Liar, Liar

I decided to catch up on some summer reading, some educational, some not. So far one book talking about transitioning from college to the corporate world explains that everyone needs to create a corporate persona, not make real friends at work, and maintain this corporate persona even after hours with co-workers. Another book I've been reading is a memoir of a woman who used to be a stripper. In her book she explains that she created a separate persona to cope with stripping and lived as this person. Somehow this seems confusing and completely wrong. Why do we have to hide who we really are and basically live a lie all the time. Whether we do something like stripper (which especially after reading this book I hope no one I know ends up doing) or climb the corporate ladder it seems that we must create a persona different from who we really are and live as this person.

In both books, it explains how you should not become real friends with your co-workers. Well then I pose the question, who should you become friends with then? It is so aggravating to me that to succeed in life (not as a stripper, but in the corporate world), you have to lie and pretend to be something your not.

I guess I could be called out for lying. Someone heard me lie a few times and afterward would never believe anything I said. I admit I do lie, but normally it is to avoid punishment or to make my life easier (this sounds really bad, but it's human). I mainly lie to my parents because telling them the truth about everything would only hurt them and cause me a lot of grief. Example: I went out of town this past weekend and wanted to go to a party the night I got home. My parents would have asked to many questions about why I was not spending the night at home since I had been gone for a few days, so I lied and told them I wasn't getting home until the day after the party. I almost got trapped in my lie because I locked my keys in my car when I got back into town the day of the party. Instead of calling my parents to get them to bring a spare key, I decided to call a locksmith and pay for the man to open my car. An expensive lie, but it helped prevent problems in the future.

I guess that may be what the author of the corporate book was trying to get across. The idea that having a certain persona is only helpful and prevents problems in the corporate world. I just wish that we could be honest all the time without terrible repercussions, but that will never happen. We always have to watch what we say or we may offend people, have people think we are crazy, or we may end up without jobs and now that I'm nearing the end of college (I have 2 more years, but they will go by too fast) I am realizing the importance of making and saving money.

The Friendly Doctor

Yesterday while I was running I felt this dull pain throbbing in my left shin. I always have pain every time I run, I just get used to it and try my best to ignore it. This made me think about my sports medicine doctor. He hasn't had the pleasure of seeing me in awhile, even though I have called his office for my orthotic prescription. I don't mind going in to see my sports med doc, he's always upbeat and even though he misses things all the time, like the stress fracture I had in my left leg, he is fun to talk to. He is probably the only person who after all my leg problems is excited to hear about my next running challenge (if he knew I ran a half marathon he would be jumping up and down). He ran track in college and understands the thrill of running (which fewer and fewer people seem to recently). He didn't tell me to stop running after I sprained my ankle for the second time (although my mother suggested I take up swimming when I called my freshman year of college asking her if the paramedics had contacted her while I was getting an x-ray). He just referred me to physical therapy (I have been to the same physical therapy clinic for at least 3 or 4 different injuries but never seem to retain the same physical therapist). I think physical therapy is a waste of my time, I never do the appropriate exercises and refused to go in high school (to be fair in high school I refused to go to my school's sports med department. On various occasions they burned my leg, hurt me, and almost caused me to lose toes due to frostbite-I have Raynaud's syndrome (look it up) and can't handle cold very long). My ex-boyfriend would literally force me to go to sports med at school (once I think he physically carried me there-sometimes I can be the biggest pain in the butt).

But back to my sports med doctor, I think he honestly would have made a better coach than doctor (considering he missed my stress fracture). He would have been supportive and encouraged runners to achieve their best. Unlike my head track coach in high school who ridiculed me, thought I couldn't achieve anything, and even tried to make fun of my accomplishments ("You made states? What height did you have to jump 4'4"?"-he was referring to high jump and the height was 4'10"). If only everyone was like my sports med doc, encouraging. I think too many people try to put others down like my track coach for some reason. I don't see how that helps people achieve their full potential. I mean, my doc never told me he thought I was going to be an Olympian, but he was always excited to hear about the next running challenge I had set for myself.

Is it right or left?

I am going to be in so much trouble next year. I am directionally-impaired as my parents like to call it. It took me a long time to learn my left from my right and I still have problems with it sometimes. For my driving test when I was 16 I wore a ring on my right hand, so when the instructor told me to turn right I wouldn't end up turning left (believe me this has happened before, even in the driver's ed car). Last summer I went to DC for the first time and had to take the metro from Union Station to Springfield. Well somehow I got lost on the metro (yes the DC metro, the easy one with color-coded, easy to understand routes). I ended up in Vienna and had to back track while my friend and her sister could not believe how stupid I was.

It's not only cities that give me a hard time either. Once during cross country practice I was leading my friend through the woods and instead of going to the neighborhood we were supposed to meet the rest of our team at, I ended up taking her to an elementary school, pretty far away from our cars. She was not very happy and refused to listen to my directions after this, so she made us run back along the roadway. Our entire run ended up being 80 minutes long (the longest I had run at that point). Our coach had sent people from our team out to look for us. We were only supposed to have gone on a 40 minute run. After that no one believed I knew the trails at all, even though I made myself learn them thoroughly.

Yesterday was one of those wonderful days where things go completely wrong. I was supposed to drive me and my friend to the water park a few cities over. Everything was going fine and I was catching up with my friend until the directions I was following told me to take the left fork into a highway that happened to be closed. Not a big deal, it old me to follow a different route for a detour, except after the initial, follow this other highway signs, the detour signs ended and I was lost. Luckily my grandmother happens to live right off the highway we had to take, so I was not completely lost, but my grandmother was not home and I don't have a GPS in my car (you would think my parents would buy me one). We decided to have lunch and figure out what to do. I called my dad after lunch, he gave me new directions that seemed a bit strange (why was I taking 220 south and then following some other road and taking 220 north...how would that work). I followed the crazy directions and was doing well until the directions ended with "fork left"...except there was no fork, and there was nowhere to go left. I ended up back in the same place I started. At this point it was pretty late in the day and we were tired, so we gave up, went to my friend's pool, and had Mexican for dinner (where I had to make a complete ass of myself, typical).

Growing up too fast

I was a lot of trouble when I was younger and always gave my parents grief (kind of like what I currently do). I am too headstrong, want things my way, and can be so obstinate that I won't listen to anyone else (which has caused me to do things no one thought I was capable of, and has caused me a lot of pain, physical and emotional).

When I was 4 (according to my mother), I wanted to be 16. Who knows why the age 16 appealed to me so much. Sixteen was the magic number, the age where I would be grown up and love life. I always tried to act older than I was. I wanted to be older so I could control my own life and be taken seriously. I negotiated a weekly allowance with my dad when I was probably 7 or 8 because I wanted to start saving up for a car (if that seems weird, I was talking about what college I wanted to go to when I was 5).

When I did hit that magical age I had fantasized about, it wasn't that special. Me and my friend had a double birthday, which sort of became a tradition. We went bowling with friends and watched White Noise. My friend was sleeping over at my house and we got back late. My mom happened to be awake and handed me a car key. I started freaking out and me and my friend were jumping up and down yelling because I got a car!! My mom then motioned for me to open the card sitting on the steps it read on the front, "What would be better than getting a car on your birthday?" Inside it read, "Getting a Card, one whole extra letter". I was so confused, did I really get a car? My mom was laughing hysterically. Apparently this was a joke, there was no car. Wonderful 16th.

I did end up getting a car, a month later. I didn't get my license until 4 months after I turned 16. Ended up wrecking my car a month later and then being forced to grow up. Before, even though I always wanted to be older, I was Daddy's little girl. My dad understood me better than my mother and would normally take my side or help me out of scrapes, not to mention let me take advances on my now monthly allowance that I would go over every single month.

I still sometimes want to be older than I am. People don't take me seriously half the time because they still think I'm too young to understand. I think people with that mindset are completely wrong. There are some 40 year olds out there who comprehend less than people half their age. It all has to do with your experiences. I finally try to embrace my age. I don't want to relinquish the ability to make mistakes and do dumb things (which I constantly do) without having someone give me a weird look and tell me to act my age. That does happen sometimes, but I roll with it. I think regrets are dumb, don't regret something that happened, move on and learn from it. The only thing I think I regret in my life is wanting to grow up too fast and not enjoying being a kid.

As Good As it Gets

Yesterday at work, I was talking about how much it sucks that I turn 21 in Hong Kong. One of the male servers, who I think should try his luck at stand-up comedy, sarcastically went on about how that is terrible and how bad my life must be because I have to turn 21 in OMG Hong Kong. Yea, I love that guy so much.

I realized that even though I'm missing a year in the US, being abroad for a year will be amazing. Especially since I get to go to Copenhagen, Brussels, Berlin, England, and will hopefully get to visit Barcelona, France, Milan, Florence, Amsterdam, and a few other places. Then I fly Emirates to Dubai and then to Hong Kong where I get to go to Shanghai and Tokyo and will hopefully find the time to visit friends in Australia. Yea my world travels are looking pretty good right now, as long as I can break even this summer (after paying for my NYC trip, airline tickets to Copenhagen and Hong Kong), then I should be set. There's no reason to complain or be sad (when I moved out in May I cried so many times that it was hard to hide from my parents).

The countdown has started I have 2 months and 4 days until I leave the country for a long time. I leave RDU around 4:30ish, leave JFK around 7:30ish and leave the airport in Iceland around 7:30 in the morning (ugh...not a fun flight).

There are downsides to going abroad for 10 months:

1. I miss most of my friends for 10 months or more (but I am no longer worried that they will forget me, we'll just ahve so much to catch up on when I get back...I'm forseeing a huge night out when I return).

2. I won't be able to take my business core classes until I'm a senior. (Well most of them, I take two electives when I come back for my program, but the rest of my senior year will be core classes.)

3. It will be hard to find an internship for the summer (most companies want to see you in person, which will be impossible for me).

4. I have to network now with alumni so I will be in front of employers (and for people who ahve not tried to network, it is hard, very hard to get responses).

5. Housing for senior year will be harder to arrange.

But, it's more than worth it. The only thing that I really wish was that I was leaving sooner. I'm anxious to go and see the world right now!!

The Curse

I never heard of this before I started working at my current employers, but this past winter after a former co-workers horrific death I heard people start mentioning "the curse". Five former employees died in the past year, well six now as of Monday (even though the 6th was a current employee). Their deaths are not the usual, oh the person was old or was in bad health kind of deaths, but the unexpected, you never saw it coming kind.

One of my co-workers passed away this week and his death is being investigated. An artery was cut in his leg and he bled to death in his house. I thought everyone at work would seem distraught and upset, but when I came into work the following day nothing seemed different except there was a new guy in the kitchen. It bothers me a bit that no one seemed to care that someone died. It also bother me because I knew him. Our last conversation centered around my legs. He noticed they were muscular and asked if I played soccer. Then we talked about the half marathon I would be running that weekend.

The supposed curse at my work had claimed a victim in December as well. A former employee, I didn't know, hit a fire hydrant in his car and the car flipped vertical and hurdled into a grove of trees behind the fire hydrant killing the driver (the former employee) and causing the passenger to fly out the back window, injured, but alive.

Another victim of the curse, a guy I knew, another former employee who worked the first summer I started, hung himself. I knew he was troubled, did a lot of drugs, and kind of scared me. My second summer there he would come back late at night when I was the last server on and most people had left the restaurant and follow me around and try to touch me. It's crazy to me to believe that all these people are connected and that these terrible things happen.

"Body, if you get me through this I promise to never do this to you again..."

I am a very impulsive person, which gets me in trouble a lot. I don't think about the consequences of my actions most of the time and just do what I feel like doing at that moment. This past Spring I decided that I had nothing to work toward (a bad predicament to find myself in). I signed myself up for a half-marathon in Hickory because I thought it wouldn't be too bad (I'd run more than 13 miles at once before) and I had been telling myself I would do one for some time. My mom freaked out when I signed myself up telling me I would injure myself again and that Hickory was too far away and I should find something closer. Well I'm also very stubborn and won't listen to reason when I have my mind made up about something. I signed up and kind of forgot about it because it was a few months away.

After I finished exams and realized i hadn't run in over a week and had a half-marathon to run in a month, i hit the pavement. I ran almost everyday everywhere. I explored neighborhoods to potentially live in by running past. I also discovered a mental hospital in a place that was very surprising. The day of my half marathon crept up pretty fast and I felt as prepared as I was going to be.

What I know now, I was not ready for this thing (the whole experience). We checked into our hotel in Hickory, got food, and were going to look for the start of the race (somewhere in downtown) so we wouldn't be lost at 6 in the morning. After spending an hour driving around Hickory (I lost the map of Hickory they had given me) and being bitched out the entire time for losing the map and having my parents berate me about how I was going to get lost everywhere I went and that I would get raped in New York and kidnapped abroad, etc. etc., we managed to find the start and our way back to our hotel room. I forced myself and my parents to go to bed at 9pm, so I could wake up at 5 am and feel well rested. One slight problem: I don't go to bed ever at 9pm, I normally go to bed sometime after midnight. A bigger problem: The room next door was throwing a loud party and our side of the hotel faced a major road where everyone decided to rev their engines and drag race. Then the worst thing happened: my dad started snoring, loudly. Every time I got up to get ear plugs (they had provided them for us at this hotel), my dad stopped snoring. I was also paranoid that if I put the ear plugs in I would oversleep and not hear my alarm. (I didn't trust my parents to wake up.)

I got up at 5am, ate a quick breakfast, began downing fluid, and vaselined my feet to avoid blisters. I got to the race at 6:15, attached the timing chip to my shoe and walked around looking at all the people I would be racing against. I haven't raced since high school and a 5k or track race is very different from a half marathon. The people I saw where drinking coffee (a big no-no for any type of race) and listening to their iPOds. I refused to wear my mp3 player because I feel that music while your running helps you run faster and longer (it helps block out some of the pain your feeling by distracting you and it gives you a beat to keep up with). At the start I felt good, a bit nervous but not too bad. The race started fine, I was up with the second to top group of runners at the start and felt fine. It was into the first mile that I ended up beside a woman who sounded like she was about to pop out a baby. Her breathing sounded like this "hee-hee, haw-haw" and it was loud. At once I thought I heard her say "hello" and another time "water", but I was never sure. All I knew was I had to get the hell away from her because I could not run 13 miles listening to that. I lost her after the third mile, but endured her for 24 minutes. My downfall I'd have to say in this race is that I ran too fast at the start. My first mile was under 7 minutes, with many of the proceeding miles around 8 minutes. I made it to mile 6 and then mile 7 without too much difficulty. At mile 7 I started feeling bad. I got a throbbing pain up my right leg. It started in my foot and went all the way up to my butt. I kept telling myself to keep going that I was 3 miles from mile 10 and that was 3 miles to the end. (I know some motivation, hey body you only have 6 miles left-it sounds impossibly long). Around mile 8, some man decided to smartly read the writing on my shirt and the back of my shirt. Just the smug way he said it made me want to flick him off, but I resisted. I have this bad habit of being very mean to people who cheer for me in races. I've gotten better, I like it when they cheer in long distance races now, hurdle races, etc., but if I was still high jumping, I would go off on anyone who made a noise while I was attempting a height. I needed all my concentration for high jumping and the noise was too distracting (I would envision myself clearing the bar and jumping perfectly: perfect j-curve, left foot plant, jump straight up, lifting arms straight up, bending head, neck, back into a perfect arch, and then immediately kicking my legs up so they wouldn't hit the bar and ruin my jump-a lot to think about just that happens in a few seconds). Anyway this guy was not going to get to me, so I just shook my head and kept going. Another annoyance I encountered around this time was the realization that my butt was bouncing around and it felt like it was slowing me down. I have had a love-hate relationship with my butt. While competing in high school and at that moment I hated it. It slowed me down in cross country and it was terrible for high jump. I couldn't lift my hips high enough to get my butt high enough to clear the bar. If I had no butt I could have cleared 3-4 more inches easily. And now it was bouncing around and just being a pain. If I could have cut off my butt to shed some extra weight to make me more aerodynamic then I would have.

Mile 9 passed the start and finish area and took you past Lenoir-Rhyne college. By this point I was cold for some reason and my body was tingling. Probably not a good sign. I knew I had to stop running if I stopped sweating, but I didn't know what to do if I felt like this. I decided to keep going because at this point I didn't care what time or what place I finished I just wanted to finish without ever walking. After mile 11 things went uphill, literally. The last two miles of the course were uphill. I thought I was going to die, right there, but I was so close. "Body, if you get me through this I promise to never put you through this again, no more half marathons." This really had no effect on my running, but maybe it would help me finish strong. After mile 12 I kept myself going by thinking "You are less than a mile from finishing, come on you can do it." I ran up hill after hill, hoping that the finish would be around the corner. Eventually it was around the corner and I began to speed up. (I love finishing fast, I sprint in, no matter how tired I am). I beat 2 people from my sprint alone (one happened to be a little boy half my height who I didn't even see beside me). No matter, I finished, I had finished a half marathon!!

Even though it was tough and I was beaten by 158 other people. I finished 159 overall, 5th in my age group thought (20-24) and had a 73 yr old man beat me (he looked like all he ever did was run to be fair). And never again will I sign my body up for another half marathon...well at least that's what I told my body.

How to Make Money Fast

At work today me and my friend, who I never get to see because I think our boss purposely schedules us to work opposite shifts (so if I work lunch she works dinner), decided we need to make money fast. I need to make money to go abroad and then have enough to support myself during the summer after I return (because I cannot live at home again) and she needs money because she recently went abroad and doesn't have any. We began contemplating ideas and came up with a fee viable choices:

1. Sell our eggs (Besides the hormones and surgery, it would be easy to make a couple of thousand. The major downside the potential of having children with your DNA running around.)

2. Sell drugs (Completely illegal and not incredibly profitable actually. Plus the danger of a drug war.)

3. Crash weddings (It sounds like this would make you no money, but as my friend pointed out, you could steal some gifts and then sell them on e-Bay and no one would notice.)

4. Strip (No one would have to know unless your friends came to the strip club you worked at, but then you could pretend to have a look-a-like, because how many of your friends have seen you naked. But as my other friend pointed out to me most strippers are fat, his words, not mine, and I am not. Another friend suggested I should be a go-go dancer.)

5. Sell plasma (You make 60 a week if you donate twice a week and you can do it over and over again. I have never donated blood, hate having blood taken from me, and think I would probably pass out, a very legitimate concern.)

A few other options were thrown out there, but really none of these ideas is very good. I mean half are illegal and would end in jail time if we got caught, which is definitely not worth the money and the others are not very appealing (stripping). I guess I could try donating plasma, but the idea of being poked that much does not seem worth the 60 a week. I guess I'll have to stick to waiting tables and hope that someone will walk in and leave me a couple of hundred out of the kindness of their heart. Probably won't happen considering today my last table told me to that I looked like I didn't want to be there (and I basically told them I didn't). When I transferred them to another waitress once I was cut and came to tell them they mentioned that was the first time they saw me smile the entire time I had waited on them.

Either Way You're Lying

Everyone should wait tables at some point in their life. It changes your perspective of the world. I started working in a restaurant when I was 17. It was a terrible job. I started out busing tables and watched parents dump runny black beans on the table for their little babies to eat. Just a little FYI the tables in restaurants are disgusting. Even after they have supposedly been cleaned. One restaurant I worked at didn't even use sanitizer spray and a dirty rag (yes all the rags used to wipe down tables are dirty because they have are being used all day to wipe down every dirty table and chair and booth seat), this restaurant used a rag dipped in sanitizer, but the rags were used a lot and not re-dunked in the cold dirty water that passed as sanitizing solution.

Anyway, restaurants are not only disgusting places (I've worked in 3 different restaurants and even though some are more sanitary than others, they are all gross), but they let you see how people really act when they think no one is watching. Being a waitress does not just entail taking orders and getting drinks, it's learning to anticipate a person's needs by watching their body language and gestures. When customers have to ask for things they think the server is terrible at their job and not attentive enough (even if they just saw you get 5 new tables at once). I dealt with crazy customers ( I had a woman who rocked back and forth in her seat, wanted her ribs, coleslaw, and fries to be on separate plates, and refused to pay 2 dollars of her bill because she didn't like the pasta salad, yet refused to tell me this. Regardless, I had to chase her down and make her come back to pay her entire bill). I've also had to deal with picky customers, mean customers, nice customers, and liars. I had a table once tip me 50 dollars when their bill was only 80, it made my night. Monday night I had a table of liars who tried telling me that they had been here before and we had a 2 for 1 special on food on Mondays. Only problem, we don't run specials on food or drinks ever. I explained this to them and then came back to take their food order only to be told that this was their first time here. Come on, you just told me you had been here before. Sometimes I just want to yell at people, but I continue to smile even when they ask for their change when they give me 43 dollars and the bill is 42.33. I love those people (sarcasm), but they are much better than the people who tell you to keep the change on something like that. I would rather be properly stiffed than get 63 cents.

There are a few things I have not had to deal with that I am thankful for: I have never caught anyone having sex in the bathroom or someplace in the restaurant (this actually happens more than you would think), I haven't had anyone throw up at one of my tables, I have not had anyone (other than the crazy lady) try to run out without paying, and I generally come out pretty well at the end of the night (besides last night when I made 16 dollars).

Inflatable Animals

Every night out is a mini-adventure, you never know how it's going to end. The other night is a perfect example. The night began with me and a group of friends over-indulging ourselves at a local chain restaurant. After copious amounts of food were consumed we headed back to my friend's apartment in search of a party, which during the summer is harder to find since the vast majority of students have left the area leaving behind the very studious or the people who need to be pay more attention to their grades than their social lives. Through social networking we discovered a small party that didn't sound very promising, but would be better than sitting in the apartment doing nothing.

After arriving at this party and realizing the people we knew had yet to arrive, we walked in pretending that we had every right to be there (which we most likely did, we actually brought the first girls to the party). Making the rounds we introduced ourselves to people and it turns out I knew a few of the guys there and some of them even remembered my name. While I was chatting with one guy I had met a few times before but had never really talked to, a bunch of older guys came in with leis, glow sticks, and grocery bags. The first thought that entered my mind was, "Why do alumni keep coming back to party with students?" I never really understood why old guys come back to their Alma mater and hit on undergrads. I don't get it. Freshmen year a bunch of old guys who claimed to only be 23 (though one was balding) tried to convince me and a friend to join them in the "back house" for a private party. Anyway, these guys started pulling out inflatable animals from the bags and blowing them up. There were two inflatable monkeys (one happened to be 3 feet tall), a crab, an octopus, fish, a flamingo, and other various animals. One guy proudly announced to everyone, "I have crabs and an octopus". Wonderful, an old guy with a sense of humor bordering on a prepubescent boys. The guys distributed out their loot, handing me a flamingo and placing the 3 foot monkey on my friend's back. I decided since these guys made up half of the party that I might as well get to know them, plus they were the ones who brought the decorations (and fun) to an otherwise dull summer party.

One of the guys happened to be 24, which was probably bad news since he looked like the youngest of his friends (one looked about 25/26 and the other appeared to be approaching his mid-thirties). This guy was ok, slightly goofy, but had started his own business. The mid-thirties guy was a complete turn-off, he was not very nice to me and was getting on my nerves (and why was he partying with students is a very good question). The guys with the inflatables ended up leaving because they were committed to meeting friends elsewhere, but invited us to come watch them play later on a street corner. Apparently they were part of some kind of Stomp-esque band and would be entertaining the drunken masses later on. We planned on stopping by, for a laugh, and my friend still had the inflatable flamingo.

The rest of the party was ok, nothing out of the ordinary occurred except the man who had been sitting behind us at the restaurant earlier showed up accompanied by our waitress. The only thought I had about this was that I was glad I tipped the waitress well. We left the party and made our way to the designated street corner. They were there setting up but hadn't started playing yet. Their instruments consisted of paint buckets, pans, a cookie sheet and spatula, along with various other kitchen and household apparatus. Their drummer was still MIA, but they warmed up with my friend creating the beat on the paint cans. Once their drummer made an appearance and they began rocking out, we joined in with maracas and flamingo guitar playing. Their music attracted a crowd that began trying their best to hula hoop or dance to the crazy beat.

That could have been the end of the night, weird, bordering on average, but it wasn't. Right before leaving the raucous orchestra a women came running up to us in a panic, "Do any of you have a condom? I need a condom for my friend." One person replied that they didn't use condoms, while everyone else around explained that they didn't carry them around. The lady began accosting other people walking by, begging each one for a condom for her friend. If that wasn't bad enough, this thirty-something year old woman came running up to us, "Do any of you have a condom? I need to have sex tonight. I haven't had it in such a long time." Wow. This was something. When all of us once again explained that we didn't have a condom, she rushed over to her friend who had found a man, a random man on the street, who happened to have a condom in his wallet. Then the woman who "needed to have sex tonight" had her condom and the number of the man who had supplied it.