| No Witty Titles Here Folks! |
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August 18, 2005 |
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I’ve been a bit delinquent in my posts haven’t I? The funny thing is that I’ve been online practically everyday for at least an hour or two since my last post yet I couldn’t motivate myself enough to post in my blog. But I was able to visit the anime fan listings and apply for two fan listings, go figure. It irks me something terrible when people start trading around fan listings like they’re a bunch of trading cards, or worse yet they just abandon them! Seriously if you don’t care that much for the topic why bother signing up to run the fan listing? Why not leave it for someone else who will actually dedicate the time and effort that it deserves? Two fan listings I joined just went belly up so I decided to go ahead and apply for them. You’re supposed to wait until you get approval before you start building the site…but I doubt anyone actually does that anyway. I was up all day yesterday popping DVDs into the computer and taking screen caps of the characters to make image galleries and to use in the layouts. One of said fan listings is almost complete, I’ve created the index page and I’m satisfied, for now, with how it looks so I’ll be coding the other pages later today, after I get some sleep. A friend and regular customer where I work at (Pic Quick) and his wife got to go to San Francisco, California a couple of weeks ago for a short vacation and they took their digicam and got some shots of these beautiful redwoods there and of Alcatraz. I’ve always wanted to go to the rock which is why Ryan offered to take some shots for me. They started having problems with the digicam at the end of their trip so they only had a few of Alcatraz, but that’s all right. I’m absolutely in  with the redwood forest [1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ] they went to. Looking at those giant trees really puts things into perspective for you and where you stand in the grand scheme of things, I think.
School starts next week so here’s a funny little fact: since I started school back in Elementary it has always rained the week of or the week before my first day of school. Odd bit of trivia that I noticed a few years back , and now every year I eagerly anticipate the rain, and without fail it started raining again despite the weatherman’s predictions. Last night it poured, and like an idiot I was out driving in it.  But it was for a good cause I tell you! I went to *drum roll please* Wal-Mart *gasp* for some stuff, mostly for cat food and cat products. I got me some muchies that I can keep stock piled in the car to snack on on those really long and tiresome days, but I mostly got stuff for the kitties. I ended up spending $30+ last night, I’m such a shop-a-holic.
Thank you: Julie, Jess, Laura, & Miranda  @ 1:07 pm
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| Oppurtunities: Lost & Gained |
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August 13, 2005 |
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I got six hours of sleep yet I still feel lethargic, I suppose this is a side effect of pulling a double shift (mostly cleaning) and staying up nearly twenty-four hours.  I’m not complaining though, I was miffed about my cut and screwed up hours, so I have been milking the clock lately. I’ve always arrived to work a little early, usually about fifteen or ten minutes, lately though I’ve been making sure to clock in at least fifteen minutes early. My co-workers are of the mind that if they are scheduled to work at a certain time they won’t show up until that time, usually after though, and so I usually get another fiteen or twenty minutes of time there. A few weeks ago a memo came out stating that each shift must complete their shift duties before leaving, and if need be a person may stay later to complete these duties. So on the days where I’ve come in for cleaning I stayed well after my time to leave, and on days where I have the early departing time of 5am I make sure that there is just so much more stocking and straightening to be done in the cooler still. 
Well yesterday Rachel’s husband called in while I was on shift for the cleaning and stocking shift of 4 to 10pm asking for mine and Amanda’s numbers since we’re the other graveyard workers, and Oscar was already scheduled to work that night. Apparently Rachel was sick in a bad way but still going to come in and so he was taking the liberty of trying to find someone to cover for her. Well Cher answered and told him that Amanda was out of town and of course I was already on shift. When I found out I went ahead and called back and got a hold of Rachel who was trying to get ready for work. Upon hearing how narly she sounded I made a snap decision to cover the shift for her. I had been up since about 8am that morning so I knew that I couldn’t stay till seven o’clock in the morning so I asked Oscar to stay to seven for me and let me go home at five, miraculously Oscar the miserly agreed! 
So yeah, thirteen hours in one day. I got an extra seven hours this week, plus the few hours I already milked and my already scheduled 31hrs; hopefully I got a little bit of over time. In other news I saved $65 on my car insurance yesterday, and I didn’t switch to Geico. State Farm has this discount that they give to students who make a 3.0 GPA or above, well last semester I made a 3.5 so I took my report card up to the office there and got the discount applied. It brought my insurance down to $642 every six months, not bad really. It’s good because that’s just a little less money I have to come up with next month. Right now all the extra money I’m making is being saved so that I can buy books and pay my car insurance. I wouldn’t be hurting so bad if I didn’t have to worry about a car payment of $183 on top of that as well. I’m glad school starts soon; I might not be getting any disbursement back from Financial aid but at least I still have my work study which pays me about $240 every two weeks, plus the $80 or so a week I’ll make from Pic Quick and then whatever hours I can get from working security for Special Events. My insurance will be due around the 12th of September and schools starts the 22nd of August so there’s about two weeks worth of pay from NMSU, plus whatever I can get from Special Events. That in combination with what I already have in my savings should be enough - I hope. If I use Pic Quick’s checks to cover gas and bills and save up whatever is left over I’ll have it in the bag. Ah, sorry to be writing about this;  I know you all don’t want to read/hear about my financial troubles. I’m just feeling stressed out over the money issue and needed to vent. I never realized just how much I depended on my disbursement, just goes to show you, you never really appreciate something until it’s gone. But hey, at least financial aid paid for the majority of my tuition and I only owe $9 dollars on the account.
For those that are interested here’s what my schedule is going to look like for the semester to come: Sunday 4pm : wake up, eat, get ready for work 10pm - till 5am : Graveyard shift @ Pic Quick Monday 7am : sleep 4pm : Wake up, eat and study 9pm - till 11pm : Anime Night @ NMSU (assistant director) (every third Monday night this will be substituted for working at the Athletics Department) Tuesday 10:20 - 11:35 : Astronomy 110 11:45 - 1pm : Philosophy 101 1:10 - 2:25 : CJ 300 3:00 : Free time to study, eat, sleep whatever. Wednesday All Day to Study/Whatever 6pm - 8:30pm : CJ 424 Thursday 10:20 - 11:35 : Astronomy 110 11:45 - 1pm : Philosophy 101 1:10 - 2:25 : CJ 300 3:30 - 5:30 : Astronomy lab 6pm - 8pm : dinner and break 8:15 - 2am : Athletics Office Friday 4pm : wake up, eat, study, get ready for work 10pm - 7am : Graveyard @ Pic Quick Saturday 7:20am : off shift from Pic Quick, cash pay check and head to campus 8:30 - 11:25am : CJ 321 11:30am : Go home and sleep! 4pm - wake up, get ready for work 6:15pm : Pan Am Special Events (football game) 10:30pm - 3:am : Work @ Athletics (after game uniform repairs & laundry) It's going to be a little rough, especially my Saturdays but I think I'll be able to manage. Wish me luck! Yesterday I managed to type up the long anticipated chapter four of "The Prodigal Child" and upload it to fanfiction.net. I'll be adding it to Nanashi here in a little bit. I was re-reading over the past chapters and I'm not too pleased with my past writing style, ie. tossing in Japanese dialogue here and there so I'll be re-writing bits of the past chapters over the next few weeks as well as fixing some grammatical errors as well. That should be fun. Hopefully TPC won't be going on anymore two year Haiatus again; I don't think I or it's fans could handle that!
Thank you: Laura, Drea, Jess, Tori, Miranda, Jeanie, Hannah, & Julie @ 4:03 pm
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| Oi Vey |
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August 9, 2005 |
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Well I’ve got a “Can You Believe This?” Story to tell you all today! At the beginning of my shift last night there were two teens and a little boy that came into the store. Nikol told me to watch them because the boys had been stealing. So I watched them, like a hawk,, the two teens, a chbyy little Hispanic and a African male (who didn’t really look like a teen but was) stayed at the magazines while the little boy walked around. I saw him slide something into his pockets, but I couldn’t tell what it was. Since he way staying by the Coca-cola and Pepsi fridges and end-caps I assumed he had grabbed a couple of 20oz cokes. Well he grabbed two 20oz bottles all right, but they weren’t coke. The Coca-cola is right next to our “imported” beer and the boy had stolen two 20oz bottles of Corona from a six pack and slid one into each pocket. Now get this, the boy is only ten years old. My co-workers got upset with me because I called the police on the little boy and didn’t just let him leave and do a report on him. Both of them are mothers so you would think that they would understand why I called the cops and made him and his friends wait. Both Nikol and Mayela kept trying to calm the kids and tell them things like: “you’re a minor, nothing is going to happen”; which I thought was total B.S. So I started scaring the kids and exaggerating the possibilities of what could happen. I told the kids that since he was a minor he wouldn’t be arrested but a report would be made and he would at least have to go before a judge and get at least six months of probation if he was lucky. If he was lucky he might get to go through teen court, which was unlikely, and that he might even do some time in Juvie. Not to mention I told him that he was banned for life from that and all Pic Quick stores. When the mom arrived, because I was nice and let the kids call their mommy instead of letting the officers take the kids home themselves or down to a holding cell for the parents to pick up, Nikol automatically recognized her as a regular and started telling her all the things I told her sons and how mean I was. Do you know what that mother did? She turned around looked me straight in the eye and said: “Good, because she’s right.” and then told me “thank you” before letting into her kids something fierce. The kid tried to give the mom and the officer that arrived a cock and bull story of stealing the beer to sell it for school supplies. Uh duh, like that is going to fly! Why not steal the school supplies itself kid. So yeah, them alcoholics and idiots out there doing beer runs are getting even younger now folks. Other than that I had a really long and really slow night which was made even worse by the fact that the newspaper delivery dudes were two hours late and the Krispy Kremes guys still hadn’t shown up by seven 0’clock (making them four hours late) so I had to deal with a lot of pissed off people wanting donuts and newspapers with their coffee. Life’s a bitch, but at least I had some of my funny and cool regulars to keep me going. [EDIT]Oh wow, my last entry was supposed to be short but ended up being about the typical length, but this one came out super shrot![/EDIT] Thank you: Tori, jeanie, Jess, & Casie @ 8:44 am
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| Dead Tired |
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August 6, 2005 |
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Okay folks this is going to be the shortest entry yet, no seriously it is. Isis got two teeth in the top back of her mouth on the left side extracted due to far too much root exposure. Funny, for a kitty who just had teeth pulled she sure is happy. I guess I’ll just have to take that as a good sign for now. She’s taking a lot of pain killers and antibiotics though so maybe she’s still just high as a kite? Speaking of pets I got a chance to get a bunch of pictures of mine uploaded to the site. I’ve got images of my dog Shizuku up as well as some of Denali as well. To be frank, the pets page got a pretty decent update as well as their gallery. Actually I’m thinking of just deleting their gallery and adding thumbnails to their other pictures below their little mini bios; seems tidier that way somehow. I mentioned pictures didn’t I? Well at last folks, some new shots of me and my new hairdo, be prepared to cringe in terror. Viewers wearing glasses are strongly advised to remove them before viewing images as the high intensity of hideousness may cause some glass objects to shatter. Viewer discretion is advised. (1 2 3 4) For now you can only see the images in my weblog, I’ll add them to my album’s page later when I wake up. Why not now you ask, well to be frank I’ve been up twenty-four hours straight and I’m just cutting corners left and right here ladies and gents. Are there any gents reading my weblog? I seriously don’t know if there are! Ah okay the reason I’m up and all is because I’m supposed to work Graveyard shift Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday nights. Well my sadistic manager got this notion into her head to start taking her better cleaners off of night shift and sticking us during the day to come in at odd hours to clean the store while two others are on register. Granted I had three days off meaning two days to adjust to day shift hours so that I could come into work Friday evening at 5pm till 10pm but then Saturday night I work graveyard. Now if I go to bed like I should, considering I was up since about 3am this morning (can’t quite get the hang of sleeping during the night) I should have been able to go to bed around 1am, but I can’t, because if I did then I would wake up at around 7am and then I’d have been up all day and all night Saturday night as well. So in order to switch myself to graveyard hours I have to stay up till at least 6 or 7am this morning. 
I’m currently here in the computer lab on campus, as I was planning on going straight to the laundry mat when it opened to do my laundry but my eyes are sliding shut and driving up here after heading home and dropping off some stuff and grabbing a bite to eat was murder. I’m seriously lucky an officer didn’t see me and pull me over. He’d have tried to given me a sobriety test and by sheer tiredness I’d have failed! Ah and to make matters worse I get to repeat this wonderful experience again next week, this time 4pm till 10pm. At least I did my job and kept the store nice and dandy. Rachel and Oscar definitely didn’t have to worry about day shift slacking off, not when I was doing all the work. Seriously, the two girls just stayed behind the counter and chitty-chatted while I did everything. For example, Nikol, who is about 4-5 weeks pregnant, went to the rest room complied it was “a little smelly” and came back out. I go in ten minutes later and lo and behold a big disgusting pile of crap next to the toilet.  Why couldn’t she actually say something about it? I mean both Lorena and I thought she meant that after using the restroom it was now a little smelly. WTF? Surely someone who is pregnant would have a sensitive stomach and not be able to handle the smell long enough to do their business and would instead tell someone immediately or at least clean up some of it, yes? Good Goddess, the people I work with.
Who likes my “short” entry? Well not to be mean or anything ya'all but I'll return all emails and comments after I get some sleep. :) Thank you: Tori, Casie, Miranda, & Hannah @ 5:14 am
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| A Little Good w/ the Bad |
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August 3, 2005 |
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[EDIT]I thought I had mentioned this before, but in case I hadn't Isis is my nine year old siamese tabby cat ^_^ My Apologies for any confusion this may have caused[/EDIT] Here is a little bit of Zodiac lore. As we all know the twelve animals in the Chinese Zodiac are the Rat, Ox, Dragon, Horse, Cow, Pig, Tiger, Sheep, Rooster, Monkey, Dog, and Snake. And even though the Ox is sometimes called the Bull and the Pig sometimes called a Hog we all know that no where in there is the Cat mentioned. How did the Zodiac come to be anyway? According to legend the great Kami-sama (see God or Goddess) invited all the great animals of the land to his great palace in the sky to celebrate the new year. The Cat lived in the farthest part of the land and so the Great Kami-sama asked the Rat to deliver the Cat’s invitation, and to stress the importunacy of punctuality. The Rat decided to play a prank on the Cat and instead of telling him that the banquet was to be held that evening he told the Cat it was the following evening instead. That night all the great animals journeyed to the palace in the sky single file, the rat who was by far the smallest of the animals asked the dependable and reliable Ox to give him a ride. When the party of animals reached the gate the Rat jumped off the Ox’s back and to the front of the line which is why the Rat is the first animal of the Zodiac. That night as the animals regaled the Cat stayed at home content and dreaming of a feast he would never be asked to join in again, for Kami-sama was miffed and insulted by the Cat’s refusal and so He left the Cat out of the Zodiac in order to punish the Cat’s “arrogance”. Even though I am born in the year of the Rat and can identify with many of the personality traits of those born year of the rat I am truly a cat person and I find myself able to identify better with cats. They are wonderful and beautiful creatures that are so often misunderstood. They love humans and the humans they own, but they also need their solitude and so people assume that they are selfish creatures that don’t like anyone. A completely inaccurate accusation, just as the one that Kami-sama made all those years ago. Seeing as how I identify with the Cat better than the Rat most of the time I tend not to trust the words that come out of most people’s mouths unless I can check up on it from another source, especially the words out of people’s mouths who have shown a dislike for my person. One of my co-workers Angelica called me just a little while ago to inform me that today’s mandatory staff meeting had been cancelled. As some may remember this is the same co-worker who would go out of her way to be snotty with me and when she could get away with it she would be as insulting as she could be. Yes she is the one I got into the row with when she was supposed to be on register and was instead fifteen minutes late, clocked in and talking on her cell phone in the back instead of working. Well here I was getting ready to head out to this meeting that was bound to be about as fun as a rampaging hippo with a toothache when my cell phone starts ringing. I hurry to the phone expecting it to be my mom, as she was dropping Isis off at the vet’s for me, and instead I see this unknown phone number. I’m tempted to just let my voice mail pick it up but instead I find myself answering it and lo and behold it is Angelica. Now I have my employer’s number programmed into my phone book so when anyone from work calls me it reads: “Pic Quick Calling”. This number was not in my phone book making it either her phone number, a payphone, or her home phone number. Now considering that all of a sudden she’s been acting, well, nice and friendly with me all of a sudden, a complete 180 turn around here I am immediately suspicious and the first analogy that pops into my mind is that of the 13th member of the Zodiac, the Cat. (And now you know why the number 13 is supposedly unlucky.) I immediately called the store and talked to my manager Sonia, she confirmed that yes the meeting had been cancelled and that no there was no new time set yet. Then she asked the oddest question yet, how did you know? Apparently there had been a rush of customers and she hadn’t had a chance yet to call me and tell me the meeting had been canceled. So now I am in a bit of a quandary, did Angelica do this because she knows I live far away and it would be a total waste of a drive for me for nothing? Did she do this because she was just trying to help Sonia out by finishing up the rest of the calls, and if so then why wasn’t she out on register instead? Or was Angelica really trying to play a spiteful joke on me that by sheer dumb luck just happened to backfire? Is she trying to be nice and repair the damage done in our working relationship or is she just attempting to lure me into a false sense of security, I have no earthly idea. It could all of course boil down to the fact that I am a totally paranoid freak. So there’s the good of this entry (sort of) now here’s the bad. Not two minutes after I hang up the phone with Angelica my mom rings me with the news. She dropped off Isis and after explaining the return of certain symptoms an assistant does a quick examination of Isis and notices that the same tooth in the back that had the infection is once again being exposed too much, meaning the gums are receding around it. However she is not the expert and so she suggests putting Isis on antibiotics to see if that has any effect for a few hours and doctor Callista, who is in surgery, can look at her in a few hours. The assistant of course asked if the need for extraction should arise if my Mom gave permission for it to be done, and knowing my decision on the matter she gave consent. So now I’m here sitting at home waiting for the vet’s office to call me with the verdict. If they have to do the extraction they’ll have to put Isis under and any time that happens I worry about her. She is getting old now, 9yrs old in fact going on 10 which makes her about sixty-three or so in human years. They’ll be monitoring her with an EKG (her heart beat) so if something goes wrong they’ll be able to tell right away, but I still worry. I still remember the first time she experienced anesthesia, she was barely old enough to get spaded and when the surgery was over and I got to take her home she was so listless. Barely walked, looked like she was drunk or dead, you really couldn’t tell which. Hours after the anesthesia had worn off of Misty Isis was still out of it; she scared me so bad. Granted last time she had anesthesia for her minor surgery she didn’t seem so bad off, just happy to be out of pain but I still can’t get that image out of my mind. The good news of the morning, no meeting today; the bad news is of course that Isis is more than likely going to have to have some teeth extracted after all. I’ll be heading in to town in a little bit to drop off some film at Walgreens to be developed and then I head on over to Nay’s to get the pictures scanned so hopefully I can get the newer pictures of me up for you all to see. Yes I’m still posting pictures the old school way. I must get a digital camera, there is so much I want to show everyone but time and money is limited and having a digi camera again would make things so much easier. Back to Ebay to scour for a good camera at an affordable price. Thank you: Laura @ 10:30 am
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| No Repeat |
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August 3, 2005 |
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Today I did something rather stupid. I know that alcoholism runs high in my father’s family and that I more than likely inherited some of the high tolerance for it, but I kind of never really believed it. I remember one day during JROTC class back in high school I snuck a bottle of Jack Daniels into school and we were drinking. Anita and I polished off the bottle practically by ourselves and I was only slightly tipsy, where as everyone else was well, drunk. Today though I decided to actually put it to the test. Over the span of three hours I had 3 shots of Pucker’s Peach Schnapps, 1 shot Smirnoff Strawberry Vodka, 1 glass (about 8 ounces) of MD 20/20 Grape Wine, 2 glasses (about 8 ounces each) of TGIF’s Mudslide, 1 shot Parrot Bay (coconut), 1 shot Paul Masson’s Grande Amber Brandy, 1 shot Vejo Verghel Brandy, 1 bottle (12 ounces) of Bacardi Silver Black Cherry malt cooler, and 1 shot of Crown Royal. Had one of my friends not been there to witness it no one would have believed I had consumed that much liquor. By the end of it I looked like I had just started drinking. Apparently I came off as an alcoholic, I was downing the drinks but there was no outward appearance of it, not even the blood shot eyes. Frankly I scared R. and he is extremely relieved that I don’t drink that much normally, or very often in fact. Frankly I’m still kind of tripping out on the experiment. I mean yeah I’ve always been told that I would have to be careful and watch my drinking but to actually see proof of it was downright scary. Half the time when I’m with friends I end up being the designated driver because I don’t drink beer, I can’t stand the taste, and by default most of the places that serve affordable beer (excluding clubs because we are not clubbers) around here don’t have that a good selection of mixed drinks and hard liquor so I might drink a basic margarita, pina colada, or a mudslide. Those are drinks I don’t normally want too many of because I’ll get tired of them real fast so I end up getting one or none and drinking Dr. Pepper the rest of the night. After today-err yesterday though I am definitely going to be sticking to my minimal alcohol intake standards. My father was a bastard and even though I never knew him personally, the scars he left behind on people I care about, and the hell he put them through is enough to make me want to be nothing like him. So my preferred drug of choice remains sugar in any form, though preferably in the form of Dr. Pepper and 7up, honey stix, and candy. 
I’ll have to be going back to bed in a little bit in a blatant attempt to get myself off the night shift sleeping hours. I have to go in to work on my day off later today for a mandatory meeting at the store at 10am. Damn it, I’m usually eating dinner or getting ready to go bed around that time.  I have no idea how long the meeting is going to be, so yeah sucks to be me. And instead of going to work at 10pm on Friday night I’ve been switched to the relief (see: cleaning crew) shift of 5pm to 10pm. Hence why I have to get used to day shift hours, I don’t typically wake up till five o’clock or later! Then on Saturday I go in on my regular graveyard hours again so I’m going to be a little snaky for a bit I bet.
I’m definitely a little miffed with the schedule but on the grand scheme of things it is by far the lesser of many evils. My baby Isis is going in to see Dr. Callista today. Some months back Isis had an infection in her mouth from tooth decay and even though she had a minor surgery no teeth had to be pulled. When she had this infection she suffered from some really foul breath and could hardly chew right. For two weeks she has been having trouble chewing again and now on top of that she has the bad breath again. I tried to get Isis in to see Callista back in the middle of July but she was pretty much filled up and so her appointment was made for the 3rd of August. I refuse to change Isis’ appointment because of this meeting and make her wait longer so I asked my mom to drop Isis off for me at the vet’s so that they could do a quick check up and clean her teeth. If it turns out that something else is required (hopefully not) then the vet’s office is supposed to call me and frankly I don’t care if my cell goes off during the meeting, Isis is like my child, she’s my baby and her health comes first. I won’t lie though, I hope my phone doesn’t ring while I’m at the meeting. I don’t want to hear something like: the infection is back and we have to pull her back teeth. No news is definitely good news, even is an interruption in that meeting would be like a slice of heaven. Okay I lied, first I’m going to Ebay to look for a decent digicam at a reasonable price then I’m going to bed. I’ve found a bunch of good ones, but they all so far ship from Hong-Kong and what not. I don’t want to wait two to three weeks for the camera! 
Thank you: Natalie, jess, Julie, Shasta, Moonia, Hannah, Drea & Miranda @ 3:12 am
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emoticons by: Cattery-Index.com