My Snitch Came In!

It's obvious from previous posts that I like to buy things. Recently, I purchased this fabulous Harry Potter item:

I hear it opens at the close.

And it does! Only to reveal a watch.

I got it off Etsy from someone in China who was selling it for $3. It cost more to ship it, but everything ended up being less than $10. The necklace seems like it's decent quality, too, at least a bit better than Forever21 quality. Tons of them can be found on Etsy, and I'm very tempted to get a silver one to match my engagement ring.

Also from Etsy:

Yes, I know it's not positioned correctly. The arrow should be pointing southwest, not northwest. But I'm so glad I finally replaced my Hello Kitty decal.

And here's one last purchase I made:

It was an impulse buy, made while I was interviewing a lady in Stone Mountain Village. After making jewelry for 20 years and collecting items for the past three years, she decided to open her own shop filled with the jewelry she makes and antiques she finds at auctions and estate states.

I saw this tree jewelry holder and couldn't resist. And at $30, it seems like a steal to me, because it doesn't look like something that will tarnish in a few years. Even though I only had $27 on my Paypal card when I bought it (I used my credit card), I totally don't regret buying it at all.

Hopefully I'll do another update this week since next week I probably won't have time. I just got word that I'll be guest editor for the Lilburn Patch next week. Super stoked because that means more money and more experience for me! I've been such a slacker these past few months, I'm not sure if I can handle it. (Of course I can.)

'Hunger Games' Withdrawal

I just finished "The Hunger Games" this weekend, and I'm having trouble picking out my next book to read. I promised myself that I would read "A Game of Thrones" next, but I can't seem to get into it, possibly because I know the main storyline since I've watched the HBO series.

I'll probably do a review of "The Hunger Games" at one point since I'm going through a crazy fan phase right now. I almost want to go back and reread them already, but I will constrain myself since I just made a list of books I need to read.

 
This weekend was pretty legit. Went to see Max Bemis and Sherri Dupree at the Masq on Friday and it was surprisingly good for an acoustic show. From a concert-goer who likes to mosh, crowd-surf and skank, it's hard for me to stand still at a show, so when I say it's good, it truly was a good show.

As husband and wife, they're super adorable. Sherri, who's the lead singer of Eisley, has a pretty good voice. Max, the lead singer of Say Anything (who I've seen about 3 or 4 times), played more stuff off his band's records than I thought. He has three albums under his solo-acoustic name Max Bemis and the Painful Splits, so I thought he was going to play mostly from that. From the early days of "Baseball" to his latest days under the band's self-titled album, he played a little bit of everything. He even played "The Church Channel," one of my favorites that he never plays.

Saturday we all went to a cocktail birthday party. Overall, it was enjoyable, not to mention a fun excuse to dress up.

My dress is from Modcloth. It's backless, but I didn't take a picture of the back, so check it out here.

My shoes are super cute, too. Unfortunately, this is the only picture I have of them:

My friend Beza and I decided to try on each other's shoes. Mine are the pink nude ones, from Charlotte Russe.

Lots more to talk about, but I will reserve it for another post. Later!

Carne Guisada

I've been perusing Skinnytaste for the past week and want to make and eat almost everything on there. Last week, I tried the Chicken and Mushroom recipe, which wasn't too bad, and then yesterday I tried the Carne Guisada.

I couldn't find achiote/sazon, one of the ingredients the recipe asks for. I also didn't cook the beef for the hour-and-half that it asked me to, so the beef was a bit tough. I cooked the potatoes for the 20 minutes it asked for, though, but that was still tough, too.

Regardless, it tasted amazing. Will cook again.

Tonight, I'm making Portabella Pizza Bites, which is supposed to be on the healthier side. Alex is currently going through a mushroom stage, so I thought it would be a delicious dish. Let's hope I don't screw things up.

New Shirts!

As a regular buyer from TeeFury and RIPT Apparel now, I got some new shirts in this week! Say hello to Stay Shiny and Major League Quidditch:

Click here for a better view of Stay Shiny.

I also got these bad boys in from this fabulous lady on Etsy:

Mix those with the erotica magnetic words on my fridge, and my HP fanfiction just may make a comeback.

Nail polish this week: Plum's the Word by Sally Hansen.

Now everyone gets to see all the imperfections! Most of the polish that's on my skin rubs off in a day, anyway.

Doing It Rebel Style

Some house shots with my new Canon Rebel T3:

Purple Yam and a Canon Rebel

For the first time in four years, I spent Thanksgiving with my both my parents. And for the first time it was rather good. My mom cooked everything; I went there early to cook with her, but when I arrived, she had cooked everything already.  

 

Too much food for five people!

The purple dish is some Filipino yam. I had the ice cream version of it in high school at a Filipino friend's birthday, and I remember it tasting like buttered popcorn. 

This version didn't taste like it though, which is a tad disappointing but not disappointing at the same time. I saw it and kept raging that it was going to taste like popcorn, and then when I ate it, it was more on the sweeter side. It tastes better than buttered popcorn. 

I spent some time at home cleaning my closet (pictures TK) and then headed over to Alex's. His mom had made some Cajun-flavored turkey, which was super spicy. 

I ate dinner with them around actual dinner time, and then Alex and I headed to Target around 10 p.m. for this: 

It's the Canon Rebel T3. Alex bought it for me for Christmas and he let me have it early. 

We waited outside Target until it opened at midnight for Black Friday. There were maybe 100 or 125 people in front of us, because they were letting 20 people in at a time and it only took us 10 minutes. 

Getting the camera was somewhat of a bitch. The electronics line was all screwy because some of the barriers weren't established, so some people tried to cut in line. The atmosphere was a little chaotic, too, and of course, some people were acting crazy. Still, we were able to get a hold of one.

I'm super stoked.

It's charging right now. I didn't want to charge it overnight because it only needs two hours plugged into the wall, and I don't like to overcharge things.

If I don't get to do a photo session today, I'll eventually get to it. My mom just drove my dad to the hospital because his foot's been intensely hurting for the past week or two, and now he can barely walk on it. I'll update with that later.

A Rookie Who Breaks the News

This lack of article assignments is really taking a toll. I'm bored, and I feel lazy with nothing major in my schedule. Granted, I do have some chores to do, and I'll go for a run in the evening, but I figured I'd get my blog post out of the way first.

I broke two stories before three major news outlets Friday. The article in my last blog post about the woman who posed nude at a church? It was posted to the Lilburn Patch website Friday morning, and around 5 p.m. the same day, the same incident was reported on the AJC's website and on WSB-TV, both found here. It's not breaking news since it happened more than a week ago, so I'm fairly certain someone read my article and decided they should write about it, too.

The other story is a bit less exciting. For my last Meet the Owner column, I interviewed a lady who just opened Scentalicious, a soy candle shop in Stone Mountain Village. It posted Friday at 12:01 a.m. on the Stone Mountain Patch. Around 10:30 p.m., I got an email from the owner saying CBS Atlanta saw my article and went over to shoot a story for the 11 p.m. news. (Unfortunately, there's no direct link for the video.)

And yesterday, I changed my nail color again. Commander in Chic by Sally Hansen.

I love it. I just hope it doesn't chip as badly as the Gray by Gray.

Posing Nude Near a Church

You just can't make this stuff up. Here's another article posted today on the Lilburn Patch. It's one of my favorites in a while:

The Buddy Christ from "Dogma," via Wikipedia

Expanding a nude portfolio: A woman and man were arrested near a Lilburn church when Gwinnett police officers found the man taking nude photos of the woman. The two eventually explained that they were taking the photos to expand her portfolio because she wanted to pursue a career as an exotic dancer. Check it out here.

Friendsgiving is tomorrow! That occasion is pretty self explanatory, right? I'll try to take photos.

Patch: Inside the Police Blotter

I am super bored. Here some articles of mine that were posted last week.

Credit: Teqnoqolor via Deviantart

Wrong delivery: On Halloween night in Norcross, a group of kids opens the door to a man dressed in a Dominos outfit, complete with a pizza box. After establishing that no one at the residence had ordered pizza, the delivery man pulls a gun on them and brings out two other guys for a robbery. Read the rest of the home invasion here.

Credit: jenny downing via Flickr

You just got forked: A 53-year-old Lilburn woman stabs her husband in the arm and groin after calling her a bitch. Twice. Check out the aggravated assault incident here in detail.

Nail Polish Was on Sale.

My weekend was blah. Two days of visitations, funerals and hopping from state to state are not fun.

On Thursday before the trip, I went into Walgreen's to buy some nail polish remover and one bottle of Essie. Yeah, that didn't happen.

Nail polish was on sale. I bought it all.

And by "all," I mean "five." But I definitely wanted to buy them all.

I originally put on Sally Hansen's Gray by Gray (second from the right). In the store, it looked like a bluish gray, but when I put it on, it ended up just looking ugly.

It's super disappointing because I love the color gray. However, I didn't like this particular shade for some reason. It's odd because I usually put on gray if I'm indecisive on choosing my weekly color.

I couldn't wait to change it, especially since Hampton Inn's walls fucked up my nails when I was out of town. Their walls are covered with some hard, caulky crap. I can't really describe it since I don't know construction jargon, but it looks like the same material used to add depth ceilings. (To me, the ceiling design looks like somebody used a paintball to make it.

Anyway, the walls looks nice, but it's so disastrous on my nails that the slightest contact scraped the polish right off. That's never happened before, not even while washing dishes.

So once I got back, I changed the color to Rimmel London's Wild Orchid (second from left). It's actually not bad, but not my favorite.

I tried the cooking spray trick for the first time, and so far, it seems to be working. I'll have a verdict after I sleep on it, since oftentimes I wake up to dents and impressions from my pillow.

On another note, I need more scarves.

I want to try out of all these.

We Are Journalists.

An impromptu trip to Tennessee awaits me for the weekend. Alex's grandmother died yesterday morning, so we're heading up there for the funeral.

Hopefully I'll take some pretty pictures of the autumn leaves.

Anyway, I stumbled upon this nifty place yesterday: We Are Journalists.

It's a Tumblr of editors, reporters, copy editors, page designers, bloggers and other journalists. Each one writes a short blurb on how being a journalist is completely worth the shitty moments of being paid less, having unhappy comments spat at you, the sleepless nights and everything else in between.

Reading each one makes me proud and sad at the same time. If I wasn't uber afraid of my career before, this just confirmed it. But goddamn, I love what I do.

Here's my attempt to writing one, photo TK:

My commute consists of walking from my bed to my couch. I live off my MacBook Pro and my shitty iPhone 3G for emails from my editors. I completed five internships, four of them unpaid, before landing a freelance gig with my current employer. I still work for free with a publication just so that I can add two extra lines to my resume. AP style is my lifestyle. I've interviewed celebrities, business owners and educators, and I've gotten tons of free shit just because I'm in the media. After all of that, I still feel the most prideful when thinking about my article involving a local hero who had the balls to chase a group of bank robbers for ten miles in his own truck.

Despite my recent pay cut and all the criticism thrown my way, he is the reason why I'm still attempting to make it in this industry.

I am a freelance journalist.

--

I also felt like I needed to say this, too, but I couldn't find a way to incorporate it with the graf above:

I was a sales rep for an inbound call center making decent moolah until the company closed two and a half years ago. It was the best thing that ever happened to me, because if the company didn't close, I would probably still be there, still hating the job but doing it because of the money. I love what I do, and even though I'm not making as much as I did with my old job, I'm definitely not reprinting a resignation letter every week anymore.

I'm a freelance journalist.

Sunday Funday

The people have voted! Liquor and beer can now be served in almost all cities around the metro Atlanta area, including my areas of DeKalb and Gwinnett counties.

Photo by Tobyotter via Flickr

I've been a massive supporter of Sunday alcohol sales since I wrote an editorial on it for school a few years ago, so of course I went to the ballots last night.

You should have voted, mister. (Yeah, I'm wearing the same shirt. Don't hate.)

As one voter commented to the AJC:

"We are one of the last states to attempt this, and we want to be the leader of the South? If we want to make ourselves appear to be a cosmopolitan city, we have to allow it."

The main reason booze isn't sold on Sunday is because of Christianity. How did that happen again, considering the separation of church and state?

One Sunday school teacher told the AJC that Sunday is the "Lord's day," and "if you can't do without alcohol one day a week, there's something bad wrong with you."

First of all, lady, it's "badly wrong," not "bad wrong." Second, it's not just about doing "without alcohol one day a week." I spend many days not drinking alcohol. Sometimes weeks. I don't keep a stash of Strongbow in the house for this reason.

What if, after weeks, maybe a month, of not drinking, I get a craving to have a beer or two and it just happens to be Sunday? Or what if last-minute guests decides to drop by my house and I need to grab some wine, as part of being a good hostess?

I want to be able to have that purchasing option, as a majority of metro Atlantans seem to agree with. Seventy-one percent of Stone Mountain voters favor it. Atlanta saw 82 percent. And Lilburn? An (unofficial) 64 percent.

It's like that box of Drumsticks ice cream sitting in my freezer; I don't need it, but I like to know that I have the option to pop one open whenever I want.

Just because alcohol will be available on Sunday doesn't mean you have to buy it. If you don't support the ban lift, then don't buy alcohol on that day. It's as simple as that. Don't take away my right to buy alcohol on the Sabbath just because you believe in some book that says it's a "day of rest." What if my day of rest consists of being lazy and drinking some hard cider?

And don't be one of those hypocritical assholes that wants to keep the ban but still ends up drinking on Sunday because the alcohol was lying around the house. The whole point of not purchasing on the Sabbath is so that you don't imbibe it, too.

Now here's a toast to finally loosening those blue laws and joining the other 47 states that aren't dry on Sunday.

Photo by tces6, via Flickr

Run for Your Lives! No, Really.

I've been in an athletic mood recently.

Jogging all weekend. New shoes. Athletic wear sent via FedEx.

And most of it has to do with this little thing in March:

Run for Your Lives: A Zombie-Infested 5K Obstacle Course Race.
 
It'll be my first 5K, complete with obstacles, dirt and a lack of asphalt. For training, so far I'm only running and doing crunches and pushups, so I need to step up my game soon with some more epic exercises.

Yesterday, I got some new running shoes that I'm super stoked about. I've been running on some shitty Nikes that don't allow my feet to curve at all, and I was eyeing the Nike Free Run+ 2 for a while (which Alex actually ended up buying). When I went to Sports Authority, though, I realized they probably weren't the best shoe for me because of its lack of tread. Plus, they look funny.

I wanted a similar shoe with some tread, so I spotted these:

New Balance 101 Trail Running shoes. They look awesome, and they have the same barefoot-feel as the Nikes. And they have tread. Plus, I go them for $40. Beat that, $90 Nikes.

I haven't tried them out yet, but tonight, the treadmill shall see my fabulous new sneakers.

Ooh, and I got this in the mail yesterday, too:

A Firefly/Peanuts crossover? Undoubtedly clever. Possibly the best $10 I've ever spent. Stay classy, TeeFury.

Nail Polish, Halloween and Shithead

This is my week in review. I imagine this is going to be a long post. Let's go in reverse chronological order.

Before every weekend, I paint my nails. Last night I grabbed "Empower" by AVON.

And this is what my thumb looks like. Do I feel empowered? Yep. Especially holding a cup of Yogi chai tea.

My verdict for the color: Eh. I'm surprised I chose this color out of the dozens in my collection, especially since I went dark last week, too.  I'm content with it for now, but by Tuesday, I'll be itching to grab the nail polish remover to put on a lighter color.

In more exciting news: "Shithead" (pronounced "shuh-theed"), a dating parody video created by my kid brother and his friend, went viral last week.

On Tuesday, it aired on "Tosh.0" as the Viewer Video of the Week. Check it out here.

Daniel Tosh completely pronounced their names wrong, too. Kurush Bakhtiari = Kurushi Bakhtiari, and Andrew Ruse = Andrew Rose.

Regardless, we were pretty stoked. It was also on G4's "Attack of the Show" (jump to 1:35) and on HuffPo last week.

He's only 20 years old. I can only imagine what he's going to accomplish by 30.

Last Saturday we had a Halloween party. I decided to dress up as Lana Kane, and Alex went as Cyril Figgis, both from "Archer."

I've spent more money on this outfit than on any other Halloween outfit. Luckily, I already had the boots and belt, but I had to buy the gun holster (from Walmart!), the dress from Victoria's Secret and the BB guns from Wumart.

I've only worn this costume once, but I want to wear it again so badly. DragonCon 2012, anyone?

As for this weekend, it seems like it's going to be pretty quiet. Brickstore tonight, and so far, that's it.

Excuse Me If I Suck At This.

It's been a long time.

I should have gotten into the blogging world ages ago, when Creative Loafing's music editor asked me why I didn't have a blog. He had been interviewing me for the music intern position for the summer of 2009 (which I didn't get, by the way, but instead landed a summer events intern spot), so I made up some bullshit story about being too busy with school and working full-time.

Since then, the importance of blogging has always popped up. My journalism professors said we should keep blogs (even though in class they never covered how to blog). I was asked during other interviews, and more recently, a recruiter for Home Depot asked me via email for my resume, clips and blog. I told her I didn't have one but sent her everything else, and she didn't email me back.

So, to be frank, I'm composing this blog for a few reasons:

1. My career. I've noticed since high school (when I actually had five to six blogs) that my writing has deteriorated. As a journalist, that's not really a good thing, so I need to get back into the creative writing habit.
2. My increase of free time. Because my current employer, Patch, has decreased the freelance budget across the board, I'm writing less and getting paid less. It still pays the bills, but my work now consists of only 10 hours a week. So aside from reading the Sookie Stackhouse books (currently on book eight) and watching "Sex and the City" reruns, I need something to occupy my time. 

 Hopefully, from this day forward, I will not be blogless. We'll see.