in 3 days i will begin my road trip to maine. i have a good bit of packing to do..

yesterday was my last day of work; i did get slightly sentimental. carmela got me a going away gift which is really sweet. i'm probably going to miss her the most..

also one of my regulars ("diet coke guy") got me a nice little card, which i was not expecting. his name is terry and he works at the bank across the street from my job. he is an older rather cranky, uptight gentleman. the only conversation of substance that we've really had together was talking about our pets the week that one of his favorite dogs died. he was very upset about it.

you all will think i'm exaggerating, but when i told him that i was moving away he became very emotional and teared up a bit. i think it's so cute that he's all grumpy all the time but really is a huge sentimental.

anyway, on my last day terry came into eat before i even arrived for my shift. he sat in my section and waited for me apparently. i got him his lunch like normal with his diet coke and all..he had me open the card in front of him and read it: "Dear Janet -Thank you for making my lunch break more enjoyable. Whatever you do in your life, keep your eyes bright and your lovely smile! Best of luck for your future in Maine, Terry"

He tipped me $5 instead of the usual $2 that day..haha, so generous! seriously though i was very touched.

in other news..we walked the golden gate bridge the other day





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happy earth day ya'll!

so i havent updated this in a while but i figured this is a pretty good time to do it.

ryan and i are moving to maine in june. it's final.

we are going to be going to school there. i will be taking esthetician classes (i'm totally excited).

we had a good stay in california. it was an amazing experience, and i've grown up a lot. i'm ready to start my life!

so in june, ryan and i will be packing up our belongings (including our two cats!) and driving across the country once again. only this time, we will be going the southern way!!! we're making about 6 stops on the way to maine-- the two that i'm most excited about? las vegas and atlanta!!!

being in atlanta again will be surreal. i'm also stopping by shortly in griffin, where i will be picking up JW in order to finally party with him at last. i cannot even begin to tell you how excited i am to eat Chikfila and WaffleHouse again.

i know what you're thinking: how the hell is this girl going to deal with intense Maine winters? well, i'm not quite sure. but i'm definitely open to the experience.

also, this is a rather magical weekend for me. on sunday i will be breathing the same oxygen as miss britney spears in san jose. i'm not really sure if i've mentioned how much of a fan i've come to be.

obviously as a young girl i adored her, but throughout my teenage years it was not so. but i love her new cd and i love her so it's going to be amazing. ryan and i are staying in a hotel room with a jacuzzi afterwards. it's going to be our last big financial expenditure before the road trip, as we will be saving money pretty aggressively afterwards.

anyway, that's all i wanted to say. <3

merry christmas! i'm so excited about tomorrow.

Being 21 is nice..i am enamored with all of my gifts.

one of which is a pair of binoculars, i received them from carl. since i've taken an active interest in observing the wildlife in our backyard, this is the perfect tool. i've also purchased 2 bird feeders hoping to attract some interesting friends other than house sparrows. anyway, i havent had much luck--only one american goldfinch that i've seen anyway. god knows what goes on during the rest of the day. the pet food store that i buy seeds from insist that the birds will come eventually. i cant wait for the day!

back to the binoculars! they are AMAZING actually. simply put, it's like having super vision..there's a huge range of uses for these really. so far just nature watching for me. when the spring comes i want to go camping and just sit motionless for hours observing the society that normally would shut me or any other human out.

when i get off of work every day i spend a good bit of time in the backyard watching hummingbirds come to our feeder. they're just so damn cute. the kind we have is exclusive to the west coast, mainly california. it's also the only hummingbird to have a "song" apparently. now that i'm familiar with it i can hear hummingbirds singing almost wherever i go, particularly if i'm in a residential area.

for these photos i stood for about 10 minutes next to the tree that holds our feeder. i tried very hard to be totally silent and almost motionless, and the hummingbird flew right up to me! he then decided i wasnt a threat i suppose and went about his feeding.

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ryan looking at coupons. how intriguing :P



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OMG so i ordered a new camera about a week and a half ago and it just got here and i'm so fucking excited!

it's all good to go and take pictures, just waiting for that damn battery to charge!

Ten Rules for Being Human

by Cherie Carter-Scott

1. You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it's yours to keep for the entire period.
2. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called, "life."
3. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial, error, and experimentation. The "failed" experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiments that ultimately "work."
4. Lessons are repeated until they are learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can go on to the next lesson.
5. Learning lessons does not end. There's no part of life that doesn't contain its lessons. If you're alive, that means there are still lessons to be learned.
6. "There" is no better a place than "here." When your "there" has become a "here", you will simply obtain another "there" that will again look better than "here."
7. Other people are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself.
8. What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.
9. Your answers lie within you. The answers to life's questions lie within you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.
10. You will forget all this.

yay!

so i took this picture on ryan's 22nd birthday (oct. 26). we were having a nice birthday lunch in the lovely palo alto and as we were searching for the local halloween store we happened upon an obama volunteer event. there were young people, old people, all different kinds of races (obama supporters truly are diverse).. i'm so excited for this election! it makes me feel important to be able to make a difference when it comes to our country. i know it's not a huge difference but it's a difference nonetheless, and i feel like if you exercise it properly you can do great things.

which is why this weekend i'll be calling even more people on barack's behalf..his website apparently gives you a list of numbers or something. when i did it in palo alto i talked to so many inspiring people. this one lady in florida was so happy to share her excitement with me about actually having a black man in the white house. she said that she had lived through the civil rights movement and had always wanted to see the day.

also, my birthday is near. i am turning 21. i am planning on going wine tasting, i'm like 30 minutes away from napa valley after all!

- passed my california driver's license test
- have taken up birdwatching
- also i painted my coffee table and i love it

I am having Sarah Palin nightmares. I dreamt last night that she was a member of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of drowned and starved polar bears around their necks. I have a particular thing for Polar Bears. Maybe it's their snowy whiteness or their bigness or the fact that they live in the arctic or that I have never seen one in person or touched one. Maybe it is the fact that they live so comfortably on ice. Whatever it is, I need the polar bears.

I don't like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of Feminists.

But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical to Feminism which for me is part of one story -- connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering women, giving young girls options, opening our minds, deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.

I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous choices of my lifetime, and should this country chose those candidates the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that America may never recover. But what is equally disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the rest of the world. Unfortunately, this is not a joke. In my lifetime I have seen the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the presidency with regularity.

Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor. In her world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better or evolves. She does not believe in global warming. The melting of the arctic, the storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are all part of God's plan. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered species list. The earth, in Palin's view, is here to be taken and plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and plundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to be taken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, "It was a task from God."

Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women who are raped and incested and ripped open against their will should have a right to determine whether they have their rapist's baby or not.

She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth control. I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence and we know how many babies that makes.

Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. From what I gather she has tried to ban books from the library, has a tendency to dispense with people who think independently. She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity and difference. This is a woman who could and might very well be the next president of the United States. She would govern one of the most diverse populations on the earth.

Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting rifle. She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot hundreds of wolves from the air.

Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private right. But when God and Guns come together in the public sector, when war is declared in God's name, when the rights of women are denied in his name, that is the end of separation of church and state and the undoing of everything America has ever tried to be.

I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S., but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack. It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.

If the Polar Bears don't move you to go and do everything in your power to get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, "Drill Drill Drill." I think of teeth when I think of drills. I think of rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination. I think of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain.

Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life?

(begging for food)

lately i've been trying to "discover myself", which is a strange task to me because i was so sure that i had already done so! well, it was a foolish belief.

anyhow, i figure a good way to start defining who i am as a person would be to write out my morals for life. kind of like, my own rules for my own life i suppose. recently i've been coming to terms with the fact that I am the only person who is living this life and the only person who will be accountable for what happens in my lifetime. it seems like such a basic concept, but in my life i, like so many other young women out there, have come to expect other people to take care of me, if you will, make decisions for me..which is a sad realization. i do feel totally helpless.

but it is my life and i know that if i establish how i expect to conduct myself for this lifetime that it will help build confidence and clarity, which i need!!! i have 0 clarity as it is. these morals will be kind of like my religion i suppose. that's what i want, something to replace a religion, because as of now i have nothing but disdain for most religions. but i recognize that a belief system of some sort is also important.

one of my rules is to never disrespect or mistreat my beautiful body. this will be hard for me, but if i can manage it i think it will really improve my quality of life. i think i will call that one The Golden Rule, because all my life i've been inwardly hating my body.


anyhow, love to everyone. <3

hay guys!

so things have been pretty nice for me lately. i saved up a couple hundred $$ from picking up waitressing shifts and then i went on a nice shopping trip at the great mall of the bay area (love it!). it was pretty much the best day ever since it's been SO long since i've been able to shop. i love all the clothes i bought, they make me feel pretty. you know, if my proper camera were up and working i'd totally take pictures and post them here. sad.

the weather this month so far has been INSANITY. i've had headaches for days straight because it gets so hot here and i'm very sensitive to extreme temperatures. but it's still nice because we get to do things like go swimming in random lakes and the water won't be freezing.

oh and did anyone catch the vmas? britney looked gorrrrgeous.

anyway, i'm dead tired and i have to be up at 9 tomorrow. goooodnight