Steps in life

Hello, today I will be talking about how important and quickly days go by. June 8th is my birthday and I will be 19 years old this year, almost 20! This is my first year living in the dorm, this coming semester I will be moving into an apartment here in Long Beach due to the huge price of living in a dorm. I will be living with two other friends and rent a three bedroom apartment and I expect to pay less than what I pay for my dorm. Now that I am actually going to start living in an apartment, it has made me realize the big step I am taking. I am no longer going to be living with my mother, brother, and sisters over the winter, spring, or summer break because I will have my apartment. I’m sure I will go visit them often, but I know that things from now on are going to be extremely different. This is a big step in life that I know everyone has to take, but never thought that once in this situation it would make me feel like this. I am very worried, scared, at the same time excited and anxious to begin. I hope everything goes well and I am able to pay all my bills. I am scared to think that after I get my own apartment, I will no longer ever live with my mother again. I feel that I am still very young and taking a big step, which makes me feel proud of myself but scared that I may not be ready for this big step in life yet. I hope for the best and hope to concentrate solely in school so I can graduate fast, but with all these budget cuts, who knows.

Lesson Learned

Today I’m going to talk about something surprising that happened to me today. I work in the Office of the Mayor is Los Angeles City Hall, and at work one of my supervisors told me to help her return art pieces back to the artist. The art pieces were either valuable sculptures, or amazing paintings. My supervisor Carmen Duran is retiring tomorrow is her last day at work, and I am going to miss her so much, she has been the best boss I’ve ever had. She is in charge of the Mayor’s Art exhibit locate here in City Hall. Since she is leaving, she must return the art pieces back to their owners, these artist are very well recognize and I’m pretty sure most of you have herd of at least one of the artists we were contacting. We had artwork from artists such as Patssi Valdez, Sylvia Moss, Stephen Coleman, Pamela Davis, Pablo Cristi, Frederick Booker, Bill Rangel, and many more. I was in charge of contacting a total of 53 artists and make an appointment as to when they are available to either come pick up their art piece or we would go drop I it off to them personally. Each art piece is worth between $600 to $4,000. We went to Bill (William) Rangel’s house to drop his 6 art pieces off, he is one of the artists who is extremely talented and owns art that is valued at $1,200 for each art pieces. I was expecting for him to have an extraordinary big house, but to my surprise his house is nothing bigger than mine. He lives in a single apartment, very clean house and also very simple. This is nothing of what I expected, this thought me that big things can come out of simple, ordinary people and to definitely not judge a book by its cover, here are some art pieces from Patssi Valdez and Bill Rangel. =]

Patssi Valdez   Bill Rangel

Insidious

Hi, today I went to the movie theater called Edwards, located in Long Beach. I watched insidious a word meaning dangerous. The movie was produced by those who made Paranormal Activity and Saw.  When I saw the previews before watching this movie, it didn’t look so attractive, much less scary, yet I chose to watch it anyways with my friend. This movie was extremely scary, nothing like I’ve ever seen before, it involves a little boy, being the main character. I hate movies in which involve children because it make me feel as if it real. I love children, and with the simple idea that something can happen to them makes me feel extremely sad and scared. This movie takes place in two different houses. I demon follows a boy and wants to take control of the boy’s body, his father, who has had the previous experience must go into the world of the dead and rescue his son who is kept hostage by the demon, trying to escape, there is a possibility that another dead soul might take control of the father’s body. Now I’m going to let you watch this movie and see how this movie ends, meanwhile, here is a little preview for you all to watch. Enjoy!

Dentist at Downtown Long Beach

Hello, today I went to a dentist I’ve never been to before and they treated me excellent. I went to the Dental Care Dentist in Downtown Long Beach. They showed me x-rays of my four wisdom teeth. They told me that they must be pulled out because they are growing crooked. They pulled out my right, top and bottom wisdom teeth, at the moment I my mouth was so numb that I didn’t even feel it, but as soon as the anesthesia was beginning to go away, I began having terrible pains. The pharmacist in CVS took an hour and a half to give me my medication. Looking back, the dentist explained to me what he was going to do, yet I still wanted to see how it looked in his point of view, this is why I looked up videos of how dentist pull out wisdom teeth and now have a better understanding. Before I left he explained that I need crowns on top of two of my teeth because they are beginning to crack. I was also curious about this, so I looked it up. So here are two videos, one is the extraction of wisdom teeth and the other is putting a crown on a tooth after a root canal. Enjoy! =]

Problems at Work with my supervisor

Today I’m going to talk about work and managers. I work in Los Angeles City Hall, in the office of special events. I have a boss who is really difficult to work with. When she is in a bad mood she doesn’t want anyone getting next to her nor asking her questions. Last week she told me “Mayra secure a lance closure on spring street between 5th and 6th street for the African American Heritage Event”, I asked her “do you want the lane closed in front of the Los Angeles Theatre Center where our venue is going to be or across the street?”, she said “I don’t know” so I said “I’m going to reserve it in front” she yelled saying “no close it across the street!”. I was really upset but still managed to respond in a calm voice saying “who should I contact” she said “I don’t know figure it out, look online I don’t care” and as I was leaving she said “try Rita”. I began asking Rita if she could help me and she said she didn’t know how handle this, so I researched it on my own with help of my co worker. I applied for the permit needed to secure this lane and the page did not let me submit the application, it said “you must apply for a permit 5 days prior to the event” and I was applying 2 day before the event. I informed my supervisor my situation and she was really mad and said “I’ll take care of it, I told you specifically what to do and who to contact!”

This situation last week was horrible, first because my supervisor did not tell me specifically who to contact, second because she told me 2 days prior to the event, not giving me enough time of notice. What can I do in these situations? Should I have responded back? If I would have I’m sure she would have fired me right there and then.

Procrastination

            Why do people procrastinate? I procrastinate because I feel lazy to do my work sometimes, other times I am just to tired, but most of the time it’s because I put insignificant things in front of things that are important. This past week I began to make  list of all the things I needed to take care of for that week, things that have to do with homework for school. I wrote down things for my history, English, Psychology, and Math class. Once I completed my list and saw all the things I needed to do I automatically got lazy. I started of with English class and began writing my essay. It took me two hours to complete two paragraphs! Why? Because my roommate turned on the TV and I got distracted. I could have gone to a study room or asked her to turn it off, but the show on TV was good that I felt that I could multitask. Turns out I could do homework with the TV on, but must stop writing and turn around to watch TV every 30 seconds.

            That day I after writing my agenda for the week and after two paragraphs I realized it was 10:30 p.m. already! I pulled out my psychology homework and began reviewing my notes. I usually type them up and print them out and then review it, but I felt so lazy that I didn’t want to type it out. I went to sleep at 11:30 p.m. The next day I realized that I didn’t COMPLETE at least one of those tasks I set myself to do. I really have to start drinking vitamins and avoid distractions if I want to complete my work.

Keeping up with classes

Hello everyone, today I’m going to talk about how difficult it is to have a job, go to school, and pass all your classes. I was taking French 100 which introductory to French, but the class was extremely difficult. I can’t believe the professor isn’t allowed to speak English in the class! How were we supposed to understand what he is saying if he isn’t able to tell us what it means in English? Keeping up with homework and class work was extremely difficult, he would ask the class questions, and the majority of the class would stay quiet without a response because nobody had a clue of what he was saying. He burly wrote anything on the board, and would not teach us how to write in French, his entire lecture would be on videos of people talking in French and he would review the chapters in the book so fast that also keeping up with that has hard. My friend stayed in that class and I dropped it, and I am extremely glad I did, she is stressing in the class and had a midterm coming up, good luck to her and all those taking that class, at least with this professor. Attached is a link to French tutoring on line for those that may need it. http://www.ielanguages.com/french.html