Awesome site

Today is my first day off since the middle of last week, and I decided to spend it by listening to podcasts and designing my book cover. Which is done. I’ve finished it. It’s when I lose hope and decide not to invest all my energy in a project that I find something really cool pop up on the screen.

Only by God’s grace…

Anyway, here’s a cool site I thought was worth posting about: http://www.bookcoverarchive.com/

 

It’s chocolate for designers.

Another Cop Story

Prologue: Cleaning up took me ages tonight. I had several customers knocking on the window, wanting to ask me questions, and my boss called, wanting to know what he wrote on his grocery list, and then I called him to ask if I should clean the grinder. My boss also wants the floor cleaned real well. I feel really bad taking so long to clean up, but part of the reason was because my blood sugar started to crash and I just can’t move as fast when that starts to happen.

Real story: I was fighting with the mop bucket and out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone coming into our little, deserted parking lot. Two men, muscular, wearing all black. There’s no one else around.

I think Crap! Who am I going to have to scream off? and then I see the little gold accessories and the radios.

“Did you call us?” a brown-haired officer hollered to me.

“No, I didn’t.”

“Okay…What’s your address?”

I told him, and he nodded to the bald officer behind him. One went ahead and the other backtracked.

So there I am, wearing my shirt that reads DETECTIVE (Chicago Police Department logo) WE’LL SOLVE NO CRIME ‘TIL OVERTIME.

Then, I realize that there are apartments above the shop. I’ve only ever seen people going into them two or three times since last summer, but I thought it possible that someone from there could have called 911. The brown-haired officer reappeared, I called out my suggestion.

“Nah, it’s okay. We got it,” he said.

That was when I heard someone yelling from the alley. As much as I wanted to drop the mop bucket and run down the parking lot to see if someone was getting tased, an uneasy thought entered my brain. Hey, it said, you’re by yourself and someone nearby just called 911. Stop thinking about the fun that could be just around the corner, and concentrate on getting cleaned up and going home.

So I did. By the time I walked my bike across the alley, there was no sign of cops, victims, and the accused. I was sad. (LOL)

But now I really want to watch COPS. Maybe someday, my mad cooking skillz will get me into a police department. I can brew cofffee, too.

How Ratatouille Got Started

Breakfast:

A partially-scrambled egg with carrot, green pepper, brocolli and corn wrapped in a tortilla with a half slice of cheese.

Lunch:

(No pic, saahhry)

Fresh deli ham, provolone cheese, pesto sauce and spinache on Italian bread, and grilled on a panini grill.

Dinner:

Fresh lettuce, bacon, tomato, a little mayo on a hamburger bun.

 

 

I love food. I love cooking.

The Happiest Person

At the grocery, there was a man who I guessed was mentally handicapped from the way he talked, walked and reacted to things. He was with a woman, and the two were probably in their late 30’s. When he was coming through the aisle, he said asked me to move and then added “I didn’t want to hit you!” and we both kind of laughed. At first I was annoyed, and it caught me a little off guard to realize that–hey, maybe that person can’t help that behavior.

Our clerk scowled and whipped each and every can of orange juice into the empty cart, almost with added emphasis. My dad asked her to please not throw in the cartons of yogurt because they would break and splatter. She set one down roughly, tossed the other in, and winged more hard things on top of them. Yes, I know clerks want to get to the next person, but this was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen.

I stepped back, not wanting to be in the line of fire, and noticed that the man and woman were finishing with their order a few registers away. The clerk finished their order, took the woman’s money, but then scanned two more things on a separate order. The man watched and grinned, like these were his items.

“9.78,” the cashier said.

The woman handed him a $10 bill and the man next to her put an arm around her and, beaming, said “Thanks, sis!” He seemed so happy. Our clerk was still scowling and waited in frustration as my dad took out his wallet.

In the meantime, the man and his sister were getting ready to bag up their items, when the man turned to his own cashier and said “God bless you!”

It was really sweet, but got me thinking…Between our clerk and the man, who was the happiest and most full of life? Why do we expect it to be differently?

Tired day

After I biked over a draw bridge and was chased home yesterday (only to exagerate the issue a little), today I am completely wiped. Days like these pass in similar fashion: By noon, I can’t recall anything productive I completed that morning, including getting dressed, having breakfast, starting school, and the like. I try to make progress on something, but by 3 o’clock, I’m passed out on my bed, sometimes too antsy to fall asleep.

Dinner time, I start to feel a little better but begin to wonder if perhaps I’m not coming down with a bug. By 9 o’clock I can’t move, and then it gets to be around 11 o’clock pm, and I’m ready to par-tay.

One of the other things I do to keep myself awake during times like these, it to take a break and do something I really like. Just to get that feeling of Wow, I sort of want to stay awake for this. Tonight, I was hoping to add Twitter and Pandora widgets to my blog–but guess what? WordPress doesn’t allow javascripts or flash.

Come on.

I love WordPress, but lately I’ve been considering getting another domain and hosting service, just so I can do what I want without resctrictions. (Sounds so teenager-ish of me, eh?) And, yes, I do know coding (PHP, CSS, HTML, PHP includes, etc, etc) but my question for anyone reading this tonight is What hosting service do you have and are you happy with it?

My day, the 1970’s adventure episode

Instant recap: Okay, so I posted the other day that the coffee shop had reopened, and I have successfully completely three consecutive afternoon shifts, each about 6 hours long. We now have a panini grill, which in turn has quadrupled our sandwich menu. A lot of things have changed, and since the shop is under new management, it’s a much happier place to be.

The real post: I bike to work. Round trip is about 3.5 miles, and it is not flat. Many, many hills, including a 1000 ft bridge and through town and narrow sidewalks. Why do I bike when my parents offer to drive me? First, I need to get used to navigating my way in traffic before I go for my license on June 25th. Second, I have lost 8 pounds from April to May and it is still dropping because I am not constantly snacking on pound cakes and scones. Third, I need to get in shape. The Detective Booth in my head is constantly mocking me. No, seriously. I’m like schizo, or something. Just kidding.

I really haven’t had any problems biking until today. I didn’t even have problems that one day last summer when I biked home in the pouring rain, with no brakes on my bike, on the cell to my mother, and over a bridge with rails not to high for passing bikers. And because I survived that, I have never questioned if there is a God.

Today, however, I literally stepped onto the middle partition of the bridge when the bells started going off. Then the horn. The stoplight went on for the cars, and everyone stopped and the bridge usually opens right away. HEY I’M RIGHT AT WHERE IT’S SUPPOSED TO OPEN AND I DON’T THINK THEY SEE ME. The incline on the bridge going into town is really steep, so I usually walk it. It would take me forever to get seated on my bike, start pedaling up the incline and zip down the decline, so I took my bike handles and began to run. Already I was out of breath, and I’m hurying because I still don’t know if the bridge tendors see me. I’m almost past the red and white safety bars (not unlike those parallel to train tracks) and they start to go down. Immediately, they spring back up and I sprint a few yards past, get my butt on the seat and fly down the rest of the bridge. As soon as I crossed the intersection at the foot of the bridge, I turned around and saw that the bridge was almost all the way up.

I almost died.

Actually, I was just out of breath and a little freaked out. So, after I got to work about 5 minutes later, I sat for about 10 minutes and drank about 14 ounces of cool water.

When I get off work, I call Mom to let her know I’m on my way home. When she asks “Where are you?” I most often times respond “At the police station!” because I cut through the parking lot. From there to home, it’s about 1.5 miles, and for like the first time, I made it there to home without stopping. Part of this is because the incline on the bridge is not as severe as the other way, so that whoooole way I trudged then ran up, I get to speed down like there’s no manana.

Then, I cut across behind a parking lot by a bar and deserted hardware store, and take the most gorgeous commute home. There is nothing prettier than Lake Michigan at sunset, with the cool breeze and the lapping water…I also cut through a park (don’t be hater, there is a brick path) and saw that there was a party.

What’s weird about me, is that I hate other teenagers. I’m like a betta. Seriously though, they squeal, get drunk, use credit cards, and wear mini shorts. The girls are worse. (Mostly kidding, hahaa)

But there are about 30 of them, teenagers and young adults alike, playing volleyball and blasting rap. Almost as if on queue, a guy yelled out “Hey!” Psh, hey bro, I don’t stop for dawgs like you and I don’t even see yo face, hon. So I kept going. Uh oh, another steep incline up ahead. There’s a white sedan coming down towards the parking lot and it’s windows are completely tinted. If I were a cop, I would have pulled him over. I say that about most people, so going on….A red sports car happened to be pulling out of the parking and the two cars pulled alongside each other so that the driver’s windows were facing each other. I call this “cop style.” But it’s kind of creepy, so I use those hamstrings and get up that incline and across the deserted intersection when the white sedan pulls up the incline and down the street, going real slow.

But I keep going, thinking that I’m just paranoid, right? Still going slow, the car pulls onto another street. Sweet, I was being paranoid. But then I see the red sports car passing the intersection, going super slow as well. That car also had tinted windows, but I presume it was teenager or young adults. This guy didn’t turn, but kept going straight in the direction I was going. I’m still at a small incline, and he stays well behind me.

He follows me for about three streets, and I then I felt like hey, I really am being followed, and turned off a side street. I looked back a few times, but never saw him pass by.

Now, I wouldn’t think they’re behavior odd, except there were two of them, both going about 7 mph, same direction as me, and it’s a residential area where people fly past like they’re being cattle-prodded. I made it through that last incline and down into my backyard, panting and sweating.

I was greeted by my little brother, who is now waiting for me to play videos games. I promised I’d be down 11 minutes ago, so….

Ciao

My Kiss had 3 banners!!

     It did. I only wish it had extra chocolate. But weirder things have happened today. I’ll get to that in a second…I see my little brother copied a note and left it on my dad’s desk. “Courtesy, Your Friendly Neighborfood Spider-man” Hahaha! I love that!!

     Anyway, since Thursday (not last Thursday, the one before that) I haven’t been feeling well which left me tired, exhausted and not practicing my violin. Gavotte seems ridiculously harder to play…

     To go on, I came this close to calling 911 this afternoon. Work is getting weirder and the people are becoming more and more absurd. For a short description, there is one exit and entry way behind the counter–the “employees only” area–which just off from the back entrance where quite a number of our customers come through. An old guy walks in and is dressed like a modern day pirate. Black and red, rag-ish clothing, and an eyepatch. He gets right in my entry/exit way and leans uncomfortably close to me.

     “What’s for lunch today? Something vegetable, I see?”

     Whether it was the soup to which he was referring (Garden Vegetable), I don’t know. I asked him what he would like and he replied, “Something vegetarian.” I suggested one of the tofu burgers, and he agreed that that’s what he would have.

     “Oh!” he moved closer, and I wished I hadn’t left my cell phone at home. “I’ll also have a tall coffee.”

     He turned and went back to the bathrooms, where he spent a few minutes (doing heaven knows what), then sat down with his order, and tried to read the newspaper with his lone eye. This involved him holding the newspaper very close to his face, and pausing occaisonally to stare at me in a I’m-purposefully-trying-to-be-creepy kind of way. 
     Seeing this, I decided that I was going to call someone. I was in the store by myself, as the last group of customers had left.  My co-worker, Lacey, had clocked out some 20 minutes ago. I didn’t want to call Lacey, because I had already called her once to ask where the mayo was and she was in the middle of grocery shopping. My alternative was to call 911 and have an officer drop by for a bit and make sure this guy didn’t pull anything.

     I remembered what the police chief had said to me about strange customers, and that if I ever felt the least bit threatened to call. I may regret it otherwise. (He also mentioned that if I was too shy to call 911, to call the non-emergency number…I only now remember that part)
     
     In the below 0 windchill, I took the cordless store phone and called Lacey from the back porch. She answered the phone, “Mary.” 
     “I’m sorry!” I said. “There’s a guy here and he was, like, trying to come behind the counter. He’s really creepy, can you sit in?”
     “I’ll be there in one minute.”
     Mention a customer trying to come, or coming, behind the counter to any of my co-workers and you’ll immediately get their attention. It’s just something we don’t tolerate. Luckily, Lacey did have an almost police-like response time and was there about 3 minutes later.

     To add to the drama, a woman came in at the same time as Lacey. This woman’s son came in 2nd place on a widely viewed reality TV show that aired last season. If you have basic cable, then you’ve heard of the show and have probably seen at least one episode. The mother adopted the “My Son is Famous” attitude, as well did her daughter, for quite some time, leaving me small messes to pick up and being very snippy. Anyway, as soon as she entered and saw Eye Patch, she cried out his name. “I haven’t seen you in so long! How are you!” It was like two old friends.

 

     I told my parents, I feel as though I’m in a really tacky reality show. The group of customers before that were discussing how they could get a lion into our small Wisconsin town. A bear would also work, the man pointed out, or even a gorilla. One of the two women came up to the counter and asked for a phone book for one of the surrounding counties, but I told her we didn’t have one. Thankfully, I then heard the word “for our opening scene.” Later, I casually mentioned to the man if he was in show business, and he said he wasn’t—they were filming a commercial.

 

     For the heck of strange customer stories, there were two girls in a few weeks ago. The one girl I knew, and I told her that she looked familiar to me.
     “Do I?” she giggled in almost a flirtatious way.
     “Stephany, right?”
     The attitude stopped and her expression wasn’t so cheery.
     “No.”
     “I could’ve sworn you like just like a Stephany I know!”
     “No, it’s not Stephany, but…other girls say that.”
     That night I remembered that Stephany was the wrong name, and the wrong person I was thinking of. The other day she and her friend returned.
     “Hazel!” I said. “I thought of it the other night. I feel so embarrassed!”
     But I wasn’t the one who should have been embarrassed. This girl is just a year or two younger than me (I believe she’s 16) and was outfitted in a red and yellow summer dress, suede boots, a grey woven scarf and a full face of clown makeup. I asked her if she and her friend had just come from a play rehearsal.
     “No, this is just for fun.”
     Girl. It’s like 20 degrees out. Yet she and her friend went and sat out back for a while, not to mention that all the chairs were snow bound or coated in ice. They came back shivering. Her friend, if I might add, always seems to be pulling off the homeless look. She wears light pajama pants, doesn’t wash her hair, and her face is so gaunt, you’d think she was dying. No joke.

 

Life in the coffee shop continues.
Hugs,
Mary

I’m BACK

I just spent $6 on Mozart’s Divertimento No. 3 K 138. I want to marry the man! So talented. Hahaha, going on…

Lately I’ve been super overtired and can’t really figure out why. I was feeling really good for about 4-5 days when I had lights out around 11 and I would actually wake up at 9. Have you seen that part of Wall-E, where he wakes up and stumbles off his shelf? I make those exact same noises. I think Disney and Pixar just took sound-bytes of me waking up in the morning. Moan, stumble…crash….Oh, I watched Wall-E again last night with my lil bro. It’s such a good movie and we colored together ))

Anywho, my late nights have been due to the fact that I’ve re-discovered novels. Dad got me a spy novel from the library called The Spy Went Dancing and it was very interesting. I finished that in about two weeks, about the same time it took me to finish The Templeton Plan that I’ve been reading for school. Now, I’ve started The Great Gatsby. There’s not a lot of plot so far, and generally I like stories that start out with “He fell to the floor, dead, and I’m going to find his killer.” BAM. PLOT. But in Gatsby, the prose and flow of the words are so detailed and…harmonious that you can’t help but go on. Maybe Mozart wrote it.

I do have some more things to scan for brushes, but I’m afraid I won’t be able to get to them until next week.

Until then,

Bonne nuit

More posts soon!!

Heh, sooooo I posted the other day about how sick I was. Being sick, left me behind on my school and I wasn’t supposed to be online until I finished the rest of my schoolwork. Ya. Yesterday was crazy busy, and my stomach’s still messed up. A few more dramas at work, so look forward to a longer post later

What to do…

I can’t believe I posted an entire entry on chemical reactions yesterday. Kinda silly…But, oh well.

What sucks about living in a small town is that you can’t just go somewhere and do something. Now that I’m older, I have that ability to go places, but other than bowling and speed-dating there’s really not much else to do.

Actually, there’s ice-fishing and getting the cops to chase after you with their tasers. And beer…lots of beer.

SO, I’ve decided I’m going to work on graphics today. Screenshot some Bones episodes and make myself a nice pretty desktop background and a bunch of avatars. Maybe I’ll go for a walk and get some fresh air before the snowmobilers emerge from their caves.