( From a tiny room in NJ, here's to hoping everyone is having/had a happy and healthy holiday. )

Wrong Aid?

So, as a Rite Aid employee, I feel it's my duty to extensively document all of the crazy people that come in. Granted, this is not possible since seemingly every customer contains some level of crazy, albeit, some more than others.

The recent story of crazy contains a bit more than the others, especially since I feel it directly insulted my intelligence because it was a trap that I fell right into.

So picture 2 boys. Tall boy and small boy. Both Caucasian, white males, couldn't have been any older than 20. And even that's being generous probably. So tall boy comes up to my register and asks how much lighter fluid is. Now, I'm thinking, "That's a stupid question, walk to the front of the registers and look yourself". But, bearing in mind that 98% of the population is inherently lazy, I figured this would be too much to ask, so I walked the 4 feet away, and as I turned around to ask him if he was inquiring about the small or large bottle, a regular customer shouts, "He's stealing a carton of cigarettes!"

Now, not being a smoker, it takes me a second to process anything tobacco product related, since before this job, I knew literally nothing about anything cigarette-related, besides the fact that there's Marlboros, Camels, and Parliaments.

So, after the split second passes, and I turn around to call him out on this, he starts to walk away. And then I yell. And then he starts to run. Sans small boy. In case this got a little convoluted, let me just say, that tall boy reached BEHIND me, when I turned around to see how much the lighter fluid *actually* was (small = $4.19, large = $4.39...will never forget that one), and stuffed an entire. carton. (Ohh, about 70$ worth of Marlboro Lights), under his hoodie.

Small boy still hasn't left yet. Give him about 30 seconds. He "picks up" his phone, even though I don't think there was anyone on the other end, I think he just wanted to look busy, and when my boss told him to get out, and to not come back in by himself or with his friend ever again, he cops the. biggest. attitude possible for his tiny body. We're talking, "EXCUSE ME LADY, what are you TALKING about? What FRIEND? I didn't come in with any FRIEND." Seriously kid? Your friend just stole over 50$ worth of cigarettes, get out.

So, welcome to my life. I get tricked by thieves but I'm in school to get my masters degree. So much for street smarts.

4oh4.

This basically needs no explanation besides the fact that it's an awesome 404 page.

-less.

"Regardless of what you have heard, 'irregardless' is a redundancy. The suffix '-less' on the end of the word already makes the word negative. It doesn’t need the negative prefix 'ir-' added to make it even more negative."
----
Maureen and Rachel and I were trying to think of this word over a lovelyy Bagel Chateau breakfast on Sunday morning, and couldn't think of it until we got in the car and Rachel yelled, "Irregardless!" And it totally makes sense, it's just one of those things that you don't really think about. "Irregardless" doesn't seem like it should be a real word though, but it is...

In other news, it took a painfully long 10 hours to get from NJ to Boston on Sunday afternoon.

But Thanksgiving was good. Yearly 'thankful list' coming up soon...

two-lips.

I decided on my humid walk home tonight that things that I need to start doing again are writing and blogging. Even if it's about mundane details of the day. I guess on some unconscious level, it's important.

So for today, I leave you with this before I pass out since I've been awake since 630am, just got home about an hour ago, aaaand need to get up just as early tomorrow...

...but this is so cool, and could you imagine flying above this sort of thing and just looking out the plane and seeing it for miles and miles and miles? I wonder if there's any strategic planning to the colors or if the people in Holland (which is where this is from, ps), just really <3 their tulips.

...I think it's the latter.

Things that have/have not changed in Boston since June 23rd:

1. Victoria Seafood has changed their lunch special from $3.95 to $4.75. And they got a new banner. Why they didn't bother to jack it up a full dollar, I don't really know...
2. The crosswalk sign when I cross from Starbucks towards my building has ceased to function.
3. My bottle of Charles Shaw wine was replaced with a way nicer bottle with a note on it that read, "I'm sorry about the bottle of wine, here's a replacement." But hey, I got a nice bottle of wine out of it. The odd part, is that I don't know if it was dropped and broken, or "accidentally" drunk?
4. The lock on our mailbox is busted off. Things that are not good.
5. Our toilet paper holder has been wrestled out of the wall. There is now a gaping hole where it should be.
6. Sunset still smells like the Coors Light brewery.
7. ...and still has amazing quesadillas.
8. The *entire* layout of Shaw's has changed. And by changed, I mean not only a few things - the entire store has been flip flopped.
9. My roommate still doesn't know how to lock the top lock.
10. Seemingly all the trees coming up my street have been taken down. It's odd.

EST.

Contrary to popular opinion, I have returned from the other side of the world safe and sound. All in all, trip was a total success and we didn't have any problems with anything (besides getting on the "wrong" train at one point, but even that was only a slight detour, ok, maybe an extra 3 1/2 hours is a little more than slight), so it was awesome. Taking off 3 weeks was definitely worth it, even though probably something I'll never do again.

I also don't think I'm as jet lagged coming home as I was going. No, let me restate, I'm DEFinitely not as jet lagged coming home as I was in Madrid. That staying up for 36+ hour thing really messed with me, and when we got home, I passed out at 830pm, and woke up about 45 minutes ago, totally rested and ready to go. I might crash tonight, but let's try and avoid that...

Highlights of the trip?
1. Dude in Gdansk open 3 bottles of beer with a swipe of a lighter. Ridiculous.
2. Auschwitz. Enough said.
3. Being in Spain when they won the EuroCup. And I don't even care about soccer. Or futbol. Or whatever it is, but it was amazing.
4. Epic grocery store meals. Because they're cheap, and the possibilities are endless, and fun.
5. Amstel (not imported) in Budapest = amazing.
6. Hostels with Happy Hours, and free breakfast, and boys from London, who love listening to us "banter" as much as we loved listening to them.
7. Red roofs in Prague, and pizza places that were underground caves.
8. Tyskie.
9. City bikes and epic bike tours.


...Photo documentation will be coming soon...

So in approximately 11 hours, I'll be in a huge metal device, 491,290 feet above the earth, on my way to half-way-across-the-world. That's right, Amy and I totally leave for Europe today, and I'm having a hard time believing this. I'm obviously not packing like I should be, and I obviously should probably still be sleeping since it's 7:30am and I'm going to be awake all night until probably 1:30pm tomorrow (we get to Madrid at 7:30pm, European time).

But I figured it's better to get up early, have a really good breakfast, work on my website, and get some stoof done before I throw everything in this crazy backpack and think about peacing out.

And that's all, I'm gonna go freak out some more. :D

Hiroshima

Post-Secret has become yet another reason why I look forward to waking up on Sunday mornings. Now, I know that probably 150,249,394 other people say the same thing, but there's something comforting about that, and not cliche. There's always the strange, yet unsensical hope, that someone will have written something about you and you'll suddenly have a link back to something that was thought lost a long time ago. One secret that struck me this week was this one.

There's something about the setting and the historical context of it that caught me off-guard. Someone is obviously writing this in reference to Hiroshima (I figured this out when I enlarged the thumbnail and the name in the address bar of Firefox was 'http:///../hiroshima.jpg'), but it's applicable to a vast array of other things. And why are they referencing something that happened 63 years ago and killed everyone in its path? It just makes you wonder what the connection could be, how it applies to other areas of this person's life, and well...why?

The Way I See It #263

Run when you can, walk when you have to, crawl if you must; just never give up.

-- Dean Karnazes Runner and author of Ultramarathon Man

Floor-lounger?

Because I definitely am. But then you always end up with those rug-burn-ish-type-things on your elbows and hardcore indentations from the rug, or hardwood floor that you're leaning on. Putting aside the fact that it looks a bit like a massage table, I think this is pretty sweet, and another reason why Asian people need to never stop inventing things (sorry, Thomas Edison):


Seriously. No elbow-prints, it's probably better for your circulation, and you have your own little chin rest. If you're a drooler though and tend to fall asleep at your computer (as I don't think very many people are...but hey, you never know), then I don't want to use your lazy geek's cushion...just get me one for my next birthday. : )

The Eiffel Tower looked really pretty this morning, as seen from my iGoogle homepage.

This is from an article in Violent Acres today:
--
The phrase ‘The Customer is Always Right’ is the single worst philosophy that has ever been adopted by American culture. It gave an entire generation of people the green light to be as impolite, unreasonable, and demanding as their little hearts desired because they were always going to be considered right. It destroyed the entire concept of courtesy and rendered manners obsolete. People began to treat their peers in the service industry like incompetent morons, lacking in feelings or human dignity, who deserved to be browbeaten and abused for no other reason than they had the audacity to run out of a particular brand of coffee. Furthermore, instead of suffering negative repercussions for their appallingly disrespectful behavior, they are awarded with free coupons and plenty of ass kissing. In reality, they should be shunned and humiliated for behaving like such self absorbed little children.
--
Ok, well obviously this person is way disgruntled about the entire issue, but I will have to agree with them to a certain extent. This phrase really has destroyed some people's perception of manners and how to use them when interacting with other people. It's given them the privilege to think that there is no way possible that they could be wrong, and that they can jump to conclusions and immediately be right. Now, granted, I'm not saying it's not possible for the consumer to be right, it's just strange how consumerism thrives on making the customer happy, even if they are blatantly out of line.

And that's my rant.

Some-er!

5 Years Ago Today...

"6/9/03
If at all possible, please
excuse Ali Yuhas from Spanish
to setu for yearbook distribution on
Tuesday, June 10th.
Thank you,
Kristen Toriello"

So I switched bags today and when I took my computer out of my bag when I got to work, this note came out with it. It's kind of strange when things that happened 5 years ago to the day totally surprise you like this.

Even weirder is the perspective it puts things in since meaningless things like getting out of my 9th period AP Spanish class was probably stressing me out, and in comparison to, well, life, it's seemingly the smallest deal ever. Point? Stressing out is never worth it.

Peets&Bagels.

[[ This was a draft saved from sometime this winter, and I was hemming and hawing about postng it because it's kind of ridiculous, but I'm just gonna go ahead and do so since I'm tired of looking at the "draft" in my dashboard. ]]

I've been trying to do things that make me happy that aren't materialistic. Most of these things stem from cooking or food, or something that I can enjoy when I come home from work or something, but it's good. I read it in the doctor's office in a Reader's Digest. I was reading Reader's Digest because it reminds me of Aunt Joan.

I'm currently sitting in the window of Peet's, where I just had an amazing bagel and iced coffee, and decided to bring my computer so I could do work. I have lots of Mendix stuff to do, and need to force myself to do it. And I can people watch here, and I like it.

Snow&Coffee.

I woke up this morning and it was unexpectedly snowing and it's kind of awesome.

Now a days, the first thing I think of when I wake up in the morning is that I want to wake up next to someone.

This is the first full week of classes, even though the past few have been full weeks of work, so I'm not dreading it.

I've worked the past 3 days and am working today.

Work makes me want to constantly eat when I come home, and I think I've gained back that weight that I unintentionally lost.

Ty started school and that makes me really relieved.

I went out with people last night who I think I can now call my friends...and I like that.

I've been working on the same thing for class for the past week and a half and feel like I've made no progress. I think I'm trying to complicate it and it sucks.

I got season five of Dawson's Creek out of the library, and must go attack it.

This post has absolutely not substance at all, but I figured it was better than no post.

Apples&CheezIts.

A model just came in to be paid and asked if we had any other work open on Valentine's Day, because it's his birthday and he likes working here, and then going out and spending the money on himself and not using it for paying bills, etc..

It made my day because I like the fact that other people do stupid things like that and that it makes them happy. It restores like, a small portion of my faith in humanity or something silly like that.

The more time I spend at work today, the more excited I am for tonight.

What does tonight consist of, you ask?

Me, going home from work, putting pjs on, starting to make my pizza crust, letting it rise and cleaning my room/fixing the light fixture in the kitchen, after it's risen, I'll make my pizza, eat my pizza (complete with Honey Brown), and do ActionScripting for the rest of the night. And be antisocial. And take care of my stuffy nose. And headache. And apparent cough that won't go away.

Even though I've had to cancel plans the last 2 nights on account of being sick and not feeling like being antisocial, I'm actually looking forward to tonight because I'm being antisocial by choice.

I still haven't heard back about NYMF. I'm pretty skeptical about getting this job. Even though it would be fucking awesome if I did.

I'll ask you, what in the world should we do?

http://wwar1.blogspot.com/

That's really cool. And it's being posted because I don't want to forget about it.

I'm posting because I need to stop eating peanuts, because the scratchiness of the coating (they're sweet&crunchy or some nonsense like that), feels good on my gross and swollen tonsils. And because it's after 11pm and I shouldn't be eating peanuts at this hour anyway. I guess that's what happens when I have tea for dinner because I don't have any other food at work because I wasn't really planning on getting a lunch break.

It really bothers me at Rite Aid that even when you're OBVI going to have dinner, they still call it lunch. It pissed me off. Probably more than it should.

I'm still hungry, but I think I'm just going to head to bed.

Ok, so I decided to go for the cup of soup that was left over from lunch (literally, a cup of soup, not like, Campbells Cup of Soup, cup of soup) and a piece of bread, rather than go to bed hungry.

So now that I'm satisfied and have a heating pack on my back, I can go function and do work for a bit...

Your voice...was the soundtrack of my summer.

That song played before randomly on my iTunes, and I haven't been able to get that one freaking line out of my head. And I hate it.

But before I get back to work, even though I've been working all day, I realized today that I should kind of pause to reflect back on...things? I shrugged it off at dinner with Ro, Curley and Konstantine tonight as not that big of a year, but personally, it was kind of was? I fell in love for the first time since high school and got my heart totally shattered for the first time. And I'm not saying that because I want sympathy or because I feel bad for myself, it's because I learned from it. I'm not tooting my own horn or anything, I just think it's important that I came out of that a better person. When it totally could have shattered me. There was dwelling and not eating and losing of weight and crying and not sleeping, but then I decided it was enough. And that was that. I'm able to do that, and to be okay with something like that, and to be okay with myself.

I also graduated. And got into all but one of the grad schools that I applied to. That was a huge deal. And a big personal accomplishment, and probably the most life altering decision that I've had to make up until this point in my life. I think I made the right decision, and I'm happy with where I am. That leads me into the next big thing, and that's moving to Boston. To a city that I had been to only one, briefly, at night, to go to a bar. And leaving behind the city where I knew a lot of people, to move to one where I knew random people from high school and one girl I went to Marist with. Terrifying.

I've gotten ok with being a real person, and with paying bills, and with living by myself. I actually like it. I don't have a lot of money, and that will probably be true for a while, but I think I spend it wisely. And I'm ok with that.

I traveled to a part of the country that I've always wanted to see with some of my best friends, and got to spend 8 amazing days with them, and meet some amazing people.
I gave my heart away, and that's more than I've risked in a long time.
I'm learning how to try and like "nice" things, and appreciate them.
I actually *want* to get a new wallet.
And I want to be less sarcastic.
I'm giving someone a second chance, because not talking for years doesn't make sense.
I drank more than I ever thought possible, played more beirut than I thought possible, and became better friends with more people than I thought possible.
I want to keep in touch with those friends I'm keeping in touch with now.
I want to make my thesis kick ass. And to be the best.
And I want to travel this summer. And get this freelance job, so I can save all that money to travel this summer.
I still play the piano, and write, and started painting.

I'm happy with 2007. I can probably count the really shitty parts on one hand, which is something that I'm eternally thankful for.

And that's all.