Surprisingly, today actually IS Saturday

One of the worst things about unemployment (besides the whole "no income" thing) is that I am completely losing track of the days.  You see, my life consists only of Saturdays, since I never have to worry about waking up at a specific time the next morning.    But nonetheless, I have been realizing lately that I need a calendar.  I didn't need one when I was working because I was always ACUTELY aware of what day of the week it was (more specifically, how close I was to Friday).  Well, it's like the end of April and I still don't have a calendar, because I had my eye on one online months ago that I LOVED, but I was like,  "No way am I spending $35 on that, I could totally make it."  So, I finally made it!  

This is the original (duh)

This is my version (totally copied, or as the lady at my favorite scrapbook store would say, it's "scraplifted."  Anyway, I made mine on 8 1/2 by 5 1/2 white cardstock, and all of the designs are cut out of colored and patterned paper and glued with spray-mount.

Not bad, eh? 

In other news, my good friend Russell, who works for Disneyland but has been gone the last 8 months at Army training camp, is now back at the park and can get me and up to 2 friends into the park for free on weekdays.  Any takers???

This last month has been full of the MOST change I have ever experienced in my young life.  

I think of my life consisting of three main components, and everything else is a detail.  Those three pillars are: home, love and work.  I've felt in the last few months that I can't have all three in happy unison. If my love life is great, something will be wrong with my living situation or my job.  As you all know, I hate my job and have been having a REALLY tough time finding a good (really, even just ok) living situation in Los Angeles.  So, my job was going ok (no worse than normal) and I was FINALLY moving out of my awful living situation with the roommate who decided to stop paying his bills (and ended up owing me almost $2000. Now he owes me about $600).  I was moving into a super cute studio  and everything seemed to be heading towards peace and balance in my life, then OF COURSE.. because heaven forbid I get 3 out of 3... on March 20 my boss freaking lays me off!  I really shouldn't be surprised- it just goes with  my theory that I haven't yet earned the right to have a great boyfriend, a peaceful living situation and a decent job.

Anyway, I'm not that angry, just frustrated.  I hated my job and am very glad of spirit to be free of it, but of course I got no severance and now I am facing the... no less than daunting task of finding a new job.  I have fairly low standards, I just need to make almost as much as what I was making before (which wasn't much, so it won't be too hard to find) but everyone knows that there are very, very few jobs available right now.  

My only solace comes from the fact that my boss has already recognized how utterly STUPID it was to lay off his ONLY sales/marketing person when he has no work for production (yet kept the entire production staff) and he has a warehouse full of merchandise that is now not selling.  I guess the silver lining is that I don't have to work for such an intelligently inferior person anymore.

So my life now consists of a LOT of time and effort applying for jobs, and almost instantly getting an email telling me "thanks for your application but we are looking for more experience" or whatever kind of BS that companies are saying.  Ugh.  So I have started broadening my search even more.  I am looking into becoming a leasing consultant for an apartment building either in West LA or in Downtown, those jobs make about what I made before hourly, plus commission.

Other than that, my apartment is fantastic and cute and cozy and Bret and I are better than ever.  If I had to have 2 out of 3, at least I have my own space and an amazing boyfriend.  Now I just need to find some source of income.

In other news, I did something I NEVER thought I would do and embraced my inner democrat and applied for unemployment today.  To show how shitty my job was, on government assistance I will be making 60% of what I was making before.  So insulting.

And that's about it for now.  

Haiku

I'm still alive, just
Busy making adjustments
Without internet.

Inspirational Design!

Www.ApartmentTherapy.com is one of my all-time favorite blogs.  I was introduced to it when I started working at my company, because the site has featured our products several times (like here and here if you are interested).  Basically, it's a blog that features inspirational design, DIYs, good use of color, etc.  They also focus a lot on space-saving solutions, which is obviously a concern for most apartment dwellers.   Anyway, so I am making a BIG move in the next few weeks.  I am going from a condo, where I fully furnished and filled my bedroom, living room and kitchen with stuff.  I am moving into a one-room studio, and if it’s 250 square feet I will be surprised.  The studio is very nice, newly remodeled and in a good area, and I am just relishing the idea of living alone.  But, besides being small, there is hardly any storage room! I have no access to a garage, or even a deep closet (like I have now) so I am trying to be extremely strict with myself in downsizing my possessions.  The idea of surrounding myself with ONLY the things that I cherish and truly love is so appealing to me, but proving to be difficult!  So, today I turned to apartmenttherapy.com for some inspiration.

 

This studio in Santa Monica is bigger than my place is going to be (if you can even imagine that!) but the woman that lives there did a truly WONDERFUL job with not only space planning, but with her use of color and minimizing her stuff.  Nothing there looks cluttered or overwhelmed.  I can only hope that I will be able to minimize like that!  Not surprisingly- it's the top rated house tour on the whole website (and they feature one a day!)

 

This house in Austin, though not similar to my situation in terms of space, is my DREAM color scheme.  I LOVE the white/green/orange/yellow that she used.  Love love love.  I also love how she took the pattered material from the table by the window and then has 2 picture frames framing the same material across the room.  It is a great use of repetition- but I don’t think I could ever do it.  I have so many pictures that I would rather hang- and I don’t want to cover every single inch of the wall!

 

So, I hope I will be able to get to this level someday.  Until then, I am ruthlessly categorizing my stuff into 5 categories:  KEEP, SELL, DONATE, STORE IN PARENT’S ATTIC and GIVE TO FRIENDS.  

My fun Saturday Night :(

Saturday afternoon I was minding my own business, in bed reading an amazing book (called The Shell Seekers) when I get a call from Bret.  I answer and he said "can you come over and take care of me?" and I thought he was just being a baby so I was like, yeah ok sure, do you want frozen yogurt too? (I wanted some for myself, so I thought I'd offer).  So I went to get him froyo, and went to his house.  I go in and low and behold, Bret is sprawled out on the couch, with his whole left arm covered in ice packs.  I asked what was wrong and he said he fell playing basketball that day and felt it pop and now even the slightest move hurts like hell.  His mom (who used to be a chiropractor) was in a movie and couldnt get back for 2 more hours.  As soon as she got home, she looked at it and immediately called Bret's dad (who is also a chiropractor) and talked it over with him, and they decided Bret needed x-rays.  LUCKILY I didn't have to take Bret to a hospital- we just drove to his dad's office in Santa Monica and Rick (Bret's dad) met us there and took the x-rays.  He took tons of "pictures" as he called them and concluded that Bret broke one of his forearm bones and will have to get a cast this week :(  I feel sorry for him but the Big Baby is milking it for ALL ITS WORTH!  "Suuussiiieeeee can you make me some teeeeaaa???  It hurts too much to get up."  Good thing I love him!

And yes, he made me feed him his froyo since he couldnt hold the bowl himself.  Such a baby :)

Tahoe!

I tried to upload pics of my Tahoe trip, but YET AGAIN it didn't work.  So, no pics.

Long story short:  Weather on Saturday was perfect and we had an amazing day, complete with a gondola ride and cocoa on the gondola sky deck!!  It snowed like CRAZY on Sunday so we quit early and Bret and I went to Harrahs and gambled.  He lost all his money in craps and I slowly lost $20 playing slots, but it took me like 3 hours to lose so it was actually almost fun.  On Monday it was snowing again but it wasn't very cold, so we toughed it out, to be blessed with about 1 hour of beautiful sunshine.  As soon as we went in for lunch it started snowing like crazy again so we called it a day around 1pm.  It was snowing so hard we couldn't even see 30 feet in front of us.  Monday evening Bret and I flew from Reno back to LA.  Taking off, we had really bad turbulence and I almost lost my MIND.  It was SO SCARY!  But, it was fun flying into LA for the first time since I've moved here.  Now I know what everything was that we were flying over, and I even saw my apartment (literally the last building you fly over before you are over the airport- pretty nuts!).

If maybe someday figure out how to upload photos to this thing, I will show you some of the amazingly beautiful pictures.  

Yeah!!! Internet is back!!

Currently listening to:  Kanye West "The Good Life"

"Come on y'all, let's go on a livin' spree!!"

I'm in a great mood for a few reasons:

-Yesterday was my 2-year anniversary with my sweetie :)

-Today I gave my 30-day notice to move out of my apartment with my laaame roommates

-Yesterday I found a way cute (but small) studio in my budget that I am moving into on March 15

-I am THISCLOSE to being truly independent and the master of my own domain!!

-I spent Saturday- Monday in Lake Tahoe with my favorite people in the world- my parents, my brother and my boyfriend.

-On Saturday I rode the Heavenly Gondola, one of my favorite things in the world to do.

-Tons of NSYNC came on my ipod today- talk about an instant pick-me-up

-Hillary is going to help me clean out my closet soon (please???)  :)