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Week and a weekend of wuukiee's work at a waitress at a westwaunt...

important things i've learned during work...

  • Slivered garlic and slivered blanched almond look the same. They are not. (Fortunately I played this little trick on myself, not an unsuspecting customer.
  • No amount is too much for a truly good pair of shoes. Those are worth anything you can pay.
  • Find out if the owner of your restraunt is rumored to be Mafia BEFORE you agree to work there.
  • FEAR "the birthday song"!
  • To Mexicans, football is NOT! football. It's soccer! Keep that straight.
  • Customers seem to think "Atta girl!" is a high compliment for good service. They are mistaken.
  • Just because you wait tables in a team waiting system doesn't mean everyone on your team is on your side.
  • People can and will suprise you, both in good ways and bad.
  • Don't eat the gelato off the desert cart. It's a demo. And made of crisco.
  • If you ever find something called a "mezzanote chocolate cake, ORDER IT.
  • Italian spoken with a south-american Spanish accent sounds really bizarre.
  • I went to give a couple out on the patio near closing their check. I walked in on them dancing together to the piped-in music, oblivious to anythign but each other. They left me a huge tip. I felt guilty--I wished I could have tipped them for making my day with something that simply beautiful.
  • Make friends with the bartender.
  • No, I mean it. Make friends with the bartender. Aside from being a bottomles source of caffeine (or tasty adult beverage if you so choose) they have some interal authority and can help get people from picking on you when it's unjustified.
  • bellini and martini glasses suck majorly. The bellini glasses tip if you look at them crosseyed and the martini glasses sloosh.
  • There are too bloody many kinds of wine in this world.
  • Dr. Scholl's inserts are my friend.
  • "You'll have an 8 hour workday" can mean you'll work 3 hours, or 12. Likewise, "you'll average 8-10 bucks an hour" can mean 20 bucks one shift and 130 another.
  • There will be days I love my job and days I hate it. But it's something I can stand to do to pay the bills, if I have to.







Today I am a college graduate.

I achieved a dual B.S. in computer science and Japanese from North Central College in Naperville, Illinois. Big day in life, I guess. Still, no success without a little loss. I didn't make cum laude status at the very end. I haven't seen my grades yet, but I'm guessing I probably missed by one one-hundredth of a GPA point. That kinda sucks. It was a personal goal I set for myself, and to miss it by so little... even though my accomplishments are still quite impressive (two majors, two minors, an honors thesis, 6 months study abroad, president of the literary magazine, and some other stuff).

So, there's a little sting to it. I didn't get to wear the yellow tassle, but black has always been more my style anyway.

Still, this is a happy day. A very happy day. Next up: internship, and then graduate school.

Worn out, emotionally and physically. Started the day with a trip to Office Depot, to buy a USB cable for an HP Printer/Fax purchased yesterday. The trip with my mother was a little better than yesterday with my dad; she at least talked to me.

After a lot of cleaning under the computer desk, I opened all three of the colour ink cartridges (yellow, cyan, and magenta) for the printer, and when my mother informed me that she had already inserted the cartridge (singular), I determined that I had picked up the incorrect cartridges the previous evening. This entailed a journey on my bicycle, grades not good enough to get a license, and on the bus, rides being free in the summer.

After making dinner, spaghetti, I decided to go exchange the ink cartridges. I popped my bike out of the shed and began to ride. Catching the bus over to the street the shopping center was on, and securing my bike, I entered the store. I picked up the little voucher you give the cashier for the ink cartridges, she deduced that the store was out of the ones I needed. I opted to keep the old, and return home, to come back Monday.

I decided I was going to ride all the way home, since the bus had already completed it's layover and would not return for another hour. This turned out to be a mistake my calves, lower back, and legs have not yet forgotten. I rode up and down hills for about 2 hours, and when I finally stopped to look at a map at a gas sation, I found out that one of the first turns I made was the exact opposite of the direction I had needed to go. Feeling rather stupid, I left the station, and started the long ride home.

When I got home, my mother was sitting at her computer, and papers from my school sat next to her on her desk. These papers basically confirmed the fact that I had failed 2 classes during the school year and earned a "D" in French, making it impossible for me to continue the language next school year.

I should node this in "The Worst Feeling in the World", I think I will, but one of the worst feelings I have had thus far is coming up. My mother has been one of the best people in my life. Like the w/u above, I have felt I could tell her anything and she'd accept it. She has gone through a whole range of emotions during my educational saga, since my 7th grade year, on through high school, to now, the segue between Junior and Senior year of high school, and I haven't had a GPA higher than a 2.0. I feel like an idiot, like I've wasted my life, I feel like a leeching, disappointing, loserish, son of a bitch. I don't understand my own problem, and I don't understand myself. My mother says that she can't trust me, she doesn't trust anything I say anymore, I've not been the person she knows.

I don't know. I have never taken drugs, never done anything remotely illicit, not betrayed her trust. I just am a lazy, unmotivated jerk. My grandparents pay for my education, and almost anything expensive I need. I told my parents I was selling my computer to buy a laptop, because I thought it would help me in school, my grandparents bought me a laptop. They bought me a video camera for Christmas because I have been getting into videography and media for the past year. They pay any and all facets of my educational fees. Saturday, after reading my mom's hastily written notes about summer school and feeling let down, I came downstairs to find a gigantic cockatiel cage sitting on my bed that my sister informed me my grandmother purchased on a whim. (I have a grey cockatiel, she didn't just buy a cage out of nowhere) These people are probably the reason I'm not living in the fucking slums, and I'm wasting their money.

I'm down here in my basement room, about 4 months away from being a legal adult, thinking of how much I wish I could be as successful as my sister, and wondering if I am going to be able to find an answer to my motivational problem, and just wondering, writing because I can't figure out myself, my problem, my life. I can't succeed because I don't try, and when I do try, it's too soon or too late. I have every intention of trying, and fully willing to accept the consequences if I don't try at all, and yet I don't seem to give a shit when it matters. I don't lie about this to anyone, not my parents, not anyone.

And today, my mother told me that she had been looking forward to my graduation, but wasn't anymore, that it'd be anti-climactic. She said that she knows I've been lying about my schoolwork, about a lot of things, which I haven't. She said that she guessed she'd have to wait to be proud until my sister graduates in 4 years.

God, I hate myself.

I'd never kill myself, because I have to take the consequences of my actions. I could never do that to my parents, people I care about, my friends. I feel like dirt, though. I don't know what to do next, how to try and salvage what I can, because I don't know how I'll feel once this summer really gets underway. I don't know if I'll blow off my schoolwork once August comes around. I just have to take it day by day, I suppose.

But, it hurts so much, to have my mother say she doesn't trust me.

If anyone has got the same problem, please /msg me...

Today, Saturday June 8, 2002 has been one of those days that have been awesome yet sad.

I woke up late, waking to the sound of Warning by Incubus, which is a really good song. I layed there like I do most mornings wondering what the hell I'm going to make of my day. Will this day be different? Will this day lead me in the right direction to find love, friendship, etc? Or will it pass me by like a fucking semi?

I didn't know. You usually don't know till you wake up the next morning and wonder what the fuck happened the day before! But not today.

Today there was a festival in town. Nothing big or spectacular, the usual. Well my friend, a girl (believe it or not) asked me if I wanted to go. She is my best friend's ex, and i won't go into that, but I said sure. A few hours later she calls back. A friend of hers wanted to go and she wanted to make sure that it was okay. I really didn't care.

Now for a time warp that will explain what i have to write later on. I've been through 3 really bad relationships and I should have realized that the first night that I went out with them. I finally got so pissed off with myself that I said "No more! I'm staying alone! I'm tired of getting treated like shit all the time." So that was that. My friends and family tried to talk me otherwise but I wouldn't have it.

And this is where life gives you a kick in the rear... So I go with Sarah to pick up this girl. Nothing spectacular, woo-hoo, yada-yada. So we get to her house. She is getting off work and won't be there for a while. Okay, thats fine. Woo-hoo, waiting. I figured that this girl is going to be like the rest i've ever met and just ignore me most of the time. she gets there and we leave to go back to sarah's so that we can just walk to it from there.

We walk and talk and what amazed me the most is that, well yeah for starters she was talking to me, but the fact we had things in common. As I look back on previous woman I've dated we really didn't and that was my fault in a way. Blinded by beauty. But anyway we talk, etc., etc.

That's when the night gets interesting. We go eat and we start talking more, poor Sarah - she was forgotten!, but it was clear we couldn't stop talking believe it or not! Well we didn't like the rides that turn you upside down or the like, so Sarah went on those. So Anne and I go on the Ferris Wheel, the tea cup ride, and a ferris wheel like one but it looks like you are in a cup type thing , and these racing cars that go around and you get squashed as it flys. I don't know how to explain it. But at one point the cup type one started freaking me out from the speed, nothing like I'm crying or shouting but just that my nails were making indents in the metal bar, so she grabs my left hand and holds it, out of the blue, knowing what is going on. That was so cool of her.

So later on we get on that car racing ride and it starts, she just slammed into me and stayed there, not trying to move away. Now it was my turn because this ride was freaking her out a little. All I can say was it was just amazing.

We got off the ride and Sarah wanted to leave. She was tired and needed rest. So we left to go back to her house. We hung out there for an hour, had sprite, and watched t.v. Sarah decided she'd better get us home because she didn't feel safe driving when she is tired. So she took us to Anne's house first. By the time we arrived we saw that Sarah was really tired and needed to get back home. So Anne, making my day, told Sarah that her father could give me a ride home and that Sarah should go home. Sarah agreed and left. Anne said let's go inside and tell her dad. Her dad was eating so he didn't want to go right then and she said "Lets go watch a movie." We ended up watching office space on DVD and instead of watching the movie we talked more! How on earth I know people might be asking but it's true.

Next thing I know I've spent over three hours there with her, the movie finishing long before and neither one of us actually noticing or caring. Finally I'm noticing that it's like 10:30 at night and needed to get home. I had to get going. And it saddened both of us! We hated parting! It was amazing. ( I know I keep saying that. I'm sorry.)

So her father and Anne drives me home. We talk the whole way to my house. We get there and we say our good-byes and she gives me her phone number, email, and aim address, with instructions to call her any time.

I was so happy. I walked in, had to get some stuff and I finally got on AIM where my friend JDooty was on. He wasn't too happy. He had had a bad day and pretty much summed it up with what he wrote above. That kind of knocked me back to reality. I felt bad and depressed. I finally understood where he was coming from and wrote him to help him feel better. It is best to let him think it over and then talk to him. How many times he and I have gotten in arguments to only think about them later and realize how childish they were. I'm going to give him time and we'll talk about it again soon.

Here's a toast to all those who hear me all too well. Here's to the nights we felt alive. Here's to the tears you knew you'd cry. Here's to goodbye. Tomorrow's gonna come too soon.

Goodnight Anne.

Goodnight Sarah.

Goodnight JDooty.

I've never written a daylog before, so forgive me in advance if this is either not the appropriate space for the following thoughts or if they are too lengthy.

It's been almost exactly two years since my break-up with my first girlfriend. It ended in about the same way it began, 6 months earlier. Very, very strangely. Two and a half years ago, I was at a very odd point in my life, confused and depressed. Being an army brat (or in this case, Coast Guard), I had moved to a different part of the country every 2 or 3 years, and so I never really made friends, and had never really been managed to talk to girls. However, I had met someone at my high school (which I despised, the school that is) that I liked, but I wasn't really sure how to approach her.

After giving the matter considerable time to sort itself out inside of me, it failed to do so, and so I turned to angst. I am not, for the record, an outgoing person. I am the person in the dark corner who everyone ignores, and who you'd swear doesn't even have a tongue, because you've never heard him talk. So, with considerable hamfisting, I finally managed to tell her, over AIM, that "I loved her." This was probably the worst possible thing I could have done. I didn't have the slightest fucking clue what love was. Up until that point, she had been reasonably good friends, and by that, I mean that she talked to me from time to time. She never said two words when one would do, after that incident.

This caused a lot of depression on my part, and my thoughts strayed to suicide. I had no idea what to do, and my parents, completely oblivious to it all, were no help. So at the winter play for my school, where I was the lighting technician, I was sitting backstage one day, wishing that someone would talk to me, but too bitter and afraid to talk to anyone on my own. A girl who I didn't really know, didn't want to know, came over and talked to me for a little bit. Jessica. This began a strange relationship that her parents refused to admit existed (because they were fascist overlords of her life and hated me) and that my parents didn't know was happening.

Over the course of the next 6 months, we had one of the strangest relationships ever, and I can say this with confidence, despite never having had a relationship before or after that. We never went on a date alone, as her mother followed us everywhere. About the only place we ever had alone was the school library, because the librarian was out on maternity leave. During that time, our relationship quickly lost any semblance of being anything other than "friends with benefits" only without the "friends" part. We were people who knew each other who, for an hour or so a day, would hide out in one of the upper rooms of the library and make out. We barely knew each other, each of us hated what the other liked.

So, it wasn't much of a suprise that 6 months after it began, she informed me that she had been "cheating" on me. I didn't give a flying fuck, as she was leaving for college, and I was entering my senior year of high school and learning more about computers than I had ever known existed.

Flash forward to the present. I still haven't had a girlfriend since then, and have only had one female friend, who lives a thousand miles away and I know mostly online. Two weeks ago, I started work at the OSC (a Coast Guard computer center) as a college intern. I love my job, I spend all day long playing with expensive computers as a system administrator and network security administrator. So, as part of the SA portion of my job, when a new intern needed a computer, I went to deliver it. This is where I met Melanie, a girl who shattered every view that I ever had held about girls.

She is smart, more so than anyone I've ever met. While I was setting up her computer, putting it on the network, configuring it for her use, we talked. For once in my life, I was not nervous when talking to a girl, I did not stutter, I did not make an ass of myself and then become bitter and leave. Without realizing it, I started talking about computers, only to learn that she was a Compsci major, loved computers, had overclocked her computers at home, and so much more. My jaw must have dropped at that point.

Over the following two weeks, we've become friends, spending hours upon hours a day talking to each other, both over IM and in person, and I've attempted to flirt with her (with the guidance of the aforementioned female friend), and she's caught on and (given the fact that she isn't running away from me) accepted it.

However, now I am once again reduced to angst. I like this girl, a lot. I know far too little to say love, nor would I if I did. The problem is that I have reverted to being afraid. In my first relationship, there was no gradual dating process or anything like that. One day, out of the blue, it happened. Now that I'm attempting to woo her, I no longer know what to do. I don't want to be seen as obsessing over her (something that my best friend and college roommate jokes with me considerably about), but I want to convey to her the fact that I would like to date her, and that my interest in her is far more than just her looks, but her mind as well.

Apologies for the above ranting, but I needed a place to write this out, and perhaps gain feedback.
