after a nearly six month hiatus, i'll be posting regularly again very soon. 'remodeling' the layout for now.

babies, tests, cars, trying to manipulate target to change shifts, cleaning up the filth around this place, and falling behind in school. all of this stuff has molded together as my life in the past 10 days. it has sparked in me the need to become super organized again...so today i cleaned up my room and put together/updated my collection of 7 or so planners, calendars and journals to keep me on track. by the way, if you are deprived and didn't know it, you should get yourself a moleskine notebook pronto. you think you don't need one now, but once you buy one you'll love it. i recomend the 5 x 8 plain notebook. anyway, i made a pretty sizeable purchase at B&N today. $50 gone on a 3x5 plain reporter moleskine notebook, "the portable dante" which includes la vita nuova and the divine comedy, a giant sudoku book, and a box of 600 spanish grammar cards. i'm pleased.

i was supposed to get my new(er) car yesterday, but that didn't happen. i am giving up the corolla (its still a good car, its just not dependable enoug for me to have up here by myself) to my family in exchange for some cash to help me buy another ride. i settled on one over the weekend, and although its not as new as i wanted, i really love it. 1997 Nissan 200SX SE-R, bright red (i didn't think red was a good choice either until i saw this car). its more of a sporty car, 2 dr with spoiler and sunroof, etc. the good thing is it only has 60 something thousand miles. hopefully i get to pick it up sometime this week.

melanie's baby was due on halloween. it isn't here yet. she went to the doctor today, they ruptured the membrane to try to set off the natural labor process, there's a 50% chance she'll go into labor in the next couple of days, if not then tuesday is set for induced labor. i'm so tired of waiting for my little niece.

anyway, i have to continue spending the dreary day trying to get my life back on track. go out and vote. i'm not, but you probably should.

After an interesting weekend, I have good news. I am currently in search of a new vehicle! Not a new vehicle as in like a brand new car, but a newer one at least. I guess my parents finally sensed the anxiety that the yota was giving me and decided they would take my car and pay a certain amount towards getting me a new car. Now I will probably end up having to pay about $1500 myself because I want to get a little bit nicer of a car than they are willing to pay for, but I figure it is well worth it. So hopefully within a week or two I will be sporting a newer, more reliable ride.

Tomorrow is Halloween! It is also the day that Melanie's induced labor will be scheduled if she doesn't manage to have that baby between now and then. Exciting.

I don't know where I'm going to get a new job. But I need it. Now that I've gotten it in my head that I could be leaving Target forever, it makes it even harder to get up and go to work there.

And I don't have tutoring this afternoon since its a teacher workday for public schools! That may not seem very exciting, but trust me when I say it is.

Amanda and I went to see Saw 3 on Saturday night. Now it was a great movie, I mean really good, but the sound effects and all the on-screen disgustingness had me covering my eyes and ears for about 30% of the movie. Not to mention it wasn't a good idea to start with, because the movie started at 9:55 and didn't end until almost 12, and I had to work at 4am. But its ok. I slept most of yesterday anyway.

I am so ready for Thanksgiving. I will actually get a break of more than 2 days. I will have Wednesday through Saturday off of work and out of school. That is really good news to me, I thought I was going to have to work on Thanksgiving, but fortunately it is one of the three holidays that Target shuts down for.

I registered last Friday. My schedule is surprisingly similar to this semester.

Well I must go do some homework before I'm off to class. Hope everyone has a good Halloween.

I guess I'll update this thing while I'm waiting for my registration window to open. It is cold and rainy today, but I kind of like it. For some reason I feel like this is the kind of weather that most suits Raleigh, or at least NC State. I went to English and Spanish today, but I skipped Psych and Biology in order to meet with my adviser and catch the bus home to register.

FYI, I almost died last Sunday on my way home from work. It was raining and as soon as I exited off the beltline my car hydroplaned on the exit ramp and spun around. Scary times in the hood.

I'm also looking for a new job. I'll probably end up sticking with Target a while longer, but after 8 months of getting up at 3am, its starting to get old.

I'm going home again today, hopefully the baby will be born. But the good news is that if she isn't born before Tuesday (which is her approximate due date) and Melanie still doesn't feel too well (she actually feels pretty good, she just tells the doctors she doesn't feel too good hoping they'll let her have the baby) then they will schedule an induced labor for sometime next week. So either way, looks like I'll be an Aunt this time next week. Super exciting!

Anyway, I'm not much in the mood for typing, so I'm going to go try to get into my registration thingy, hopefully it will stop rejecting me soon.

Let me just say, for the record, our apartment is SO filthy. And thanks to faulty sprinklers, it now has about ten random 1' x 1' square holes in the walls. And white dust everywhere. BLAH. But on the bright side, our kitchen light is fixed. And tomorrow is Friday.

I quickly glanced over some of my past posts. Most of them have a glum feeling to them. My thoughts are a little dim, but I actually am happy to be alive. Life is pretty good.

I find sometimes that thinking about my goals and the things I actually want to do in my life gets me really irritated. I feel like I dedicate 90% of my life to planning and thinking and 1% actually acting on these plans. Perhaps I would clean the house today if it weren't raining outside - which may not sound like a decent reason to let the house continue to spiral into chaotic grossness - but we have several 30 gallon trash bags worth of garbage and dragging those things to the dumpsters in cold rainy weather is a good enough reason to leave it alone. I've been thinking a lot about relationships lately. And thinking about relationships gets me to thinking about myself. The kind of person I am - which I cannot describe with a couple of carefully chosen adjectives, I've just given up on that - or at least the person I consider myself to be is not conducive to luck in relationships, or for that matter friendships. Being in college kind of makes me think its almost wrong as a human to not really treasure the ideas of sleeping around, placing my sole purpose in life on developing as many relationships as possible in hopes of finding someone I can force things to work out with, wasting away my weekends at parties, and trying to gain as much experience in casual drug use as possible. Not to be misunderstood, I enjoy a party every now and then, I like to drink a bit, and it was fun when I used to dabble in weed. But I think most of that is just trivial social bullshit. I feel like people have lost touch with themselves and each other and the genuine connections we can have with each other apart from crazy occasions under mind-altering influences and other certain physicalities. People don't really seem to honestly enjoy each other's company anymore. There seems to be a general lack of passion for simple kindness and caring, a lack for passion towards good causes, and growth of self-indulgence and self-centeredness. I'm selfish too. We all are to some extent. But I find that my main purpose in having friends is not really so that I'll have someone to listen to me talk about myself all the time. Sure, I like to share a few opinions of mine, talk about things that are going on in my life. But I take simple pleasure in listening, in being kind to people, in giving. I'm not very good at it, but at least I am making a conscious effort to do what I know makes me feel worthy of this life I have. My mother laughs whenever I tell her I'm pretty sure I'll be single the rest of my life. And I stopped intoning that phrase with sad self-pity because that was what I did back when I actually believed there was a good chance I'd wake up tomorrow and really meet someone I could connect with. Now when I say that, I mean it. I believe that there is a decent chance a person who can enjoy my personality will never come along. As I said, my mother finds this amusing, she reassures me by letting me know that I'm only nineteen and to stop acting and thinking like I'm forty. I don't believe no one good enough will ever come along, because I don't think I'm better than anyone. I just think I'm a lot different from most people. Not too eccentrically different, but different enough in my opinions and values to want things from my life apart from the norm, which so far hasn't seemed to make me an attractive person in the "market". Not to mention I'm not better looking than the average person, which seems to matter a lot. Well I've spilled myself a bit today. I'll probably go take a nap. I feel like I should clean up a bit, or at least read or do some homework. Oh well...the Earth will keep turning no matter what I decide to do.

I have been so busy. My life is nothing more than a melting pot of classes, tutoring, work, homework, and sleep. The one exciting thing going for me right now is that I can expect my niece to arrive any day now! She is due around Halloween but the doctors say it could be anytime. I am really excited about it. I've gone home for the past two weekends hoping I'd get lucky and be there when she's born but no luck yet. My life other than that is pretty uneventful. I guess thats what I have Amanda for...her life is fit for a soap opera.

It has been a rough couple of days for me. I woke up yesterday with the worst headache I've ever experienced in my life - when your entire head and right down to your neck throbs, and everytime you blink or move your head the aching gets worse. I also had a sore throat and just a general bodyache. So I tried to get a lot of sleep last night, but unfortunately I found myself waking up at least 3 times an hour. So I finally decided I'd call out of work, and Amanda offered me some of her coveted sore throat medicine. It knocked me out, and I slept until 10:30 this morning. Luckily the headache was greatly reduced (it is still there now but just kind of a dull ache) when I woke up but the sore throat was and is still worse.

I had to go do tutoring this afternoon...it did not go well. In addition to the two kids I normally have, I had another who totally made my two hours there HELL.

And everyone is tailgating and partying and going to the game tonight. But not me.

to update this thing.I meant to type up several interesting things that occurred last week but I found that I never really felt like it. I'll sum up a little bit of last week for you. Last Monday, as I sat on a bench near Bostian between my Spanish and Biology classes reading the Technician and having a cigarette, a young man (he could have been college-aged) approached me. He says something along the lines of do you mind if I sit with you. I didn't mind. He sits down in silence for a moment, and then says I'm going to go ahead and tell you, I'm not hear to talk. He then proceeds to tell me that he is from Charlotte, and his mother had just called him and said that his little brother had been shot in the head and killed. He said he had no money to get home, and he needed to catch a bus. While I debate whether or not I want to give him money, he speaks a little more casually and assures me that he's not bullshitting. I have a couple $20's, a $50 (from my bday), and a couple ones in my wallet, so I give him the ones. He asks that I pray for him and leaves. Now I know most of you are thinking I'm a dumbass for doing that. But as I sat there I remembered that it wasn't my place to judge him, or decide whether he was lying or not. Regardless of if he was telling the truth, he obviously needed the money for something. I found this very interesting, I sat there without moving for about five minutes after he left just replaying what had happened. It was strange.

Also, I started my tutoring thing at the elementary school last week. The first day was less than stellar...the kids I had weren't too excited. But Thursday I got hooked up with a couple of 5th graders (who I will hopefully be able to tutor for the rest of the semester) who were just amazing. It really made me happy to spend a couple of hours with them.

Amanda got a dog this week. Well, she and Wes got a dog, technically. I don't really care who the dog belongs to, the important thing is that it continues to piss and shit on our floor, and we're not even supposed to have pets in here. I mean yeah, its cute, its a puppy, but still...its annoying.

Unfortunately it looks like my college education will now be extended a full extra year rather than just a semester as I had hoped. My adviser pointed out while approving my plan of work that my course loads were basically just too heavy, so I went ahead and added another semester. It kind of sucks, not sure how much financial aid I can get for the 5th year but at least now I have reasonably light course loads for each semester.

Well, in closing, I will remind everyone that I will have a niece by the end of this month (if all goes according to plan...)! I'm pretty excited. If you're out of the loop...she will be named Layla Danielle (Danielle after yours truly!). Well I really need to go watch some TV and do nothing for a while...happy living.