Car Shopping

So I went car shopping yesterday. Looked at three different kinds of car, all of which were the same car essentially. It wasn't has bad as I feared. It seems most car dealers have toned down the rhetoric and aren't as full court press on people who just want to look. I took my Dad with me, and most of the salesguys were courteous. Only the Nissan dealer tried to pressure me into purchasing today, but only after my Dad had gone to the restroom for a minute. But I held strong :) which is always a fear of mine, cracking under pressure. The Toyota saleman was 100% uninterested in selling me a car, so much so that even if I had liked the new Corollas (which I ended up NOT likely, surprisingly since I drive one now) I wouldn't have gone back to that particular dealership. My Dad was really pressing me to get a Honda, which I agreed to test drive, despite feeling they were out of my price range. I was pleasntly surprised and enjoyed driving the new Civic, but the Civic Hybrid doesn't handle as well. He (my Dad) didn't even understand why I wanted a Nissan Sentra so badly, but when I convinced him that I would consider the Hondas if we could test drive the Nissans, he agreed to give them a shot. I knew he would come around once we test drove and I was right! Although he explained, he really didn't know much about Nissan, only that they were orginally Datsuns, a car he has had horrible expierences with. But the new Nissan Sentras were a much smoother ride and quieter engine then even the Civic. So I'm pretty sure that I have found my new car!

PS~ My Dad's favorite salesman was the Honda sales guy who when seeing my current car (a 1996 Geo Prizm) which has close to 200K miles on it and looks like it's been in a fight and barely survived....remarked "You aren't trading that in......are you?"

Puppy Fever

I have a bad case of puppy fever! I want a new dog so badly, and now with school coming to a close, I thought that I might get myself one as a graduation present. I had an opportunity to get a puppy (cavalier king charles) last November. These puppies are normally priced very high because they are a really great all around dog, (and before I get a whole bunch of comments on the tragedies of paying for a dog, when I could rescue one, I know I could do this, but I prefer to get one of these dogs, so please spare me the comments...I am aware of puppy mills, the unwanted pet population, etc. I am a responsible pet owner and get my dogs fixed as soon as they are old enough)

anyway....I am not able to keep dogs in my apartment. So I tried to work out an arrangement for my parents (who live down the road) but my mother didn't want the responsibility, especially since I don't live there. My dad then tells me later that it would have been fine with him and I should have jumped at the opportunity....

So fast forward 6 months......I am going to be moving in with my parents for the next 15 monthes to save up money so that I can pay off bills and move back to California. I have a line on getting a puppy, exactly the one I want, and my mother says it's fine with her....Now my Dad is the one who doesn't think he wants another dog in his housse (they have one) because he doesn't want his dog to start marking his territory in the house.....I mean I understand their point of view and I will respect it since I'm getting a year of free rent, but it still makes me sad....

I was given a puppy back when I was 13 (1990) as a Valentine's Day gift, a brittany spaniel. I had him from the time he was 8 weeks old until he passed away at the old age of 13. He had moved to 3 different states with me, and I had even gotten an apartment that accepted pets when I went away to school because I didn't want to leave him at home.....It was so hard on me when he died because he was my constant companion and it's taken me about 6 years to really feel like I could have another pet......So now I guess I will wait another year and a half.....BUt by then I'm sure something else will come up......

Minor rant about Oblique Advertising!

Okay....Today was a day I had been looking forward to for a while, ever since I saw a billboard up on Memorial advertising this event. There was a wellness expo at the State Fairgrounds today and it's theme this year was "Living Green and Efficient"! I love things like this, learning about recycling, bio-friendly cleaning products, how to de-mold your house, etc. Since this is specifically what was advertised, I thought for sure it would be an interesting time and since I am working on both a web-page and research paper on these types of things, it was a perfect research opportunity.......but I have just one thing to say about it.......

WHAT A LOAD OF HORSE MANURE!!!!!!!

In the whole expo hall, there was one small booth with cleaning products and a small, un-manned table from the OKC-DEQ with some free stickers that said "USE LESS STUFF". Everything else was home repair products, with NO emphasis on what made the eco-logically friendly, or "green". A bunch of chiropracters (I think like 5 different totals), someone who made wooden fish carvings, displays that sold the latest in "ion revitalization" which is supposed to soak all the metobolic wastes out of your body through your feet (like, whatever) and my personal favorite was the women who stopped my mother and I by walking right in front of us and holding up her hands and asking us how did we eat our produce and trying to sell us pills that contain all the vitamens and minerals that our body requires from fruits and vegatables, so we would have to eat the real ones....it would have seemed plausible, except for all of her assistants that walked around pretending they were on the phone, only the "phone" was a banana. Then another woman saw me talking on my cell phone and rushed up to me with a flyer on how cell phones cause brain cancer, and I should buy this magnet that she was selling to reduce those harmful cell phone waves attacking my brain....

It was like the Twilight Zone and if this is what passes for a "green living" expo then we are in trouble. No wonder, most people think that environmentalists are crazy, because if this expo was their first encounter with "environmentalists" I have to say they would be correct in their assumptions.

Saving the environment, and working towards a more bio-friendly household are noble causes and should not be presented as the latest "snake-oil" fixes. Nice advertising job! Because it wasn't even close to what it was presented to be!

The Food Circus is rolling into town!

In ring #1 the ringleader is telling me the history....First it was okay to drink soda, then sugar was bad for you, so along came diet soda, but wait...artifical sweetners caused cancer, so then it was back to the regular sodas, then it was no, no wait....just kidding here is a new improved diet soda, no calories....but it'll make you fat?! Ring #2 is showcasing how fat free foods have too much sugar and sugar free foods have too much fat and in Ring #3 we have the Advertising clowns chucking free candy, both sugar and fat free varieties into the crowd and the vendors are calling up and down the stands, Free diet pills! Weight Loss Surgery! Electroshock Ab Belts! and on and on and on until you are ready to rip your own arm off (with it's attractive heart monitor/pedometer) and use it to karate chop your way to the exit! So, as you leave the circus, you stop at the farmstand where you buy all the ingrediants to switch to an all natural, 100% whole grain food diet, all organics, no preservatives, etc....then your doc tells you, you've been feeling sick because you can't eat wheat or any other gluten containing products because your body can't digest it, but don't worry there are plenty of new gluten-free products that are available at the market, located back inside the main tent, just be sure to read the labels carefully, because most of these products are highly processed.......it never ends and it never fails....can't I just take vitamins and minerals tablets? Because this whole food circus is really no fun at all!

Procrastination :)

Tonight instead of working on my essay on logical fallacies in my favorite tv show for Advanced Comp and my essay on the social relativity theory for Criminology, I watched an old movie and treated myself to a Hideaway Pizza (half Paradise Pie and half Mediterranean). If you haven't ever seen "Clear and Present Danger" starring Harrison Ford, I recommend it. It's slightly smarter then your average action movie, so it's worth your time. As I was watching it, I did manage to get another chapters worth of definitions completed for Criminlogy, so it wasn't a total waste of time.

In watching this movie, it's plot and central theme seems awfully reminisenct (sp?) of recent political actions....but that's all I'm going to say about it. If what I have said interests you, then watch the movie for your own conclusions.

Anyway, today was a good day, I found out that I get to go to Vegas for a work conference in June, so I'm looking forward to that! Oh, and I got a promotion as well! :)

Life has no rewind button

Well, here was my last spring break of my college career and it's over. Did I go out of town, do anything new, take a vacation? No, No and no. Real life after college has had me in it's jaws throughout my entire college experience, so I did what everyone else who isn't in school did. I went to work. It only now just dawned on me at 12:33 in the morning on the last day of spring break that I've never really had a spring break moment. Never went to Cancun or Florida, never drank until the worm in the bottom of the bottle told me to stop. Do I feel like I've missed out on anything? I'm not sure, but I don't think that I would change anything if life came with a rewind button. Specifically speaking, I wouldn't change anything about how I worked full time all through school and took 13 years to complete a 4 year degree. I might change other things along the way, but not the basic structure. I've had too good of a time, believe it or not, by doing things this way, I feel I've gotten more out of what was being taught in the classroom because I also saw the real world application of it the next day at work, instead of waiting for graduation to come and then I frantically try to remember everything from school when starting that first new job.
Working through school has afforded me the opportunity to try on several careers to best decide what would be the thing I want to do most in life. I've run movie theatres (both multi-plexes and small town one screeners), managed several video stores, worked for a candle and home furnishings importer, been a 411 operator, coffee barista, I was a pastry chef for a single weekend, accounts payables and accounts receivables clerk, collections clerk, sales and catering assistant, procurement clerk, business affairs secretary, production analyst. I've worked for family owned businesses and a huge coporate conglomerate. While working for one of the largest movie studios in the world, I also spent my nights pulling shots at the local *$'s. I've also been a in-home child caregiver and babysitter. All in all, every single one of these jobs have made me who I am today and I wouldn't trade any of these positions or erase any of them from the past...that is if life had a rewind button...

Closed roads in my brain....

Do you ever wonder why the everyday things that you always remember to do, suddenly disappear from your brain's schedule? Like when you are trying to give information like your address or phone number to someone and then you just draw a complete blank? I sometimes feel that the information is located down a road in my brain that didn't inform the rest of the brain that it is down for some type of service. Then I'm forced to babble incoherently until the electrical forces of my thoughts find a back road into the information store.

The same thing can be said for my ability to read and retain information or deadlines. I mean I read in the syllabus that we were to have this blog set up by Wednesday last week. I make note of it and then completely forget to mark said information on the road map of thought, so now it's over a week later and I'm re-reading the syllabus and thinking "Son-of-a-%&*#!" So I hope that I still get some partial credit for at least attempting to "write"a wrong here. Can I just say...I'm taking 20 credits this semester as well as working a 40 hour a week job, which is one of those excuses that I so loathe to hear, but I'm not above giving out.......