Re-Stringing The Uke

 I can't believe it took me this long to realize 

there are adorable little dolphins on the back.

 Prep.

 Reminding myself which strings go where 

because I'm scatterbrained and I knew I'd forget.

 New Aquila strings, ready to go :)

 Apparently my pretty little 

instrument is breaking :'(

And then the power went out.

I finished it this afternoon when it was light enough to see.

Hurricane Sandy Cheeks Chased Me From Geneseo

It's kind of hard to be afraid of hurricane named Sandy. 

But all joking aside, there's a hurricane yo. So far it's not that bad here yet - just a light rain and some wind.  The closest body of water I live to is the Hudson River and I feel like I'm far enough away from it (probably like 3 or 4) that I shouldn't be anticipating any flooding. Sometimes my backyard collects enough water to come up to our patio door, but that's easy to deal with.

I was in Geneseo this weekend! I was going to come home today but my parents wanted me to come home yesterday because no one was sure when exactly the storm would hit, or where. I was glad I was able to get away for the weekend. I stayed with Gabby at her Valley View apartment. We ended up watching all of the Paranormal Activity movies (including the one out in theaters right now) and were astonished to find that they actually had a storyline. (4 didn't expand on the plot very satisfactorily, though.)

On Saturday night we all got dressed up in our costumes and went out. I was surrounded by Scrubs characters and some bikers and a blue collar worker. While we were getting ready and pre-gaming, Wenley and I had a butt competition. We ultimately decided that I had a better butt, but Wenley had waayy better quads.

More documentation of the night:

I ended up losing Gabby and kind of roaming lost around town trying to find her for a bit. My phone was dying and I was getting scared that I'd had to spend the night outside in the rain because I didn't know where anyone was, but luckily my friend swept me off my feet and to the Crow's house for the night, what a peach :)


The next morning I had breakfast at the Omega Grill for the first time ever, so now I can check that off my non-existent "Did That In Geneseo" checklist. Uhhh, I don't know, what else happened this weekend? I got some new tongue rings, including one that has a lil smiley face on it:

I guess that's pretty much it. It wasn't a highly eventful trip, but it was supes fun. Oh boy, a fire alarm is howling away now. Is it bad taste to say that I'm excited for the storm to be bad? It's not like I want millions of dollars in property damage or a tree to fall on my house or flooding so bad that thousands of people are temporarily displaced. But I remember Hurricane Floyd, when I was in like 6th grade, and it was freakin' AWESOME. The little road in front my house turned into a mini river, and pieces of the road started to come up so I surfed on them. 

It feels like the world's come to a temporary stand-still. Schools have been closed and not a lot of cars are out. I feel like we're all holding our breaths, waiting for the worst of the storm to come.

I think I'll re-string my uke while I wait for the Frankenstorm~

Oops

I messed up my sleep cycle again (for like the twelfth time in my life).

Oh, Fionna

I collected all of my confidence and threw it into one video...then posted it to YouTube. 

The results are below! Please excuse my constipated expression in the thumbnail.

Gettin Real Tired Of Your Shit, Huntington

Seriously. You're like an neglectful boyfriend, HLC. "I'll call you on Tuesday!" you promise. I wait around all weekend, to no avail. I cry into my pillow at night, "What did I do wrong? Why don't you want me? Was it something on my resume??" Tuesday passes with no word from you, so I call on Wednesday, heart in my throat. But my call goes to your voicemail. I leave a short message, ending it with my number - to be sure that you still have it, and so that you can't use not having my number as an excuse not to call me. Pretty soon I'll be standing in the rain outside of the Learning Center, holding a sign that says "CALL ME". Don't make me do that, HLC. Don't make me.

Okay, so, dramatics aside, Huntington Learning Center has to get their shit together. I might work at the Lego store or Victoria's Secret part time instead. I really would prefer to not work in retail again though, such bad memories from Express *shudder* Save me, Huntington!

I'm slowly working on the JET application package. It's gonna be so tedious to put everything together. I've asked my old music teacher to write one reference, and I'm thinking of writing to one of my old bosses to get the other reference letter. My mom is the cutest. She helped me brainstorm who to ask for a reference, and then while she had free time working at her school she drafted an email I could send to my old music teacher (since he's now the principal of her school). I'm really thankful at how supportive she is. I really have to start writing out my Statement of Purpose asfjkadl; They haven't released some big parts of the application yet, though, like a questionnaire I have to fill out online and then print out and sign and make copies of, and a medical form. I wish they'd release all that stuff now so I have more time to work on it and get it together.

I think this blog should be re-titled "Learning Patience" because I need some of that stuff right now.

The Huntington Saga Continues

OH also, I found out what happened with Huntington Learning Center. The dude who was hiring me, Mike? Yeah. Douchebag. He suddenly up and left the company, and didn't feel the need to tell any other employees about me; didn't feel the need to tell me he was peacing out. Dick move.

I found out 'cause my mom works with this Jeanette person (lovely lady) who also works at Huntington. So Jeanette reminded the Huntington people that I'm still looking for employment. I got a nice call from a Daniella today, apologizing for what happened with Mike. She's gonna call my references, grade the ACT I took (except I thought Mike did that already, but I guess he was just trying to be the most unhelpful person in the world before he left the company), and get back to me by Tuesday. So I might yet become a tutor!

Meanwhile, babysitting is going swimmingly, and I've got both my costumes just about done for Halloween. If Huntington ends up not giving me a lot of hours, I'm gonna see if I can work part-time at Victoria's Secret with Charmander. Whoa man, three jobs? Don't remind me. I don't think I've been this productive since junior year of Geneseo.

Edit - The application for the JET Programme also (finally) came out, so I'm working on getting that done, too!

Today I High-Fived Healthiness (after eating Taco Bell, of course)

Alright! For the past few months I've talked a lotta talk, dropping phrases like joining a gym, running, and getting back into exercising. Today I felt guilty enough to do something about it! Guilty why? Guilty because of Taco Bell. I had it last night and this afternoon, om nom nom. I love me some chalupas.

See, it's common knowledge that to be healthy you gotta eat right and exercise. At first I gave up on exercise, after being sick in June.

Me, laughing at the idea of exercising  

while being hooked up to a heart monitor that would 

shock my heart if I went into cardiac arrest.

 Thanks for pulling through, kidneys.

The I'm recovering excuse molded into My body is still too weak, which then turned into Wait I have to watch six more episode of How I Met Your Mother. And it was slightly okay because I had lost weight from being sick anyway, so I could get away with lying around in bed all day. And I was still eating alright!

And then I moved back home, and started eating a ton. And I was still laying around in bed all day. And now I get fast food at least three times a week. I personally blame McDonald's for deciding to have their Monopoly game going again.

So I had given up on exercise and eating well. I reached my "Warning Weight" - the weight at which I told myself, if ever reached, I would start acting healthy again. Except when I reached it, I shrugged and went back to bed to watch Netflix.

So now that I've surpassed my warning weight, I'm like, alright. Listen up, body. If I'm going to eat fast food three times a week, then I gotta exercise at least as much. So today after getting Taco Bell and delivering my first babysitting paycheck to da bank (cha-chinnnng) I went to Bowline Lake Park Thing (yeah, I'm not really sure what it's actually called) and walked for a while. [Edit: It's totally called Peck's Pond and I'm an idiot because I've known that my whole life.]

I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the park's gotten a lot nicer and workout-friendly since I was last there years ago. There are now 10 different workout stations set up around the lake's path so you can walk around the lake and work out a little bit as well. And they have this little off-path section that actually has outdoor exercise equipment (like a rowing machine, leg press, shoulder thing, and spine-alignment-twisty-thing). So now I don't even have to join a gym, I can just go to the park :)

I rediscovered the raptor mask I never returned to the GSTV prop room

This is what I would look like if I was a raptor:

Classy as fuck.

Anticipated Halloween Costume

A female Team Rocket Grunt.

I really want to visit Geneseo for Halloween. My aunt is throwing a Halloween party a week before the actual holiday, though, and I don't think my family will understand what a Rocket grunt is, so I may have a secondary costume.

Edit - I will have a secondary costume and it is a motherfuckin LION.

Life - er, Job Update

Since I've been home I've suddenly and mysteriously begun sleeping like a normal person. It literally happened overnight. This is revolutionary because for my entire life I've been a night owl, and the thought of sleeping before midnight just felt wrong. But now, I fall asleep sometimes as early as 11:30pm - and I've been waking up around 9ish, as opposed to any time between 12 and 4pm. Is this...adult life? Experiencing mornings instead of sleeping through them? Weird.

Fall is coming er, here! This means tea and boots and apples and pumpkins and acorn squash and sweaters and pretty leaves and further feelings of doom when I think of the future. So that's fun.

I hate writing these kinds of posts because they're so boring. I get caught up between thinking "No one wants to read about this" and "They'll take what I give them, it's my blog." I should mostly just apologize to my (sole?) reader, Brendan, for making boring posts...they can't all be about playing Batman, I guess.

[Edit: HI ANGELA!] 

Okay, but really, I'll give some life updates. [Edit: Heh, I started writing this post a week ago and am only now picking it up again....] [Edit again: it's not so much a 'life' update as it is a 'job' update, you're gonna have to deal with that.]

I'm pretty fed up with Huntington Learning Center. At the beginning of the month I went through the hiring process and passed with flying colors and all that jazz. I thought I'd be traveling to Colorado so I told them of my expected travel dates, and that they should call me in for training towards the end of the month; they were cool with that. Then my trip got cancelled (read: crashed and burned, with my parents holding the blowtorch). I called to let Huntington know that I could come in at any time for training...but the dude, Mike, that I'm trying to coordinate things with, wasn't in. I left a message for him but Arceus knows if he ever got it. In the past three weeks since then, I've called and left numerous messages for Mike to get into contact with me, but to no avail. I haven't heard a word from anyone at Huntington for over three weeks, so screw them.

I kind of have another job now, anyway. My aunt recommended me to one of her friends and now on Tuesdays and Thursdays I babysit for her twin sons :) It's kind of the best. I get to their house around 2:30, meet them when they get off the bus, help them do their homework, drive them to tae kwon do, make them dinner, then make sure they get into bed. I also do some other simple chores around the house like feeding the pet lizards, taking out the recycling, and prepping morning protein shakes. Today I got to pet one of the little lizards :D

The only negative thing I can say about this job is...you know that horror story about the babysitter who gets threatening calls from a serial killer? This family lives in the kind of house that I'd get murdered in. Don't get me wrong, it's a really nice house. But it's got a ton of large windows and decks and twists and turns and it's in the woods and oh my god I'm going to be killed one of these days while the twins are upstairs sleeping...!

So like I was saying, it's a really nice house, and the family is very well off. How well off, you ask? This family is so rich that the twins own their own Macbooks and Beats by Dre headphones. This family is so rich that the drawers and cupboards in their kitchen are automatic. This family is so rich that they leave the lights on when they leave the house. This family is so rich that I once joked about crashing my car and one of the twins didn't understand why I wouldn't just buy a new one. This family is so rich that I can't even relate to them on some levels. Example: I was talking to the mother today about her husband working in NYC. I asked if he drove in or took the train; she answered that he drove. I said he was brave for driving in the city, because city driving makes me terribly nervous. Her response: "Oh, he has a driver." WELL THEN. (The driver is also an ex-NYPD officer fjdksalfja;)

Haha all that aside, though, it's a pretty sweet job. I'm still looking for another one, though progress is at 0% on that. I've started looking on new job posting sites like Monster.com and USAJobs, but my search is a fruitless and frustrating as ever (mostly because of my own hesitations and indecision though).  I actually got so frustrated/stressed about my lack of job options (and about my lack of sleep) the other night that I almost applied to the Peace Corps at 5am. I'm also frustrated that the JET application was supposed to come out last month and it hasn't yet, boo. I wanna teach English in Japan, dammit!

So my Job Hunt Progress is either at 100%, if you count the fact that I'm babysitting twice a week (technically I'm employed!),  or 50%, if you count the fact that I'm only babysitting twice a week and am still looking for further employment. 

I think that's where I'll wrap this post up, as it's getting rather lengthy. Tune in next time to hear about my family weekend and Bannerman Castle~!

On the Presidential Debate and Election

Okay, this is going to be a legitimate political post (or as much of a legitimate one as I can muster, seeing as I know next to nothing about politics and the issues). But first, you have to appreciate this gif at least as much as I do:

I read an interesting opinion article by George Farah today about the nature of the presidential debates. It basically talks about the Commission on Presidential Debates, claiming it has kept the election debates from actually being legitimate debates and that it ensures that candidates are asked safe questions, and even limits the number of debates the candidates actually have. I excerpted my fave parts from the article:

"This year's debate sponsor, the Commission on Presidential Debates...is a private corporation that was jointly created by, and for, the Republican and Democratic parties. In 1986, the parties ratified an agreement "to take over the presidential debates" from the nonpartisan league, and the commission has sponsored every presidential and vice presidential debate since.

"Undoubtedly, the commission's monopoly over the presidential debates has harmed our democracy. Without a [bipartisan] sponsor willing to criticize the Republican and Democratic campaigns, the debates are often structured to accommodate the wishes of risk-averse candidates, not voters.

"Because the candidates fear making a costly gaffe, fewer debates are held than necessary to educate voters. In 1858, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas debated seven times. Earlier this year, the Republican primaries featured an unprecedented 27 debates. The commission, meanwhile, has only scheduled three presidential debates this year.

"Even more troublesome, the few presidential debates held are often governed by rules that impede actual debate. Remarkably, contracts negotiated under the commission's tenure have prohibited the candidates from talking to each other. The contracts also require all questions posed by audience members during the town-hall debate to be prescreened . And the moderators are vetted by the candidates and thus unlikely to pose surprising questions.

"Third-party candidates also are routinely excluded from the commission's debates, even when a majority of voters support their inclusion."

But it's also an opinion piece, and this came up:

"Every four years, the commission demonstrates its fealty to the Democratic and Republican candidates. Behind closed doors, negotiators for the major party nominees draft secret contracts that dictate how the debates will be structure."

Laying it on a bit thick there, eh? Farah doesn't really give any evidence to back up the claim that the nominees draft secret contracts, and that all sounds pretty hokey to me. But for the most part I liked the article and the information he presented.

I have been making an effort to cast an informed vote in November, so I've tried to keep up with the candidates and what they stand for. I watched speeches at both the RNC and DNC, watched the presidential debate last night (and plan on watching the impending ones), and have been trying to do some online reading, but there's a problem. I'm getting a lot of information from Reddit and from my friends - all sources that are biased to the left and hate Romney. So my opinion is probably skewed. For the most part, I don't like the idea of Mitt Romney as the president. I like Obama - for the most part. I also like Jill Stein, but the system is so heavily stacked against third-party candidates that voting for anyone but Romney or Obama is a waste.

I watched the debate last night and tried to stay attentive, but I still ended up getting lost or confused with what the candidates were saying some of the time (I'm a political n00b, sorry). For example, when they were talking about Medicare/Medicaid: Obama said Romney wanted to turn it into a voucher system, and I don't really know what that means.

During the debate Romney came off as admittedly on-point and aggressive, but I wasn't entirely comfortable with what he was saying. For example, in the beginning of the debate he said that he supported green, renewable energy for future generations. The rest of the debate, however, he proclaimed "I love coal," said he supported the Keystone XL pipeline, and vowed that if he was elected he'd do his best to ensure America wasn't relying on imported oil. He even tried to attack the fact that Obama's backed green energy/companies.

EDIT: OH WAIT. I had a huge fit of rage when Romney was talking about healthcare and he was like, "I want to be able to choose my healthcare, I don't want the government to tell me what to do." SAY THAT TO MY VAGINA YOU REPUBLICAN JIZZSTICK. That made me angry, since the party he represents is trying really hard to dictate what I can do with my lady parts. I apologize for the crude words, but they felt really good to type out.

Mitt's stance on the military budget also makes me uneasy. He wants to keep funneling money into the military - money that, as Obama pointed out, is unrequested. Mitt would rather put more money into the military - and cut funding elsewhere to do so - when the military isn't even asking for federal money. To my understanding, war is now privatized in a lot of ways, and I don't think our military needs more federal money than it's already getting. Mitt also seems to want to keep an American presence in countries like Afghanistan and Iraq, whereas Obama would like to systematically withdraw our troops; I support Obama on that issue.

People keep saying that Obama was too laid-back during the debate, but I think he was fine. To me he came off as calm and collected. In my opinion, Obama knows that Romney will most likely trip himself up (since that's all he's been doing lately, what with performing poorly diplomatically overseas and the leaking of the now infamous 47% video); it was almost noble of Obama not to take those cheap shots at Romney like he could have. But I also know nothing about rhetoric or debates, so don't listen to me.

Here are some things that have helped me learn more about this election and the two big candidates (just in case someone reading is as apolitical as I am):
1. "The 2012 Election: My Attempt To Be A Responsible Voter"
2. politifact.com
3. Was there a #3? I don't remember...

One last thing - watching the debate was actually fun for me. I was kinda proud of myself. I giggled a lot when Romney threw a tantrum about wanting the last word, and at how he kept interrupting everyone.

[Yes, tumblr was live-gif-ing the whole debate and yes of course I followed along.]

AND the classic moment when he said that if he's elected he'll cut federal funding to PBS. He said this to the moderator, Jim Lehrer. You know, the executive editor of PBS. 

Neil deGrasse Tyson was quick to come to Sesame Street's aid, tweeting that "Cutting PBS support (0.012% of budget) to help balance the Federal budget is like deleting text files to make room on your 500Gig hard drive."

I hope Jim took a long, hot bubble bath after the debate last night, then fell asleep snuggling his wife and watching his favorite movie. He deserves at least that, after what Mitt put him through.