Last week of summer. Cat in danger...?

Finally. Officially 7 more days until I move...

Still sucks that I'm stuck moving the DAY BEFORE school starts.... But hey beggers can't be choosers, especially this late in the game and I'm lucky enough to get a 1-bedroom. I'm really excited to be living in Brooklane because even if it's just another apartment on campus it's still a new place. I've been trying to find a floor layout to show you guys but my connection is being retarded.

I worked the past few days, which honestly meant limited practice time aside from getting the chance to complete this video that I've been meaning to do for awhile:

Ha, you can always tell when I'm concentrating really hard because my nostrils flare up. 

I try to avoid this unappealing face on video and at recitals so I try to practice to the point that I don't need to think so hard.

Let's see, I work at 5'.. That'll be a nice short shift. Then I work Thursday from 11-4 pm, then I'm DONEEE! woohoooo! I'll be happy to tell Jake about my accomplishment on the completed video this week, and he'll also be happy that I took the guitar in the shop finally. Not having my electric the past few days has forced me to play with my acoustic which sometimes I find much more enjoyable. 

Today I'm going to work on In Keeping Secrets Silent Earth, primarily for MEMORIZATION. Jake's been hammering that into my head every lesson since the last recital and this last one he was like 

"Why don't you listen to me? You should listen to me! Stop relying on those damn tabs!"

I'm like

Lol isn't that so stinking cute? I watched the movie Hotel Transylvania over at Tyler's house recently, I loved it. Since I went over there I can't find my DS which is pissing me off to no end that I'd be so stupid to leave it somewhere. So many hundreds of hours invested into those damn pokemon games... the past few days I have been getting better sleep so maybe it's best that I put this hobby to bed.................... actually no, I want my DS.

I need to figure out where my student loan money's at and how to get access to it. I also need to call my doctor to see if I can get a refill on my perscription... He didn't call me back the last time I tried so I need to keep working on it. Yesterday I forgot to take prozac and this morning my body felt super sore and stiff, it was somewhat disturbing. But yeah that's just a reminder that I need to get this taken care of. 

My family has been trying to convince me to not take Miranda to college with me... They think that having her in the apartment without the ability to go outside freely is going to have adverse effects on her health and wellbeing. Though I have a hard time believing this myself, the thought of it gives me a ping of indifference on whether or not I should take her. 

She's been acting so weird lately ever since I got the boxes out and I'm convinced it's because she knows that I'm leaving again... This is why I just want to give this a chance to see if she would like to stay with me. If she doesn't I'll bring her home, easy as that. They're also convinced that I'm going to "let her run away" if I bring her up the day of the move. Uh no, we'll bring her in a cat carrier. 

My sister is really angry about me taking her and hasn't really spoke to me in days. Well you know what too bad, she has a boyfriend that's here to keep her company practically 24-7. I'm alone. Case closed. 

peace. 

What does a good entrepreneur do when her plan fails?

I've got some pretty exciting news.

I got a message on Youtube from another kid here at Central that apparently was planning to give guitar lessons as well. I'm excited to meet this person because HELL-O! They play guitar too! That's exciting in itself. He said he hasn't been able to find any students either. Based on the lack of ability to generate funds in one way I'm turning to other sources-- the internet!

Here's my first guitar lesson video that I uploaded today. It's basic alternate picking and corresponding note exercise, just as I would initially teach my guitar student. I figure if I do one of these on a semi-regular basis, I can maybe gain some subscribers on youtube, become a partner and earn a small amount of income that way. 

If that doesn't work, well, at least I tried and I can use it as a reference tool for my students if they forget what I'd taught them during a lesson. You might be wondering, why would students actually get lessons from you if they could just look online? Because in person you can ask me questions, I can elaborate things for you, and I can teach you way more tricks and exercises than I plan to upload to youtube. 

You can support my channel on youtube by subbing to me. My url is www.youtube.com/ewilsonlife. The channel itself has a pretty random assortment of stuff that has gone from "kawaii" Japanese themed videos to... Iron Maiden covers. I'm weird.

But my life is fun, seriously I do enjoy things around here even if after a high stress class situation I can always seem to find stuff to bitch about to my mom. The main stress on the back burner is, again, my 21st birthday and what I'm going to be doing for that. I'm just hoping Jason and I spend the evening together on either Saturday or Sunday. That's all I really want, I've already gotten my gifts from my family, I've got more than enough money to survive here for awhile and I'm also set for clothes. 

Jason and I had a really nice night together last night, that was pretty unexpected! 

He's been really busy with studies like I have. I've already studied accounting today for an hour, sorta dredged through the first half of Chapter 3 today. We didn't talk about Chapter 2 at all a couple days ago so I'm wondering if he's going to do any review for that chapter. I don't really care either way, Chapter 2 is pretty straight forward, it talks about methods in costing (both direct costs and indirect costs of a product). Costing is basically the plan for how much a business anticipates spending on manufacturing a product (or many products) for the upcoming month. Product costs are the cost involved in making the product itself when overhead costs are the cost to run the company itself. 

Overhead costs can include anything from the heating bill, the cost of the toilet paper in the bathrooms, the wage of the employees. Product costs include the cost of the raw materials and even the cost of employees that are putting the product together. I think back to my days cherry picking and the little punch cards that would say how many boxes of cherries that picker had completed. The Cost, then, of that box of cherries includes the amount it took to pick them. 

I post a lot of pictures of cherries on this blog, haha. 

A lot of this terminology is hard to keep track of but I'm very fortunate that I have this much life experience to understand a lot it. Working at Rite Aid has helped me understand merchandise costing, inventory, and hourly wages versus salaries. Working on the farm has helped me understand touch labor or direct labor because you really can't get much more direct then picking cherries off a tree and punching a card that says you did it. 

peace. 

Seeing someone for the first time in years

I'm writing to give my hands a break more than anything.

My left hand needs to relax because I've been working on Fear of the Dark for an hour and a half trying to get it to where it's recording ready. I really want to make that second video. I've just it down to just about right but there's still some problems in the intro, as well as coordinating so that the track isn't too loud for my recorder, the amp isn't too loud OR too quiet... recording on a computer is tricky without the proper equipment, but Jacob seemed pretty impressed by my video editting skills using Windows Movie Maker.

I had a nice day, met up with Jordan G. and we had coffee and discussed our updates on life. For us it's been years since we've been able to update on anything, even if she's been living in Benton City for awhile now. I guess I'd never checked in with her again because I was afraid our political views and personalities would differ so much now that we wouldn't be able to get along but I was wrong. We clicked very well and had a great discussion. She's had a lot of resolve in her life from the previous divorce situations that she's had  growing up and now she's starting to get settled in with her boyfriend Logan. Logan's family has been very supportive of Jordan since early in highschool when she moved to La Grande.

Jacob came over and talked to us after me and Jordan had been talking for about an hour so she got to meet my drug of choice this summer. Literally guitar playing has become like a drug.

It's funny, I explained to Jordan that I had a depression problem through highschool and that I was medicated on a few things before I dropped anti-depressant drugs. She said that I was the "debby downer" in middle school, and I look back to 7th grade and I'm sure I was. I was miserable practically all the time because I felt ugly and outcasted. Lack of self esteem reflects and people take advantage of it.

I'm glad things have changed since then.

Susan Atkins. I still plan on making that Sims 2 video of my replica of Spahn and Barker Ranch but I haven't had a chance yet... mainly because of time constraints, seems like whenever I get done practicing I don't feel like doing much else or it's 11 PM and starting a project seems like too much work.

I'm in Week 18 now. Just completed Month 4 recently. Another paper for my wall. I did 77.13 hours in July, which is pretty good considering the the California trip and all. I could have gone that whole week without playing but I took comfort in it when visiting with Grandma created stress at times.

I studied accounting today for an hour, sort of just going over the journal entry process and how to do all that again, Assets = Liabilities + O.E. and all the accounts that go under each headings, the basic stuff that we nailed over and over again in Key's class. I'm also kind of getting into adjusting entries from unearned service revenue to earned. How I'm memorizing it is applying "real life" to everything, imagining all of the accounting circumstances with my little guitar business that I'm going to start, even if it's entirely fictional because I don't even know if I'll be able to do it. Still, though, it's making things make a lot more sense.

Just me and my sister tonight, everything's locked up and quiet so my sister can go to sleep. She's got work tomorrow morning at 3 AM. My parents randomly left on some trip somewhere again.

peace.