Looooong blog entry ahead. I'm compensating for a lack of recent activity. Guys do it all the time too, just turn a blind eye if you don't like it.:P



Today was productive, at least compared to most of my days. I did laundry, dishes, swept, did more grocery shopping (I need to find less expensive hobbies), and went and got more books from the library. I love reading and cooking. I finished The Golden Compass last night, and all I have to say is that a) that book is sure as hell not the children's book I thought it was, and b) Lord Asriel (and pretty much every major adult in that book) is a dick. Seriously, total dick. I was still kind of disappointed, because I read The Subtle Knife when I was younger and loved it, but Golden Compass never really seemed that exciting. Maybe because it's really bloody disturbing or maybe because I'm older, but aside from the philosophies and the third "book" of the book, it was really slow going. I'd tell you all to just go ahead and read the last third, because it's pretty wicked cool, aside from Lord Asriel being a dick, but there's so much mucky backstory leading up to it that reading the last third out of context is akin to tossing an 11-year-old into the middle of an orgy and saying "Go."

Okay, maybe not quite like that, but it's similar, and thematic, because 11-year-olds get manhandled a whole lot in that book. Mostly because all the adults are dicks.

BUT now I have new books. I went to get A Clockwork Orange, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and left with those three along with three other novels by Phillip K. Dick (last name not an attempt to continue my Golden Compass motif, I promise) and Dresden Files: Storm Front, because I figure now that my buddy has me addicted to those books I may as well try and read them in sort-of order, and Storm Front's the first of them.

Also I'm pretty sure I was the only girl in the science fiction section. Although considering there were maybe two other people besides librarians, it's not a phenomenal statistic.


I also went on a food adventure through three different stores and markedly different neighborhoods. That was fun and now I have freaking bajillions of ingredients for basically everything ever, provided it doesn't require meat or butter. Wednesday is going to be crazy cooking day.




Also I closed at work, and I'm bloody tired. There was a lady came in about half an hour before closing, and I swear she must've been drugged like no other on something. Talked so quietly I had to get six inches from her face to even venture a guess at what she was trying to order (eight minutes and one wrong drink later I deduced America with soy milk and brownies). Then she spent literally twenty minutes counting her change and realizing she didn't have enough, so could we put the brownies back and I just didn't charge her for the soy. She was really nice and appreciative, which is a sight more than can be said for some of our customers, but something about her made me nervous down to my bones, and I was dead-walking tired for the rest of work. Still am.

Then right before closing this girl came in for a white mocha and actually wanted whipped cream on it. Which is kind of like saying a elephant came in on a unicycle singing God Save the Queen in a flawless Canadian accent (and by God, if that ever does happen I will die happy). Seriously, no girl over 12 except me ever gets whipped cream on anything, and whipped cream is delicious. But apparently whipped cream was going to make her day, so I made her the small mocha she ordered in a medium cup and just filled the rest with whipped cream. She was a damn happy camper, too.

Now I'm debating bragging to my friend/coworker Marc about how much better I am at flirting with girls that he is.

There was this really cute little girl at Starbucks today (where I spent all day on register) who bought a little coffee frappuchino from me at one point. I thought it was a little weird that her parents weren't around, because she looked about nine years old, but I figured either it was allowance day or they were just hiding cleverly in the woodwork. Anyways, point is, she bought a small frappuchino, which is oddly disciplined for anyone and certainly for a nine-year-old. Later, though, in proper child form, she came back for more. She looked over the entire pastry case, then called me over and asked how much the toffee cookie bars we have are. $2, because everything at Starbucks is overpriced. She thought for a moment, counted her change and asked if she could just get a croissant. Then her dad, who'd followed her over this time and was apparently proud of her for not begging money off of him, hopped into the conversation and handed her some change, saying warmly "Here, I'll pay for the extra," and then, looking at me, "Go ahead and get her the bar she wants."

"Do you like toffee?" I asked, fishing around for the biggest, toffeefullest (not a word) bar in the case while she nodded happily.

"Yeah, get her a big one," Dad laughed. I gave her the cookie and her change and she ran off while her dad ordered a triple espresso.

"Go ahead and charge him for a double," my buddy Shawn, who was working bar, piped up. It was about then that the weird thing about the girl trotting off like that and being so shy around her dad actually occurred to me.

The guy wasn't her dad. He was just the guy behind her in line. Grinning ear to ear, I rang him up, and, since we always pull two shots a time and just happened to have a fourth lying around, we wound up giving him a quad espresso instead.

"It's a karma thing," Shawn laughed. Tell me about it.

Whenever you're really feeling like shit, just think of this: no matter where in the world you are, you are walking on an unfathomably hot, roiling sphere of molten magma. And probably dinosaur fossils.

I mean really, how can you still feel bad knowing that?



Tomorrow is my first day completely off since I started working again, and I can't wait. I'm going to get lots done, be productive, watch a movie with Forrest and hopefully finish this book I'm reading. A friend of mine found out I was making a summer reading list and said I should give the Dresden Files series a go. I started on the third book because the library didn't have the first one in, but it's awesome anyways. I mean, what's not to like about mixing modern-day magic and detective novels?

Yeah, that's what I thought. Nothing. I recommend them if you're a big shameless nerd like me.:)

I got to sleep in for the first time today in about two weeks. By sleep in I mean sleep until 7, but MAN was it awesome. I felt so good.

I'm still unpacking at my new place. I love how it looks now that I'm setting up home, because it really is a home. I'm almost tempted not to put in much more furniture because I like how big and open it is, but I know it'll just seem empty once I have all the crap that's piled up in the living room put away and there's all that freed floorspace. Also I kind of need for, you know, a TV and couch. So I can have people over who don't just wind up sitting on my bed. Or laying on it. Or in it. I suspect my apartment's not going to wind up as much like Vegas as I'd planned though, now that all my guy friends are getting girlfriends. What's up with that, anyways?

I worked my first full 8-hour day at Starbucks today. 8 hours there is a lot more tiring than 10 in the park service, which is weird since it's much lighter labor. It was fun though. I've been there almost a month now, but it doesn't feel like that at all. It's really weird; I feel like I should know everything and I definitely don't. Today someone spilled a mocha frap all over the floor and I had to mop it up, and when I finished and headed back I accidentally left little size 6 Citron mocha footprints all along the floor.

The water in my apartment complex is turned off right now because of a plumbing problem that's hopefully getting fixed tomorrow. Luckily I have random water stored all over the place, but I'm taking my water bottles to work tomorrow to fill up just in case.:P

I had leftover pizza and fries with green tea for dinner. Green tea and pizza taste really lousy together. Seriously, don't try it.

I said don't try it, dammit!

Finals are over! Over! O-VER!

But I have to be up at 3:30 tomorrow to get to work, so I'll bombard you charming cats with updates from the past few weeks o' crazy later...

But finals are over!

I am so tired of homework! There's so damn much of it! Finals are everywhere! Work is everywhere! Apartment hunting is everywhere! Money is nowhere!

I've been really scatterbrained lately, probably because of all the things I've been trying to juggle. I went and looked at another studio today and loved it- I got my application in right after work and I'm sending her my credit report tomorrow, so I really really hope she'll give me the place. It's big and bright and has a giant closet I could use as a workroom, and, and, and... :daydream:

There's this really awesome guy called Damien at work who's one of my supervisors. He loves how into games I am and he's always asking about my classes and where I would work if I could choose any studio. And he likes to talk about GTA4 a lot. I haven't played a GTA in a long time, but everyone seems to love this one, and I've done enough research and review-reading to be able to chat it up with him. We have fun conversations.

I always thought that the last part of the Christmas carol was "Oh what Daddy would have been if he could have only seen Mommy kissing Santa Claus." It turns out it's not, but up until 90 seconds ago I didn't know that. Anyways, because my brain likes to wander out into uncharted regions with absolutely no permission from me whatsoever, I spent my entire 10 minute break wondering what Daddy would have been. Jealous? Hurt? Murderous? Encouraged by the fact that he could get as old and fat as humanly possible and his tasty little dish of a wife would STILL hop him?

I like people to be happy, so I decided it should be the last one.

Anyways, Damien put me on bar today taking care of all the hot drinks on my own... I'm glad he was there to tell me ingredients though, or I would have botched a lot of drinks... BUT I survived the whole thing and didn't spill anything or take too horribly long or get any complaints or returned drinks.
It's also a good thing most people where just ordering chai and lattes with different milks, because I am the milk-steaming master.
We close really early on Sundays (as coffee shops tend to), and they were missing a guy, so I helped out. It's fun actually doing stuff instead of standing around learning out of a book.:D

Homework!!! I've already done two animations today and I still have so much more to do... BLAAAGH.

I had a really boring "introduction to the company" thing at the Starbucks headquarters today. I totally owned everyone at drawing new coffee stamps, not that that matters at all, but that was still a pretty lame activity... It was mostly those happy videos about how great the company is and what a bright future we all have and how we all might as well just be swallowing rainbows.

Now I'm getting a mental image of that and let me tell you, it is WEIRD. Oh god, new mental image! Bad brain, BAD!!

:cough:

Annnnyways.....

I decided to take the bus to HQ in the morning, on account that it looked to be about a two-hour walk. I got to the bus kind of early, though. Being that it was, by happy coincidence, Saturday morning, all of the Evangelicals and anti-abortionists were lined up outside the Planned Parenthood right across the way. Whenever there are protesters out there, girls who work at PP stand outside, partially as safety escorts and partially, I imagine, out of pride for what they do. I've been meaning to go over and stand with them for a while now, and since I had some time I finally got to today. The protesters kept praying together for God to forgive us and save us from hell... Which makes them a lot nicer than a lot of the people who protest there, but it's getting hard for me to keep track of who does and doesn't want me going to hell.

In any case, it was very liberating.

Back to corporate whoredom...

There was another guy already waiting outside when I got there (half an hour early). He offered to take me to coffee, so we went and chatted about college and work so far and stuff like that. He was really cool and cute and kept flirting shamelessly with me all through the workshop. Which was a shame, because when I'm at work I'm totally in work mode and flirting very rarely occurs to me as something to do. Otherwise I would have.

As it was, I couldn't stop thinking about how tall he was. He was 6 foot fucking 8! That's 19 inches taller than me! That's tall even by normal people standards (by my standards everyone is at either "tall" or "even fucking shorter than me and it's kinda scary"). I don't know why I seem to attract these phenomenally tall guys...

Ah well, he's sure a leap and a bound over Car Guy. And I know where he works.:P


I decided to walk on the way back, since I didn't feel like shelling any more money out for the bus. So I found a street leading straight back to my school and decided to just follow that, despite there being a pretty steep hill right at the beginning. Because, you see, it was also pretty short.

WRONG. Guess what folks, in San Francisco, short steep hills hide other short steep hills. And THOSE hide other short steep hills. It's a fucking wedding cake of wheeze-your-lungs-out death!

Okay, I suck at analogies. Suffice to say I overcame the wedding and carried on my merry way. However, I wouldn't suggest trying to climb any San Francisco hills. Fuck you, hills.