Happy October. Dude, time is flying by. It's weird not to have anything by which to reflect the passing of time (can't end in a preposition now). For as long as forever, I've counted down the days until summer break, marked each year by my grade, just toiled through to some ending in the vague future that I never believed would ever arrive.

It disgusts me that I've forgotten so much French and Japanese. I've been close to fluent in both and now... At least school provides some incentive. Now the only incentive is food. Ha! food... not nearly as persuasive as grades.

You mean, people can read this thing??

Today I bought the unabridged diary of Sylvia Plath. Hopefully I won't identify too much.

So I kinda wanted to learn how to sketch. Unfortunately, I don't think I should be starting anything no career related.

Dude, remind me not to read everyone's blogs before I start my own. Now I'm trying to remember what the heck I was going to blog about...oh yeah.

I finally found my focus, the thing I will deprive myself of until I get my act together. Furniture. At least, I'll try to deprive myself. I wouldn't let myself buy a $50 table-type thing today, but I ended up getting a $10 Firkin/basket. Hey, I don't know what a Firkin/basket is either, but it's kinda cute, and it was marked down from $40. It's a wooden basket, but it was legs so it's like a stool, and it has a handle so you can carry it around like a purse. Hey, it was cheap. Did I mention that all the things I have to keep depriving myself of are from antique stores? I have a serious weakness for old things in different styles. Once I actually get money, it's going to be a struggle not to spend it all on old wooden things that cost thousands of dollars and are too big to fit anywhere. So that is my happy news.

Crazy news: I may have to avoid anyone in my extended family. I got a whole speech on how I should look for government work, maybe in the post office or at the prison, today. Federal pays better than County which pays better than State, just in case you were wondering. Can anyone think of a quicker way of dying than to get a government job?? I can't. Oh yeah, and the prison is fine, but you should avoid working in the Welfare Office apparently. Everyone is either on their way into or just getting out of prison...so, I just kinda spaced off at that point.

So now that the Big Move has fallen through, I have nothing to be working toward. I'm not saving up for any special future, there are no CDs that I'm dying to have. Now I have a sniffle that was an evil cold, and I'm using it as an excuse to not take the dog for a walk. What else will I use it to not do?

I got an email from SUA asking permission to use my Capstone as an example to show the current seniors. I wanted to say no, because, well, mine is boring and longwinded and I could probably write something better in my sleep (which brings up the question, well then, why didn't I?). But I figured that it's time to move on, and if viewing my horrible writing gives someone else the boost of confidence needed, then it's all to the good. I think my Capstone could have been something slightly interesting had we had the criteria that the news guys got.

So a) Blogger has decided that I am just not good enough to view it or to create a post, and b) I have suddenly developed an aversion to the internet. If I get on at all, it's just to check my email real quick and jump off. I think I'm afraid that I'll get sucked in and spend my life online.

News: I finally got a car. Okay, well, my dad got a car and I get to drive it. Hey, I picked it out and paid some of the down-payment, and some day I'll take over payments. So I'm figuring this will help me two-fold. 1) (thought I'd switch to numeration) now I have a way to get to some sort of vague future job-type place, and 2) I'll have to get a job so that I can pay for gas. The familia is still not putting a whole lot of pressure on me. You know, sometimes you just want some pressure, not understanding!

My brother got a girl for a roommate and my familia (the same as above, not the father-type) is all freaked out about it. The father who is not included in the above blanket statement is just glad that she's paying some rent. After he got back from New Zealand, he was hanging out here for a few days, but then she called and told him to come back. Hehe, and she's making him get a job. Which is interesting because, as far as I know, they're not sleeping together or anything like that.

I figured out that if I curl just the little chuck on not-quite-bang above my right eye, I can just fake the rest and it still looks okay. Hey, anything that makes my life easier is news.

I'm going to pay William to cut off my head. I'm dying of sinus pain anyway, so I figure this would benefit us both: quick and mostly painless for me and fun for him. Anyone wanna donate to the Jessica Euthanasia Fund? I figure it's going to cost a lot if he's going to go to jail for helping me out.

It's really sad to me that apparently none of us who have stayed in the country have much to blog about. At least, that's why I'm not particularly in the mood, and I'm projecting onto everyone else.

The rain announced itself loud a clear today. It's friend wind howled it's agreement. I think poor mister sun is hiding under a rock somewhere.

As Sammi once did for a friend lost to technology, I shall share with you all the happenings of our dear lost Ann, whom you may not have known was completely lost.

Upon arriving in Tokyo to begin her career as a JET, our illustrious heroine immediately and tragically come across a must-have pair of shoes. Known to sell her own soul for a part of brand-name, semi-cute shoes, our heroine does so. Instantly remorseful and filled with the dread assurance that she will never in her life wear the adequate foot-coverings, she sets about gathering the money to buy her soul back. Never once does it occur to her to take back the shoes.

Ann's first get-rich-quick scheme calls for her to sell small boxes of tissue on the city streets, having direct knowledge that all Japanese people depend on such extravagance. Unfortunately for her, she has forgotten that others, many others, will give small packages of tissues for free. Which is slightly ironic because where do you think she got her stock in the first place? After killing, maiming, or otherwise disposing of 759 of the free tissue-giving cads, she must admit to herself that there are just too many of them and she will have to come up with another brilliant plan.

By this time, the evil-hearted JETs have given our poor helpless Ann up for lost and moved on. Yes, the JETs moved on, all except for one hardy soul with an interest in Ann's safety...

Moving quickly on from her tissue fiasco, Ann next opens a school for young Japanese children to learn Japanese. She figures that her small stature will help ingraciate her with the young ones, enabling her to teach better than other, possibly better qualified, but un-Soka educated teachers. Again, our slightly slow friend has out-smarted herself. While there may be much demand for those with fluent Japanese, she has forgotten that, as the country of the languages birth, most children are spoken to in Japanese from their birth. Also confounding her logic, having spent too long abroad, Ann has forgotten that many people in the land of her ancestors are as small in stature as she is, indeed, some even smaller. These smaller people, according to reasoning stated above, must be even better than our Ann at relating to the children in question. Immediately realizing the folly in attempting to assassinate every single teacher, Ann gives up her dream of teaching Japanese to the Japanese children. And she forgot that children scare her.

At this time, having failed to locate Ann or even confirm that she still lives, even stalwart Allison is forced to admit that Ann is lost to all. However, if any of her family ever found out that a JET had gone missing, they would surely force her to return home to teach the undisciplined and barbarian children of her land of birth. Unwilling and slightly nauseous at the thought, Allison concocts a plan to fool everyone into believing that Ann had a slight computer glitch and is even now settling in at her new job. Hacking in to Ann's blogger account proves easy enough, after all, the password proves to be a truth that all know, jessicasthequeen. After leaving a trail of Ann like messages, she must convince the others that they should expect to word for a while. After all, she can't be expected to continually update both their blogs. Easy enough, there are forever festivals and conferences that she must attend, why not Ann? And so Ann's true friends, the only ones who can rescue her from her shopping-induced danger, and made complaisant about her lack of news.

Meanwhile, having no more ideas about how to make a quick buck and regain possession of her soul, Ann enters a prostitution ring.

Tune in tomorrow, or next week, or whenever I feel like continuing the tale of drama and intrigue, and maybe I'll throw in some true love and a few yakuza.

Why am I forever dreading Mondays??? Oh yeah, I remember.

Okay, the Middle East branch of the family is gone. And with them goes a good chunk of my excuse for not having a job. And it's already the middle of August. Oh well, I was thinking I may become a superhero, or a schoolbus driver. I saw Sky High today, and I think that would be pretty cool. Just have to find some toxic waste to dump myself in.

Ha, I already saw the marching penguin's Hollywood debut. It was pretty cute, but no Winged Migration. Though I do have to say, watching what the poor fluffies go through to procreate, I will NOT be one in my next life. And having to trust the men and all.

Why does Andy's little brother look like a cross between Andy and Koji? Maybe it's just the picture, but I swear he looks like Koji's little brother What's-his-name.

Anyway, now about ME!! The real reason you're here! Hahahaha. Okay I'll make my evil side quiet down now.

We took a family girl trip to Winthrop, a little tourist trap/town in northern central WA. It's just slightly on the east side of the mountains, still west enough to be really pretty. (A look how Bellingham is on the little map! Isn't that just wonderful!!) We stayed in a cabin by the river, but of course we only went to the river for about ten minutes and spent more time playing with the sprinkler than with the river, though two people did manage to fall in within that short period of time. They have a bunch of artsy shops with a lot of hand-made stuff so over priced only the rich and crazy can buy anything. I bought two things.

It's supposed to take four hours to get there. I think it took us eight both ways. There was so much construction we were about to murder people. On the way there, it wasn't so bad, the eight hours were from stopping and looking at the prettiness, but on the way back we were stopped by a flagger for almost an hour. AND most of us had to go to the bathroom at the time. Talk about torture. You could see everyone getting all fidgety in their cars. But the funny part is, some of our largest laughing attacks happened while waiting. At one, my aunt took the keys out of the ignition while we waited, and then when it was time to go, she couldn't find the keys. I thought we were going to be killed by the cars behind us, but she found them in time.

So the point of this rampage is really to relate that we found a campsite remarkable like the places we went in the Redwoods. It was really nice and treeful by a creek. The only difference was that the fallen trees in the Redwoods were slightly bigger and more ubiquitous, but...eh. So Washington really is the coolest state ever and no one can convince me otherwise. Oh yeah, at there's this cute little supposedly rabbit-like creature that lives in the mountains called a pika. So beat that!

I've spent the last handful of days house-, horse-, and dog-sitting, and I have decided a few things. Firstly, dogs are evil and the bane of my existence. I did not get one full-night of sleep the whole time because first the stupid fluffy dog wouldn't sleep upstairs without his owners and then he wanted to go out at 1 in the morning. Then he wouldn't come back in. I was worried because they specified that he sleeps inside and upstairs, and he's an old dog, so I would get up every once in a while and see if he wanted in again. Which he never did. Then he wanted breakfast at 6 in the morning, and so did the horses. Fortunately, I wasn't in charge of feeding the horses breakfast and could lay around in bed until *gasp* 6:30 before I went out and helped with the watering and cleaning.

Secondly, no matter that they wake up too early, I'm all for having horses as pets. It's the best of the dog and cat worlds. They're pretty friendly when they get to know you, but not overly annoying and clingy like the previously mentioned bane. And they're so cute!! I don't want to ride them, just keep them around. We were taking care of six horses and I got to know about four of them pretty well. There's this one old one who I was having a little friendly fight with. He gets special food that the others like, so we had to isolate him, and then he didn't want to go back. We didn't put any halter or bridle on them for breakfast, whatever those things are. So I'd push and push and push, and he'd just look and me and wander off like I wasn't putting my whole weight on him. And he let me pet his ears, which the other ones don't like at all. Once he got in a fight with one of the dogs because he wanted to eat her food, or at least knock it over.

Korina was telling me about their little hierarchy too. They all respect Danny, the old one, because he's old, and let him have the first pick of the food. And then next is a girl-horse named Bella. When the others try to mess with her, Korina says she grrrrs at them. I haven't heard the literal growling, but it's certainly apparent when someone's not pleased with someone else. The big ones are kept mostly separate from the rest, but even they respect the little old pony Danny.

Once I read a story with this old lady who had a pony who was like her dog and would come in the house and everything. Maybe that'd be a bit messy, but I wonder if I could train one. It's all about the cute horses now, who needs a dog or cat for a pet!

I hate it when I'm whiny, which is all the time, but here I go again.

I need to get a job, so I can get my own place, so I can get out of this crazy zoo!! But there are too many people and too little cars, especially that I can drive, so for the moment, I can't get a job and don't have anywhere to go, so I'm stuck in the zoo!! There is no way I'm ever going to become a housewife because I would kill everyone in sight. Half the time, I'm afraid I'll do it anyway, or at least scream at everyone whose annoying little habits are driving me insane.

My cousin from the UAE, Remzey, is in the country now and staying here. He's starting college in a couple weeks and still acts like a 10-year-old. Good thing he's got his own dorm room. Anyway, he won't keep his hands off Ben, the 11-year-old, and they yell and scream into the night. If I have two boy-children, one of them is going into the dumpster. Anyway, point. He's got one of those voices that doesn't know how to get lower than a bellow, and it's another one of those things that's driving me crazy. I really hope that's not how I sound, you know, when you tell me that I have a loud voice, 'cause I don't sound like that to me, but I imagine he doesn't sound like that to himself either.

I'm considering a career in hermitism. My favorite time is when I'm alone, there are no ambient noises, and I'm reading a book. Yesterday a friend came over unannounced and invited me to go swimming on the beautiful day. I said no. There were some other reasons, but mostly I was just happy with my book. I didn't even think about those other reasons until after I said no. I must be making some progress because, unlike at SUA, certain of my bodily functions have begun to regulate themselves, which is a positive for any future children that I could possible have.

Goodbye to the Japanese.

I hung out with a friend of mine from high school the other day. It was slightly depressing. We had a lot of fun together, but I hadn't seen her in a long time and we have nothing in common any more. Each of us spent the whole time trying to talk about ourselves because we had no other topic. The only thing we could find to talk about at any length was Japan. She's doing JET too, and I could give her a little advice from my time there. Overall I don't really see why we need to see each other. I care about what happens to her, but I think email can cover it if all we're going to do is talk about ourselves.

While we were together, I found myself hoping that the same kind of thing doesn't happen to my SUA friends. I'm not the best at keeping in touch anyway, but if we let things go too long, all we'll do is get together for lunch once in a while and try to talk over the other as we babble on about ourselves. That's one of the reasons I wanted to do the bookclub, so that we could have something in common at least. And if we keep up with the blogs, we can bypass the everyday-newsy part of any get together and go straight to some meat.

I worried that I'm becoming slightly passive.

Okay...interviewed on Wednesday, 45 minutes to get there, kinda far, but it's got a pretty view of the Sound and the cutest little coffee shop by it. I haven't heard back yet...I don't know what to think. It's a brand new place and I got interviewed by all three people who were there, not including the lady I interviewed with on the phone.

But now I hear there may be plans of me going to the U.A.E. in the spring, and my aunt says that maybe I could get a job at one of the hotels because there's crazy construction going on (they're building more than one artificial island) and it's going to be a new tourist hot spot. So I'm thinking if that is the case, maybe I should just do the temp agency thing that I conveniently forgot about during my last round of applications... None of the other peeps called or anything. I guess I'll figure it out when I find out about the Mukilteo job...

Speaking of the aunt. The U.A.E. one got here on Friday, and when she comes, she gives presents. So, among other things, I can now count myself among the MUMU-owning people! Crazy huh? She was going to give it to someone else, but it's all pretty and bright-colored!! So now I have to figure out how and when to where one...

So the lady from the phone interview called back to schedule an in-person interview. But she called at a quarter to 9, so my brother picked up my phone. I called her back and we set it up for tomorrow. If I get the job, I'll have to take some major backroad-age, so my aunt is coming with me and we're giving ourselves an hour and a half to get there. Hopefully it will only take 45 minutes to get there...I can always hope.

What kind of job? People have been asking, so I'll just write it here. The one I have an interview for is at a skin care place where I would be an underling to do a bunch of people's bidding. The other two were similar without quite as much on the job description. And I don't know what kind of companies those were. Anywho, I didn't want to get stuck in the assistant thing, 'cause who knows when I could get out of it, but it's the type of job I feel most comfortable applying for and carrying out.

So we'll see what happens. I'm going to look a little more, and maybe apply to a couple more, but if these people offer me the job and no one else has even contacted me, I'll take it, unless I can't stand the people or something.

The "Official Monday" started at 7:00 this morning, about 3 hours earlier than usual. I set the alarm for 7:30, but when I came downstairs after two snooze sessions and a shower and discovered that it was only 7:50, I did some investigating. Turns out, the alarm clock is 30 minutes fast. Must remember to rectify this, or else never set the alarm again.

So anyway, I got back from breakfast at noon...yeah yeah yeah, taking my grandparents to breakfast takes a long long time. Then I had to read outside for awhile because the maids were still cleaning. THEN, I got to Official Monday business...and people practically attacked me on MSN. Long story short, I sent my resume to three places today, and about an hour later I got a call from one of them! Isn't there some kind of grace period for that kind of thing. I had to close my computer and hope they wouldn't record my email when they looked at my resume and laughed at the thought that I might think I could get a job. Money is so...crude. Alli knows what I'm talking about. This is in the same category as asking for my money when they forgot to pay me in Japan. Asking for a job is only slightly less painful than asking for money, because it is asking for money, but in a more polite way. But of course, the first thing the lady asks me is what kind of salary I'm expecting. Yeah, that's how it works, but it seems so...uncouth to me. Maybe I should start my own thesaurus service.

Phone interview went okay except for the unpreparedness I suppose. Korina said it was funny to watch me as I looked for the right word. Sounds like there's a good chance I'll get an in-person interview. But now I'm panicking. What if I get that job? Do I want it? What if I don't accept it and then no one else calls. Sounds like an okay job, lots of stuff to do and all, but still. Oh panic panic.

And I'm not sure about the commute time between Mukilteo and Kirkland. I know Monroe to Mukilteo won't be fun.

Breath. It wouldn't be forever anyway. And I don't have to accept it even if by some miracle they decide they want to hire a 16-year-old look-alike.

Oh yeah, and Uyen, do you want to join our bookclub? I don't have your email.