Interview time

Tomorrow, I have a job interview in the afternoon. Uh, I'm closing comments because I don't want people crawling all over me and asking me what it is and how much and all this crap. I'm already annoyed with my family as it is with the 20 questions and getting all in my business over it. Good lord, it's just a friggin' job to pay the bills!

I realized that I didn't have a proper interview outfit as it's summer and most of the nice work clothing I have is too hot to wear in this weather. I went shopping and bought a nice plain skirt and 2 button downs PLUS a pair of jeans, 2 more v-neck shirts and 2 sets of new rings. Not bad for $80.

I've gotten off my lazy ass and submitted my resume at more places. Yes, I'm tired of my vacation now and would like to get back to work. I want to take another major trip overseas next year and it's either Europe or Asia. Italy or Philippines. I say, Italy since I've never been. My relatives in the Philippines can stand to wait another year for me to visit again. Hell, I haven't been back there since 1990. Yeah, they can wait. I want to do a tour of Italy.

Squeezing $50 out of a nickel

Good lord, the heat was totally opressive today! 102 degrees! And not much humidity either. *sigh*

On a good note, went to the casinos with the family. We get free tickets to the big buffet from one of my brother's friends who works there. While our parents were getting the tickets, my sister and me decided to play the slots. Being cheap, we hit the nickel slots. Charlie has never really played the slots each time we went to the casinos. We don't go that often either.

So, we sit at a bank of nickel slots and she starts to play the $5 our dad gave her. Haha, she didn't have money to play since she had to pay off her big car insurance payment (remember her accident)? I had to show her how to play,...well, get her in the right mood to play. After watching her play about a dollar's worth, I sat down and put in my own $5.

On the first nickel I played, I immediately got the bonus play. The slot I was playing was something about frogs. You pick 5 flies and get whatever they are worth in bonus coins. I picked 1000 worth of nickels!

Now, I never win when we go to the casinos so that's why I stick to playing nickels or pennies. As soon as it showed I won $50, I cashed out right away! My sister got so mad because I won on the first spin! LOL! After that, we played on the pennies and I still won! All in all, I walked out with $65 from playing only $2.05!

Humidity

The humidity here in the South is just staggering! For more than a week now, we've been under heat advisories (the same goes for most of the country). Dry heat is bad but try extreme heat with lots of humidity,...it can be just as bad or worse, I think!

Tomorrow, we might get some relief in the form of rain. The forecast is showing temps below 95 degrees and lows under the 80s. Thank god!

I've been staying cool by simply not leaving the house unless I absolutely have to. Surprisingly, I haven't developed a case of "cabin fever" yet.

Harry who?

I think I am the only one I know of (LOL) that isn't reading Harry Potter! I've never read any of the books nor seen any of the movies. Sorry, not interesting enough for me to get excited over.

Meanwhile, I still have friggin' 60+ more pictures to photoshop for my brother. I stayed up till 5am working on them. I swear, I better get some money out of this from the people I took pics of!

Portable

I'm back home now and setting up my new laptop! FINALLY! I have yet to start on the pics I took over the weekend. I've been going back and forth between my old computer, burning the stuff I've stored on it and moving it to my laptop. PS is already installed and I'll do Dreamweaver next.

I love this widescreen! I might pop in one of my dvds later just to test it out. The keyboard is a good size too.

Heh, I don't like giving names to inantimate objects but I think this new laptop deserves a name. Meet "trinity"!

In transit

Well, I got the tracking number for my laptop at lunchtime today! But, I won't get it till Monday! Ah well! It's all good, I'll be too busy in New Orleans to fiddle with it anyhow so at least I'll have Monday to get PS, Dreamweaver and some other programs on it so I'll be good to go on editing pics!

I wonder tho, will I really get it on Monday because I'm seeing that it's in Nashville and that's only a 4 hr drive (I picked free ground shipping). That's what I get for waiting till the last minute to order (Sunday night). If it had shipped yesterday, I'd have it in my hands tomorrow.

So now, I'm debating on whether I should get a flash for my 20D or get a 6x8 Intuos tablet . Or should I go with a 4x5 one instead? *sigh* Bah, I need the flash more! Who am I kidding?

Empty wallets?

Well, there goes FCS doll money down the drain as I just bought myself a laptop tonite. *groans* I ordered a Dell Inspiron 6000. Couldn't pass up the deal my brother found online for it. I had been going back and forth last week, looking for the best deal online and in the end, it was just better for me to go with this particular laptop. It will be my primary computer till I get a new desktop. The upstairs computer will go to our parents. Hmm, now I need to go buy a basic keyboard as I have my wireless keyboard on this and I still want to keep it! LOL! Same with my mouse!

My brother and sister are giving me money to help towards my laptop for my birthday. Very very nice of them and it helps as I'm still jobless at the moment. My brother did make an offhand comment about wanting me to take pics at his salsa club once a month so I guess I can deal with driving downtown...but only if it's not raining again! Grrr!

This weekend, we are going to New Orleans for my birthday and to visit our sister. I will be gearing up the 20D for some cemetery and French Quarter pics,...pics that I've been wanting to take the way I wanted to take but couldn't due to the limitations of having a point/shoot digicam! I hope my laptop comes before we go on Friday so I can edit the pics before I get home.

Just reelin'

My sister gets home just now and tells me this:

Charlie: "I'm such a redneck!"
Me: "What?"
Charlie: "My friend and me,...we rolled a friend's truck,..."
Me: "So what."
Charlie: "Yeah, but we didn't use toilet paper"
Me: "Then what the hell did you use?????"
Charlie: "Fishing line"
Me: "WHAT??????"
Charlie: "Yeah, clear fishing line and boy, it's gonna be a bitch to clean up when he finds out!"

She said that they used a huge roll of line and he's going to have a hell of a time cutting thru the stuff cuz they apparently did a good job of making sure the line was totally tangled!

Okaaaaay, my sister needs a vacation AWAY FROM THE COUNTRY and I'm talking redneck country! Maybe our cousins in NYC or LA/San Diego can house her for a week and get her cultured!

Excessive pride?

My sister's trip to the Philippines could be regarded as her first real trip. The actual first time she went was in 1999 (I think) for a cousin's wedding. It was a rather inconvient time for her as she was going to start the new semester in less than a week. She went with our mom too. From what I remember, she only stayed in Manila for 2 days and the rest of the time was in Bicol but it was such a short stay,...certainly not long enough to get some good/bad impressions of the country.

This time, she was in the Philippines for several days. One of the many impressions she told me while we were shopping was the constant barrage of "pinoy pride" that was thrown at her. Thrown, I use loosely and I'll explain why.

During the time I lived in the Philippines for 10 months, I had to endure with the crap that everyone outside of the US hates about the US. At that particular time, the US still had military bases in the Philippines. Anyone that was against the US bases being in the Philippines (there were many I encountered) just couldn't pass up an opportunity to rant to me once they found out I was American.

I had one uncle (who, sadly, has passed away) who loved to rant to me about his hatred of American foreign policy and I think, he did it mostly to see if he could get a rise out of me. It always struck me as odd when I'd encounter pinoys that hated American foreign policy yet would be so damn eager for American pop culture!

My sister ranted to me about family members who seemed to have an excess of pinoy pride during her stay. They were old, mostly aunts/uncles. She said she was getting so sick of being told how "we have what you have" or "what we have is better than what you have back home" when she wasn't voicing any type of comparisons at all. One relative was bragging how they had more cable channels than we did! Um, ok. So what. LOL! Cable channels vary from city to city and you can get more than just the basic package, she explained. They didn't seem to understand that and still bragged about the fact they could pick up our channels. LOL!

I had to explain to my sister some of the reasoning behind this "pride". After 4 months of living in Bicol, I realized why the bragging occured. For one, I tried not to voice too many comparisons between living in the province and living in the US. I didn't want to come off sounding like the typical arrogant ass American overseas! I told my sister that I felt the bragging occured when pinoys wanted to feel that their life,...their country,...wasn't so bad off. There are a great many things filipinos aren't happy about with their current economical and political situations right now so they need to feel that they've still got something to be proud of. Besides, it wasn't our cousins that were doing the bragging/ranting but our aunts/uncles. Our cousins were more concerned with the pop culture here than anything else. So, just let the older relatives brag/rant and don't let all that ruin your vacation!

My sister was still irritated and I hope that doesn't keep her from wanting to do another visit to the Philippines again. She was the only one out of my sibling was bothered by all of this. Our brother and youngest sister,...they had too much fun during their trips to let stuff like this get to them.

Thursday

Today I met up with an old co-worker of mine for lunch. We met up for lunch at my favorite japanese restaurant in Memphis, "Edo". It had been a while since we'd seen each other so we did have a lot to catch up on. Jeri and me have similar interests and generally, it's hard to find others like us here in Memphis so our get-togethers are always filled with the stuff we see online and want to buy! LOL!

Prior to meeting up with her, I had stopped off at the PO to check my box and found that some special goggles I got from ebay for Artemis/Mir came in. I'm too lazy to take a picture of Artemis wearing them but I think they turned out alright for wearing on her head. At least I know my secret Blythe (ok, she's not a secret anymore) can wear them.

I did take some pictures of the budding veggie garden in the back for those of you who love to see the garden pictures but again, I feel so not in the mood to mess with Photoshop. Hopefully tomorrow I'll have them up on my website.

That reminds me, I need to pay for my hosting for this website tomorrow. *sigh* I also need to find someone to help me move my blog to my other sites. I wish I had set it up on mysql before so it would have been easier to do a data dump instead of the long way around.

Busy busy

I might not be working but damn, the days seems to be speeding by for me! This entire weekend had me quite busy as my sister and her husband came up from New Orleans on Friday nite. They both left for their long-awaited honeymoon trip to Asia. Lucky them get to go to Cambodia (where he's from), Thailand, and Philippines.

This weekend, I was chauffeur to Steph as she still had last minute crap to do for the trip. I laughed at her buying travel toilet paper, which we found in the camping section at Walmart. She must have bought 5 packs of them (they come in a 3pack set). I still warned her to take 2 regular rolls, just in case. I know that the places she'll be staying at will have it but in the Philippines,...hahaha! I even made her take my trusty travel bag that I store my camera and stuff in. Yes, that damn Overland bag! The purse she wanted to use was this gorgeous turquiose bag that would have gotten her ass seriously mugged as she stepped off the plane! Nothing screams "rich tourist" more than a nice purse! Even her filipino friend, Elna, who came over to visit (and had been to all 3 countries) said Steph wasn't thinking straight by bringing that purse! So, we traded: my Overland bag for her gorgeous turquiose purse! Oh, I'll get my Overland bag back but I think I'm going to keep the purse too! LMAO!

My ankle is well enough for me to be able to walk around with out limping but damn, it's still sore. I still can't move it in certain angles and I'm kinda worried bout that. If it's still sore by Wednesday, then I'm making an appointment with my doctor.

We decided to have lunch at Olive Garden before Steph left today. As we were being taken to our table, I ran into 2 old coworkers who were surprised to see me there. Told them to say hi to everyone back at the office and relished the thought that I could eat lunch without worrying about not having to rush back to a desk. Hah, for now. T_T

I have another doll photography tutorial I'm going to work on. This time, show the differences in the type of lighting used indoors and how to color correct for them on Photoshop. Oh, and it won't have to be with a white background either. Color correcting is easiest when you have a white background tho. Hope to get that done all in one day.

I have a sewing project I've committed myself to doing because I'm so backed up in baby gift-giving so I need to get it all done. It's a surprise and I hope my friends enjoy it, along with their babies. I'm going to photograph my lame attempts at hand sewing it all too. Yes, I don't know how to use the damn sewing machine and frankly, I'm not in the mood to learn right now.

*sigh* My other sister is trying to get me to watch Napoleon Dynamite with her on DVD right now but I'm also not in the mood to watch any movies. Is it any good?

Box of goodies

Tashaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!! Loooook!

Your item arrived in CANADA at 12:55 pm on April 29, 2005. Information, if available, is updated every evening. Please check again later.

Here is what happened earlier:
-INTO FOREIGN CUSTOMS, CANADA, April 29, 2005, 12:55 pm
-OUT OF FOREIGN CUSTOMS, CANADA, April 29, 2005, 12:55 pm
-INTERNATIONAL DISPATCH, MIAMI AMC, April 28, 2005, 1:51 pm
-ENROUTE, April 28, 2005, 8:44 am, MIAMI, FL 33112
-ENROUTE, April 27, 2005, 7:19 pm, MEMPHIS, TN 38101
-ENROUTE, April 27, 2005, 3:39 pm, MEMPHIS, TN 38130
-ACCEPTANCE, April 27, 2005, 3:33 pm, MEMPHIS, TN 38128

Don't you just looove EMS!! *except for how much it costs to send!*

Rain in the forecast

Dammit! I had planned on taking more flower pics tomorrow with the hopes that it would be sunny but noooooo, it's goign to rain here all weekend!

That means I'm going to have to sweat it out by the hot lamps and take the pics in the light tent. DAMMIT. I so don't feel like doing that, having to set everything up and then take it down to put away.

Screw it, I might just waste the weekend away watching my LOTR Triology DVD set instead.

Flowers for Tami

Happy Birthday, girl! I wish you all the best on your birthday!! Here are more pics of the flowers that I bought today in honor of sweet Tami in Norway!

There is a whole bouquet and more tullips again but the lights are so hot to work under! Definitely more flower shots this weekend!

Winter Warning

This is crazy! It's mid-March and we are under a winter storm adivisory for possible sleet/freezing rain and snow! I walked out of the hated office this evening and was shocked at how cold the air had gotten! The ground might not have been cold enough for the sleet/snow to stick but I still hate having to drive in this kind of weather!

Saturday, not Sunday

I've been stressing out over work a lot lately that weekends, I end up just vegging to relax. I intended on taking some pictures outside on Saturday but got lazy and decided to do it Sunday. It was a gorgeously sunny day on Saturday so I expected it to still be sunny on Sunday. WRONG!

I woke up to it being cloudy and looking like it would rain, tho the forecast didn't say for rain. Argh! I ended up grocery shopping rather late and bought some nice tulips to use as subjects for picture-taking when my new macro lens arrives on Wednesday.

Well, IT BETTER or B&H Photo will get a piece of my mind Thursday morning! I ordered it last Wednesday and they didn't ship it till Friday! I called on Thursday to ask why it hadn't shipped and was lied to, told that it would and it didn't. I called Friday and was told it should have shipped Thursday but no explanation as to why it didn't but promised it would Friday. I think this is the last time I'm going to order anything from B&H. They gave me the same run around last year when I ordered my other Canon lens.

RAW is the way

Woo, I now have Photoshop CS installed! I can finally work with RAW files from my 20D and see how they turn out compared to the large fine jpegs I've been shooting in. Lord, I know that they will take up even more space on my 1gb flash cards but I'm going to buy 2-3 more of those cards next month at Costco since they will have a special 20% off sale on them. I could get a 2gb card but then, I always worry that something might happen to the card and I won't be able to use it and there goes 2gb, rather than 1gb.

I think i will redo the pics I took over the weekend of Artemis in her new outfit and shoot them in RAW this weekend. Then I can really compare the difference.

Saturday shopping

I'm too tired and lazy to take pictures of the purchases I made today. It's been a while since I went shopping. I scored on some pretty good bargains from Marshall's and TJ Maxx: 1 purse, I new messenger type bag and 2 pairs of shoes. I think I've reached my "purse quota" till fall. I bought 3 new purses in Paris and gave one to my sister as a late Xmas present. I normally don't buy many purses the way some women do to match outfits or whatnot but I am proud to say that a lot of my purses are no longer black! I know Cat and Clarissa are probably laughing at that one!

I also ended up buying a new book called "The Queen's Fool". 2 weeks ago, I bought "The Other Boleyn Girl" by the same author. I've been reading a lot of historical fiction lately and from the Elizabethan period. There isn't a lot of modern-day fiction that appeals to me most of the time.

Sunday afternoon, I need to run to Costco and buy some roses for some pictures I plan on taking. Bleh, Valentine's day. The one holiday I hate to work the most in an office full of married women. It's a never ending session of who got the best roses and crap. I wish I didn't have to go to work on Monday, period!

Earthquake

Hmm, apparently there was an earthquake here. Around 8am...it was about 40 miles from Memphis and registered as a 4.2 on the scale.

Now, I usually leave the house between 8:00-8:15 and I didn't feel anything while I was getting ready. When I got to work, I heard over the radio that we had an earthquake. Huh??

You should have seen my coworkers! One would have thought that we had an 8.0 or something! The Mid-South doesn't get earthquakes very often but we do sit on a rather bad fault line and if we did get a big one, that's the end of it for everyone! MANY of the buildings and homes here are NOT retrofitted or what to withstand an earthquake. One coworker was crying because her daughter lived out in the area where the earthquake was centered and lord, she was afraid that the aftershocks would be bigger! *sigh*

Anyhow, now the radio stations are flooding with callers all "I felt the earthquake!!" LOL!

Death to PS

I didn't think it was possible but I'm sick of Photoshop at the moment. Due to this, I won't even pick up my camera and take pictures of a lot of things that need to be photographed, such as pics I owe Joey and a lot of the new stuff I received before/during/after vacation. The thought of having to photoshop those pics turns me off so I'm taking a break from anything photography-related for the next week. Since I finished all the Paris vacation pics, having to go back and re-edit more of my sister's wedding pics,...I seriously don't want to think about it! Just watch me veg in front of the tv or rent movies for the next week. Yeah, I need to rent Collateral, Amelie, and a dozen other movies. Oh joy.

Generation Twixter

Original article by Lev Grossman posted here:

Grow Up? Not So Fast! Meet the twixters. They're not kids anymore, but they're not adults either. why a new breed of young people won't or can't? settle down.

Michele, Ellen, Nathan, Corinne, Marcus and Jennie are friends. All of them live in Chicago. They go out three nights a week, sometimes more. Each of them has had several jobs since college; Ellen is on her 17th, counting internships, since 1996. They don't own homes.

They change apartments frequently. None of them are married, none have children. All of them are from 24 to 28 years old.

Thirty years ago, people like Michele, Ellen, Nathan, Corinne, Marcus and Jennie didn't exist, statistically speaking. Back then, the median age for an American woman to get married was 21. She had her first child at 22. Now it all takes longer. It's 25 for the wedding and 25 for baby. It appears to take young people longer to graduate from college, settle into careers and buy their first homes. What are they waiting for? Who are these permanent adolescents, these twentysomething Peter Pans? And why can't they grow up?

Everybody knows a few of them full-grown men and women who still live with their parents, who dress and talk and party as they did in their teens, hopping from job to job and date to date, having fun but seemingly going nowhere. Ten years ago, we might have called them Generation X, or slackers, but those labels don't quite fit anymore.

This isn't just a trend, a temporary fad or a generational hiccup. This is a much larger phenomenon, of a different kind and a different order.

Social scientists are starting to realize that a permanent shift has taken place in the way we live our lives. In the past, people moved from childhood to adolescence and from adolescence to adulthood, but today there is a new, intermediate phase along the way. The years from 18 until 25 and even beyond have become a distinct and separate life stage, a strange, transitional never-never land between adolescence and adulthood in which people stall for a few extra years, putting off the iron cage of adult responsibility that constantly threatens to crash down on them. They're betwixt and between. You could call them twixters.

Where did the twixters come from? And what's taking them so long to get where they're going? Some of the sociologists, psychologists and demographers who study this new life stage see it as a good thing.

The twixters aren't lazy, the argument goes, they're reaping the fruit of decades of American affluence and social liberation. This new period is a chance for young people to savor the pleasures of irresponsibility, search their souls and choose their life paths. But more historically and economically minded scholars see it differently. They are worried that twixters aren't growing up because they can't. Those researchers fear that whatever cultural machinery used to turn kids into grownups has broken down, that society no longer provides young people with the moral backbone and the financial wherewithal to take their rightful places in the adult world. Could growing up be harder than it used to be?

The sociologists, psychologists, economists and others who study this age group have many names for this new phase of life "youthhood," "adultescence" and they call people in their 20s "kidults" and "boomerang kids," none of which have quite stuck. Terri Apter, a psychologist at the University of Cambridge in England and the author of The Myth of Maturity, calls them "thresholders."

Apter became interested in the phenomenon in 1994, when she noticed her students struggling and flailing more than usual after college.

Parents were baffled when their expensively educated, otherwise well-adjusted 23-year-old children wound up sobbing in their old bedrooms, paralyzed by indecision. "Legally, they're adults, but they're on the threshold, the doorway to adulthood, and they're not going through it," Apter says. The percentage of 26-year-olds living with their parents has nearly doubled since 1970, from 11% to 20%, according to Bob Schoeni, a professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan.

Jeffrey Arnett, a developmental psychologist at the University of Maryland, favors "emerging adulthood" to describe this new demographic group, and the term is the title of his new book on the subject. His theme is that the twixters are misunderstood. It's too easy to write them off as overgrown children, he argues. Rather, he suggests, they're doing important work to get themselves ready for adulthood. "This is the one time of their lives when they're not responsible for anyone else or to anyone else," Arnett says. "So they have this wonderful freedom to really focus on their own lives and work on becoming the kind of person they want to be." In his view, what looks like incessant, hedonistic play is the twixters' way of trying on jobs and partners and personalities and making sure that when they do settle down, they do it the right way, their way. It's not that they don't take adulthood seriously; they take it so seriously, they're spending years carefully choosing the right path into it.

But is that all there is to it? Take a giant step backward, look at the history and the context that led up to the rise of the twixters, and you start to wonder, Is it that they don't want to grow up, or is it that the rest of society won't let them?

SCHOOL DAZE
Matt Swann is 27. he took 6-1/2 years to graduate from the University of Georgia. When he finally finished, he had a brand-spanking-new degree in cognitive science, which he describes as a wide-ranging interdisciplinary field that covers cognition, problem solving, artificial intelligence, linguistics, psychology, philosophy and anthropology. All of which is pretty cool, but its value in today's job market is not clear. "Before the '90s maybe, it seemed like a smart guy could do a lot of things," Swann says. "Kids used to go to college to get educated. That's what I did, which I think now was a bit naive. Being smart after college doesn't really mean anything.

'Oh, good, you're smart. Unfortunately your productivity's s___, so we're going to have to fire you.'"

College is the institution most of us entrust to watch over the transition to adulthood, but somewhere along the line that transition has slowed to a crawl. In a TIME poll of people ages 18 to 29, only 32% of those who attended college left school by age 21. In fact, the average college student takes five years to finish. The era of the four-year college degree is all but over.

Swann graduated in 2002 as a newly minted cognitive scientist, but the job he finally got a few months later was as a waiter in Atlanta.

He waited tables for the next year and a half. It proved to be a blessing in disguise. Swann says he learned more real-world skills working in restaurants than he ever did in school. "It taught me how to deal with people. What you learn as a waiter is how to treat people fairly, especially when they're in a bad situation." That's especially valuable in his current job as an insurance-claims examiner.

There are several lessons about twixters to be learned from Swann's tale. One is that most colleges are seriously out of step with the real world in getting students ready to become workers in the postcollege world. Vocational schools like DeVry and Strayer, which focus on teaching practical skills, are seeing a mini-boom. Their enrollment grew 48% from 1996 to 2000. More traditional schools are scrambling to give their courses a practical spin. In the fall, Hendrix College in Conway, Ark., will introduce a program called the Odyssey project, which the school says will encourage students to "think outside the book" in areas like "professional and leadership development" and "service to the world." Dozens of other schools have set up similar initiatives.

As colleges struggle to get their students ready for real-world jobs, they are charging more for what they deliver. The resulting debt is a major factor in keeping twixters from moving on and growing up.

Thirty years ago, most financial aid came in the form of grants, but now the emphasis is on lending, not on giving. Recent college graduates owe 85% more in student loans than their counterparts of a decade ago, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

In TIME's poll, 66% of those surveyed owed more than $10,000 when they graduated, and 5% owed more than $100,000. (And this says nothing about the credit-card companies that bombard freshmen with offers for cards that students then cheerfully abuse. Demos, a public-policy group, says credit-card debt for Americans 18 to 24 more than doubled from 1992 to 2001.) The longer it takes to pay off those loans, the longer it takes twixters to achieve the financial independence that's crucial to attaining an adult identity, not to mention the means to get out of their parents' house.

Meanwhile, those expensive, time-sucking college diplomas have become worth less than ever. So many more people go to college now—a 53% increase since 1970—that the value of a degree on the job market has been diluted. The advantage in wages for college-degree holders hasn't risen significantly since the late 1990s, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. To compensate, a lot of twixters go back to school for graduate and professional degrees. Swann, for example, is planning to head back to business school to better his chances in the insurance game. But piling on extra degrees costs precious time and money and pushes adulthood even further into the future.

WORK IN PROGRESS
Kate Galantha, 28, spent seven years working her way through college, transferring three times. After she finally graduated from Columbia College in Chicago (major: undeclared) in 2001, she moved to Portland, Ore., and went to work as a nanny and as an assistant to a wedding photographer. A year later she jumped back to Chicago, where she got a job in a flower shop. It was a full-time position with real benefits, but she soon burned out and headed for the territories, a.k.a. Madison, Wis. "I was really busy but not accomplishing anything," she says. "I didn't want to stay just for a job."

She had no job offers in Madison, and the only person she knew there was her older sister, but she had nothing tying her to Chicago (her boyfriend had moved to Europe) and she needed a change. The risk paid off. She got a position as an assistant at a photo studio, and she loves it. "I decided it was more important to figure out what to do and to be in a new environment," Galantha says. "It's exciting, and I'm in a place where I can accomplish everything. But starting over is the worst."

Galantha's frenetic hopping from school to school, job to job and city to city may look like aimless wandering. (She has moved six times since 1999. Her father calls her and her sister gypsies.) But Emerging Adulthood's Arnett—and Galantha—see it differently. To them, the period from 18 to 25 is a kind of sandbox, a chance to build castles and knock them down, experiment with different careers, knowing that none of it really counts. After all, this is a world of overwhelming choice: there are 40 kinds of coffee beans at Whole Foods Market, 205 channels on DirecTV, 15 million personal ads on Match.com and 800,000 jobs on Monster.com. Can you blame Galantha for wanting to try them all? She doesn't want to play just the hand she has been dealt. She wants to look through the whole deck. "My problem is I'm really overstimulated by everything," Galantha says. "I feel there's too much information out there at all times. There are too many doors, too many people, too much competition."

Twixters expect to jump laterally from job to job and place to place until they find what they're looking for. The stable, quasi-parental bond between employer and employee is a thing of the past, and neither feels much obligation to make the relationship permanent.

"They're well aware of the fact that they will not work for the same company for the rest of their life," says Bill Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution, a think tank based in Washington. "They don't think long-term about health care or Social Security. They're concerned about their careers and immediate gratification."

Twixters expect a lot more from a job than a paycheck. Maybe it's a reaction to the greed-is-good 1980s or to the whatever-is-whatever apathy of the early 1990s. More likely, it's the way they were raised, by parents who came of age in the 1960s as the first generation determined to follow its bliss, who want their children to change the world the way they did. Maybe it has to do with advances in medicine. Twixters can reasonably expect to live into their 80s and beyond, so their working lives will be extended accordingly and when they choose a career, they know they'll be there for a while.

But whatever the cause, twixters are looking for a sense of purpose and importance in their work, something that will add meaning to their lives, and many don't want to rest until they find it. "They're not just looking for a job," Arnett says. "They want something that's more like a calling, that's going to be an expression of their identity." Hedonistic nomads, the twixters may seem, but there's a serious core of idealism in them.

Still, self-actualization is a luxury not everybody can afford, and looking at middle- and upper-class twixters gives only part of the picture. Twixters change jobs often, but they don't all do it for the same reasons, and one twixter's playful experimentation is another's desperate hustling. James Cote is a sociologist at the University of Western Ontario and the author of several books about twixters, including Generation on Hold and Arrested Adulthood. He believes that the economic bedrock that used to support adolescents on their journey into adulthood has shifted alarmingly. "What we're looking at really began with the collapse of the youth labor market, dating back to the late '70s and early '80s, which made it more difficult for people to get a foothold in terms of financial independence," Cote says. "You need a college degree now just to be where blue- collar people the same age were 20 or 30 years ago, and if you don't have it, then you're way behind." In other words, it's not that twixters don't want to become adults. They just can't afford to.

One way society defines an adult is as a person who is financially independent, with a family and a home. But families and homes cost money, and people in their late teens and early 20s don't make as much as they used to. The current crop of twixters grew up in the 1990s, when the dotcom boom made Internet millions seem just a business proposal away, but in reality they're worse off than the generation that preceded them. Annual earnings among men 25 to 34 with full-time jobs dropped 17% from 1971 to 2002, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Timothy Smeeding, a professor of economics at Syracuse University, found that only half of Americans in their mid-20s earn enough to support a family, and in TIME's poll only half of those ages 18 to 29 consider themselves financially independent. Michigan's Schoeni says Americans ages 25 and 26 get an average of $2,323 a year in financial support from their parents.

The transition to adulthood gets tougher the lower you go on the economic and educational ladder. Sheldon Danziger, a public-policy professor at the University of Michigan, found that for male workers ages 25 to 29 with only a high school diploma, the average wage declined 11% from 1975 to 2002. "When I graduated from high school, my classmates who didn't want to go to college could go to the Goodyear plant and buy a house and support a wife and family," says Steve Hamilton of Cornell University's Youth and Work Program. "That doesn't happen anymore." Instead, high school grads are more likely to end up in retail jobs with low pay and minimal benefits, if any.

From this end of the social pyramid, Arnett's vision of emerging adulthood as a playground of self-discovery seems a little rosy. The rules have changed, and not in the twixters' favor.

WEDDINGS CAN WAIT
With everything else that's going on careers to be found, debts to be paid, bars to be hopped love is somewhat secondary in the lives of the twixters. But that doesn't mean they're cynical about it. Au contraire: among our friends from Chicago Michele, Ellen, Nathan, Corinne, Marcus and Jennie all six say they are not ready for marriage yet but do want it someday, preferably with kids. Naturally, all that is comfortably situated in the eternally receding future.

Thirty is no longer the looming deadline it once was. In fact, five of the Chicago six see marriage as a decidedly post-30 milestone.

"It's a long way down the road," says Marcus Jones, 28, a comedian who works at Banana Republic by day. "I'm too self-involved. I don't want to bring that into a relationship now." He expects to get married in his mid- to late 30s. "My wife is currently a sophomore in high school," he jokes.

"I want to get married but not soon," says Jennie Jiang, 26, a sixth-grade teacher. "I'm enjoying myself. There's a lot I want to do by myself still."

"I have my career, and I'm too young," says Michele Steele, 26, a TV producer. "It's commitment and sacrifice, and I think it's a hindrance. Lo and behold, people have come to the conclusion that it's not much fun to get married and have kids right out of college."

That attitude is new, but it didn't come out of nowhere. Certainly, the spectacle of the previous generation's mass divorces has something to do with the healthy skepticism shown by the twixters.

They will spend a few years looking before they leap, thank you very much. "I fantasize more about sharing a place with someone than about my wedding day," says Galantha, whose parents split when she was 18. "I haven't seen a lot of good marriages."

But if twixters are getting married later, they are missing out on some of the social-support networks that come with having families of their own. To make up for it, they have a special gift for friendship, documented in books like Sasha Cagen's Quirkyalone and Ethan Watters' Urban Tribes, which asks the not entirely rhetorical question Are friends the new family? They throw cocktail parties and dinner parties. They hold poker nights. They form book groups. They stay in touch constantly and in real time, through social-networking technologies like cell phones, instant messaging, text messaging and online communities like Friendster. They're also close to their parents. TIME's poll showed that almost half of Americans ages 18 to 29 talk to their parents every day.

Marrying late also means that twixters tend to have more sexual partners than previous generations. The situation is analogous to their promiscuous job-hopping behavior—like Goldilocks, they want to find the one that's just right—but it can give them a cynical, promiscuous vibe too. Arnett is worried that if anything, twixters are too romantic. In their universe, romance is totally detached from pragmatic concerns and societal pressures, so when twixters finally do marry, they're going to do it for Love with a capital L and no other reason. "Everybody wants to find their soul mate now," Arnett says, "whereas I think, for my parents' generation I'm 47 they looked at it much more practically. I think a lot of people are going to end up being disappointed with the person that's snoring next to them by the time they've been married for a few years and they realize it doesn't work that way."

TWIXTER CULTURE
When it comes to social change, pop culture is the most sensitive of seismometers, and it was faster to pick up on the twixters than the cloistered social scientists. Look at the Broadway musical Avenue Q, in which puppets dramatize the vagaries of life after graduation. ("I wish I could go back to college," a character sings. "Life was so simple back then.") Look at that little TV show called Friends, about six people who put off marriage well into their 30s. Even twice-married Britney Spears fits the profile. For a succinct, albeit cheesy summation of the twixter predicament, you couldn't do much better than her 2001 hit I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman.

The producing duo Edward Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz, who created the legendarily zeitgeisty TV series thirtysomething and My So-Called Life, now have a pilot with ABC called 1/4life, about a houseful of people in their mid-20s who can't seem to settle down. "When you talk about this period of transition being extended, it's not what people intended to do," Herskovitz says, "but it's a result of the world not being particularly welcoming when they come into it. Lots of people have a difficult time dealing with it, and they try to stay kids as long as they can because they don't know how to make sense of all this. We're interested in this process of finding courage and one's self."

As for movies, a lot of twixters cite Garden State as one that really nails their predicament. "I feel like my generation is waiting longer and longer to get married," says Zach Braff, 29, who wrote, directed and starred in the film about a twentysomething actor who comes home for the first time in nine years. "In the past, people got married and got a job and had kids, but now there's a new 10 years that people are using to try and find out what kind of life they want to lead. For a lot of people, the weight of all the possibility is overwhelming."

Pop culture may reflect the changes in our lives, but it also plays its part in shaping them. Marketers have picked up on the fact that twixters on their personal voyages of discovery tend to buy lots of stuff along the way. "They are the optimum market to be going after for consumer electronics, Game Boys, flat-screen TVs, iPods, couture fashion, exotic vacations and so forth," says David Morrison, president of Twentysomething Inc., a marketing consultancy based in Philadelphia. "Most of their needs are taken care of by Mom and Dad, so their income is largely discretionary. [Many twentysomethings] are living at home, but if you look, you'll see flat-screen TVs in their bedrooms and brand-new cars in the driveway." Some twixters may want to grow up, but corporations and advertisers have a real stake in keeping them in a tractable, exploitable, pre-adult state—living at home, spending their money on toys.

LIVING WITH PETER PAN
Maybe the twixters are in denial about growing up, but the rest of society is equally in denial about the twixters. Nobody wants to admit they're here to stay, but that's where all the evidence points.

Tom Smith, director of the General Social Survey, a large sociological data-gathering project run by the National Opinion Research Center, found that most people believe that the transition to adulthood should be completed by the age of 26, on average, and he thinks that number is only going up. "In another 10 or 20 years, we're not going to be talking about this as a delay. We're going to be talking about this as a normal trajectory," Smith says. "And we're going to think about those people getting married at 18 and forming families at 19 or 20 as an odd historical pattern."

There may even be a biological basis to all this. The human brain continues to grow and change into the early 20s, according to Abigail Baird, who runs the Laboratory for Adolescent Studies at Dartmouth.

"We as a society deem an individual at the age of 18 ready for adult responsibility," Baird points out. "Yet recent evidence suggests that our neuropsychological development is many years from being complete.

There's no reason to think 18 is a magic number." How can the twixters be expected to settle down when their gray matter hasn't?

A new life stage is a major change, and the rest of society will have to change to make room for it. One response to this very new phenomenon is extremely old-fashioned: medieval-style apprenticeship programs that give high school graduates a cheaper and more practical alternative to college. In 1996 Jack Smith, then CEO of General Motors, started Automotive Youth Educational Systems (AYES), a program that puts high school kids in shops alongside seasoned car mechanics. More than 7,800 students have tried it, and 98% of them have ended up working at the business where they apprenticed. "I knew this was my best way to get into a dealership," says Chris Rolando, 20, an AYES graduate who works at one in Detroit. "My friends are still at pizza-place jobs and have no idea what to do for a living. I just bought my own house and have a career."

But success stories like Rolando's are rare. Child welfare, the juvenile-justice system, special-education and support programs for young mothers usually cut off at age 18, and most kids in foster care get kicked out at 18 with virtually no safety net. "Age limits are like the time limits for welfare recipients," says Frank Furstenberg, a sociologist who heads a research consortium called the MacArthur Network on Transitions to Adulthood. "They're pushing people off the rolls, but they're not necessarily able to transition into supportive services or connections to other systems." And programs for the poor aren't the only ones that need to grow up with the times. Only 54% of respondents in the TIME poll were insured through their employers.

That's a reality that affects all levels of society, and policymakers need to strengthen that safety net.

Most of the problems that twixters face are hard to see, and that makes it harder to help them. Twixters may look as if they have been overindulged, but they could use some judicious support. Apter's research at Cambridge suggests that the more parents sympathize with their twixter children, the more parents take time to discuss their twixters' life goals, the more aid and shelter they offer them, the easier the transition becomes. "Young people know that their material life will not be better than their parents'," Apter says. "They don't expect a safer life than their parents had. They don't expect more secure employment or finances. They have to put in a lot of work just to remain O.K." Tough love may look like the answer, but it's not what twixters need.

The real heavy lifting may ultimately have to happen on the level of the culture itself. There was a time when people looked forward to taking on the mantle of adulthood. That time is past. Now our culture trains young people to fear it. "I don't ever want a lawn," says Swann. "I don't ever want to drive two hours to get to work. I do not want to be a parent. I mean, hell, why would I? There's so much fun to be had while you're young." He does have a point. Twixters have all the privileges of grownups now but only some of the responsibilities. From the point of view of the twixters, upstairs in their childhood bedrooms, snuggled up under their Star Wars comforters, it can look all downhill.

If twixters are ever going to grow up, they need the means to do it and they will have to want to. There are joys and satisfactions that come with assuming adult responsibility, though you won't see them on The Real World. To go to the movies or turn on the TV is to see a world where life ends at 30; these days, every movie is Logan's Run. There are few road maps in the popular culture and to most twixters, this is the only culture to get twixters where they need to go. If those who are 30 and older want the rest of the world to grow up, they'll have to show the twixters that it's worth their while. "I went to a Poster Children concert, and there were 40-year-olds still rocking," says Jennie Jiang. "It gave me hope."
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*sigh* This sounds all too familiar. I'd like to write a longer, in-depth post about how I feel about this article but right now, I can't. Maybe later in the day after I've kicked some sales people ass around the office for annoying me with their petty grievances on a Friday!

Should have bought

ARGH! I knew it! I just checked the Sephora website and found that the makeup bags I almost bought at Sephora in Paris,...ARE NOT sold on Sephora USA! DAMMIT! I missed out on buying the cutest makeup bags as gifts to give to my sister and friends! I had 2 opportunities to buy them as I was able to visit a Sephora under the Louvre and off the Metro line at Porte Berger and each time, I kept thinking,..."It's prolly on the US website and would be cheaper for me to buy since the exchange rate is crappy right now." ARGH!

Movie marathon

I spent the whole weekend glued to the tv and doing my laundry before vacation this week. I'm not a big Elvis fan but there's something about his movies,...maybe it's the complete sillyness or perhaps the songs that will have me sitting thru a couple of them during the marathon in honor of his birthday. I didn't mean to do nothing but watch tv but I somehow couldn't stop for the next 8 hours!

I also FINALLY saw "The mask of Zorro" movie with Antonio Bandaras and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Yeah, I hadn't seen that at all. Good movie and I think the sequel comes out later this summer?

I'll start packing up tonite for the France trip. My mom was telling me, "Just use a carry-on bag and don't check in luggage...that's what we are doing." ARE YOU KIDDING? 5 days in Paris and you're only bringing enough clothing for 2-3 days. Screw that, I told her,...I'm checking in my luggage and I'm NOT going to go dressed like an obvious tourist like they are! Plus, it's going to be cold when we go! Typical filipino attitude...like they expect to not spend any money while there. I just know it's going to be a non-stop bitch fest about how much everything costs! Well, HELLO...the US$ is trash compared to the euro!

Happy New Year!

I'm late with my New Year's post, I know. I slept about 17 hours yesterday. Let me step back and tell you what's happened since Friday.

I got out of work early, about 2pm. Went straight home because I was tired from the Nashvile quick trip. I come home to my parents playing competition mode on the Karao-mike. ARGH. My sore throat made me feel crappy so no, I didn't go out. Called a couple of Cali friends to wish them Happy New Years and stayed awake chatting with Joey till I couldn't keep my eyes open.

Saturday, I felt even more crappier and around 5pm, went to my room and stayed there all evening. My parents had a mahjong party Friday night and the same crew of friends came over again for more punishment (my mom won a lot). It was raining and surprisingly, the power started going out, especially when they were doing damn karaoke! YES! It kept flickering back on and off so I had to haul out of bed and unplug all the computers in the house. Last thing we need are brand new Dells getting fried from power surges.

Apparently, there was an accident nearby and the car had hit one of the power poles. Fortunately, they were able to get our power back up sometime during the night.

I tend to stay up too much and lately, I've been drinking a lot of coffee. Yesterday's sleep fest was a result of my body telling me that it's had enough. No amount of coffee could keep me awake. *sigh* I woke up with an aching back (I didn't turn over in my deep sleep) but refreshed this morning,...early too...ugh, 7am!

Now, I have too much crap to do. I've got to wrap up Joey's Jun to send to her tomorrow, print out god knows how many 4x6s my mom is pestering me to do from the wedding and take pics of stuff that has come in the mail. I'm running all 3 computers too, between upstairs and downstairs. My brother's computer, I'm burning CDs, sister's computer I'm PSing and this one, I'm printing. If this isn't multi-tasking, I don't know what is. I'd rather do the PSing and burning of CDs on seperate computers so I won't slow down either programs.

I am so not looking forward to working all week either. It was nice having days off here and there during the week.

Exhausted

I'm exhausted from my 3 days of vacation! I'm typing while at work today...odd that I came in on Friday when almost everyone is off today. It's very quiet and I hope it stays that way too.

I finally got to see my doctor yesterday morning. Ugh. I have an ear infection, apparently and that is what's causing this cough/cold/sore thoat deal. I was coughing so bad by the time he did see me that on the way out, he said "I'd give you a cortisone shot for the cough but then, I know how you feel about having to take another steroid,...!" DAMN RIGHT, I told him! LOL! I don't want anymore steroids in my body unless I absolutely have to take them! Instead, he gave me this freaky-looking inhaler that will help tone down the coughing and prescriptions for antibiotics and....something else, I can't remember. The inhaler helps a lot tho. I wish I'd been able to see him last week when my coughing was even worse. My voice has gone to that scratchy, wispy state again. NO, don't ask me to do an audblog post cuz my voice isn't fit for one!

As soon as I got home, I got dragged into a quick trip to Nashville by my visiting sister from New Orleans. Our mom came with us and slept in the back seat. Along the way, there was a bad accident involving an 18-wheeler that must have lost control because it was flipped over to the side. The driver appeared uninjured. There were a couple of men that had stopped to offer help because the driver had opened the back of his trailer to check out the stuff he was shipping: boxes of 32" Sanyo tvs! I told my sister we should stop and *help*! The guy was unboxing some tvs to see if they were damaged and the screens were fine!

We went shopping at the Opry Mills outlet mall, as usual. Lots of sales but I didn't buy a lot. Must save money for Paris still. The only thing I did buy for myself was another new wallet. The other wallet I bought to replace my beloved Nordstroms one,...ended up being too small. This one, I got from the Saks Fifth Avenue outlet. The hiliarous part is the color scheme matches the new purse I bought. Outside, the purse is turquoise while inside is this spring green of sorts that compliments it. The wallet is almost the same color green but the inside is turquoise. I've been hunting down for this particular style of wallet where it doesn't have endless slots for non-existant credit cards (why the hell would someone carry more than 3????). Anyhow, I was willing to pay $75 just to find the style I wanted. Fortunately, I only had to pay $39 for this one. It better not break on me. I hate having to shop for wallets!

I tried to shop a bit faster than usual because we 3 agreed to split up and meet up at a designated spot when we were done. I was thinking that my mom would be the first there and end up waiting forever for us. I ended up being the first one done. Steph, surpisingly, showed up 20 minutes after me (but with way more shopping bags). We sat around for close to 2 hours WAITING for our mother! Where the HELL was she??? We even walked around the mall looking for her and this mall is HUGE! I KNEW we should have brought the 2-way radios with us! I started getting worried because it was unlike her to not show up after shopping for 2 hours. We had already been in the mall a total of 4 hours! When we agreed to split up again and look for her, she showed up. Grrrrr, she thought it was funny that we were waiting for her. She knew would would after the 2 hour mark so she took her damn time, she said, in trying on stuff. Grrr! I ended up driving back home the first half of the way...once we hit Jackson, TN...we had to switch because my back was too tense from driving. It's always windy driving back since we are going downhill. Plus, it's all hilly and curvy...reminds me of the time I took a trip from SF to LA and we drove on the 101. NOT the best way to get to LA...it was windy as hell!

We got home at 10:30 and I was too tired to check emails and such. Just passed out on bed. I come in to work this morning and we are running on skeleton crew. They better let us out early today for New Year's.

No plans for tonite, just staying at home. It's quite a difference from my last New Year's where I was drinking it up at the W hotel in SF with my friends during my visit back to the Bay Area. *sigh* Blah, I'll compensate myself with Paris in 2 weeks! W00T!

Naughty or nice for Xmas?

Happy Holidays! Merry Christmas! A christmas greeting card should be up later today! I stayed up rather late using my sister's new Dell to finish photoshopping all the wedding pictures, finally. Got up an hour ago. Haven't opened my presents yet either. I hope that everyone is having a safe and merry holiday today!

Next year, y'all better think twice about being naughty! A very smart father decided his sons weren't being good this year and put their presents up for auction on ebay! Thankfully, we didn't have ebay when we were growing up! LOL! Otherwise, I'm sure a lot of us would be seeing our presents go for over $800!

18 degrees

Yesterday, I left work early and I would have left earlier if the damn DHL guy had shown up. He never did so I had to drop off our stuff before heading out. I left about 3:45pm. By then, the sleet was coming down hard, as it was all afternoon. I let my car warm up really good and had trouble trying to keep my windshield from freezing up again because my wipers kept freezing up and not wiping away the sleet.

Traffic was at a crawling pace. Fortunately, I was going against traffic so my side was moving constantly, unless there was a red light. The fastest I ever got to drive was 10mph. It took me almost 90 minutes to get home because everyone was driving this slow. The wind was lashing out and blowing the sleet so bad, no one dared try to drive any faster than 10mph.

I got home a little bit after my brother did and it took him almost 2 hours to get home from downtown. He had to take the interstate before getting off and side streeting it the rest of the way. I found out that our sister was at work at the mall so my dad and brother ventured out to get her and her car.

The most hilarious part of the day was when they were warming up her car. Before my dad could stop him, my brother had tried to open her car door. That door was frozen stuck and because of this, he BROKE her door handle off when he tried to yank it! Charlie said the look on his face when he did it, doubled with our dad yelling at him to WAAAAAAAAAAIT right before he did it...she couldn't stop laughing, despite it happening to her car. Yes, he said he'd pay for the repair! Dumbass! I told him that my car door was stuck too but I went in from the passenger side first and pushed the driver side open from the inside. Plus, I gripped from the top of the door and pulled!

I did take pics from work and of this morning but I can't seem to install the card reader on my computer here. The driver isn't listed on Sony's website anymore and I left the driver cd at home, not thinking I'd need it. Crap. Anyhow, it took me 40 minutes to get work. It normally takes me only 15-20 minutes.

The sleet from overnight,...formed a solid 1-2 inch layer on the ground this morning. It's all crunchy underfoot. Kids were outside with sleds and running to the little hills nearby. It's very cold outside...windchill around 8-10 degrees and windy still. This is the closest we've come to a white Christmas in Memphis. This type of weather may not be a big deal to many up north but for us, we only get 1-2 snowstorms a year and if we're unlucky, an ice storm. December, we rarely get weather like this...it's still raining for us.

I'll post the pics when I get home. I guess I won't be going to the damn doctor AGAIN as they decided not to go in and open their office! I am so pissed! They called me yesterday to cancel my appointment because they were leaving early due to the weather. Then they don't go in today to open the clinic. That pisses me off! I hate going to Minor medical for something like this but I will if they aren't there to open the clinic tomorrow. >_<

Winter weather advisory

The only thing I'm looking forward to today is seeing my doctor! Ugh. I woke up feeling quite miserable with this cold/cough. I had to go into work today and I wake up to this! Winter weather advisory warning! Great. What I don't need is to be driving on ice to my doctor's office!

They said we will get snow/sleet but what it probably won't stick. What worries me is the ice. It rained all night and with the temperature dropping below freezing point, I hope it doesn't freeze until after I'm home!

Update: 2:50pm

As soon as we get our DHL pickup here by 3:30pm, I'm leaving early. It's been raining sleet now for the past hour and all the trees and bushes are coated in ice. T_T

Stuffy microphone

This is me at 1:37pm in Super Walmart:

"Advil Flu&Body Ache vs. Advil Cold&Sinus? One cost more than the other but they HAVE THE SAME INGREDIENTS!!!!"

Where is a friggin' PHARMACIST when you need one?? Too bad the one at the counter was too busy dealing with an customer. The expired Advil cold tablets I took (I don't want to hear it) this morning was wearing off and I could feel some sinus pressure coming back. I ended up buying Advil Cold&Sinus because it came in a 40-pack. I need all the help I can get. Stupid doctor's office couldn't get me in tomorrow so I have to suffer until Wednesday afternoon before I can see my doctor.

4:13pm
I'm using vacation for today and tomorrow. Yeah, nothing like being sick while on vacation. I noticed BROWN truck pull up in front of the house. I know I didn't order anything coming UPS so it must be for someone in the family. You know how even with Ground, you're suppose to sign for it? The bastard just did a driveby,...put the package on the porch and hopped back on his truck and zoomed off. If I'd known what was in the package, I would have GLADLY PAID the dude to take it back.

The package was for my mom from someone in NJ. We have relatives there but the name was unfamiliar. I handed it to her and her eyes lit up. She excitedly opened the box and DAMMIT, it was new DAMN karaoke microphone! Oh, this isn't JUST a microphone, it's a MAGIC VIDEOKE MICROPHONE! One of our relatives sent it to her for Christmas. *puts relative on blacklist* I asked her, "Aren't you going to test it out?"...hoping she'd say NEVER but she answered, "Oh, I'll test it tomorrow when your dad gets back from Kentucky." UGH. I'm STILL OFF ON VACATION! Suddenly, going back to work doesn't seem like a bad idea, eh? When my brother came home from work, I told him what our parents got for Christmas and he whole-heartedly agreed: We need to get the audio plug in cords to that microphone and HIDE THEM!!!

Headache

Don't you hate it when you catch a cold that turns into a nasty cough? I've been coughing all day and at times, so hard, that I'm getting a headache from it. I'm taking 2 vacation days on Monday and Tuesday so I've got to get up early Monday morning and call my doctor's office to see if I can get an appointment for that day or Tuesday. *sigh* On top of that, I still have to go to work but only to send my timesheet in. They set us up on a new system where we keep track of our time on the intranet and the sheet has to be mailed before noon on the day it's due.

Anyhow, I have a load of crap I have to work on, more pictures...to be taken and to be edited. Earlier today, I went to the flea market but didn't buy anything. The only thing that was interesting were the cute english bulldog puppies that someone was selling, along with a bunch of other puppy breeds. I wanted to take that cute wrinkly face home with me! Unfortunately, I didn't have $300 to spare. The only thing that I could afford was a pronto pup! (Pronto pup = foot long corn dog slathered with mustard for $2)

Late night run to Walmart

Receipt:

1 Vicks Waterless Vaporizer - $12 something
1 pack of Vicks Waterless refills
4 bags of Halls cough drops in various flavors
1 car air freshner
--------------------

Hmm, I guess I do have a cold? Ugh. I hope the vaporizer works. I haaaate using a real humidifer!

28 degrees

It never fails! When the weather suddenly shifts, I end up with a cold! Right now, it's not a full-blown cold and thank god for that. With the wind chill factor, it's feeling like 18 degrees outside! It's a little too early for deep freeze weather like this. The wind is what is a killer. When it gets this cold, I don't want to leave the house. Hell, I don't want to leave my toasty bed!

On another note, I have not finished my Xmas shopping, nor mailed out my Xmas cards yet. I'm such a procrastinator. Ah well. They'll get it when they get them. Heh.

Unexpected

I like surprises. I don't understand people who don't like to be surprised. You can't control everything around you, no matter how hard you try. I may not like change sometimes but no change means very boring to me. You need to have those unexpected moments, no matter how small or large, to keep you going thru life.

Past weekend

Pretty boring weekend for me as the only time I left the house was to drive my visiting sister to Garden Ridge (to return stuff used at the wedding reception) and Dillards to visit our friend that works the Chanel counter. Incredibly, hardly any people hitting the cosmetic counters on a Saturday afternoon so Elna was bored enough to force us to sit in the chair while she did our eye makeup to pass time. She offered her 25% off employee discount on anything in the store so I did some shopping around for gift ideas afterwards.

I left my sister with Elna at closing time since they both were going out afterwards and headed to Barnes & Nobles. Mwhahaha,...I found Alishia's Xmas gift by chance! She better like it! I meant to buy a French phrase book because I couldn't find my stupid French book from college. I must have sold it after that one semester. Crap.

Is Monday over yet? Work sucked and the rain makes me sleepy. At least, it's not in the 80s and humid anymore!

I forgot

4 Things you cannot leave the house without:

• House key


• wallet


• cell phone


• sunglasses

Out of this list, I forgot my cell phone! Doesn't it just drive you nuts when you forgot your cell phone? While I don't use it now as much as I did while living in SF, I still feel better having it with me when I'm not home. Should I have car trouble or need to make a quick call to somewhere, I've got it to use. I was recharging my phone on my desk last nite and forgot to put it back in my purse afterwards. Argh!

Yes

I am off till Monday! I'm SO FRIGGIN' GLAD!!!

Off to another friggin' bridal shower. Ugh, filipino moms and the inevitable questions I am going to rudely ignore when they ask.

Burglarized

WTH? I came home from work today and my dad told me that we got robbed last nite! Luckily, our house didn't get broken into! Apparently, some guy had scaled our fence and broke into our storage unit in the back. Now, I find this sorta amusing because there really isn't anything of value in that unit,...just junk that my parents refuse to throw away. The guy stole an old bike (he can have it, we've been trying to get rid of them but no one wanted it!) and my dad's beloved weed wacker/trimmer. It may not cost a lot but my dad definitely wants that back.

We weren't the only ones that got hit. Our next door neighbors got hit bad, the guy actually broke into their house. They weren't home all weekend and when they came home this morning, that's when they found out they got robbed of a lot of stuff. They came over and told my dad so I think he went out in the back and started checking around and that's when he noticed stuff missing from the storage unit.

Anyhow, the cops caught the thief tho I don't know if they were able to recover our stuff and our neighbors' stuff. I wonder what time he was stealing our stuff,...I was up till 2am last nite (T_T) but it was raining and pretty windy so I don't think I would have been able to hear anything. Now we were telling our dad how maybe it is a good idea for them to get a dog!

Can't wait for the weekend

My new lens came in today! I couldn't wait to get the wide angle default lens off and put this on! Someday I'll get all L series but for now, this is what I can afford and it's definitely good enough to use.

Dinner was ready so here's a pic of what I had:

Oh boy

I know, I suck...I still haven't bought a dress for the wedding yet! I will definitely go this weekend and start looking around. The wedding is Nov. 6. I got roped into getting my hair fixed for the wedding also. I actually just need more of a cut than getting my hair shalacked and what not. Ugh, I'm so talking my way outta being in ANY family pics. Sorry, folks but I don't care! I'm taking all the damn pics and I'll only sit in for ONE and it's on MY CAMERA, no one else's.

Rushing around

I hate to drive and even more, I hate to drive in the rain on one of the busiest streets in Memphis. It's been a humid week in Memphis with all this rain we've been getting. The temperature went UP instead of down. We had upper 70s to mid 80s and it was HUMID!

I got up early Saturday morning (10am...is early for me) and hauled my ass outta the house before I got dragged into shopping with my soon-to-be-married sister. Heh, our youngest sister got dragged with her.

I planned on visiting 3 camera stores, all on the same street. Of course, they were all on Poplar Avenue, one of the streets I totally hate driving on in Memphis! I hate midtown Memphis, I don't give a rat's ass what people from Memphis say about Midtown...I hate driving there!

First stop, idiot Wolf Camera. You know, Wolf Camera used to be good when it came to their selection in photography equipment. Since they got bought out by Ritz Camera, their selection and quality of service has gone down the sewer, much like the rain that day did. All their tripods are their cheap inhouse brand, Quantaray. Geez. I went ahead and had the salesguy pull some lenses out for me to try out like the 28-105mm USM and the 28-135mm IS. Now, I wish I could have bought the 28-135 without IS (don't really need it at that focal length) but they only make it with IS. 28-105mm seemed pretty good for an all-around lens to keep on the camera most of the time. I didn't even bother to have him pull out any of the L series, who am I kidding? I can't afford to throw $1k on a lens! Crazy!

Next, I headed to American Camera. Ugh, damn traffic and the rain made what would have been a 10 minutes drive become a 25 minute drive just down the street. Now, this store carried Tamron lenses so I tried out the 75-300mm? I can't remember but it was a pretty long zoom. Hmm, it looked sharp but it seemed to focus a bit more slowly than Canon would. Didn't like that. The lens slide nicely tho...going from short to longer. I tried one of those stupid Quantaray lenses and ugh, it's heavy and I didn't like how it handled at all. Tamron was 2 steps above it but 2 steps below the Canon lenses.

They didn't have the Tamron 90mm macro lens which I really wanted to check out but they did have the Canon 50mm macro. Wow, I can see now what a TRUE macro lens is like and a must if photographing bugs/flowers or anything in macro!!! I definitely want to either get the Tamron or Canon macro...but Canon must be at 100mm.

American Camera was kinda overpriced tho. They sell the battery grip for $200! GEEZ! I can get it online for $166 at no tax/free shipping! The 28-105mm lens there was $300, I think?

Now, I decided to drop by Wild Oats and stock up on the lotion I use. While I was shopping around, I reached for my cell phone to call Cat in SF and realized, it's not in my bag! Gaaaah! I had answered her call while in the car, driving but told her,..."it's raining and there's traffic,...I'll call you back!" and threw it back in my bag. I started to get pissed because I didn't want to have to use camera lens money to buy a new cell phone. So, I thought the cell must have fell out of my bag as I was pulling my camera out while at American Camera. I immediately paid for my stuff and headed back. Damn train was causing even more traffic (it runs along Poplar Avenue) so I ended up taking a backstreet and parking across the street from the store. Sure enough, my cell phone was there and the owner gave it back to me. Whew!

Last stop was Memphis Photo. They carry Tamron but didn't have anything different from what I'd already seen. They do have a lot of other photography equipment that the other 2 stores don't carry. I bought the LCD display protector. There are 3 sheets of this that has a sticky back yet doesn't leave a sticky film on the screen. It will protect it from getting scratched. Also bought a Kodak grey card for metering, should I need it. Hell, that was just $4.99. I was tempted to buy this lightweight tripod they had for $34.99 but decided not to. The monopods looked good too but nah, not right now.

Running around in the rain had me exhausted within the 4 hours I spent shopping. I just headed back home and called it a day!

Sniffles

I caught a cold. I caught it Friday, probably at work from someone. Dammit. It's been leaving me achy all week and my trip to Nashville didn't help as it left me exhausted and not able to catch up on the lack of sleep. Every morning, I get up and think I should call in sick but I don't and drag my ass to work. Something has been going around at work, some virus, I think and I just hope all I've caught from it is just a cold.

Meanwhile, the book I ordered on my camera came in today. Some of the creative fuctions are confusing to me on this camera (20D). It's totally different from shooting with a 35mm SLR,...it's like relearning how to use a camera all over again. For now, I'm concerned about how to learn Flash Exposure. I have even more control over the flash with this camera so why not put it to use, even when I'm taking pics with dolls. The pics I took over the weekend in low light,...I ended up shooting in auto because I couldn't get the FE to work the way I wanted.

Ok, not a good sign. I'm breaking out in a sweat as I type this yet half an hour ago, I was freezing in the house and the A/C isn't on. Ugh, I'm sick! Maybe I should call in sick tomorrow!

Oh well

Yeah, yeah. I said I wouldn't be posting but I guess I was more cranky than anything yesterday when I wrote that post. *sigh* I'm still irritated tho. This weekend has been bad for me. My body decided to shut down and go into sleep mode Saturday and let's see, I slept more hours than I was actually awake. I think it's a combination of the stress I've been under, plus staying up later than I should be during the week.

I'm not pmsing...I'm just pissed and I don't want to say why.

writer's block

I haven't been posting much lately. Call it writer's block, maybe I'm just stressed out. Either way, don't know how long this will last. This goes for emailing. Sorry, but if you need to reach me, try calling.

Handwriting deterioration

Earlier this week, I was in a hurry to write a quick note that I had to enclose in a package going out to Joey in the Philippines.

As I scribbled the note, I realized just how horrible my handwriting has become, all due to the lack of handwriting anything these days. 95% of what I write, I type now. 3% I try to write in my paper journal. The rest, signing my life away...eh, I mean my name on stuff. I used to have nice handwriting, I was proud of my handwriting in high school! Of course, when I was in high school, we didn't type term papers on computers, it was on typewriters! *gasp* Yeah, I can hear Generation Z wondering what the hell those things are!

With the instant gratification of , I can't remember the last time I even wrote a letter by hand. I used to write letters every week to friends/penpals. That was 10 years ago. Now, I send/reply to emails every 10 minutes or less while at work. While writing just a simple note by hand, I found I was also getting impatient because it's a slow process! I could have typed it out in less than a minute and here, it's taking me longer by hand because I keep messing up!

In a way, I miss writing letters by hand. It is definitely a more personal form of expression. You can see a lot more emotion when something is handwritten, the strokes/pressure used when writing....the crossing/scribbling out of mistakes or how often the mistakes are made...even ink that was smudged from tears.

With email, it's clean, to the point, and spell-corrected...well, sometimes. Printing out a special email,...it doesn't seem to hold as much sentimental value as an actual letter that was written by hand, now does it?

Sangriaaaaa

My sister came home for the weekend from New Orleans yesterday. When her friend came over to visit, she brought sangria to drink while they watched tv. LOL, told Steph that Dad's going to looooove seeing that bottle! None of us in the family really drink, only on ocassion so alcohol, even beer...will sit in the cabinet for a long time.

We had a fun evening of pitchers of sangria and tv while talking. When our parents did come home, dad spied the bottles and claimed one for himself! He's going to be enjoying half a glass of sangria while he watches the news during the week and while the warm weather lasts.

Mantras for the week

Things I am looking forward to this week:

• Friday


• Getting the hell outta this shithole called "Memphis"


• Going to New Orleans this weekend with my family


• Watching, in amusement with my siblings, our parents walk down Bourbon St. and be amazed insane-ness that surrounds New Orleans nightlife (hey, they want to see it)


• Um, did I say Friday yet?


Posted by nikita at 10:54 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Movie time

The sound of shuffling mahjong tiles is carrying over from the rec room here in the house. My visiting sister and me are going to watch "Cold Mountain" since neither of us has seen it yet.

I wanted to see if my blog is still giving that damn 500 internal error after I post and it looks like it still is. *sigh*

Master & Commander

Just got done watching Master & Commander: On the Far Side of the World. Excellent movie, definitely going to buy it. Naval movies usually don't interest me but I knew this one would be a really good one, given the time period (and the actors in it, namely Russell Crowe). Those were true sailors back then!

I had a pretty busy day. Didn't sleep in, as I usually do on Saturday mornings. I had to drag myself outta bed to get to the PO in time to pick up an EMS package I'd been eagerly waiting for. Now, I'm not going to say what it is. It's a surprise that I will reveal later on.

After the PO, I had to run some errands. I just didn't have time to eat lunch and by the time I headed home about 7:30, I was pretty exausted and sleepy,...mostly due from the lack of lunch. Once I had dinner, I'm all energized to probably stay up all night again. Ok, maybe not, I should try to get some sleep tonite. Hehe.

9 years

Wow, 9 years to the day! Hard to believe, huh?