My first job was working as a make-up artist in my mom's cosmetic shop, which was located in "the dead mall" across the street from the mega-mall, where everyone respectable went to shop. The only folks who ventured into the dead mall were those with bizarre fetishes they wanted to try out in "public" without actually being too far out into the public sphere. My four hour shift was often punctuated with high school principals and construction workers in drag, trying out the new high heels they just scored at Payless; a 60 yr. old woman dressed as a naughty school girl being led around on a leash by her husband; your occasional flasher; foot fetish guy who would creepily make me show him the colors of "toenail" polish we carried and on & on...
Anyway, it appears that Vox is now the dead mall. Of course, I'm sure there are still many "respectable" folks on here...but more so, there are a lot just letting their freak flag fly. And I love it. You are my people and I'm happy to be back. But don't send me pictures of your penis. Thanks.
Finances are about to get very interesting - with only one more month of certain employment left, a move to Hawaii, and two major world trips on the books for the second half of 2009...paying off my student loans may have to take a backseat to big fun and big adventure. If I were to continue at the current rate, I would be finished with them in five months...
But I am now planning a trip to Thailand with my best friend in November, to celebrate our joint 30th birthdays. The ticket from Honolulu to Bangkok is $784, but that's the biggest expense - I'm sure it will be cheap once we are there. We still have to sort out the details, but it's looking like it will be a two week adventure from November 12 - 26...she will fly from Cairo to Bangkok to meet me. With two weeks to kill, I would like to take a train to Phuket and another to Cambodia to visit Angkor Wat. I can't think of a better way for us to celebrate this milestone, than to meet half way, on the other side of the world, for a grand adventure.
The second big trip will take place over New Year's Eve. Steve & I have our eyes on either Australia (for the Falls Festival) or a trip to Vietnam, where we would buy scooters and drive them up the coast from Ho Chi Minh to Ha Noi...I'm kinda leaning toward Vietnam...but I will gladly do either.
As for the loans...I have managed to really kick them in the pants this year, it's possible they may have to wait while I have a little fun!
According to Maxim magazine (yes, I have a subscription - don't hate):
In Ireland they say a pint should be drained in seven swigs, leaving seven foam rings (laces) inside the glass.
In honor of St. Patrick's Day, I decided to put this to the test. Unfortunately, I couldn't record my results until the experiment was completed and at this point, I may be too drunk to adequately convey the results.
Much of this experiment relies upon your definition of "swig" - I interpreted the data in "gulps" vs. "swigs." If taking one swig is filling the mouth and any number of gulps is allowed to finish the drink, then yes, I was able to finish a pint in seven swigs. However, if we are counting the number of actual swallows - or gulps - then my minimum number is 24.
As I said, I'm really too drunk to convey this information. Let's hope the pictures do this experiment justice:
Oh shit! They uploaded in reverse order, but that totally reminded me of what I wanted to say! The experiment was flawed from the beginning...when I got my crappy bottles of Guinness home, I discovered they are only 12 fl. oz., not the requisite 20 oz. that I needed to make a full pint.
Also, my beer didn't even make rings on the glass!
Therefore, I am calling this whole study flawed - I think I probably need to be in the company of real Irishmen, in Ireland, to be able to convey this data in it's purest form and to obtain the guidance I obviously need.
Having said all that - FUN! Yay! Happy St. Patrick's Day everybody! I'm going to continue on now and get lit! WAAAHOOOOO!!!
Oh, before I go, I should give credit to my faithful assistant on this project:
I have been staring at this blank page for about two minutes. Whenever I try to write about this topic, I find I cannot, because it is something very close to me, that effects me very much. I don't really know where to start, so I'm just going to write what comes out off the top of my head.
When we moved into our new place a year ago, I was immediately drawn to the filthy plot of hardened earth on the sidewalk outside our building. It looked like this when we moved in:
Well, actually, it looked much worse than that. The photo at left is after I took out most of the used plastic utensils, old batteries, orange peels, assorted rusty keys, nails, a single razor blade, and a condom wrapper. It took awhile to aerate the dirt and mix in a new layer of top soil. I then bought 500 worms to mix in and planted some flowers. Here is what it looked like after all that:
Unfortunately, those flowers did not prove hardy enough for the foot traffic coming in and out of the parking spot adjacent to the garden. The stone border got kicked to shit and the flowers trampled upon. After a little while of continuing to water & nurture the soil, as well as keeping my worms happy and removing trash daily, I decided it was time to upgrade the garden, which I refer to as "the bum patch" with some hardier succulents and ground cover plants.
My husband rented a car for us, and we visited Home Depot to procure my new babies. I briefly considered planting nothing but cactus, but my conscience wouldn't allow me to actually do so. Instead, I purchased aloe, some ground cover with pretty hot pink flowers, and a succulent of some varietal I could not name. Thus, I cultivated bum patch 2.0 and for about a week, it looked almost as though people were going to respect my little plot. There were still daily deposits of trash - lighters, cigarette butts, styrofoam coffee cups, and animal feces - none of which bothered me, as I have grown accustomed to picking these items out of the patch.
The real offense came this past weekend, when some godless fuck went to the trouble of digging out and stealing my fucking aloe plant. Now, I don't know the street value of aloe or if it can assist in the procurement of crack or crystal meth; nor do I know if this vermin simply decided to take my plant because it was there and not chained down...but really - REALLY - is that REALLY what we have come to as a society? That anything not nailed down is free for the taking? That it is okay to destroy someone else's property, just because it's unguarded?
I know that I should not be upset; I knew this could happen, even that it was highly likely to happen. I even gave my plants a little pep talk when I put them in the ground - I told them that they had been selected for a tough job, because they were the best of the best and I knew they could take it...but now I just feel bad. For humanity. For my stupid abducted plant, which for all I know ended up in a dumpster or a crack house. And it's hard for me to talk about this shit, because no one, EVER, should be this sensitive to the world and I hate that I am this vulnerable.
Here's the current state of my garden:
I will do what I can to maintain what is left, but in 75 days we will be gone and it will be totally on it's own. While the plants will likely go unwatered and the trash will undoubtedly pile up, my only hope is that the 500 baby worms I mixed in the soil - which are huge fatty's now by the way - will continue to be nourished from my efforts. I did the best that I could do for them, and for this tiny piece of urban landscape. What happens next is no longer in my hands.
This is a very special installment in the "drops to freedom" series, detailing my journey to become debt-free. Yesterday, I was called into my boss's office and handed a generous bonus that I was not expecting. Needless to say, I cried like a little bitch. It was deposited into my account this morning and although I would love to blow it shopping, I will send it all to my evil student loan provider today. The even better news is that I think this payment will bring me significantly closer to my goal and I may now only have 5 or 6 big drops to make...I'll report back a little later after I have had some coffee and spend a little time with a calculator. In any case, I AM SO STOKED RIGHT NOW!!! The end is nigh, suckahs!
I am so thankful for this gift, it's hard for me to even put it into words...in fact, I have to stop or I'm going to start crying again. Amazing how debt can be such an emotional thing, huh?
UPDATE: The payment I sent today was large enough that I now only have 6 more installments to make, in as many months, to be completely 100% debt-free and finished with my student loans!!! OMG, I need a drink.
A few posts back I revisited my life's list of things I want to do before I die and recounted the many things my husband has helped me accomplish on that list. There has been a disturbing trend in the things I/we have accomplished as of late, in that the things I want to do appear to be cursed. Firstly, I had been trying to see The Roots in concert for years...and then when we went to see them, the show super sucked and we almost died on the highway on the way home - and I mean, very seriously almost died in a close call that both Steve & I recognize as the closest to death either of us has ever been. Second, we camped at Pololu Valley on the Big Island, on a night with 40-60 mph winds and driving rain, with flash flood and rock slide warnings posted everywhere. Thirdly, I visited City Lights bookstore last night to procure anything by Angela Davis, and discovered that I don't really care for her work, at least not any of the titles they had in stock...
So, I have now started to read Walden and am hoping this will not disappoint, I'm fairly certain it won't....but WTF is going on? Do you think I should start a new list? Is my old one cursed? Or do you think forcing these events is somehow creating an unreasonable expectation of a positive outcome and I should just let these things happen naturally? I suppose my only concern there is that I won't actually accomplish anything, if I don't have a clear picture in my mind of what I really want to do...but any thoughts on this topic would be much appreciated.
The photo is from our visit to Egypt, the only thing we have done from the list that worked out perfectly.
And I didn't even barf afterward!
The husband & I will be in Mexico City for one day, while we're making our way over to our honeymoon destination. We will only have time for one major outing - does anyone have any advice on what we should do?
So far Rudy & I have baked a dozen cornbread muffins (eaten them all), rearranged the Day of the Dead altar, and gone trick-or-treating.
