Day 148 - May 28, 2012 - Herbie in the parade!

I covered the Memorial Day parade for the Beacon. I like my assignments where I get to cover hokey festivities better then my school board meeting assignments, but I do enjoy all the writing assignments I get, and I'm glad to actually be paid for some of my work, and to have the luck to be working as a journalist without a degree only a few years after I decided I wanted to write (hopefully one day I'll actually get to do it for a living),  I'm grateful though, some writers don't get work published anywhere during their whole career so at least I have some articles actually being published. The parade featured a bunch of classic cars at one point including this Herbie replica.

Day 147 - May 27, 2012 - It's Bob

My cousin's children are pretty hysterical and adorable. John and Rosie are actually about 5 years apart, but John is short and Rosie is tall for her age so people think they are twins. Right now they tend to get along pretty well and they play together. Apparently during the night when they were supposed to be sleeping they had a little party and played with their kinnect toys to create Bob.

Day 146 - May 26, 2012 - Red Eye!

I went to Delaware with Shawn on an overnight trip to visit my cousins who moved there a few years ago. They live on seven acres of land. They have a chicken coop which used to have 10 birds, now because of birds escaping or being eaten by predators Red Eye is the only surviving rooster. He hangs around their house and craps on the deck which infuriates my cousin's husband. Red Eye became my favorite subject to photograph in Delaware, he liked me until I told him I was obsessed with him then he ran off.

Day 145 - May 25, 2012 - 6 PM come as fast as possible, please!

Worked a 10 to 6 shift before the Memorial Day weekend officially kicked off for me. The library was still open on Saturday but it wasn't my Saturday to work, so I lucked out this time and got in a 3 day weekend.

Day 144 - May 24, 2012 - The gloomiest May

So I thought at some point in April that New York would get off easy this year and bypass what has happened in past years which I refer to as the gloomy month. Surprisingly there were hardly any rain showers in April, we had sunny days, some were warm, I thought we were going to smooth sail into Summer weather. I was wrong. I'm barely tanned, I still have sweaters on when I'm outside, NY should now be renamed Seattle because we've seen the sun maybe 5 times this whole month. I'm now an expert on driving in the rain and my umbrella has become my best friend. My only solace is that I'm at least driving and I don't have to trek around in this shit in between bus and train stops. I have to stop bitching after I'm done with this entry. I believe very strongly that when you keep bitching you invite negative energy into your life and bad things seem to happen more and more, but at the same time sometimes a bitch fest is needed so I'm going on one more daily blog rant before I calm myself down a little. So this morning apparently wasn't my morning either. I woke up early as I normally do on a Thursday only to find out that little Vincent wasn't going to be around this morning. I wanted to go back to bed because I was a little tired, but I was also really sad, maybe it's stress, maybe it's fatigue but I was very emotional this morning and as soon as Shawn left to go to work I started crying, the worst part is I can't really put a finger on what's wrong, there is nothing that is seriously wrong I was just sad. I got myself together and started to write in my digital journal because writing helps me cope when I'm sad or troubled, my computer froze and I lost the entry for this morning. I talked to Shawn's mom a little bit before going to work, she woke up and I always end up talking to her about what's bothering me. I headed to work (I thought it was early enough) but there ended up being a considerable amount of traffic for late Thursday morning, early afternoon, when I stopped at Starbucks for coffee it also started to rain, so I ended up late to work. When I got to work there was no parking because the library employees have maybe 15 designated spots to park in and sometimes the patrons that are in the know will use our spots in the school district parking lot as well instead of parking in the main lot, so I ended up having to park on one of the side streets and walk to work. There are visitor parking spaces in the school district lot but I've heard mixed things about being allowed to park in a visitor space and I'm not taking my chances. I'd rather walk a little further and have peace of mind knowing my car won't get towed. Driving is great but it's made me realize how truly overpopulated Long Island really is right now. More and more homes are being chopped up into apartments, children are still sharing homes with their parents because they can't get out on their own because of this economy, there are many more cars on the road then ever before because mostly anyone who is driving age, has a license and can afford it has a car. At times when I used to bike ride and notice less traffic on the road I now notice more traffic on the road. There really shouldn't be that much traffic when I am coming to work on a Thursday morning for my night shift but there is, and there are still many people on the road at 9 PM when I leave work.

Day 143 - May 23, 2012 - Not my best night

Wasn't a good night at all after work. I even had to settle for using a photo I took on my cell phone (I prefer to actually shoot with my camera for these daily photos, but in a pinch if I didn't get a moment to shoot with my camera I will use a cell phone camera photo). I left work and had to get to Avis Lube in Farmingdale for an oil change. Shawn normally goes there so I didn't want to go to a different place just because it was close to work. I needed an oil change, I still had around 250 to 300 miles to go before it was actually due but we are planning to go to Delaware this weekend and if we take my car the oil change needed to be done or I would go over the miles I had left before it was due. So naturally I got myself a little lost going to Avis Lube (even though I've driven through Farmingdale before and am a little bit familiar with the roads) because almost every new place I end up driving too I get lost going to because I miss a turn or something. I had to make some u-turns on route 109 to get back to Avis Lube because it turned out to be on the corner of Main and Fulton and I ended up missing it. I was really scared to make the U-turns I really don't like to make U-turns on busy roads. I got to Avis right on time before they closed. Then I followed Shawn to a diner for dinner, then he explained how I could get back to the Middle School for the board meeting I had to cover. His directions were good after the poor guy gave them to me like 5 times I was able to remember what to look for, only problem, when I got to the middle school there was no board meeting. I ended up finding out there was a board recognition program going on at the high school. So I drove to the high school after getting two sets of directions and using the GPS on my phone, only to get there as the recognition program was over and my story was missed. Then I went to go home to meet Shawn because I was too scared to drive down main street, turn on Carmens Road and end up on Sunrise Highway to get to the movie theatre in Merrick where he was going to see Dark Shadows with Dave. I am such a pansie about Sunrise Highway I haven't driven much on it and for some reason I'm really afraid every time I might have to go on it. It took me longer to get home from Farmingdale then it took Shawn to drive back and meet me from Baldwin. I ended up going out to the wrong parking lot when I left the high school, then I ended up going the wrong way on Main Street and had to turn around to go back home. I was really upset during the movie so I only half paid attention to it when we got back to Merrick to go to the movie.

Day 142 - May 22, 2012 - Fifty shades of madness

In keeping up with the masses, I've succumbed to reading the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy. This was the last book in the trilogy, I've been toting it back and forth to and from work desperate to finish it.