summertime

i had a pretty easy start to the week. worked few hours the days i was scheduled and actually had two days off in a row. we went to kings dominion on one of those days. it was sunny but not too excruciatingly hot. and it was in the middle of the week when they close at six still so in four hours we were able to ride just about every roller coaster without any lines. including the new dominator.and the ferris wheel. which was new to us.
we stopped by the congo grill but it was closed so we didn't get to say hello to kayla at her new job. on my next day off i dragged gareth out shopping with me and i found this great new luggage. it's like a duffle bag but it's got wheels. fits my tripod and hopefully everything else i need to take. we also went to olive garden with the gift card my mom got gareth for graduation. it was delicious as usual. and he finished the entire lasagana as usual. i had a bit of a scare with my phone this week. it got wet at kings dominion and wasn't working for a few days. it started working last night. before that i was scrambling around trying to figure out which phone service to sign up for. but i'm safe for another month. our family plan ends the end of june and i have to sign up for my own for the first time. or get on gareth's. but that'll be another hill in a month. right now i'm working too much to think about anything else. i worked a ten plus hour shift closing last night and i'm working ten plus hour double shifts today through wednesday to get all my hours in before i leave. but i got an extra day off before i leave so hopefully i'll be able to recuperate before heading out on our big adventure. i finally sent my guyana story out to foster parrots and they sounded grateful. said they'd put it up on their website. i'll post when i see it.

almost

i keep thinking this is the last week of may. i just want june to come quicker. i am all prepared for alaska now. just got my camera cleaned this week. figured it was worth fifty bucks to be spot free for all those landscape shots. gareth's been reviewing more movies at rva magazine online. he hated the new terminator but enjoyed the new night at the museum. it's been a pretty easy start to the summer for him. there have been computer problems preventing him from his promotion. lucky guy. he was pretty unlucky earlier this week though when we found that kitt had peed on the lower book shelf containing only his books. he had to throw away a bunch of them. it was dried so we don't know when she did it. but i put her nose in it and banned her to the bathroom for a few days. she's been out a day or so now and we haven't found anything else. i'm concerned about what's going to happen at the new place. the bathroom's too small for her kitty litter let alone her home. and there's only so much we can keep out of the room we put her in. oh well. a hill to climb in another month. besides that it's been a good week. i watched the new season of weeds on dvd. it doesn't come out for another week. but it's definitly a good one to check out. i applied for a few more jobs not found on craigslist. i'm really hoping to get a call back from the university of richmond. a girl i work with works there and recommended me for the job so i hope that helps.

proud

this has been an exciting weekend. gareth's family was all here.
we had some nice meals and went to see star trek for our second and third times. it's really that good. it was nice to have a day off too. especially after getting threatened from my manager who got threatened via text from the training manager who was told from my district manager that i needed to lose the attitude or else i was going to lose my job. again. i believe it to be constructive criticism but apparently when you ask "why" instead of "how high" when he tells you to jump it's seen as insubordination. and that was my thanks for all the work i did preparing for the visit. i ended up being the one there for the visit. and working another double shift preparing for the inventory. all those things went quite well thanks to all my hard work. and that's the thanks i got. frustration. i can't wait to leave this place. to do something that actually means something. gareth got another review published in rva. it was on angels and demons. he didn't like it very much but wrote a really good review as to why. he's not going to get into prescreenings but he'll get reimbursed for his tickets at the end of the month. so it's kind of like getting paid. he'd be seeing most of them anyways. he's going to be moving up at bbuster this summer. he's not as annoyed with them as me. yet. i do feel hopeful about our future. i just get frustrated along the way.

trekking

last night i was looking at all the places i've sent my resume to. looks like about thirty. and i've only gotten a handful of responses. and of those only two weren't spam. and of those only one actually sounds promising. and it's for a movie company. haha. i can't get away from film. that may be a good thing though. gareth got his first movie review published this weekend. i'm super proud of him. http://rvamag.com/articles/full/3045/star-trek. rva is going to look into getting him into prescreenings at a local theater. and we're going to look into seeing star trek tonight. i didn't go to the midnight opening with him. but his review sold me on it. i'm happy to have the day off today. i just finished watering my plants. everything's coming up quite nicely. except for the bulbs mom got me. and the strawberry seedlings. i hope those come up soon. everything else is nice and green. today is supposed to be the big visit by the regional director at bbuster. he was supposed to come two other times and never did. but today "he's really coming." so i spent twenty hours in the past two days getting the store ready. while working two of those shifts with the most annoying employee. she was sick and just made everything worse. i really hope i find a new job soon. but today i'm going shopping with the money i make from all those hours spent in annoyance. and that makes me happy.

stories

so i only heard back from one of the job posts. and it was spam about working at home to make money. sigh. i've applied to a few more. an office assistant, a bank teller and a preschool assistant teacher. i think i have a pretty broad range of skills and experiences for these different positions. i know they're not exactly what i want to do in life but i've actually been getting to that lately and it seems like it's going to take a while to get there. i worked on the guyana story this weekend. rewrote the beginning to capture the reader's attention as recommended. "I got down on all fours and crawled the last few inches to peer over the cliff and down the 741 foot drop that led to the bottom of Kaieteur Falls, the largest single-drop waterfall in the world. It was an impressive way to start our adventure in the rain forest. We’d arrived just hours earlier to begin our ecotourism trip in Guyana and were already blown away by its beauty." i still need to write a sidebar on my brother's sanctuary to add a local appeal to it. but then i'll be ready to start sending it out to publications. i got a few books on freelance writing and photography. and on alaska. i've begun my research for the trip. my idea for the story is a bridge in the gap of generations between my parents my niece and me. how my parents passed an appreciation of the earth and environment through travelling down to me and how it is my responsibility to pass it on to the next generation. does that sound interesting to anyone? my professor said i need a new angle on going to alaska. i figured that's pretty specific to our trip. we'll see where it goes. i ended up working friday night so my manager didn't have to work a double. and in exchange he was supposed to work last night for me so i didn't have to work a double. he ended up going back home to charlottesville to his parents' house to do laundry yesterday and asked if i could stay later because he was running late. that turned into him not being able to work at all. i stayed late and someone had to fill in closing who couldn't even run register. i can't believe he pulled that. it's the first flaky thing he's done though so i'll let it slide. this one time. it was just really rude of him to do.