Groceries

Just yesterday I bought $180 worth of groceries. I can't remember my mom ever spending over $120 for our whole family growing up. Obviously, prices have risen, but I also bought more stuff than I could probably eat in a month. Which is why I did it. I hate going to the grocery store. Once I'm there its fine I guess, but I hate knowing I have to go soon and not having food to eat if I don't. So this time, everything that does not parish within a month, I bought a ton of. I bought 2 loaves of bread, 4 bags of english muffins, a bunch of cans of chili, couple cereal boxes, couple different frozen food items, some frozen fruit, like 4 packages of deli meats (its nice because unopened, they last till like december, same thing with cheese which I also bought a bunch of). I wish fruit lasted a long time but unfortunately I will have to eat all my fresh fruit by the end of the week, or else it will go bad. Same thing with lettuce. I like to always have some sort of lettuce around, whether for a salad or a sandwich, but its so annoying because it goes bad like 3 days after opening. Then I am lettuceless until next months grocery trip.

I was recently wondering, do apples or oranges get ripe or unripe? It seems all other fruits you can tell by looking at them or feeling them whether they are ripe or not, but apples and oranges you just have to bite and hope for the best. Are mushy apples too ripe? It doesn't seem that way because I have left apples in the fridge up to 2 weeks and found them as crispy and fresh and good tasting as ever. Thats all

Life In Current Form

Life has changed a lot since summer it seems. I now live in a new place, a nice one with nice folk. The only bummer about the place so far is the noisy neighbors who have children that just yell and scream at each other for no reason sometimes as early as 5:30 in the morning. Which is quite annoying with the thinness of the wall between my bed's headboard and the kids room. They really might as well be in my room and jumping on my bed while they're at it. I may not have it as bad as my roomate Reed though who often has to sleep through their DVD menu stopping and starting throughout the night. The only other complaints I have of the place is the great lack of windows. We only have one window for all of the living space, and then one for each bedroom. The bathroom doesn't even have a window. And the one window we have is covered by a patio, so there really is never any natural light in the place. And it has a lack of close parking for friends to come over, but really other than that, you can't beat it.
It has been nice to have people always around. My old living situation was practically by myself, so if I ever wanted people around, I had to go somewhere. Now if I want to be alone, I can either go in my room and sit through the screaming neighbor kids, or go somewhere else. But luckily I haven't really had any desire for alone time, so I have quite liked having the fun people always around.
Much of my time as of late has gone into the making of our future coffee table. I have really enjoyed getting back into the creative process of making something useful. Though I must admit not too much creativity was involved as all I really am doing is sanding and oiling a giant block of wood. Plus I stole the idea for the creation of it from a magazine, but mine will be different and better. I guess I just love doing anything with wood. I really have come to think that I have to find a way to make that what I do. Finishing wood and making ugly wood look and feel amazing really is one of my favorite things in the world to do. Once I got started I just couldn't wait to keep working on it till I could see the final outcome. I pretty much lost all desire to do anything else when working on it, and I'm almost done. Just have to wax it and finish the little legs for it.
School this semester is likely to be the most busy semester of college I have yet experienced. I am taking more units than I ever have, and they are almost all upper division classes full of lots of reading and plenty of papers, and plenty of class presentations and speeches. I am also taking a class called book arts which should be fun, but really stretch my creative abilities as I have to write and construct my very own creative cool looking books. I don't think I have ever done anything close to that before in my life. It should be fun though, and hopefully I will make a cool book or two. I never knew how creative books could actually be until taking this class. I never really contemplated how much creativity and craftiness can go into the cover and type of paper and everything. Last night I made paper in the class which was actually quite fun. I never imagined it to be so easy, and also was quite surprised how it works. I got a little carried away in the creative part of the paper making and started throwing in all sorts of things into the paper to make it look cool. Things like bark, leaves, and other little spices and such to add color and texture. Now I have 7 fairly useless pieces of paper as they are full of little bumps and ridges and leaves that make writing on it not too easy, nor easily readable. But hey, its cool looking paper. I kind of want to make a little hobby of paper making now, but it does require the purchasing of certain devices and tools that I don't currently have, but didn't seem too expensive.
So life is pretty busy as of late, and seems it will be for the next year or so, but it seems to be full of good stuff for the most part.
God bless us, every one

A Realisation

When I was 14 or so, it seemed everyone over 20 was so old and mature. Now that I am well past that age, it still seems that they were much older and grown up than myself at the moment, and now the 14 year olds seem so much younger than I was at a similar age.

Real Dialogue from the Flying M

Scene: group of 3 firemen walk up to the counter.

1st fireman: "I'll have a not too hot mocha."

2nd and 3rd firemen: Nonstop teasing of 1st fireman saying things like, "how can you be a fireman and order something not too hot? ... rookie"

It gave me a laugh. They were relentless on the poor guy.