Working Girl (October 23, 2008)

My road trip was definitely one of the top highlights of my life and I took some time once I got to Raleigh to try to absorb it all and recharge and figure out my next step. Once I decided I was going to try to stay in North Carolina and make a go fot higns, I applied for several different jobs that I felt I was qualified for, that related to my major and career path in some way, and that I thought I could be good at and enjoy. Some of the jobs I interviewed for include editorial assistant at the Garner Citizen News and Times (a local publication), production assistant at Gulf Stream Communications, and PR assistant at The Rivers Agency, apparently for none of which I was qualified or the right candidate. In addition, postings for jobs in any aspect of entertainment or communication in Raleigh were few and far between.

My nice break in August was a welcome reprieve from the grueling pace of my road travels, but as September rolled around and the rejections continued, my vacation seemed to drag on to the point where sleeping in and watching TV on the couch all day actually started to wear on me and become boring. I might even go so far as to say that I wanted a reason to get up out of bed early in the morning. I wanted somewhere to go like everyone else who was working and something to do that would make me feel like a productive member of society again instead of a waste of a person hiding out in the suburbs.

By October, I was still surfing the Internet job boards, tweaking cover letters, and sending out resumes, with little or no feedback. However, I wasn't willing to give up on my dream of making it on my own out here in NC. With the holidays just around the corner and retail stores guaranteed to hire extra employees for the upcoming busy season, I decided that for now it might be a good idea to temporarily postpone my career-oriented job search and instead take a seasonal retail position to establish a local resume and start replenishing some of my road trip funds.

I applied to Blockbuster, Borders, Circuit City, Hallmark, and Marquee Cinema. I heard back almost immediately and simultaneously from Borders and Circuit City and even went on interviews for both jobs on the same day, Monday, October 20. Initially, I liked the idea of working at Borders more because, during my extended vacation, I was able to tear myself away from the TV more and more frequently to quench my renewed thirst for reading and Borders has a loan out program where employees get to borrow any book for free, like the library, but better, in my opinion, because the library tends to only have hardback books and I am not a huge fan of those. However, during my interview, I found two big negatives to working at Borders: one, the location of this particular Borders was in an odd, somewhat isolated area that didn't seem to get much heavy consumer traffic other than a short lunch and evening commuter rush and, two, the majority of the employees that I saw as I wandered around the store were in their 40s, much older than I, and I was hoping to find a job that also had the added benefit of serving as a social network where I could make friends in my new hometown.

My interview at Circuit City was much more positive. I noticed that the majority of the employees were relatively young, appearing to be my age or a bit younger, perhaps in college. I also felt more comfortable with the manager who interviewed me at Circuit City. I felt that a rapport was quickly established and that there was an easy flow of conversation as opposed to an impersonal Q&A session. The manager, Brian, must have felt the same way because after we wrapped things up, he called in his assistant manager, Vonetta, so that she could conduct a brief second interview and speed the hiring process right along. She clearly approved as well and even said as much, and Brian came back in and basically offered me the position if I wanted it. I explained that I had had another interview and wanted to weight my options rather than make an impulsive decision, but I think I pretty much knew what my answer was going to be based on my initial gut feelings regarding both jobs. I started working as a customer service associate at Circuit City 3 days later! Yay for finally having a job!

Unfortunately, that same week, news began to surface that Circuit City was in big money trouble and that it would most likely be filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in hopes of reorganizing and digging themselves out of debt. For a while there, I actually started to believe that Circuit City might make it out okay, but, well, I'll leave the rest of that story for another blog...

North Carolina State Fair! (October 18, 2008)

There are many things that I swear I have memories of doing or going to or experiencing in my life, but I think most of them are actually memories of movies or television shows that I have seen than actual first-hand experiences. My life, education, and career have revolved around movies and TV so much that the majority of my memories are in the form of 27" screen-size images of someone else's life rather than 4x6 prints of my own real life. Sad and a little confusing the way I wrote it, but still very true.

Case in point: I would swear I have lots of seemingly tangible memories in my head of attending a fair or carnival and I'm pretty sure it is true that I have been to the Del Mar Fair at least once in my life. However, taking a moment to sort through my memories, I think my idea of a fair has mostly been shaped by a combination of scenes taken from various movies and TV shows. Not to say this is a bad thing because I think most people would say the same thing. Entertainment has a huge influence on our lives, more than we realize most days, but when I take a moment to consider this, it doesn't necessarily make me want to stop that influence altogether - I know I'd never survive total disconnection from media. It does, however, makes me more aware that I live way too much of my life vicariously through characters on soap operas and motivates me to get out there in the world and see what things like fairs are really like for myself instead of through a camera lens.

Which brings me back to my case in point once again (no more crazy tangents and soap box speeches, at least not in this blog, one can hope!): Luckily, I moved in with my cousins who do get out of the house much more often than I and are kind enough to take me with them, so I finally got to experience a state fair for the first time in a long time. Unfortunately, we chose one of the first really cold days this fall, but we braved the cold weather and the crowds on the first Saturday it was open to check out the North Carolina State Fair.

It was a fun day, full of new experiences. North Carolina and the southern states in general are big fans of fried foods and the state fair is a perfect place to exhibit this tradition to the extreme, including fried peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, fried candy bars, and fried Twinkies, to name a few.

I went for the fried Twinkie -not as scary or exciting as I had hoped. Turns out that the filling of the Twinkie melts and disappears during the frying process so you just end up with lots of breaded greasy/sweet stuff on a stick, which wasn't bad, but wasn't that great either. My cousin Billy got a fried candy bar, Milky Way, I think and he was not a fan at all. Not sure if it was too sweet or just a nasty combination, but I just remember he was sorry afterwards! I also had a corn dog, which I rarely have the opportunity to eat and perhaps that's a good thing because I was not that impressed. I also got some fried mozerella sticks and shared a funnel cake. And to wash it all down, I got some Pappy's Old Fashioned Soda Pop - rootbeer the first time around and then gingerale for the free refill on the way out. Clearly, at least for us, the fair was mostly about eating our way from beginning to end, which seems like a better idea than throwing your money away on those expensive carnival games where the reward does not equal the cost in the slightest. At least when you eat your way through, you leave satisfied with a full belly and empty wallet rather than disappointed with a dinky little stuffed animal and an empty wallet. That's my opinion anyway.

My little cousin Connor got to play a couple of the kiddie games so he could have the full exprience.

I think he won a little car or toy of some sort that wasn't age appropriate but he didn't really care about that anyway. The joys of being one! I didn't want to spend more money than necessary since I still didn't have a job at the time, but I really should have paid up and seen what an eight-legged woman looks like in real life. Oh well, I'm sure they'll have something equally awesome at next year's fair, regardless of which state I'm in!

Despite the cold, it was defintely a worthwhile experience. I even got a souvenir Mt. Olive pickle (a local NC company) sticker that smells like a real pickle, something I'll treasure for as long as the smell lasts - not sure if I want that to be a long time or not, it's a tough call!

Pumpkin Patch! (October 13, 2008)

I can't remember the last time I made a big deal about Halloween. It's never been one of my favorite holidays. I've never been a fan of dressing up for formal events and I guess somewhere along the line I must have lumped dressing up for Halloween into that same category. I didn't change my tune this year either, unless you consider my Circuit City shirt and tan pants a valid Circuit City employee costume, although I'm not sure your costume counts if it's your actual job's uniform, but I'm getting ahead of myself - you're not even supposed to know that I work at Circuit City until my next blog so forget you even read that...

Besides, this blog isn't even about Halloween itself. It's actually about pumpkin picking at an authentic North Carolina pumpkin patch! It was Connor's 1st Halloween this year, so his mom and grandma wanted to make sure he had the full experience and I was lucky enough to be able to tag along. Tiahna, her mom Mary aka Mee-Maw, and Connor all had the day off thanks to Columbus Day (definitely a worthy holiday because if Columbus hadn't discovered America, who knows where I would have done my road trip this past summer!) and I still hadn't found a job yet so I was free as well. There's a great place in nearby Youngsville called Hill Ridge Farms where not only can you pick pumpkins, but you can also take a hay ride (and a nap, if you've got a good pillow!), roll around in a playpen made of corn kernels, hang out with goats and turkeys, ride a train around the grounds, hide out in a teepee to get out of the sun, and take silly pictures,As you can see, we pretty much did it all! Most importantly, Connor did an excellent job bonding with all of the pumpkins (and his mom, Mee-Maw, and me, too!) on his first trip to the pumpkin patch!

Now that's a happy boy!

Can you find Connor amongst the pumpkins below? He seems to blend right in. Good thing we didn't dress him in orange or we might have taken an extra pumpkin home instead of him!

Here's Connor posing proudly with his very first pumpkin that he picked out all by himself! What a picturesque shot taken by his talented mom, Tiahna!

Sadly, our pumpkins went uncarved as we never found the time to sit down and carve them or we just plain forgot, or a combination of the two. They still served us well, sitting on the front steps of the house and adding the perfect seasonal touch to the oustide decor for both the Halloween and Thanksgiving holidays.

Los Angeles/San Diego Visit (October 3-8, 2008)

I know it's been FOREVER since I've posted anything on my blog. I apologize about that, but I actually have been doing some fun things over the past few months and I thought perhaps people might still want to hear about them. I'm hoping to post several new blogs over the next week or so and then hopefully continue the blog more consistently thereafter. For now, we'll travel back in time to October....

Back in August, when I had no idea where I'd be or what I'd be doing with my life in October, I decided to go ahead and buy tickets with a few of my friends to a USC football game. I figured that regardless of where I was on October 4th, I knew I would do everything I could do be at that game. It just wouldn't be fall without attending at least one Trojan football game! In September, I still didn't have a job and so I figured I might as well make the most of my free time so I put together a plan to fly out to LA for the football game and for a little visit with my LA friends and then would head down to San Diego to visit with the folks for a couple days and go thru my storage unit to gather more of my stuff to bring back to Raleigh with me.

I landed at LAX on Friday, October 3rd, after an easy problem-free couple of flights. My good friend and old roommate Jenn picked me up and we headed to our friend Sarah's apartment in the heart of downtown LA to wait for her to come home from work. I got in a bit early, so while we were waiting, we decided to walk a couple of blocks to one of my favorite restaurants, California Pizza Kitchen, to grab some take out dinner. I had my favorite, a barbeque chcken chopped salad, yum!

When Sarah got home, we ate and then headed off to a friend, Kirk's, going away party - he was moving back home to Oklahoma. I knew most of the people there from school and from Christian Challenge, a group of awesome people on campus that always made me feel welcome even though I was never an official member. At first, I didn't want to go because I had selfishly been looking forward to hanging out and catching up with Jenn and Sarah, but, in the end, I was that I had gone because it reminded me that even though I didn't realize it, I do have quite a few people in LA who I could call my friends and who care about me. That was definitely refreshing and made me feel really good. I had a blast!

I spent the night with Sarah and slept in the living room on an air mattress for the first time. That was an interesting experience. Luckily, I was tired and a bit jet-lagged so I think I slept pretty well considering. The next day, Sarah and I grabbed lunch at The Counter, a phenomenal burger joint in Santa Monica, definitely a top five favorite restaurant of mine!

I'm salivating just thinking about it now and really need to stop because I don't have time to drive down to Charlotte, the lcoation of the nearest Counter, to grab a burger before work tonight, bummer!

After lunch, it was time to get ready for the event I had come to town for: the USC Trojans vs. Oregon Ducks football game! I donned my #4 Joe McKnight jersey and my USC sweatshirt since it was a night game and I knew it would get a little chilly later on. My friends Katie, Jenn, and Jon picked Sarah and I up and we headed to the Coliseum. We only had to park a few blocks away, which really isn't that bad considering we were battling with 90,000 people for parking.

For some reason, the computerized ticketing system wouldn't let us purchase 5 tickets together, so we had to split up the seats, with Jenn and Jon in one section and Sarah, Katie, and I in the other. However, there were some empty seats near Jenn and Jon by halftime so we moved up there and got to sit together for that half of the game. The game was awesome as always, especially since we won 44-10!

The only negative to the night was that rained a little, but even though the weather dampened our coats, it definitely didn't dampen our school spirit!

There's always so much energy in the Coliseum that you can't help but have fun, especially when your team is kicking butt! Plus, being at the game brings back so much nostalgia and so many memories of all the good times I had in school and a part of me always wishes that my friends and I could travel back to senior year and be carefree and together again. It's been hard being so far away from my family and friends and from the city I loved and lived in for so long and always dreamed I'd live in forever. Raleigh has been an exciting challenge, but it definitely hasn't been easy and going back to LA was just as hard as I knew it would be, but just as fun as I'd hoped it would be, too!

After the game, everyone was pretty beat, so Sarah and I just went back to her apartment and watched a movie. If memory serves me, I believe it was "Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day" with 2 of my favorite actors Lee Pace (I'm totally in love with him from the ironically dearly departed "Pushing Daisies") and Amy Adams. If not, I'm sure it was a great movie whatever it was.

On Sunday, I attended church with Sarah and several of the people from Challenge. It was funny to me that I'd known these people for a good portion of college, but I'd only really hung out with them in social settings, such as football games and holiday parties, and I'd never been to church with them in all that time until a year and a half after graduating. The church had a good feel to it and it was nice to see where everyone went on Sunday mornings while I always slept in. I might have a slight regret for never having gone before, but at the time, sleep seemed like the better things to do, and I can't really fault my younger self for wanting to take advantage of the opportunity to sleep in. Now that I've been in the working world for a while, I know how precious and few those mornings when you actually can sleep in can be, even more so now that I live with a baby who's up at 7am and a dog who barks at his own shadow when it shows up as the sun rises in the morning!

We hit up In 'N' Out for lunch, another amazing west coast fast food burger joint that's a top fiver for sure! I hadn't had it in 3 months and that was definitely 3 months too long!

After lunch, I still had some time before I had to catch a train down to San Diego, so Jenn, Sarah, and I put our heads together and remembered that there was a mini golf place nearby, so we decided to go have some fun on the putting green!

It was a little competitive, but nothing too crazy!

A surprising number of holes in one were scored that afternoon, one of which was thankfully mine, or at least that's what I choose to remember and believe as the truth. Mostly, we laughed and had fun and tried to capture a few good memories and photos to last us until the next time we could all get together again.

After mini-golf, we still had some time to kill before I had to be at the train station, so we stopped by Jenn's mostly moved in condo so I could see it as I'd never been before. It was pretty amazing! I'm especially jealous of the fact that she has a view of the Hollywood sign in the distance from her living room window, a feature I had always wanted to have in my own apartment, but was never able to achieve...maybe someday.

Finally, it was time to head to the train station. I said goodbye to Jenn and hopped back in the car with Sarah. She dropped me off and we said goodbye. The last time I rode on the train was to meet my family in San Juan Capistrano for a Father's Day brunch together, a trip on which I only took my purse. I had never ridden on the train with luggage before and as if that wasn't enough of an added complication, the train was overbooked and there was standing room only. However, I must have pretty good ingenuity, or, well, maybe just a little bit of luck, but I was able to get away with sitting in a booth in the snack car by constantly buying soda and candy to last me the whole trip down to San Diego. I was pretty proud of myself.

Mom and Dad met me at the train station in Solana Beach. Mom, of course, was waving her slightly embarrassing, but creative and thoughful and full of love homemade "welcome home" sign as she greeted me with hugs and tears. I can't remember what we did for dinner that night, possibly because we didn't really go anything since I had filled up on soda and candy on the train ride.

Being home was pretty mellow and low key, just the way I like it. Since I went away to college, home has always been a refuge where I can completely relax and not think about my other life full of school, homework, reading, papers, work, etc. for a little while. Thankfully, home is still that place for me, and hopefully, it will always be that way. Mom and I went on one of our dates, just the two of us while Dad was at work. We went to Maggie Moo's for ice cream. I had a cup of black cherry ice cream that was amazing and I think Mom had a Pistacio milkshake. Then we took our treats and wandered around World Market because it's just such a fun, eclectic store to roam and every once in a while, you find some pretty unique things.

This has become somewhat of a tradition for us, something we always try to do when I'm home. Not sure how the tradition got started, but I think it's here to stay! I'm sure we went to In 'N' Out again while I was home because you can never have enough to get you through the long, lonely months without it!

I was also able to meet up with a couple of friends, Jazell and Brad, who I went to school with and who now live and work down in San Diego and are always begging me to move back! We went to dinner at On The Border, a pretty yummy Mexican restaurant, which thankfully has locations here in Raleigh (surprisingly, Raleigh actually has several decent Mexican restaurants in the area, I've been very impressed and glad that I am able to satisfy that craving at least while living so far away from California). It was great to see them and catch up for a bit.

After spending some more time bonding with the folks, I packed up 2 suitcases worth of additional warm clothes and jackets to try to prepare for the colder winter I was going to experience in North Carolina compared to the much milder ones I was used to in California, got up early on Wednesday, October 8, said a quick goodbye to Mom to avoid both of us making the other one cry, and drove to the airport with Dad. Dad always seems to have a trick up his sleeve when it comes to traveling and this time was no different. He had business he needed to take care of in Las Vegas that week and it just so happened that I was going to be changing planes in Las Vegas on the way back to Raleigh, so he moved his meetnigs to Wednesday so that he could fly with me from San Diego to Las Vegas. It was pretty great of him to do that and I enjoyed it because he had been working most of the time I was home so it was nice to spend a little quality time together, just the two of us. It was our version of my date with Mom, and it was fitting since we do seem to be pretty good traveling buddies after our stint on the road together during my cross country trip this summer.

All in all, I think I managed to cram a lot into a short amount of time, saw everyone I wanted to see, and did pretty much everything I wante to do, and loved every second of it. I was sad to go and sad to leave, but mostly I was just happy that I got the chance to travel back home for a few days before I started working, at which point it may not have been possible to visit for such a long weekend. Now, I was back in Raleigh and ready to experience the first of many holidays out here, starting with Halloween!