you can have her, I don't want her, she's too fat for me (hey!)

Plenty of good things have been happening. Fall is a magical season. Forget about Christmas and all that.

First, I was able to get a new job and quit Cosi. I liked the majority of my coworkers and preparing food and having so much contact with the mostly nice public, but the company treats their employees like crap. No amount of free drink is going to make up for the number of times I have been kept late and not been given the few days off I requested, which I warned them about weeks in advance. I now work processing voter registration applications, and so far I have opened thousands of envelopes and looked up thousands of addresses so that we know which county/city clerk to send the applications to. Getting guaranteed full time hours, never having to stay late unless I want to (AND getting paid extra for overtime!), and generally doing less work for more money makes me happy. I don't feel as much rapport with the people there, but when you're sitting at a computer all day you don't have a whole lot of time to socialize, and you don't have to work together there as closely as you need to at a restaurant.

Second, I went last weeekend to Seattle for Zach and Jenny's wedding. I got up at 4:15 Thursday morning and was there by 11:30. Zach's house got a lot of the projects done that came up when I was there last year (rewiring all the electricity in the entire house, painting the bathroom and dining room, staining and installing the new front door), and it's looking a bit more homey. Oscar was happy to see everybody :) I also tried Gorditos for the first time, which is this Mexican restaurant that my mom cannot get enough of and tells everyone who will listen several times about how good it is. My burrito and the tacos were kind of bland, but the salsa was delicious. I helped make the programs for the wedding at his house too. We went shopping at Pike Place Market too. I sampled some treats and found this shop that sells bulk spices and loose tea, and they had the garam masala I so dearly wanted to try, and I didn't have to pay an arm and a leg for it like I would back home. I kind of wanted to go to See's and buy some chocolate or at least get a sample, but I need that like I need a hole in my head.

I got my first ever pedicure last Friday. It kind of tickles, and wasn't as painful as I was expecting it to be. My feet are all pretty now, and they were really soft for the whole day after. Since nail polish is the last thing they put on and it's not usually dry by the time you leave, they give you paper sandals to wear so you don't mess it up. I thought that was funny. We then went out into the country for a bridal luncheon that Jenny's friend Alicia and her mother threw for her. They have a REALLY nice house and they're both really sweet. I loved everything there. Zach and Jenny picked a malt shop (Blue Moon Burgers) for their rehearsal dinner, and it was AWESOME. The food was delicious. It was a first for the restaurant, too - they closed 2 1/2 hours early just for us. I think they got a lot more business from us than they would have had otherwise...about 15 people showed up at the door while we were there.

The day of the wedding (Saturday) we spent all morning and most of the afternoon just getting ready. Kelly did everyone's hair, and I wore makeup for the first time in a couple of years. I still can't believe she was able to make my hair stay in spiral curls for more than half an hour! I felt very pretty. We went straight from the apartment to the Palace Ballroom and waited around for the bride and groom to get there to have pictures taken. As sisters of the groom, it was our duty to hand out programs to the guests. It was a fun job, especially with the event coordinator girl being cool and my brother and Jenny's brother there for ushers. I have a bit of a crush on one of Zach's friends because he's quite genial, good for intelligent conversation, and British, so he greets ladies with a kiss on the cheek. ^^ The ceremony itself was a lot more moving than I thought it might be...maybe because I know both people so well. The most emotional part for me is when the bride walks in and everyone stands up for her. My brother actually got kind of choked up during his vows. I don't think I've ever seen him cry. Come to think of it, I'd never seen him kiss Jenny at all until the ceremony. (Quite different from my boyfriend, who is very affectionate, even around my family.) Dinner was really awesome because the Palace Ballroom is chef Tom Douglas' event space, and he's a local celebrity of sorts that makes really good food. He did not make an appearance (I doubt he personally cooked the food or was even there) but it was really unique and delicious. It was also awesome because Zach sat me next to his British friend at the table and we talked through dinner. Jenny's mom baked a really awesome cake, too. :D My dad (the best man) gave a really cool speech at the wedding. The dancing was a hell of a lot of fun. I had NO idea Zach's friends were all such great dancers!! They were better than most of the girls and so much fun to watch. Jenny stabbed my foot with her shoe heel (she wore red shoes with her dress, which I think is a kickass idea) and my foot bled for a bit, but that didn't stop me XD I even taught the British guy and Jenny's father how to dance polka. Too bad British guy ended up talking to event planner girl all night and I didn't get to hang out with him after that. Hell, one of Zach's friends that was there by himself (but has a girlfriend) acted as a sort of "date" for Kelly's friend XD My date left me :( oh well. at least he said goodbye at 2 AM :)

All in all, this Seattle trip was a smashingly fun time. I felt very welcome, both with Zach and Jenny as well as all their friends that I'd only met a few times before. My dad even said that he was happy his son and daughter in law have such awesome friends. It's something that gets you feeling very thankful and lucky. I felt the same when Ty and I were able to enlist 15 friends to help us move into our house in June. You know you're surrounded by good people when you can get them to help you out with a shit job like that.

Other things
1) I found out how my herb pots keep ending up dumped over outside. I went out to my bike yesterday morning and found a squirrel tipping them off the back ledge. Sneaky little bugger.
2) Thickening curry with frozen yellow squash was definitely a good idea. It adds a lot of color without being spicy, lends a potato-y texture and flavor, makes it sweeter, and it's a lot healthier than coconut milk.
3) Garam masala was that last little missing piece to make curry that tastes complete.
4) It was raining hard yesterday on the way home, and I rode my bike. I got to the park and about 80 ducks were sitting all over the path and in the puddles in the grass. Hearing them all quacking and watching them lazily waddle out of the way made me smile. I like ducks.

Also, hooray for getting Hunter wellies for $35!! I wanted red ones, but couldn't justify paying $120 for them. Then tonight I go online and find a website with one certain color in my size on sale for a ridiculous $29.99. I really wanted red, but for the quality and the price, I decided I could settle for light blue. It certainly isn't the worst color I could have ended up with, and it's a bright color, something raingear should be to offset the dreary day, and light blue is neutral enough to work with too :)

I love fall.

いっつも、最後の最後、救われる。

It may be that I tend to work much harder for something when it gets down to the very last moment where I could still make it work out fine, or that I have this strange knack for being saved right before I fall into a serious problem (it's happened three times in the last year).

Whatever it might be, I have a new job!!

Mind you it's a temporary job, but six months is a decent length for a temporary job, especially when you're working for the state, get paid 25% more than where you're currently working, are guaranteed full time hours at the SAME time every day every week (no more working weekends for me!), and aren't hassled/disciplined for feeling too sick to come to work every once in a great while. Bonus: I get to feel like I'm helping out with the election! Whee! I'll be entering and updating information in their voter registration database. I had a feeling I did all right with the interview, especially when they made sure they had my work references before I left and the guy told me I did a good job (I swear he said that to me as I was leaving, but I can't remember for certain). They said they'd call me whether they chose me or not. The lady who interviewed me called and left a message on my phone today, but just told me to call her back about the job. My mom does exactly that when she has good news for me - she waits for me to hear it in person. ^^

Now I don't have to worry about making it to Courtney's wedding. phew.

All I have to do is negotiate new hours with my current job, or if they don't like that idea, I'll quit. bam. I get very little notice with just about everything I do there, so I don't think they can really expect a lot of notice out of me. On the plus side, next week was the week I took five days off for my brother's wedding anyway, so it's rather like two weeks' notice with just a few days they need to find someone else to work, because I can work through Sunday.

I think I'll just quit, actually. 40 hours is enough to work in one week. Originally I planned to renegotiate hours because the new job was only going to be 8-10 weeks long, but now that it's 6 months I really don't see the point, especially when I'm so adamant about having weekends off (which is really the only time I could work, or evenings, but they have a ton of people for that already).

In other news, I went home to visit my parents this past weekend, and saw my brother and sister, picked up a lot of my things (and found out my sister stole a bunch more things I bought in Japan and lied to me about it), and brought my dress for my brother's wedding home for my mom to alter. Dave's birthday is on Saturday, and we will be going apple picking this weekend, which I am VERY excited for. I love eating apples, have loved picking apples since I was a little kid, and introducing people to it last year was really fun too. :D My brother is getting married in a week and a half, and now I have a new job to tell people all about while I'm there and I won't sound like I'm still the bum I was a year ago. I have to figure out how I want my hair done (and now I don't have to worry about how much I'll spend on it because I have a decent job). I'm thinking curls, but since my hair is in so many layers now I don't know how well that will work. And, down or up? Up is more formal, but I think down just looks better on me. I also had the JLPT study group today, and got a bit of insight into Ross' character that doesn't really come through when we're talking in Japanese. I can see how Fred would think it's annoying, but I'll learn to deal with it instead of just getting frustrated.

Knowing I don't have to search for jobs for a while any more will make me so much happier than I've been...

dress shopping

I went shopping yesterday for a dress for my brother's wedding. In specific, I went to the store I talked about last time, to get an idea of exactly what size would fit me and how true the colors of the fabric were to the colors online because a lot of clothing sites digitally recolor one picture of the item of clothing you're shopping for instead of taking a real picture of each color (convenient in some ways, but for a thing like this, I don't want any color surprises).

Out of all the ones I tried on at the store, I only liked one (which is still amazing given that they were all from the sale rack and they didn't have much in my size to begin with) and it was the right size and color! That NEVER happens. I still wanted to see what else was on their website, though, to make sure I couldn't find a different one for cheaper that was still pretty.

I wasn't planning on being able to order the exact style of dress I ended up liking, though :)
Sure, it's navy blue instead of copper, but I think navy does better for me anyway - it looks better with my hair (the copper kind of washed it out and made it have a dull, ugly color), and I can wear silver jewelry with it (which is all I have, no gold or copper) and it will look great. Bonus: it cost less than the copper one in the store, even after shipping. (I'll be spending it on alterations, though...) Here are some pictures of it!

I fixed the color on the pictures to make it look a bit more like it does in person. I'm really excited to wear the dress, actually. I also bought some shoes for it (in black) and a wedding present for my brother and my soon to be sister-in-law (they looooooove Thai-style food and she really loves to cook, so I thought it would be really nice for both of them). I spent a lot of money today. I also washed dishes for a whole hour at work (anyone will tell you it's my least favorite kind of housework - thankfully at least you can get a machine to do most of it for you!) and had the new pumpkin spice latte we're introducing on Monday, and it tastes pretty good (kind of sweet when you get to the bottom, though). I sat outside on the patio drinking that before going home, and it was very relaxing.

Someone is finally buying my old anime/manga/game CDs! So happy :D there's not much of a market here for that. More money for dress alterations, or sewing supplies.

Speaking of sewing, I'm planning to devise a way to make my own underwear because
A) they're so expensive for what you get (so much money for so little fabric and it's usually not that great in terms of quality)
B) you need a good lot of them (unless you want to be doing laundry every few days or replacing them every few months)
C) they're so small and manageable to make, I would think. You could easily whip up a pair in an hour once you figured out how you wanted to construct them. and
D) You could make them really, really cute/your own style.
Finding a good fit will be the hardest part. That'll probably take a few different patterns and a few test pairs with each to figure out. You can even get the fabric for them from other clothes. :D New use for T-shirts I never wore, and the designs from the ones I wore too much!

I also need to shorten the straps on this dress (the bunny dress I bought in the winter!) so that my chest does not look like it's 50 and losing the battle with gravity. I don't look like that just yet. XD The model looks sort of like that too now that I look at someone else wearing it...maybe I just made a bad choice of dress. oops. but the print was so cute.

I thought I was going to cook dinner but it looks like we're going out for Indian food tonight. mmmmm ^^

happy September

Another month has gone by. I am still looking for a job, although I tried a lot harder in August than I did in July. 3/4 of the people do not even get back to you when you apply to shit, so 75% of the work you do is for nothing. I feel like I look really nice on paper but the second they actually have a chance to talk to me, the little red flags go up in their heads. I feel like the last interview I had went really well, though. I guess what you have to believe is that every no is one step closer to a yes, partially because you get a lot of practice on the way.

I had a wonderful day at work today for several reasons:
1) There's this one guy who always has a smile on his face that stops in a couple of times a week, and always gets the same salad, plus a huge cappuccino with lots of foam ("dry" for those of you who know the terminology). Thanks to him I have been able to perfect my milk foaming technique, because so few people order such foamy drinks. He also always tips me. :D Today he brought some friends and stayed to eat instead of taking it out.
2) One of the younger baristas that started about a month ago told me today how she likes working with me because I get excited about little things and it brightens her day. That made me feel awesome.
3) Two men came in today and ordered some food to go, and I found out they were from Switzerland. They must have liked me because after I made their coffee and the other server brought them their food, they came back and found me before leaving, and gave me a Giandor chocolate bar.I got so excited because Swiss chocolate is damn good, and after researching it a little bit I found out that this brand is not sold in the US at all. Bonus points! I also thought it was really sweet of them to give me something at all. Random acts of kindness rule.

In exactly a month I'm flying out to Washington for Zach's wedding, which means I need to find a freaking dress. I'm not in the wedding, but I will be in a decent number of the formal pictures so I want to look nice! There's a bridal store here that has a lot of styles and colors for dresses, even on their online clearance, and my plan is to go to the store and try some of their dresses on just to get an idea of what size I should order (their online deals are amazing, but you can't return the dresses once you buy because they're final sale items). I also hope I get a new job by then so that I don't look like a total slacker, and I'll have something to talk about. I mean it was at that point last year that I flew out there to look for a job, and they didn't take so kindly to me not finding one in 2 1/2 months there.

In other news, I'm getting a study group together for the JLPT and hopefully it will help us all do better, boyfriend had his first live show with his new band last Friday and it was a raging success, it's REALLY hot outside (please fall come soon...), I went to a rummage sale and got some cool things for cheap for my room upstairs (the vase and chair on the left side of the picture, plus a sterling silver bracelet with heart tag and some cute blue polka dot ribbon, all for only $6.25!).

I'm also impressing lots of boys with my cooking lately. It makes me wonder all the more if I belong in cooking school.

well, I was right about the dog

Oscar, that is. Sure, he can be a little annoying sometimes (particularly when he just barks and whines at cats and people and things he sees or thinks he sees from the front door) and he does leave around a lot more hair than I thought (I should talk...), but for the most part he's just fine to have around, and provides entertainment. Plus, I feel good helping take care of him. :)

I haven't heard too much about my parents' new puppy yet, but my dad took some pictures of him yesterday and he is still the cutest little thing I've ever seen. Too bad they can't agree on a name for him, though. I got to hear some funny puppy stories about Oscar, like the time they took him over to one of Zach's friend's houses when he was about 16 weeks old (about a month older than the one in the picture), and Oscar was persistently trying all night to get their friend's Bernese mountain dog (who was about 10 times the size of him) to play, and she just wasn't having it. Then finally, she bounded, all 80 pounds of her, over to where Oscar stood and let out this thundering playful bark, and Oscar shrank down into their carpet...and peed himself. Kind of a weird story, but still very funny.

I woke up to my phone ringing this morning (and earlier to my brother coming in and out and rummaging in the ONE closet in the house for his nice clothes, and to a dream that ended with my failed attempt to commit suicide and realizing I didn't really want to die anyway, and another strange dream I can't quite remember). I got to talk to a nice man who called me Heidi-san and is attempting to get me a job. I never actually spoke with a recruiter before, but I like to think it'll get me somewhere. I spent the next few hours throwing together a cover letter. My original plan today was to go to Uwajimaya Village and Kinokuniya and look for the JLPT grammar prep book, but it's already getting to be late afternoon and I just kind of wanted to bum around there for a while, but not spend too much money. I guess with my security deposit money coming soon (I got the joint check in the mail from Di-chan yesterday) I can afford a little something, like あんぱん or nice ingredients for a good Japanese meal...but I still think I should save my pennies until after I have some income. Maybe I'll take some pictures of the house and around the neighborhood or go for a walk instead (but I'll probably save that because Jenny is coming home early, and Oscar hasn't gotten to go outside today). There's still that tree that fell down and blocked the road. And the invisible roundabouts that people just barrel straight through anyway. XD not to mention the fall colors are beautiful in this neighborhood.

It's settled. Picture time.

ハッピーバースデー to マイボーイフレンド. ユーアーマイラブだよ。
I wish I could be there, but what I sent will have to do. And I already gave you my present :)