All I can say is that it's been an unpredictable year for sure. Having the opportunity to go home for six months was exciting, though I couldn't have predicted what would have happened when I came home. Working at Lucas was...interesting. But when I got a chance to leave behind my typical 60 hour work weeks and either explore the city or just catch my breathe it was gratifying.

Came back to Hell-A with the doors wide open to endless and uncertainty, but eventuallly I have succeeded career wise with getting my production assistant position at Nickelodeon and finally getting a project I'm working on into the public spot light. It looks like, as far as job asspects go things should be smooth sailing. Socially, though, things have started to slide into the shitter, but it's things like that that can turn in the opposite direction so quickly, so I try and look to the future.

So looking toward the last year of this first decade of the new century, I wonder if it will be like the last eights years. Those past eight have seemed like a wild ride with it's ups and downs and unpredictibility and occasional excitement. So when I find myself in a pessimistic frame of mind, I'm reminded of the words of Bill Hicks:



"It's just a ride..."

Thanks to Omiphiliac!

Thought I'd share this with you all, this is great if you've been having a bad day:

Coming down the hill from the bus stop to my friend's parent's place I'm house sitting, I am looking directly at the widow where my friend's bedroom is and where her cats go in and out. It's about 8pm, and the kitties need to be fed. I look up at the window and I literally see two kitty faces with their front paws sticking out the window, watching me come down the hill. The neighbors must have thought I was crazy because I couldn't stop laughing at the adorable yet hilarious sight of them. I wish I still had my old phone, I would have taken a photo of them.

Alexys, your cats are adorable!

My Personality

Neuroticism	50
Extraversion	31
Openness to Experience	43
Agreeableness	23
Conscientiousness	31

You rarely get angry and it takes a lot to make you angry, however high levels of stress can lead to you feeling panic or confusion, but usually you cope with day to day pressures. You are not prone to spells of energetic high spirits. You prefer facts over fantasy and are more interested in what is happening in the real word. You do not enjoy confrontation, but you will stand up for yourself or push your point if you feel it is important, however you believe that a certain amount of deception in social relationships is necessary. You are guarded in new relationships and less willing to openly reveal the whole truth about yourself. You are not an overly cautious person. You will think about alternatives and consequences but make up your mind fairly quickly.

Take a Personality Test now or view the full Personality Report. The best Myspace Layouts

 I'm now in the San Francisco Bay Area and will be here until about August 1st. I moved here in the beginning of February and started working at Lucas Arts as a game tester with the hope of saving some money. I've pretty much been working non stop, literally for the first 27 or so days (except for President's Day). I'm mostly working six days a week, tough my schedule is up in the air. But if you're in town, please feel free to drop me a line. I also have yo apologize to Viv and Lauren for not seeing them yet, and to Jill for not letting her know. Sarah, I hope you're still alive 'cause I haven't heard from you! I'll also be house sitting in the city for a month starting on the 27th. In the mean time I'm living at my mom's and have my apartment in Los Angeles sub-letted by a good friend of mine and her wife until I go back. They'll be moving up here around that time to go to the Art Institute of San Francisco, along with my friend's sister. 

I only knew about a week before I came that I had gotten the Lucas job for sure, and randomly my good freind Maria had re-surfaced. She had moved back to Kentucky a couple years back to save up money for her future plans and for a change of scenery. She had actually arrived in January and was living with her gradmother (not the best arrangment, but it's not my business) and was looking for a place for herself and her wife to stay while her wife adjusted to California and before they set out for A.I. in the fall. Meanwhile, I had been stressing about suddenly having to give notice and store my stuff for six months when Dhino told me that Maria had stopped by his place and explained her situtaion. Though my rent would be on the high end of what she and her wife could afford ($1030.00/monthly), I got a hold of Maria and let her know what was going on with me. I got the sub-lett secured 36 hours before I left! She, Dhino, and Michael C would have been the only people I would have trusted with this anyway. It's too bad that things weren't a little different though, that I had been able to stay so that I could hang out with her and meet her wife, but hopefully they'll be able to make it up here before the fall term begins. 

Other than that I haven't been doing much. I was able to hang out with Alexys when she was in town last month, and fell in love with a tastey salad drewssing her parents had. I'm going crazy now trying to remember the name of the dressing manufactorer and looking for it on stores. I think I've found it but I want to make sure I have the name of the brand right. That's pretty much the highlight of my life right now, I know it's sad. The only other notible thing I've done is watch a short doc on men who get Real Dolls (NSFW!!). Real Dolls are pretty much a high end blow-up doll, costing about eight grand a piece but highly custumisable. The manufactorer sees his product as fulfilling a sexual need, but it's interesting to see that most of the men also start to use them for companionship as well. Makes one wonder if there is something similar for women, or if there is a market for such a thing (we're not as shy as our mothers and grandmothers). It was also interesting to see how each of these men custumized their dolls, and how many they each had. 

Well, that's it. Hopefully I'll see you all soon.

 I'll start off first with some bad news, to get it out of the way. I lost my job about a months and a half ago, it was a real blow to me. It wasn't like GoTV, I really wanted this job and felt that it would advance me in my career. What happened was that the studio we were working for (we were going to be making a 3D animated TV movie for them) had realized, after our second screening to them, that they needed to re-write the script they had given us because they realized the second act was too long. This will take at least six months, if not more. Though the WGA strike shouldn't affect this, you never know. They also realized they didn't like the voices they has cast for the characters, which for some characters I agree with but it was still a shame. My boss was really good and warned me what was going to happen, and then when the axe did fall the company gave me two weeks notice. I didn't mention any of this to my other co-wrkers though, because I didn't  want them to worry and possibly even start looking for jobs if it was unnecessary for them to do so. It turns out I probably should have told them though, because a day after I was given my two weeks notice they had to let most of them go do to lack of work. It was really sad, both to see these people who had been working be let go with such short of notice, and also because we had become pretty close. I'v e since been loking for jobs, but because of the holiday season it's been slim pickings. But on a good note, my old company recently sent me a Christmas card with all their signatures, which was really sweet of them. They probably do that for all cards they send out (the signatures) but it was nice that they sent one out to me.

I was able to go home for Thanksgiving though, and had a great break from job and finace worries while there from getting to see friends at Sarah's (

misery_9) birthday party.  Also got to meet some of her friends from San Francisco State, pretty cool people. Found out that her friend, who shared her birth date with Sarah, is going to be going to Bikram Yoga teacher training in a couple of months. It's mostly cool becuase you usually never meet other people who do Bikram yoga out of the blue. We had Italian food and then headed off to Kareoke afterwards, with much fun to be had. The only part that sucked was that the kareoke place, that's usually empty, was jammed packed, and the management decided it would be a good idea to let the regualrs get in more songs than the people who were new. We even saw a group pass money off to the DJ to let them get up on stage more. This same group also decided to pervert Britney Spear's "Hit Me Baby One More Time" by having a cute girl our age and some nasty dude in his fifties writhing all over each other while singin the song. Never mind I never liked that song, or songs like that, anyway. Now when I think about it or Spears the image of those two pops into my head. Ugh, scarred for life!

Also had my eyes examined for the first time in about three years or so. My company was nice enough to extent my insurance coverage ot the end of November, so I was covered. My eyes have only gotten slightly worse, but my right eye has become dominant over my left. My eye doctor would like me to now wear my glasses whenever I'm on a computer, driving (especially at night she said), as well as when I'm reading. So pretty much I'll be having to wear them all the time, but that's ok, I got to get a nice new pair of frames. When I come back for Christmas you can see them. I just have to get the left side adjusted, it pinches a little. Any good places I could go to that'll adjust them for me anyone knows about? The only concern was that for my eye scan (I think that's what it's called, it takes a picture of the inside of your eye) the right eye had about four little dots. Since it was my first scan picture thingy, we don't know if they have just appeared due to possible blod pressure fluctuations or if they are naturally accuring. My doctor wants to monitor it and this makes me want to have a physical as soon as I get insurance to check everything out. It'll probably be ok though. 

 

I finally got everything fixed on my car that needed to be done, so it should be ok to turn in next week for the end of the lease. The last thing to get done was the leather replacement, which I just got the car from today. This whole week I haven't slept well because of tall the last minute stuff I had to do. Hopefully little Dameon next door will have had his Rittlin so I can sleep in tomorrow. Last weekend he was so hyper that it sounded like he was just running into the wall, bouncing off, and running back into the wall.

I am also heading back to the Bay Area this coming Friday (the 19th) to get my new car. I had been hoping for a dark blue color but since the '08s just came out there aren't that many around. Complicating everything is that I'm trying to get it with a Navigation system, since it would help me run errands both for work (since I'm a Production Assistant) and on my off time. Right now I have one on reserve that's the same color as the dark grey car I have right now, but me and the sales consultant at Marin Honda (who we;ve worked with since '99) are hoping that the dark blue will pop up at the last minute.

On a side note, one of my cousins found me on MySpace. Funny thing is I've looked for her a couple times, I think the last time was six months ago. Anyway it looks like she's doing well, I used to see her once a year since she was a toddler but when I stopped going on my yearly summer trips to see family in Michigan several years back I lost contact with her. She came out earlier this year with her mom to San Francisco, and it was kind of a dissaster. Hopefully she can make it back out again, without her mom. Speaking of my cousin, I got bored and filled out a semi-questionarre she had on her blog on MySpace.
( Read more... )

Well, it  looks like I shoulod have posted sooner because even after my last post I forgot to add stuff! This is back to my personal stuff. The day before my birthday (the 21st) a big storm hit Los Angeles, and when I say big I mean a typical storm in Marin. Bikram has been helping out a lot as far as my emotions go, I guess getting into a regular routine of exercise will do that. If it wasn't for the yoga I'd be a warbelling bag of slop. Usually it also helps me sleep if I'm stresssed out, but for the past few weeks I've been waking up in the middel of the night, though usually I can eventually get back to sleep. I think part  of the problem may be with my new neighbors. I'll ellaborate later. Anyway, I don't remember why but work had been sort of stressfull and my car was still at the mechanics, so I was loking forward to making it to yoga that night. Well, because of the rain, I missed class by ten minutes (also happened last Friday, sans rain). I was also worried that my birthday would be a big bummer, and with the rain I thought people would flake on me, though at this point I have a small but close and dependible group of friends. I stoopped to get dinner and went home to relax. I'm not sure if it was the sound of the rain, which is sort of conforting to me, but I think I was able to sleep through that night. I've heard that rain on birthday is supposed to be bad luck, but I've also heard the opposite, thought that night I felt that the first would be true for me. Not only did I sleep through the night (I think) but slept for a long time, which I needed. I finally got my ass up to take a shower, thinking that I'd spend the day alone like a few of years ago. Turned out that Dhino had called while I was in the shower and was driving to my place, silly me. I got out of the shower and Michael called to wish me a happy birthday and to make plans to celebrate it, which turned out to br a dinner we'll have to do another time because at the last minute his company flew him to San Diego. In the middle of the call Dhino rang the intercom and Michael let me go. Thiugh Dhino recently got a car, the tires on it were bad, so I took out the rental car to one of my favorite places, Vegan Plate. It's a Thai restaurant that doesn't serve meat (and most Asian dishes don't serve dairy anyway, so it's just the meat that's faked) and even my mom liked. Though it's only a couple of miles from my place, by the time we got there it had gone from a slight sprinkle to pouring rain. The rain had also given me good luck that day. I tried a dish there that I'd never tried before that was delicious. We decided to go to Pasadena and got into the car. I was backing out, super slow as usual, but didn't happen to see a bright red Civic in front of me! Worst was that I left my insurance card in my Honda. The girl got out and instead of wanting to exchange info just said, "You know, my uncle just hit my car, it's a 2001, so I'm not going to trip if it's coool with you." Thank fucking gawd. We got to Pasadena, and I only had enough change for 35 minutes. Needless to say we took way longer than that, but there was no parking ticket! Usually I get one of those even if I'm 30 seconds late to refill the meter. Again, the only bummer was not being able to have dinner with Michael to celebrate my birthday.

Also, around the last week of August, my Russian neighbor quickly and randomly moved out, and within a couple of days a mixed Latino family moved in (Grandma and dad are Latino, mom's white, and their demon spawn is of course mixed). They seem to be pretty cool and quiet, except for their kid. The kid looks to be between 6-8 years old and is loud an obnoxious enough that whenever I hear him throwing a fit (which is almost everyday) my ovaries try to tie themselves into a knot. The worst part is that his bedroom is next to mine, and the walls are paper thin. Usually I can hear him being woken up for school, and though he's gotten better, I would hear him fly into a massive tantrum of yelling, screaming, crying, and demanding that he wanted to watch TV. I still fantasize about shooting him down with Ritalin darts. You can hear that his parents are fed up with it, but of course it's the spoiling grandma that always lets him carry on for a while before trying to calm him. I do kind of feel sorry for her though, it looks like she may have suffered a stroke because at least the right side of her face is paralyzed. I've talked to the mom a couple of times, and though she's really sweet I can see where her kid got the hyper activity from. I hope for their sake he's easier to manage when he grows older, though I doubt it.

This past month has been very interesting, both (and mostly) at work and privately. I guess I'll start with work first. We've hired some new people to start animating, and one of them is a bit of an odd ball (let's call him Ted). Doesn't help that he reminds me of a boyfriend from high school. Though Ted's across the room and can easily close his door, he keeps it open so that Yuko (the production coordinator) and I can here everything that he does, including randomly break into song for about thirty seconds and hear his discussions with his family. He also has another person (another animator and new hire) sitting next to him, yet Ted still seems to keep up his antics. I think my favorite is when his mom calls him, or he calls her. He usually checks in once a day, and the greeting is almost an announcer-like, "hello mother." Ted never calls his mom Mom, always mother, which makes listening into the conversations all that more entertaining. Usually he check in on her health, and the conversations usually are short and end abruptly. He is alo apologising constantly, and that partly also has to do with him seemingly not being able to take critisism well (from what I hear from Yuko). An example with be if I go into the kitchen (which is very small, maybe room for three people at the most) he will apologize profussly for, "being in my way." He does this with everyone else too. Also, according to Yuko, when the animation supervisor come to check his work and sees something that could be improved or fixed, he will usually become very apologetic. The last week, though, he seemed to become adjetated when he was given criticism. I think maybe the more depressing of the conversations I've heard from Ted was Friday morning when he was talking to the other animator (let's call him Jon). Ted was talking to Jon about seeing movies, which let to a comment from Ted that Jon should invite him to Jon's house to watch movies with him. I almost laughed, the comment was almost something out of a comedy where the older sleazy guy is trying to seduce to young naive girl. There was a short pause, follwed by Ted saying something along the lines of, "aww c'mon we should hang out, I have no freinds!" That last staement just made the preceeding conversation depressing. But on the flip side, his animation work is very good. There are times when I believe that these things happen as a way of balancing things out.
Also, I got to go to a line reading session last week with my boss as well, my first time ever. It was interesting to see how the person in the sound booth would direct the person to say the lines they way tey wanted. I was only allowed to be an observer, since my boss had toold me that Disney were the ones now in charge of how they thought the lines should be read. It was kind of hard at first, I wanted to correct them on a couple of things about the premiss of the story, but I did very well about keeping my mouth shut. That and my boss has a cool Jepp, the driver's side is on the right hand side from her days working for the postal service. Another funny thing that happened with my boss was that on the way back, my boss had a question for me, and said that she asked me specifically because I'm from San Francisco. She and her fiance (who she still calls her girlfriend, oops!) are getting married soon, and my boss wants to invite her best friend of 27 years (who happens to live in San Franciso) and her girlfrind to the wedding. Where this gets complicated is that her friend and her partner opened up their what is now their 27 year relationship with another lesbian couple. My bosses question was if she could just invite her firend and her girlfriend or if she'd have to invite all four of them. I gave my opinion, which was that she should just invite her friend and the girlfriend, and then for some reason I recommended that she should ask Dan Savage of Savage Love. Turns out my boss is a fan of Dan, but didn't have the information for his pod-cast, which I recommended she call into for a quicker response. I got her the info, so I'm wondering if she actually called in!
Personally, things have been a little up and down. I don't mean to be a whinny bitch but it seems a lot of shit hits the fan around my birthday. Labor Day weekend was when it started, and I was feeling really down. From the last time things got pear-shaped, I realized that it's a good idea to hang out with good friends even when I'd like to be like Osama and find a good hiding spot from the world. I called Dhino and we hung out. The funniest thing that night was that we were driving through a not so good part of town, and my car ended up stopping next to a white middle aged woman (who looked a little Tammy Fay Baker-ish) in an Oldmobile blasting what sounded like Beyonce. My car windows were rolled down a little and Dhino and I were in a conversation. Again, just like a scene in a movie, Dhino gave a quick glance to his right, turned to me with a slightly disgusted look on his face, and quietly rolled up his window. Probably due to how crappy I was feeling, I bust out laughing and had to put my hand over my mouth to quiet myself and to stop myself from laughing. About a week after that, my car's engine light popped on for some reason. Because I had had some unforseen expenses at the time and with work so far away (and majorly screwwing up at work, which I thought would lead to my firing, so me trying to look good), I avoided taking it to my mechanic for about a week. Friday night, on the 14th, when I got off the freeway exit to go to Bikram my engine stalled. Because Honda's are so quiet and I had my Zen blasting I didn't realise that the engine had stalled until I tried to turn. I started the car again and got to practice. When I tried to go home (which is a little less then two miles away from the studio) the car stalled twice. I was supposed to take it to a body shop the following Monday to re-paint a badly patched area so I could turn in the car a little earlier than the lease end date (October 23rd) but with the engine acting up I didn't trust the car. The worst was that I nereded to do errands that couldn't wait, so I resolved to call the local Hertz rental car office (since a Chevy Cobalt that I got stuck renting for four days from Enterprise cost about $0.99 a day, and that was for economy) becuase they offer better cars at cheaper prices. The only trouble with this was that it was a Saturday, so even thoughg they offer pick-up services there was only one guy in the office. I also forgot to mention that the 15th was also the eighth anniversary of a good friend's death, and with everything else getting piled on I was a wreck. I had called my good freind Michael the nioght before to see if he had my mechanic's direct number since the shop is usually closed on weekends (Michael is friend's with our mechanic's ex-girlfriend, and they are still friends) and vcalled him again to see if he could also give me a ride to Hertz so I could pick up a car. Thanks goodness for good friends, he picked my sorry-ass up (I was so defeated I started crying on the phone when asking him to pick me up, embarrassing). On the way there he called the ex-girlfrind and left a message. While at the rental place he tried to cheer me up with a story of a friend of his whose car got totalled by a drunk in a Hummer who hit the curb next to the driveway, flipped over, and smashed the friend's Pontiac before coming to rest in the front lawn. I was relieved to have transportation but still was stressed over how to get my car to my mechanic. Later in the day I walked over to the Coffee Bean that had opened up about a block and a half away from me to give myself a little pick me up. On the way there who should call but my mechanic, who saved me the third degree by hearing about how shitty my month was so far and the fact that it was both the anniversay of my friend's death and my birthday a week from then. He arranged to have my car towed, since I didn't trust it making the ten mile trip to his shop. One crisis averted, but I was still feeling shitty. Dhino came over later in the day and we ended up again at Coffee Bean, with him helping me to cheer me up a little. Turned out that the engine's air temperature intake sensor and fuel sensing unit had pooped out, and becuase my car is less than 3 years old and under 36,000 miles, I didn't have to pay the $401.91 in repairs because or warrenty (thank god!!!). The trouble was that because of how far away work and the repair places were (and the lack of available rides) I just got the car back yesterday instead of maybe a week ago. Now the only thing to fix is the paint patch, which hopefully can be done before the 23rd, or I'm screwed. I'm also trying to have a local dealership down here take the car so I don't have to ship it to Marin Honda. As you can tell, still a little stressed about the car, but it'll all be over soon.
Then there's getting a new car. Since my family and I have owned Hondas/Acuras since '88 and this is really the first time I've had a major problem like that, I'm of course giving them another shot. This was also the first Honda I owned or even drove that was built in the US, and though my mechanic says it shouldn't matter, I'll most likely try and buy one that was made in Japan with all the stuff I want. Now, this will probably should like my spoiled Marinite self coming out, but I'm a big fan of toys and (especailly with the Hertz reantl with XM radio and my mom's h all te extras excuding stereo) have decided that I would like to get the new '08 Civic with the navigation system. I know that's silly, but when driving in my mom's car the navigation system saved my butt a couple of times, and with the driving down here and nearly getting into a few accidents bacasue of bad directions from direction sites and friends I found the system to be far easier to work with. Also(especially since the rental car I have right now has XM) it comes with XM equiptment standard as well as a three month free trail, and has card readers to play music and such. I have checked my credit, and though I don't have much of a history (my choosing, which looks like a good choice so far) my score is pretty good, so I'm hoping that I can get what I want without having to pay a lot. Again, don't mind my Marin-ness, but I'm thinking of getting a four door (mostly for errands I have to run for work and occassionally for myself) and I'm trying to decide between a regular EX (they are coming out with an EX-L, which is a regualr EX with standard leather, heaated seats and windows, which makes sense for some parts of the country but here would just be silly) or the hybrid since my drive to work is about 22 miles one way. The problem I'm having with the choice is that I believe I'm killing the engine in the car I have now (and possibly the last Honda I had) by driving a little harder than it can manage, and the regual Civics now have 140 horse power instead of mine's 129 (the hybrid has 110). On the other hand, the hybrid has climate control, and hear me out. It doesn't seem like a big deal but it seems to save energy because the computer is programmed to recognise the actual temperature you set it to instead of just making the car hotter or colder. For example, my mom always has the car set to 72 degrees, and instead of just having it be slightly warmer than normal, you can feel the car trying to cool itself down to 72 degrees if you've left it out on the sun or warm itself up if you're driving on a cool night. Yeah, I know, it's silly toys that really shouldn't affect my decision, but....TOYS!!1!!1!!1!! Oh well, it'll all come down to money...I hate money.

Y'all have been warned!!