There are certain people in your life that you meet and feel so lucky to have happened to cross paths with because they're the masters of what they do and are willing to take the time to teach you.

That's how I felt when I met Jacob, feeling desperate to learn the guitar and he had the tools to teach me how to do it. I spent a half an hour each week with him and he'd give me as much information as possible to practice and process the following week. After doing this for months and months I finally got to the point I was able to teach myself new songs and didn't really need lessons anymore. But those ten months or so that I did put my all into-- writing down and following every detail of the lesson, practicing three hours a day, not letting anything discourage me... is what got me to where I am today on the guitar.

...Another random person that inspires me, "Deelishis", not only because she has a bodacious a** but because of her amazingly confident personality in Flavor of Love (I've been watching that since it's leaked onto Youtube recently, nostalgia crack much?)

So I will of course be eternally grateful to Jacob for getting me over that intial "hump" that gave me the tools to teach myself. It makes me shudder to think of what might have happened if I hadn't been at that music store that day and met Jake in the first place. I could have ended up with another dead end instructor that had no idea what kind of motivation I needed. It's luck.

And in the same sense I feel this way about Ed. Back when I was 19 or so and had Math 96 with him I could see he was a good person and he could see that I was intelligent. After that class we of course lost touch but I added him on facebook. About a year ago he'd randomly came up on my news feed when I saw he had his first daughter (which led me to checking out his facebook to see that he'd fallen in love with a pretty girl about a year back, was still managing at some casino, etc..) and I messaged him to congratulate him.

Maybe that's been why he's been willing to take me on as a dealer at Lucky Bridge Casino. Because I absolutely suck. The other night Ed had me come over to his Dad's bar and help them out but having a *very* mediocre knowledge of the motions of the game and what winning hands are made it a very slow (and stressful) process. On top of that I had these really nice dudes that wanted me to chill out buying me drinks which I happily accepted and ended up getting too drunk to drive home until I threw up in the bathroom.* Beautiful. 

So yeah. I've just been practicing poker online against the computer any chance I can. I've been working at Caesars a lot lately and started my accounting 305 class so I've been keeping pretty busy.

In other news my birthday is coming in three days. Two days in two hours. I get paid tomorrow so I'm considering planning a party but I've gotta figure out what my work schedule is for the next week. Having a party should really be at the bottom of my priority list when I've got so much at stake right now. Like tomorrow I've got my first accounting homework and quiz due at 9, I got invited to a birthday party at 4 pm and I might get asked to come in and job train more. I don't know. tomorrow is going to be an interesting day.


peace. 

Today was a hard day.

You guys know me, I'm a perfectionist. When it takes longer than I want to get things up to the standard I expect, I get frustrated. Today was kind of one of those days. It was my third day receiving poker dealing training at the casino and I grew anxious and frustrated when I felt like I wasn't getting things at the speed I should be.

Alright I need to back up. . .

My friend Ed invited me in for an interview a few days ago for a dealer position. My parents and I both assumed it was Blackjack so I did a lot of research on that before the interview. Ed then informed me that I would actually be auditioning for a position dealing poker. I have never played poker in my life. Or dealt with cards, really.

So everything was (and still for the most part is...) totally new to me and I'm trying to process a ton of information at once as well as use these little tricks required to deal in this game. I'm really lucky though because Ed is like... the coolest guy ever. He's someone I went to school with at CBC (nostalgia moment: we actually briefly hung out after class at some neat park in Kennewick and smoked a couple times. . . Back in like Spring 2012. At the time I was taking math 96 with Professor Zhang. Shawn sat next to Ed and in front of us sat the *probably* autistic guy that used to stick his hands down his pants in broad daylight. On my left was Josh F., who I now work with at Little Caesers-- small world. That's where I -also- met Cory B.... who led me to meet Guy S. which led to a *very* interesting summer.)

Anyway like I was saying about Ed, he's like this 30-some year old guy that recently got married and has two daughters. He's worked for a lot of different management because he's really good at what he does. He's also a good teacher. He's been really good at teaching me the game itself. Technique on some things he's been really helpful on, like this neat card fanning trick for aesthetic purposes. It's way harder than it looks.

So challenge #1, aside from being able to quickly shuffle the cards, organize the cards, and understand how to play the game when I'm still get confused on the terminology...

MAKE THIS PRETTY RAINBOW

From what I've seen all of the poker dealers are men but Ed brought me and this other girl Maria in to train for awhile. Maria has been messing around with cards since she was 9 so she knows how to properly pitch them, shuffle quickly, knows how to play etc etc... She's pretty and seems really intelligent.

Anyway I'm gonna hit it. Today was a shitty day at Caesers because I had to stay for 6 hours and didn't have much food in me so I got really cranky and down on myself. Now that I've eaten and talked to my mom I feel better. This is just another one of those things that if I really work at it I can achieve. 

peace. 

"You just amaze me" What an incredible day

Wow, today was really great. I wrote down my goals and was able to accomplish all of them.. And had some unexpectedly good things happen during my errands.

First of all, this morning I practiced a solid hour of guitar, breaking the hour up into 3 segments instead of just boring myself to death playing Aerials all the time. Diversify my playing, I remember Jake stressing that.

Recently while tuning down to System's weird tuning I broke my high e string, that's always the first one to go. I bought two packets of strings today-- both of which are Slinky's but I've decided to move up slightly in string thickness to maybe provide more clarity. I need to get that stupid Tremelo removed from my Ibanez. It's sitting there collecting dust because I never play it anymore. Now that I have two batches of strings that would be a great project to restring both guitars but I don't want to bother with the frustrating tremelo on my ibanez. The thing that fucked up the tuning on my guitar for all of my recitals that I remember playing.

ANYWAY.. I went to the music store today at the Uptown and picked up strings, picks and an awesome Metallica tab book that will let me play a LOT of my favorites... Including FRANTIC! I could NOT believe Frantic was on that song list, it's an underrated song but I've loved it forever. It reminds me of racing my bike around campus to get to class....

Prayer tick tick tick tick tick tock, prayer tick tick tick tick tick tick tock...
In case any of you forgot what song this is:

MY LIFESTYLE, DETERMINES MY DEATH STYLE... RISING TIDES, THAT PUSHES TO THE OTHER SIDE... 

Such a great song. Getting that book is going to be just the push I need to start practicing 3 hours a day again. 

Okay what else. 

My payday was two days ago so I deposited my check. A big ole whopping $167, ha ha. Granted my hours were really scarce two weeks ago, but since I've become faster at sheetouts and can really make a difference when I'm there Rita has started scheduling more hours at a very consistent time. I like that. When I went to the bank I took $20 out in $5's and checked my available balance to see if I'd managed to save something from my previous paycheck on August 21. Total of $189 in there, not too bad. I have some potentially lucrative opportunities coming up in the new future... maybe, I'll explain that later..... 

YangHaiYing said something really eyeopening today when she said that it's important to go different places and window shop to find what you need. I took her advice when I found this pressure cooker after going to like 4 places.

The first place I checked was Rite Aid. It's fun going there because I always see at least one familiar face of the women I worked with. Tammy and Traci were running the tills when I went back to look i in their small appliance aisle for the pressure cooker. Nope. No surprise there. I actually checked there briefly after going to Goodwill to no avail. The only one there was broken and I asked a larger Grandma looking lady in the aisle if that was indeed a pressure cooker. She said "Yeah it is but it doesn't have the plug on top to vent it." I didn't want to risk spending $7.49 on a used piece of crap so I checked the next place. 

When I went up to say hi to Tammy and Traci I was like "Oh you guys don't have what I'm looking for! I thought maybe you'd have this weird thing!" They actually told me that a pressure cooker is not that weird, people still use them and they work very well when my Dad had convinced me they were almost completely obsolete. I personally had certain.... "alternative" uses I wanted to experiment with that I'd seen in a YouTube video by a Canadian. It worked tremendously and haven't smoked all night. The tea tastes like Thai tea, oddly enough! 

I did try looking at Fred Meyer. There are a lot of beautiful appliances and things there, especially huge coffee makers, oh my gosh they are lovely. Only one pressure cooker for sale, $69.99. I couldn't spend that much and left. While cutting through cosmetics I caught a glance at a clearance bin. Tanning lotion for HALF OFF... Like I got two for the price of 1 today on my favorite tanning lotion. That's nice because I was starting to run out. I think I'll use some tonight.

ANOTHER reason today was awesome is that Jonny C. said something profoundly nice to me that made me smile. . .

I went to the grocery store today with a sole purpose of getting a small 1 serving bottle of whole milk. I ran into the Raider clan (Ken and Kathy) and as always they're so friendly and make you feel really special when you talk to them for some reason. They're really cool, entrepreneurial people that have always been their own bosses. 

After I picked up my milk I sort of meandered around to find something to improve the taste of the tea. I found Mexican chocolate milk mix that worked surprisingly well. It was a great discovery. Anyway when Jonny checked me out he immediately laughed at what I was buying. I told him how much I appreciated him always liking my drawings and he told me how much I'd been improving. He said he did it because I amaze him. And he meant it in such a sincere way, I was just like, wow Jonny thank you...

But probably the best news of all today is that I got an interview on Wednesday at 1:30. Surprisingly this person actually knew that I worked at 3 on that day which will save me the drive into town which is lovely. 

My night ended with my mom bringing home KFC, which is like Christmas for dinner (*Lol I love that Japanese tradition) that I very rarely enjoy but when I do it's super delicious. I did workout by playing Just Dance and doing the splits video on Youtube. I feel like my stomach is getting a little flabby though and need to work more on my core. Today was a day of awesome food in general.. When I got the $20 in 5's one of them was designated for a delicious carne asada burrito from my favorite taco establishment of all time here in town. I used the word "siempre" today which means always to joke with Mrs. Lopez because I always order the same thing. 

It's nice living in a place where you know people around you and can more or less keep in touch with people's lives on facebook so when you see them you typically have something to talk about.

Goodnight all, what an amazing day. Tarparnum and the new moon has started and the spirits are on the earth plane according to my favorite spiritual instructor on Youtube. Now is a great time to pray and think about your dead ancestors and they can help you. The fact that it just so happens to be the day before the new moon and I recognized tarparnum for the second year in a row makes me a believer. Coincidence? Maybe. Who knows. 

I'm Too damn honest.

Hi.

Well it's Wednesday and I'm anxiously waiting my paycheck that's coming on Saturday because I've got about $70 to my name and want to save as much as that as possible before that day comes. Why? For the satisfaction that I am saving money and that I didn't just spend all of my last paycheck getting through the last three weeks or so. Literally the last time they paid us was Thursday the 21st of August. Tomorrow that'll be 3 weeks ago.

I've done a good job saving my money by just not taking random trips into town or going out much. I've also had to abstain spending money on food while at work (not a hard thing to do considering there's usually free pizza out at one point) by making sure to eat beforehand. Spending money on snacks dries up your bank account like trying to kill someone by pelting them with little rocks.


..That was rather morbid. You'll have to excuse the fact that I'm not in the most optimistic mood right now. Yesterday I did get good news but at the wrong time and this morning I got bad news that put some things into perspective on my job search but also made me the target of my Mom's criticism and put me in a shit mood.

I am an honest person. I have a hard time lying to people and naturally won't unless someone asks me to specifically to cover for them and even then it's a challenge if people start prying. My honesty has now gotten me into trouble twice because I was automatically filtered out after applying to Macy's and Ross because my answers didn't make me seem friendly enough.

When I was asked in the two surveys how "important it is that you make friends on the job" I thought it was a trick question. In my mind I think "Not important", duh, you're there to do a job and get work done, not find people to hang out with on the weekends. But after getting screened out twice that's CLEARLY a wrong answer. Though thinking about it now it was probably stupid to have selected that answer in the first place.

Kayla told me, "You have to make yourself sound perfect on those things." My response was, "How is wasting time perfect?"

But then again, it's retail. You're expected to be super friendly toward everyone including your coworkers. For some reason I just think of "being friendly" and "making friends" as two completely different things. My Mom was really pissed at me this morning because that distinction kept me from getting an interview at Macy's. All I could say was, "Well how about you go work at Macy's," lol.

Here's a picture of a Russian cathedral on a lake in St. Petersburg for no reason.

Now for the good news!! Kayla referred me to her boss at Subway and he actually gave me a call yesterday after receiving my resume. Unfortunately I spaced putting Little Caesar's on my resume so it made it seem like I was trying to mislead them to think I had full availability. Kayla has explained to her boss that at my current job I only get about 11-15 hours a week and would be more than willing to work mornings. He called me yesterday at 2 at work.... whoops.  

So my mom has also been hassling me this morning about calling him back. I've tried to call the restaurant twice and nobody picked up so I'm just hoping I get a call from him before the end of his shift. He works from 5:30-3 pm so I'll try again around 1:30 when the lunch rush is going down.

Working at Subway would be great because I could potentially even get full time hours if I do well enough there. We'll see what happens. I'd rather have two part time jobs because of the change in environment but it might become a hassle when my class starts. Doesn't matter, I've been pretty much broke and useless way too long now. 


I haven't heard from the guy that I had recently taken interest to in about 2 days, which sucks because he seemed really interested in spending time together about a week ago. Jared's snapchat indicates he was drinking and eating pizza with some ugly bitch last night. Of course they're taking selfies together on his phone. You never did selfies with me you prick!! 

Lmao. Okay that's enough with all that. I want to take a run.

peace.

Partied like it's 2008

Hello.

It's 10:14 pm and as I sit here writing this I'm being swarmed by fruit flies for who knows what reason. They're probably attracted to the smell of my diet coke or the M&Ms that I'm having for dessert after an awesome tamale dinner that my sister made. Tonight I ate dinner before and after my 3 mile run... lol it's a little progress day in that respect.

I went to a pretty fun party the other day over at Justin's mom's place again. This time it was a pretty different crowd, many of which I hadn't met before. It was a going away party for Lexi who's moving up to Olympia for school soon. She seems like a pretty cool girl-- her girl friends she invited were really pretty; but had all left by the time this picture was taken. The party dragged on really late. I wasn't paying attention to the time and I swear I wasn't in a bed on the floor until 6 am-- crazy!! 

One of Lexi's pretty girl friends was dating a guy named Khai K., a guy I remember being friends with on MySpace and commenting a picture he had posted of Dimebag thinking it was Claudio Sanchez.... As you can imagine it was a roast in response, even stupid bitches that probably couldn't name two songs by Pantera were like "wow ur stupid, its dimebag RIP". Of course I didn't mention the extent that I remembered that interaction on MySpace probably more than 6 years ago.

Today I went into town and delivered a resume to Rue 21 in Kennewick that seemed pretty booked for employees so having Tiffany as a reference wasn't going to help me much. This would have been really discouraging had I not gotten awesome news from Kayla that her boss is considering hiring me if I come to meet him and he likes me. I submitted an application to the Subway she works at earlier and I have a good feeling about it. Tomorrow I am going to meet her manager "Jr" face to face.

Yesterday I was really irritated and depressed when I'd gone to work and asked Brianna if we were getting paid soon and she said that we weren't for another week. I'm almost sure she's wrong.. Like I don't recall getting my check on August 31, but unfortunately because I rarely wrote that month I can't use my blog to recall what I did that day.

I was tempted to call Caesar's today to ask if the checks were there but decided not too. Regardless of being flat out broke cash wise and having no idea how much is in my bank account (it can't be much) I've got enough gas to get me into town tomorrow and to my next shift. I'm hoping Brianna is wrong and I'm stressed out over nothing but if not I'm going to be forced to ask my Dad for money again in the next few days which I'd really like to avoid.

Today I tried again to get a good recording of Aerials but it still sounded muddy. My mom helped me tweak with the amp settings to see which ones sounded best on camera while I was playing and she ended up really liking the "Tweed" sound because it sounds the cleanest-- though seems too twangy sounding for what I'm trying to perform.

I'll show you the attempt I made today that's still not up to my uploading standards as far as sound quality goes. I'm considering trying to dig up the POD out of our shed and try hooking it up to a speaker tomorrow instead of even bothering with the amp anymore because it's clearly not working as well as I want it too:

I have a new crush. I actually thought I might see him today because it was his first day off in awhile but he ended up too exhausted.

peace. 

..Gotten good enough that even my "haters" want in..?!!

Today nothing really out of the ordinary happened until about 5 minutes ago.

I checked my portrait page and had gotten a message from a girl who I've actually wanted to draw for quite awhile-- perhaps because I knew for a fact she's not a fan of me which makes it slightly more fun but also because she's slightly exotic looking. She asked I do a picture of her sons but because one of them is a newborn and the only available photo to me was from June I realized I'd have to receive more input before I start this project.

This was the only picture I could access of her son (likely because we're not friends on facebook. Lol which is fine like I've said before I don't expect everyone to like me or be my friend, that's not how the world works) 

Anyway, I'm personally stoked as heck I'm drawing her with an actual request!! Had it been otherwise I would have felt the pressure of the fear of her calling me out as a creeper because I'm pretty sure she hasn't liked me for a long time. Why? It could be any number of things. When I look back on middle and highschool that we all went through and how we acted toward one another I wouldn't be surprised if I said something offensive. I think about the insecurities I felt at that age and how some things that people would say that would stick in my mind for hours or even days afterward contemplating what it meant-- and who knows if that person meant anything by what they said! 

Regardless of whether or not she likes me I always thought she was an interesting person. In middle school she was in the honors English classes with me as well as took Mr. Zorn's class in 6th and 8th grade with the 30 or so notorious "smart kids" from my class. She was new at school that year and was sharp and outspoken from day one. She was of course very popular because she was new as well as confident. I remember she was the first one in our class daring enough to wear those 80's style leggings. . . .

Yup, definitely an interesting person that I remember going to school with very well. Though we've never been "bffs" (ha ha ha) I'm stoked as Hell to draw this pic tomorrow, going to be fun.

I also got a request from James L. who wants a drawing of him as Superman. This drawing is going to be EPIC and I plan to do it here in the next few days too. These are drawings that I'm very inspired to do right now but as my page gets more hits I'm getting more and more requests that have been sitting on a list or in a pile for months...

That being said the only way I can give priority to people that really want drawings is by charging a small fee for my time. I'm going to charge $15 and have people send cash by mail I think.. I'd rather not deal with the online payment bullshit. Anyone can stick some cash in an envelope.

peace. 

Last night run turned nightmare.

Evening.

Today's September 1st, the Monday of labor day weekend. Every year of school I recall this being the 3 day weekend to follow the first week of school or the last day of summer.. In both cases it was usually kind of a melancholy feeling knowing I was about to enter another arduous year of having to spend 8 hours a day at Ki-Be surrounded mostly by people I never felt comfortable around.

Luckily now that I'm in college I look forward to Fall, it's my favorite season. This fall is going to be unlike any other in the past 18 years of my life because I'm not going to be going to school full time but instead working and keeping my brain active by taking an online accounting class. The fact that it's not going to be frying hot out anymore is more than welcome, especially now that I'm not going to take any more night runs.

Okay what you're looking at is actually a picture of a picture on my phone of my leg after an accident while out running last night.
 ...because I am too lazy to log-out of this account to log into my gmail.. stupid Google accounts. 

This is what happened:

I was up by Maeleena's house and there was a creepy car parked idling on my side of the street. I didn't want to run passed either side of the car on the sidewalk and decided to just run on the other side of the street. On the other side there is no sidewalk and not wanting to ride on the side of the road I decided to run on the land by the curb, assuming it was part of someone's yard.

I'm sure it was because my leg suddenly dropped into a 2 foot deep hole full of goathead plants. Shocked, I quickly pulled my leg out of the hole, feeling my other knee dragging against the ground. I got up and looked down and not only saw my leg bleeding but also some little bundles of bristles stuck to my shoes and other knee.

How this looks now, after cleaning and adding Neosporin to reduce the pain this morning. 

You can clearly see how my other knee was used to pull myself out of the hole because it also shows having been irritated by the poison in the thorns of the goatheads. 

For those of you that aren't from the desert, these are what these nasty little bastards look like. They grow in green weeds that grow in bunches on the ground and require very little water to thrive. So just imagine a 2 foot hole full of these plants and that's what I fell in last night. It was not a pleasant experience. 

My mom said it was bound to happen because running in the dark I'm just asking for problems. I know she's right but all August I was doing it anyway because it would always be too hot and muggy during the day-- that and it was always the last thing I wanted to do before bed to avoid late night calories. Unfortunately the exercising itself caused me to be so hungry when I arrived home that I'd normally eat too much anyway! 

This fall I'm going to really work on having a healthier lifestyle and getting in better shape instead of just trying to maintain my current shape. Jared and I got together the other night and he actually managed to make me feel like shit about my body because he's obviously into girls that are obsessed with their physique. Like he always "likes" female bodybuilding models on facebook and never even compliments my looks or body. That and he's so obsessed with his own physique and fitness that he makes me feel lazy or that I'm not doing enough even if I run 3 miles a day 5 days a week. 

I wish I could afford a damn gym membership but I can't right now so I'm just doing what I can. But seeing him reminded me that I should be doing more. The more he talked about working out and showing me pictures of girls with perfect bodies (like not just perfect washboard abs and muscles but ALSO big butt and/or boobs... like how do you know those aren't just implants?) the more insecure I felt and wondered if he was even attracted to me at all or if I'm secondary in his eyes to these girls? 

Another thing that bothered me is that he acted like I was somehow hindering on his time. Like he made it very clear to me numerous times that I had to leave early in the morning because he had to buy military gear and that was the main reason he was here. Not that he was happy to see me after 2 weeks of zero communication, but more that he was doing me a favor by seeing me. 

Yeah if that's the case don't do me any f*cking favors, lol. I realize if I continue to pursue this it will only lead to pain and disappointment because he doesn't seem to care about me at all. In fact after the vibe I got during our last visit I almost doubt we'll even talk again. As a little experiment to see if I'm right and he'd welcome the chance to no longer talk to me I will not text him from this day forward unless he sends me a text or Snapchat first. If he does my perception might have been distorted by my own insecurities during this last visit. 

I just don't know or really care right now, whatever happens happens. I've gotten to know myself well enough to not let some guy's standards modify who I think I should be.

peace.