SO HOT. I am in love with Sonya Tayeh’s choreography. Damn, I’m going to be sad when this show is over after next week! Even though I LOVE Sonya’s hot ass burlesque number, I think the winner will be either Katee or Joshua because they are the best.

As of late, I’ve been spending my afternoons helping my mom sell a bunch of her designer accessories on Ebay.  I think I have about 16 listings right now, 5 of which are closing tomorrow.  It’s really quite exciting.  We’re going to use a lot of the money to go toward remodeling the house and for our Vegas trip at the end of August.  Some of the items are REALLY nice too!  Up for auction I’ve got a few Juicy Couture charms (1, 2, 3), a Juicy Couture charm bracelet, a Juicy Couture charm necklace, a Coach scarf, 2 Coach wallets (1, 2), a Coach watch, a Tiffany & Co. starfish necklace, a Tiffany & Co. bead bracelet, a L.A.M.B. watch, a couple Tarina Tarantino jewelry pieces (1, 2), a Bulova watch, and a Foley & Corinna handbag.  All the items are either brand new or hardly used and are REALLY NICE!  My mom has been collecting this stuff for years, but seeing as how we really need the money right now we decided to sell the stuff that she never uses (or has never used).  But seriously, every time she comes to me with a new item I’m like, “No we CAN’T sell that, it’s WAY too nice!” but she ends up convincing me in the end.  Please check them out if you’re interested at all

Over the next few days I’ll probably start listing some more items so feel free to check my Ebay page periodically for new stuff.  Sorry for the shameless self promotion, but in the past I’ve only sold things periodically (such as old laptops, cell phones, and textbooks) and I’ve never sold this many items all at once.  It’s fun for me!  It’s sort of like a business!  Heh.

So beautiful

Earlier today I drove down to Vista to help my wonderful best friend, Ashley, and her fiance with some of their wedding plans. Helping plan their wedding has been such an awesome experience for me because, being as we’re both pretty young, we haven’t really had a lot of experiences with weddings yet. Today mostly consisted of figuring out the wedding favors and designing the invitations, both of which went extremely well. The favors are going to be homemade (by Ashley’s mom) powdered sugar tea cakes placed, along with hot pink tissue paper, in these little white craft boxes from Michaels. The boxes are pre-creased and ready to be folded by hand, which is a task that Alan (the groom) has mastered quite impressively. The dude seriously folded 50 (41 actually, because I folded 9 hehe) of them in less than 30 minutes. (By the way, Ash, just a few minutes ago I gave Alex the tea cakes I took home with me and he said they were awesome which they are!)

Designing the invitations was quite a task indeed (though it was also really fun). From trying to figure out the perfect wording to the perfect font and the perfect colors, it was pretty meticulous. We printed out god knows how many different versions (and on the actual invitation paper too, lol) because otherwise we couldn’t really tell exactly how it would look. The end result turned out FANTASTIC though. But I doubt any of the guests will be as amazed by it as we are haha.

That’s basically all I have to talk about right now. I’m STILL SICK, of course, which doesn’t work for me whatsoever considering tomorrow is Monday and I have to work. Work has been pretty awesome though lately. As of late, my boss thinks blogging is the shit, so I’ve been working on setting up several different blogs for him. He’s currently in the middle of purchasing a bunch of mobile home parks in Mississippi and Alabama, so one of the blogs is pretty much for him to keep track of everything going on with that (for example, he posts entries about progresses with loans, escrow, tenant stuff, etc). I also set up another blog for the Western region (which includes all our properties in California). I think my boss actually wants to have everything we do running on blogs eventually… which sounds really wacko, I know, but the way he was describing how it would work makes me think that it actually might work, haha. We’ll see. Just think though, if we manage to get the majority of our company operating via blog, that would probably earn us an article in the L.A. Times and definitely on the front page of Wordpress.com! LOL.

G’night!

Yay! This should make me feel a little better now…

This summer has left me with plenty of much-needed time to focus on my hobbies and to just relax. I’ve really enjoyed working on this website, and I can’t believe I took such a long break from graphic and web design. It’s as if I’ve rediscovered my love for Photoshop and CSS styles, lol. I’m sure no one will be too surprised that I have yet another project in the making. Yes, there is a new domain that I actually just purchased on Monday. I’ve finished the design already, but I still need to work on the content. It’s going to be a psychology website/blog that I’m going to use to reflect on my education and career developments over the next couple years. I realize this isn’t going to interest everyone, but it’s something that I feel will be very beneficial to me. Once I’ve completed everything, I will announce its official debut

Unfortunately, I seem to have contracted quite a vigorous little disease that has kept me bed ridden for the most part. I’ve been having endless headaches, back aches, coughing fits and sore throats for several days now and it still shows no sign of letting up. Surprisingly though, I’ve managed to only miss one day of work for this, but during that day I spent hours upon hours in Photoshop (when I wasn’t sleeping that is). My ill mind sure has a way of expressing itself in interesting ways.

My illness is also the reason why there’s been a lack of Flickr/moblog updates here. I don’t think anyone would be interested to see what I’ve been up to the last few days (haha). But I have a hair appointment in less than an hour, so I’ll be sure to Flickr it. Yes, I realize that I should NOT be getting my hair done in my current state of misery, but I’ve had this appointment for over a month and my hair desperately needs it. So I’m just going to have to deal.

I am slowly becoming more and more appalled by the health care system in this country. It is complete bullshit. I’ve always been one of the lucky ones who has great health coverage because my dad always pays for the best health plan his company has to offer, so I’ve never had a problem. I also get to stay on his insurance until I’m done with grad school, which is nice. However, it must be very frustrating for those who are less fortunate (and quite possibly for me once I’m out of college). For example, I had to take a friend to the hospital last night because she was experiencing a severe pain in her back and couldn’t stand up straight. She also recently had her purse stolen which contained all of her insurance information. At the hospital, they barely even let us through the front doors because she didn’t have her insurance card or a photo ID. It was such a struggle. She was in severe pain and all the stupid hospital staff cared about was her insurance information.

They examined her, of course, as is required by law. It turned out she had a kidney infection and a muscle spasm, so they prescribed her some antibiotics. After all that was said and done, they hassled her once again for the insurance info. It took us over an hour to leave the hospital because of this. In the end they decided to put her down as a cash customer, and I don’t even want to KNOW what that is going to entail (in terms of $$$), until she can call them back with her insurance information.

Furthermore, my poor boyfriend had to have some dental work done yesterday, and, of course, his insurance isn’t going to cover all of it. He has to pay upwards of $1000 out of pocket.

Not only does the health care system suck in the US, but health insurance sucks as well. What really bothers me is how the Republicans in this country don’t want socialized health care because they think that the quality of our health care is going to decline, even though countries who DO have socialized health care are doing just fine, if not better, in that department than we are. Out of the Western nations, the US actually has one of the highest infant mortality rates. That is extremely sad and is likely due to the fact that plenty of people here don’t have any kind of health coverage whatsoever. I think either Norway or Sweden has the lowest infant mortality rate on the planet. And, of course, they have socialized health care. It really goes to show you how ignorant the right side of the political spectrum can be.

Wow, that’s the most worked up I’ve gotten in awhile!

Last night Alex and I saw Wall-e and I completely fell in love. I actually think this one might surpass The Incredibles as my favorite Pixar film. I just thought the idea for the film was completely original, and Wall-e was so flippin cute that I could not take my eyes off him. Pixar was also sending us quite a message with this film, which takes place several hundreds of years in the future when humans have to evacuate earth so that they can begin “Operation Clean-Up” to get rid of all the trash that has piled up on Earth’s surface. During this time humans all piled onto this “luxury” space craft called The Axiom, where they were originally supposed to spend 5 years time until the Earth has been cleaned up. However, it has been over 700 years since the launch of The Axiom and still they have not returned to Earth. Life on The Axiom is entirely horrific. Everything is controlled by robots and humans don’t even know how to walk anymore. They are all obese and they use electronic chairs to get everywhere. They don’t have to do anything for themselves because everything is handled by robots.

Wall-e is a solar-powered robot who is basically in charge of clumping all the trash on Earth into these little cubes that he then stacks high into buildings. He even created a little “house” for himself full of little trinkets he’s collected from his daily adventures. He pretty much does the same thing everyday until Eve, a “female” robot, is placed on Earth in search of any plant form that would then mean that Earth is once again inhabitable so that the humans can return. Wall-e ends up falling in love with Eve and does everything he can to impress her. When she completes her mission on Earth and must return back to The Axiom with her plant specimen, Wall-e follows her out into space and eventually to The Axiom because he doesn’t want to let her go.

I don’t want to say anymore because I don’t want to spoil it for those who haven’t seen it. Wall-e was such a cute and robotically romantic movie and I can’t wait to buy it!

Alex and I are kayaking in Dana Point Harbor today! The weather is pretty gloomy but it’s still nice out! Right now all we have is this inflatable 2-person Clear Blue Hawaii kayak, but next year we plan on investing in 2 1-person regular kayaks. Fun times!

Yesterday evening I accompanied a friend of mine to a nearby Jeep dealership because, after taking a ride in mine, she had her heart set on her own Jeep Patriot. We found the perfect sparkley black one with all the features she wanted, so we were stoked. However, after getting her fully-loaded, top-of-the-line 2003 Pathfinder appraised, all hell broke loose, lol. Her car is now only worth approximately $9,500 and she still owes around $14k. She bought the car less than 2 years ago for $21k. I cannot believe how much it decreased in value, and for a Nissan too no doubt. It really goes to show you how the market is right now, especially for a mid-sized SUV like the Pathfinder. No one, including her, wants a car with 14 average mpg anymore. Now she’s completely stuck with a car that costs her $90 to fill up, and there really is no way for her to get rid of it.

My sister went through this recently as well with her 2005 Escape. She ended up trading it in for a brand new Nissan Versa, but it sure did cost her because she owed a few grand more than the Escape was worth. She didn’t care though because she just wanted to get rid of it. Now she really loves spending only $40/week on gas. My car gets an average of about 24 mpg, which is pretty damn good for a small SUV that isn’t a hybrid. And since it doesn’t cost much to fill up (even with rising gas prices), I feel alright about it for now.

I am so in love with my Patriot, but still, I cannot WAIT until gas cars are completely behind us. The environment is practically begging for it. This article talks about the transformation from gas to hydrogen fuel, and while it is so obviously necessary, it requires so much funding that I’m afraid a lot of people are not going to get on board with.

I could make this post longer, but I’m running late for my chiropractor appointment.

Also, I just upgraded to Wordpress 2.6. So far I haven’t noticed a single difference, but I guess I feel good that I’m now running on a “stable” release. It’s entirely psychological, of course.