Birthday

So my twenty-third birthday has come and gone. It was an excellent one. Harry Potter came out, as it seems, just for my birthday (haha), but really I've always had good luck with that. I remember on my 14th birthday the 4th HP book came out and Harry and I turned 14 at the same time. However, I didn't end up seeing Harry at midnight like I had originally planned. Instead I headed into the city and met up with Rachel and Rob. We had a drink at Rob's, and then ventured out into South Philly, where we went to dinner at a place called the Tap Room, which had an excellent beer selection (I had a phenomenal Pear Cider), and a delicious menu. We then headed to Lucky 13, and later to a little bar called Grumpy's Tavern, where we enlightened the wonderful crowd of fellow drinkers by singing a delightful rendition of "My Girl" on Karaoke.

It was a fantastic night (sans the 8 or so times I vomited - I lost count after a while), with fantastic friends (who were sweethearts and held my hair). Honestly, it was one of my favorite birthdays to date.

And then yesterday was Harry Potter with Danielle, Kayt, Momma Jess, and G-Unit (aka Grandma). And let me just say that it was well worth the wait, and definitely my favorite Harry Potter movie so far. It was funny, and scary, and just fantastic. Even though they didn't add my favorite scene (when Griffindor wins the Quidditch match and Harry runs up to Ginny and kisses her in front of the whole common room for the first time <3 <3 so cute) , and even though they added some random Christmas scene that was a little awkward, the movie was phenomenal and made me so happy. I can't wait to see it again.

Professional Development Day and LOST 5.10

Yesterday was Therapeutic Recreation Professional Development Day at Temple.  Our Professional Seminar class organized it, and I think it was a huge success. We had representatives from agencies all over the area, and from all sorts of facilities. We organized the room into sections too, so that people could check out all of one type of agency at the same time.  For instance, all of the mental/behavior health agencies were together, and all of the Long Term Care agencies were together. There was also large representation from Pediatrics, Developmental Disabilities, Physical Rehab, and outpatient care (like LIFE and Time-Out Respite Care). I feel like I'm missing a group of people... IDK... NCTRC was there which is the national organization that we get certified through. Got lots of free stuff, and everyone loved the gift bags that we gave out (Elizabeth and I spent 4 hours making them on Tuesday afternoon).   I also got to see a lot of friends and TR buds who are now interning, and were there with their supervisors. Rachel (like I never get to see her... haha), Devon, Evan, Tad, Lisa, etc...  It was a really fun time.

Now on to LOST.  I am so confused. Here are my thoughts:

1. Now that Sayid killed Ben when he was a kid, does that erase all memory/experiences with Ben that everyone had in the future?  I mean, that's so significant, it would change EVERYTHING! The Dharma Initiative would still be kickin', Juliette wouldn't have been brought to the island, I was going to say the island would've never been moved, but they actually wouldn't have had to move the island anyway, because Charles Widmore wouldn't be after Ben, the Oceanic 6 wouldn't have left the island, because there's no Ben for Widmore to hate, and therefore no boat with a helicopter to take them away.  I'm so confused.

2. Sayid: seriously???? What the hell is with killing the kid? I know it's Ben and we all hate him, but he was actually kinda a cute kid and I feel bad for him. I mean, it's really not his fault that he turned into such a fuck-up. 

3. On the other hand, maybe Ben isn't dead.

4. Um, who else thinks that Sawyer is now a huge tool? Really, as soon as he put his hand up to vote with the rest of the group, I knew he'd completely sold out. The 6 came back to help the people who were stuck on the island, and he's so self-absorbed that he couldn't care less about what they gave up to be there and help him.

5. The funny thing is that I've never been a huge Jack fan, but now I love Jack just because he's so consistent. He's still the same exact Jack as the plane crashed.

6. How cute was Sayid when he was drugged and being all truthful and stuff? Adorable.

7. We still have no idea about where/when/etc. the rest of the people are. Bernard, Rose, random other plane people we never knew, Daniel, etc.

8. Although I do think it's fun that Michelle Dessler from 24 is now on the show (Horace's wife). I was severely depressed when she got killed off of 24, because I loved her and Tony (remember in the 1st season of 24 when we all hated Tony and thought he was the bad guy, and then he turned into the best character on the show?).  Maybe the LOST island is really TV heaven, and once you die in TV land you go to the island. lol, i don't know. That's a pretty faulty theory considering that that girl's character's name isn't even Michelle. But I think I'm going to cut off my LOST thoughts there before this turns into a 24 blog.

Some Random Things

First of all, this morning I took one of those lame-o IQ quizzes on Facebook and it said my IQ was 145, which is in the 96th percentile. Apparently I'm a fucking genious. The questions were all really simple though. Like, 'who was the 16th president of the US?', and 'which continent is Canada located on?' and 'what is the capitol of California'. So I know that my score is totally bogus, but it compared it to other people who went to my high school who took the test, and they all scored between 94 and 125, so it at least made me feel smarter then them.

And this is extremely random, but I was walking down Broad Street the other day and noticed a bus for the Academy Bus Company and thought to myself, 'wow, that logo really looks familiar'. Then I forgot about it until a few days later when Danielle said to me, "Today at Temple I saw an Academy bus and it had the same logo as TAI". Look at these:




I wonder who came up with TAI's logo, because I looked up the bus company and they've been around since 1968 or something. On the other hand, I don't know if they know about the bus company, since it's based in New Jersey.

The other night was fun. Rachel and I went to a Kabab (sp?) house on 5th street, right off of South, and it was delicious and affordable food. Then we hiked up to Chestnut street between 2nd and Front (in my 3-inch heeled boots I might add, which is a little difficult when dealing with the cobblestones of Old City) to Triumph Brewary. We were told (via text from Rob) to tell them that we were there for Temple Med. Unfortunately a girl we go to school with was at the desk, and she’s in our major so we obviously couldn’t lie and say that we were in med school. So we tried dodging out of her sight and up the stairs to the private party, but she followed us and pinched Rachel (yes, she actually pinched her to get her to turn around) and was all, “You guys can’t go up there, it’s a private party.” But we were just like, “whatever, we know its Temple Med and we were invited, so we’re going anyway.” But once we got there it was really fun and crowded and just kinda crazy because most of the people knew each other, and then there was our little group of friends crashing the party (we weren’t really crashing, because Rob and Jen’s roommate Franklin actually is a med student at Temple and he invited them and they invited us. Besides, Rachel is interning this semester at Temple Hospital and we are both in the Temple University College of Health Professions, so we had every right to be there, imho.)

The only really sketchy part about the night was the co-ed bathroom with the frosted glass doors. I couldn’t help but think about how many people had probably had sex in there, which was pretty skeevy.

Lost Series Theories - 5.9

What is going on here?

Why is Sun in a different time then the rest of them? I think that's my main question. And will she ever be able to travel back (or get them to travel forward) in time? My theory is that Sun will be the person responsible for bringing them back to the present.

Daniel? So he's not in 1978 anymore. That doesn't surprise me since we hadn't seen him at all. However, the way that Sawyer said that he wasn't there, made it seem like he didn't die, but in fact just wasn't with them anymore. So I'm betting that Daniel definitely did not die.

I also want to know if Ben remembers Sayid and the rest of them from when he was a little kid. We know that he's met Sayid, and that he's most likely met James and Juliette and will soon be meeting Kate, Jack, and Hurley. So all along has he known what was going to happen, because he saw it as a child? Does that make any sense? I think that soon we're going to find out the other reasons (besides the fact that Jack is a doctor) that The Other's caged Sawyer, Jack and Kate back in season 3 (that was season 3, right?). Who knows, maybe in 1978 they all became really great friends with Richard, and he missed them, so when they crashed on the island he just had to have them back....

ugh! I don't know. This stupid show is killing me.

Tonight I'm taking the 6:00 train to Center City and heading to Rachel's house. From there we're going grab dinner at a new restaurant near her house (exciting!) and then we're heading to a brewery called Triumph in Old City to meet up with Rob so that I can get my letter from him. And also to hang out, but I'm on a mission tonight to get that letter. It should be a really fun time.

Tomorrow I work for Stephanie. Jody's in the Philippines with Rotary, so Stephanie needs help doing the Senior Life and Culture Series up at Lankenau Hospital. Basically it's this thing that Saunders puts together every month that's free for seniors, and they get some health information as well as some cultural information, and a free lunch. But it's pretty hard for Stephanie to do it all on her own, so that's where I come in.

Thank god it's not raining anymore. I curled my hair and then as soon as I was finished it started pouring rain. I just hope it doesn't start up again.

Aurora's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Today was horrible (and it's not even 5 o'clock yet, so who knows, maybe it will get worse).

I'll start with the trivial horrible things.

First of all: I hate the Philadelphia Flower Show.  I'm sorry, but once a year for a week, thousands of unemployed elderly people and housewives journey to the city to look at some flowers. And they take up all the goddamn room on the trains.  And they make a ton of unnecessary noise.  I usually look forward to my morning train ride to school as a nice 40 minute chunk of time where I can chill out, relax, read a book or listen to some music, or even take a nap.  But for the next week I'll have to deal with probably not having a seat, listening to the old people yell at each other because they can't hear anything (you know I'm annoyed if I'm picking on the elderly), and a bunch of uncontrolled children.  It's horrible. 

Second: why do we get fined like $200 if we don't shovel our walks in a timely manner, yet St. Charles Seminary never has to shovel their walk?  I was trying to get from the Overbrook Train Station to work today, and had to walk through snow that sometimes was up to my knees. I almost twisted my ankle numerous times, and then made myself look like a big crazy while I shouted, "FUCK YOU LAZY CATHOLIC BITCHES!" at the top of my lungs every time it almost twisted.  Christine said that yesterday the priests were outside playing football.  Well maybe they should spend a little less time playing snow football, and a little more time shoveling their two blocks worth of sidewalk.  I knew there was a reason for not liking religion.

And of course the biggest reason why I'm pissed:  The lovely place where I work decided today to lay off 15 people.  3 of them were from my mom's department. Dawn, Donald and Bill are all now laid off.  How the fuck is a department supposed to function when they're cut in half?  Also, Debbie, who is the head of dietary (not to mention one of my friends) was laid off, and they put some incompetent new guy who didn't even know how to do his ridiculously easy job before, in her place.  How is this douche bag going to be able to run possibly the most difficult department in the building when he couldn't even do the job that a ninth grader could've done before?  Then... to top it all off, WE'RE ALL GETTING A 10% PAY CUT! Yes, now I will be making less money then I did when I first started there four fucking years ago.  The funny thing is that I was so excited last year when I got bumped up to $11/hour (which incidentally was the amount that they originally promised me when I was first hired. After I agreed to the job, they started me at $10/hour), only to get knocked down now to $9.90. Fuck that.  This is a huge deal for me, because I make just enough money during the course of a year to barely qualify for financial aid for school, and of course I get probably the lowest amount of it possible while still getting aid.  There were times last year that I was seriously down to $100 in my savings and checking combined.  Now I'm going to probably be even worse off. And because of the economy, I've already cut back on a ton of stuff. I haven't bought new clothes in forever. I haven't bought any new books or movies lately, and I've been cutting back on the amount of money I spend on food.   The worst part is that I definitely do like twice the amount of work that I did when I first started, and I do wayyy more work then the other people in my department (even my boss most of the time), and I'm still the lowest paid person in the department.  Even if they would've bumped everyone else down 10% and left me where I was, I think I still would've been the lowest paid.  And that's the problem with this place; they always take advantage of the people who actually have a good work ethic. 

I guess I'm still lucky to have a job, but it's not like they could've gotten rid of the receptionists anyway.  We're a pretty vital part of running the building.

Possibly

I have a test tomorrow and I most certainly did not do all of the studying I should've done. Oops! Well, there are 7 more where that came from, so I'll just have to make up for it then if I do poorly.

Also tomorrow I have to work. 4-8. This later shift really actually sucks. No one comes in after 6:30, so maybe I'll have time to eat some dinner if I take it (I'm thinking a Lean Cuisine Southwestern Panini).

THEN, tomorrow night I'm possibly going to take the R5 train into center city and then the R6 train to East Falls, where I may possibly be seeing a band called Pawnshop Roses with Rob and possibly some other people. I have no idea what is actually going on here, except that I was invited and I said I may go.  Waiting on the details to see if it's actually going to be a possibility. I kinda hope it is. I like going out on these Thursday night outings. I have nothing going on on Friday, so why not?

Friday Night

Friday was fun. Hung out with Rachel at her place for a while and introduced her to the wonderful world of TAI.  We went to dinner at a vietnamese restaurant on 2nd and South and joked about how we looked like a lesbian couple on a date because of the candlelit tables and everything. The food was delicious though.

Met up with Rob at the Khyber, and Rachel and Rob seemed to get along well.  The MLMs (it stands for Music Learning Module, which I asked Chris about later, but Rob joked that it was for Major League Music, and the band seemed to like that) were awesome as usual. We hung out after the show for a while and Ilana, Rachel's friend met up with us there.

Later, we headed across the street to the Plough and the Stars to dance, and then headed back to Rachel's to sleep.

I had to get up at 6:30 to go to work, so that definitely wasn't fun.  

Last night I went to my grandma's and had Chinese (it was a very Asian weekend apparently, because they had Chinese food at work for lunch on Saturday) for dinner.  My Aunt was there with Ben, and I love that little guy so much. He got a new toy. Something to do with Matchbox cars and a crocodile.  Croc Expedition Game or something... i don't know... I'm not really up on the kiddie toys.  

But he made up a song for me to the tune of Take Me Out to the Ball Game. It went like this:

Take me out the the Croc Game,

Take me out Ararara (that's what he thinks my name is)

Buy me some crocs and applejacks

And then take me to the zoooooo!!!!

Lol, well it was Take Me Out to the Ball Game until the last line. hahaha, I love kids so much. What a cutie pie.

I have to go write up my answer to 35 interview questions now. Fun fun...