My Rant and Ramble Zone

Written months ago.

I knew it had been a long time since I last wrote a journal entry but damn is time blindness a wild ride. I had no idea it had been so long. I really regret stopping and I honestly don't remember if there was a reason or if I just drifted away and kept forgetting to get back to it. There's so much I can't remember now that I could have been documenting. But I can't change what I didn't do, so I'm trying to push past the shame of a dropped habit and try to pick it up again. I don't know how often I'll get a chance to sit and stream my consciousness onto the screen since I do best with a physical keyboard than having to split my focus to the touch screen keyboard which requires it. 

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Think I've reached my capacity for this for now. Talk later.

I've got too much on my mind...Hence why I am not sleeping right this moment. Like I should be. Mostly things that are looming large rather than having many items. Like I've been talking to people lately about going to school. Specifically a local school that specializes in training medical personnel. I was looking at being a Phlebotomy Technician. But to be honest, I'm not enamored of the idea. The motivation was to get into something where I could make more money. I want to pay off my debts and just generally get into a more solid financial place. The added bonus to the medical field is that I would know that I was benefiting people in general, not just myself. But I'm nervous and scared and not confident in my ability to do it besides knowing that I don't want to spend my life/make a total career out of it. Since I've told people about it, it bothers me that I'll look like a fool/coward or something for backing out of the path I told them I was embarking on. I know it's more important to do what's best for me, but.... What if I don't know what's best? What I want to do? The only real job I've had is Value Village. I don't know what else I might enjoy or want to do. At least not with the economy so uncertain. I know I love books and would be happy working with that, but it's not a good choice right now. Someday, being an editor or something would be suited to me, but it's not a well paid position as far as I've heard. So it's the "when I'm financially comfortable to do what I love" kind of "some day".

So, should I just take more classes at community college and hope something sparks? That I find something I'm honestly good at? There have been numerous times I've read something and thought "Wow!" because the people or the job/field/profession that I was reading bout were so impressive. It made me want to be like them. But I can't think of anything in particular right now. And there have always been so many that it seems/is impossible to aim for multiple... And so I know I can't have found my "calling" or at least something I can really get into if I so easily feel the draw of various other things out there. Indecision is one of my biggest flaws. Coupled with insecurity that makes a fist in my gut and chills my heart (yes I realize that sounds dramatic...blame the muse who must be getting revenge...that I'm not resting or writing on Ice/Flame...)

Getting a lecture/rant about doing what I WANT to do and being told I sounded like I was going around in circles about the phlebotomy choice...kind of threw me off. I had at least gone far enough to meet with the admissions at Pima Medical Institute, but the lecture combined with the fact that I wasn't totally sure in the first place..... Well now I'm back to where I was. Fretting about whether I should do it or not. Plus my Mom's teacher at her school had me meet with her to try and tell me Everest College has the better accreditation that would allow someone to be certified in their chosen field. Both schools tell me phlebotomy might be too narrow a field, but I don't know that I have the stomach for anything more intensive (seeing wounds etc) or the memory to handle as much information as those fields seem to require.

So I decided to vent all the uncertainties I could think of onto this (web)page. I really don't know what I should do. I know that I have people who care about me and they believe in me. And I appreciate that. Really, I do. But it only does so much good if I don't believe in myself. Or if I don't believe in the choice I'm making. Or if I just plain don't know what to do.

Combine that with worrying about my Mom and wanting her to complete the schooling she's in now because she is doig so damn good...Wanting her to get good work and be confident and strong and financially able to leave the jerk she lives with that makes her days roller coasters that can change course on a hair spin turn or drop...

My little brother is over in Iraq...

My coworker's husband is struggling to put his life back together and I plan on helping despite the reluctance of my room mates. But doing things that run directly against the will of other people I care about is hard on me. Even if I believe I'm doing the right thing or at least, a good thing.

Trying to wrangle (figuratively) with the manager to get things fixed in our apartment...

Worrying about my dog's itching problem.

Worrying about my own health and precarious job situation.

Worry about the state of my soul and the choices I make.

Worrying about my debt and plans that I've made...

Concerned for various real time and online friends and their situations...

I'm a worry wart and my tendencies to procrastinate and absent minded nature are no help to me at all. At this rate I would be more surprised to find out I don't have acid reflux or an ulcer than if I won the lottery.

All right. So I feel a tad better. Damn it. Never mind. Going over the list of negative things to be sure I didn't forget anything only makes me think of them again and start the process all over again.

Please forgive this rambling rant and the ego to whine about such petty issues when there are people I know and people I don't who have bigger problems and worries on their mind and still manage to keep moving forward with their lives. I've stopped or slowed or stagnated to some extent/in some areas. I feel pressure in a sense from the things I've claimed to plan to do and the pressure to do SOMETHING when every direction looks the same or I just don't know which way to move so how can I progress? And then there is my over thinking in worrying "Well if I take this path, what if it's the wrong one? Will that be a waste of my time? Do I want to risk it being or feeling like a waste?"

I KNOW it's not changing anything to worry about it. To let that worry overwhelm me to the point where I make no choice at all rather than take a risk... I know that's worse than wasting time in the wrong direction...in it's own way.

I could write like this for hours. And I don't have that time to wast and I'm sure by the end anyone who bothered to read it would be thoroughly sick of me and my whining. But this is what it's like in my head. Turned round in circles by my own issues and then spun in other directions by the opinions/advice of others or of newly acquired information.

So I will cut this off before it gets any worse. Ta-ta!

when do I ever sleep when I should?

Anyway, just a quick note for anyone who reads this/cares: I got a letter from my bank. They approved my fraud claim! so they paid back all the money that was messed with and reversed all the related fees. BUT I still need to pay back all the money I did 'advance' to my account then and there are still negative balance fees. D: And since I won't be able to pay that all back at once....more fees! I wonder if I should ask them to put a freeze on the negative balance fees and put me on a payment schedule for the money owed? If not it is LAME. I might need to ask my friend Q if he will lend me the $$ to cover it and I can pay -him- back over time.

This will all be much easier to handle -after- I make myself go to PIMA Medical Institute and learn to be a phlebotomy technician (blood drawing/tests etc). Then I will make more money! Yay! It will be hard to leave Value village, but it will only get harder the longer I stay there, so...just need to take the plunge.

Note to self: I am not capable of a "quick" note. Later. :)

THREE NAMES I GO BY
1. Panda
2. Disco Duck
3. Arkane

THREE JOBS I HAVE HAD IN MY LIFE
1. General help with family friend's store
2. Amateur House painter (the insides anyway...) lol
3. Current work as retail salesclerk.


THREE PLACES I HAVE LIVED
1. El Cajon, CA
2. Thousandsticks, KY
3. Port Charlotte, FL

THREE TV SHOWS THAT I WATCH
1. Scrubs (though it was on DVD...)
2. House (when possible)
3. Doctor Who (when possible)
(I only really watch TV at Tj's or Mike's house anymore and that isn't very often at all.

THREE PLACES I HAVE BEEN
1. Idaho
2. Mexico
3. Portland (soon anyway...possible road trip)

THREE PLACES I WANT TO GO
1. Japan
2. Ireland
3. France

THREE OF MY FAVORITE FOODS
1. Snickerdoodle cookies
2. Sushi
3. Udon/asian noodles

THINGS I AM LOOKING FORWARD TO
1. Getting a new job
2. Warmer weather
3. Going to Dragon Con (super hopeful)

THREE PETS THAT YOU HAVE OWNED
1. Bandit, dog
2. Buttons, cat
3. Snuggles, dog

THREE FAVORITE BANDS/ ARTISTS
1. Duran Duran
2. Asian Kung Fu Generation
3. Simple Plan

THREE FAVORITE TEAMS TO WATCH
1. Seahawks
2. Cardinals (go Fitzgerald!)
3. Mariners
(I'm not a huge sports fan, but I watch it sometimes)

THREE FAVORITE DRINKS
1. Pomegranate Lemonade
2. Watermelon liquor/pineapple liquor/POG mix
3. Koji Osakaiya's house sake warmed

(ARGH! I totally forgot to put this up here two-three weeks ago when I planned the party. So super sorry for the uber late notice!)

Who's party might you ask? Mine. I'm throwing my own party...again. Whee!



When: Sunday February 15th



Time: 5pm to ??? Probably Midnight or later.



Where: Monster Gaming, my friend Sam's game store.

Map/Directions (can be found at MapQuest. or I'll edit this post with the proper link later)

What to bring: Food and drinks as you can manage it would be nice. Let
me know which you plan to bring so I can keep a balance and not end up
with all drinks and no food. lol =D Or just send me a message if there
is information I left out that you want to know.



Hope to see you there if you are local enough to make it!

a.k.a Alora Mackenzie Jordan. My long time friend Lindsay Davis-Jordan had her first baby with husband Joe Jordan on January 9th via C-section. It was the safest way for mom and baby with some health complications for Lindsay. A healthy 8 lbs 13 ounces.

Here are some pictures on Joe's viewable myspace album: http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewPicture&friendID=203997801&albumId=1755668

I started calling Lindsay Squishy after watching Finding Nemo with her one day. So I decided to nickname her child, no matter the gender, "mini squish". That it's a girl just makes it work better.

I get to go see her later/today....Saturday! Whee! Little pseudo-niece!

1.Green apples
2.Games
3.Guitar Hero (and Rock Band...just had to say it)
4.Gaia
5.Gold (see #4)
6.Gina (one of my supervisors...fun lady)
7.Giraffes
8.Grease (the movie)
9.Genbu Kaiden (part of Fuushigi Yugi)
10.Geisha

Man, that really was harder than I thought! Playing the Alphabet game is rough business. I had to stretch a little to think of things I at least like that started with G. The order things are listed is not the order of my preference for them; just the order I thought them up in.

Now comment on this post and I will send you a letter and you can make your own list! =D

Well things settled themselves after my Mom arrived and began to cook Christmas dinner. In between starting the turkey and making the side dishes, we opened gifts together. Well, my Mom's boyfriend/roommate sort of person (Charles) wasn't there yet, but that was ok. My sister did as she usually does and did most of the photography of people and their gifts after they opened them. Last year we took before/after shots but this time the camera's battery life was low; so we only took after shots.

So my happy for today was finding peace with my sister and having a good time with the family members that could be present. The gifts were all the kind of stuff I like and the food was good. Yay for Mom's cooking! The stuffing is always my favorite part. Num!

Charles arrived just before dinner was ready and got the Speed Racer toy and Starbucks gift card that I gave him (other people might get him stuff later, it was just a tight budget Christmas). It was nice to know that he is making regular good use of the coffee press I gave him last year. :)

I'm glad for the "8 Days of Happy" even if I wasn't able to do it on time. It has helped remind me about posting more in my LJ, even if there is only one person that reads it. So maybe I should try making a point to post a "happy" as often as possible. It'd bring me here to post and I'd be looking for things to be happy about which would improve my days. Sound good? :)

So Saturday was just a blah day. I woke up late and didn't get to go anywhere or do anything that I had hoped to get done. I suppose my "happy" for the day would be getting "no deaths" on a few Little Big Planet levels since that was my main activity for the day.

Sunday was a pretty good day in the "looking at the big picture" sort of way. They canceled church, which was a mixed blessing. I got my friend Tom to drive me to the mall and got a fair chunk of shopping done. But then I went back to Karen's place where my sister was still hanging out. Then we started work on my sister's gift for Mike/Q which was a wooden puzzle sort of thing that would end up looking like a motorcycle. That was around 6pm(ish) or so we approximate it to have been.

I ended up kind of monopolizing the project because it was so damn hard to figure out and multiple people just made it more confusing. This thing came with a single sheet of paper with a picture of the finished project on one side and "insturctions" on the other. The instructions were crap! "Match the numbered pieces and then check the picture to see if its right." is about the sum of the lengths to which they chose to enlighten us. Now if I had read that before popping the pieces from the templates, I might have laid them out according to the numbered picture. But I wasn't there when they did the popping out and they had apparently not looked at the instructions so this thought did not occur to them. It only occurred to me a good ways into the project.

I didn't finish this thing, even with their help, until somewhere between 1-2am. While I was struggling with the ridiculous thing, they decorated gingerbread houses for friends. Stopped and had a very tasty dinner of rib roast, three bean salad and baked sweet potatoes. Nummy.

Then we ended our time with Karen by getting her little car quite stuck in the snow. After about an hour and a half or two hours of maneuvering, digging and late night calling of friends, we finally got the car on the road. Figuring out how to get over the road block of snow lining the middle of plowed streets to get to our apartments added to the adventure. We got home around 3:30am.

Monday's happy would be that I spent most of my day -not- on a register; though I did spend that time in the cold donations area. After a brief stint of register use and picking up the sales floor, I got to go home at 7pm. This wasn't a much of a boon as it would seem because shortly after my boss told me I was going home, he also announced that the store would be closing at 8pm. Why we were even open that long, I don't know. Road conditions had marginally improved, but over all things were still pretty bad and customer traffic was trickling in. We'd only made $2000 by 3pm and to me that should have been a clear sign that we should have closed down. I'll bet any thing that we lost money yesterday. What we made vs employee pay and utility bills is probably a pretty lopsided equation.

Today's happy is that my younger brother Bryant arrived safely via plane very early this morning (1am). Other potential happy things include, mailing packages FINALLY and getting the last of my shopping done and some gifts delivered today. Though I still need to wrap a fair number of them (read: all that haven't already been delivered).

Sorry about not posting for the last several days, but Saturday I forgot until I was too tired or after I had already turned the laptop off. Sunday is fairly obvious why. Last night is because I went along with my Mom to Muckleshoot Casino so my Mom could pick up a free gift and then she ended up playing slots for a while. I even got my own card thing and played a few dollars worth. Bryant was in by the time we got home and so I hung out with my siblings for a few hours before showering, reading a few archived webcomic strips and going to sleep.

Currently, we're waiting on Chris C. to get back from buying a shovel (since our manager either didn't lend him hers or it wasn't effective). His car is currently stuck in the apartment parking lot apparently. After he gets free, I expect we will head out to the post office, fedex and the mall. I hope so anyway.

(Note to self, get a snow themed icon.)

All right, I should have had this posted with the date "Dec 18th" since I was home around 6:30pm due to my store closing at 6:00pm. But instead I came home and decided to use my new found free time to watch some anime I've had sitting around for about a month and a half. So I did. Then some other stuff happened and my friend Chris said "Hey you didn't post on LJ!" That led to me being here at last. Aaaand then I slip in the snow in the garden while walking the dog. I used that as a good enough reason to take the shower I meant to take anyway.

My happy for Thursday the 18th was, primarily SNOW!!!! Tons of it compared to the time before. Secondary to that but also a resulting factor: early work closure. That and Chris the store manager was cool about leaving clothes behind instead of his usual crazy self that would want to get everything done.

And something from Wednesday: I finally got our Christmas tree decorated! The tree itself has been sitting in its stand for a week or two. At first it was undecorated because I didn't have the parts of the stand meant to keep the three stable. Then Ben the room mate made his own solution. It works....mostly. Then The lights I thought worked fine only half worked after I had them on the tree. Trying to fix them, I broke them entirely. Two of the three bunches from my Mom worked, but one of those was this terrible tangle. So we borrowed some from a friend. One worked great, the other was half out, but I rescued the bottom of the tree with the short strand that was left from my Mom's stuff. Three quarters of the tree is colored and the bottom bit is in white lights.

The end happy for that too long tale is that I got tubs of Christmas stuff from my Mom. So this year, after 4 years of lacking, I got to decorate with the ornaments and things I'd used for years on our family tree. My sister would prefer the "simple" way we've been decorating (just some bulb ornaments and matching garland). I love having all those ornaments on there. Nostalgic. Be nice if we could have a larger tree (or at least taller) for next year though.