Posts (page 2)

*sings* I brought a camera! I brought a camera! I brought a camera! Hey,hey, hey hey! *end singing*  So a few days a go, I realized that I had enough in checking account to buy a pretty decent quality camera. So, I looked on newegg.com to see what they had. After a few days of deliberation, I decided to buy this one:

30-122-200-02

I wanted something that was a little more advance than the average point and shoot. I really wanted a DSLR camera (either Canon Digital Rebel or maybe one from Nikon), but I don't have the money to buy one...well, technically I do, but I don't want to dish out all of my money for a camera. So far, the reviews I seen are pretty good. For it's price, it takes good quality pictures and some people who use it say that they take with them to shoot photos along with they SLR's and it works wonderfully. It may not be the sleekest camera in the world, but if it takes good pictures then it's good to me. It just got shipped yesterday fron New York and is currently in Louisville, KY. According to the UPS tracker, it should be here by the 31st, so we'll see. I also got a package deal, so it comes with a mini tripod, camera bag, lens cleaning wipes, batteries and charger, and...well I think that's it. I can't wait to snap some photos and see how they come out. This also give me incentive to knit more and post pictures of my progress.

by a homeless person for no reason. I meant to write about it on Friday when the incident happened, but because I have been quite busy, it slipped my mind for a while.

So I decided to take the bus to the mall a meeting that I had with my former TV Broadcasting professor (I'm her TA this semester) to do some shopping. So I walked to the bus stop that I was supposed to be at and there is this lady sitting on the bench talking to herself. She had many bags around her full of food and clothes and I had seen her walk up and down the street that we were on a lot with all of those bags. I am assuming that she's homeless--I don't know for sure. Anyways, I stood near the bus stop sign waiting because the bus was going to come any minute. I didn't care for sitting on the bench because 1.) I never sit on the bench at bus stops--I prefer to stand, and 2.) the lady had a ton of bags blocking the bench to me anyways. So, I'm listening to music on my iPod and waiting for the bus. I wasn't really paying too much attention to her because thus far her conversation had nothing to do with me (I could still hear her a bit). I see her take out a can of Arizona Green Tea and she starts to drink it. I check the time and realize that I'm a bit early, but the bus was on the way. As I was looking at my watch, I felt a splash of cold wet liquid hit me. I looked up at her and pulled out one of my ear buds.

"Is there a problem?" I asked slightly startled, but not in an agressive way.

"You'd better sit your ass down!" she said.

"What?"

"I ain't afraid of you," she huffed.

I feel the sudden urge to laugh at this point. I guess because this was completely out of the blue, but luckily I didn't because I think it would have exacerbated the situation.

"Look, I'm not hear to bother you," I said. I tried not to meet her eyes because I did not want to seem aggressive. "I'm listening to my music and waiting for the bus. Do you want me to sit down or do do you want me to stay here?"

"I don't care. Whatever."

I was temped to pull out my pepper spray, but I didn't want to seem threating so I decided against it. She didn't say anything else to me as the bus pulled up. I got on and put in my quarters. The driver asked me if she was harrassing me, and I told him what happened. He called security, which I assumed told her to go somewhere else and not to bother the people at the bus stop. I don't know what happened after that. What I do know is, I'll be taking the bus more, and I would like to avoid conflict like this.

How many times did you move growing up? How did moving (or staying put) impact your childhood?

I moved 6 times between different cities, four times between the states of Washington and California, and had 10 different addresses. I think moving so much has affected to a degree how I forage relationships with people. I am very wary of having close relationships for the fear of either abandoning them or them abandoning me. Every time I would forage a strong bond with some one, I'd either have to move or they would move from me. Looking back on it now, I wouldn't say that that was abandonment, but as a kid, I felt it was. The major factor in this perspective was my father. He was absent in my life for 15 years, and I felt that I was abandoned by him (I also felt that most of my paternal side of the family abandoned me as well). This weighed heavily on me for many years.

The move that had the most impact on me was when I was 12 years old. I had finally started to open up to people and had many friends. I loved the school I was going to, and had thought I was going to stay in the town until I graduated high school. At the time, my immediate family were staying with my aunt and her fiance. Because of some shady stuff she was pulling, we had to move because we could not afford staying in California. I was devastated, and my friends were completely shocked and very sad that I had to move. It sucked and I was depressed for several months after that. The middle school that I went to was completely different and felt more like juvenile detention than like a school, and high school was okay, but I still wished that I could have went to the same school as my friends back in California. I tried to make the best of it though, and was determined to go to my high school for the entire four years. My mom wanted to move to a different city, but I refused to go to another school. I was tired of having to start all over again with making friends.

Although I am still very introverted, I have started to open up a lot as started university. I think it's partly because a lot of my fellow classmates won't let me clam up. A good amount of them are extroverts and they just won't leave me alone!  ^_^ The same goes for my professors, and now they are very much like my friends.

It is indeed my birthday, and my gift that I received from my co-worker...a head cold. I'm feeling more miserable by the minute. I told her that she should have stayed home during the worst of it, but no. Now I have her cold.

In lighter news, a few days ago while at work, one of the little girls that I work with saw me knitting (I'm working on a simple scarf) and she wanted to learn. I did not have any extra needles nor any ones small enough for her to handle well. Luckily for her however, while I was talking to her, I messed up quite a bit and decided to start all over again, so I showed her how to cast on and how to do the knit stitch. She sort of picked up on it, but because of her impatience she did not listen completely. After a while she got bored, but she said that she would like to learn more someday since she thought it was really cool. This made me quite happy.

I think I'm going to go to sleep now. I just feel so groggy. This is not how I should be feeling on my birthday!

What are your fitness goals? What is helping or preventing you from accomplishing them?
Presented by Intel, Sponsors of Tomorrow.

I would like to get to a healthy weight. For my height, 130ish is pretty good, so I hope to get to that weight someday. What is getting in the way is who I live with. I still live with my mom, and she doesn't really buy the healthiest stuff. I am also a morning person, so the best time for me to workout is early morning. Thing is, I don't want to wake everyone up with me running on the treadmill or doing some other form of cardio (I'm also too broke to get a gym membership). I got to figure something out here.

NOW! So, I've been making strides to loose weight and have lost about 30 pounds since February, but I am frustrated. I have reached a plateau. However, the plateau is not the problem. Lately I have been buying new clothes and I've noticed something, I can see my fat rolls through my tops. My tops love to just lay in the crevasse between rolls. It is annoying as hell. No matter how loose my tops are, they just tend to lay on my rolls. It is so frustrating. I know there is no exercise that really targets this problem, so I have to spice up my exercise routine...I just need to figure out how though. The treadmill is getting really boring so I guess I just need to check out what is on OnDemand and do that for the time being until I find something that I really like to do.

Also, I went bra shopping and I would like to know, when in the hell did my boobs decided to become DD? I don't know when this growth happened, but I don't like it. It has made bra shopping sightly difficult and costly. I lost weight in each one of my problem area's but it seems that my boobs got larger. WTF. SHRINK DAMN IT!

I have naturally, super curly hair. I like it a lot (except at times when I have to by products because they leave a dent in my pocket), but apparently my folks don't like it. They are always insisting that I have it straighten, and they constantly call it "nappy." Personally, I don't get it, but apparently it is something that tends to be up for debate in the black community. There are some women who get into heated arguments over should one maintain their natural locks or get weaves, relaxing treatments, and other methods to get straight hair. It beckons the question, "What is good hair?"

Good hair, to me, is hair that you are happy with. If you like getting a weave and you feel great with it, then that's good hair. If you have super curly locks and you feel great with your hair like that, then it's good hair. I love my hair because not only do I look good with it, but it is a reflection of my heritage. I am black and Puerto Rican as well as a mix of other nationalities, and I'm proud. Because of my mixed heritage, I have naturally curly hair.

I used to hate my hair. My mom would brush and comb it out and it would become a huge quaff of hair, almost like an afro. My mom also liked to braid my hair a lot too, which at times was cool. However, I got bored of braids. I was against using chemicals to straighten my hair, but then I gave in to the pressure. Luckily, my hair did not give in to the relaxer and stayed the way it was. It wasn't until a year and a half ago that I learned that I had curly hair. I washed my hair one day and just realized that I had curly hair. This was my problem all of these years. I wasn't doing the right thing for my hair, and so I started to research techniques and products to use. Now I love it, but my folks hate it. However, I get plenty of people coming up to me and staying nice things about my hair. That outweights why my mom and grandma says about it.

Anyways, I guess what I am trying to say is the question of "What is good hair?" is so damn trivial and doesn't need to be something that we dwell upon. Good hair, is healthy hair and hair that makes the individual who has it feel good. 
 

Have you (or someone you're close to) ever been on television?

I almost had my 10 seconds of fame, but my chance was shattered thanks to the f***ing reporter.

A few friends of mine and I entered an engineering competition back in my high school years and we had reached national and won second place. It was a pretty big deal in my city, and we had articles written about us on several websites and in the major newspaper. We were doing a presentation in front of the school board when we were asked to do an interview for a local news channel. Well, I was the first up in the interview. So thinks were going pretty well at first. She asked me about my participation in the competition, things we needed to learn--the usual questions. And then she asked me what I planned on doing after high school, and I said "I want study journalism in university and hope to become an anchor." Before I could get "anchor" out completely she exclaimed "NOOOOOO! Why do you want to be an anchor. You should be a scientist. You don't want to be an anchor!" Needless to say, my segment got the ax.

The funny thing about this was after they aired the clip of my two friends interviews, they said that I was "not available to be interviewed," but then proceeded to say what I had said in the interview about how I felt had many interests including physics and journalism and that I felt the sky was the limit for me. WTF? If I was "not available for the interview," how do you know what the hell I had to say on anything about the topic?

So, yeah...my 10 seconds of fame was ruined by the reporter who interviewed me because she seemingly hated her job.

What have you been putting off doing?
Submitted by BeautifullyBroken.

My final project for my graphic design class. I couldn't use my right arm in May so my prof told me that I can have the whole summer to get the project done so I have time to get well completely. Now it's close to September and I need to really get going on it. I just started to plan what I want to do a couple of weeks ago...Procrastination is a hell of a drug, I just can't kick the habit.