Coffeebration

Do you ever shoot straight up in bed in the middle of the night and realize something important? Well I was sleeping last night and suddenly at 5:13 am I sat up, and I went … wow I have two tests on Monday, not Tuesday. Don’t even ask how I got it confused. I have the classes on the same day, so I just decided that I had those classes on Tuesday’s and not Monday’s. That is what being busy does to you I guess. Oh well, I did not study at all yesterday, so now I have tonight and tomorrow to get my study on. And I still have Monday night off, so I am going to spend it wisely, organizing my planner so I know when everything is taking place for the rest of my life!
P.S. My arms are getting buff. I’m going to be the next superwoman!

Bye.

Nothing really much going on in these parts of the woods. I got an A on my Strategic Management Test, yay!!! That is the only test I have had so far this semester. I have two tests this coming Tuesday: Germanic Myths, Legends, and Sagas & Intro to Asian Art. They should be quite easy, but I still have a lot of reading to do because I’m slacking. I just got home from work, and I have to get up again and be there at 10. That sucks. I will probably spend my weekend studying, but now I have a free day because I found someone to work for me on Monday night. A day off, woohoo! I will feel much better that I have Monday night off to study because having two tests in one day sucks. Plus I will be plenty rested.
I was feeling really ugly the past few weeks, like the bags under my eyes had doubled in ugliness and that my face just looked crumply and old. Maybe it is just my imagination, but I bought some Revlon: Age Defying Makeup yesterday. It really made a difference (even if only in my head), but I feel sexier now.

I am getting paid tomorrow and I have finally decided that a new pair of shoes is in order. Not fancy happy shoes, but a nice pair of exercise-type shoes from New Balance. I was window shopping last week, and now this week they have shoes on sale for $60. Earlier, while being a coffee-house newspaper reader at Panera Bread, I came upon a 10% off coupon in the Pitt News. Tomorrow at this time I may be the proud owner of a new pair of shoes. This might sound dumb, but my whole “get fit and exercise” is ultimately not starting because I use the excuse “I have no good shoes”, which is not really just an excuse … well it is, but honestly I have no good shoes. My sketchers that I wear frequently are going on three years old. The bottoms no longer have any tread, but surprisingly I have not worn a hole into them yet. When I wear them to work, I slide all over the place because the floor is slippy and my shoes are not equipped to handle that kind of situation. My Vans, which I bought around April of 2001 were heavily used during my days of “walking” when I was at Cedar Point. I worked about 50 hours a week, and I walked 90% of the time, so they also have no tread left. My last pair of shoes is a pair of Nike’s that have to be at least 5 years old. They were my good shoes before I got the Sketchers. I never wore them much, but from being stored in boxes and laundry baskets they are all crumply and nasty. I must have gotten bored one day and created something out of the shoelaces because they are gone. Oh wait, I have yet another pair of sneaker-like shoes. These are a pair of Nike-Air, I think. My dad gave them to me when he mistakenly bought them for himself at a yard sale or auction, or somewhere used. They fit perfectly and look like they have have never been worn, however someone, like me, must have gotten creative in deciding to remove the sole inserts. I could go spend a couple bucks on them, but I wore them one day and I thought my feet were going to fall off. I unfortunately have flat feet, which causes me immense pain when I wear any type of shoe with built in arches. These shoes are like a boat. The middle is flat sides curve upwards. Seriously though, even if I had arches, who has feet like that? I’m glad my feet are not shaped like boats. Maybe that is why someone was selling them.
Anyways, my sole purpose (or so I tell myself) for not starting my exercise plan is lack of proper shoes. Tomorrow will be the day that it all comes to a crashing end. So I’ll let ya know how my progress is going.
I want to be fit because I think that if I stay active I will have more energy. I also think that if I get rid of any excess fat hanging around, it won’t hog up all of my energy. My “quit drinking pop” campaign has been super successful. I have not had any pop since my family Labor Day picnic, when I was forced to either drink Code Red or die of thirstiness, I broke down. It was not even rewarding. When I was addicted to pop, I would have consumed goat milk before succumbing to code red. Pepsi all the way. No more Pepsi 🙁 No, really … I’m not that sad.
Anyways, the anti-pop campaign delivered some nice results at first, but I think that it is done making my fat go away. I can now comfortably wear everything I own, and I find myself finding new treasures in the back of my closet. Things that I did not think would ever fit again. My favorite bra that I bought at Victoria’s Secret like 2 years ago finally fits without making me pop out o have the bulge (double boob effect). If you don’t know what I’m talking about, feel free to leave a comment or ask, I don’t have time to explain that now. So, yay! I think my boobs shrank. How exciting is that! Ok, enough for now.
Oh yeah, I stole a poster off of a telephone pole today! It is awesome, Guiding Light is coming to town to find people on September 25th. I won’t try out because I know I’m not soap opera material, but the poster had a big color picture of Marina (Aubrey Dollar) and Shane (Marty West) on it. Marty reminds me of a really gay guy, he used to model of Abercrombie and Fitch. He’s one of those annoyingly feminine blonde guys. Ugh … but Aubrey is really really pretty and I want to cut her hair off and glue it to my head. I wouldn’t have taken the poster if Aubrey wasn’t on it. And no, that does not mean I want her or that I want to make out with girls, I just think she is pretty. Anyways, we can leave the whole “I like to check out girls more than guys” topic for another day. It is time to print some things out and get back to class.

Later 🙂

Since describing your “typical day at work” is now the new trend according to some local insiders, aka Julie and chickenbutts, I have decided to join the wave in reporting what I do at my current job.
First of all, let me begin by telling everyone that I work at “Vento’s Pizza, located at 420 N. Hollow Ave. (in the corner of Home Depot parking lot). I work at a family owned business, which has its perks and its not-so perky advantages. In addition, I will note that I do not plan to make this my career. It is a pretty basic, non-thinking job. Sometimes it makes me want to die.
First of all, I have to explain that I have two different jobs. I have the Monday, Tuesday, Thursday job (we’ll refer to it as the “weekday” job) — and then I have a Friday, Saturday job (I’m inclined to be somewhat unoriginal and call this one the “weekend” job). I work 30 hours a week, 20 hours of it is devoted to my weekday job.

So we will start with my weekday job: Hostess by night
I come into work at approximately 5pm. Carl, the manager says “Hi Nellie, how are you?” I say “Great Carl, how are you?” He says “I’m good.” Then I put on my executive apron on and login to my very modern day cash-register. If a client comes in, I say “Hello, can I help you?” The client tells me what he or she would like to purchase, and I respond “Is this for here or for take out?” After the clients’ response, I choose the appropriate “Eat in” or “Take Out” option on my register. I carefully and explicitly customize their order according to each individuals preferences and then I announce the charge being made to his or her account. The client proceeds to make a payment to his or her account via cash that is withdrawn from various sources; via pockets, purses, shoes, armpits, wallets, etc. Sometimes this process can take upwards of 5 minutes so I economize on time by retrieving drinks that have been ordered if applicable. When I am not busy with a client, I help out on the unloading dock, directing pizza and sandwiches from the oven to boxes, bags, plates, or trays according to the client’s preference of eating environment. I also handle calls in the receiving department. When a client calls to place an order, I carefully record the order onto an order slip and act as a courier, delivering orders to their respective departments; pizza or grill. In addition to recording orders, I am also responsible for handling many customer service calls. Some customer queries that I handle inculde: status of order, hours of operation, services provided, return policies,and many other general questions.
When I am not preoccupied with clients, merchandise, or customer service, I spend my free time in the assembly department, assembling boxes. I assemble boxes of different sizes and stack them into piles. I am also responsible for the orderly maintenance of our clients’ visitation areas. I make sure that their spaces are kept orderly and tidy. When everything is in order, I spend many free moments drinking gallons of coffee so I can be coherent and conscious throughout my work-day.
Around 8pm, I check the status of our beverage inventory. If it is getting low, I go to the warehouse and load up the new inventory that is needed for replenishment. In the evening I spend time re-stocking the shelves so everything will be there the next morning. In addition to beverages, I re-stock napkins, forks, spoons, knives, straws, boxes, etc. Once everything has been re-stocked I make sure that everything in the work area is tidy. I sweep the floor, and clean up any other small messes that have been made. At 11pm, I go home. I get home between 11:15 – 11:30.

Now onto my weekend job: Chef extroidinare by day
This job is much more interesting than my “hostess” job. It requires a great knowledge in the fine art of pizza making. It is an intimate and precise job. First I would like to announce that other than being the great chef I am, I still hold many of the responsibilities that I did as hostess. For example, I still handle customer service, work on the unloading dock, and take orders in the receiving department.
I come into work at approximately 10am. Al, the owner greets me with a very “loud” and cheerful “Good Morning! How are you!” That always sets a chipper, yet deafening mood for the day. I begin my day by carefully spreading sauce and cheese onto fresh pizza dough from the bakery. After I have pre-made about 25 standard pizzas, I am content. Ok, I am getting really sick of talking about my day at work. Anyways, I make pizza. I make stromboli’s. Some people are retarded and need extra sauce, or no sauce, or no cheese, and I swear that they are insane. Sometimes people order bread with sauce on top. Some people want large pizzas with a different topping on each slice. Sometimes people order pizzas with every single topping on them and the pizza gets so heavy that I can barely lift it from the counter into the oven. When I work on pizza I smell disgusting and all of my clothes have pizza embedded into them. Before I leave I have to refill everything and rotate everything so all of the old stuff is on top. Frequently I spend a lot of time picking sausage out of the vegetables. I rinse the vegetables frequently, and damn … I would be pissed if I was a vegetarian because I can’t tell ya how much sausage disentigrates into the veggies. I would really like to organize a way to make the sausage die. Sausage is gross anyways. People are disgusting and 90% of them want pizza with pepperoni, sausage, and meat. I swear they want to die of obeseness or heart-attacks really soon. I hate touching anchovies. A surprisingly large amount of people want anchovies on their pizza. Anchovies smell like shit, and there are always these white balls floating around in the anchovy juice and I swear little anchovy fish are going to hatch. Uck. And the nastiest thing is people who, instead of pizza sauce, want anchovy sauce with cheese on top. Seriously, puke. Besides anchovy nastiness, pizza making is fun. I also make strombolis. That requires a lot of skills, but I have been proclaimed to be a fantastic stromboli maker. Yay. You roll out dough with a rolling pin, throw sutff in it, fold it up, brush butter on top, sprinkle parmesan cheese on top of that, stab it with a knife, and throw it in the oven. Mmm, good. I’m tired of talking about work now.
WORK SUCKS. I am also deeply involved in our lottery pool at work. I am going to win and become rich, so then I will have enough money to invest into the stock market, and then I will sit on a beach in like somewhere beachy for the rest of my life and sip on those drinks and sit under an umbrella.
Yeah!
OK DONE NOW.

Damn! My stock portfolio earned $755,564.76 in one week! I’m up to to $30,224,488.01 from last weeks $29,468,923.25

I sure wish this money was real 🙂 I could be rollin’ in the mo mo.

I was at a loss last week, but from my original investment of 29.7 million, I’m still up $524,488 dollaz!

Come to me for all of your investment needs. I can do your research and your pickin’ … just make sure you give me some mo mo so I can someday earn some big money.

Today I met this dude on my way to work … seeing as I live in the ghetto and everyone around here calls you “baby-girl” and needs to know your life story.
So this guy actually ended up being the nephew of a guy I work with. He asked me what kind of alcohol I drank, how much I partied, where I was from, if I smoked pot, then of course asked me why I didn’t smoke pot. The usual ghetto questions.
Anyways, when he asked me how old I was, I told him I was 22. His response was, “That’s it?” I was like “Um yeah, sorry.” And he goes, “Damn, you is still a baby, I thought you was like 25 or 26”. Gee thanks, good way to brighten up my day. And it was not like he was some old dude with no concept of age, he was 26 himself. Do I really look that old?? Seriously? I think perhaps I need a makeover or something. I’ve been regularly using my biore nose strips, but I guess that they aren’t that age defying.
OH WELL.

I’z gots to study, perhaps if I get bored lata, I’ll give brokenduck a young cute girl makeover. Peace out niggaz.

It is funny how things are sometimes.

1. The only night since I’ve lived here that I seriously need to study also happens to be the only night someone was having a major bass fest upstairs. In fact, tonight is one of the only nights I could hear anything other than the creak of the bathroom door as silent, almost non-existent roommates went about their lives. Now that I have been listening to it for a while, I am guessing that there must be a bass’like dance-techno party upstairs. Too bad I can’t join.

2. Last night I came home to a monster fly inhabiting my bedroom. Due to my inability to actually “swat” a fly, I find aerosol glass cleaner to be a great alternative. It doesn’t usually do the trick on the first spray, but since flys like to land on monitors, mirrors, and TV’s, it gives me an excuse to clean while slowly poisoning an innocent fly to his death! The fly did end up landing on all three of the previously mentioned objects, so it was a fun night. His second to last landing happened to be on my curtain which happens to be directly above my bed. The big bugger was getting pretty bogged down with all those clean chemicals and I feared he was going to die there and fall on my head while I was sleeping. I rattled the curtain and stood up, armed with my aerosol can in one hand, flip flop in the other. He buzzed in mid-air quite slowly across the room and landed on my door frame. I sprayed him again and he roused. This time coming, in slow motion, straight towards my head. Did I duck? No. Did I stand there and let him attack me? Of course not. I acted quickly, closed my eyes, and swatted my hand (holding a flip flop) into the air. Out of pure luck, I my flip flop came into contact with him, guess I’m just a great batter. Who would have known I could be the next Sammy Sosa? Not quite a home-run though. He went “thud” onto my floor, a few feet in front of me. I am sure I would have eventually killed him with the glass cleaner, but that was much more fun!

3. I have a “quiz” tomorrow. A quiz that encompasses about 300 pages of pure crap and 100,000 powerpoint slides. Our professor said our “quiz” is fair game for just about anything in the articles. I like how she calls it a “quiz”. Quiz my ass, fuck you.

So I am going to study now. I’m coming along fairly well with my insane amount of studying to do. I think the only reason that I got so much done was because I stayed at school today and studied for a good 3 hours. I had nothing to distract me, for instance Television, bass-techno parties, or say LiveJournal. I will be working tomorrow and the rest of my life, but I will definitely update again sometimes this weekend.

Tata!

My head hurts, really bad. Thankfully I am not sick anymore and I have my voice back. I would like to thank my bed, my cough medicine, Mark’s delicious stuffed pepper soup and medicinal cough drops, and my box of lotion tissues for my speedy recovery. A great big thanks to all!
Yesterday at work Al informed me that John Ritter died. Obviously misinformed, he pronounced that he died from a drug overdose, which really bothered me. I always thought of John Ritter as the ever-so funny and sweet Jack Tripper of Three’s Company. Although many times you find out that some celebrity is a drug-addict (and we have to wonder — who isn’t these days?) Afterall, if most celebrities weren’t hooked on drugs or abused when they were growing up, those E! True Hollywood Stories would be really boring. But I never thought that John Ritter would be one of those guys. I remember Joyce DeWitt saying that she loved working with him and he was the sweetest guy in the world. Fortunately,(well nothing about this is fortunate) he didn’t die from a drug overdose. I don’t think I can ever watch Three’s Company again without thinking, “hey he’s dead now”. I guess 8-Simple Rules will be cancelled now. I didn’t really like the show, and Katey Sigal annoyed me because even though she looks different now, everytime I saw her I couldn’t get the picture of her big red trashy hair from “Married With Children” out of my head. I guess it is hard for me to not associate things with other things. I love watching “All in the Family”, but ever since I found out that Rob Reiner is really fat and bald now … well ya know. And need I say more about Sally Struthers? And Carrol O’Connor is dead. I don’t know why I don’t have this problem with my soap opera. They replace characters all the time, and within a month I forget that the old character ever existed. Maybe it is just because the shows are old and I cannot watch them without thinking about them in the present. I love Cheers, but Ted Danson is old and bald, he’s just fugly … watching Becker brings me to the reality that he isn’t a stud anymore, so I try to refrain from watching it.
Anyways, I am really sad about John Ritter. One day I was watching a made for TV movie with my brother, starring John Ritter. I was probably about 15-16, and I wasn’t a Three’s Company fan then, but I knew who he was. I guess I asked what happened to him or something, and my brother told me that he was gay and died of AIDS. I believed that for the longest time, haha … I’m rambling, I know.

Since I’m on the topic of death, we have yet another FC death to report here at the Broken Duck headquarters. The death of an odd boy who befriended me in high school during study-hall. He used to write me love-letter type things, always on that square graph paper. Not long after we started talking, he started dating my friends younger sister. They were together for at least 2 years. My best, yet dumbest memory I have is our trip to the Butler Mall. His name was Jim, but everyone called him Shaffey. He was kind of odd, he collected Pez, and he claimed to be rich. I say “claimed” because we never saw his money. Anyways, one day Shaffey decided he wanted to go to the Butler mall, but nobody had a car. Shaffey, claiming to be rich, decided that he was going to call a taxi to come take us to the mall (which is about 30 miles away). So the Taxi comes and we hop in and leisurely ride to the Butler Mall. The cab-dude says “Just give me a call when you want to be picked up”. We are like “yeah cool” and go on our shopping venture. I don’t think we bought anything, and we weren’t there long. I don’t remember what the point of the trip actually was. Anyways, we decided to leave, and we called the cab-dude back. Then, oddly, we happened to run into Shaffey’s dad (I think) or some kind of parental figure that demanded to take us home. Shaffey did not want to say that we had hailed a cab, so we had to hide when the cab-dude came to pick us up. Hence, we ditched the taxi, and got a free ride home.
After I graduated from high school, Shaffey opened up his own computer store in FC. I remember going there and when I went in, there was a cat chilling out inside of a computer case. His store was kind of crappy, and he was trying to sell really shitty computers for a lot of money, but whatever. Then I guess he moved his store to Kittanning … I don’t remember much else after that. I haven’t talked to him since he broke up with my friend’s sister, which was like 2 1/2 years ago. I guess I don’t really talk to anyone anymore. I guess that is what happens when you get old.
I think I am just completely shocked right now. I’m not really that sad because I did not consider him a dear friend, but he was someone that I talked to a lot. Before I came to college, Jamie was my best friend and her house was like my second home. Her sister Kelly and Shaffey were pretty much a constant in my life. It was like we were all related, like we really didn’t “love” each other, but we were always around each other. I always considered him to be someone that was easy to talk to. Since he was fairly odd, I felt like I could pretty much say anything to him. I’m weird like that … always relating to people who seem weirder than me. Maybe because I always find it hard to relate to people who are normal. And I guess that is because I am different too. I cannot relate to 99% of the people in this world. It seems like when I talk to people, if I just act like myself and say anything that comes out of my mouth, there is a point where they will just stop and look at me like “ok”. Well, see Shaffey was one of those peope, where no matter what I said, even if the “ok” look arose, you could always just laugh and think “well stranger things have been said.” It is like this one guy that I work with. He is seriously my dad’s age, but I can say anything in the world to him and he will find something to say back. It seems like so many people are impossible to relate to, everyone is anal, everyone takes everything you say way too seriously, nobody has an open mind for pure silliness, sarcasm, or just plain whatever. I have found that I don’t even have much of a sarcastic side anymore. I still think things, but I rarely say them. If I express myself in that way, I feel that I am being judged as being mean or rude. Occassionally, I still give people dirty looks, or mutter a “fuck you fat bitch” above a whisper. And I guess I should not care what others think, but that is a myth because everyone cares. But I can’t help it, when I’m at work and some fat ass woman orders a whole pizza for herself with like 12 toppings when I’m trying to leave, I can’t help the “You fucking fat ass lard”.

Anyways, I’m still sort of upset about this whole “death”, and all I know is that it was a murder/suicide. I guess one of those jealous rage things that happens when someone goes nuts on the significant other. I did not know his current girlfriend, I just thank God that it happened now, and not before when he was dating my friend. I never imagined or sensed that he was capable of something like this. Maybe he has changed in the past few years. I know a lot of weird people, but that does not make them murderers. I don’t often associate with people who are crazy enough to take his/her own life, or the life of another. Death, murder, suicide, guns, violence … it really really freaks me out. I really do not understand the world, people, anything. I just sit around and think way too much, so I’m glad that LJ is back in my life to let me type away my worries.

In other news, the entire time I have been writing, my roommate and his girlfriend have been screaming at each other. I hear sniffles, yelling, door-slamming, and I don’t want to leave my room. I sure wish I had somewhere else to live, with someone else to live with. But for now, I am stuck here, broadcasting to you from Highland Park/East Liberty Ghetto Town USA.

Later.

It’s been a lousy few days, and also my excuse for not updating. I was looking forward to Wednesday because I didn’t have to work, and I had all evening to study/do nothing. So Wednesday morning rolls around and I wake up with a little bit of a runny nose. I figure it is allergies, kind of brush it off, and I scamper off to class. By my second class, my head was exploding with head-achey not happiness, and my nose was a solid brick of cheese. So, yeah … I’m sick. I have no voice. I don’t feel good.
Anyways, I never finished my story about group projects. If you missed that episode, you might want to go back and read the previous entry.
So where was I? Well, now that it is many days later, I’m not quite as pissed off anymore. To make things short and sweet: Dumb girl didn’t know how to do the project and she called my cell phone at 2:30am the night before it was due to ask me. Of course I was sleeping. When I woke up the next morning, I got a call from my other group member, and we decided to just finish the project without her since she was gay. I agreed to put it together. So, it is about 9:30am, the project is due at 11am, and I live far away from campus. I am fervently working to get it done, when dumb girl calls again, bitches at me because she wants to be included, and demands that I include her stocks. I tell her that I don’t have time, and she gets attitude with me and says that she didn’t do all of her work for nothing. I reply that she should have tried to reach someone in the group at a decent hour, and not an hour before class. She claims she is going to do the project herself and asks me how to do it. She had no idea how to calculate anything, and I told her I already had it done so basically fuck off. Then, I said that she could give me her stocks and I would put them in if I had enough time. If I hadn’t spent the whole morning looking for new stocks to put in the portfolio, I wouldn’t have been pissed. But this was seriously wasting my time because A: I had gotten up super early to do more work that I wasn’t supposed to do, and B: After I did all this work she calls me to tell me that I can just get rid of it all because she wants to use her stuff. WHATEVER. I could kick her ass, little Asian girl that talks like an 8 year old boy. Fuck You. I don’t have time to piss around with this stuff. Anyways, I got it done, it was perfect, and I did manage to incorporate 3 of her stocks. Needless to say, I think the rest of my group also hates her now, so I don’t care. The END.

I’m sorry for the vulgar content. This girl just really gets on my nerves. And I’m in a class with assigned seats and I have to sit by her smelly ass every day. Ok, done now. I am going to revert back to my blissful state, try not to dwell on the fact that my body is decaying, and get some serious school work done.

P.S. I’m very sad that John Ritter died today. If you know me, then I’m sure you know that I am a very big Three’s Company fan. If you would like to appreciate the life of John Ritter and watch him every single night of your life, being funny funny funny … stay tuned to Nick at Nite, channel 29 for all of you Comcast subscribers in the Pgh. area. And if you have digital cable, I think it is channel 76 or 77. You will be sadly missed John Ritter/Jack Tripper.

Come and knock on our door …. We’ll be waiting for you … Where the kisses are hers and hers and his Three’s Company Too.

Get used to me never having anything optimistic to say. The only thing that I feel is worthwhile talking about, well it just sucks!
If you read my previous entry, you probably noted my dislike for group projects. Today’s events provide a perfect example for why they should all be made illegal by universities around the world. In fact, I think I’ll make a petition. Anyone willing to sign?
Today the first part of my Efficiency of Capital Markets project was due. We are working on a project where we pick 30 stocks off of the NYSE, and keep a portfolio of them for the next 12 weeks. We have 3 million dollars, and 1 million dollars must be alloted to each stock (for the sake of diversifying our portfolio). However, we have to pick the stocks, get the prices, find the market value, and then add up all of the excess cash and dump it onto another stock, in an attempt to get our excess cash as close to 0 as possible. The goal of the project is to pick good stocks and earn a positive return on our portfolio.
Anyways, enough of that. My class meets Tues & Thurs. Last Thurs, we all agreed to email each other the stocks we picked. Then someone was supposed to put them all together, add up the excess cash, and reinvest it into something. Not really a big deal, assuming that everyone does their job.

*** NEWS FLASH, sorry to interrupt your regular scheduled bitch-fest, however it has recently come to light that there was a shooting approximately one block from my apartment less than an hour ago. In addition, the Sunoco that I stop at daily to buy coffee at no longer has windows that are in-tact. And finally, I must leave for work in less than an hour and walk past this dangerous area en-route to my lovely job at Ghetto Pizza. ******

** I apologize for the interruption, and further apologize that I must go take a shower that I would have had ample time to do this morning if people weren’t assholes. I guess I’ll just have to keep you in suspense now! Stay tuned!!! **