Pun Intended

Nick and I are planning on going to Silverwood in Idaho August 1-4. If anybody would like to go, let us know. It costs like $55 per day for the theme park and $28 per day for the campground, and each camp site holds two tents so I guess we could share a camp site with somebody else.

Don't be a fucker. Of course you have to pay for yourself.

I forget EVERY birthday.

I have a new job at the Cheesecake Factory in Bellevue. We want to move out of Auburn and either to Seattle or Bellevue, so this place will be closer to where we move (probably Bellevue). Also, I'm hoping to increase my income. Oh, and there was that situation with my GM that i never became un-angry about.

I told my manager, Kit, that I would like to still work at Bahama Breeze part-time. He got all pissy and said no, that it was going to be all or nothing. Like that would somehow change my mind. So I gave my notice. The next two weeks are going to be a bitch, because I'll be training at the Cheesecake Factory Monday-Thursday and I'll be working weekends at Bahama Breeze. I'll have to be able to give away my Monday and Thursday shifts both weeks, which might be difficult, but I can probably do it if I pick up extra shifts on the weekends. I could just wait for the next training class, in three weeks, but then I'd be out of work for one week and I'd be in training for two weeks, and trainees don't make any tips. So I'd basically go three weeks without making any money. I think it'd be best to start now if I can.

The interview process at Cheesecake has made me think a little bit about my situation with my GM at BB. At Cheesecake, I went there FIVE TIMES during the interview process. I filled out my application last Wednesday. They told me that open interviews were Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. So I went back the next day and had my initial interview. Then I had to go back on Monday to take a 'service questionnaire," which was basically to determine if I was social and energetic enough to be a server and to make sure I wasn't completely insane. After successful completion, I was scheduled a second interview for Tuesday morning. After that interview, I had my final interview with the GM on Thursday. The whole process took over a week. However, I was hired at Bahama Breeze in about an hour. I went in, filled out an application, talked to Kit, took their "questionnaire," and was hired. But after seeing other people go through the hiring process, I have noticed that it's supposed to be a three-interview process just like at Cheesecake. So I have a sneaking suspicion that my GM at BB has always resented me a little just because I didn't go through the process correctly. He is supposed to make the final decision in the hiring process of every single employee, but he never even met me until I was already in training. It wasn't my fault - it was Kit's fault for screwing up the process, but I wonder if that might be why he has never seemed to like me, despite that I work my ass off, I'm the shift leader almost every night, I constantly get teamwork pins, My "internet guest satisfaction surveys" have been in the top 10 since I started (and I've only cheated a few times! Thanks, Vicki!), and all the other managers love me.

It's only speculation, of course, but I think it makes sense.

As far as school goes, I've decided to take this next quarter off. And by this next quarter, I mean this next year or two years or five years or however long it takes me to want to be in school again. My GPA this quarter is probably around a 1.5. I'm just not mentally in a place where I can handle studying every second that I'm not in school or at work. I'm so tired of getting four hours of sleep every night because I get home from work so late and I have to get up so early for classes. I'm tired of never seeing my friends. Also, I don't know what I'm going to school for. All I want to do is write. So maybe when I actually want to be in school, I'll go back. But for now, I'm going to sleep in. I'm going to watch TV. I'm going to read books. I'm going to save money to travel. I'm going to have fun.

In other news, my little brother's girlfriend is pregnant. My mom's side of the family is extremely religious. They are not going to handle this well at all. My brother and his girlfriend are both 19. They both work part-time, minimum-wage jobs and have no idea what they want to do with their lives. There's no way they are ready, financially or otherwise, to have a child. My parents already know, and while they're not happy about it, they seem to be supportive. I find this amusing, because I was always told I'd be kicked out of the house if I became pregnant and was not married. So what I predict will happen is that Jessica will eventually move into the basement of my parents' house, where Mark lives, and they will spend a few years, until they get better jobs, raising this baby almost completely with my parents' money. I don't know. If I were them, I'd just be completely embarrassed right now. I know it happens all the time anymore, but it was clearly a mistake, it was clearly preventable, everybody knows they aren't ready for it, and it's just blatantly obvious that they were being careless and weren't thinking about what could happen as a result of their actions. To me, that seems embarrassing.

Strep throat.

Haven't worked since Tuesday. Doctor says I can't work until tomorrow. Am officially bored senseless.

Have decided to quit wasting my time with school. Really. What's the point in going when I change my mind every few days about what I want to study?

Will spend the next few years traveling and finding a way to make millions while doing nothing.

I do!

Lol.

I found what I'm getting Melanie for Christmas.

So my grandparents are still very upset that I eloped. It's only been about two weeks since they found out, and I've been meaning to write them a letter. I figure that writing a letter would be much easier than actually having to face them, if they're so upset about it.

However, my grandmother is back in the hospital and I guess tomorrow they're re-doing the same surgery that nearly killed her two weeks ago. And she's much weaker now because of the first surgery. It's very possible that she won't live through it.

I can't really have my grandmother, who until two weeks ago I got along with great, dying while she's upset with me. So I guess I have to go to the hospital tomorrow and talk to her and my grandfather. I'm not really sure what to say to them, and I don't think I should have to apologize for getting married.

I'm absolutely dreading tomorrow, because of talking to my grandparents and because of the possibility of losing one of them. And also, my grandfather's health is terrible and the only reason he's even alive is because of my grandma. So if she died, we all think he'd probably die within a couple of months.

Yay, Christmas.

I really don't know what to do right now.

Hello, friends.

Yesterday morning, I found myself backed into a corner and was forced to tell my mom that I eloped. She was upset, mainly because I waited a month and a half to tell her. However, she's over it now.

She told my father, who said nothing but "she did it because she's embarrassed of me." This pissed me off. Haven't I made it pretty clear that, while Nick and I were talking about getting married in a few years, we decided to just do it right now so we would get financial aid? What my dad said doesn't make sense at all. However, it did make it so that I don't know what I'll ever say to him any time I see him for the rest of my life.

My mother also told my brothers, the oldest of whom told his wife, who told her sister, who goes to school with my cousin, who then found out and told my aunt and uncle, who told my grandparents. My grandmother was in the hospital last week and almost died (she's like a billion years old), and I went to visit her. At one point, I mentioned something about maybe being engaged soon. So now that my grandparents know that I was married at the time that I said that, they are demanding a formal apology and have decided never to speak to me again, I guess.

I didn't want to tell my family. I knew that they would react horribly. Everybody said I was overreacting and they couldn't possibly be as upset as I thought they would be. Well, it actually went much worse.

Meh. Such is life, I guess.

Well, it seems that Nick went and decided that we weren't going to keep the fact that we're married a secret anymore. Fine. He thinks that because I told Melanie, he could tell the entire world. So I hope nobody gets all upset that I didn't tell them. It was supposed to be a secret for the next few years.

So now that everybody knows, it's starting to feel really weird. We were planning to just kind of "ignore" the fact that we were married. We had planned to get married in a few years, but we realized that we would get loads of financial aid if we did it now. So we did. The first month or so basically felt exactly the same. I mean - what's the difference? We already live together and all that. Being married is really only a legal thing that enables you to be on each other's insurance, get better financial aid, etc. But now his family and everybody knows (everyone except my family) and they want to have this big dinner party or something on Saturday night to celebrate. Well...I'm slightly unprepared for all this. I was expecting to kind of file away the whole being married thing, and then we were going to get engaged, plan the wedding, and go through everything like normal people. So it feels really weird that suddenly a bunch of people want to celebrate our marriage.

Oh well. I'm not really a romantic person. Or rather, I don't think marriage is romantic. Like I said, I see it as just a bunch of legal crap. It used to mean more, back when people didn't live together before they got married, and when people didn't get divorces so frequently, but now...I don't know. When people are in a committed relationship now, they generally just move in together. After that, it seems marriage isn't such a big deal - it signifies committment, but if two people live together then hopefully they're already committed. Anyway, It will still be fun to plan the wedding. So for now, the plan is to announce our "engagement" in December and then get married August 30, 2008 (it's a Saturday, and it will be exactly two years after the day we really got married). The whole being "engaged" thing while everybody except my family knows that I'm already married will be weird.

Please, nobody leave any comments regarding marriage on my myspace. My brothers read it.

My hair is a different color.

Summer is over, and now Bahama Breeze is not so busy. So now I have to work twice as much to make the same amount of money. And I need that same amount of money to pay off all my debt :( and so I can hopefully go to Europe this summer :).

My manager Rob walked into the break room the other day while I was reading a book called "Europe by Backpack." I guess he goes to Europe every year, so he was finally nice to me for the first time since I started there. He doesn't care if you're a good worker. He's only nice to you if he thinks you're cool.

Chris Foster, my favorite manager but the one who wouldn't let me be a TL (TL = "team leader" = the person in charge of a specific pod in the restaurant = the person who gets free food at the end of the shift) has been gone for like two weeks. So I asked Kit on Monday if he thought I was capable of being a TL, and he made me a TL on Tuesday night. Wee. Wait 'til Foster comes back and I tell him. I'll be like "what now, bitch?"

Fall quarter starts on Monday, and I'm taking a 7:00 a.m. math class. Also, a history class at 8:00, a Spanish class at 10:00, and maybe a choir class at 1:00. I won't find out about that one until the first day of the quarter. Anyway, the math class is math 102. Yes, I've already taken math 124, but I have to take more math classes for UW and I don't want to take higher math classes because I don't really care about math, so I'm going backwards. I'm not too worried about it, except that it's at 7:00 a.m. and I don't usually get home from work until like 1:00 a.m.

I think that's about it. Oh, and last night at work I was invited to some crazy hippie vegan party. I had a table full of hippie vegans (who I thought were really cool) and they left me a phone number to RSVP at. I didn't, though, because I'm an antisocial coward. However, I think a crazy hippie vegan party might have been fun.

I called in to work today. I've never done that before. But I did today.

I've had a sore throat for the past two weeks, but it has been kind of mild - it hurt in the morning and at night, but during the day it wasn't too bad. Then today when I woke up, it was really really bad. So I decided to go to the doctor. It's a new doctor, because my old doctor moved to Michigan so she could pretend to not be a lesbian. The new doctor seemed kind of...crappy? He didn't test for strep throat or anything. He asked me if I had a temperature. While he was standing right next to a thermometer. He asked me if I had a temperature. First of all, yes. Yes I have a temperature. But we won't know what it is unless we use the goddamn thermometer. Also, he asked me if I have swollen glands. Umm...another thing he could have figured out on his own? I'm really not interested in the science and medical fields, and while I know that the glands he was referring to are somewhere in the neck, I don't know how to tell if I have swollen glands. Then he looked at my throat and said it looked normal, which I don't believe because right now I'm drinking peach iced tea and it's burning the back of my throat. This tells me that my throat is raw. He didn't do the swab thing to see if I had strep, either. Instead, he took a blood sample. I don't know why. Oh, and he kept asking me if my family has a history of cancer.

Another cool part was that in the waiting room there was this old guy who was telling me about how he threw his heart medication out the window, and he feels better than he has in years. He also told me that if he weren't a Christian, he would sue. Crazy old man.

Micah is back from Nicaragua, which means that her Spanish is suddenly better than mine. Need to practice. She convinced me, though, to look into applying for winter quarter at UW instead of waiting for summer quarter. I don't know. I would love to get out of Green River sooner, and to start taking classes for my majors. However, I don't know if I'd be accepted right now. As it stands, my GPA is an unimpressive 3.1. After fall quarter, I will have completed all of my general requirements for UW graduation except for one math or science class. The rest of the classes I was going to take this year at Green River are all relatively unnecessary. It would boost my GPA to somethinglike a 3.4, but I don't know if that's really going to make a difference. My personal statement is awesome, and my high school transcript is good, which will impress them. Will my slightly-lower GPA really decrease my chances of getting in so much that I should wait until summer quarter to apply? I don't know. I emailed the head admissions advisor at UW and asked her these questions (in a way that made more sense), and she replied back with "well, it doesn't hurt to apply." That didn't answer any of my questions.

Oh well.

In a temporary bout of femininity, I went out yesterday and got a manicure. And this crazy old Korean lady literally forced me to have my eyebrows done for free because she liked my skin. No joke. She made me do it.

And finally, for the past two hours I have been laying in bed, watching Spaced on YouTube ala Tyler. We should have a Spaced party soon. I'll made a sparkle light out of tin foil. We'll eat carrots and dip and listen to Time Warp.

I just looked up the math teacher I'm taking fall quarter on one of those rate my professor sites. One of the reviews said "Mr. Jonas is a pancake."

It makes me love the world.

Thing 1: There was a shooting in the Southcenter Mall parking lot today. At a bus stop. One guy got shot and may or may not die. The suspect is running around somewhere. This would explain why we suddenly stopped being busy. However, I think it's strange that nobody at the restaurant knew there was a shooting, or that there was a crazy person with a gun running around just outside.

Thing 2: After work, Nick and I went to the Applebee's in Auburn. My old favorite manager from my old Applebee's was working there. He just transferred this week. He offered me a job. As an expo.

Fuck that.

I hope everybody thinks this is as funny as I think it is...

On opendiary.com, I was reading a random entry where this girl was doing a survey. This was part of it:

40. What do you at for Christmas dinners? umm what? what do I EAT? the regular christmas stuff: turkey, ham, masked potatoes, corn usually, buns... nothing out of the ordinary

First, she makes fun of the survey-writer for accidentally (I think) misspelling "eat," and then she herself writes "masked potatoes."

I can't think of anything cooler than "masked potatos." And I sincerely hope Tyler draws a picture.

Hmm. Update? Maybe. I'm going to the UW for Transfer Thursday this week, and I'm going to talk to an admissions advisor. If I get into that school, I can stop pretending that I really want to go to Seattle U. Also, I filled out my FAFSA (after much rule-bending and cheating so that I can be considered an independent student) and it said my EFC (estimated family contribution) is $508. In theory, everything else should be covered by financial aid. That would be super cool.

When I transfer after this year, I want to work only weekends. Micah goes to UW, and tells me about all the chapters and chapters of homework she has every night in her international studies classes. I want to make the most of my education. I don't want to barely pass by because I'm working 40 hours a week. So hopefully I'll be able to get lots of financial aid next year. Otherwise, it will be student loans for me.

As far as work goes, Chris Foster is perpetually mad at me, and Georgina (the one who tried to steal my money) hasn't spoken to me since that day. And I really hate people who think they can go out, order nothing but a beer, take up one of my (or any other server's) tables for three goddamn hours and then think that leaving a %15 is good enough. Bullshit. A %15 tip on a beer is like 50 cents. By sitting for that long, you are preventing the server from having any more tables, tables that might actually ORDER something, and you are ultimately making it impossible for them to make money. Oh, and Chris Foster is perpetually mad at me.

Lastly, during the next few months I will try to rebuild the positive habits that I have lost over the course of the past year and a half. It will be difficult, but people have begun to notice that I don't smile much anymore. And they're right.

Oh, and I miss my friends. Micah is in Nicaragua, where phones don't exist, and Melanie is in Pullman, where internet doesn't exist, and Vicki is in school, where time doesn't exist, and Leanne is in Spanaway, where good judgement doesn't exist.

Where is Melanie?

I make a lot of money. I think I make more money than any student I know on a personal level. I'm sure there are lots more who make more money than me, or who are given more money than me by their parents, and I don't really give a damn. However, I'm getting fucking sick of people trying to tell me how I should spend my money.

I spend exactly half of what I make on rent, utility bills, food, gas, and extra spending money each week. Some people who have seen the comment I made in Nick's entry would say "you spend $1,500 a month on that stuff? That's insane!" Kiss my ass. My half of the rent and utilities is $700. Our rent and utilities actually don't add up to $1,400 a month, but we save the extra money for vacations we will hopefully take someday. I spend $125 a week on gas and food. I'm sure somebody wants to say "That's more than I spend on food and gas in a month!" Again, I don't give a fuck. Besides the fact that $50 of that is spent on gas because I work 45 minutes away and I think $75 a week is a perfectly reasonable amount of money to spend on food, I honestly don't give a damn if you spent $30 a week on ramen noodles and frozen pizzas. I could do that also, if that was how I wanted to live. It's not. Get over it. That leaves $75 a week for spending money, which may seem like a lot to some of you but I fairly frequently have to buy new work pants, school supplies, birthday gifts, shampoo, vet bills, etc.

I spend $400 a month on school. Yes, cash, out of pocket, because my parents don't help me at all and I don't qualify for financial aid at the monent. Speaking of my parents, starting in September or October I will be paying $150 a month on braces because my parents won't pay for those, either - even though their insurance would cover most of it if they bothered to try.

My car and insurance combined costs $400 a month.

I have my own bills - cell phone, gym membership, two credit cards - that I pay about $250 for a month.

That leaves me $300 a month if I've done my math correctly, which I may not have because I'm writing this in a hurry so I can get to work, and I'm trying really hard to save that but it gets difficult when I think about how I could buy chairs for my dining room table or other a couch to replace the one I borrowed from my parents, but I really want to go to Europe next summer and that's what I'm trying to save my money for.

I'm just really tired of people criticizing me about my money. I'm trying really hard to find a way to get financial aid ( my parents make WAY too much money), and people say "why do you need financial aid so bad if you make so much money?" Besides the fact that I just explained where all of my money goes, I'm about to transfer to fucking Seattle University. Last I checked, it cost like $20,000 a year to go there. I'm sorry, but I can't pay cash for that working as a god damned waitress.

Mandy last night said "You bought a tv stand? Why are you paying money for a tv stand when you apprently need financial aid so bad?" For God's sake - the tv stand was $250. Again, quite a difference from Seattle University.

Also, I know I could have gone to a garage sale or thrift store or something and bought a tv stand for $10. I don't want to. I like to have somewhat nice things, and I'm willing to spend a little more money to have them. I'm well aware of the fact that I'm going to have to work really hard to get anywhere in life - I'll be the first person in my family to graduate college, and I'll be working my ass off to pay for it. All throughout my childhood and until fairly recently, my parents really struggled to pay their bills. I never had toys that my friends had and all that crap, and I think I can count the number of times I went to a sit-down restaurant with my parents ever. I'm not trying to get any pity, I'm just trying to explain that that's not the kind of life I want to have. I'm willing to work really hard so that I don't have to buy some broken tv stand because it was $10. Think whatever the hell you want about that.

This isn't aimed at anybody in particular. I'm just starting to get really tired of the snide little comments that so many people make about how I manage my money.

Drama likes me. Or I like it. OR BOTH.

Today at work, I caught Georgina trying to steal money from me. In a very sneaky way. But I caught her. This is all very strange, because until today I really liked Georgina.

About a third of the way through my shift, I got bored and decided to print a checkout report so I could see how much money I'd made so far. Two things that the checkout report shows are the amount of money you've made in credit card tips, and the amount of money you owe the restaurant or the restaurant owes you at that point in time. When I ran my report, all of my sales had been in credit cards. So it should have shown that the restaurant owed me all of my credit card tips. But it didn't - it showed that I'd had $20 in cash sales. So it showed that the restaurant owed me $20 less than it should have. I knew I didn't have any cash sales, so I printed my closed check report, which shows each check that I'd closed throughout the night. Another strange thing that had happened was that I'd opened my screen on the coputer so I could print a table's check, and the table was no longer on my screen. I didn't remember closing this check at all. Also, my closed check report showed that I'd closed this check as cash, which I wouldn't have done because 1. they hadn't paid yet, and 2. nobody had paid me with cash. However, for the time being we all assumed that I'd accidentally closed the check somehow.

When I paid close attention to my closed check report, though, it showed that I'd closed a check for $20 to cash. It was a check that I didn't remember having. So I brought it to Kit, and he pulled the check up on his computer. It was definitely not one of my checks. The check showed that it was Georgina's, and that she had transferred it to me.

First thing: you cannot transfer a check by accident. To transfer a check, you have to have both the check number and the number of the person who is taking the check. It would be possible to transfer the WRONG check to somebody by accidentally typing the wrong check number, but she wasn't supposed to transfer any checks to me so I know it was no accident. I was not aware that she knew my number, but it's not hard to get somebody's number.

Second thing: this check had been closed by someone other than myself, and it was closed as soon as it was transferred because I never saw it when I opened my screen. It had to have been closed by somebody who knew my number, and Georgina obviously knew my number if she had transferred the check to me.

Third: my closed-check report showed that this check had been closed at the same time that my other check had been mysteriously closed to cash. I assume this meant that she accidentally closed the wrong check, and then went back in and closed the check she had transferred to me.

Fourth: by transferring her check to me and then closing it, she is the only person who would have benefited. Since the customers had paid her the $20, she had the cash. If she had transferred the check to me, the sales would have been taken out of my tips and she would have pocketed the $20.

Fifth: the only other way the check could have been transferred to me would have been if somebody else had known both her number and my number and had had a lot of time on their hands. But this is a ridiculous idea, because this person would not have benefited at all - it still would have been Georgina who benefited.

When I realized what she had done, I didn't say anything to anyone for a while. Kit said he would talk to Georgina, and I assumed he also thought she had been trying to make some extra money. I found out later that I was wrong, and that at the time Kit thought it had been some weird computer problem. He talked to Georgina, who claimed to have no idea what had happened, and he told her that she owed me $20. He thought it was over after this.

Later at night, though, when Kit and I were the only ones in the pod, I asked him if he had thought it was suspicious. He said no, and proceeded to say "Georgina wouldn't have benefited from it at all. She...wait...you're right. She would have benefited because she would have kept the $20 and you would have lost it." I told him about all the other reasons I had to think it was done by her and on purpose. He kept saying "yes, it is seeming more and more suspicious" until I had him absolutely sure. He admitted that there was no way to transfer a check on accident. He admitted that she couldn't have closed one of my checks by accident. He admitted that she was the only person who could have possibly benefited from the check being transfered to me. He pointed out that most people probably wouldn't check to make sure all their closed checks were their own, I agreed with this, saying that the only reason I had really noticed was that I knew I hadn't collected any cash yet and this check was closed to cash. If I had had other cash sales, I might not have noticed. I just would have been disappointed with how much moeny I'd made when I did my checkout at night.

So Kit and I are absolutely positive that Georgina did this on purpose. Nothing can be done, though, because we don't have actual proof. Just circumstantial evidence.

So now I don't know how to act around her, knowing that this is the kind of person she is.

Since nobody is updating, I will.

Hello.

Oh, and Melanie - I have your camera. And the naked pictures of James that are on it.

Dear Stephen,

Did you first read East of Eden because it was an Oprah's Book Club book?

Just wondering.

Sincerely,
Denise