So just got back from seeing X3 - The Last Stand. Awesome movie. Great effects. Solid story. Go see it.
Tomorrow (er... today) going to Universal Studios with my friends Justin and Heather. Lots of fun.
That's it for now folks! Off to bed...
Signing off,
Cy
So tonight at work was an interesting one. First of all, I worked a full 8 hour shift, which I haven't done in quite a long time. My feet are killing me right now. Second, Veronica, one of our managers had caught a kid stealing sunglasses, called his mom, and told him to never set foot in the store again. That was rad.
The third thing irked me and still irks me to this moment. I was laying out T-shirts on one of the front tables. One of em had a printing of a couple cartoon dogs standing behind a fence. One dog says, "Why must I feel like that", another says "Why must I chase the cat?", and the third says, "It's just the dogg in me!"... Obviously a Snoop Doggy Dogg shirt. Another is a shirt with 'Dr. Dre' printed over a large portrait of himself.
No, it wasn't the shirts that bothered me, but rather a comment one of my coworkers had made. This coworker walked up to me, looked at the Dr. Dre shirt and said, "Since when did we become a 'N*gg*r Store'? I swear, we're getting all this black stuff. They have Demo (another retail store) for that. Pretty soon we'll be selling Fubu."... I was kinda blown away by the comment and didn't really react to it. The coworker went on his way straightening up the area.
Later on in the night, two young black ladies came in the store acting quite hyper and giddy. This same coworker murmurred to me, "I f***in' hate black people."
What is it with people? I'd like to say, what is wrong with our generation, but this isn't a problem that is different between ages. This is something that all people of all generations deal with. Really, why the animosity? Are they really that annoying that you have to generalize an entire race with a stereotype and judge?
I don't understand why people can't be more accepting and kind towards one another. Especially for our generation, we need to set a better standard of acceptance and unity. Building hatred is not a good thing for this world.
*sigh*... My opinions of this certain coworker have definitely changed a bit. I wish that this person gets some sort of revelation in their life that changes their view. But that's wishful thinking.
Cy
Probably one of the coolest websites out there is AskANinja.com. I don't know what it is, but I find it ridiculously hillarious.
Basically it's a guy dressed as a ninja answering questions on video that people email him. Genious, I say.
Here's one video that I found pretty funny.
Cy
If you've been keeping up, you'd know that today I went over to Thousand Oaks to speak at our local HOBY seminar about this blog. The kids are still as energetic as ever. It's always fun. I also got to see some of my old friends from 2003 that were on junior staff with me in 2004. Jeff and Andy... Cool kids.
So anyway, I spoke a little bit about blogging in general. A brief history about where blogging came from... blah blah, etc, etc. I spun it in a way that showed that the youth can get their voices heard through the internet. We're a diverse and opinionated generation. We're tech savvy and the internet is a common tool used by people our age.
When it came time for a brief question and answer session afterwards, I was asked something along the lines of "Do you think blogging promotes the 'emo' lifestyle and is a means for people to draw attention to themselves?". I had to laugh a little because I think that that question was very true and a good generalization of many teenagers today. It does seem that many teens who blog always blog about something sad or depressing and how 'emo' they feel. My response to the ambassador was that while yes, it's a common thing, it's still a stereotype that unfortunately, others of us who are not like that, have to deal with. I don't find blogging as something where I want people to focus on me and check out the cool things I'm doing. If you read some of the past entries, it's normally about plain stuff that I do, what my day was like, etc. I don't blog for other people. My blogging is mainly a hobby for myself.
After the question and answer session, the ambassadors broke out into their groups. The other panelists and I went around answering any questions that the groups might have had. One question I was asked most often was "Why do you think so many people view Myspace.com as a bad thing?"
My response to this is that Myspace.com is a tool. As any other means of communication (IM, telephone, etc) it can be used correctly or abused. It's sad that the older generations get a bad image from Myspace and the people who use it because of what's displayed in the media. The news wont tell you stories about how people have reconnected with old friends or anything like that. The news will tell you about the 16 year old girl who was abducted by an older man posing as an 18 year old guy in high school on Myspace.com. They'll run the dirt, but not the good stuff. And the sad thing is that this isn't just true about Myspace. This is true about most things involving the youth.
One of the other panelists had mentioned a familiar quote about media and news: "If it bleeds it leads." and "Sex Sells". Sadly, because shocking and horrible things get better ratings, noble and praiseworthy things get overlooked.
The internet is a great thing. It is very useful and can be used for so much benefit. Unfortunately, the internet is prone to human fallacy. You can't blame the internet for sexual predators any more than you can blame a car for someone drunk driving, crashing into and killing someone.
If you're reading this and have a blog or a myspace or whatever, be smart. Don't post stuff that contains personal information such as where you live, your phone number, etc. It's just not safe. I know many parents have concerns about their children on myspace. If parents would teach their kids what's okay to put down and what's not, we'd be in a better place.
---
So that was the majority of the day, spending time down in Thousand Oaks. I was suprisingly not very tired considered I worked last night from 9pm to 3am. I woke up at about 9:30am, so i got about 5 hours of sleep. There wasn't any traffic heading down below, but there was a lot on the way up. I'll tell ya. The 405 North to the 5 North exchange is absolutely terrible. On the 14 freeway towards the Antelope Valley, there seemed to be a huge accident southbound, slowing traffic to a dead halt on the southbound side, and also creating a bit of traffic on the northbound side. Hope everyone involved in that was okay.
Anyway, that's mostly it for today. The DaVinci Code came out and I do plan to see it. Should be interesting.
Peace out.
Cy
It's funny that my last post mentioned the end of the world... Cause 30 minutes ago, the end of the world started in Lancaster, California. It was a nice, hot day... now suddenly, we have a huge thunderstorm rolling into town. It's raining and the thunder's loud and the lightning's scary.
Looking out my window, I can view flashes of light strike down from the sky; coursing through the clouds... Even now as I type this, the rain is picking up. Oooh. I just remembered I left the windows open in my car. Be right back.
Wow. It's raining really really hard. Normally storms don't scare me, but just a few moments ago... my room flashed brightly and seconds later, a deep rumble and pop ran through our streets. Soon after, my power went off and car alarms on my street were sounding.
This is really weird.
...okay. Well have a nap. THEN FIRE ZE MISSILES!
Just a quote from a funny flash animation called 'The End of the World'.
Yeah, so work today was pretty interesting. I was originally scheduled to come in at 9:30am, but they called me yesterday asking me to come in at 8am instead. Tom and Ruth, the Regional and District Managers (respectively), were to come in today to do a little check-up on our store. So, they asked me to come in so we could get the store all clean and ready. This involved sweeping, scrubbing, and mopping the store. Tiring work.
When they came in around noon-ish, they looked around a bit and made some nice comments. They left about an hour and a half later. I asked Maria, my manager, if they had said anything good, and she sighed, rolled her eyes and said, "They told me we're 'turning the ship around'". Apparently our store is considered an "Opportunity Store", which means is a nice way of saying that our sales suck and we need to get better.
Last year, the entire company had an increase of around 10% in sales from the previous year. Our store only had an increase of 4%. We were one of the two stores with the lowest gains, so we were picked to be an "Opportunity Store". Maria has to call headquarters every other week or so to update them on everything we're doing. Sounds like the suck.
So I got off work at 2pm and headed home. When I get there, my dad stops me before I head upstairs and tells me he needs my help with something. Not surprising to me though, as he asks me for something almost every other day. But this request is a bit harder than the ones before it. I guess he wants to buy clothing that's on sale here, send it to the Philippines and retail it at a higher cost. I don't know if that's illegal or not, I'm not going to say anything.
Anyway, he wants me to find out how Anchor Blue does their operations. Like the POS (Point-of-Sale) systems that we use, software, how we track inventory, blah, blah, blah. This is honestly something that I am not at all interested in. I have no clue where to start. I've already googled "POS Systems", but all I get are results that I have no clue what in the heck they're talking about. And I'm not about to go to my boss and ask her, "So my dad bought a bunch of stuff on clearance here and wants to sell it overseas for full price. What's the best way to go about doing that?"... You can see the problems with that.
*sigh*... I don't know what to do. My dad is wrapping his head around way to much at once. He's reading real estate books, wheatgrass books, practices piano all day, and is listening to CDs about making money. He owns two houses in the Philippines that he's trying to sell and he's looking for property here in the States. I told him, "You're just doing way too much, dad." He tells me that teaching piano just isn't cutting it and that he has to make the money. He's 50 and only has '5 more years to do it'. I just want the guy to retire already.
A part of me wants to be selfish and not help him at all, but what can I do. He's my dad. He's taken on so many ambitious projects, all of which have never worked. I guess it doesn't help any that mom has a great job and position where she's making a lot of money.
Anyway, that's a lot of honesty for right now. I'm thirsty and dying for a drink. So with that, I leave you. I'll probably post again later tonight.
Cy
Actually, no it wasn't. That was just a lyric from a song by Jack's Mannequin that was in my head.
Today was pretty neat. I got to sleep in til 11am because I had no work. That was cool. Hopped online and jumped on AOL Instant Messenger. Justin and I had talked the previous night about going to get lunch and hanging out before he had to go work. We start conversing on AIM about random things like we always do.
I was pretty hungry so we decided to head to Del Taco for lunch. Before that, I had to hop in the shower. Actually, Justin and I decided that hopping in the shower would be a little dangerous, so I just stepped in the shower instead. I got ready and left for Of the Taco.
Let me tell you guys, even though Del Taco is nothing remotely close to true authentic mexican food, it's darn good and it's darn cheap. Right now Chicken Soft Tacos are going for 79 cents apiece. How do you top that?!? I ordered 5 of em and also an order of chili cheese fries. (aside: if you know me, chili cheese fries is one of my most favorite things in the world) Justin, always having to 'one-up' me, ordered 6 chicken soft tacos.
We headed back to my house to enjoy the delicious snacks. Upon placing the bags of food on the table, I looked in the bag to find, much to my dismay, only FOUR tacos in the bag. Needless to say, I was pretty frazzled. But it was alright. I had my delightful fries to make up for it.
We downed our meals fairly quickly and sat on the couch to watch some good ol' television. One of my favorite shows to watch is "My Super Sweet Sixteen" on MTV. Not because I think that what they're getting is cool and I'm so jealous, but rather because it keeps me humble knowing that there are people out there that are so incredibly spoiled. "BUT DAD, I WANT THAT BMW!!! IT'S SO JUICY!"... wow. just wow.
After that, we headed up to my room to hop on the computer and make some changes to the color scheme of his blog. Check it out. It's neato looking. We also watched some funny videos on YouTube.com. One of which was a hillarious Alex Rodriguez clip...
Wow.
Justin had to leave for work soon after, leaving me to play some World of Warcraft. I haven't played as much of it lately, but I do still play regularly.
Tomorrow I'm due to come into work at 8am. Supposedly our District and Regional Managers are coming in to do some kind of inspection/check-up. So my boss wanted to bring the expert (me) in a little early to clean up some of the dirty work. Haha just kidding. I'm not that great. (But really... I am.)
So that's the blog for the day. I'm still trying to cram in Blogs because I have to speak about it this Friday at a seminar, so I don't want the kids to go home, look up my blog and see absolutely no entries since like April. Not impressive.
Okay, that's it for now. More to come tomorrow (later today).
Cy
Normally I associate the word 'muse' with the image of a beautiful woman with an aura of radiating grace... Justin is neither of those things. But we were talking earlier and he suggested I use this as my title. So, I have.
Anyway, this past week has been reaaalllyy eventful. The first thing that comes to my mind is that one of my managers had to fill out an accident report about me. I had dropped a bottle of cologne on my foot while I was wearing flip flops. It busted up my big toe and left it bruised and bleeding. Pretty cool stuff. My manager said (jokingly I hope) "Well at least the bottle didn't break"... Haha. Good lookin out.
This past week has been pretty crazy/hectic. Between a bunch of work, mother's day, and feeling sick; life has been crazy.
One of the things I've been trying to do lately is to have a really positive outlook on life. Just being more optimistic. I'm content with where I am in life and I think that makes me happy.
So... I don't have much to say right now, mostly because I've forgotten what's happen in the last month.
I'm trying to cram as many blogs in as I can because I'm supposed to talk about it at my local HOBY seminar in Thousand Oaks this friday.
This week is even crazier with work. I work over 30 hours. Today I worked from 6am to 2p. We're doing visual changes, price corrections, and inventory this week. Not fun.
Anyway, drop me a holler when you can.
Cy
okay, I really love this blog. I love doing it. I enjoy it. Lately though, I've just been un-motivated (is that a word?) to post new entries. Maybe it's because my life is a boring chain of events...?
Haha. Not really. Okay. An update.
1. I'm working on getting promoted at Anchor Blue to Assistant Manager.
2. That hasn't been going too well because I've been late on many occasions.
3. We'll see what happens.
1. I've been asked to speak at my local State HOBY's Seminar in May.
2. The topic is "How Youth Are Portrayed in Media" and I'm going to be talking about this here blog.
3. Better start updating!
1. I moved my room around a bit.
2. It's more spacious.
3. Change is good.
1. I really like Wetzel's Pretzels.
2. My pockets are being emptied.
3. Mmmm... Cheese Dogs.
Gah, I really want to take more pictures. I need to. /sigh
The sky has been really beautiful the last couple days. If you've seen my pictures, most of them are of things that are up. Trees, skylines, the sky, ceilings, etc. I dunno. I have a fascination with what's above us.
Okay, short update for now.
Will add more, laterz.
Yeah... believe it or not, people have been asking me, "WHY HAVEN'T YOU BEEN UPDATING YOUR BLOG!?!?! BLAHAGG!! ALL CAPS!!1!ONE!"... I wasn't aware so many eyes graced the musings of a 19 yo kid who has all too much time on his hands. COMMENT. kk?
So, I've pretty much been wasting my life the last couple weeks on an unhealthy binge of World of Warcraft. If you know anything about the game, you'll understand this. I'm going for field marshal and after I get it, I'm done. I'm probably uninstalling it. We'll see. It's a good time killer.
Between melting faces and role-playing (jeez. there really is no hope for me) I've been working a lot at Anchor Blue. It's a great job. I get decent hours and I love the people. Customer Service is just my thing. I'm good at it. I enjoy it. I get people to buy things. It works.
Right now is an exciting time for me because I'm working on getting a promotion to assistant manager. They like me there. I've tried to go out of my way to be kind, throrough, and innovative. Today, I think I impressed Maria (my boss) when I showed her what I had done in the stock room. We have these crates that have flip flops in em. I sorted them out, but them up on the shelves and hung the smallest pair of the corresponding footware on the outside of each crate. She liked it and said it would help a lot when doing stock checks. (Score one point for me.)
Anyway, tomorrow (today, Thursday) I'm supposed to go in at 12pm for two hours to meet with Maria's boss, the District Manager. Nervous? A little. By the time anyone reads this, that will already have happened. So I guess I shouldn't be all that nervous.
Anyway, I couldn't sleep, so I got food from the kitchen, started browsing blogs, and thought... man I really haven't updated in a while. So there ya go. An update.
Oh btw, I support Mockumedia. It's the brainchild of Michael Murray (cool guy who went to my High School) and his friend Joseph Engel. They provide commentary on movies, music, news, etc. I found myself giggling like a schoolgirl in some parts. It's completely improvised, so it's funny like that. Check out their Myspace profile. (For the internetly ignorant, click 'myspace profile'. duh).
Ok, I need to finish eating and get to sleep. peace out yallz.
I shall explain the title later...
So today (Saturday) was pretty cool. slightly eventful.
I wake up at 11am. Thank goodness for sleeping in late on Saturdays.
Get to work at 12pm.
Work was kinda interesting.
So one of my coworkers Kenny, this 17-year old guy; senior in high-school is working with me today. He doesn't look 17. I thought maybe he was my age (19) or a little older. He's on register and I'm out and about on Fitting Room duty and customer servicing. After he wraps up with a customer he comes to me and is like...
"Dude, remember that lady who came in with the little girl who was dancing around all over the place?"
I nod.
"Well, I was ringing up her stuff and when I handed her the receipt she gave me a slip of paper with her phone number on it."
I'm shocked. "Are you serious?"
"Yeah! She's like in her late 20s too! She was just like 'You were really nice.'"
haha. He told me he is nowhere near interested, though. lol.
--An hour later--
"Oh man, Cy."
"what now?"
"This lady I was ringing up left some money on the counter. I told her she forgot her change and she said to keep it. She was tipping me!"
What!? I have never heard of anyone in retail getting tips. What's with this Kenny guy? I told him, "Haha man, looks like the older ladies have an attraction to you."
He laughs. "That's not funny, man!"
He's a cool kid.
Another odd thing happened at work today. While I was on fitting room duty, a guy came up to me and asked to use one. He had 4 items, so I hand him a tag, unlock a fitting room for him and let him get to business.
I float around the store for a bit, customer servicing, let a girl into a fitting room and go back to more customer servicing. I remembered this guy was browsing with his girlfriend, who I could not spot anywhere in the store. I had only let the guy into the fitting rooms, as we don't allow couples to use the same room. But apparently, she had gone in while I wasn't paying attention.
I then thought, "Man, this guy is taking a long time to try on 4 things."
My first reaction is to think that he might be shoplifting. The other girl I let into the fitting rooms had already left, so I head back there, and I swear I heard some... well, let's just say it was suggestive of something. It was faint, not blatantly or obnoxiously loud... but still there. Or at least I thought so.
I thought I heard a shushing noise too, so I kinda hung around just to confirm my suspicions... but then I was called to the cashwrap. The couple came out shortly after.
Did the two join the retail equivalent of the "Mile High Club"? I dunno... but it was something to ponder over for a couple hours.
After I got off work at 5pm, I played on my computer for a bit.
Emily, Justin L., Mallory, and her boyfriend Mike came over and we chatted for a bit while playing Jenga.
It's funny, because I'm like the hired entertainer for my friends. I'm the one to look to to plan things for the whole group or to come up with some sort of game. I deliver. Tonight, I played the role of the 5th wheel. Which I don't mind too much. Did I mention that I plan to be in a dating relationship this year? At least it's a goal.
After a bit of that, we head to Wal Mart to look for another game to buy. I have Cranium, Monopoly, Twister, Scene It, Guess Who, Jenga, Bop It Xtreme, and a cool game called Hillarium, but we've played all of those out. We were disappointed to find nothing interesting at Wal Mart. I'm trying to find this game called Curses. Can't find it anywhere. I may have to resort to buying it online.
So after Wal Mart, we head to Marie Callendar's where we order dessert... I order mozarella sticks because I was hungry. I'm always hungry. We played some mind games that frustrated Mike and Emily, but we pitied them so much, we told them how they worked. We talked for awhile while eating our pie and cheesecake. It was nice.
So anyway, the title of the blog comes from a memorable event that happened between Mallory and I...
...but I'm tired. So i'll tell the story tomorrow. *sunday*
Peace out yallz!
Cy
...well it sure seemed that way tonight.
Also, it seems that recently my blog entries have been written past midnight... my sleep schedule's jacked.
Ok, so tonight after church, I dropped by the house to grab some quick eats. I then headed out to Palmdale to my friend Justin's house to play poker with him, his girlfriend Emily, and the other Justin.
To make a long story short, Justin Lebens got knocked out first, then Emily, then I did. I lost on a big hand, leaving Justin Gott with $15 more than when he started... except sorta not, because I didn't have any money on me. So, once again I am in debt to one of my friends. This happens often. My return rate is something up to 3-4 months or so. =D
After that game ended like around 11pm or so, we got to talkin and shootin' the breeze. Everything from High School Memories to drunkeness to lesbians to film noir. We talked about a lot of stuff. We were having a good time though, and didn't realize the time until Emily said she had to go. It was about 2:30am by then. Pretty late.
All in all, it was a good night. A good time of catching up and enjoying each other's company. Thumbs up.
Yeah... so because I went to sleep at like 5am today, I woke up at about 3pm... did absolutely nothing, because, thankfully, I was not scheduled for work.
There's not much to eat at the house right now, I can't fall asleep... so I think I'm going to Jack-in-the-Box to get some eats. Enjoyable.
Aight, that's all I got.
Interesting day today. I wake up at about 1pm. Check my phone.
"You have a new voicemail"
Call the voicemail. Press '1' to hear the new message.
"Hey, Cy. It's Veronica. It says here that you're scheduled to be here at 10am. Didn't get a message saying that you weren't. Please call me back as soon as you get this. I have no one here with me for opening."
Press '7' to delete it. Check the time of the call. 10:32am.
crap.
I check my schedule. Sure enough, I was scheduled from 10am-12pm and from 8pm-3am. I forgot I was working a split shift.
I decide to pass the time to 8p with more World of Warcraft. 7:45p rolls around. I hop in the car and head to work.
Melissa sees me and says
"Oh hey, Cy. We didn't know you were coming in tonight. Maria said we'd be going home early if you don't come in."
Oh...
I walk into the stockroom where Maria and our assistant manager Brianne are. Maria says
"Cy! Missed you this morning. Were you OK?"
I explain to them that I forgot I was supposed to work a split shift.
"Oh Okay. Just wanted to make sure you were fine. We can talk about it later."
...what they really wanted to know was... "WHERE THE HECK WHERE YOU?"
So... we work. and work. on the visual change. The entire Men's side is redone. I did wall 2, so look at that and be proud.
12:30am rolls around and Maria asks if we're ready for our 30-minute break... which for some reason whenever it is, it is always called "lunch". I say yes, I'm pretty hungry, and she lets me go out to get food. I drive to Carl's Jr... and sit in the drive-thru right by the menu for literally 5 or 6 mins...
"Hello?"... "Hello!?" <-- for 5-6 minutes.
I pull forward and aparently they close at 11p.
I go to Jack in the Box and get a burger and fries. Eh, it's not all that great. I'm sippin on the large lemonade I got from there right now, too.
I return to Anchor Blue and we work some more til 3:30am.
Now I am home. I killed 40 minutes playing WoW, until I realized...
I'm dead freakin tired.
So now, after writing this blog, I am even more tired.
so... that's it.
good night.
...so i got this idea that i should take pics everyday wherever i go. Well, it was a good idea, but pretty much, just that.
I did manage to get pics for two of the days!
Sunday i dressed up all spiffy for church...
That same day we went to Thai Cafe for lunch...
Thai Tea is... well, amazing...
Saturday i went to work, and when i got out at 9:30 i found this...
What goes best with cold weather?...
No, thank you, Starbucks.
I'm going to try to do a better job this week.
...oh yeah. I stayed up kinda late changing the site layout a tad bit. Hope you like it.
Today was my first day back on the job at Anchor Blue. Apparently, Maria my boss is going to give me more hours this time around. I worked an 8 hour shift today. I have not had to stand this long in quite a while. Oh, and my pay's been moved up to $7/hour; a quarter more than last year. It was good to be back. I'm still familiar with the register and all that, so it's cool.
We bought two movies today; Shaun of the Dead ($10 at Wal Mart) and Jarhead ($16). We watched Jarhead tonight. It was the first time any of us had seen it. My thoughts on it? Incredible. Sam Mendes does an amazing job. I guess he also did American Beauty and Road to Perdition; two other movies that I also enjoy.
It's quite vulgar, but I bet it's a pretty darn accurate description of how the Corps really is. To think... I seriously thought about joining the Marines for a while... I haven't told many people that, but yeah, it was a serious consideration.
Well... I work tomorrow from 10am-2pm, so come drop by Anchor Blue and say "Wassup, Cy??"... That would be neat.
