My favorite watch broke today. I bought the G-Shock watch three years ago and I've never had a problem with it. I originally bought it because I was feeling proud of myself and wanted to give myself a gift that I normally wouldn't buy. In a way, the watch was always there for me. However, my girlfriend and I went swimming today and water managed to get inside (don't ask me how) and pretty much damaged all the components inside of it. Tomorrow I'll be sending it in to see if it's worth the repairs; I'm guessing it's gonna be the price of a new watch since the price range to repair the watch is going to be between 10 dollars to 150 dollars. If it's 150 dollars, I'm pretty sure they're just going to replace it with a new one. If I can repair it at a decent price, I'll do it because that watch has been through a lot. I'm just really disappointed in how it happened; getting water inside was the last thing that I expected to happen. I expected the battery to run out (despite it being solar powered) before anything else. After all, it was water resistant to 20 bar and I've never went below 10 feet. Took showers with it and all kinds of stuff but not scuba dive or whatever. I'm gonna send it in and hope for the best but I seriously doubt they're going to give me good news. It's a shame that their product (which they claim to be "unbreakable") only has a 1 year warranty. If you buy something that claims to be something big and it only has a 1 year warranty, I would seriously doubt it. If you claim something to be unbreakable, then you should offer a lifetime warranty to back yourself up in case it is proven to be false.

Today has been a decent day, but I'm really upset that my watch doesn't work. Just thought I'd let you know that I'm upset, even if it's a seemingly small and insignificant thing. But it means a lot to me...so...

Right now is the only time I'm glad that I don't live in my own apartment because I don't have a job. I'm an extremely fortunate person to have such supportive grandparents; otherwise, I don't know what I would do. Because I live with my grandparents and they provide for me what I can't provide for myself, I can't really fathom the real magnitude of the situation right now. If it was anyone else in my shoes, they probably would've set everything aside and  spent all day looking for jobs. They would've dressed nicely and took the time for apply for different positions at various stores. But for me...I'm more relaxed about it, and that's not something that I should really be proud of because I don't have a job. I'm not making money. The best thing about it all is the fact that I got all this time to do stuff and I've been practically stress free. Yesterday I spent a good amount of time cleaning up my room; I've wanted to do some stuff in my room for a while but never had the chance to get around to it because I'm very rarely home. I took all the crap from underneath my bed, re-arranged my clothes drawer, threw away damaged clothing and socks, and re-organized all my documents into more specific folders. All I gotta do is finish cleaning up, help my grandparents with some stuff around the house...and I plan on driving over to Kathleen's place tomorrow night. I told her that I wasn't sure what was going to happen and I'm telling the truth because I don't want to leave my grandparents without showing them that I've put forth effort for their satisfaction. The problem with my grandparents is that they don't really tell me specifically what they want done because they're old-fashioned. If they were me, they'd be doing all kinds of seemingly random things like planting more flowers in the backyard or something like that. They'll tell me what can be done around the house and I'll do it, but I always have this feeling that they're disappointed in my lack of effort. I'm pretty much the type of person who is okay with people bossing him around because that makes life simple. You tell me what to do, and I'll do it because I'll know that it's what you want done and there's not a problem. When I worked with David and his dad doing framing, that's what I pretty much did. They had the knowledge of how to do stuff and I was pretty much the "bitch" who gave them tools, carried heavy stuff around, etc. But I'm okay with that. I'm not afraid to do hard work but I don't usually do hard work on my own. I don't like to think too much. I am, by definition, type B. Some people believe that getting degrees and working hard is a good kind of stress but I don't believe there is such thing as good stress. Stress is stress, y' know? Ain't nobody got time for that.

It's really unfortunate the way things have turned out in my life. Falling in love has been the most incredible experiencing and most wonderful thing I've ever experienced, but I don't feel like I've changed as much as I would've liked. You would think that having a competitive girlfriend would help me strive to be competitive as well but I'm still struggling to find motivation. My girlfriend and I both know that it's not there. I want a better life, but I don't realize it yet and I'm really fucking scared. Been scared for a while now, actually.

Losing my job was the worst of my troubles. Going to Brazil, I really wanted to find myself and come out with a new perspective on important things and in a way...I have. People believe that I'm more talkative than I was and that's because I didn't really have the chance to talk that much in Brazil. I was really held back and put into awkward situations. I turned out okay thanks to my girlfriend translating for me, but it took an open-mind and a lot of patience. So I enjoy talking with people more because we can actually understand each other. That's basically what I came back with when I originally wanted to come back a different person. When I came back from Texas several years ago, I was a different person. I was very productive, woke up early, did shit, but it eventually wore off and I went back to my old self. But...things can change, can they not? I guess we'll find out.

I also recently found out that Xanga is probably going to be shutdown due to insufficient funds to re-launch it. I've had my Xanga since around 2004 (14 years old) and I regret not doing more private entries. I don't really have any juicy stuff that makes me go "ahh yeah...I remember that." When I cleaned my room a little bit, I found some sheets of paper that had my writing on it, and they were old diary entries, poems, etc. I'm more likely to find juicy stuff lying around my room than I am looking in my own online diary. So I got my archieved blogs and I'm pretty much waiting till Xanga gets shutdown to figure out where I wanna take my blog next. I hope it doesn't get shutdown; the fund is already over halfway there and they've still got about 19-20 days left before it's gonna be shutdown. I can't really donate since I'm trying to save all the money I can since I don't have a job.

What I plan on doing is Friday while my girlfriend is at work, I'm gonna spend time applying for jobs and being productive. I really need to apply for jobs because next week, I told my grandmother that I'd go back to Krogers if I didn't have a job...and I really hate that. I really didn't want to go back but I just might have to if I want to some money to be able to pay for gas and all that stuff. I really fucking hate working at grocery stores; I planned on applying for different jobs sooner but I haven't done anything. My sister talked to someone who manages a call center, and I was hoping that I'd land the job because it would've been awesome but, of course, "no experience required" just translates into "you don't need to be required to have experience, but we're gonna hire the people who do anyways so it doesn't really matter." I love it when businesses play around with words. I hate being a pessimist, but I just don't see how it's possible to overlook stuff like that and not die a little on the inside. The world fucking sucks, you know? I read a quote somewhere that said "we live to die, we rise to fall," and I thought that was very true. I hate the way I view life, don't get me wrong, but it's a gift to see that much detail in something to be able to point out such flaws, but it's a curse. I guess that's why they say "ignorance is bliss." I would've rather been ignorant because the stuff that I know is not only depressing, but it's non-motivational.

I guess that's all for now.

I have my first jury duty in about 6 hours almost...shit! I have jury duty in about 6 hours! Need to get my ass in bed!

But I'm not...might as well take this short amount of time to talk about something I really hate. I know that hate is a strong word and there's actually very few things that I hate about the world but I'm kind of leaning towards both sides on this one.

We're consumers, right? Practically everything around us is part of some kind of business. The coca-cola cans that I have on my desk are designed a specific way to get me attracted to it, the taste is distinctively good (designed a certain way), and everything else about the Coke has been designed to attract consumers. Hollywood is the same way, right? The actors/actresses in movies aren't always determined by how good they are, but how popular they are. If John Cena is in a movie, he's going to attract wrestling fans along with women who are attracted to big men. Gunner movies like Rambo, Terminator, etc consist of big dudes. It's no surprise the purpose behind it all; Hollywood is a business, and we are the consumers. Put a movie in with a hott chick, throw a partial sex scene in the movie trailer, and you've got a select age group of men flocking to the movie practically just for that reason.

Of course, why not? You know? Hott chicks in movies that are nude enough to allow you to fill in what you can't see by promoting the use of your imagination. But the truth of the matter is that us consumers are either too stupid to notice, or we don't care.

There are men/women all over the world who compare themselves to celebrities. Some men/women literally starve themselves because they're trying to compare themselves to a certain female celebrities. The problem is that, along the way, their image gets distorted until they no longer can tell what is true and what isn't. You could tell them that they're skinny and it's gonna flow right over their heads because they can't see it. In their minds, they need to lose more weight because they aren't skinny enough. They might even start those high intense work-outs like P90X and whatnot. However, you'll ask yourself...why the hell is he/she doing something like that? They're about 20 pounds. If Charles Darwin came back from the dead, he would laugh at some people. It's all because of this body image that you canonly be beautiful if you're skinny.

Now I can't decide whether I should be blame us, the consumers, or we should blame the media. The stuff we should've done a long time ago is put real women in movies. You can say that all women in movies are real women, but you know that's not the truth. I believe that some people are so stupid that they have to continually be reminded that not every woman looks like her natural self. You've got fuckin' make-up artists, clothes designers, lighting specialists, photoshop specialists, and any other kind of specialist that specializes in making a woman as beautiful as can be. Personal trainers, doctors that do plastic surgery and other kind of surgery, the whole 9 yards.

It fucking kills me to see men and women look up to celebrities as role-models for their body because it's all lies. And people are either, again, too stupid or don't really give a shit. Men will jerk off to celebrities fantasizing about meeting Angelina Jolie in her Tomb Raider outfit, or some woman will have dreams about certain celebrity males. It saddens me to hear that some women honestly believe that there's a possibility that they're going to marry a celebrity.

I never understood it. Yeah, I'm fat as hell but I guaran-fuckin-tee you that if I was going to be put into a movie, my body would make a transformation too. It's Hollywood. They could make me into anything I wanted to be with the technology. It's manipulation, and consumers are a bunch of sheep when it comes to that. I don't have six pack abs, but if I'm going to look up to someone...it's gonna be a guy that works hard at work and at the gym and doesn't have anyone helping but his own mind. I don't get jealous of celebrities because celebrities are celebrities. They have access to shit that I could only dream of accessing. But if you give me access to that shit...it'd be a whole different ball-game.

It's just stupid. The thing about celebrities is that if we left them alone, they wouldn't be such a big deal. We have the power to cancel those bullshit shows on television, but we eat that shit up like it's going out of style. We don't know how much power we have because we don't use it. We're too stupid for that, or maybe we're just too oblivious. But I just think that it's because we're too stupid.

My last entry was three months ago. I've got what they call "writer's block" and it's something that I've been struggling with for several years. It's tough now because I'm in the process of gathering ideas for a book that I'll eventually be writing and the ideas are all in my head but when I write it all down on paper, I can't do it. Sometimes I just write a couple pages and I end up throwing it away because I can't find a good pace to bring all my ideas out into a book. Writing a book is really fucking complicated and it's something that helps you appreciate a good book or author because it's not as easy as it looks. I can't imagine what J.K. Rowling was doing as she wrote the books because to put everything together into something beautiful like that is a concept that I may never be able to grasp. Of course, I don't plan on writing several books in a series but I plan on writing one really powerful book and seeing where it takes me. However, it's been difficult because, like previously mentioned, I've been suffering with immense writer's block. With a dash of laziness. But you know...the show must go on, and I'm going to provide a little update about what's been going on the past several months since I wrote a entry last semester.

I'm glad the last entry was short and sweet because it helped me understand kind of how I felt at the time and what was going on; of course, it had everything to do with school. I was really afraid that I was going to fail Computer Science because it was one of the classes that I didn't quite understand. A lot of the people in that class had prior experience in different programming so I really felt out of place. I guess that Computer Science is something that you have to enjoy so much that you're willing to experiment outside of class but I really was interested in seeing what it was all about. It was much different than I anticipated but I did the best I could in that class and landed a C. When I found out, I didn't really give a crap because I expected worse. The thing is that I hardly even studied for the exam because I had...something lined up but it turns out that my plan went absolutely horrible. Some of the multiple choice I guessed, and I left some of the short answer blank. I thought I was doomed but it turns out that I wasn't so bad off.

I was really happy that the semester ended but kind of scared because I've had a lot to worry about. My financial aid is about to get cut off because I'm about to reach the maximum hours...which is funny because I don't even have an Associate's degree. As we all know, I've been in a really fucked up situation with school and it's something that I'm slowly dealing with because it's all just too much for me to grasp. The thing about me is that if I'm stressed about something, I give up...but if someone else is stressed, they might step outside and smoke a cigarette. I've been too overwhelmed and my instant reaction is to duck and cover, but that's mostly because I have no idea what the hell I'm doing. So I've been major procrastinating on really important stuff, and you can bet your ass that it's going to eventually bite me and there's not a damn thing I can do about it.

I've probably mentioned that on May 16th, I was supposed to go to Brazil with my girlfriend...if not, now you know. Um...yeah...I had pretty much everything planned out but I was starting to run into some complications with work.

I didn't think there was going to be a problem because I had a week vacation and two personal days. I want to say that my dad told me that I could use my week vacation and personal days spread out so that I could take unpaid vacation in addition to prevent myself from getting knocked out of the system. For instance...I could use my paid vacation in the middle, use my personal days, and come back June with a job. It turns out that my store manager wouldn't allow that because according to her, the company policy has to abide by union regulations as well as their own. I don't particularly like my store manager; she's what my co-worker refers to as a "devious bitch." She called me into her room for a little talk and she started going on about favoritism, un-fairness, etc. Basically, she couldn't approve of that long of vacation because corporate wouldn't like it. She originally told me that I needed to request off at by sending a piece of paper into corporate and I went all out on that paper: I provided all my documentation, reasoning, nice letter, etc. Denied. To make matters worse is that I went a couple weeks without a response because someone responsible for sending those papers in didn't get around to it, so I didn't find out that I got denied till about a week before I was planning on going to Brazil.

Of course, they told me that I didn't have to spend all month there, that I could pay the penalty for coming back early but this has been something that I've been planning for a while. No matter what, I was going to Brazil because it was an opportunity of a lifetime. I needed to meet her mom, and I needed to be there for my girlfriend for whatever she was going to go through. The last time she went to Brazil, her face got bit by a dog and it left a scar near her mouth. I wasn't gonna let that happen again. I wasn't gonna be there for a couple weeks and somehow find a way to travel back to the airport without knowing ANY portugese and spend tons of money to change my plane ticket to an earlier date just to keep my almost minimum wage job. 

Ultimately, I was given two options: get terminated, or quit. If I didn't send in my two weeks notice, I'd eventually get terminated because I have to work a certain amount of hours per week. After a couple weeks or so, I get kicked out of the system and I pretty much don't get to re-apply because it wasn't on good-standing. But the benefit to it is that I get unemployment benefits or something along those lines. However, if I quit...I don't get unemployment benefits, but I get a chance to re-apply due to quitting on good standing. At the end of the day, I really could've disappointed my girlfriend by going back to America early (somehow), but I really dislike Kroger. I dislike working in grocery stores in general because I've been working in them since I was 18 years old and I'm going nowhere with my life. I need to move up, you know? I can't do that as a meat department associate. So I guess one of the main reasons why I quit was because I really wanted to quit, and this was a good opportunity to come up with an excuse. Well...that's partially true. Still...I hate working there. I hate pretending that I like working there because I really don't. So I sent in my two week's notice and started packing up for Brazil without giving a fuck.

Prior to leaving for Brazil, we bought a lot of clothes. It's ridiculous how much clothes I bought; I brought way too many boxers but not near enough socks. I probably would've been okay with two pairs of jeans but brought four just in case. That luggage was just around the weight limit (of 70 pounds).

As you can imagine, I had a lot to be nervous about; after all, I was heading towards a country where I didn't speak their primary language AT ALL, I wanted to make a good impression on her mom, and I was gonna come back to a shitstorm. I didn't know what to expect but it's something that had to be done. I was really excited about the flight because I've never been in a flight for more than a couple hours. Our flight was going to be 8 hours and it was over-night so I didn't know what to expect on how well I was going to sleep. I thought I was going to sleep pretty good but it turns out that sleeping in an airplane is fucking miserable. It's like trying to sleep on a tile floor; it's uncomfortable and no matter how tired you get, you will never get close to falling asleep. I remember that I wore my Walking Dead t-shirt because a TSA employee told one of his employees about my shirt and talked to me for a second about it while I was going through security. I think I also wore shorts but I can't remember.

After we reached Brazil, we got picked up by her mom's current boyfriend. Of course, he couldn't speak much English so I spent most of my time looking out the window and noticing the world around me being so different than what I'm used to instead of listening to my girlfriend talk to her mom's boyfriend in Portuguese. The first things I noticed was the amount of motorcycles on the road compared to America. It seems like the motorcycles outnumbered other vehicles 4:1 because there were motorcycles all over the place. The motorcycles usually weaved through traffic and disobeying speed laws. Also, most of the cars were manual transmission. I saw a ton of old school beetles and to this day I'm not exactly sure why the old ones are popular.

It was kind of scary at first because we were supposedly in a really bad city, and there's nothing better than a Caucasian tourist carrying a big ass travel sized luggage and 500 bucks in his pocket. That was just a disaster waiting to happen. Prior to going to Brazil, Kathleen told me what to do and what not to do in bad cities like that, so we ended up getting on the bus without a problem. I did my best to look like everyone else, and I'm just glad that I had my girlfriend to do the talking; otherwise, I would've been a lost puppy.

The buses were really nice. Of course it was about a 25 dollar bus ride, but it was considered an "executive" bus because it had air conditioning and all that stuff; Kathleen and I sat in the back next to the bathroom which was a pretty dumb idea. Every time the door would open it would smell like straight up ass. When we stopped by a food place, I got a can of Coke and it tasted distinctively different than American coke. My girlfriend told me a while back that their Coke was made with "real sugar" and all that stuff so I anticipated it to be different but not that different. It took me about 3 Cokes for me to get used to the taste; even still, there's been some Cokes that I thoroughly enjoyed, and some Cokes I didn't enjoy but drank it anyway because I knew I was addicted. I also saw model cars there at the shop but some were over 150 dollars. A lot of shit is imported there so I eventually realized why everything was so much more expensive and made me regret not packing an extra suitcase with all kinds of shit in it. If I really wanted to, I could've doubled (maybe even tripled) my money but I was ignorant.

When we got to her mom's house 5 hours later, I found out that the apartments are usually surrounded by electric fences. I'm all about that security so I thought it was a pretty awesome thing. Also, the place didn't look that good but I didn't want to say anything to my girlfriend because I thought that it'd upset her. As it turns out, that's kind of the point. The city wants to build crappy looking exteriors because they don't want thieves knowing the nice apartments. The apartments look really good on the inside and a pretty good amount of space.

For the month, I'm gonna pretty much summarize what all happened because I'm starting to get tired and this entry is entirely too long.

Going to Brazil was nothing like I expected. We spent a lot of our time in the apartment reading books, watching movies, eating, etc rather than venturing out and seeing Brazil. Brazil is a huge place so it's not like I can just go to the beach without spending 25 dollars and 5 hours on a bus ticket. Everything that I wanted to do was at least an hour away, but we've done a couple of things. Her mom's best friend had barbeques every now and then; the meat that they used was the cow hump. It contains a lot of fat, but it's a meat that they usually have. I've never had cow hump before and I was excited because I like trying different kinds of meat and I've been used to strip steaks, ribeyes, filet mignon, etc. We don't really have the cow hump at grocery stores like Kroger. I also spent a lot of time drinking tons of Coke because there was a lot of awkward moments. It's not fun listening to a conversation and not being able to respond because you don't know what the hell they're talking about. So it's like you just sit there looking at someone without saying a word. No matter how hard I tried, I still couldn't understand what they were saying even though Portuguese is like the "drunk version of Spanish."

Despite soccer being the most played sport in Brazil, I only got the chance to play twice with a group of people and it was fun as hell. The only problem was that I was on the team that had to take my shirt off and I thought it was extremely awkward that I was the only dude who was not only fat but hairy as fuck. Also, there was a girl who was my defense who didn't understand a God damn word of English so she was probably feeling just as awkward as I was. I was the goalie for a team and apparently I was really good.  My girlfriend's cousin told me that they thought I was a very brave goalie because I ran in front of the ball to pick it up and someone kicked that ball into my face. I got a bloody nose from it and didn't even know till later. I was more concerned about my contact falling out because I can get over a nose bleed but can't get over losing a clear contact in dirt.

We also celebrated a couple birthday parties as well as went to a couple of weddings. On both occasions, bad things happen and I guess it's because I anticipate bad things to happen when alcohol is involved around me and I get uptight about it. The first occasion I ended up having to drive a manual transmission and I was already pretty fucking pissed off about something. I didn't know how to drive manual and I was scared as shit because I didn't know the road signs one bit. The second time, my girlfriend and I got into another argument and it took a while for us to be able to sit down and eat something. What ended up happening was that we had a nice long conversation. We're okay now but my mom didn't like that. My girlfriend's mom is usually on my side, and she doesn't like it one bit. We came to a compromise, and now I know how I can prevent arguments from happening...it's just really difficult to do. Also, it was disappointing that I didn't get the chance to see the night sky without a lot of clouds because it's supposedly really nice where we were (the country side). We were there for about a week and it was cloudy until like..the day after we left. So I never got the chance to see a REAL nice sky; I saw a nice sky a couple times, but it wasn't totally dark and I didn't see everything. But it was nice.

The farm was cool though; a lot of land, hummingbirds flying around, dogs running around, fruit trees all over the place, etc. I found out that I like Mishitika...which is a type of fruit, supposedly family of the tangerine, grown in Brazil. I really enjoyed that fruit that I actually brought back some of the seeds to try and plant them.

We spent a lot of time looking for gifts and shit like that. I found Coca-cola glasses for my collection along with some other cool stuff to fill up in my collection cabinet so I'm very pleased with the things I've purchased. I even came back with 115+ dollars so I didn't spend all my money.

We didn't go to the beach or waterfall, but I got to spend time with her family and that's pretty much what I was hoping for. I'm sure I could go into more depth about Brazil but it's time for me to go to sleep.

When I came back to Georgia, my dad thought that I still had a job with Kroger; a part of me was hoping that I could get back in the game and start making a little bit of money again, but another part of me was hoping that I was off the schedule because I really needed incentive to look for jobs elsewhere. I really don't want to go back to Kroger despite how long I've been there. I need to move up in the world, and Kroger isn't that opportunity. Yesterday I had to drop something off at the UPS store (my ex-kindle that I thought was broken), and I went to talk to a Kroger employee about my potential return and she said that I'd just need the store manager's approval and I'm pretty much good to go. I told her that I'm not ready to go back to Kroger because I'm hoping to find something better. My sister is gonna try and hook me up tomorrow, and I'm also going to be sending more resumes into different places with desk jobs. If I had a desk job...that'd be amazing. I'd rather make minimum wage sitting on my fat ass than standing up all day. Working in the meat department is hard work...you ever try cutting a 50 pound Ribeye roast into 1 inch slices with a dull knife? That shit wears you out.

But that's enough of that. I'm tired, so it's bed time. Let's just hope that everything works out soon because I need a miracle.