so, i'm kind of tired of having the uber awkward conversation about what happened to me on monday with people (you know, the oh-so-usual conversation of "hey" "hey" "how's it going" "okay" "okay?" "well, i was hit by a truck" thing tends to freak people out). so, i figured this would be a viable outlet to let just about everyone i've ever met in my entire life in on what happened while skipping people looking at me like i'm a ticking time bomb.
the set up:
there's a girl (let's call her: christine hammond) sitting on a bench holding a box of donuts she bought for her co-worker's birthday (remember the donuts for later. this is what we like to call a "smoking gun") waiting for everyone else to get to work and open up.
enter vehicle number one (let's call it: gray F250) heading north on myrtle avenue.
enter vehicle number two (let's call it: white van) backing out of a diagonal parking spot on myrtle avenue
vehicle number one (gray f250) swerves to miss vehicle number two (white van) and hits vehicle number three (not yet introduced, but has no other point in the story)heading south on myrtle.
f250 loses control and hits girl on bench (christine hammond), sending her into the street, and continues out of control halfway through building number one (let's call it: vitaganza)
pandemonium.
christine hammond is covered in jelly donut (from aforementioned "smoking gun" birthday donuts) which she is convinced is blood oozing from her thigh. it isn't. it is just the comedic element that needs to shine through in any story involving me.
well, that's pretty much the long and the short of it. i've got some bruising and a couple of fractured ribs, but it could have been a lot worse. it probably should have been a lot worse. i'm very grateful to have not died. i'm unbelievably thankful to have the friends and family that i have. i practically have my own little shrine from all of the care packages i've received. thank you so much for being a part of my life. i know it's corny, but having the threat of everything you love taken away makes you appreciate it all. so thank you.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Sunday, August 16, 2009
it is you, peter.
I haven't written in this thing for a while. in fact, i'm not one hundred percent positive anyone even reads this any more. not that they did. things have changed since the last time we spoke, dear cyberland. first off, i don't capitalize much any more. i feel like it wastes my time, and that i'm pretty confident in my capitalization where-with-all. secondly, i've discovered pandora. oh. my. god. seriously, what a brilliant idea. other than that, nothing too notable. i still enjoy writing late at night (although, truth be told, i feel a little rusty), and this will invariably be long and nonsensical and uninteresting.
i'm doing laundry. i just wish there could be one time in my life when doing laundry wasn't an epic experience. you know, when picking the clothes off the floor and smelling them wasn't the way i figured out what needed to be washed. i'm on my fifth load. MY FIFTH LOAD. what?! and the real irony is that i guarantee i'll wake up tomorrow and hate everything i own. i will wear the same three articles of clothing over and over, but inexplicably feel the need to take everything out of my closet and step on it a few times until it's so wrinkled that i say (to myself. i do that. don't judge me.), "i will literally never iron this. might as well wash it and see if that fixes the problem"... and we end up at square one. it's the cross i have to bear.
now that all of my clothes are being washed, it's cleared up a lot of floor space (which has been hiding for... i don't know... the last one or two... decades), and man am i finding some interesting things. like, for instance, six cell phones. not all in one piece, and certainly not all in working condition, but it's a little worrisome when your room is a cell phone grave yard. not only that, but i saved all of my old cell phone chargers (you know, just in case). between car chargers and wall chargers and car charger to wall charger converters, i must have dozens of chargers. that is absolutely insane. i realize that. what could possibly need to be charged that requires DOZENS of chargers? certainly not my phones that don't work. the kicker: i have NO idea where the charger for the phone i currently use is. i have to charge it via computer, which takes forever and is not terribly effective. classic christine.
i was thinking about changing "classic christine" into something with a better connotation. you know, like "pulling a monica" from friends. i'm just not sure if it would be as accurate. i found no less than sixteen bjs check presenters under my dresser in a stack. obviously at one point, i thought it necessary to keep them. why? was i going to return them? that's not weird. bjs swat team would probably jump out of the bushes and kill me for having so many check presenters. along with them were four employee cards and a baby-doll tee. we didn't wear baby-doll tees for at least a year before i quit, and i will NEVER wear that shirt again. you know what i did throw away? my nonslip shoes. you know what the ONLY thing i have needed in the last six months since i worked at bjs is? my nonslip shoes. classic christine.
i also found a lot of untitled mixes. i went through a phase where i thought that i would like the music i liked at that moment for the rest. of. my. life. because of this, i thought it would be cute if i never labeled them so that future christine could be pleasantly surprised when she found them strewn about (i've always had an affinity for strewning things. i don't think "strewning" is a word. i don't care. i do, however, think "strewning" looks borderline obscene. sort of like the time i accidentally wrote the word "reaction" "eraction"... ANYWAY). these cds are AWFUL. i mean, really bad. there are one or two songs that i still like, but apparently at one point of my life i thought that the song "sexy love" by neyo (neo? ne-yo? does it matter?) would stand the test of time. if you're reading this thinking, "hey! i like that song!" you should take your hand, extend it straight out in front of you, and karate chop yourself in the neck.
speaking of music, why is norah jones so awesome? that's all. she's just so awesome that she needed her own paragraph.
i really have nothing else to say, and i think my next load is dry, but in my travels, i also found all of my old notebooks and i read them all for the first time. ever. my advice to you: keep a journal. it's an incredible thing to look back on who you were and what made you tick. my next piece of advice: if you're going to wash your bedding, do that first so you aren't up until way past your bedtime waiting for something to sleep on. classic christine.
i'm doing laundry. i just wish there could be one time in my life when doing laundry wasn't an epic experience. you know, when picking the clothes off the floor and smelling them wasn't the way i figured out what needed to be washed. i'm on my fifth load. MY FIFTH LOAD. what?! and the real irony is that i guarantee i'll wake up tomorrow and hate everything i own. i will wear the same three articles of clothing over and over, but inexplicably feel the need to take everything out of my closet and step on it a few times until it's so wrinkled that i say (to myself. i do that. don't judge me.), "i will literally never iron this. might as well wash it and see if that fixes the problem"... and we end up at square one. it's the cross i have to bear.
now that all of my clothes are being washed, it's cleared up a lot of floor space (which has been hiding for... i don't know... the last one or two... decades), and man am i finding some interesting things. like, for instance, six cell phones. not all in one piece, and certainly not all in working condition, but it's a little worrisome when your room is a cell phone grave yard. not only that, but i saved all of my old cell phone chargers (you know, just in case). between car chargers and wall chargers and car charger to wall charger converters, i must have dozens of chargers. that is absolutely insane. i realize that. what could possibly need to be charged that requires DOZENS of chargers? certainly not my phones that don't work. the kicker: i have NO idea where the charger for the phone i currently use is. i have to charge it via computer, which takes forever and is not terribly effective. classic christine.
i was thinking about changing "classic christine" into something with a better connotation. you know, like "pulling a monica" from friends. i'm just not sure if it would be as accurate. i found no less than sixteen bjs check presenters under my dresser in a stack. obviously at one point, i thought it necessary to keep them. why? was i going to return them? that's not weird. bjs swat team would probably jump out of the bushes and kill me for having so many check presenters. along with them were four employee cards and a baby-doll tee. we didn't wear baby-doll tees for at least a year before i quit, and i will NEVER wear that shirt again. you know what i did throw away? my nonslip shoes. you know what the ONLY thing i have needed in the last six months since i worked at bjs is? my nonslip shoes. classic christine.
i also found a lot of untitled mixes. i went through a phase where i thought that i would like the music i liked at that moment for the rest. of. my. life. because of this, i thought it would be cute if i never labeled them so that future christine could be pleasantly surprised when she found them strewn about (i've always had an affinity for strewning things. i don't think "strewning" is a word. i don't care. i do, however, think "strewning" looks borderline obscene. sort of like the time i accidentally wrote the word "reaction" "eraction"... ANYWAY). these cds are AWFUL. i mean, really bad. there are one or two songs that i still like, but apparently at one point of my life i thought that the song "sexy love" by neyo (neo? ne-yo? does it matter?) would stand the test of time. if you're reading this thinking, "hey! i like that song!" you should take your hand, extend it straight out in front of you, and karate chop yourself in the neck.
speaking of music, why is norah jones so awesome? that's all. she's just so awesome that she needed her own paragraph.
i really have nothing else to say, and i think my next load is dry, but in my travels, i also found all of my old notebooks and i read them all for the first time. ever. my advice to you: keep a journal. it's an incredible thing to look back on who you were and what made you tick. my next piece of advice: if you're going to wash your bedding, do that first so you aren't up until way past your bedtime waiting for something to sleep on. classic christine.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
A Day in the Life
So, today was my first day off in a week, and I have news for you: being a grown-up sucks. I’m sure a lot of you are familiar with the notion; however, right now it seemed important for me to reconfirm it. Today, I slept in until noon. It was glorious. The angels were singing from outside my window, I ate a bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats (Hbo, as it’s called in the house of Hammond), watched a movie, went on a walk, cleaned my room, and did a LOT of laundry (which I’ll talk about later, as I may have made a major laundry faux pas which is going on as we speak). Note that I did miss Happy Hour Tuesday due to my poverty, which was a really big blow, but all things considered, it was a pretty solid day. Now the only problem is that I can’t seem to go to sleep, which wouldn’t be a big deal except that if I don’t get sleep tonight, I will literally not be able to catch up until next Tuesday. Let me tell you that it is a very strange place to be in: knowing that my being up right now will effect how tired I am for the rest of the week.
And soon, there will be school. Which is this entire issue in and of itself, because I’m really not sure how I’m going to be able to fit it in what with working two jobs (needing both of them to survive, incidentally… considering one is used to pay the majority of my seemingly insatiable bills and the other is to give me experience in something other than waiting tables so once I (finally) decide to finish school I’ll be able to get a job that isn’t… well… waiting tables) and starting this new volunteering venture which I hope to be doing sometime in the next couple of weeks. That was a very long sentence. I’m sorry to unleash all of this on you, but quite frankly, it’s beginning to cause me a lot of stress and since I obviously cannot afford therapy, this is the best I’ve got… which is sad. It’s also sad that both of my eyes have begun to twitch uncontrollably. Alright, maybe that’s not sad so much as it is really really REALLY annoying, but that’s neither here nor there.
What is both here and there is that currently I have taken my rug out of the washing machine and put it into the dryer. This would not normally cause concern, but being that there were specific instructions not to put my rug in the laundry, I’m a bit worried. I just didn’t know what else to do… I mean, it was really dirty. Milk Duds everywhere (lately, incidentally, I have become a Milk Dud fiend. In fact, about a week ago I was out, and I kept feeling the pant leg of my jeans stick to my leg. It wasn’t so bad at first, but it began to get increasingly more irritating, so I went to the bathroom to do some advanced recon. Know what I found? A Milk Dud was actually stuck to the inside of my pant leg, and it was causing said pant to stick to my leg… that is literally the fattest thing I have ever heard of happening to someone, and it happened to me. At the mall. How embarrassing. ANYWAY…), make up embedded in it, some sort of unidentifiable gunk, some really gross stuff. Clearly it needed to be cleaned, so I’m taking a chance.
On a side note, I think it’s time to reevaluate your career as an actor when you become the face of some obscure pharmaceutical drug. For instance, I was reading some issue of Reader’s Digest, and Sally Fields was on a full page add (which isn’t very large on a Reader’s Digest, I think the magazine itself is half the size of an 8x11 sheet of white paper) promoting some drug that impedes the spread of Osteoporosis. What has happened to you Sally? You can have a job at BJs if times are that tough. You are an Oscar Winner, for God’s sake. Pull yourself together and out of Reader’s Digest. Also, I went to see Stepbrothers the other day (pretty funny… recommended if you have some time to kill and a twenty burning a hole in your pocket), and during those previews before the previews, there was a Sprint commercial starring Martin (and please forgive me if I butcher the name, because I’m too lazy to IMDB it) Scorsese (director, very prominent eyebrows). What?! I mean, Martin, what are you doing? The economy will pick back up. People are still seeing movies. Batman is the second largest movie gross of all time behind Titanic (I know he didn’t have anything to do with Batman, I was just proving my point that people are still frequenting theaters). You do not need to be doing Sprint ads. And while I’m at it, I really think that big name stars should stop doing cosmetic commercials. Not because it’s below them, but because movie stars already have jobs. They don’t need free drug store make-up. They should leave some opportunities for the girls who won’t ever be in the Fantastic 4 or a Woody Allen movie. Or any movie for that matter, but that’s just my opinion.
Also, I am sick and tired of hearing people complain about the economy while they’re out spending money. You are a contradiction to yourself. If you don’t want to spend the extra money on gas, then don’t go anywhere. Right now, I am so beyond poor, that poor looks like The Hamptons to me. Does it suck? Yes. Is it my own fault? Of course. Am I paying the price for money that I knew I shouldn’t be spending as I was spending it? Absolutely. You know what I’m not doing right now? Driving and spending money. It seems very logical to me. One begets the other. The pendulum has to swing; it’s an actual law of physics. I don’t think that all of this is reason to go out to a restaurant and blame the economy for why you aren’t tipping your server.
Which brings me to my next point: the customer is always right has got to be the worst phrase to ever hit capitalism. I spend a lot of my time with people who think they know more about what I’m doing than I do. I had a woman come into the shop the other day, hold a piece of Jade up to her pulse, breathe a few times and tell me that it was no good. It’s amazing how people instantly turn into certified jewelers the second they pick up a piece of gold. People don’t know anything, and somewhere along the line, someone told them that when they went out into society and into some sort of business that they would always be right. Who did this? People are ignorant. They are almost never right. I don’t care if you have money (which you probably don’t) or if you’re going to buy something (which you’re probably not); you are in no way entitled to anything. I never thought I would live to see the day where I long to hole myself in my office and enter in the dailies, but believe it or not, it is the bonafide highlight of my day.
I don’t want this to sound so negative, though. I really do, for the most part, love being around people. I really do. I’m struggling with the fact that if I don’t want to continue to work 15 hour days for the rest of my life, that some time in the relatively new future, I’m going to need to get a nine to five job. I mean, even the little glimpse that I’m getting of it now is scary to me. Today was the first time in a long time that I didn’t have to get dressed up to go to work. I have to start buying work clothes and work shoes, and things of that sort. I need to sign up for Kaiser. These are all things that are wearing on me, and it’s just a small piece of what’s going to become of me… I like waiting tables. I like meeting new people every day. Just last night, one of the couples who used to come in all the time had an impromptu doctor’s appointment at City of Hope, and called me to see if I wanted to go out to dinner. I love that I probably would have never met them otherwise, and now I have these amazing people that pop into my life every once in a while.
Ps, dear reader, if there’s anything that you get from this really long ramble of a post, I want you to know that Glendale sucks. Never ever go there. Never, under any circumstances, work in any area even remotely connected to customer service out there. It will make you feel soulless. I know that it seems random to talk about, but that last paragraph about customer service and the customer always being wrong reminded me about Glendale, and it only seemed fair that I should share my experiences with you so that you don’t ever have to experience it for yourself.
And with that, I feel like my charitable work for the day is done and that I should force myself to go to sleep so that I get more than three hours tonight. Sorry this wasn’t interesting on top of being pretty complainy. Next time should be better. Until then, stay away from Glendale, and don’t keep Milk Duds in a box next to your bed unless you plan on having them explode all over your room.
And soon, there will be school. Which is this entire issue in and of itself, because I’m really not sure how I’m going to be able to fit it in what with working two jobs (needing both of them to survive, incidentally… considering one is used to pay the majority of my seemingly insatiable bills and the other is to give me experience in something other than waiting tables so once I (finally) decide to finish school I’ll be able to get a job that isn’t… well… waiting tables) and starting this new volunteering venture which I hope to be doing sometime in the next couple of weeks. That was a very long sentence. I’m sorry to unleash all of this on you, but quite frankly, it’s beginning to cause me a lot of stress and since I obviously cannot afford therapy, this is the best I’ve got… which is sad. It’s also sad that both of my eyes have begun to twitch uncontrollably. Alright, maybe that’s not sad so much as it is really really REALLY annoying, but that’s neither here nor there.
What is both here and there is that currently I have taken my rug out of the washing machine and put it into the dryer. This would not normally cause concern, but being that there were specific instructions not to put my rug in the laundry, I’m a bit worried. I just didn’t know what else to do… I mean, it was really dirty. Milk Duds everywhere (lately, incidentally, I have become a Milk Dud fiend. In fact, about a week ago I was out, and I kept feeling the pant leg of my jeans stick to my leg. It wasn’t so bad at first, but it began to get increasingly more irritating, so I went to the bathroom to do some advanced recon. Know what I found? A Milk Dud was actually stuck to the inside of my pant leg, and it was causing said pant to stick to my leg… that is literally the fattest thing I have ever heard of happening to someone, and it happened to me. At the mall. How embarrassing. ANYWAY…), make up embedded in it, some sort of unidentifiable gunk, some really gross stuff. Clearly it needed to be cleaned, so I’m taking a chance.
On a side note, I think it’s time to reevaluate your career as an actor when you become the face of some obscure pharmaceutical drug. For instance, I was reading some issue of Reader’s Digest, and Sally Fields was on a full page add (which isn’t very large on a Reader’s Digest, I think the magazine itself is half the size of an 8x11 sheet of white paper) promoting some drug that impedes the spread of Osteoporosis. What has happened to you Sally? You can have a job at BJs if times are that tough. You are an Oscar Winner, for God’s sake. Pull yourself together and out of Reader’s Digest. Also, I went to see Stepbrothers the other day (pretty funny… recommended if you have some time to kill and a twenty burning a hole in your pocket), and during those previews before the previews, there was a Sprint commercial starring Martin (and please forgive me if I butcher the name, because I’m too lazy to IMDB it) Scorsese (director, very prominent eyebrows). What?! I mean, Martin, what are you doing? The economy will pick back up. People are still seeing movies. Batman is the second largest movie gross of all time behind Titanic (I know he didn’t have anything to do with Batman, I was just proving my point that people are still frequenting theaters). You do not need to be doing Sprint ads. And while I’m at it, I really think that big name stars should stop doing cosmetic commercials. Not because it’s below them, but because movie stars already have jobs. They don’t need free drug store make-up. They should leave some opportunities for the girls who won’t ever be in the Fantastic 4 or a Woody Allen movie. Or any movie for that matter, but that’s just my opinion.
Also, I am sick and tired of hearing people complain about the economy while they’re out spending money. You are a contradiction to yourself. If you don’t want to spend the extra money on gas, then don’t go anywhere. Right now, I am so beyond poor, that poor looks like The Hamptons to me. Does it suck? Yes. Is it my own fault? Of course. Am I paying the price for money that I knew I shouldn’t be spending as I was spending it? Absolutely. You know what I’m not doing right now? Driving and spending money. It seems very logical to me. One begets the other. The pendulum has to swing; it’s an actual law of physics. I don’t think that all of this is reason to go out to a restaurant and blame the economy for why you aren’t tipping your server.
Which brings me to my next point: the customer is always right has got to be the worst phrase to ever hit capitalism. I spend a lot of my time with people who think they know more about what I’m doing than I do. I had a woman come into the shop the other day, hold a piece of Jade up to her pulse, breathe a few times and tell me that it was no good. It’s amazing how people instantly turn into certified jewelers the second they pick up a piece of gold. People don’t know anything, and somewhere along the line, someone told them that when they went out into society and into some sort of business that they would always be right. Who did this? People are ignorant. They are almost never right. I don’t care if you have money (which you probably don’t) or if you’re going to buy something (which you’re probably not); you are in no way entitled to anything. I never thought I would live to see the day where I long to hole myself in my office and enter in the dailies, but believe it or not, it is the bonafide highlight of my day.
I don’t want this to sound so negative, though. I really do, for the most part, love being around people. I really do. I’m struggling with the fact that if I don’t want to continue to work 15 hour days for the rest of my life, that some time in the relatively new future, I’m going to need to get a nine to five job. I mean, even the little glimpse that I’m getting of it now is scary to me. Today was the first time in a long time that I didn’t have to get dressed up to go to work. I have to start buying work clothes and work shoes, and things of that sort. I need to sign up for Kaiser. These are all things that are wearing on me, and it’s just a small piece of what’s going to become of me… I like waiting tables. I like meeting new people every day. Just last night, one of the couples who used to come in all the time had an impromptu doctor’s appointment at City of Hope, and called me to see if I wanted to go out to dinner. I love that I probably would have never met them otherwise, and now I have these amazing people that pop into my life every once in a while.
Ps, dear reader, if there’s anything that you get from this really long ramble of a post, I want you to know that Glendale sucks. Never ever go there. Never, under any circumstances, work in any area even remotely connected to customer service out there. It will make you feel soulless. I know that it seems random to talk about, but that last paragraph about customer service and the customer always being wrong reminded me about Glendale, and it only seemed fair that I should share my experiences with you so that you don’t ever have to experience it for yourself.
And with that, I feel like my charitable work for the day is done and that I should force myself to go to sleep so that I get more than three hours tonight. Sorry this wasn’t interesting on top of being pretty complainy. Next time should be better. Until then, stay away from Glendale, and don’t keep Milk Duds in a box next to your bed unless you plan on having them explode all over your room.
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