28 year old
Pagan female who lives in Florida with her guy and two cats,
loves Disney, reads fanatically, tinkers in photography and
believes growing up is overrated.
There are people on the net that have nothing better to do
with their time
then be nasty to other people online. They post rude comments, spend hours
a day talking about sites they hate so much, that they well, spend hours a
day talking about them. (lame) They mock the owners and posters for their
opinions and their right to free speech. They expect everyone to fit into
their narrow-minded little world view or else they throw a temper tantrum.
To these people I say grow up.
Here's a bit of info people...the web is
a HUGE place. If you don't like what I say here, or who I am, or what I
do, or talk about, or what I look like, or the color of my hair, or
whatever asinine thing you dwell on, go somewhere else. It's
really, really easy. Honest. You just click the little "x" in
the corner of your browser and *poof* the offending, big, mean and nasty
site has disappeared.
I pay for this site. It's mine. That
means I can use it for whatever the hell I want to. Don't like it if I'm
bitching about something in my life? Oh fucking well. Go somewhere else.
Think I'm stupid for expressing my thoughts? Too fucking bad, don't read
them. Somewhere along the line, someone forgot this simple fact: Live
and let live Don't like me, cool, fine, whatever, I don't care.
This journal is NOT for you. It's for me. I'm not in it for popularity or
fame or anything stupid like that. I write it because I need to write and
express myself and get things out of my head sometimes. So read or don't,
it doesn't matter, but don't waste my time (or yours) bitching about it.
*gets off soapbox*
Tooth
Drive:
I need to
raise over $850 for critically needed dental
work. I'll be listing my hand made
jewelry, bracelets,
earrings, necklaces and horns
for sale to try to raise the desperately needed funds.
Every order helps. I can accept paypal payments at
webmaster@giveneyestosee.com
or check/money orders at:
M. Turner
PO Box 1484, Elfers, FL 34684
Thank you for your help and support.
I've also set
up a
tooth fund for anyone
wanted to donate without purchase.
Need a
good webhost?
Try
DreamHost. Use
my linkI'll get a
referal credit which goes straight into the Tooth Fund
as well.
Harry Potter Party & Magical Soda (NO SPOILERS) Last night, after we got my wristband at B&N for HP, we went back home. Got some food and hung out until about 10:30pm when we left to go back to the store. I knew they were doing activies from 8pm on and I didn't think that it'd be that big of a thing to get to see the critters and stuff. Boy was I wrong.
The sign outside the building announcing the event.
Turns out, we got there and basically stood in a totally unorganized mass of people outside until just before midnight. I got two of the green bracelets, a pair of HP glasses and a poster but that was it. You literally couldn't even get into the store. They wouldn't let anyone inside.
Green HP Bracelet with Owl imprint and the date, "July 16, 2005" and HP glasses.
There were other activities and raffles and stuff but I missed out on all of it. Which stinks. And there was exactly zero organization in getting people in any sort of order for their bracelets. There wasn't a line, there was a teeming mass of people running the entire length of the shopping center. We kind of squeezed in towards the beginning of the line because we were in the first 100. And they were going to let in the first 100 - in no particular order mind you - first.
So we got in and they started letting the line form inside. (Thank gods because it was SO HOT outside.) There were four news channels there by then. We're in line in the store for a few minutes and suddenly they start counting down from ten. So everyone joins in and at one everyone cheers. It was kind of cute.
The line moved really efficently once you were inside, I'll give them that. It was hell outside - with literally hundreds if not around a thousand people in no order - but inside they had like twelve registers open and people who's job was to do nothing but supply pre-loaded bags with books ready to go. In a few minutes, I was at the counter. Not one but two seperate news cameras were filming me making my purchase so there's a distinct possibility I was on the news last night. *laughs* My receipt said 12:08am which shows how fast they were moving inside.
The Busch Garden's people were supposed to have left by 11:30pm but because so few people got to go inside - some people were actually hiding in the store and the cops had to get them out (!) - they stayed so after we checked out, we could wrap back around and see the displays. They had a herbology one we saw first.
Part of the good-sized Herbology exhibit set up.
It was cute. All set up like a little class with tons of plants and stuff. Then they also had a display of different types of wood for wands with tags and their properties.
Wand wood and properties displays
Then we got to head back over and see the lady with the real thing I wanted to see: an owl. Oh, she was so beautiful:
Lovely brown spotted owl
I asked the lady if I could take a picture. She said sure. I asked if I should turn off the flash and she told me that she [the owl] was a professional and didn't mind. So I snapped a quick shot. Then another lady says no photos. It'll back up the line she says. I turn around behind me and there's not a single other person waiting to see the owl. Dammit. There was another lady holding an iguana or some lizard, but I was ethralled by the owl. I didn't get to ask her any questions because the second lady's imaginary herds of people waiting to see her so I just started a little more and headed out.
They directed us out the cafe door and because they had some barricades, we had to go down a bit before cutting back over to the parking lot. Meanwhile, I had pulled my book out and was looking at it. This kid sees me and says, "Hey! You've got the book!" And I'm all smiles. He says I'm the first person he saw holding one.
We walk back to the car and Love and Rand were joking they were my guard to get me back to the car without getting mugged for my book. The line was indescribably long. I just can't tell you how many people were lined up all along the entire length of the shopping center. Past like four other stores and down the corner. It was insane.
I read about a hundred pages last night but I'm not trying to finish it immediately. I'm going to let myself take a couple days and enjoy it. So I'm firmly avoiding anyone who's even remotely mentioning spoilers.
So today then, we had to go drop the car off to get the brakes fixed. *sighs* Afterward we ran around a little and stopped off at Publix to get some lunch. You wouldn't believe what we found.
Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper
This may not seem like a big thing. But then you don't know the back story. I had been wanting to try it since I first heard about it in January. But our local bottler was not making it in non-diet. I can't drink diet soda. I get violent migraines from artificial sweeteners. Back in April Rand brought me back a two-liter from KY. He got it for me on a business trip. It was the one and only time I was able to have it. I was so sad because the diet had a nation-wide release (and taunted me on my store shelves) but they literally weren't making the non-diet in my market.
Until today. When, in a moment of unbelievable amazement, they had some two-liters and one 12-pack on the shelf. Which, needless to say, I bought. I went to the office and asked them to stock more (because it was the only 12-pack they had.) We're actually going to head out to another store as soon as I finish this entry to try to find some more on the odd chance this was a fluke. Better to stock up.
So today is clearly a magical day. Harry Potter AND non-diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper. Mmmm...
Whew! That turned into a much longer recap then I planned but there you have it. I'm off to try to find some more yummy soda. Out for now.
Harry Potter! Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince comes out tonight at 12:01am. (duh, right?) Well I pre-ordered my copy from the local B&N. Today they called me telling me it'd be available tomorrow. (um, yeah, I think everyone knows the release date at this point.) I mention I'm going to the midnight party. He says wristband distribution will start at 5pm.
Wristbands?
Crap. They didn't tell me that! So my wonderful Love left work early so I could get there to get in line to get my wristband. I love my Love.
So, I just got back. Little yellow wristband says I'm #54! Boo-yah baby!
Festivities start at 8pm (Busch Gardens will be there with animals and stuff!) though there were already THREE news channels there when I was in line for my wrist band. I'm in the first group so my purchase return time is between 11:30-12:00. First group!
The Car is Back Went up to my mom's and picked up the car. Good news is that with the new alternator, belt, pully and battery, it's running again. I was even able to run the a/c on low the entire way home (about 45 minute drive) without it overheating. I haven't been able to run the a/c in over a year.
Bad news is that the $220 we already owe for the parts wasn't it. I need another $250 to replace both front brake pads and rotars. They're badly cut up and waaaay past the point that you absolutely have to change them. So my dentist/tooth money that my mom and I have been scrimping, saving and selling off her gold to get is now going to pay for that on Saturday. When it rains, it fucking pours.
I don't have this money. I mean I can't explain just how much I don't have this money. If I didn't pay cable, phone, car insurance AND electric, I could pay for the repairs. But seeing as those are my only bills (besides rent and water) and they're all utlities, not paying them is not an option.
I'm just so worn out. I really don't know what to say anymore.
This and That The good is that my mom's husband was able to replace the alternator and charge the battery back up. The car is running again and we're going to get it after Love gets home from work tomorrow evening. The bad news is that they also changed the serpentine belt, some pullies for the alternator, an air filter, lubed the water pump and replaced my tail lights (which require you to disasemble the trunk and which the owner's manual actually says you have to take it to the dealership to do and thus we've had tail lights on only one side of the car for two years now.) While all that's lovely, the fact that it pushed the parts cost to over $220 isn't. I mean, still, yeah, that's a hell of a lot less then it would have cost me to get it done because I didn't have to pay labor, it's still more money then I have. I didn't have $150 for the alternator and I really don't have $220. My mom said I can pay her in payments though. I feel bad because she shelled the money out upfront (and not for the first time to fix my car when I didn't have the money to do it) and he did the work for free and I can't even pay them back fully for the parts. (Anyone want to buy some jewelry so I can get her more of her money back? I've got tons of new things I need to update but just haven't gotten to.)
The other bad news is that we utterly and completely can not find anyone to finance a car for us. At all. Not even $5,000 or anything. So without a co-signer (which I don't have), we're screwed. I don't know how we're going to get a new(er) car. Which still leaves us only one car that still needs more work - brakes for one are totally shot - and can't support both of us getting to-and-from a job. Without getting another car, I still have no way of getting a job. Which means we'll never get anywhere because we can't improve anything if we can't get more income in the household.
So, it's one hell of a bittersweet week. Don't get me wrong. I'm really greatful that my mom and her husband were able to get us back on the road in the short term. But Love works so hard and has been with his company seven years next month and we can't even get a loan for a car. It's like what's any of it for? We can't get a car, can't get a house, can't improve our situation. We're just stuck in such a quagmire and we can never even try to better ourselves. It's such a horrible, helpless pointless feeling.
I don't know. It's just wearing me down further then I thought I could be worn down. When you just don't have any reason to hope anymore and you don't have anything to look forward to and you don't have any way of making things better for yourself, you really just start to question why you even wake up in the morning, you know?
A Possible Temporary Fix The plan, at the moment, is that my mom is having the car towed from Love's work to her house. Her husband finally agreed to help and can get us the part for under $200 and do the labor himself. We don't really know that the alternator is the only problem but this might be a way to get it running for a few weeks while we work on getting a new(er) car. Buy us some time. She's going to float me the money until next week when we get paid. Not that we have it (or will have it then), but what are we going to do?
I can tell you that the phone has rung, literally, over thirty times today. Between the dealerships we called around to over the weekend calling us to "touch base," my mom, Love, my mom, my mom, my mom...the phone hasn't not rung for more then ten minute at a time. I had four calls just while I was in the shower.
It's not a done-deal yet. It's just the current plan. We still don't have a running car but we might again in a few days as a hold-over.
Silver Jewelry Club - New items Wow! Some totally new items up on silver jewelry club Haven't seen completely new pieces in awhile. They just had a neat pair of amethyst hoop dangels with beads and now there's a red coral set of earrings up. Red coral! Sheesh. That's different.
Anyway, head's up for those who've checked it out before but were waiting for new stuff.Here it is. (Note: I get 50 cents if you use my link. Thanks)
Wampi is a Maine Coon cat who was thrown off of an apartment building and needed extensive surgery to survive. Wampi's owner is running a campaign to help raise funds to pay for his vet bills with simple things like recylcing.
I have to say, I can really relate in some way to her cause. Those of you who are long-time readers will remember the two-year battle with cancer we went through to save Kush-ka. Two surgeries and over $2,000 later we ended up losing the battle. But I don't for a moment regret that we tried so hard, nor have I ever given a second thought to the money it cost. So many people fail to understand and realize that their lives are precious. Four legs don't make them any less a part of your family then two.
Anyway, I wanted to help spread the word and pass along the link. We need more people in this world that are compassionate like Wampi's owner.
Waste of a Day Love and I both felt like ass today - ass that had been run over a couple times - but we needed to try to go look at some other cars, dealerships and get some quotes today. There was another Saturn dealership somewhere over on this side of town so we thought we'd try to find it to get a comparison. Well, turns out I totally misread the miniture map that superpages.com gave me - it made it look like the street we needed was called something other then it really was - so we drove around in the borrowed-from-work-for-the-weekend mini van for over an hour and a half, back and forth, totally not knowing where the hell we were going. Turns out that we basically drove past where it really was like five times and didn't know it. We were within like half a mile of it all those times but because we didn't know we were trying to find the wrong street (that went the wrong way from the way I thought it was labeled on the map to boot.) I just don't know this side of town. Neither of us do. (Clearly.) So when it got to be going on 4pm and the entire damned day shot, we stopped to pick the girls up some food from the pet store and got ourselves some food from the grocery store and called it a day.
So a totally, useless, pointless wasted day. When we don't have days to waste. Put it this way, we still haven't figured out how Love's actually getting home from work tomorrow afternoon.
I don't have $400 or $500 (or more) to replace the alternator in the Mustang. It's got a brand new battery that ran for four days in it, completely dead. Hell, it's still parked at Love's work because we couldn't get it started. It's not even at the apartment. I have no money for anything for the next two weeks - you know, like important things like insurance, electric or even food - so I certainly don't have hundreds just sitting around for car parts.
This situation just keeps getting worse. Love and I were joking that we're not quite at the "slitting our wrists" stage yet, though we've gone already through the "getting totally sloshed" stage and are well on our way into "popping pills" level. (And yes, it's a joke. A poor taste one but our spirits are rather morbid these days.)
I didn't sleep worth a damn last night. The storm kept me up. (Hurricane Dennis, though it never came near us, battered us with heavy, gusty winds and rain because we're on the east side of the storm. With hurricanes, if you're east of it, you get the bands that can span hundreds of miles outside the eye.) Normally, I sleep great with rainy nights but my stress, fears and anxiety just kept making me jumpy from the noises. Love's been running a low-grade fever, feels like he's getting sick. I just feel achy and tired and more lethargic then normal. Ontop of my crushing depression of course. /sarcasm
Anyway, we accomplished exactly nothing this weekend. You know we only had to accomplish "find car with no money and no credit." Clearly we did great on that.
Rain On My Parade Like trying to find a car with shit for credit isn't hard enough on it's own, of course, we've had Dennis to deal with all day. Blustery, rainy day with gusts that kept making the rain fall sideways in torental fits. Clear up...downpour. Repeat. It's even worse right now:
It's not even really near us, but it's so damned big, we've been suffering the bands all day and will continue to through the night.
Got my hopes briefly up at the thought of a 2005 Saturn today. We called all over, gave them the credit score up front and asked them point-blank if it was do-able for them because we didn't want to waste time at a place if it wasn't. Even took a test drive. I've never owned a new car a day in my life. Love either. But, of course, it turned into a huge thing, and like over an hour later, they're going to "do their best" to shop out for a loan for us. It's like, if you realistically couldn't do it, why did you even bother with all of it? Just a waste of your time and ours? You know? They could have sold a car to someone who could actually get it in the amount of time they took with us today. So, it's out there. Hanging. 99% unlikely to happen but yet, if we go look again tomorrow and DO find something, we've already basically committed to this one. It's just such a fucking head game. The whole lot of it. We hadn't even given a moment's thought to an actual new car. Turns out though in several instances, it's actually cheaper because of the rebates and offers for 2005 models. What the hell?
Anyway, it's all so frustrating. We have one more day to figure something out and a dealer who is basically expecting it will be most of next week before we even know one way or another. Meanwhile, Love still have no way to get to-and-from work this week. It's just a nightmare. It really is.
Needless to say, it's been a bad day. And the rain out there just mirrors my mood.
