Went over to Al's and cooked goose dinner. Went to show in the eve. Had dinner at 5. Turned out real good. Didn't touch no liquor. Here's hoping this year brings good luck.
Wed.
Relief women was up. Sewed a skirt for Darla. Marie don't feel good. "Cramps." RW called me. Charlie, Una's friend, was up.

Thursday, August 8th, 1935
Went down & got my check Greibs(??) discounting. But did get 400 lbs ice from the relief. went out to Tus in evening another fight with Arnie. Manis & Milly were along. They had a good time. I dont know why Arnie and I can't get along. Guess perhaps I've been too much in the square with him. I can feel our friendship slipping. Too bad.

Friday, August 9th, 1935
Wrote Duco a letter
Started day out rotten fighting with Arnie. Was going to leave but Nick & his 3 body quards (Lou, Benny & Cliff.) came & kind of upset my plans. Boy he thinks I'm putting the heat on him but I haven't. Then also met Marie and she is coming over this eve. Arnie was here and said he might come tonite he did so did Marie went over to the bar and had beers. Lindy was there we all came here and had sandwitches talked until 3 in morning. Duy(?) wasn't bad at that. Still like Arnie.

Saturday, August 10th, 1935
Started day O.K. Didn't have no drinks until eve. went to Rubinsdale to party with Una.

Friday, June 19th, 1936
Went out with Babe and Jonny to Excelcisor. Had my pitcher taken is it ever Cute - we went in to the dance when it was over we went to Minetonka Diner. I got home at 2:30 Mother sure was mad. Babe sure is a nice kid.

Saturday, June 20th, 1936
Slept til 11:30 Got up & straightened the house Mother told me I couldn't go anyplace that night but I went to the dance at Franklin Hall. Seen Babe All the kids were real nice to me at the dance. Had a real good time. Loraine Miller, Dick & I walked home together. Got home at 3 min to 1. I didn't like Dick. Thisnt Dick Harvy this is another kid.

Sunday, June 21st, 1936
Got home at 1:15
Mother didn't get home till 11:30 in the morn. And then I got up. We went over to the Bar & had dinner. I came home & read a little and went to show. Saw Harold Loyd in the Milky Way. We were going to the S.S.N.H.H. to a dance but they didn't have one so we went down to 5. East Lake. My feet hurt so on the -- way I took off my shoes & walked in my stalking feet. We were suppose to go out to Elva's today but didn't get there(?)
Babe was suppose to call me but he didn't.

Monday, June 22nd, 1936
Slept till 11:30. Boy I sure can sleep. Sis came in town today and brought some fish. I helped clean them ugh. Lorraine was over for a while. I seen Gill (?)
Babe call this afternoon
I went out that night night to the Silver Tray. Was home by 11: and we waited for Mother when she came we went over to the Acorn. Babe, Harold, & I went down to the Chicago Tavern & had something to eat. The rest of them came home & had fish.

Tuesday, June 23rd, 1936
Gee I sure get lazy when I stay out late. I had to wash the K. floor & it took me 3/4 of an hr. Mother told me to just try and go any place that night. But I did. Dick came over and we went to ??.5.
I walked home part wase with the kids but they walked so slow I went ahead of them.

Wednesday, June 24th, 1936
Babe doesn't work today so we are going out.
Mother gives me the pleasent idea I cant go unless I take Dar along. We went out to the air? Babe wanted me to go up but I wouldn't go. Aint a scared Baby Gee but Babe is quiet. I have to go to Montey Sat. Gee I sure hate to leave all my friends here. I've got quite a few too. A well. We are going on the Capital Fri. Dora M & Doris were over today Margrett is sure cute. So is Doris but she knows it.

Thursday, June 25th, 1936
Nothing exciting happened today. Babe called at 9:30. We are going tomarrow on the Capital for sure. I did the ?roning? Boy it sure is hot. Mother and Arnie got in a fight.
When Mother got out of the car Arnie tore her off from her. Did she look funny.
I stayed home in the evening allthough it was hard to do. I seen Millie & Shirley today. Ray got a job at the Troy Laundry. Dick is going to Milwalkee Traveling Salesman

Tuesday, June 30th, 1936
Went on the Capital with the kids. I was with Rolly. Babe went out with Harold I guess. Gee I like Babe. I sure do think he is O:K:

Wednesday, June 31st, 1936
Left for Monte

Saturday, July 4th, 1936
Seen the parade. Went to the fairgrounds. Carrie says I'll have to go home with Della tomorrow. Am I ever glad. Im lonesome for Babe already I never knew how much I like him till now. I wish I was home cause I would be with him now.

Monday, August 3rd, 1936
Came back from Monte. Called babe. Gee I sure missed home I think he's swell
It seems to funny to be true. But it is. I do. Mother & I gota apt. on Park & 15th Madelene (Madiline?) and I came in on the beer trucks. I start working Thursday.

Tuesday, August 4th, 1936
Cleaned the apt for Mother. Babe came over in the evening & we went out to Jennings
Seen Loyd out there. We live right next door to him. Babe told Loyd we were engaged. -------------

Old Book list!

2008-05-31T13:30:00.000-07:00

I have decided to catalog my ancient antique books and I thought I would share some with my faithful (and hopefully patient) readers. I know I don't blog near as often as I should and I'm trying to do better. It's been finals this past week and the past three weeks has been hectic trying to get my projects to work right >.<

Book #1 is not my book, but my parents. I put it here because it is that awesome!

The Mother and Her Offspring was written by Stephen Tracy, M.D. in 1853 and published by Harper & Brothers. It was written for young women pioneering out west without their mother's to help them during childbirth. It's really quite awesome and certainly one of a kind type of book! Looking it up, it's worth around $100.

#2
The School Reader Fifth Book by Charles W. Sanders, A.M. is a cute little school book for fifth grade reading and I still cannot get over the word elocution. It's just a word that is not used that often and the only person I hear use it is Matt. He has the power of elocution :D Anyway, this is a cool book that is actually more advanced than what I've seen in high school books. I guess our standards have dropped in 148 yrs... ^_^;
This book was published in 1860 by Ivison, Phinney & Co.
Unfortunately this book is not fit to live much longer as the whole book is warped from being in a moist environment, as well as missing the spine label, the front cover dangling by a few threads, and the pages have age spots. I wouldn't say it's worth much, maybe $5 at most, as that's what I paid.

#3
Handy Dictionary illustrated is a very cute, tiny pocket dictionary that has almost completely fallen apart. The spine is missing and the front cover is detatched, the back cover is barely on, and pages 1-10 are missing completely. However! This little book is awesome as it was published around 1865 and it's just awesome! Do you know what it says for Uranium? Since it wasn't discovered to be radioactive until 1896, it just says, "A metal." >.< it's funny. Oh and communism was a good thing. It meant, "For the community."

#4
I like this next one. A Knight of the XIX Century (or nineteenth century). It was written by E.P. Roe in 1877, apparently a first edition. I can only find a couple of original copies, one of which is $12 and the other is $20. Not worth much, but it has good reviews as it is a good book. It's about a troubled young man and his mother ^.^ Really pretty cover, red with silver and black crests.

#5
The Student's Mythology. If you remember, I was doing a project making a book cover using this book and it took me forever to figure this book out. It was written by C.A. White (Catharine Ann) in about 1873 and my copy is from 1900. It's apparently worth about $80, which is somewhat surprising! My copy is probably worth more like $50 as it's not in the best condition, especially since Joseph scribbled in it ~>.<~
Anyway, it has a lot of information about many different mythologies from different countries and it's pretty cool. I do wish it had more information though. They tried to cram as much as they could in as little amount of pages as they could.

#6
This is actually a set of 5 books totalling about 4,000 pages. The History for Ready Reference and Topical Reading volumes 1-5, complete set, publushed in 1895. And, for this exact set, condition and all, $250! I don't believe I paid anything for them! Either that or I paid $1 each... Book Sale rooms in libraries are awesome :D As are yard sales :D These are very nice black leather bound books with golden edged pages and gold line decorations on front, spine, and back.

#7
The Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror is possibly one of the coolest books we have, published 1906. We paid I think $20 for it and it's being sold elsewhere for $200, which would be a 1000% profit! Yay I did a percents! >.<;
This book was published before the fires of San Francisco were cooled and it was written and published by the survivors and rescuers of the quake while the event was still very fresh in their minds. It has detailed pictures and stories and is very very fascinating to read.

#8
The Story of King Arthur by Edward Brooks is basically just the classic romatisized story of how Arthur got Excalibur and won the throne. My copy was published around 1900 and is in pretty good condition. I was looking online and found a copy that is from 1902, is worn out with pages falling out, going for about $70. Not too bad :)

#9
Ok, this one is cool. A Year from a Reporter's Note-book was a documentation of the events that took place from May 1896 to June 1897 that reporter Richard Harding Davis witnessed. He takes us to the inauguration of President McKinley, to Greece to see the soldiers, to Cuba to see a revolution, and to Britain to see the Queen's Jubilee, where people were evicted from their homes only because they had windows viewing the street. Apparently landlords made a mint from selling these seats to yankees and other foreigners, ultimately ripping off both the former tenants and the purchasers. My copy was published in 1903 and is still in decent condition. It's a bit worn with the page edges a little damaged, but all together not bad. Approx. $50 or so.

#10
The Little Lame Prince is not an awesome story, but it has very beautiful pictures. Unfortunately, the copy I have (which I paid 25 cents for) is very badly damaged with rips in the pages and ink spills all over. It's still got some pretty pictures ^.^

And tomorrow or whenever I get around to it, I shall post more stuffs.

For those of you who want to know

2008-05-29T10:38:00.000-07:00

The Bastard son of Satan is this guy in my class who's name is Damien, no joke. The name Damien has been often referred to in cartoons, movies, books, etc as being the son of Satan, but this guy is not anywhere near cool enough to be a legit son of Satan, so I figure Satan got drunk one night (and I mean the kind of drunk where you don't remember anything) and did it with some ugly hooker and forgot all about the whole affair in the morning.
This guy is so full of himself that I think if he did have a best friend, he probably wouldn't even remember his name, or at least wouldn't refer to him as his name.
No one likes him, not even the guys he hangs out with. While he's not around they badmouth him. But it's ok, because he badmouths them too while they're not around.

This one time in Storyboarding we were watching the making of Black Hawk Down and he said, "I don't get why they don't just use a real Black Hawk, it would be much cooler." Irked by this I stated, "Do you know how much a Black Hawk costs??" And he said very sarcastically, "I'm just kidding, or don't you think I know that? Besides, I wasn't even talking to you." (mind you he was talking loudly during class as if to the whole class) and then he proceeded to continue to talk about it as if it was a completely legit request that they should blow up an actual Black Hawk. Then he said that they should have built real Transformers to blow up for the movie.

That did bug me, but one day I actually wanted to literally kill him and I had to leave class early because of how sick I felt from it. He was just being such an ignorant s.o.b. and being so rude and blah blah blah. Oh and he calls us "guys" because we like "ungirly" things. He's such a freaking chauvinist!
And he refused to acknowledge that Jen is a director for our project because he said there can only be one director (which his pansy little group always lets him be). He forgot that it was Jen's idea in the first place and that if there was only one director it would be her.
I do like how we blew him off the other day. We were going to go out filming and he was like, "I got a great idea for your film" and we were like, "so? We don't want to hear it." "Well fine, then I won't tell you" (imagine a snotty spoiled brat voice as if he thought we actually cared) and I said, "Ok, come on Jen let's go." And walked out.
*sigh* No matter what happens, he either blames someone else, or makes it somehow so that it glorifies himself. I know Jacob bugs me because he does this too, but Damien is MUCH worse!
I honestly really don't think anyone would miss him if he died or went on a very long vacation somewhere never to come back.

And so that is the explanation of why I go to school with the bastard son of Satan. No one likes him and I'm surprised he's made it this far.

Mother's day and then some

2008-05-15T07:53:00.000-07:00

I go to school with the bastard son of Satan.

Anyway, mothers day was fun I guess, cept that mom had to work :(
So Matt and I, after church, went down to Ontario and bought some Irises for the mommies.

I should start at the beginning. Waking up at 8 instead of 5 was nice for a change. Sunday school was fun and educational... and very embarrassing as I had a large hole in the seat of my pants and no one told me until we were leaving... So we had to go back to my house and get me a change of pants ^.^
Then we went down to Victoria Gardens and I went to Macys and Matt went to the MAC store to get a part for his computer. I was just looking around at the different dresses and I saw a few that I liked so I power walked over to the MAC store and got there just as Matt was leaving, so he followed me to Macys and I ended up trying on three dresses and I got one!
House of Brides
Mine's blue but I don't have pics of it yet.
Then Matt surprised me and got me a fancy expensive CZ necklace ^.^ *heart* It goes with the dress really well. I later bought shoes, gloves, and a hair piece to go with it as well.
After that we went to Michaels and I got $20 worth of art supplies for more illustrations for Matt's book. Then we went to T. Austin's Flowers and bought Irises for the mothers. They're only $2.99 in a bouquet with baby's breath! The other store wanted $6 just for a single flower.
Then we ate at Carl's Jr. and had a Strawberry Oreo shake which is really good. After eating we zipped over to the library in Fontana to visit mom and we surprised her with the flowers :D She was very surprised and happy to see us and flowers :D
She was also the only one to get flowers in the whole library which is pretty huge.
After giving Matt the grand tour, we left and went up to Matt's aunt's house and hung out there and ate a very gooooood dinner of country chicken, biscuits, corn... yum...

So yeah, all in all it was a good day :D

And now I'm going to post as many pictures as I can to try to make your computer go really really slow.
Ok for anyone who looked at this post before, the pictures didn't work so I'm fixing that now.

FAIL

stupid pictures...

Another packed weekend

2008-05-05T15:21:00.000-07:00

Friday we went down to Castaic after Matt got off work and hung out at our friend's 16th birthday party. Wow, Matt is friends with people ten years younger than him! Hah, they're only seven years younger than me!
...
*sigh* For some reason that makes me feel awkward and old... that I hang out with people who are Not my age, but younger.
The party was fun. They played "Do you love your neighbors?" They have everyone sitting in a circle (in chairs) and one person in the center. The center person goes up to someone in the ring and asks, "Do you love your neighbors?" The person can answer Yes or No. If they answer No, then the people sitting on either side have to switch seats without the center person grabbing a chair. However, if they answer Yes, they say, "Yes, but... I don't love anyone who ___" and you choose what you don't like. Example: "Yes, but I don't love anyone with pigtails." Then anyone wearing pigtails has to get up and race to find another seat. Whoever is left without a seat has to pick someone and ask them if they love their neighbors. It was quite fun to watch.
We played Super Smash Bros Brawl all night and fell asleep somewhere around 3 in the morning. We woke up at 7. bleh.
Then we went to Grandma's house for lunch and hung out with everyone. We had to leave about 4:30 or so to get to Victoria Gardens for a dinner date with two of Matt's fellow teachers, who, as it so happens, I have already met one at my church! He and his family had come for some BBQs and 4th of July celebrations :)
We hung out for a while after eating at P.F. Chang's and just walked around Victoria Gardens. We didn't get to bed until after midnight.
Sunday we went to church and I gave mom the messed up cup I had originally made for my grandparents in Hawaii, but I had made a new one for them so I just gave to mom. I'll probably end up trying to auction that cup off at the church auction and make mom a better one because it really kinda sucks... I hate it.
After church we went to Matt's place and ate chili with top ramen and waited for his parents and brother to get there. His parents arrived about 2:30 with groceries and were surprised at how well stocked Matt's kitchen is :) They also loved his little garden. We jammed with his dad on Rock Band, me on bass, Matt on guitar, and his dad on drums at first. Later, after we picked up "I am legend" we played Rock Band again and his dad sang. I'm getting a lot better rythm!
"I Am Legend" was an interesting movie that I'm still thinking about. I need to write a book where the "things" come out during the day. Like lizards but not ^.^

Not much on my thoughts here... probably won't post those for a while till I figure them out myself ^.^

Until later, then,
Signing out,
Rachel

Monday and Tuesday and why not Wednesday too!

2008-04-30T17:12:00.000-07:00

Ah Monday, sweet monday... See, monday was the best day of the week, for some strange reason.
I woke up real early and took a shower because we were going to be filming a skittles commercial and we hadn't decided who the main actress was going to be. I got to school around 7 and was the first to play with the NEW I-Macs.

Then Jen walked in right behind me and we were so excited because these screens are huge that we couldn't figure out how to turn the stupid things on ^_^; We finally figured it out. There's a little button on the lower left side on the back (right side if you face the back). We would have figured it out sooner had we turned around and looked at the computers behind us.
I put this as my background:

:D
So we were one of the first groups to start production on our commercial. Jen had Gloomy bear and the stunt Skittles, and Tracy had the main Skittles and I controlled the camera. It was awesome fun. We had Nick, the dean, turn out the lights in the hallways so we could have a gloomy dark atmosphere and so we taped Jen running for her life down the halls. We then went into the Nursing area and filmed some there, but the real fun was in the bathroom hall in the atrium. We filmed Jen running into the door with the main skittles being dropped, but it didn't really look right. Then... duh duh duh.... the lights went out. Power outage in the whole city block! It worked awesomely to our advantage. We then moved our team to the Janitor's hall and filmed there. I'll see if I can post the video on YouTube or on here.
The three of us are each doing our own edit of the video, so you'll see my version. It has scary music!
After school I went to the library early and just kinda hung out and did some work. Everything was done well in time for opening and it was a casual day. (except for that picture I mentioned earlier)
I ate two pot pies for dinner and fell asleep.

Tuesday, HellDay.
It didn't start too bad. Really. Just everything kind of fell through or was just not good. First off, this class is character creation and design and we need the program Maya to work in order for us to do any school work. Unfortunately it locked up the computers whenever anyone tried to open it. So class was just us drawing, which wasn't bad really. I just love modeling.
Went to work early and on the way I noticed that my car was wobbling a bit more than it should and so I checked the tires when I got to work and found them to be very very bald. So bald that there was more metal showing than rubber! So I called dad and he said he would meet me at America's Tires at 5:15 but to call mom and see if she had any better ideas. She didn't. Well, I was scheduled for a doc apt. at 6, but the tire place closes at 6, so as you can tell the time slot was difficult to work with.
Thankfully mom got off early and our regional manager said I could get off at 4, so I met mom over at the tire place instead, about 4:30, only to find out they didn't have the tire size (12), so we drove all the way to Upland which wouldn't have been bad had there been about 50 less lights! I hit practically every single red light!
Well, they had the tires there and mom paid over $100 for two tires for me and then let me drive her car to the dr. while she babysat mine. I was almost late for the appointment, which, looking back, I would have gladly missed. See, for years I've been enduring the calls from Kaiser and the notes and everything about how I was overdue for a papsmear. I did not want one. Finally I had gotten an appointment and they found out that they did not have the correct equipment (which had to be child-sized) so they said I had to go to Fontana. So I made an appointment for Fon. Which was tuesday at 6.
I freaking HATE that dr. more so than I thought possible.
that's all I'll say.
I hate him.
So I got to mom about 7:15 and we ended up meeting Matt for dinner at the Old Spaghetti factory. That was nice at least.

Today was so far boring and typical. yay. Nothing out of the ordinary has happened. I probably just jinxed myself, ha, but oh well! I did get to visit mom at Fontana branch and meet our new page. She seems coool :)
Oh, but yes, something HORRIBLE happened today!! They closed the Coffee Bean where we go for our daily addiction of chocolate milk! :( WAHHH!

anyway...
Rachel out

Weekend Rush

2008-04-28T16:46:00.000-07:00

*editing note: for those of you who have already read this, nothing changed until Saturday night.

Ah, such a hectic weekend this was! So glad to be back at the school/work schedule where I can finally relax...

Friday
7:00 A.M
Woke up groggy not really wanting to get up but unable to go back to sleep, I rolled out of bed and ate breakfast.
8:30 A.M.
Started my laundry and while I waited for the washer to get done I went out to the shop to work on a project/gift for my grandparents in Hawaii. It turned out fairly well, but there are aspects I am not happy with. There is a possibility I may not give it to them for the imperfections, but we'll see. People say it's the imperfections that give something character.
1:00 P.M.
I start thinking and talk to Jacob about taking Harvey (the dog) to the vet so I could try to get my allergy shots. As I start going out the gate to go to Stater Bros to get money for Jacob, I realize... "Wait a minute, I can just go get my shots now and be back in time to take Harvey myself!" I rushed back inside and said, "I may be longer than expected... be right back!" and proceeded to rush off to Kaiser.
1:43 P.M.
I arrive at Kaiser only to be told, "No, you're still too sick to get shots! Here, what's your doctor's name? Let's see if he has an appointment for you today. Oh look, he has an opening for right now! Ok, check in at the front!" So I checked in, and realized I didn't have my ATM card with me... So I told her to bill me and went up to 3rd floor area 5 and waited.
2:17 P.M.
I heard my name called and went in. I weigh 155.5 lbs and am 5'5". That's a lot of fives. I was hoping I would be a little less, but I've still gone down 10 lbs since last time I went in! Blood Pressure and pulse were 120/70 and about 68 I think. No fever, but cough, congestion, sinus pain and pressure, slight pain in upper teeth, post nasal drip and an antibiotic that didn't work. And so I was led to a room and waited for the dr.
2:30-something P.M.
Doc comes in and asks what's wrong. Told him that the antibiotic they had me on (twice a day for two weeks, it had been two weeks) wasn't working and the nurses that give the allergy shots say I can't have the shots unless I get better. I've been taking Guaifenesen (sp???) and Loratadine, along with a saline nasal spray in the mornings and so far they won't let me get shots. So he gave me something stronger. 4 times a day for three weeks. They're pretty blue capsules ^.^
2:48 P.M.
I went outside and phoned Jacob. Harvey's appointment was scheduled for 3:30 and there was no way I was going to make it. So I told Jacob I would meet him there and could he bring my black jacket as I left my ATM card in there. I checked in at the pharmacy for my new drug and then I rushed over to Hesperia and I made it there by 3:15, so I thought, "hmm, Matt should be getting home by now to change for his track meet, I'll see if I can zip by to say Hi." And so I did. I got there just as he pulled in :D I watched him plant the rest of his pepper plants while munching some Hawaiian bread and milk and then left to meet Jacob. We got to the vet at the same time :)
3:38 P.M.
I pulled into the parking lot with Jacob on my tail. He had Joseph with him and Harvey, who took up the whole back seat of Bert (my VW bug). He was panting and was ever so hot!! See, the reason we took him to the vet was so that he could get vaccinated so that he could get groomed! Man, his hair was all matted and it was horrible! He desperately needed a grooming. So the vet shot Harvey about three times and Harvey was such a good boy! He just sat there panting.
4:15 P.M.
I was finally able to leave and I took Harvey home while Jacob and Joseph wandered around Victorville until Joseph was s'posed to see his mommy. I made Joseph cry tho :( *sniff* I told him to have fun at mommy's house and he started bawling :(
4:45 P.M.
I finally made it home only to realize that it was too late to pick up my prescription as the pharmacy closes at 5 on Fridays. So I chilled out for a bit then decided to go get Jacob that money for the grooming on Monday and went to Staters in Adelanto.
5:30 P.M.
Started shopping and got a great idea for Matt for dinner. As he wouldn't be off work until 8 and I hadn't had time to make him a nice dinner for his birthday, I decided to buy him some Swordfish steaks, some wine, butter, and spices. The wine was ok, it was a Bella Sera white wine from Italy 2006, but it didn't leave much flavor.
Anyway, I was running out of time, so I skipped going to JoAnn Fabrics for supplies to finish Matt's present and just went straight to his place so I could prepare him a fabulous feast.
6:45 P.M.
Arrival at Matt's, talked to Mom until around 7, when I started preparing dinner. She's having fun at her new library, hahaha... she had a major headache and she's sick and so she spent the day yelling at children all day which made her feel worse >.< bleh
7:00 P.M.
I get out the pans for cooking and look around the bare pantry for some sort of side dish. There was nothing. I guess looking back I could have made potatoes, but it didn't occur to me at the time. So I thought, ok, I'll just open the bottle of wine. Ok, the only cork screw I could find was a little pocket knife. So I tried it for half an hour with no luck. hmph. Then I decided to give up on it for a while and went to Staters (yay) for a side.
7:30 P.M.
Arrived at Staters and ended up buying a tomato, Italian squash, a cork-drill (not much of a screw, looked like a drill), some Pasta Roni, and that was about it. So I went back to Matt's and cut up the mater and squash, stuck them in a frying pan and went back to work on that blasted wine bottle.
7:45 P.M.
stuck on the wine.
8:16 P.M.
Matt gets back to find me crying on the floor with a bottle of wine unopened. *sigh* I just got so frustrated especially with how the day went, that one stupid bottle sent me over a breakdown. yay. So Matt helped me uncork the bottle with a real corkscrew that I had failed to remember and I went about cooking dinner. It may not have been done by the time he got off, but it was still good and it made him very happy ^.^ so i was happy about that.
Fell asleep about 10:30.

Saturday
9:00 A.M.
Woke up. YAY! I slept in! Got up and ate Happy Shapes, but my tummy felt funny during... Played Rock Band with Matt until around 10 when we decided to go to a rock store in Barstow for something to go with the present I made grandma and grandpa. It was a long and boring trip there and a long and boring trip back, but we at least found what we wanted.
When we got back to Main st. we ate at Jack in the Box where I had an ultimate cheezburger. My stomach really felt unhappy after though. Then as we were driving back to Matt's, realized that I needed to go to the junkyard to pick up a part for my car (my car was leaking water like mad... fill it every two days or so) so I called Jacob up as we went to Matt's to get the tools and he said he would meet us there.
He was currently with a friend who will remain anonymous and was driving Bert. So we grab the tools and on the way to the junkyard I realize I need my prescription and so we drive all the way to Kaiser and get that done, then back track back to HWY 395. I call Jacob to let him know where we are and he tells me that Bert is broken and do we have pliers. Without actually checking, I say we do and Matt very grudgingly drives all the way BACK towards Kaiser area only to find out when we get there that we DON'T have pliers!
So his friend walks to someone's house and gets pliers and Bert gets fixed without us having to do anything... wasted gas. So we run off to the junkyard only to realize as we walk up to the gate (and by this time we're both in somewhat of a bad mood from all the random driving and the heat) that we're both wearing freaking sandals!!!!!!!
they won't let you in wearing sandals!!!!
argh!
So Matt is so ticked off (understatement) by this that he drove like a maniac all the way to a Rite Aid where we met Jacob and gave him the tools, filled up the tank (Matt's camaro gets 25 mpg and it was at 3/4 of a 15 gallon tank when we left that morning) and it cost $60 because it was empty. $60!!
So we got to Matt's finally at I don't remember what time and played Rock Band and drank liquidfied chocolate silk pie mixed with chocochip cookie dough ice cream, which was a little bleh because of the crust on the pie made it a little "sandy" feeling.
In the middle of the song Maps, by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Jacob comes pounding on the door with a pipe for my car, so the game went on pause and we worked on my car. By we, I mean I sat and played with an orange kitten while the boys got their hands dirty. This cute little kitty just came waltzing up and she was so soft and cuddly!

>^.^<

Later after Jacob went home, Matt and I ... you know, I cannot remember what we did!! What did I eat for dinner? Oh yeah, nothing. Matt ate some cheese and I took a couple nibbles and just gave up trying to eat anything.
Then on Sunday...
Woke up early, got dressed, filled my car with gas and went to Target around 9 A.M. I bought a pillow for mom to give to Matt for his birthday (she paid me back, she just didn't have any time). Then I went over to JoAnn's Fabrics, found they didn't open until 10 so I went to Home Depot instead. I looked at some boards for a project Matt wants done and they weren't too badly priced, but I'm poor so I didn't get any ^.^ I did however buy a tomato plant for $2.
Then I went back to JoAnn's and found they didn't sell belt-type buckels. So I bought two buttons and left for Church. On the way to church I stopped at the Hostess store and bought some donuts and milk for breakfast (oh so healthy!!). I made it to church 15 minutes early too! I'm slick. ^.^
Dad and Kim are going to do my favorite song, Seek Ye First, next Sunday for offeratory (sp?) I think. Dad's going to play flute and Kim's going to play organ. I swear the overtones that song creates with the descant makes it sound like the angels are singing with us ^.^
After church I jetted home and kicked Jacob awake. I snatched some shepherd's pie for lunch and then left to go find buckels. I went to Big Lots, but they didn't have anything, so I went to K-Mart and lo and behold a small leather purse was in the $3 range! It had two nice buckels and so I bought it. I'm going to fix it up so it's a good purse again (all I need to do is find a strap to sew on) and give it to someone or use it later on.
I spent the rest of the day working on a strap for the sword sheath that I made for Matt's birthday of which I need to upload some pictures despite how unhappy I am with the top >.< It sucks! I really need to remake the whole thing.
So for dinner we went to Staters to get food for his kitchen. We got two frozen pizzas, ten frozen dinners, ten frozen pot pies, and some juice. As we were checking out, the cashier (probably a high school student) noticed Matt's Lamb of God shirt and they just started talking about music which led to Rock Band and it was like they had known each other for a long time, but in reality had never met before ^.^
And so back at Matt's he put me in charge of cooking. Since he doesn't have cookie sheets, he suggested that I use the wooden cutting board to slide the pizzas in and out of the oven. In my mind I figured he was saying cook the pizzas on the board, whereas he was saying to use the board as a ferrying device and to cook the pizzas on the oven rack. So he went off to oil his bow in the garage and I put the cutting board with pizza in the oven. I went out to the garage and said, "If the wood catches fire, I'm blaming you." And he thought I was talking about his bow! So it was a bit of a miscommunication night...
And then he walked into his house and smelled burning wood. As soon as he opened the oven, smoke poured out and set off the alarm. We quickly slipped the pizza off the board and shut the oven and then hurriedly opened the windows and I fanned the alarm to shut it off. When we assumed all the smoke was gone, it was as if something else started burning in the oven and the alarm went off again! So Matt killed it by taking the battery out and all was good. We ate pizza and watched cartoons because Matt got cable that day and we could. Yay.

I'll put Mon and Tue next post.

Oh, some stupid kid put up a horrible background on computer 10. A rather young patron was using the computer (the internet browser has been left up when he got to the computer) and he closed the browser, only to see a picture of a young soldier with his face blown off and blood and guts everywhere. This, mind you, was a REAL picture. It was not a staged fake-out picture. Whoever put that up was sick and I can't believe we missed the guy who did it. It's hard to keep track of all the computers, but this one was really close to the desk... No one else had seen anything. It was a student who put it up and the tech guy is tracking him down.

I"M SO FREAKING ECSTATIC RIGHT NOW!! The Library is CLOSED! CLOSED ON SATURDAY! I don't have to work! :P hahahah See, they're doing construction in the gym and the power will be OUT all day!

Rachel out.

hello, world.

2008-04-21T16:25:00.000-07:00

How come hardly anyone understands depression? The only people who do are those who have it, while the others do one of two things:
sympathize or critisize.

This sucks. I shouldn't write when I'm depressed.

Look at this:

Fontana Library

Been awhile....

2008-04-18T16:39:00.000-07:00

Dang, I've not written in way too long! I'm watching "Meet the Robinsons." It's not too bad.

Not much to write about at the moment, just busy busy and sick. It's all these allergies getting my sinuses unhappy. bah, I didn't think it was that bad til the lady who gives me allergy shots yelled at me ^.^

Anyway, I have been taking pictures!

Gas prices are atrocious right now...

The outfit we have to wear for Motion Capture!

Early morning drive to school. I was running late tho.

I have succeeded!! muwahahahhaa....

Are they not just so CUTE??

So not much else going down. I'm working on Matt's birthday present. It's a sword sheath, but I won't get paid until after his birthday so he has to wait a bit.

Did I write about how he moved out? I can't remember. He's liking his new place with his fancy couch and bed. But most of all, he's loving his independance! He can make his own house rules now.

Anyway, I think I'll jet. I'll see about getting on more often.

Rachel

I want gimme gimme!

2008-04-02T17:49:00.000-07:00

it's just soooo pretty!

:)

And so I return...

2008-04-01T17:14:00.000-07:00

Though it has not been but about five days since I have last written, I feel that I have been on a long journey and am only now returning. I pray that you will forgive my absence.

Jen says it would be cool if I were schizo - it's her favorite mental disorder. My teacher says he trusts me because he knows I'm psycho - it's the quiet ones that disturb him. A few people are worried for their lives around me - their imagination is fed by their friends. Some people I wouldn't mind if someone did them bodily harm - one of which is emo and cuts himself because he wants to fit in to the depressed/goth crowd, I presume.

Which brings me to that subject. Emo. Those who are "depresed" but have aweseome lives that they take for granted. This guy that I mention has a beautiful rich home with a personal maid. What the crap is he depressed about? Nothing. It's fake. He broke up with a girl just because he couldn't always get his way. He's a WoW-tard as well whose friends are dipwads. Waniko-chan (a made up nickname) for some reason he cannot fathom, actually hangs out with this WoW Emo kid. weird.

Ooooh, we had a patron come in today and ask, "Is it ok if I return the books early?"
Oh how I wish all patrons were this awesome!

An hour and a half before I leave! yay.

Rachel

Classes

2008-03-26T16:32:00.000-07:00

I'm in an awesome class now :D
This is a class where the teacher picks on people and tells them to strip and put on black spandex, then we cover them in balls and make them dance around.
It's called Motion Capture! And we do have a nearby bathroom we can change in, so don't worry about that. The black spandex is super skin tight and we put the mocap reflective markers (balls) on the spandex so the 6 cameras we have will send the reflections back to the computer and presto! we have a skeleton!

My other class that I'm in is called Storyboarding, which pretty much is just that. We have picked a story that we want to turn into a movie and we write out a script of it, draw rough thumbnails of the important movements and then draw the tight sketches of each scene.

At work, one of our two computers has died horribly and has left us crippled. With Fontana opening soon, all of everyone is busy with that and so leaving us crippled to deal with the people that can no longer go to Fontana as it will close on Tuesday.
I HATE working the desk when there are five or more people all trying to get my attention at once! Patience, people, patience! Thursday I was about to yell at them all because I swear fifty people came in all at once and started talking loudly, with the volume getting louder every second and they all wanted to get on a computer which were all full and the reservation computers had reservations a mile long and some people when they did get off a computer logged off so we had to go fix that, but mostly they wanted to have stuff done that had to get done on the only working reference computer, which left me wishing they would all go away.
Oh and the printer on Wednesday wasn't working at all and on Thursday it took it like ten minutes for it to actually print.

Matt's moving, by the way! On Sunday. Very short notice, eh? But it's all cool. Despite the fact that it is an apartment type house thing it's not too bad. I might be able to take pictures if I remember on Sunday.

Anyway, I'm waiting for Matt to call for a ride because he's still at work and his car is in the shop and so I'm being his ride until he gets his car back which I thought he was getting it back today but his parents who I thought were going to go get it are still here and haven't gotten it yet....

I love you all (I'm sure) and hope you have a great day

Rachel

80th post for my bday

2008-03-17T09:22:00.000-07:00

So my birthday was yesterday. The day itself wasn't that bad, it just didn't feel that good.
Woke up about 7 or 8 and Matt's mom made breakfast. Jacob and I had spent Saturday gaming with Matt and some other friends. Ok, I did homework and played in the snow. IT SNOWED!! it snowed and I love it. I have pics! Ok, but you have to click on the pics to actually see the snow in some... :/

Oh but that wasn't about my birthday. Anyway, Matt's mom made pancakes, eggs, and sausage. It was good. (she had also forgotten that it was my birthday, so it's just a normal thing for her! she's a great cook) Unfortunately Matt was sick and didn't eat much. His throat was sore and he had a stuffy nose and pained sinuses. Oh and his stomach too...
Then Matt helped his dad with his new phone and uploading new ringtones and we left for church. After church, about 12:30, we had a memorial service for Larry Turner, who was a very awesome God fearing man who died of cancer throughout his body. So we spent an hour and a half crying, remembering Larry as he was - not perfect but so cool that you never remembered anything bad about him. And now he's up there talking to God. We miss you Larry but at least you aren't stuck down here anymore!
So after the service, we went to my house for lunch where we had ramen and I opened my present from Aunt Betsy. Aunt Betsy got me two Japanese bowls (made in China!), three flavors of YanYan, two anime pins, a box for the bowls, some Udon noodles, and the best part (well, not really, but it was silly cool) a curly ribbon decoration that bounces nicely.... go ADD.
After lunch, Matt took me down to the mills mall to find me a present in the form of a black dress. Good gracious me, the mall was insane! A mad house! Everyone and their mother's daughter were there! I guess this is the time to get a prom dress and so all the dress stores were packed and being ravished by giggling high schoolers trying to find the best dress for the prom. We went into my favorite shop, but there was only one dress there that looked really pretty that might have worked for me, but there were none above a size 4. A quarter of the way around the mall Matt said he needed some peppermint so I thought the chocolate factory might have something, but it was packed so I took him to the sweet factory where he proceeded to pick up 1 peppermint. I told him we should get more so he grabbed a handful. Good thing too cuz he ended up eating most of them. It helped his throat, nose, and stomach.
We never found anything after that until we got to Tyler Mall. We went into Nordstroms first and found two dresses that looked nice, so I tried them on. Man the dressing room was a palace. It had a small platform with a wrap around mirror, in a large room. Soooooo nice. Unfortunately neither dress worked for me as nice as they were. I need something with sleeves that goes down to the floor I guess. So we walked over to Pennys, but there was only one dress there that had it been longer it would have been better, but perhaps not as elegant as I would have liked. So we gave up and went to Macy's but they were even worse. I'm out of my time... just like Matt. I think we're like 100-1000 years too late.
So we went to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner but when we opened the door, the noise that hit me gave me a headache so fast we walked right out and went to Ruby's, a small '50's style joint. I had an oreo shake and an albacore sandwich. It was great. So after that we went to Matt's house where I ended up falling alseep pretty quickly. except I woke up at 1:45 in excruciating tension pain :( I was tempted to wake Matt up, but he was (and still is) sick and was fast asleep on the couch. (ain't he sweet? He gives up his bed for me) :)
So I woke up feeling sick, after having a dream about working/living in a museum full of weapons where this guy kept coming in raping people and so me and this other girl ended up fighting back with swords and he had brought some of his friends... Have you ever imagined sticking a sword into someone? It was a bit different than I expected... The only unrealistic part was that no matter how many times I stabbed them or slashed them they wouldn't bleed or die. I eventually ended up fighting the main guy with a sword that was really pretty... it was made of a black mineral with blue sparklies like a galaxy. Unfortunately I never killed him. I woke up. And thus I ended up sleeping through the time to get up for school, turned in my work via email and called my work, got a call from mom saying Aunt Betsy needed a ride to her dr.s appt. which somehow ended up taking from 11:30 to 4:30. bleh.

oh well anyway, this is finals week so I need to get writing. I'm doing a report/speech on the Sexualization of America's youth and the more I look into it the more it just seems like "they" are catering to the pedophiles. In fact the pedophiles have even complained about this same thing. It sucks. So Remember for those of you with young children, yours or those who just hang around, be careful. You might just be baiting trouble. Of course you also have to remember that life does not have to be spent worrying, just keep it in mind.

Rachel

Pics!

2008-03-13T13:04:00.001-07:00

I could stare at this pic for hours.... that's how happy I am with it! I'll take more pics to travel around the planets so you can get a better 3D feel!

There's a taste of things to come! The room I'm working on for 3D modeling is almost done and is due on Tuesday.

This is the desk:

These are flowers that were part of another project and I just thought I would put it on ^.^

Big story

2008-03-07T08:46:00.000-08:00

It is my hope that I post this story in its entirety as fact and not opinion, to convey what has gone down. If it is my opinion, I will state it as so. Names have been changed to further avoid conflicts. Please remember that this is all my personal point of view and is therefore swayed by my opinion, as much as I try to leave my opinion out. If anyone has any problems with me or what I wrote, please e-mail me directly, do not comment anonymously mean things or the comment will be deleted. Thank you.

"Our new boss, “Chris”, arrived in early november having moved from out of state. He was very talkative. We were told to hold off programs until January in which we hoped he would settle in and be more comfortable with procedure.
For the first month or two he spent most of his time suing a used car salesman, using the library's phones for personal use, as well as the computers. He even went to another library and used the reference computer for his own personal use. He was very distractable and very forgetful. Often when sitting at the desk he would forget to pay attention to the patrons, instead looking things up on the computer or talking to one of us, who would ultimately help the patron while trying not to be rude to the boss.
He did try to be helpful when he was dealing with patrons, though he tended to disbelieve some while completely believing others. One of our best patrons, always ordering things, returned two DVDs. I wasn't there that day, but “Chris” handled the situation which was not that hard to deal with. That saturday our patron came back in and wanted to know why he was getting called about a fine. “Chris” was at the desk at the time and at first didn't remember the patron. (I don't know if it makes a difference, but this patron is black) He then checked the card and didn't seem to listen to the patron when the patron stated he had in fact returned the movies, instead wanting to know where the movies were.
I happened to see the titles of the DVDs and remembered seeing them on the hold shelf. Sure enough, they were on the hold shelf and they hadn't been checked in. So I picked them up and tried to show the boss, who ignored me for the first two times I said, "These are the DVDs." Then he was surprised. I told him he should just back date them, so he clicked on the return items button, which won't let you back date. You have to go to bookdrop for that. I had gone back to sorting books at this time and I heard him say that it wasn't working, that it wasn't letting him back date. He checked one dvd back in, which resulted in the fine still being on the patron's card. So I went back over and told him he had to use the book drop for that. So he clicked on the book drop and put in the date, but then he scanned the barcode into the date box. It came up with an error saying it was the incorrect date. He tried the same thing twice after that and wondered why it wasn't working. I told him that he had to pick the date again and then he scanned the barcode in again. We finally got it straightened out and our patron had his fines cleared.

Lincoln's birthday was a school holiday but not a county holiday. This was also before I got keys to the library. I was scheduled to come into work by 2, but I got there at 1:30. There was no one there. I waited until 2 and called the regional manager who told me that “Chris” had been in a meeting with him until 1:30 and that I should wait until 2:30. If he was still not there at 2:30, call the regional manager again. I had tried calling “Chris”' cell number but no one had answered. I had also forgotten which numbers were my coworkers (which one was supposed to come in at 3) so I couldn't call them.
So at 2:30 I called the regional again and he said that he would try to find out where “Chris” was and to give him 20 minutes. 20 minutes later, he calls back and says that “Chris” is on his way. 5 minutes to opening “Chris” pulls up and opens the library, all the while ranting about how it wasn't his fault. How was he supposed to know it was a school holiday? Nobody told him. Except that I had and so had the school librarians. Besides that, it isn't the school's responsibility to open the public library so that just doesn't cut it. He was also griping about the fact that he got in trouble with his boss and how it wasn't my fault (but I found out later he did indeed blame me). He never actually told anyone how he felt about them. He would say one thing to one person and then turn around and talk bad about them behind their back.
He talked crap about the regional manager, calling him evil and malicious. I don't know about any of you, but I've known the regional for a lot longer than I've known anyone at my library and I have never had any problem with him. He is a really nice guy even when he's chewing you out or firing you. He doesn't raise his voice and he shows that he actually cares about how you feel. So to hear “Chris” talking crap about him just made me really not like “Chris”. I hadn't even known who they were talking about until they said his name and it kind of shocked me. I know he's not perfect, no one is, but he's twenty million times better than “Chris” will ever be.
For those of you who don't know, the regional manager was only recently promoted to that position. He's the branch manager at my mom's library and that library is getting ready to move into their newly built huge library. There are three other libraries that he has to pay attention to now, including mine, so that's four libraries he's regional to and one he's branch manager to. So he has double his share of meetings to go to and three times and many people to deal with. And so he had to deal with “Chris” in the middle of all this.
“Chris” on the other hand was bad mouthing him and saying how he was out to can him (as if he had some sort of ten year unjustified grudge against “Chris”) and making it sound like you should pity “Chris” for having to deal with such a tyrant. To me he sounded like a baby. He sounded like a highschooler who just didn't want to grow up and take responsibility for his actions. Nothing was ever his fault. Out of all that time spent at our library he learned seemingly nothing about SERSI and continually screwed up patron's files.

He was enthusiastic about the YA and Children's programs and he did a program (yeah he pretty much took my job there, oh well) for the teens on guessing famous to not so famous anime characters. We had about 28 teens come for that. He also helped the children's librarian with story time and crafts.

The last saturday he worked, I think he knew he was going to get canned and I could tell in my opinion anyway, that he blamed me. He was certainly bitter about something that day and he took it out in his own way on me, verbally being politely abusive? Saying things such as, "Kudos to you for figuring out something yourself. It really helps." In a tone that makes you feel as if you have never done anything. That line and the way he said it ticked me off.
Perhaps not as much as when we were alone at the desk together and he was whining about how he was probably going to get canned and he told me that I was his last hope, his only hope and could I paint a nice picture to the regional for him? He told me, "You know I gave you a good review" and told me how he gave me all E's... insinuating what? Trying to guilt me into saying something nice or just trying to get pity? What about that last saturday when he told me, quite emotionally, that he just let this couple use his card to get onto a computer because that's just the kind of guy he is. That he likes to do nice things like that. And he was bragging about it in a whiny high school emo way.
I'm just still a little incredulous. He called me the other day (apparently an accident) and then proceeded to tell me that he was going to sue the library for $15,000 for traveling expense and that he had talked to some lawyers and they thought it would work...

I know this should be chronological, but the way I type it usually flows together preventing me from editing things in. Oh and I'm being lazy because this has taken so long to type.
Before he had met mom, I thought I had told him about her, but either I hadn't or he'd forgotten. Anyway, she had come over for one reason or another and it was busy, so we ended up getting called away from the desk leaving mom there to work it. “Chris” didn't even question this strange woman working the desk. He later told her, "I figured you knew something about libraries." As if that made it all better. He never seemed to care about the rules, as if they never applied to him.
Oh and he never could do our schedules correctly. I went in one saturday and foudn that the schedule was a complete opposite what he had told me the previous day. I had thought I had monday off, but then I found I didn't and no one had told me. Mom and I had started planning to go to the beach that monday and if I had called in sick saturday, I wouldn't have known that I was supposed to work monday, which would have screwed SO many things up!

And so that's pretty much it. I may delete this post later, as it wouldn't even be up had I not gotten so many requests.

Rachel

Head Cat Fairy Temple

2008-03-06T11:07:00.001-08:00

Head Cat Fairy in an Ice temple.

Big pic

Zombie FAIRY!!

2008-03-04T12:09:00.001-08:00

this was created by Jen, even though the idea was from Alejandro (our 3D Teacher)

Torture!!!

2008-02-26T11:58:00.000-08:00

Hah! Now I get to torture all you out there with...

HEAD CAT!

Muwahahahahhahahahahahahah....ha

I have no idea who took this picture, I don't know who the cat is... this pic just keeps popping up so I'm making an ice temple and putting this cat in it for fun. :P

This guy will look so much better with texture and fluff!

shtuffs

2008-02-25T19:50:00.000-08:00

"Kudos to you for figuring out something yourself. It really helps." Doesn't that make you wanna punch someone... if they said that to you after you work real hard day after day?

What day is it....

2008-02-25T18:07:00.000-08:00

You ever notice how fast time just passes you by while you sit back and stare at something? Well, it passes by much faster when you run around like a chicken with your head cut off!! I missed practically the entire month and here I am with secrets and conspiracy and ethics and 3D architecture and homework and and and.... and I just need to figure out how to slow down.
I'm a little young to be this stressed ^.^ I need to wait until I have kids. THEN I can stress! :)

It's been a rough week but it's getting better. Matt certainly helps keep me level headed, or at least he tries. I greatly appreciate his awesome patience when it comes to me. I would be lost without him :(

There's a big complicated story going down right now, but I can't post any of it lest I get in trouble. It's very fascinating and dramatic and should be on a soap opera.... or one of those over the top dramas. ooooh, if it was written correctly with a few twists it could be a thriller.... heheh

I've been taking a lot of pics lately and want to post them on my blog, so as soon as I get a computer with a card reader I will! :)

New Changes

2008-02-18T18:37:00.000-08:00

So how do you like the new look for the blog? Is it easier to read or difficult, is the font ok...etc
Let me know how you feel about it!

:)

New Project

2008-02-15T08:56:00.000-08:00

Ya wanna see my new project? 3D Architecture! I'm going to Try to recreate St. Patrick's Rock, also known as Rock of Cashel. It's in Ireland, in County Tipperary and google doesn't have a satelite that zooms close enough for me to see it as a bird does. So I don't know how to organize the buildings :( wah
So I hafta guess. (by the way, this is my lazy post)
Anyway.. I took these pics from Google Images. There are a lot, but not of every angle. I would LOVE an arial view!!!!! So here's a couple of the typical views.
(by the way, the arial view I would like should be big enough to see details nicely.)

Happy Valentine's Day

2008-02-11T16:56:00.000-08:00

Happy Valentine's day everyone!

I though this was pretty cool! I found this picture on Edwinvillanueva Picture or Edwinvillanueva Post

:)

now I'm gonna go back to work and wish you all a great romantic night! And for those of you who are swinging it single... Eat Chocolate Ice cream! it's awesome!

Rachel

(p.s. if it helps me not get into trouble, as I do not quite know the rules, i do not own that 3D Magic picture. so there :P )

In Honor of Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and Jason Bezis

2008-02-11T08:08:00.000-08:00

You know, there's something that I have in common with lawyer Jason Bezis... the fact that most Americans, most Californians, are ignorant about the holidays. I think he's a bit more adament, as he's been fighting common knowledge (as wrong as it can be) and that is very difficult and usually futile.
George Washington's Birthday is supposed to be the 22nd of February. We celebrate it as the third monday. But most Americans think that it's Presidents' Day (Presidents, President's) and can argue three ways. One is that it's for Washington's birthday, two that it's for both Lincoln and Washington's birthdays, or that it's for all the presidents.
So it can get confusing and most American's just don't like to think about it. They just care about getting the day off and if they don't, the holiday doesn't really exist. Unfortunately, I don't get the day off and I care.

Today is the celebrated Lincoln's birthday and we have school. I'm unsure as of right now (as is my teacher) on if we get "President's day" off, and if we don't, I'm thinking about mutiny. But that's mainly because I seem to tend to be controversial and they seem to be "appeasing to those who complain most." or whatever you want to call it.
Such as... We had Martin Luther King Jr. Day off. That in-and-of itself isn't bad, because he was a good man, but the reason you celebrate it matters. Did we get that day off and not Lincoln's birthday because of skin color? Does this school just not like "white" guys or do they think that Lincoln just isn't that important?
Just think of what Martin Luther King Jr.'s life would be like had Lincoln not been born or was killed before his presidency? Would he have existed? Our world would be completely different. We cannot exclude anyone from history, nor can we uphold one above another when they both fought for ultimately the same thing.
If all men were created equal, then why do we cater to those who are racist? Just think... if someone complains enough like... "It's because I'm ___, isn't is??" Well, that's a form of Racism, or Sexism, or whatever. It is holding one above another, separating themselves from others and aligning themselves in a select group. So why does this go unnoticed? Or ignored, more like? Do we want to appease those who make a fuss? Do we just not want any trouble so much that we sit back and spoil people?
If you have a toddler who keeps wanting a cookie, do you give the kid a cookie just to shut him up? Or do you do what is best for the kid? In essence, it's the same thing with grown ups, only most people don't know what is actually good for them, so they just give them what they want. :P

aaaaannnddd.... so yeah anyway....

People confuse me with their inability to care. That is why society is the way it is. People, their arrogance, their apatheticness, their passions, their ability to care too much.... Because of how different everyone is. That is why war will not go away, that is why there will be no peace, that is why society is the way it is.
Is it really so bad? The poorest people seem to be the happiest... and those poor people who aren't happy don't seem to last long :*( But those who are rich... how many are truly happy? Britney Spears? hah. Of course it is possible to be happy when you're rich, there's moderation in everything.

and then there's the lack of tolerance ^.^ and the irrational people ^.^

and me. whatever I am.

Rachel

Flower

2008-02-05T14:17:00.001-08:00

I took this up in mid-northern California in Jackson. Mom and I were on a nice little weekend trip. I miss those! And looking at all sorts of photos on DevArt makes me want to post more of mine.

Librarian: Definition

2008-02-04T18:55:00.000-08:00

"Librarian
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A Librarian is an information professional trained in library and information science, which is, simply stated, the organization and management of information services or materials for those with information needs."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librarian

You should check out the full article! I'm doing research on "typical" librarians and what librarians (assistants, pages, etc) are.

oh this is the best! Click the link!

Worship Librarians

oh yeah, worship the librarians!

Finland

2008-02-04T12:30:00.000-08:00

Was browsing blogs on blogger and came across one from Finland that has some beautiful pictures.
http://improvisages.blogspot.com/
Makes me want to travel even more... :( I hate being stuck in one place, but I'm trapped. I've a job and full time accelerated schooling that will be over in a year. A year. Think I'll make it without becoming crazy?

Hi

2008-02-04T12:00:00.000-08:00

I have two hours in which I need to kill time, two hours before work... two hours before my six hours of torture.

Ya know, normally working isn't really that bad, but I feel sick. I've not been feeling the best since Friday night, in which I woke up Saturday morning to a stuffy head, runny nose, abdominal pain, and a sore throat. Sounds pretty bad when I write it down, but it's all mild. It just makes me wanna lie around all day and do nothing of consequence,

But no, I have to go to work in two hours. So what do I do for two hours? I write posts. Maybe I should buy something online or what not...
bleh.

It's really hard to keep up a blog when there's not much going on. We finally got to start playing Lineage again. Yay. Got Dirk up to level 26 before we had to leave.

Oh and we made a hundred and something dollar dinner Saturday night. I massaged spices and Worcestershire sauce into three large Sirloin steaks and BBQ'd them. Also skewered mushrooms, red and green bell peppers, pearl onions, zucchini, and the best part, large Black Tiger Shrimp. Those shrimp are so expensive!!! $43 for a dozen. I also did baked potatoes and mashed potatoes and we had petite French rolls. It was to thank Jacob and Daddy for fixing my car.

So that was my weekend ultimately. But I'm going to stop typing now because it's really hurting my arms...

Rachel

Life and word nazi-ism

2008-01-26T10:04:00.000-08:00

I have a sort of disconect from my physical state and my emotional state at some points in time. Such as I could be feeling horribly sick but be very emotionally happy. However, my emotional state always affects my physical state. (by the way, the misuse of affect/effect is probably one of the most prevalent mistakes besides "their, they're, there...")
So since I have been emotionally drained, my physical state is one that is in need of severe rest.
Do you notice that you can go a whole stressful week and not feel that stress, but then one little thing sets it all off because you've really been bottling it up inside? Then it just explodes and people around you go, "wow, what's her problem??"
And all you can do is... well, you can cry, get angry and blow things up, hug someone or talk to them, but it really depends on how you deal with it.

All I need is someone to hug me and tell me it's all right. (did you know that "alright" had not been readily accepted? Many people consider it a mispelling.)

So here I am at work, on a beautiful Saturday morning and all I wanna (yes, wanna) do is go to a park, sit on the grass and hang out with friends and eat good food. I haven't eaten breaky yet and it's 10:39. I've been up since 6:45 and I didn't go to bed until 1 this morning, so I managed to snag 5:45 hours of sleep. bleh.
It wasn't the most restful sleep, but despite being drained, I am quite content. <~@

>-.O< nyo!

and so... yeah. Not much going on around here. Just sitting at the computer waiting for a patron to come and say HI! So far been here for two hours and doesn't feel like one.

I'm gonna get back to reading "Sunshine Rider". Byebye

Rachel

As if that's all that matters...

2008-01-09T16:35:00.000-08:00

Well! Some people are quite nice about fines. Here at my Library, I've not met someone that was actually mean about them! That is, until today.
Let me set it all up. This seems to be a day of huge fines. 3 people so far have come in with fines (before checking the books in) at about $300. One I didn't have the pleasure of meeting, it was a drop-the-books-and-run kinda thing. The first was a nice lady who flinched at seeing her fine at $88, but was quite pleasant about it. She was very happy when I told her she could pay her fees online (happy?).

Then this young man walks in with an armful of books. His final amount (it was on his sister's card) was $33. Wow, that's $55 less than the nice lady's. He says he has to tell his mom and walks out.
In walks this large woman with her arms crossed over her chest.

Her: "My son tells me my daughter has a fine of $33."

Me: "Yes she does." I showed her the computer screen. "See it was $3 for each book because they were brought it late."

Her: "Well that's ridiculous." I told her that's how it is. 25 cents for each of the books that was turned in 12 days late adds up to $3 a book. I should have told her how much the original $300 fine was!
She gave me a haughty kind of look and said, "Well you guys got your books." as if it would make her fine go away and I was the scum of the earth.

Yay! My first real library-patron story!

Oh yeah and the start of the Teen Programming!
I was told on thursday to go to the performer's showcase and was then denied a performer :( waaaaahhh. oh yeah, I was told that the teens weren't worth it.
AREN"T WORTH IT??

Well, I'll just have to show them that I believe in my teens.
I now share something in common with Hitler and E.L.F. Now don't kill me just yet! Hear me out. They share something with many successful people: Ambition! A passion for something!
Yes, Hitler was a very bad man who was completely insanely against Jews and is most likely burning in Hell for it, but he had a glorious dream as well. After the first World War, he, like many other soldiers, felt a great frustration for the state of his country. Germany suffered greatly and was no longer the powerful country it had once been. Hitler felt a powerful need to do something about that suffering, so he took it upon himself to raise Germany up out of the muck and mire and make it great and strong again! Too bad the way he was doing it was retarded. Well, true, it did pretty much succeed. It brought practically the whole world out of a depression!
I'm sure everyone has felt an overwhelming desire to accomplish what they deem important and have felt the frustration at feeling alone in it, right? Everywhere you turn, all you see are apathetic faces who couldn't care less if you succeed.
That's actually why ELF exists - They felt an overwhelming passion for saving the earth and all they could see were apathetic people crudding up the world they were desperately trying to save. In their eyes, this battle they are fighting is one that is extremely desperate! No matter that the world is extremely tough and does it's own thing even if we exist. Have you looked at an old torn up building? What might I ask has Nature done with it? It's called recycling. Nature loves things to play with.
Mind, she doesn't care much for stuff like oil in the water, but she will get rid of it. Oil did originally come from her grounds! Everything is natural in some form or another. If it is on this earth, it will go back to earth.

I'm hungry.

Anyway, I have quite a bit of frustration over this whole situation. The fact that they told me that my teens aren't worth it! What kind of wording is that?! No one here believed it either. The children's program gets 4 performers! curse them for always getting at a minimum of 4 times what the teens get! No wonder teens never feel appreciated! heh.

Don't worry, I won't go crazy like Hitler. Those who don't learn History are doomed to repeat it (next sememester!).
and I so did want to pick out my very own performer!

I am very sad.

Ergonomically Correct

2007-12-27T15:35:00.000-08:00

That phrase has been bugging me for a bit, so I thought I would write it down. Do you know what it means?

Ergonomics:
1. (used with a sing. verb) The applied science of equipment design, as for the workplace, intended to maximize productivity by reducing operator fatigue and discomfort. Also called biotechnology, human engineering, human factors engineering.

Are your pens ergonomically correct?

Anyway, I hope everyone had a great Christmas! Let's see if I can remember everything I got...
Matt got me a nice leather jacket and took me to Midieval Times where he paid $22 for drinks, $20 for a picture, and $4 for a tour of Midieval torture devices. So total, he spent: $180 for the jacket, $125 for the tickets... about $351 for Christmas!
Other than that, I got:
a fancy Yixing teapot with a Cicada on the lid,
a bag of caramel kisses,
a Garfield for the car,
a giant candy cane,
a pair of boots,
a sweater and a long sleeved flowery shirt that I am currently wearing,
Sweet Pea bubble bath and lotion,
Aroma therapy Black Currant Vanilla lotion, bubble bath, and pillow spray,
a set of four candles,
a green flash light,
a set of tools and emergency kit for the car,
$20,
a citadel for my Sisters of Battle,
a ball of snickers chocolate bars,
a tin containing a crystal dragon, a twix bar, some Lindt truffles, milkyway bars and peppermint kisses,
a thing of Avon lip stuff,
a ball of some pink bubble bath,
a goofy Koosh pen,
a little pony ornament,
a pair of fluffy wuffy yummy red socks that I am currently wearing,
a porcelain Santa ornament,
a hand drawn chalk drawing of Seshomaru from InuYasha,
a gift card for Best Buy of a yet undetermined amount (I keep forgetting to check),
a dozen homemade chocolate chip cookies,
something shiny possibly coming in the mail,
and whatever else I got. That's a lot of stuff!

and so that was my Christmas!

HI!

2007-12-13T15:56:00.001-08:00

HI Everyone! Hope you're all doing great today! I'm at the library and thought I would say HI to everyone out there in Computer Land!

p.s. click on the cat!! Smoky!

An Analytical Analogy

2007-12-12T18:55:00.000-08:00

Perhaps I'm too controversal because a lot of people are very opinionated and I try to view things from all angles. Don't get me wrong, I am also opinionated, but I do try to be open minded. The best way to solve a conflict is to put all the cards on the table and talk. Some people don't work well that way. This one girl I know likes to ignore the problem. Literally.
She got mad at me for reasons unknown even to this day and so she pretending I didn't exist, for over a year.
There are other people who will swear you are wrong, even if it is obvious beyond a shadow of a doubt that you aren't. A few people say they do that because they're so terrified of being wrong. Others say it's a control issue. It could be both even.
Some people don't think anything is ever wrong, where others think everything is wrong. The world is so diverse that it's difficult to keep up with everything. You never know what kind of person you're going to be dealing with, which is why I get in so much trouble ^.^

Making jokes about certain people, such as Vegetarians, can seem like a harsh and cruel thing to do. Those are the offensive people, who have a difficult sense of humor. My Vegetarian friend thought it was hilarious (which is why I posted it.) I do not regret posting it.

Oh and I came across two sides to an argument of sorts today. Side A was upset because Side B was calling Side A a sexist, whereas Side A did not feel like a sexist. Side B was calling Side A a sexist because Side A was defending Neutral C in a heated manner. Side A thinks this is totally uncalled for and Side B thinks Side A needs to get a life.
Side A, B, and Neutral C are all women.

My personal opinion on it? Side A should remember that there are people who are very offensive and who get very offended out there. She should remember that the world is full of jerks, some of them chauvinist males, others witchy females.
Side B needs to get the stick out of her rear, but she's an attorney. That's expected of such a high stress job where you only look at one side defensively.
Who is in the wrong? Neither. Is either in the right? Yes and no. Yes because they have good points and no because their points were not taken correctly. I am guessing they were not taken correctly by the reactions of both parties.

Blogs are fun because you can see what people are a.) really thinking, or b.) what they want people to think they are really thinking. They also make me go way too analytical and I start analyzing how or why they think the way they do.
I could be totally wrong about Side A and Side B. I am judging my basis off of what I have read from both Parties. Both sides tell completely different sounding stories, so I have to figure out what's really going on.

This all boils down to one simple fact...: They are women.

Women: the drama causers. If it were not for women, the word "Drama" would not have been invented. In negative terms, They are the back-biters, and back-stabbers. They are the gossip makers and the home wreckers. Sure men make bombs and blow things up, but if a woman was in charge, she'd make a bomb not to kill, but to make people suffer. Women are spiteful creatures who always complicate the action movie.
I am a woman. Do I hate myself?
Sometimes.
But then you have to look at the good side of things, because without the negative, nothing would be good.
Men may be able to cook, but the Kitchen belongs to the woman. There are women who disagree, but it's true. No man I know can cook as good as the women I know :) And for me, food is my biggest sin. Now, there are men out there who are absolutely wonderful chefs. But women have a touch.
Women make the best mothers :) There is NOTHING like a mother. Not even a gay man. Mothers are the flour in the cake. They hold it all together. They make every ouchy better. They are the saint when a kid is picking on you, or you had a horrid nightmare.
Women are great with fashion and clothing. Again with the gay guy thing... No. Sure they can be great with fashion (heck, my boyfriend is!) but also again, that's women's territory. For generation upon millenia! The HOUSE is the Woman's! The man is supposed to provide and make all final decisions. They work in unison, perfectly. But with the way societies are now, all the primal instincts are being thrown out. Our society doesn't need men to be macho. It doesn't need men to be tough. Women have always had to be tough. In High Society many many moons ago, they had to be quick witted and emotional strong. Even in Lower Society they had to, though there were more of the primal instincts needed.
People strive on harsh situations.

Look at what the internet made me do! :D
Rant rant rant.

I'm at work, there's no one here... so I can carry on a huge conversation with myself on the net. For my constant and faithful readers, thank you for putting up with the everlasting posts!

crap... I need to go home!! I am going....insane...and insanely...tired!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You would not believe this day. I might post it... but I might get in trouble *wink**wink* ;)

Rachel

Rachel

Psych

2007-12-04T19:42:00.000-08:00

Is it just me or do people actually not think much? Do they just follow a leader because it's easier than thinking for themselves?
You don't hear much about the sheep unless the shepherd gets them all killed.

Whereas E.L.F. you hear about because they seem to like to "throw rocks at hornets' nests"

I sitll haven't found a logical explanation, mainly because this is not logical.

E.L.F.

2007-12-03T13:30:00.000-08:00

Been a while since I last wrote in... for some reason I was a bit stressed and got sick all last week. Still getting over it. bleh. Everyone got it too. So far Matt hasn't gotten it like I did. I was the only one to get a fever.

As for the title; blame Speech, my latest class. This module we have Speech and Psychology. In Speech, we had to come up with a topic to do our final on and I decided on ELF: Earth Liberation Front. They are considered America's #1 terrorist organization. woooot. They are pretty secretive, so I'll have to really dig to find much, but basically, they're a very secretive group of super environmentalists. Apparently they hate corporate America. or just corporate anything. I just don't understand why they would see violence as being appropriate when trying to protect the earth. Ok, giant smoke cloud helping to cause global warming is protecting the earth?? riiiiight....

Wow, I just remembered I have a meeting on Wednesday and no-one is in this week! Well, Casey is out and so is JoAnn, but I am unsure of Susie... Eric will be here. dah... gotta tell my Speech teacher!

crud it all.

wow

2007-11-13T07:34:00.000-08:00

My dear brother reads all sorts of comics online and this one hits way too close to home! You'd think he was in my living room! If this link doesn't work for you, let me know and I'll post the picture.

http://xkcd.com/331/

Hi to all youse out there!

2007-11-05T18:49:00.001-08:00

It's finally calmed down a bit here at the library. Casey is out sick, so we're under staffed today and it's pretty busy. We've filled up a whole book cart with returns and haven't had time to shelve them. I would do that right now but Susie has to do the monthly reports. :(

Hi Grandma and Grandpa!

Hi Mom!

Hi everyone else who reads my blog!

Love always,
Rachel

Long Quan Chi Long sword

2007-11-04T17:59:00.000-08:00

"ChiLong(螭龍 hornless dragon) is often featured on Jian (short swords) made in LongQuan province during Ming and Qing Dynasty (1368 - 1911)."

I picked this sword up for what some would consider way too much and others would think is a great deal at an antique store down in old town Pomona. :)
Jian is the Chinese for Short Sword, while Dao is for Sabers.

This sword is beautifully balanced, with the sweet spot about an inch to an inch and a half on the blade before the guard. It gives you the ability to guide the tip of the sword with amazing accuracy. I'm not that good with blades yet, but Matt is and he thinks it's very well made. I can guarantee it's not a replica, as the replicas have very flimsy blades.
I am unsure of the blade's age, but all the resources I have found state as above, that this style was made around 1368 with the Ming Dynasty and ended in 1911, with the fall of the Qing dynasty.

I know these pics aren't the best, but I'm in the middle of restoring it. The blade itself has brass dots down it and is made of iron. When I bought it it was pretty rrusty. The rust came off pretty easy with a rust sponge, but the blade is still ccorroded with small black pits. I read at northernwu.com that it's caused by blood. Under "Restoring the Sword" under blade, it states, "Superficial rusting is caused by exposure to moisture, while deep black colored pits result from blood corroding the steel." I think that my sword should have a name due to this possibility. I am still thinking of one, but if anyone has any idea, it is welcome.

If anyone wants any reference on this particular sword, this one is pretty similar.
Picture of a similar sword

I will post more pictures with the furthering of the restoration. I may have to have it professionally done, but I'm going to try to do as much as I can.

Oh and by the way, a teen at the library thinks it's about 650 years old due to the style of the dragon. If this is so, then it was definately remodeled at the turn of the 20th century

How to say Thank you

2007-10-31T07:54:00.000-07:00

Click me, I'm a link! to: http://www.elite.net/~runner/jennifers/thankyou.htm

This person went through the trouble of writing down about 465 languages! I just wanted to immortalize them and thank them for that work.

Another creature abomination

2007-10-29T11:55:00.000-07:00

Just so y'all know, this was designed by Jen and created by Me :)

An Awesome Creature of DOOOM

2007-10-25T12:03:00.000-07:00

Before you click on the picture to see this monster large, be warned that it may take a little bit of time. I like my pics big and beautiful.

this is, by the way, a chinchilla cat, a kudu, an owl, and a horse :)

HTML Tags and quiz

2007-10-24T16:19:00.000-07:00

My HTML Class

Why is it that I'm like a bubble in all my classes?That's the only simily I can come up with. I rise to the top and bob there, bored already. We were going over color in HTML today

Pretty easy

I actually was doing color yesterday. Monday I figured out how to put in a background picture and various other things and so all I can do is continue to put in link after link and make various pages of the homework assignments and... I ramble on and on.
What am I doing in a school that does not challenge me? The Maya class was Great! Even Flash was fun. I miss those classes and I really miss Charlie, who would make us do 20 pictures over the weekend for homework. Now I slack off my drawing :( I have become lazy and it's not the best for me to be bored. I need motivation.
Then I think of the 130 pictures that I have to finish drawing for the book and then there's the cover art!! Doggone, why can't I ever remember when I have free time! Well, I'll have time tomorrow. I techinically have time right now, as there is no one at the desk >o_O<
<('.' )<
>( '.')>
Dancing Kirby

ADD, the bane of human existence. Which brings me to my next rant.
Who on earth decided that to be anti-illegal alien is racist? Ok, so I'm racist against the Canadians which, by the way, I am going to marry one? You can barely tell who they are, except they say "eh?" (which is better than "Duh")
Oh and I've noticed that if you have a European accent or if people know you're from Europe, they'd never suspect that you're an illegal. They seem to have a higher respect for Europeans. No, I think that no matter what, no matter who you are, if you cheat in some way, that's bad. There are plenty of immigrants who come over here legally who get mad at these illegals and are they racist? Because they look the same, heck they might even be from the same neighborhood. Oh yeah, I know Bob. He was my neighbor. Never liked the guy.

Do you know what my problem is? I don't talk enough. Heh, anyone who knows me... Matt knows I usually talk his ear off (that's why my lips are always chapped, right Matt? -_o)
But I only talk so much to him and my family because I don't want to talk to other people about my overly sensitive and usually very controversal subjects.
I learned my lessons the hard way.
I think they may still have a vendetta against me...
heh
Which is why I'm going in Fullll buckskin for halloween. Because they have something against me and I have something against them. They try to shove the enemy (fruits and vegies) down my throat, I'll just remind them that animals have uses. Of course saying stuff like this is exactly what gets me in so much trouble!
People seem to think in just black and white and I guess I'm more grey than they'd like to think. Do I hate animals and wish to wear and eat them? No. I love animals. I love to feel their soft fur and their warmth and breathing. I love the feel of life. It disturbs me how easily crushed it is.
I respect the animal who have given their life so that I may dine upon their meat (I sound so barbaric!!). But for the vegetables, fruits, and nuts who have waged war against me, I must dine upon the flesh of those who have lived.
In other words, I'm a carnivore. One of my best friends is a vegetarian and I drew a comic portraying vampires as "brainwashing" our youth into becoming vegetarians because vegetarians taste better. This was especially funny because of the reason Jen is a vege. She had to do a report on Veal and it was so horrible that she won't eat anything that had a face. Unfortunately, someone (and I now know who) wrote a nasty comment on my blog about me basically being stupid and uncaring towards animals and those who refuse their meat.
Can't people take a joke?
Besides, posting a comment like that anonymously is actually a pretty coward thing to do. If you aren't brave enough to back your opinions, maybe you shouldn't have them. This particular person, however, I understand (to an extent)why she didn't post her name. She hates me. Her whole entire family refuses to even acknowledge my presence because of my brother. I will not go into the story, but it's very very very unreasonable and unfair and I think that people should not hold grudges against people who actually tried to help a problem (and I didn't even make it worse) and they are the ones who won't listen and refuse to help.

Oh bother, I rant way too much. I have so many thoughts and ideas and so many controversies and not enough knowledge or understanding. There aren't enough non-biased people in the world, so I am going to live my life quiet or in constant trouble. As I cannot keep a tight reign on my tongue, I am cursed with a life of trouble ^.^
Good thing I'm planning on getting a job where I don't have to talk much! 3D animators are one with their computers. Matt understands. ;)
Oh and apparently I've always had a hard time with sarcasm - people can't tell when I'm being sarcastic. Also a trouble point!
Through it all, the thing I get most troubled with are the people who refuse to think. Maybe they just can't think. Or maybe they're so afraid of being wrong that they refuse to believe they can be. Or maybe... maybe they just like to be contrary.

Too many thoughts! I don't want to write more or my avid readers (hahah!) might not want to come back! I think Mom is my most avid reader ;) Hi Mom.

So, just remember, just because someone is older than you, or just plain old, or act like they know everything...they may be wrong. Take everything with a grain of salt, think about what people say... basically, put a screen door on your mind and thoughts. Own your opinions.

Rachel

My 59th post... yay

2007-10-24T15:19:00.000-07:00

Title HTML Test

Southern Cali's burning down! Exciting, isn't it. Right now Matt's brother is working on the fires up in Arrowhead, hopefully all the fire fighters up there can get it all contained before more damage is wreaked.
The only way these fires have affected me directly is by closing down the freeway to get home and by making me cough. No problems for me. I ended up not getting to go out to dinner with my mom Monday night and slept over at my grandma's house. Took me over an hour to get there and the wind was blowing very very bad. I think it was about 100 miles an hour and I thought my car was going to get flipped like all those semis by the side of the freeway.

In other news, any ideas for teen activities are greatly appreciated. Right now my biggest activity wish is to get papier maché masks :) I have always loved making masks and I think the teens would have a blast with it. I don't know if I have much of an idea on what the heck I'm doing here. The only reason they gave me the job was because I can make it to the quarterly meetings (which I can make because I am willing to skip school because...well, because I'm a bubble and lets leave it at that.) Have I had any experience with teens before, besides myself? Well, since each teen is different and each teen group is different, it's hard to say how much experience I have.
The teens up in Apple Valley pretty much all came from broken to very broken homes. One of the girls started smoking at 13 and was pregnant 3 years later. We had to take Kila (sp?) and her boyfriend Shawn home one day and Shawn's mother had drunk almost an entire large bottle of tequila and cussed us all out (she seemed like she wanted to kill us all, but especially Kila). It was like a tornado of drunken anger. I don't think that relationship worked out too well either :(
The problem was that they were all great kids, their parents were the jerks and slack offs.
So all I really need to do is find out who my target audience is, what they like, what projects would be good for them, etc. I need Teen Advisors.
And I need to come up with things for them to do, such as help with homework for the middle school and elementary school kids.

Oh and I got paid today.

woot.

Rachel

P.S. does this whole dress idea seem like a bad idea to you? 'cause I do get that feeling... $360 and nothing is going right.

Lolita

2007-10-18T07:48:00.000-07:00

So here is the design I came up with for my Gothic Lolita style dress. Whatcha think?

Busy busy busy week

2007-10-15T17:15:00.001-07:00

Ah for my busiest week ever :)
This week is Teen Read Week! So I get to deal with all the progams and the drawing. I'm thinking about getting the kids a pie. On Wednesday (instead of Tuesday), we're going to be making Gocks (Gothic Sock Puppets). On Saturday, we're going to be having a drawing and we'll be giving away 2 $25 gift certs for Barnes and Noble. You have to be 13-18 to be qualified. Children's Read Week is in Nov.
Aside from the library, I will be having lunch with mom tonight at the Old S'ghetti Factory (mmmmm). I can't wait :) Tuesday is a quiet night, wednesday I'm babysitting a friend's house and it's Finals (so finals, Gocks, and house sit), thursday I'm actually working (woo), Friday I'm goofing off if I have my way except in the afternoon Matt and I are going to go down to Castaic. Saturday I will leave Castaic to go to work (from 10-2) and at 1 we'll have the drawing. I hope I can attract at least 10 teens! >^.^<
Sunday I'm goofing off again!! and back to the grind on Monday.
I'm zoning out so I should get off and eat some chocolate that JoAnn was nice enough to bring :)

Rachel, signing out

Strange creatures yet to be discovered by Science

2007-10-14T19:48:00.002-07:00

Go here for the pics of strange creatures that have only been seen in reality by one person ;)

http://www.worth1000.com/cache/contest/contestcache.asp?contest_id=4173
just go to www.worth1000.com for a look at other contests. Also, if you go to related contests, a click down menu under the title, you can see other contests of the same sort. Such as Chimera 7 takes you to the latest contest. The ones that say advanced are the best.

And... if you like that! Then take a look at http://www.somethingawful.com and check out the Photoshop Phridays!

Oatmeal (o_O)

2007-10-06T16:05:00.000-07:00

OK, was reading Happy Villain's blog today and saw her latest post about Oatmeal...
So here is something worse than anything like what she has been forced to eat!! Frost bitten pre-manufactured oatmeal complete with brown sugar, ice, and raisins. You can access Happy Villain's blog through the link at the bottom of the page with the New site.

Be glad... be very glad

Boredom and the internet MEMES!

2007-10-02T18:49:00.000-07:00

I am not all that computer savvy right now and don't really care. So if you want to see how I am an exploding Whale, copy and paste the link below.

http://www.okcupid.com/tests/take?signup=1&testid=2985285002461575078&test_key=NzcyODA3MjU=&answers=0:0:0:2:0:3:2:1:1:1:1:2:1:2:3:3:3:2:2:1:2:1:2:0:0

What color is your soul painted?

Yellow

Your soul is painted the color yellow, which embodies the characteristics of joy, happiness, optimism, idealism, gold, hope, liberalism, sociability, friendship, death, courage, intellect, confidence, communication, travel, movement, attraction, persuasion, and charm. Yellow is the color of the element Air, and symbolizes the sun, grain, and the power of thought.

Click Here to Take This Quiz

Quizzes and Personality Tests

$5425.00

Free Online Dating from JustSayHi

JustSayHi - Free Personals

I'm a Chevrolet Corvette!

You're a classic - powerful, athletic, and competitive. You're all about winning the race and getting the job done. While you have a practical everyday side, you get wild when anyone pushes your pedal. You hate to lose, but you hardly ever do.

Take the Which Sports Car Are You? quiz.

this is Jen and Me

My cat... is dead.

2007-10-02T07:43:00.000-07:00

Twilight, a memorial to the ancient... a blood soaked lawn... a can of tuna... I don't think it's really hit me yet, but if I think about it, I will cry. When the one who listened most when you were about to kill yourself just dies, it's very difficult, even if he is a cat. Animals listen better than people anyway...
I am depressed still.
oh and I'm in the middle of taking a midterm ^.^ and my car died and I have to come up with a program for teens today :) Goth Socks!

Ok, I decided not to make a new post, but I'm done with my midterm. yay.
and i'm bored now. I don't really want to work on my project right now, as it has gotten on my nerves. It's gonna take a while to get through! :( and.... i'm bored with this. woo

Gothic Lolita

2007-09-24T12:06:00.000-07:00

Hi, here is my new wishlist :) Found on Ebay

Even MORE pictures of that throne room!!

2007-09-20T10:44:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I decided that one view just wasn't good enough so i put in a couple other views and took a few (or five) pictures.
Oh and for those of you who haven't heard, because I have slacked off so horribly, I am now a Library Assistant YA Specialist. I work at a highschool now in Fontana.

Anyway, here they are, pics of doom.

Here is an evening view, because I just plain like that view

The table at which the king eats

I love my little shield >^.^<

and my little swords :)

And a wide view of the other side of the room :)

More of the Barbaric throne room! wooo

2007-09-11T08:23:00.000-07:00

Ok, I have been busily trying to get just the perfect lighting, and now I have a list of light settings that work quite well for Night, 5 am, morning, midday, and evening! Woooot.
I will be posting each time of day, just so you can get an idea.

5 a.m.

Morning

Midday

Evening

nighttime

Yay and finals are tomorrow

Dinning with wine

2007-09-07T19:47:00.000-07:00

Instead of delicious fish, this time we decided to go with steak, thinly sliced. This was a beautiful tri tip steak. We sliced up the steak in nice thin strips and set it aside while we cooked 2 tablespoons worth of minced onions in 2 tablespoons butter. We cooked the onions until they were nice and golden brown, then we added the meat. We just seared the meat then added 8 ounces of mushrooms (sliced), 1/2 cup of wine, a tablespoon of chopped chives, and a teaspoon of minced garlic. We simmered that for 5 minutes then added 12 ounces of sour cream and 2 tablespoons Worstershire sauce. I also added 1 teaspoon of nutmeg. Then we simmered it until it was boiling. If you want thicker sauce, add a tablespoon or so of flour. While it simmers, put some water on to boil for the noodles. This recipe can be used with white rice, but I prefer it with linguini.
It was very good tasting :) The only complaint I could think of would be that it was pretty sweet. thinking about it still makes me hungry, though... Ok, now for the pictures.

This is a picture of Matt stirring the dinner in a crock pot ;) We didn't have a skillet big enough.

This is a picture of the white wine we used, imported from Italy.

And here we are, the final product!

Here's the complete recipe for those who don't really feel like deciphering the above message ;)

1 1/2 lbs sliced steak 8 ounces sliced mushrooms
12 ounces Sour cream 1/2 cup white wine
2 Tablespoons minced onion 2 Tablespoons Worstershire sauce
1 teaspoons nutmeg 1 Tablespoon chopped chives
1 teaspoon minced garlic 2 Tablespoons butter
16 ounces of your choice noodles

Slice the steak into thin slices (however big you feel like chewing, basically). Saute the onions in the butter until golden brown. Add the meat and sear quickly. Add the mushrooms, wine, chives, garlic, and nutmeg. Simmer this for about 5 minutes and then add the sour cream and worstershire sauce. Simmer until it boils.
If you want the sauce to be thicker, add 1 Tablespoon flour and stir. Serve over noodles. Green beans are good with it as well.

Thank you for your patronage and I will chat later!

Rachel

PS! Lactose intolerant peoples can have this delicious meal as well. We tried a sour cream substitute and it tastes the same!

Sheep Creek Flash Floods!!!

2007-09-07T18:40:00.001-07:00

Hey everyone out there in Nerdville! Guess what happened in the Real World? The river not far from our house flooded. The Phelanites deemed the little rut Sheep Creek, back many years ago. Today it spans quite a distance, running north from the nearby mountains:

Aren't they pretty in the snow? Snow... what a strange concept. God blesses us with snow once, if He deems us lucky enough, Once a year. Oh and if He thinks we may have deserved something good, He lets it stick for a couple hours!

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, this 'creek' floods about every winter, sometimes it skips depending on how much it rains in the mountains. here's what it looked like after it flooded in March 2003:

(and yes, that was a road)

My brother took a 12 second video and posted it on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=sheep+creek&search=Search

Here are some stills of the flooding taken with my palm pilot. I might get a couple of shots that were taken by the 10 megapixel camera my brother had.

So until next time! Actually, I'm gonna post again about the delicious food Matt and I made :)

Rachel

fire test

2007-09-05T11:07:00.000-07:00

The inside lights work great :) Still can't get the outside lights to work tho. :(

So here is a pic of a fire test. I have since scrapped this flame for a better one, but this looked too cool to toss.

and I have no idea why it doesn't look as good as it should... looks great on my computer, but not on the blog...

Finals are in a week, so I should have this done in no time.