A Gentleman’s Fund

There is no feasible way that I could purchase a $1,000+ coat. I am awful with money, if it is in my checking account, than I am apt to spend it. I do, however, want a Burberry coat. It has been my dream for four years now.

So, tonight I came up with a solution. For those of you who might be Friends fans, I am taking heart what Jack Geller taught his children. Instead of 10% of my paycheck going into the bank, I am setting aside $5 of my tips every night from work into a special fund.

This fund will go nowhere near either of my accounts since I am so willing to transfer money so I can buy things. Instead, the money is going into a tin. Think of it as a piggybank for bills. I got this tin when I got my Fossil watch for my birthday and I have been looking for a use for it.

If I work four times a week, I will be able to put $20 a week into the fund. In 50 weeks (less than a year from now), I will have $1,000. Granted, the coat I end up getting will probably be more than this, but the fund will just be a big supplement for what is in my bank accounts at the time of the purchase.

I think that this makes my dream reachable. Granted, I probably won’t be able to buy as many shoes as I did this past year; which might be for the best all the same.

Amuse Bouche

There is something magical about going to a Mexican (well, really Tex-Mex is the better term to use) food restaurant: when the waiter brings out the chips and salsa, my heart always skips a beat.

I think that every culture needs an equivalent. Italians have garlic bread/breadsticks (I am a little disappointed we don’t do this at work) and Mexican cuisine has chips and salsa. Why don’t we have something so iconic like this in our diet?

American food is stigmatized through our fast food chains. We are in such a rush in life, we cannot take twenty extra minutes to enjoy an appetizer when we go out to eat.  This is so much so that many American families (mine included) would prefer the convenience of fast food to the hassle of a sit-down restaurant.

This topic has been revolving in my head all night (I am writing this on Tuesday night). I called Katie to see if she wanted to have lunch tomorrow. Neither of us have class during lunch on Wednesdays, and lately we have gotten in the habit of meeting then so that I can give her stuff that she left at the house, we indulge in lunch and each others company while we just happen to be meeting.

Last week we got Which Wich (a topic for another post), so this week I let her chose. Generally her palate dictates that we go to Chili’s. While I do love the chips and salsa there, it is not great food by any means. This week, she is pushing the boundaries and taking us to a Mexican place on campus.

I am really looking forward to trying this place. But then again, how good can it be in comparison to the traditional Mexican food that the cooks at work make for me on occasion.

My Civic Duty (Part Three)

Two hours later, I was driving my new (new to me, but not technically) car home. It was a great experience knowing that this was thoroughly mine, something that I had worked so hard to get and so enjoyed.

The icing on the cake was that they let me steal a giant balloon from the showroom. It seems like a weird thing to be so happy about, but holding that balloon next to my car and taking a picture with Dyan was the moment in my life where I truly felt accomplished. Not walking across stage to get my diploma and getting a hug from the principal (who I liked despite nobody else liking her). Not sitting in my first college class. Not getting a 50% tip on a night at work where I was being treated like crap. No, standing there next to my car, balloon in hand, and taking a picture with the wonderful lady who had treated us so well was when I finally felt like I had accomplished something with my life. If you haven’t had that moment yet, just wait, the feeling is great and you will never want to let go.

I have three weeks of school left, it would be pointless (or at least dumb) to spend $40 on a parking sticker, so I will have to wait to parade my vehicle around. But once summer comes, it’ll be hard to pull me away from that wheel.

I have one last thing that I want to tell you, if you are looking to buy a used Honda, go to Dyan Smith at David McDavid. You will not regret it.

My Civic Duty (Part One)

I have been in desperate need of a car. There are just three weeks of school left, and once summer hits my sister (Katie) and I would be competing for the Xterra that we currently share.

I should probably tell you, this is not the first time we’ve had to share a car. We also have had to share our old 1989 (yes it is older than me) Volvo. Don’t get me wrong, this was a great first car. We never had to put a single bit of work into it (the exception being when I hit someone in the parking lot…twice…whoops). This car is a legacy in our family. It was our Grandmother’s, and my mom will be heartbroken the day it is taken away to the Can Academy.

Well, with summer on its way, my sister already has a job waiting for her working at the gift shop at the Ballpark in Arlington (or at least I believe she does). And I will be continuing (and picking up more shifts) at my job.

The Volvo is currently dead, so we are forced to share one car. It would be practically impossible for us both to get along with our busy schedules while sharing one car. I would probably just end up spending all day at work, every day at work. Contrary to popular belief, I do want some sort of summer, which would be why I am not loading up my free time with summer school classes.

We have been looking for something for about a month now. Three weeks (or so) ago, we went and actively looked and test drove. Our plan was to find a car I liked, then apply for a loan at Chase, and then buy the car for wholesale price at a car auction.

We had it narrowed down to a Chevy Cobalt and a Honda Civic. The Cobalt was the cheaper of the two, so we were going to start there. We went and filled out the loan application, and got approved. We found the car. All seemed to be going well.

When we went back to the bank to fill in the last of the blanks and finalize the loan, we got denied. This is a story in itself, and don’t really want to reveal such personal information as to why on the Internet.

My world was crushed. It was back to square one. I was devastated. It felt like my world had built itself up just to crash down on top of me, which is not the best feeling as you could imagine. We wouldn’t be able to finance through the bank, what was next?

The Script

Is the British Invasion back again? There is such an influx of good British groups/singers hitting the American charts.

I cannot write about modern British groups without mentioning Coldplay. Were they beginning of the revival of the British Invasion? Has their success led to Snow Patrol and more recently hitting the charts Cascada and La Roux?

These groups, however good, are not the focus of this post. This post will focus on my more recent musical attraction: the Script.

In the past few weeks, their single “Breakeven” has finally hit the big time on the American charts. It is long overdue, having been released in October of 2008. How did we not know about these guys for so long?

I would highly recommend listening to their CD. The twist and turns through the song have left me wanting to listen to it more and more. “The Man Who Can’t Be Moved” was actually the first of their songs that I heard.

At work, we hear the same songs every day. For a little while, Charlotte and I would hear this song every Tuesday night. Shazam (the iPhone app) refused to identify it for the first few weeks. I am completely convinced that if it had identified that first night, then this post would have been written a month earlier.

Really though, guys. If anything, check out those two songs. You will enjoy them.

The Driving Apocalypse

The past week, every night when I get off work there is construction going on. I am really happy they are not closing the Main Street bridge on highway 121/114 during rush hour traffic, but do you need to do it in the middle of the night?

This is probably very conceded of me, but they shouldn’t close down on my way home. I have a hard day getting from school to work on time and then get crap at work, I don’t need to deal with more crap on my way home! I mean, come on!

People see construction and become like a deer in the headlights. Suddenly they need to stop halfway onto the highway ramp, they need to back up on the service road, etc. It is construction, not the apocalypse.

Moral of the story: be good drivers people!

Barefoot

Today I am walking around barefoot on the TCU campus. Not because I cannot afford shoes to wear, but to bring to people’s attention that children around the world go barefoot every day.

This event is sponsored by TOMS, which just happen to be my favorite shoes ever. I wear a pair practically every day. So instead of just making it another day that I would wear one of my eight pairs of TOMS, I decided to join people across the nation and go “One Day Without Shoes.”

For those of you who do not know anything about TOMS, you should really check out their website (www.tomsshoes.com). The program is amazing, for every pair you buy they will send a second pair to children in need (generally in Africa or South America, but they have done an American drop before).

For those of you who can’t go barefoot, just go for part of the day. That is what I will be doing since I have to wear shoes at work. I have been looking forward to this day since the beginning of the year.

Maybe I will reward myself with a new pair of TOMS. What do you think?

Mini-Pizzas

I have worked at Napoli’s for about six months now. I love the job, I enjoy most of the people that I work with, and I make enough money to sustain myself. The one thing I wish I could change would be to make the customers treat me better. I deal with a lot of crap at work.

On Friday night, Kylie, Courtney, and I have started to make mini-pizzas. They are fun for us to make, take less time in the oven than normal pizzas, and are so much fun to eat. The simple things in life make me happy.

It began with the idea that we could conserve the excess dough from things and use it at the end of the night. The past Friday, however, we just made six mini-pizzas out of a medium dough ball. Why we didn’t just make a medium pizza? That is a good question that will forever go unanswered.

My question is, why hadn’t Kyle and Courtney thought of this before? They have both worked there for a long time, Kylie since they opened almost six years ago. When I asked, they just said that they had done other things with it, just never this.

Lately, that has become the highlight of my workweek. I deal with so much crap, and this has become my reward. No longer are the tips the best perk of the job, the mini-pizzas are.

Never Good Enough

I have always been the person who could never do anything quite well enough.

I am as smart as my sister, but was never quite able to live up to the standards she set at school. She excelled at the things she loved and I stayed stagnant, never quite being able to improve.

My parents would never tell me to my face, but I have let them down in my life. I could have done as well (if not better) than her, but I didn’t.

Maybe I am setting the bar too high for myself. Maybe I should just give up. Accept that I am destined for nothing but mediocrity.

I am mediocre at school: I am about to lose my scholarship, I may not be able to make it to law school, I may be ruining my entire future.

I am mediocre in love: I have never been good enough for anyone.

I am mediocre at work: I work so hard and still get crappy tips, I deal with so much crap for nothing.

Long Time No See

My father is coming in town this afternoon. I am really looking forward to see him, I haven’t seen him since Christmas.

I wish that I could go with my sister to go pick his up from the airport tonight, but I have to work tonight. I would have felt guilty asking for Friday and Saturday off, so I chose to spend all Saturday with him, and who knows, maybe he will decide to come visit me at work tonight.

What do we have planned, you ask? Well, that is a good question. As of now, we do not have any plans. As my father say, “We will play it by ear.” …or at least he would have said that when I was five, right after he would say, “We’re having frogs’ feet for dinner tonight.”

Needless to say, we learned to stop asking him what the plans were.

I do, however, need to drive home, get ready for work, clean my car out, and go to work all in an hour time. That will be fun. I would let my sister drive while I clean the car, but she is pokey on the road. Who goes the speed limit?!

Moral of the story: I have to choose the best of two evils, be late because I need to clean the car or be late because my sister drives slow…

The Little Things

I take the little things in life for granted. We all do. It isn’t until something is taken away that we truly understand how much we use and need it.

Take, for instance, being sick (which I underwent today). Being able to breath without feeling like your chest is going to explode, a little thing I learned was nice today. Going to school and work, yes I missed both of these exercises.

I found myself bored and unable to sleep because the house was so bright. I really did miss sitting in a classroom and learning something. We all complain about how much we hate going to school, how tedious it is; however, I reacquainted myself with my love of learning today.

I love my job, I love both of my majors, but why is it that I find myself going through the motions half-heartedly? Being away from my normal life for twenty four hours has made me realize a lot of things.

We should all step back once in a while and reacquaint ourselves with our realities.

Just Plain Rude

I hope that when you go out to eat, you tip well. I am so tired of people who come in, and often even compliment the food and the service, and leave 10% tips. I deserve better than a 10% tip.

I tip more than 10% when the waiter spills water on me or curses at the table, it is just plain rude not to.

How would you like it if I came into your work, sat in your office for an hour, and then took all of your office supplies and inconvenience you in every way possible.

I can understand that if I got paid a normal wage, but I get $2.50 an hour. I am lucky if my paycheck from working full time reaches $100. I live off those tips people. Be a little kinder.

There is physically no way that I could do my job better. I cannot move any faster, I cannot carry more than three plates of food (having only two hands and all), the soda fountain only fills drinks so fast, etc. I am a friendly person and always smile and treat my customers with dignity and respect. What else do you want from me?

And parents, don’t let your children trash the table, would you let them do that at home? And if they do, you better tip your server extra, for the extra work they have to do cleaning up after your monster of a child.

Just some food for thought.