I’ve been talking about my friend Jerry for a few entries now. I wrote about him in my “Snakes and Ladders” and “Be Happy!” entry. He seems to be getting all serious with me lately but can I trust that again? Sometimes I feel I am on his good side and take one step forward but right after, I end up taking two steps back. It is hard to like someone who has been doing that, all the years that you’ve known them.

Since I talked things out with Jerry a few days ago things have gotten better. I told him I don’t like doing all the talking, I feel like I am talking to a wall sometimes. He said he isn’t much of a talker but I said, well, I can’t keep talking to myself forever. Since then, he talks more, he isn’t talkative which is alright but I no longer feel like I am talking to myself. Hooray! Jerry has been saying that he always liked me because I was so nice to him but he is sorry for not recognizing that he was a pain to me sometimes. He also realized how much I truly mean to him and he is stepping up and trying to figure out what pisses me off about him, so he can stop. So far so good!

When we were talking yesterday he said that wonders about “us” sometimes. He wonders why I am so far away and why do I want him, of all people. Personally, I don’t have the slightest clue. I am nice to him but I don’t know if I could love him again, if I do he has to work his butt off. Which I know he wouldn’t work for me, I tried to tease him today and he didn’t like it.

I am looking for the long haul, marriage, and children the big shah-bang. I also question if he can commit and stay loyal to me, he has had sex before and that is always picking at me in the back of my mind. He was raised Catholic by his parents but doesn’t act upon it. I, on the other hand, have not had sex before. So it will be like nothing to him, while it’s everything to me, get it? I am thinking way to into things and your probably thinking ok crazy little lady chill out and stop thinking about it.

What I am basically trying to say is I don’t trust him and he doesn’t have main qualities I am looking for in a boyfriend. I’m not making my decision yet! I will see what happens over the next few months. I know he is trying so let’s see how far that will get him.

I have fear I want to go over. I firmly believe if someone has a role model, depending on how much they admire them, they will pick up their traits and whatnot. I look up to my grandma and she is a hard worker, similar to myself but I think if I end up with Jerry, my marriage will end up like my grandparents and that isn’t a good thing at all. I don’t know the whole story of my grandparents but from what I see is a really nice lady going for a guy who wouldn’t work for her. My grandma ends up doing everything! She works, does chores and takes care of her children and grandchildren. I don’t want to end up like that! Honestly all my grandfather ever does is sit down, watch the news, invest and manage money. That’s it! They are still married and my grandma is pretty tolerant of him and I am a pretty tolerant person myself. See where I am going with this?

This year’s youth convention got off to a rocky start. I should have been more prepared ahead of time! I was doing a super clean on my room, where I take out everything and sort out what stays and goes. Anyways, I didn’t finish it on time and I had to get ready to leave. I left my room in a decent mess but any type of mess is bad! My mom was giving me a hard time because she wanted to leave early for something she wanted to do. I was thinking why doesn’t she ever think of my needs? I am clearly busy getting ready for the weekend and she just piles more stress on my shoulders.

When I got to church I was really happy to see all my friends again. Cathy was talking about our latest’s complaints over Samuel which I will discuss more about later and what we are expecting at this year’s convention. I thought that Cathy would do something because I thought she didn’t like Michael and she didn’t really know Donald, which were my friends that I hung out with. Mann, I was so wrong! I didn’t think Donald would get a little carried away with his mouth! Well, since I knew Donald I knew he was joking the whole time but to everyone else didn’t and even though almost everything was a joke, I think he took it a little too far. I knew deep in my gut I should have stopped things before it got out of hand, but I didn’t. Oh well, I screwed up and I need to get over myself. Ha-ha!

I don’t want things to get any weirder between both of us. We talked things out a few days before convention about our friendship and how we haven’t been in contact with each other and whatnot. So I thought convention would be a place to catch up and be on good terms officially. I just feel like ever since my mom thing, when he called and what not, that he has been on edge with me or something. It just doesn’t feel the same. I am not mad at him, I am not mad at all and people tend to really back away from me when I tell them something isn’t right. I am a forgiving person! It even says on my MySpace.

There were a lot of good points and bad points of convention. On a scale of one though ten, with ten being the best, it was a nine. My reason for the nine is that I did enjoy the theme and what convention had to offer this year; I also have to admit, the shirts were pretty sweet. The only thing that got me a little bit bummed was Michael.

I didn’t force Michael to come to the convention, I just invited him. During almost the whole thing he seemed like he was forcing himself to be there, like being there was the worse place in the world. I understood it was new to him and I didn’t expect him to be excited on the first day. On the second day he ran away and was hiding from me! He was missing for an hour or so until I found him in my second workshop. I talked to him about it later on and he said he doesn’t feel that people there wouldn’t take him seriously, that he could actually kill himself. At this point I am like, what the heck? No one was treating him like he was “special” or even emotional, so I was really confused. I just told him not to assume silly things like that because I wasn’t anywhere near to thinking the way he does.

The point is I am really worried about him. I feel him getting worse year by year and at this point I can say I don’t know him anymore. He isn’t that person I knew a few years ago. There are times when I think about him and just cry or I am on the verge of crying. If he is going to keep acting like this he is going to kill himself, no doubt about it. I am hopeful that the true Michael, the one I met years ago is still in there somewhere. I am never going to forgive myself if he dies. I keep offering my help and it seems like he just pushes me away. How come at convention he took some random girl that came along and let her help him, while he knows me, he just pushes me away. Am I suffocating him? I don’t talk to him that often. I just want to scream and cry out my concerns towards him! Doesn’t he realize there is no reason to be sad! He is away from his mother now and everything should be hunky dory, I don’t understand! What’s wrong!!!

I haven’t written in a while about my life. I am somewhat doing better with Cathy. I am disappointed that she is already complaining about Youth Convention when it hasn’t even started yet. She said there are no showers there but it really doesn’t matter because it is only a weekend, you can shower on the day we are leaving, which is Friday and shower when we return on Sunday. You’re only missing one day without showering and it’s not like we are rolling around in mud or anything.

I went to Cathy’s Birthday party on Saturday but I missed out on a lot of things because I had my confirmation retreat on the same day. The retreat was honestly really boring with some interesting parts; a lot of it is just common sense. Anyways, when I came to Cathy’s house we just played videogames until someone thought it was a great idea to go to the haunted house. We waited in line for a few hours; I have no idea how we managed. The theme was haunted hospital or something like that. Honestly it wasn’t scary, I didn’t even scream. It was really disgusting with a lot of blood everywhere. We went to Jack in the box after wards and ate awesome tacos!

I went home for a bit afterwards and my dad said I seemed shaken up or something. I never really noticed until he said so and for some reason I told Melissa about it, she said I had low blood sugar which kind of scared me. I ate some candy and I felt better, I don’t want to become a diabetic like the rest of my family.

I am getting immune to my mother’s nagging. It is almost nothing to me now. I am a lot less stressed about everything but it is a little bit annoying every now-and-then.

Youth Convention is this weekend and things are falling beautifully in place. We already have our banner finished, and all the papers will be signed tomorrow when Michael comes over. My game plan is to pump everyone up and get super excited! I will show everyone around who doesn’t know what they are doing like Michael, Cathy and Jamillie. I hope I see my friends from Oregon there and my friend Marie, who got in trouble a few days ago. I hope everyone can make it!

Today Jerry and I kissed and made up. We had a huge misunderstanding about some things and I got it all straightened out. That is pretty good but regardless of whatever terms we are on, I will never really fall in love with him, even though he is really hot. I don’t think he is a person I can really commit with.

Lately I have been really irritated by Cathy, there are things she says that bother me and I wonder if she is trying to make me mad. Here are a few scenarios that happened, it pretty much started when we were talking on the phone about school and I said that I was really thankful that I was homeschooled for six years because I am a really friendly person who, (at the time) could easily be swayed in any direction. Then she got all snappy and said something like, it’s your own damn fault for being friends with everyone! Gosh, I was so shocked because this is my supposedly “best-friend” telling me this and what was the purpose of saying this in the first place? Nothing happened to me, and I am still a very friendly person and I still make friends with everyone but the only difference is that I know where I stand now. I can be friends with everyone but I won’t be influenced in a bad way. I was thinking maybe I offended her but if I did that would be stupid because I was talking only about myself. Also as a “best-friend” she can talk to me instead of randomly blurting things out, seriously what the heck.

Also yesterday when I had Michael and Cathy in a 3-way, stereotypes came up. Cathy was stereotyping herself and Asian people as smart and happy, while Michael on the other hand said that is not true because there are sad, emotional Asian people at his school. Then Michael said that it isn’t right to stereotype people like that, and Cathy replied well I can stereotype my own people, as if she owns them or something. I should have said that but I didn’t think about it entirely until I got off the phone. Today Cathy brought it up again in the library and said that Michael stereotypes with his anti-preppies shirt, I told her it was a joke but she said still it’s the same thing as stereotyping. That’s true but when Michael wears that shirt, the people who get offended, are people who consider themselves to be preps. Michael doesn’t like the stereotypical prep, ditzy, over exaggerated, bouncy and colorful. What I am trying to say is Michael isn’t stereotyping or finger-pointing anyone; it seems that people who associate themselves with this stereotype are the ones who get offended.

We just got our pumpkins today; we bought two big ones and three little ones. They come really cheap at Wal-Mart! The small ones were about 98 cents and the big ones were two dollars! We are going to carve them this Sunday after church or something. I am narrowing my design options. I want all of the pumpkins to be unique! Here is what I got so far…

Mushroom Tarts
makes 12 mini tarts

Pastry:
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter, diced
1/2 cup cream cheese, diced

Filling:
1 tbsp butter
8 oz fresh mushrooms, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 tbsp lemon juice
1/4 cup chopped green onion
2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
salt and pepper to taste

1. In a food processor, mix together all the ingredients for the pastry. Form into a ball, wrap and chill for 30 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, in a non-stick skillet, saute mushrooms and garlic in butter until soft and most of the liquid is evaporated. Add cream, lemon juice, green onion and parsley. Bring to a boil and remove from heat. Season to taste.

3. Remove pastry from fridge. It will be a little to soft for rolling, so break off 1″ balls, flatten them with the palm of your hand, and press them into the tart tins.

4. Fill each pastry shell with mushroom mixture and bake at 400F for 20 minutes until golden brown.

Boom Boom Big Mac Rap

Coffee House – Rooster Song

Coffee House – Three Sharp-tooth buzzards

Coffee House – Relapse

My friend April sent me this skit over myspace and it made me cry.

Yesterday Microsoft released their new Zune! I have to admit about for days before it came out I was a little skeptical about how it will turn out. I guess I wasn’t seeing eye-to-eye on what Microsoft was trying to get at but now that I have seen the videos of it on YouTube, I have to admit I was blown away! I am so glad Microsoft pulled through, the Zune two has everything I want and more! The things that stuck out was the new podcast feature, automatic syncing so I don’t have to manually put in new podcast episodes and the new touch pad.

The touch pad really got me confused the most but in the end turned out to be one of the best features! With the new navigation pad it is easy to get from point A to B. I am a traditional button clicker more than I am a gliding person, so with the new Zune you can do both! So regardless of what music player you were playing before, it is really easy to use. I love everything about it and I want to get it, maybe around the time the big “Thanksgiving Day Sales” roll around.

I would have to say the Zune 2 is an iPod killer! The first one was not. I have absolutely no complaints but I really don’t know what color to get but I can live. I just wish they were more unique with their color choices.

I want the 80gb, and it is going to go around for $249!

This flexible chair was made by a Tiwan College student. This chair can hold 16 people max!