OUT-DATED UPDATE

I owe this blog several generous blogs of random musings. I’m extending my deepest apologies to any readers/lurkers who have been frustrated by my lack of updates. I’ll sum up a few things that have been going on in my life, with one word per topic… in 10 words or less.

Single. Senioritis. Disneyland. Disney. Unemployed. Optimistic. Adventurous. Universal Studios. Cars.

(Okay, Universal Studios was two words for one topic, but whatever.) I’ll post blogs on all or most of the previously listed topics… eventually. And YES, Disneyland and Disney can be considered to be two separate topics. I’ll explain in another blog. I just thought it was about time I’d update this poor, neglected blog of mine.

ON MY MIND

There’s been a bunch of stuff on my mind lately.

I can’t wait until I go back to work, which (hopefully) is soon. Unemployed life is boring and it sucks to be broke. I need to save my money up… for a lot of practical and impractical things. I need to get a steady income rolling.

I feel like shit because I haven’t been to the gym in like… six months. I hate being lazy, for the most part. I love to work out, I just hate being surrounded by disgusting jocks in the weight room at school. I keep telling myself I’m going to get back into the habit; my gut has become slightly larger since the holidays and I can’t stand it. Definitely need to start eating healthy again and get back into old work out habits & commitment.

School is pretty breezy nowadays. I love AP Lit. I love having only 3 classes again. Unscheduled 4th period is a God-send. I even managed to swing a 4.33 GPA. I haven’t done that since freshman year. High school is almost over, I can’t believe it.

I got accepted into SFSU, woot woot-! My mom still wants me to go to community college for two years to get my general studies out of the way. It makes sense, but goddamn. I want to get out of this town. Well, I do and I don’t. I just really need a good dose of adventure & new things. I love meeting new people, and I’m very greatful to have had the opportunity to meet a handful of new people this past couple months. I need more of that. More adventures & more new people.

My writing has been slowly progressing, and that’s better than nothing in my book. I’m making an honest attempt to resurrect The Hot Dog/Cab Incident short story, but I really don’t know where to go from where I left off. I figure once I do something good with that story, then I can advance to Cheese, Chocolate & Grapes.

I’ve been feeling more disconnected from church lately. There really isn’t anything I can do about it. I don’t like the priests, I don’t pay attention during the readings- let alone the sermons, and I still don’t like the music. There isn’t much point in talking to my mom about it, because she’s really stubborn on the subject. I wish there was something I could to to renew my faith in my religion, but I’ve been drawing up blanks when it comes to that.

I’ve been feeling really restless due to lack of a driver’s license. I think if I had my license, I wouldn’t be so damn lazy all the time, and I hate wasting days away doing nothing but nap in bed. I plan on taking my permit test again sometime soon (for the 3rd time). I know. I suck. I’m a horrible test taker, I’m not even kidding. I absolutely HATE taking tests, no matter what. I get nervous, no matter what. It’s ridiculous. I need to get my license soon. I’m most likely going to be stuck driving the ugly janky Mexican van until I get a real car. My brother-in-law says I can have his old Nissan. The only problem is that it’s a stick shift, and I have never even touched a stick shift car. If I go up to San Francisco to visit my sister and stuff during spring break, I plan on driving the car back home with me. Summer is going to be here before I know it and I can’t not be without a car.

My love life… hah. Well, it doesn’t exist. The existance of my non-existant love life is pretty much the story of my life… that makes sense, right? It sucks, as always. I guess it’s better to be in no relationship rather than an unsteady one, right? I could ramble on and on about this, but I shouldn’t. And I won’t. It looks like a friendship got ruined because of a so-called “relationship,” and you have no idea how much that has really bummed me out. It would be pointless for me to ramble on and on about that as well, because no one reads this blog anyways, and… rambling wouldn’t change anything. As much as I wish it would.

YOB HUNT [2]

Unemployment is ridiculously frustrating, especially around the holidays. I filled out two applications for two different Starbucks locations, as well as two different applications for AMC 24 (Palm Promenade), and AMC 14 (Plaza Bonita). Game Stop apparently does not want me, so I don’t know whether or not to give up hope on that. I still have the filled out applications to the Las Americas Game Stop, as well as the National City Game Stop. I’d still love to work at a Game Stop… just imagine the discount I’d get on video games… I haven’t really gotten the chance to build my video game collection since I got my Wii. I still ONLY have Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles and Resident Evil 4.

All the really good places I want to work at hire at 18… and I’m only a month and a few days away from that. Borders is one of my new dream jobs. The Disney Store says they’ll take me back for the last month of the winter season -after I turn 18, but that’s not going to cut it for me in the next 8 months-or-so, until I go to college… wherever that may be. Sea World would be pretty cool to work at too… but my mom wants me to wait until I’m 18 if I want to work there, so I can trolley it back and forth… getting a car would be wonderful, but wishful thinking at that. (Speaking of, I should actually try studying for my permit test so I can get my damn license. Driving illegally for 2+ years is getting lame.) If I could get a legit job at Sea World with good hours and pay, then I’d definitely take that up. Alas, the waiting period to turn legal.

LOPEZ x4

Friday, November 7- I got an extra hour to myself in the morning, since I was technically excused from first period, because the bus wasn’t scheduled to pick us up until the beginning of nutrition break. Went to Fashion Valley for P.R. and photo class. Walking all around the mall left my feet screamingly sore, with a few blisters here and there. OUCH. We met up with the P.R. lady for about 15 minutes before we got the next few hours to ourselves. Ate at Panda Express with Fernando, Ximena, Vico, and Katrina. I bought the cutest Catwoman shirt at H & M… the remaining balance on my ATM is about $19. YIKES.

I kind of, sort of ditched fourth period when we got back to school, which is something I never do, so give me a break! Stopped by at a couple Game Stop stores to see if they even touched my applications. Apparently, they’re not busy enough to be hiring. Greeeeeeeeat. I’m going to be unemployed for the fuckin’ holidays. I can only dream that I’ll get a call in the next week or so saying that one of those locations want me. I NEED A JOB.

A little while later, I went to Victoria’s house, where I gave her some tips on Mafia Wars and we discussed our increasing obsession with Twilight *WINK WINK* We also both decided to try out for the school musical… High School Musical, to be exact. I don’t really have a huge desire to actually be in it… because it’s just High School Musical, but… it would be cool if I actually got a part in it or something, then I’d have to be in it, but I’m not going to get all butt-hurt if I don’t make it. My singing voice isn’t exactly wonderful. (I’m still deciding on whether or not to sing “The Mixed Tape” by Jack’s Mannequin or “That Thing You Do!” by The Wonders… I have until Wednesday/Thursday to make my decision!) A little later into the night, we watched Diary of the Dead, because we couldn’t get around to it on Halloween. It left me paranoid, like all zombie movies, and I was glad my mom insisted on driving half a quarter mile down the road to pick me up, because walking home would have been a nightmare, lol.

Saturday, November 8- I had to wake up around 6, 7AMish for this lame college prep workshop/Filipino pride event down at Sweetwater High School. I walked into their gym, and the first thing I saw emblazoned on the wall was a huge mural of Satan. WTFFFFFFFFFFFFFF. I had no idea their mascot was the Red Devils! Opening speeches/remarks were about 2 hours, and I noticed they did not stick to the time schedule and the first workshop rotation had to be cancelled. The second one I had to go to was about applying for financial aid, which was nothing I hadn’t heard before. The third rotation was some workshop regarding stereotypes and the importance of accepting all races, genders, etc. Tyler and Sam were there for that one, so it wasn’t as painful as it could have been. During an activity, I was randomly labeled as a “poor person,” LOL. Tyler was a “promiscuous male” and Sam was an “ASB member.” After all the workshops were done, I stayed a little longer for free food (abobo, pansit, and rice–nothing special) and I got two free shirts. I wasted a good 5 hours of my life at that damn pointless workshop.

A little later, I called Victoria to come over and help me kill time. After swooning over the newest issue of Entertainment Weekly (which had Edward and Bella on the cover… OH BABY) and kicking ass in more Mafia Wars, AND looking at the over-priced Twilight shirts and hoodies on the Hot Topic website (and then hatching the plan of making our own Twilight shirts), we went to Old Navy with her mom and sister. After getting back to her casa from Old Navy, we got picked up by Manny and chilled at his house for a while with Jo, and his college buddies- Janis and Angel. Michelle Bush stopped by with brownies.. YUM. Victoria and I obsessed over Twilight even more with Janis and Angel, which was really cool… and kind of nerdy, but oh well!

Sunday, November 9- Went to church, as usual. I felt really bad, because the sermon ended before I even started listening… I just zoned out for some weird reason. Kim came over after church, and then Victoria. We  went to go pick up Tina, and watched Diary of the Dead at mi casa. Halfway through the movie, my mom took us to Michael’s, so Victoria and I could get fabric paint for our Twilight shirts. We also got really cute iron-ons for the back design of the shirt. We had to swing by Old Navy so I could get my matching black wife beater. OH YEAH! The weather that day was really nice: cold, windy and rainy. I love fall/winter weather, and I can’t wait for it to get even colder and grayer. Back at my house we ate sweet and sour pork, then finished Diary. After that, we ended up watching Planet Terror. BRUCE WILLIS IS A BABE ;D

Monday, November 10- Spent most of the morning in Eastlake with my mom, because she wanted to check out this new Goodwill book store around there. It was a small store, but really well organized. I bought the entire Chronicles of Narnia collection for $5! I was hoping I’d see Eclipse somewhere amongst the old, used books… but that was wishful thinking. We hung out at the cutest Borders book store I’ve ever seen. And I had no idea there was even one in Eastlake-! I was looking through Eclipse, when this chick on crutches asked if I’ve read any of the Twilight books, and we ended up having a nice little chat about the series before she had to leave. I found one of my favorite genre sections (Reference books) and holed up there for the rest of the visit. I skimmed through a writing reference book about writing/publishing your first novel, which gave me more inspiration and motivation to get back into the habit of writing at least once a day, everyday again. I wish I could have bought it, but it was $16… and I had $0. On the way home, my mom and I picked up some food from Johnny Carino’s, which kept my mouth watering all the way home.

[Random quote from my mom while driving: "This driver in the red car must have itchy balls."]

I indulged in some delicious pasta and chicken when we got home, and shortly after, I was in a damn food coma. When I woke up, I had some phone talk, then went to Victoria’s casa to make our Twilight shirts. The first part of the shirts are a total SUCCESS. Picture this: black wifebeater, and silver text that says “Stupid lamb.” It might sound lame to you, but those shirts are our little masterpieces. You have NO IDEA what it took us to make those. We still have to put the iron-ons, but that’ll come later on this week, perhaps. We even decided to do our makeup and everything for the midnight show. OH YEAH. We’re going to the midnight show, since next Friday is a late start day at school. HOLLAAAAAAAAAAAA!

And if you haven’t noticed, I spent 4 out of my 5 day weekend with Victoria, hence the title of this blog, LOL.

WRITER’S… ROAD BLOCK –? !

Dear self,

hello, hope you’re doing well… with the exception of senioritis, unemployment, and being overcome by the deadly sin of sloth. I was just curious about something, and the best way for me to come about that is by asking… WHAT THE FUCK?! Why the hell haven’t you been writing lately? Remember One In Twenty and All You Wanted? Both of those scripts were completed years ago, and they still require your attention… given the changes you’ve been considering making for the sake of the characters and plots. And what the hell happened to that novel?! Cheese, Chocolate, and Grapes still has so much promise, don’t forget about it! You started that back in 8th grade, and now you’re in 12th. I think it’s safe to say you’ve made progress on it, however said progress is minimal. Get your lazy ass off Myspace and Mafia Wars and get back to writing! Whatever happened to that girl who carried around a notebook wherever she went? That girl who would write herself to sleep? That girl who would even write while soaking in the bathtub? WE WANT THAT GIRL BACK! Lord knows you’ve had enough inspiration to work with, so use it! Don’t waste such valuable writing resources. Don’t forget: everyday you don’t write something clever is one more day you’ve foolishly wasted; and one less word, sentence, paragraph, or page lost.

So what if Zack Braff stole your ending to Candy Hearts when Garden State was released? As brilliant as that ending was, work around it and come up with something better. And whatever happened to that “short ” story you started working on two years ago? Yeah, you know what I’m talking about: The Hot Dog/Cab Incident. That has a lot of promise too. ADD TO IT, DAMMIT. Don’t solely rely on blog sites in which to write all your material. Go back to old habits, and carry around a huge notebook and inky pens. Find yourself writing one-liners and short synopsises.

Look at yourself. You’ve gone so crazy, you’re writing a letter to yourself in hopes of striking that writing bug you’ve seem to lost over the years.

Good luck.

Love, Catherine

SENIORITIS

Graduation is months away… seven, to be exact, and I’m definitely catching the senioritis bug early on. Honestly, I just don’t give a shit about school at the moment. I shouldn’t be complaining, because I have the easiest classes right now. Government is a bit off for me, because after 5 weeks, I still don’t know how the fuck Ms. Guerrero expects notes to be formatted correctly, nor do I really care. I only turned in one packet of notes, and I didn’t even receive credit for it because I had no idea what I was doing. She rambles on and on and I manage to tune her out every time. At least I passed the first and only test in that class with a C.

As for newspaper, I have always procrastinated in that class, and I’m not really worried about it. When someone is expecting some sort of written material from me, it’s best if I write under pressure anyways. No matter what, I always get my stuff done for that class, and besides, it’s an easy A.

I realized it was pointless to even waste a breath trying to do well in Spanish. Ms. Ward doesn’t teach us jack shit, let alone set up actual lesson plans. It’ll be easy for me to slide pass Spanish 3-4 with at least a B, because I think that’s what I got on the last grade report. Being a kiss-ass never seems to fail me. High school is all about bullshitting your way through it anyways, right? Why should I give my 100% effort if my own teacher won’t even do that? As long as it looks like I care about learning and doing well, that’s all Ward will see, and that’s all that matters to me at this point.

Photo class could really use more of my attention. It’s just difficult when I’m uninspired most of the time and I have to share the good camera with two other people. I know that I am capable of taking decent pictures for the class, but yet again… laziness has gotten the best of me.

All I really do lately is nap, waste time on Myspace… and rot my mind with lame VH1 shows. I really do not know where all my spare time goes… it just disappears like it’s nothing. I think another reason I’ve been so lazy lately has a lot to do with the fact that I am still unemployed. When I have a job, I realized that for some reason I’m much more motivated in all aspects of my life, not just school life; when I have a job I like using my (rare) free time writing and reading, and even doing homework. I don’t know what’s wrong with me lately. I wish I could always just… be motivated and productive, but I can’t. My senioritis has also been tainting my college ambitions, and that is just about the last thing I need, especially now. College applications are due at the end of this month, and I haven’t gotten one essay written, let alone seriously organized/prioritized my choices of schools. I don’t want to fuck up my future because I gave in to feelings of laziness when I was nothing but an idiotic, naive teenager. I really need a life wake-up-call, in the worst way. I need to save myself before it’s too late. I need more will-power to become motivated again.

YOB HUNT

I don’t know why, but I woke up around 5AM and could not go back to sleep. I went back and forth between lying in bed listening to music, to Myspace in the computer room. Had 3 hour-ish phone talk, the longest it’s been in a while, which made me happy, even though most of the conversation was spent talking about Mobsters, lol. & I can’t believe… more or less 5 months.

After phone talk I busted out the white pages in hopes of finding some local places that would hire poor little unemployed, under-aged me. Most of the places I tried were either not hiring, or only hired at age 18 and up. I applied online for Game Crazy in Chula Vista, and when I drove my mom to Mervyn’s I applied on one of the computers at customer services. I didn’t even know they opened a new Game Stop on Saturn, but there it was… calling out to me. I was really psyched too, since the Game Stop on Palm had said they already finished hiring for the holidays. I walked in and talked with one of the employees… her name was Joelyn or something like that. She complimented my Gwen Stefani purse as soon as I walked up to her, lol; then she complimented my earrings, and then my sunglasses. We had small talk about how I got laid off at the Disney Store and stuff, and she gave me an application. She said that I shouldn’t keep my hopes too high or rely on just that store, since they already had a butt-load of applications, but I’m really hoping I get the job. I’d love working in a video game store… it’s hella nerdy, but come on, LOOK AT ME.

I was also thinking about applying at Starbucks, just not the one on Palm, because I’d hate to serve the little pukes I go to school with. AMC is also on my list of places I’d like to attempt applying at. As a last resort, I’ll apply at Levi or Nike, but for now I want to milk out all of my other options, because I want to work somewhere I love.

When I got home, I walked to Luzita’s and bought a California burrito ($4.09) and got an Arizona from Northgate, which was only $0.85(?!?!!!) Awesome. James Franco was there, but I didn’t go to his line since it was way too busy anyways. I weakly dragged myself home in the damn heat, and watched Maury… then I knocked out for 4 hours… a lovely, food coma/sleep deprivation induced nap. It was nice.

(By the way, I can’t get over how good I smell right now… thanks to Herbal Essences Long Term Relationship raspberry shampoo and that new orchid body spray from Bath & Body Works.)