As you can tell, I had a lot of time with Love and Reverie. I haven't taken band pictures in a long time so this is a first in 5 years. Yay! Anyway, I have been shooting on manual so I'm so happy they even look decent! *whew* Yeah I had fun tonight. Tonight I was handed lemons and I made lemonade! haha
I don't know if you've heard, but Yahoo has run out of email addresses. They have to be so cryptic now in order to even get one that they've done something about it. They've created two other extensions - @ymail.com and @rocketmail.com - both of which are pretty easy to remember.
Today I went and reserved my full name as a @ymail.com address so now I have something a bit more professional if I ever need it. I remember when I was trying to apply for jobs - AGES ago it seems - I always was a bit embarrassed about giving out my, then, email address. It was totally complicated: maura_ea_celelstin[at]yahoo.com and no one ever seemed to get it right the first time. While my new @yahoo.com email address is easier to relay it's still not very professional.
I decided to try and snag Paul's full name too (he's actually applying for jobs right now), but unfortunately it wasn't available on either of the new extensions. I got crafty though and just added an underscore between the first and last night and it worked :) Shocking how many Paul's there are though!
Kind of off topic, but can anyone suggest a name that has "link" in it? Paul and I were jokingly considering names with "link" in it (such as Lincoln) so we could give our son that as a middle name and call him Link like out of the Zelda Nintendo games! I know it probably makes all of you guys gag - but I really want to give my kids interesting stories for their names - without giving them really strange names. Case in point: My practically-brother Jose named his daughter Harley-Quinn from the Batman series. I think Harley is a pretty good name for a girl, easy to spell and pronouce, but now she's got a pretty cool story to go along with her name.
Anyhow, you bunch think about it and get back to me :P
Ever since the semester ended, I've been adjusting to a lot of new changes. I really don't know how I want to sum up the past few months, but I think the best way to tackle the task is by creating a list and then expanding a little on each point. (This is what happens when I have to make lists for both work and school; it starts pouring into my personal life, too! Haha.)
Shawn and Kathleen graduated. I'm not a fan of going to big graduation ceremonies, but as it turns out, I had to go to two within the same month. Shawn had to deal with my bad mood that day (I feel like I kind of ruined part of the experience for him... Bah!), but it ended up going really well. He's completely finished with college and education for the rest of his life. I'm so proud of him, and I couldn't be more jealous. ^///^
Since Shawn graduated, he's been working full time for Kohl's Corporate. Whenever any of my family members, or one of our friends, asks how he likes his job, he always tells them that he doesn't really like what he does there. Even though he says that, I know he really likes it. He's been picking up a ton of responsibilities: going to meetings, being "on call" for days at a time, attending events held by his team, etc. Whether Shawn wants to admit it or not, he likes being needed for something. He really should feel that way, too, especially after all the work he's put into the past few years in school.
Kathleen graduated high school and has been getting ready for college. She's going to the same university that Beth and I are at, which I'm totally psyched about. <3 As happy as I am for her, I have to be honest about the whole situation-- it's been a tough few weeks for her and the rest of our family. We've all been going through some major adjustments and there have been a lot of hurt feelings. I'm not sure where I stand on all of the issues anymore, but I do know that I'm trying to focus on making Kathleen as comfortable as possible with her new living situation with Beth. It's interesting how so many changes in just Kathleen's life have impacted the entire family. Something like this has never really happened in this way before.
My internship is going well.
I'm moving in with Shawn in a few weeks. Even though Shawn and I have lived in our current apartment together, with Beth, we finally found a place for just the two of us. We looked around for a few weeks, did some research, and then found the perfect place for us to live for the next year. I started getting a little stressed out when we were looking, because I hated the fact that I felt "homeless" but everything worked out in the end. The biggest challenge for us now is buying all of our furniture and still having enough money for rent. Like Shawn keeps telling me, we "have to take it slow." I guess I'm just excited about the idea of having an entirely new place to live with all new furniture. It's like I'm putting together a new family or something! ^__^ Slow steps are good.
I had to tell Dad that Shawn and I were moving in together. I had to do it. I mean, after all the years that Dad and I haven't been able to communicate, I had to tell him that Shawn and I were taking this step in our lives. Honestly, I wasn't worried about talking to Dad, but everyone else started to freak out about it. Mom even told me, at one point, that she didn't want to be in the house when I was talking to him. *sigh* Every other person I talked to gasped and made me promise to tell him/her how it went.
The thing is, everyone knows how difficult my relationship with Dad has been throughout my life. His Filipino culture is extremely different from my own, and hearing that two people are moving in together before marriage can tear people apart. There are little secrets to situations like this though: you have to know people. You have to know how they function, how they feel about certain issues, how they react to specific situations, how their thought processes break down information. I did my research and I made a plan.
Last weekend, I went home to talk with Dad. I walked up to him and asked him if we could talk alone. Within the next two hours, we stood there in my parents' bedroom talking about everything. I told him about Shawn and me, and from there we started talking about family and beliefs. Huge breakthroughs were made, and I told him that I wanted to fix everything that had gone so wrong in the past. I know that Dad and I don't have what Mom and I share, but I'm only 23 years old. I can be an adult here and try to fix something like a relationship.
A few times during our talk, Dad broke down. A while back, Mom told me that no one but her had ever seen him cry, and even then, it had happened only twice during their marriage. When he started crying, he told me he felt he was a bad father. And then he kept repeating the same story about how he had left to go on a vacation at a time when things in our family were finally good-- and then how guilty he felt about leaving for those few weeks. Even though I had little recollection about this happening (since I was so little), I felt everything he felt. I know how one guilty memory can tear me to shreds so I did the only thing I could do at the time. I listened.
Not everything between Dad and me is resolved now, but at least we have some of the issues out in the open. I told him that we need to talk more, instead of letting Mom be the messenger between us, and he agreed.
It's been an interesting few weeks. As always, I've been dealing with a lot of the stress by buying myself presents. *guilty look* I know I should be saving money for my new apartment, but having new dolls and accessories makes me feel so much better. They take my mind off of the stress. I'm trying not to repeat what happened last summer! So far, I've only had to take my stress medication for one week and I was able to stop after that. It's a good sign. ^__^
In a way, I feel like I've kind of graduated, too. Usually summer is a slow time for me, but so far, it's proven to be just as hectic as the school year!
How long do you take in the shower?
Submitted by Strive2Be.
A long shower is about 20 minutes. I used to brush my teeth in the shower but stopped because I felt that extra three minutes was a lot of wasted water. Not surprisingly I don't brush my teeth as often.
I've been reading a lot of news this morning, via the web.
One article I read was about a recent expanding of daytime checkpoints throughout our county targeting unlicensed drivers & DUIs. It has quickly turned into a racial/immigration debate though because most of the unlicensed drivers in our county are undocumented immigrants. If you're caught without a license your car is automatically impounded and towed that day for a period of 30 days. However, they are notifying (but not directly requesting assistance from) immigration & other state agencies of the checkpoints and now they are often checking for valid citizenship too. People are being deported and the argument of issuing licenses to undocumented immigrants is being brought up again. It would bring revenue into the state and provide the safe driving that everyone is clamoring for. However, the last line of the article really got me, "...There's a point of view, and it's a valid point of view, that to discourage illegal immigration, we should make the lives of illegal immigrants more difficult."
It got me because while I do not like living in an area plundered by illegal immigrants that make money here and send it back to wherever they're from without giving back to a system that's supporting them - I also strongly feel that our immigration system needs a serious overhaul. Its just not equiped to deal with the demand that we as a country have. There ARE people trying to do it by the way we want them to but they see no resolution in sight and yet they see millions of people succeeding by not following the law. It's all very unfair. I can't wait until something begins to happen - I fear it wont be in my lifetime though.