Yesterday I saw The Hollow Man. It was cheese.

I'm depressed today. My sister has (for the third time) stolen my shirt from my room. I don't really care about the shirt, it is more the fact that I seriously have about seven shirts and when one is gone, it means I don't even have enough to wear in a week's cycle. That and the fact that she has no regard for my own personal property and space. My parents want to put a keyed lock on my door (that only I can get into, even when I'm not home), but I think that's ridiculous. Why should I have to live like that? Just because my sister's selfish doesn't mean that I should have to lock up all my stuff like treasure. Oh god, my grandma is talking again. This time she's talking about the grocery store and every single experience she has had there in her 82 years...

My birthday is this Tuesday. It's going to suck. My parents didn't even realize that it was my birthday next week until I informed them today. They will still forget I bet. Besides, everytime it's someone's birthday in my household, I make the cake and buy the ice cream. No one ever does it for me... It is pretty much a given that they'll forget though. I asked them if I could get a mountain bike for my birthday (gotta milk these last birthdays while I'm still my parents "kid"), but it has never been brought up again. That means, they will "forget," and I won't get anything. Sucks. Maybe I'm spoiled or something, but it pisses me off that no one lifts a finger for my birthday, let alone remembers it. I'll probably get called into work that day anyway. Then I have to go to Santa Cruz and find a place to live. That probably won't happen either...

August 3, 2000...12:28am

Well, I was supposed ot hear from this guy about an apartment today, but there was no call. I'm getting really frustrated with this housing situation. All I want is a place to live. I don't even care if it is nice anymore. Sad, isn't it. The Santa Cruz housing market lowers your standards SO much.

In other news, I went to the beach for the first time this summer yesterday afternoon. There was some freak storm coming in or something because the waves were HUGE. I went to the beach not knowing that the waves were going to be huge and I just thought that they were normal. Then I went home, drained from the ocean tossing me around all afternoon and saw a story on the news about the "giant" waves in Southern California. Oops, no wonder why I was so tiered after swimming and playing in the water so long. There were other people doing it too, and they had just as much fun as I did. I don't surf or anything, I just like to jump in the freezing water and swim around and jump over waves.

I rented a movie called "Smoke" the other night. If you haven't seen it, I suggest you do. I thought it was excellent. I don't know how I missed it when it came out (a few years ago) but it was a really all around good film. I also watched this movie called "Clockwatchers" and it was terrible. Don't see it, it only wastes your mind away.

Speaking of mind wasting, did anyone check out TV tonight (wed. night)? Survivor was such a surprise. Gervase got kicked off, which was unexpected to me because my mom had slipped and told me that the rumor was that he WON. Obvously he didn't win because off he went, voted off by the evil Tagi alliance. I was kind of sad, I liked him. I hope Richard gets kicked off next week. He just turned way too evil. I don't even know who to guess as the winner now. Maybe Sue? Maybe Kelly? I think Richard's going to get kicked off very soon.

Next in TV news, did anyone see American High? I thought it was really good. My sister is like the female twin of the ADD crazy guy who fails school, except without the whole "helping others" for no reward part. Anyway, I'm babbling on and on about TV when I should be brooding over this whole apartment thing...

July 29, 2000...10:31pm

Well, I made it back from a two day trip to Santa Cruz. So far, no place to live yet. I did find one place that might be an interesting breakthrough, but I'm not even going to write about it because I don't want to get my hopes up too high. I really really want to live there though. I'll say that much.

This weekend, rather than looking for a place to live the whole full day we planned to, we gave up and had a little fun. Besides, there wasn't really much to look at considering the fact that there are no available places to live anywhere in Santa Cruz (at least that's how it seemed). Tomorrow, I'm hoping ot get a full day on the computer downstairs (witht he cable connection) so I can update my webpage. I do have a sick grandma living there though, so it all depends on how she's feeling.
I just watched Blood Simple with my family. I love the Cohen brothers. Seriously, my favorite directors are a dead tie between Terry Gilliam and the Cohen brothers. I can't decide though. I mean, how can you make someone choose between The Big Lebowski and Brazil? Or the Hudsucker Proxy and Fear and Loathing? Or even Time Bandits and Barton Fink? Besides Jeff Bridges is in The Big Lebowski and The Fisher King and they're both great (though if I HAD to choose between watching either of those two for eternity, I'd go the Dude in Lebowski...I sure am rambling on...

I'm kind of angry right now. My sister decided that it would be a good idea to go through all my personal stuff while I was gone and she actually STOLE two drawers and all the contents of this little Chinese jewlery box I have. I think it was all just stupid crap like rubberbands and beads in the drawers she took, but still, that's MY stupid crap, not her's. She has absolutely no respect for anyone or their personal property. My dad actually wants to put a lock on my door that needs a key to enter to keep her out. I think that's just ridiculous though. I mean, someone SHOULD be able to keep their room in their family house unlocked without having a sibbling TAKE anything they want. She just takes. That's all. She's quite an annoying thief. I think she actually snuck into my room while I was asleep and stole a shirt from my closet! That's another thing too, she totally oobsessed with her "image" and how she looks to everyone. Clothes are more important to her than anything. Anyway, I'm just irritated because my laundry has been gone through and those two drawers are stolen. I would actually consider that lock on my door if I weren't moving out soon. Oh well. I need to clean my room...

July 27, 2000…12:21am

Damn! I just found a half dead gigantic odd-looking bug being eaten alive by a swarm of ants in my bathroom! Oh, how it reminded me of Hawaii and all the tropical bugs there. This thing was weird. It was kind of long shaped with weird brownish and black stripes up and down it. Anyway, it too all my strength to spray it with Raid and pick it up (with toilet paper) and flush it down the toilet. I figure that that’s a better death than being eaten alive for days by ants. I can’t stand ants. They take over my house every summer. No matter how many ant traps (the kind the supposedly have poison in them that ants bring back to the nest) or sprays or cleanings we do, they always manage to find a way back.

I’m frustrated today. Well, my friend’s dad called Jennifer (the meanie from the property management) and finally got it out of her that she rented the apartment we applied to over a week ago. She didn’t even look at out applications (even though we were technically first). So it turns out she’s been lying to me every time I call her. I even asked her to please notify me if she rents the place out to someone else so I can stop calling and worrying. "Of course I will," is what she said. What a lying bitch. I’m not asking to be given an apartment the very second I want one, but I am asking for a fair chance. I’m thinking about complaining to someone, but I don’t know how. Besides, I’m not taking any crusade on for fair treatment in the rental market until I have a safe room over my head and a lease signed. Then I’m writing the most professional letter of complaint in my career of complaint letters to that company, demanding that they apologize for their unfair discrimination. I’m serious about my letter writing career. I’ve written a very professional letter of complaint to my high school principal, several newspapers, and more than a few businesses. The principal actually called me out of class to go to his office (the only time I’ve ever "been sent to the principal’s office") to tell me that my opinion on the inconvenience of school mandated half days instead of holidays was in his words "WRONG." How can an opinion be wrong? Oh well, high school principals (at least in my experience) can tend to be pretty stern and closed minded to student thought. Anyway, the point is that this company WILL be getting a letter eventually (just after I have secured myself a place to live and know for sure that I will not have to deal with them in the near future).

I went to work today. It was just as bad as predicted. At one point I was highlighting mistakes in hundreds of printed records. I seriously felt like I was just coloring solid pages in neon pink highlighter glow. That’s work.

Oh yeah, and I watched Survivor. I’m into that show. It looks like Richard is getting his ass kicked off next week. I used to cheer for him, but he has proved himself to be a little too much of a sneaky jerk to root for anymore. My mom ruined the show for me. Last week, I was watching it with my dad when he told me that he went to the internet sight of the guy who hacked into CBS’s computer and got the winner’s name. My dad just couldn’t resist the temptation of knowing the winner early. The LA TIMES published an article about the website with the address in case you’re wondering where it came from. Anyway, I begged him not to tell me the winner. I wanted to enjoy the show with the suspense of not knowing the winner. So he agrees not to tell me and shuts up about it. During the last ten minutes of the show, my mom walks in and says, "OOH, did you know that _______ is the winner!" Thanks mom…

July 25, 2000…11:03pm

Well, I have to go to work tomorrow. That bugs me. I hate my job right now. I hate sitting at my desk in the corner typing in information for a project that just doesn’t matter to me at all. I don’t care about my company’s audit that I’m working on. I make little mistakes and I have little questions and I just don’t care enough about them to go back and check because all in all I won’t be here when those mistakes become a problem and I don’t like the people I work with. My supervisor actually had me go through every single printed page of a fat binder one by one, clicking a little box for each corresponding file and highlighting the change in the book. There were over six hundred pages (printed front and back). It was so useless and so ridiculous. I only made it through the first two hundred and then I went home. This all happened yesterday and I know it will happen again. I feel like the beginning of the movie Office Space, the part where work is the most dreaded activity ever imagined. How depressing.
I’m also totally frustrated with family life here in dysfunctional headquarters. My sister is kind of crazy. Have I mentioned that before? She’s a really good person with some really messed up problems. You see, the thing that’s bugging me right now is the fact that because she doesn’t even listen to or care about my parents, they have no control over her. So when she does something that pisses my dad off, he somehow transfers the aggression and anger towards me, even if it doesn’t make any sense. Seriously, this happens. Once, my sister was being a loud crazy pain in the ass yelling at me late at night and woke my dad up. He got up, very angry, to make her stop and when she slammed her door shut and locked it he seriously just came into my open room and yelled at me. The only reason my sister had been yelling at me was because I had asked for a couple of my shirts that she "borrowed" (without asking) to be given back. This kind of stuff happens all the time. I just want to get through summer and move back to school. It’s selfish of me, but I just don’t think I can stand being at home much longer.

That leads me to problem number three, housing. I still don’t have a place to live next year. The woman at the property management company is evil. She is mean and cold hearted and she has no idea what the term "professional" means. Applications were dropped off almost two weeks ago. I called her and left a message on her voice mail six days after the applications were dropped off. She never called back. I called back the next day and asked her what the status of my application was. She said she’d call me that day after she’d processed it (by processing, she means calling one phone number to make sure I paid all my housing bills for the last two years). She never called back. I call the next day and asked the same question. This time she says she will need two to five days to process the application. She doesn’t call for five days. I call on the sixth day (today) and ask what’s going on. She tells me that she still hasn’t gone over the applications. What does this woman do all day? She’s there, 9-5 every day. There aren’t that many properties to manage. She told me this time that she would "rather not set a time constraint to processing the application," which means that she’s never going to do it. Damn her. Damn her to hell. Oh well, I better get used to it. Some people in life just plain suck. To anyone who read this: sorry for all the bitching, read yesterday’s entry for something oddly humorous…

July 24, 2000…11:31pm

Well, my old job hired had me come back today. Then they told me they don’t want me in tomorrow, but they do want me in the day after! That’s the thing with being a "temp" for the summer…they just treat you like a work machine. No regular hours, no regular weekdays, just plain "work when we need you, go home when we don’t." The thing that bugs me is that they said, "Well, we could have you in tomorrow but you’ll run out of work to do through the day…So we’ll just have you come in Wed. so we can make you extra busy. This means, not only do I not get paid for tomorrow, but also I’m going to have to work my ass off making it up! Screw the corporate world. I’m in college in hopes of escaping it (to an extent). I want a job where I can be creative. My job right now is seriously one that I think a machine will be built to do in the near future. I take hundreds of forms with hand written information and I transcribe it into a computer database, making a file of typed information for each form. I swear, they could train monkeys to do it! Wait, that’s all I am to them…a trained monkey who comes in only on the days they NEED me. Oh well, at least I get to have a paycheck.

Something really strange happened today and although it is pretty sick, I’m going to share it with the world. First let me explain some things. I have a dog. Dodger is his name. He is the sweetest, most lovable overweight and simple-minded wiener dog. By simple minded, I mean lovably dumb. He’s getting old too. I got him as a puppy for my ninth birthday and I’m nearing my twentieth birthday next month (actually in two weeks or so). Anyway, I decided to escape the chaos of my terminally dysfunctional home and take the dog for a walk with Jacob. We walked him to a nearby park about half a mile from my house. After letting him walk through the open fields, sticking his head in snake and rabbit holes, sometimes claiming them to be his by peeing in them, we walked him over to the open soccer field and sat on a grassy hill. I had him on his lease, which was about ten feet long, allowing him to go sniffing in the nearby bushes while we sat and watched the sunset fade away. All of a sudden, I hear my dog yelp. I get up and walk over to him thinking that he has stepped on a thorn or gotten a stick caught in his foot or something. I check his feet and there’s no thorn or anything to be found. He’s still whining in pain when I realize that there’s a foot long little stick sticking out from under his belly. I try and move the twig, but every time I touch it he yelps out in pain. So I bend way down to see where the stick is when I realize that it is stuck in his penis! Shocked, I call Jacob to look and low and behold my dumb dog somehow managed to walk into a stick and "jam it up his pee hole" (as South Park once termed the activity). Eventually, after much panic, Jacob dared to gently pull the stick out, and luckily it didn’t hurt the dog, revealing that the stick had gone up about two inches! After that the dog was happy as usual and perfectly fine.

Okay, I had to tell that story. Sorry, but you would too. The best thing about work not wanting me tomorrow is that I can enjoy a day off. I was thinking about going to the zoo and seeing the Red Ape exhibit. I’m a nerd. I like the zoo and I’m over nine! Oh yeah, and I decided that I’m going to completely change my web page layout. I think I’m going to try and not use Flash as the main editor. It’s way too annoying to update in Flash. Don’t worry though, I’m still going to use Flash for my photo slideshow and my animations!

July 23, 2000

I still haven’t confirmed a place to live next year. Damnit.

I’ve been out at the movies the last two nights (What Lies Beneath and Pokemon 2000, don’t ask). Today I actually helped my friend Evan clean his room. We watched The Beach on DVD and then he realized that he needed to clean his room. Naturally, Jacob and I helped out, knowing that if we didn’t, Evan would probably get distracted and forget about cleaning his room. It’s odd cleaning someone’s room with him or her. I think you really get to know a lot about a person. I mean, on the first hand, you learn what they value and what they simply throw away. With me, I save everything. It’s ridiculous. Other people, they just don’t care as much about little pieces of junk that they don’t need (I seriously envy that about a person). I’m such a packrat. I honestly have so much junk that I never use but I can’t throw away. I look at my room and I see stacks and stacks of boxes full of junk that I’m oddly attached to. Oh, writing about my poor packrat habits is making me want to clean my room. We can’t have that happened so I’ll just change the subject…

Actually, I’m kind of done with my documentation of the day. I really haven’t had any interesting experiences these last two days…

July 21, 2000…12:25am

Hey wow! The people who I worked with earlier this summer (doing mindlessly easy data entry) want me back Monday for a few days. Just a little while though, but hey, I could use the paycheck…

Today was hot. Yesterday was hotter. There’s this horrible heat wave that’s just cooking Southern California right now. Every summer there are heat waves, and every summer we complain. The heat makes me cranky. I don’t want to move in it. The worst is driving. I hop in my car, burn my hands on the steering wheel as I maneuver it out of the driveway and down the street, and I hope that the air conditioning in there will start doing a better job (which it never does). I walked barefoot on the pavement to get to my car in a parking lot yesterday (shoes were in the car!) and I actually burnt my feet on the hot ground to the point where the still hurt today. That’s way too hot.

July 21, wow. Where has the summer gone? Soon it’s going to be my birthday (8-8) and that’s always the first sign that summer is coming to an end. Birthdays are weird. Once, I was celebrating my fourth birthday with my very first trip to Disneyland. My parents had taken me there even though my mother was very pregnant with my little sister at the time. We were in some gift shop or something when all of a sudden… my parents start rushing me to leave. I don’t remember much, but I remember not wanting to leave (what four year old wants to?). So after this tremendous rush home from Disneyland to our suburban home on the other side of LA, they drop me off at home with my grandma or someone and leave. The next day they come home with a BABY, who I named Pinky but whose real name was Vicky. The point is, my sister’s birthday was on my celebration! Her birthday is actually three days after mine, but that’s close enough. I forgot what the point of this is…

July 18, 2000…11:58pm

I feel so lazy today. Instead of driving twenty minutes to get to the beach, I just washed my car with Jacob because going to the beach to cool off sounded harder than just spraying ourselves down with the hose. Now that’s lazy! Speaking of cooling off, today was the hottest day of this Southern Californian summer that I’ve experienced since I moved back. It was one hundred and nine degrees in some places, luckily, I live off in a nice cool valley in comparison to the LA basin and the San Fernando Valley so it wasn’t that bad here. Still, it was hot.

I have to get up early tomorrow and bring my car to the shop. The brakes sound kind of funny. The guys there must think I’m crazy because the brakes have been acting funny for a while and they always have to tell me that there’s nothing wrong with them. I swear, there is something wrong and it only manifests itself when I’m alone in the car, therefore making me seem crazy with my "imaginary" brake troubles.

Enough about my Car…The moon still looks full. It hurt my eyes driving home tonight. I wish it would morph into one of those half moon/Cheshire cat smile moons. Those are the nice moons that don’t hurt your eyes or make you and all your companions crazy like the full ones. They also don’t leave you as blind at night as those non-existent "new" moons. Why am I rambling on about the moon when I could be watching cartoons? I get my film back from the lab tomorrow. I’m excited…

July 17, 2000…10:55pm

Well, even though the date seems to say otherwise, another day has passed (almost) and I don’t recall accomplishing much. I need to get another job. I faxed a bunch of stuff to raise my chances of getting an apartment where I go to school, but I’m still rather frustrated and worried about the whole issue.

It was Jacob (my boyfriend)’s brother’s birthday today, so the evening was filled with celebratory eating and stuff. Why is it that the American culture celebrates everything with food? Think about it…Christmas dinner, Thanksgiving, Forth of July picnics, Birthday cake, Easter eggs, Wedding cake, Anniversary dinner and a movie, popcorn to go with that movie, Super Bowl Sunday chips and dip…every occasion has a food to go along with it. I don’t know whether that’s fantastic or depressing! Anyway, I had Chinese food and apple pie afterwards (a strange combination, to be honest).

I can’t remember what else I did to waste away a perfect Monday. I spent a long time worrying about this apartment issue. Oh yeah, I dragged my best friend Evan along on some pointless errands with me this afternoon. He seemed pretty down but he said that going out cheered him up. Every thing seems pretty down lately. I need a job. Oh yeah, and the good news is that I was not nervous today. I had a little nervous attack this evening, but it went away! I guess I’m sane after all…

July 17, 2000…12:24am

I’ve decided to take after something I saw from a friend and start writing a journal/column and maybe put it up on my page. I don’t know why, but there is just something so cleansing about writing down my personal thoughts and putting them up for anyone willing to read. Maybe I won’t even put this up, but right now, I’m really stressed and I just need to write it all out. I feel nervous right now and I don’t know why. It’s just the way I react to things sometimes, I guess. Last year, when I was having all these personal problems and trying to learn to drive a stick (it is really easy, but learning on a Honda Civic with 150,000 miles on one clutch is a DIFFICULT task). IT turned out that the clutch was already broken and needed to be replaced. Of course, no one told me this until AFTER I had learned to drive it and its sensitive unforgiving clutch. Anyway, back to the story, I was so stressed that I just got nervous and shook a lot as if I’d had ten cups of coffee every single day. That went on to become two or three miserable weeks where I was nervous over nothing all the time. Anyway, I feel like that now. It has only been going on for today, but I hope it goes away soon.

I think the full moon if affecting everything around me (and maybe me). I don’t really believe in all that superstitious magical crap, but I do find an odd connection between the full moon and the happenings in my life. Mainly my household is crazy right now. I don’t know what to do about it.

On the bright side, I went on a little tourist trip this afternoon. My mom, my sister, my boyfriend and I all hauled down to Hollywood for Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles (a famous LA landmark of a dining center with lots of Southern "soul food"). The place was dark, small, and crowded as hell, but it was fun and filling and the food was really a good treat (ever had maple syrup on fried chicken? Believe it or not, it works!).

I’m still nervous. I’m nervous about next year. I’m nervous about my grandma and her diseases. I’m nervous about my troubled teen-right out of a talk show sister. I’m nervous about automobile accidents. I’m nervous about money. I’m nervous about mad psycho-killers lurking in the dark parts of my house. I’m nervous of clowns in showers. I’m nervous about fires while I’m asleep. I’m nervous about evil clown dolls coming to life and killing me while I’m asleep. I’m nervous about everything still. Full moons make me a little nervous.
Well, sleeping sounds like a good escape from this nervous feeling. Maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow and feel like myself again…