i wonder if farmville is like nicotine.

it all started when i finally gave into the peer pressure. i told everyone no several times, i watched people use it and i thought it looked ridiculous and like a complete waste of time.
then, i finally accepted against my better judgment. and now i'm sorry to say i'm addicted.

i don't even like farmville that much anymore, i really don't. at first it was kind of exciting and fun, but it wore off as of yesterday. now i feel like i just have to harvest my crops because if i don't, they'll die. and if i'm going to harvest them i might as well replant them. it's just an addiction that doesn't even have a purpose or bring me that much joy. i mean it's still semi entertaining, but eh. i'd probably be better off if i never started in the first place. it gives me an excuse to use the computer, and i don't like being on the computer.

i mean i do but i don't. it's the same feeling towards staying up late.
and i guess those two usually go hand in hand anyway.

aw, man. i let my green tea get cold.

so almonds are really healthy, but they're kind of boring by themselves. so i came up with this clever idea to make a mix out of them with pretzels and chocolate and raisins, and then realized that it's called trail mix.
planters peanuts- 1 estelle- 0

if i go to sleep in twenty three minutes, i'll get seven hours of sleep. that is the bare minimum my body needs to stay healthy these days, but still if i do it several days in a row i get sick.
and that is why i ate an orange tonight, because that orange had lots of vitamin C just for me. isn't that so sweet? the orange i ate, gave all his nutrients that he'd been making his whole life, to me.

on the flip side, i learned that one egg has about sixty percent of your daily allotment of cholesterol. and i can eat three eggs a day, easily. sometimes i have five.
a couple for breakfast, and two for lunch. because at ihop i always get a breakfast meal for lunch with two eggs over easy. and many times for a snack i eat rice with scrambled egg. so that's like a hundred eighty to three hundred percent cholesterol, ONLY counting eggs, haha.
but they are a great source of protein.

anyway i hage fourteen minutes to brush my teeth and climb in bed and fall asleep.

don't forget, you're a star.

hello hello

listening to songs that i've known for a very long time makes me happy.
i feel very torn about those big sound blocking headphones. part of me loves them, the secure feeling from the slight pressure of them over my ears and of course the great sound. the other part of me can't enjoy them because i can't really ever feel relaxed wearing them because i feel like i'm too much in my own world, and if someone was calling my name or an emergency happened i wouldn't be able to be there.
i try not to ever leave my phone plugged into my charger for more than three hours, because i am really conscious about over charging it and wearing down the battery.

today i went to get my visa. and i've made just over enough money for everything i need. and my mom and i went to a pastry cafe, and had these really delicious mini cakes.
everything is perfect.

if i ever have to work in an office, i hope it's on a fifth floor or higher, and one of the walls is just a huge window.
listening to "Penny Lane" by the beatles makes me want to learn trumpet.

i'm pretty glad that i'm not going to be there for free pancake day at ihop. when it's so crazy and packed, as if that night hannah montana was scheduled to play live in our dining room, and all our customers are basically the same fan base.
although i've definitely attended pancake day before.

madonna was wrong.

time goes by soo quickly. i feel like there was never a time in my life when time went by slowly. i mean looking long term, not like waiting for the lunch bell or something.

but right now, it's crazy because weeks go by, just like that. i work these days at these places, i get paid tomorrow. then i get paid next week, i have to do another crazy weekend at my restaurants, and all the days in between just kind of happen. you could loosely say i live paycheck to paycheck, so two weeks can go by fairly quickly. and then it's a month, and holy cow i'm quitting my jobs this month, and leaving next month.
i tend to measure time in work, because that's all i do haha.

i feel so lucky that i actually have things i want to do, and goals that i'm working towards. some people just keep doing what i'm doing, except for years and years and now they're forty and still trying to find a different job, or something else to do but they just don't know what.
isn't it so amazing and beautiful to have a purpose to your life? something so small but i feel like i've taken that for granted.
thankyou

goldfish and little indians

once upon a time in middle school, we had just finished taking some standardized test. I had finished and we weren't allowed to do anything, so i recall making up a song about the ingredients in the Goldfish crackers they supplied us with.

it's to the tune of that "one little two little three little indians" song, and goes something like this:

made of enriched unbleached wheat flour,
cheddar cheese, vegetable oil (canola and sunflower),
salt, sugar, spices, [something i can't remember] and onion powder,
that's what's in gold fish!

i was thinking about that song today for some reason. and then i was thinking.. the original song is kind of a derogatory song to be singing in a public elementary school. i mean i love it and think it's super cute, grade school is where i learned the indian song. but if you replace the "indian" part with any other race of people it just sounds terrible.

one little two little three little black people/ white people/ chinese people

even if you substitute it with like african americans or caucasions...
i don't know man.

songs that aren't mine.

sometimes when i hear a really good song, i think to myself:

i wish i wrote that song before they did.
if only they didn't write that song, maybe i would have thought of it sooner or later. (haha it's possible okay)

and then i think:

dang it! and now i can't write that song because they already did. the lyrics are already taken, the melody is already taken, i lose.

if i think about it logically, it doesn't really make sense. i mean i'm still allowed to play it and sing it, why does it matter whether i made it up or not? i think because i feel like the original writer has rights to the emotions or roots of the song that i don't or something. i don't know.

then again, i think a lot of stuff like that is also written from inspiration, and not directly from the persons brains. i think michael jackson was once in a situation where he wanted to carry out this idea he had, and one of his managers or something said to wait. and he said, i have to do this now, otherwise God's going to give someone else the idea.

haha

if anyone has already done this save me years and thousand$ and let me know

one of my many life goals:
attain a huge awesome hardcover book of all the worlds fairy tales, from all different countries. not only like Grimm or hans christian andersen, but also those from like china, korea, poland, africa, guatemala, greece, india...

the book would be very pretty big. and the stories would be detailed.

i'm wondering if there is such a thing out there, i really hope so. i imagine i can't be the only one who would love such a thing.
Because the other day when i went to barnes and noble, i almost bought a book of all the grimm fairy tales because i had a gift card. But i didn't, because one: i already have a book like that kind of and two: because i just felt i wouldn't be satisfied with those books anymore, because i want a collection of those from all the cultures.
And i thought goshh.. maybe such a book doesn't exist. i mean i'm sure some form of it does, but maybe not a huge hardcover awesome one, with even obscure stories. it would probably be two or three hundred dollars.

and then i decided, i might just have to make it myself. that would be so amazing. also because i would get to see the fairy tales of all the countries, and like see their culture behind it and stuff. So every country i go to, i have to buy a book of fairy tales from that country. Hopefully it's in english, otherwise i'll need to get it translated. i want it to be from the country so that i know it's legit. I mean look what America's disney did to all the those stories, haha.

but if this sort of book already exists, that would be really great because then i could just buy it...

i wonder what i did with my stamp collection.

i love it when it's cold on the outside, and warm inside the blankets. should i watch a movie tonight?
i can't believe i have monday off all jobs. that is so wonderful. my family is going out together i guess for a late birthday thing and goodbye before i leave, even though it's still another month and a half.
they asked me what i wanted to do that evening, i asked if we could all go to barnes and noble for a little bit and then go get italian somewhere. they have good dessert and a cozy atmosphere.

i wish i could afford new guitar strings. i wonder if i would be good friends with myself. i really don't think i would... i mean i definitely wouldn't be able to make myself laugh, that's for sure.
i would always get the urge to squeeze my other person but maybe the other one wouldn't want to be hugged. but we would have fun eating snacks together i think.

"i'm going to be a good manager!"

i think whenever anyone is screwed over or somehow injusticed by a higher up, be it their manager or teacher or parent, one of the first things they think is, " i am not going to be like that when i'm a [fill in the blank]." well, at least i speak for myself.

it sounds kind of terrible and whiney maybe, i don't know.
but on my way back home today most of my thoughts were occupied by how when i have my own cafe, i'm going to treat my employees fairly and not lose my temper or take my bad day out on them. firstly because that is not a good policy for life in general, and secondly because i don't want them to not like their job and to feel crummy. and thirdly because then they might continue the chain and take it out on the customers.

interesting, now that i think about it, being a server you're kind of at everyone's mercy. because the customer could say, "well ha! i'm not going to tip you!" and the manager could say, "well ha! i control your schedule and write your paycheck!"
and the bussers could say, "well ha! i clean your tables whenever i want and however well i want!" and the hostess could say, "well ha! i control how many tables you get!". and even if you get fed up and yell, "well ha! i quit!" the manager still controls you as your reference for future jobs.

good thing i'm on good terms with everyone.
anyway.
i forgot who said this, but someone noteworthy said, "you find comfort in those who agree with you, and growth in those who don't". or something like that.
i think that's very true. i think a good healthy struggle is necessary once in a while.
but i'm going to be a good manager.

i am not a smoker.

people have been telling me that i smell like smoke recently. except for one person just said that i smell like charcoal.

this is puzzling to me, because for the life of me i can't imagine where that smell would come from. i really didn't pick up smoking, promise. i couldn't afford it anyway.

money

it's so interesting to see how money works, and how people choose to spend it.
for example, working on a good day, i could make enough to buy an ipod. so if i were to go buy one, it would be kind of easy to just think, "hey, it's only one day of work". but that money is also a decent chunk towards saving for korea, or whatever goal someone might be saving to do.

the other day, someone at work asked if she could work some of my shift for me because she really needed the money. I said sure, and she went on to explain that she wanted to get a lot of work done on her car to fix it up and then make it really good to race with, because she loves racing. that is going to be at least several hundred dollars, more likely a thousand or two.
i feel like that is one of the last things i would ever spend money on, haha.

money can go very quickly on food, especially just going out to eat with friends or just getting a milkshake or boba a couple times a week. and it's a lot harder to comprehend the value.

working in a restaurant makes it even harder to save money. first of all, because you are more inclined to buy food there, because it is tempting and discounted and you are hungry. many people eat a meal a shift, which over time could add up very much. second of all, because ninety percent of your money is in cash, which is much easier to spend the next day than a check.

personally when i make money it goes straight to my bank account, i handle it as little as possible and then deposit so that i don't use it up on things i don't really need.
but some things i am willing to spend/overspend a little on. like once in a long while, having fun with my family or friends.

i sometimes buy starbucks when i'm nervous, even if i don't want it. i don't know why. some people won't buy starbucks because it's expensive and not difficult to find free coffee.

i can't bring myself to spend money on clothes or books. some people buy clothes like there's no tomorrow, and buy books they haven't read just to see if they'll like it.

i like books, but if i were to buy them they would have to be really special.

i don't know, it's just so interesting because everyone needs money, but we all need it for different things, after food and rent and stuff like that.

i always think it would be nice to live in a place with no money, i could imagine it very well but it's so different from today's world that the idea is crazy.

my trip back home.

today i took a greyhound bus back to Houston,
so here is a little story about stuff that happened.

I was sitting in my priority seating place with all the disabled people (cause i paid five extra to be able to board first) and i was just sitting there waiting to board, and watching people. First, i was sitting there all alone, and then this blind man sat next to me. then after ten minutes or so, this blind lady was brought to the priority seating area too. I think she said something to the person who led her there, and sat down.
The man next to me kind of adjusted his seating a little, and then said with a lot of "Yolanda?!"
and Yolanda said, "Jose?! what are you doing here?? give me a hug!"

and they hugged and smiled and sat next to each other. And i don't know, i just thought it was really beautiful. Because i guess blind people are just so much more sensitive in all their other senses, and maybe emotionally too. And they just seem so trusting. I just thought, man i have two perfectly good eyes (well i think they're good eyes), and i always second guess myself when i think i recognize someone. But he couldn't even see anything.. but i don't know he just really felt his friend there, and she knew who he was.
Also, when he was brought to the seating area, the person who guided him just told him to sit down and he just sat without looking or feeling or anything. Idk i feel like they just learn to trust themselves and trust others a lot. I think people are conditioned to use their eyes to validate things, see it before they believe it.
I mean that can be dangerous too of course, but still.


when i was riding back, we passed a sign that said, "Thank you for not buying alcohol for people under 21".
I kind of felt like that billboard of gratitude really only applied to a very small percentage of people. Out of everyone that saw it, it eliminates the people that are under 21. And it eliminates the people who are over 21, and don't hang out and drink with younger people. And then of course it doesn't apply to everyone who does buy alcohol for big parties with lots of younger people. So what kind of comes off as a very broad billboard reiterating a law, can only be sincerely appreciated by people over the age of twenty one who have considered buying alcohol for a minor but didn't, or something. I don't know if that really makes sense...
like basically it's just trying to tell you the law. but if you take it literally the appreciation reaches out to very few people. but i guess those few people are the ones who always need the appreciation anyway.