My birthday has come and gone and now I'm another year older. This is my last year in my 20's. I will reach the big 30 next year. I'm not that scared of my 30's. I know too many people in their 30's to have a negative view of turning 30.
Birthday BBQ: So my birthday BBQ was an absolute blast! (I have been playing with a program called JAlbum and have all my pictures up but I'm not ready to show the link just yet. I have a lot more tweaking to do to the album.) Anyways, back to my birthday BBQ. I would have to say it was a success! I had a couple last minute cancellations but in the end I had about 25 people at my place. People showed up at 2pm and some didn’t leave till after 11pm! I was able to introduce African Uno to a couple more people. I love that game! I was able to see old friends that I haven’t seen in a while. And pretty much everyone said they had a great time. Thank you all who were able to make it! And I totally understand for those of you who had things come up.
I actually had an emotional weekend after the BBQ. I think because I had been planning on having the BBQ for so long and well with all the turmoil in my life lately I had some post-party blues. Sunday was emotional. I felt extremely sensitive about how people viewed me. That didn’t change until probably last night. I’m not sure why I’m going through all of this.
My Birthday: Monday I was planning on staying home and vegging watching tv all day. My sister invited me to go to the beach but I’m not a big fan of the beach, at least not on Labor Day and not as a big production. I enjoy the beach when I can go for a couple hours, walk along the shore without shoes on and listen to the soothing sound of the waves without a lot of people around and most importantly looking through a lens at the beauty of it all. But unfortunately Heidi had invited the entire family and I felt a bit of an obligation to go. Mostly because I knew if my entire family was at the beach and I was home alone with my thoughts I could see depression being inevitable. My brother Brian was the one to finally convince me to go. He knew with everything going on in my life I would be ok till mid-day and then feel extremely lonely. So I grabbed some beach attire and a bag of things for the beach and ran out the door last minute.
The beach was everything I expected it to be: Miserable! There was no parking, it was packed with people and of course we had ice-chests, beach chairs, tents, boogie boards and anything else you can think of that would be required to make the beach an “event”. What made it worse is we were in multiple cars, so finding parking, loading and unloading became a huge chore. When my brother and dad came from the cars we found that we only had 3 hours worth of parking time. We went to Laguna, it was a smaller stretch of the beach. It was beautiful and if it hadn’t been so miserably crowded I could see it being a great spot. I think I’ll have to come back in the winter. So I made the best of it. Enjoyed the time with my niece and nephew, got my feet wet, took some pictures, wrote in my journal, and listened to my iPod. Writing in my journal proved to be a waste of time. I was in a foul mood and I knew whatever I was writing was impeded by the day’s events. We decided not to try to find better parking after the 3 hours was up and went to the Cheesecake Factory at the Irvine Spectrum for my birthday dinner. My brother and I headed home. I felt bad because I spent the rest of the night talking to my friend Rachel on the phone but he had planned on giving me free reign of the tv and had bought me cookie dough ice-cream. It meant a lot to me and I felt really bad that I hadn’t realized he had set out to do all that for my birthday.
My Camera: Looks like everyone knows what I really want. I only got money for my birthday, and in the cards they all said “for your camera”! I love my friends! So I have enough I believe for the camera right now with what I have been putting into savings and the money I got for my birthday. I might not be able to afford tax and shipping depending on where I get it but I’m so close I think I will just get it. Right now I’m doing some research. I have two people I’m going to for advice. But I have made the decision to go with the Nikon D70. So hopefully in the next month I will have it! Yay!
Job Hunt: Well I heard the interview I had last week Monday went really well. My friend knew all three of the people on the panel and they had nothing but good to say about me. Unfortunately it came down to me and another girl and she was bilingual. So alas, I’m still without a job. But at least I know I’m not doing something stupid in the interviews. I was actually wondering if I was really making some big mistakes since I’ve been through so many interviews and haven’t been picked. I was glad to finally hear from someone that knew the people on the panel. She said one of the ladies was so impressed she went to personnel and told them something like they needed to get me in there.
Temporary Work: I am doing temporary work for my brother Shawn’s company. I need to make a splash page that allows people to pick their country and then for now they have 3 pages they need for sure built; the Global page, the U.S. page and the Fiji page. At this point my brother is working out deals with a few other countries so he’s thinking it might possibly be a permanent position if things go as fast as he thinks they will. So we’ll see. I’m scared to do programming work. I feel like I have more of an eye for the graphics and not the back-end. I am going to give it my best.
Life: So last week it seemed as if “Life” was going to take me out. I’m still struggling. I’m still fighting. But I’m still standing. Only a couple close friends know what the “final blow” was all about. I am not giving up hope. Some days I’m extremely down, right now I know where I stand, I know what I need to do. I’m just not sure if I will get the chance to. But in the end if I’ve lost my chance then I have to be ok with that.
How appropriate, the song “Everybody Hurts” by R.E.M. is now playing on my iTunes. Well I think this has been a sufficient update. Goodnight.
posted by Charity at 9/07/2006 11:03:00 PM 
