So, to fix that, things will change over the course of the next couple of weeks:

1. Dark Rose will no longer feature a personal blog. There will be updates, but it will be more like “HEY GUYS LOOK WHAT I MADE LOL” instead of “Now let us discuss the undermined importance of the grasshopper to our society” or whatever. The blogging has been my largest issue for the longest time because I already have a private journal where I write about my personal life in much more detail, and I am not interested in sharing that stuff on a public blog regardless of how much I am trying to open myself up. Also, most of the topics I would write about have already been done to death and covered from every angle. Yes, even the squid angle. So updates will be more or less of a different variety, to take the pressure off of myself to write it and to take it off of you to actually read the crap I write.
2. Now, even though the blog will no longer be totally opinionated rambles on whatever passes my fancy at the time, this site will remain personal. Things I like will still be on here and I can promise that those things will be updated frequently. I will also link to my profiles on networking sites like last.fm and Goodreads for the rare person interested in that sort of thing.
3. The ask me a question thing is staying. Period.
4. I actually do finally have inspiration for a new layout, so we’ll definitely be seeing one of those soon.

This in mind, my orientation begins August 30th (the same damn day I was supposed to go see Jeff Dunham with a certain someone, AGHHHH). The site will reflect these features by then, but they might not be as updated as frequently as they will be over the summer. And to my fellow Quilting Bee members who are waiting for a response from me regarding trades and activities - I am not ignoring you, I’ve just been a little busy, and I will totally reply to you tonight after I get home from work. ♥

So, first of all, a couple of observations I’ve made while asking for donations:

1. The reaction to the question of donating is always interesting. Some customers are very happy to donate two or three dollars at a time and others only need me to get to the word “donate” before they interrupt me to ask what their total is. The responses I receive the most are “not today” and “I already have,” although I’ve also received the rare “the government already takes away enough of my money, and now you want some too?” statement.
2. When I ask, I make sure I ask everybody. I don’t skip someone because they’re paying with food stamps; actually, you’d be surprised how many of them would be happy to donate to so and so organization even when they themselves are receiving a little help from the government. And for those customers that seem 100% sure to turn me down just from the look of them… I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been secretly surprised by the generosity of the customers. Even the most intimidating looking person is willing to help out others.

It’s great that even in economic hardship, there are people who are willing to help out a cause. However, it all depends on the cashier, too. Some cashiers don’t care enough, are lazy, or just don’t remember to ask when they are ringing up orders. People are generous enough to donate, but how are they going to know that a donation drive is happening if the cashier doesn’t ask?

If you have never worked as a cashier at a store that does donation drives, then you may not know that companies try to provide incentive to get them out there and asking so that an optimal amount of money can be raised. Popping the question isn’t exactly an altruistic thing; the vast majority of us have an ulterior motive because of it and the donation drive becomes a competition. Look at mine. The person who gets the most donations per hour (number of donations divided by hours worked during the drive) wins an iPod and a $25 gift card for iTunes. The store also offers other prizes and posts the list of prizes on a poster by the clock so everyone is aware.

And while it’s great that the store is trying to generate an interest in the drive, I don’t think this is the right way to do it. No, I don’t have a better suggestion, yes, I know that the best way to get someone to do something for others is to offer a personal incentive for them. But it’s not right. This is for a charity and it should not be made into a competition for some material possessions. Just the other day, mom went into K-Mart, and you know what the cashier said to her? “Please donate, these two other girls are beating me!!” Yeah, that’ll get me to part with my money. I’m more likely to donate out of the goodness of my heart, or even the pressure of feeling guilty if I don’t, than I am because of a petty competition behind the scenes. It belittles the purpose of the drive and it discourages me from even thinking of donating there again, even if I believe in the cause.

Rewarding people for raking in donations is all well and good, but why not make the prizes a secret thing that you don’t even know about until you’ve done enough to earn them? This way, the right people are rewarded and the spirit of the charity is kept intact. The problem is, just how many people would participate with this method? Unfortunately, I don’t think there would be many.

I know it’s not especially right of me to be speaking out against this; hell, to be completely honest, I just received prizes the other day for my own drive. Not to sound holier than thou, but, despite what my coworkers think, I don’t especially care about the prizes. I ask because it comes with my job, it’s nice to help out, and it’s uplifting to see that there are generous strangers out there, breaking all preconceived notions and molds they were originally thought to fit into. There is so much potential in everyone, coworkers and customers alike, to make the donation drives successful, and that is exactly why it’s so horrible to see the integrity of the charity destroyed before it even touches the customer.

I hear this statement everywhere these days, especially in the form of “this was meant to be.” As a consistent agnostic, leaning toward atheist individual… I disagree. Admitting that an outside force is out there controlling what happens to us to any extent is the same as confirming the existence of a higher power, unless you like to make the joke that everything happens for a reason even if it’s “just because.”

A lot of things do happen for a reason. Girls get pregnant because they’ve been inseminated, people decide to go to college because they think it’s a good investment - hell, I ate Cinnamon Toast Crunch this morning because I felt like it. But these are things that happened based on conscious decision. For whatever reason, they were made to happen because someone wanted them to. But it wasn’t God, and it wasn’t an outside force either, not unless peer pressure was involved. I am of the opinion that if God exists, he/she/it is way too busy doing Godly stuff to watch every human being simultaneously, but I’ll get into that rant at another time.

The problem I have with someone declaring that an event was meant to happen is that it is essentially a romanticized view of the world based on ideals rather than realism. So you meet someone that you really hit it off with at the same place at the same time; there is another word for this, and it is called coincidence (unless of course you or that person purposely set things up so you could meet). And while I agree that a string of coincidences seems highly unlikely, well… what percent of the world believes in Darwin’s evolution theory again? Adaption itself is not a coincidence in theory, but what I am pointing at here in particular is the evolution of life itself. Life started with bacteria and tiny molecules, right? (That’s the theory I’m sticking with, anyway.) Now, how long do you think it took its development to actually take place, and while we’re on that train of thought, how many times do you think it failed before things worked together sufficiently? The amount of times it took is coincidence, as is the success of the adaption in question. Trial and error.

I mean, let’s say I’m walking and I trip and fall, causing me to earn yet another scar for my leg. Was that meant to be? No, that was me being very clumsy and not watching what I was doing carefully enough. Let’s adjust it. Let’s say I’m walking behind someone, trip, fall, and land on them. We then introduce ourselves, get talking, become friends, get married, have children and are eventually buried next to each other. Was that meant to be? In a way, yes, it was. Meeting them was a complete accident, but the communication afterward opened more doors to possible futures.

Do you see what I’m getting at? Your life is what you do with it, your relationships are built upon the actions between you and the other person, your talents are yours and formed by the amount of practice you have at them, and ultimately, your future is only created based on what you have or have not done to achieve it. It is a disservice to the amount of effort you deposit into your life to lay it all down on God’s table. Stand up and take a bow; this success is yours, with maybe a bit of blame on luck.

P.S. I know this isn’t the best blog post I’ve ever written, but I knew that if I didn’t publish it today it would never get done. I’ll revisit it later with a hopefully more tied in approach to (my) life with less vague examples, I just needed to get this out there.

One of the things that I’ve noticed recently with my websites is that I can whip up a design pretty quickly for just about everything but my personal website. My fanlistings? Cake, I remember getting four or five layouts done over the course of a week for them. My friends? The design I made for Kae took me one night and I think it both fits her personality and website fairly well and also looks rather nice.

But man, if it’s for me? I can’t do it. I just can’t. It took me a few weeks to make the current layout too, and even then I don’t think it especially screams my name. This site is mine, it should have “AMBER” written in bolded, italic, neon, capital serif letters (okay, maybe not neon, I hate neon) stamped all over it. Because your website’s design is supposed to reflect who you are, right? At least, that’s what I always read, same goes for content too.

Actually, maybe my current layout does say enough about me. “Hi, I’m Amber, and I am completely uninspired at the moment. In the mean time: my fondness for typography and color use, let me show you them.” Don’t get me wrong, I do like my layout, but I feel like it’s a fairly weak version of my skills. I’d like to feature my art in a design again and make it truly mine, instead of using precise preset shapes; that’s not me, I’m fully capable of making my own stuff, so what am I doing? And yet every time I do go to make a new theme, I end up losing my inspiration or getting a new one. So often do I find myself loving a layout that I’m in the process of making and then suddenly trashing it because I began to hate it half an hour later.

Usually when I lose my inspiration for something, I try to listen to music and get a feel for the outcome I’m looking for. Once I find the song that fits the idea I’m going with most, I listen to it on repeat. Over and over. As I do this habitually on a regular basis, it does not drive me insane and instead keeps me going with my idea. I also like to go to Color Schemers and Color Lovers to try and find schemes that I like enough to incorporate into a design. Ironically, I’ve been uploading color schemes that I’ve both used in past designs and randomly come up with and yet I’m still completely stuck. Apparently there’s ideas in there, I just have to force ‘em out…

So, on Wednesday, I had to watch U-scan for about an hour. During this hour, I perform a simple transaction for cigarettes - ironically, someone I graduated with asked for them (making this ten times worse). I ID the person, scan the product, she pays, and we’re both off on our merry way. Or so I think, until I’m sitting in the truck on the way home and think it’s kind of odd that eight packs of cigarettes only rang up for $7.22. And then I realized… that I only scanned one pack.

At first it was like a playful joke with myself, and so I brushed it off and stared at the sunset. Except that after that awful realization, I couldn’t get it out of my fucking head. Had I really done that? Really? Then the dreaded question: Should I say something?

Anyone that I’ve talked to on AIM during the time in between Wednesday and today are well aware that I’ve been scattering my brains over this situation. In my heart, I knew I had to tell someone. My brain, on the other hand, was screaming NAY, DAMMIT, NAY!!! A breakdown as to why:

• The Pros of Telling: Wouldn’t be hiding anything, wouldn’t feel as awful, and it wouldn’t come back to bite me in the ass if they found out for themselves.
• The Cons of Telling: I could be fired!

While there are more pros, the single con is clinching. No one wants to lose their job, especially not now, and I also really like it there and have made some of what I would call friends. As a result of my dilemma, I sought help and advice from my friends and family; my friends said I should say something, and my family said I shouldn’t. With encouragement from Kae and Larissa, I planned on telling a superior about what happened, even though I constantly brought it up, almost as if I wanted them to tell me I shouldn’t. I felt like it had to be done, but I didn’t want to do it. Receiving a call to come in two hours early from the same person I planned to confront didn’t make it any easier.

The actual scene at work was almost nothing, though. I walked in, I clocked in, and then I went straight to my supervisor and asked if I could speak to her in private. I told her what happened, apologized, and offered to cover the loss with my paycheck, and all she said was to be careful. I lost the company $50 worth of cigarettes… and all she told me was to be careful. I feel relieved that I’m not in trouble (as far as I know), and that I told someone, but at the same time it just seems like I would have received some sort of slap on the wrist, an audit, something. Maybe I’m just a masochist?

With the result in mind, I feel kind of silly fretting over whether to be honest or not. In fact, it’s kind of disgusting, how much I had to consider it before deciding to be up front. To be honest. Is it natural to have this great inner conflict? Is this a personal thing, or a result of the state of the world? A combination? What if I hadn’t said anything? Would I have done the same thing if there had been absolutely no way to trace it back to me? If there was an alternate universe where I didn’t say a word, what would I be feeling right now?

And most importantly, what would you have done?

Now that I have money and work in a supermarket of all places, I am at liberty to buy skin care products for myself and see what works and what doesn’t. It’s almost intimidating to go to the beauty section and see the various bottle shapes and wonder which one to invest in. While it has only been a little less than two weeks since I started trying out some new products, I’ve already developed an opinion on some of the products that I have been using and thought I would share them with you today.

1. Neutrogena Transparent Facial Bar

   This is actually a product that I’ve been using for about a year and a half. I like these bars a lot because they’re kind to my sensitive skin and really do help keep acne at bay. Before I started using them, I’d have pimples all over the place and get them randomly, but I’ve only been getting them here and there every few weeks and sometimes even months. I will say that, as with all products, you want to rinse your skin really thoroughly after washing your face with it because it will make your skin dry in those areas where you didn’t rinse enough. On the other hand, the facial bars are also good for moisturizing the skin a little bit, because I used to get dry patches throughout the day prior to using them.

   Price: They cost differently depending on where you go, but at my supermarket they’re about a dollar.
   Verdict: Thumbs up!

2. Clean & Clear Morning Burst Detoxifying Facial Cleanser

   I was very excited when I bought this because it’s not so much the surface of my skin that I dislike, but I think the red blotches underneath it are caused by trapped dirt that my trusty Neutrogena bar can’t really get to. I wanted a cleanser to really get down there and do the job, and since I read a lot of nice reviews about Clean & Clear on product pages and was entranced by the commercials (yeah, okay, I’m gullible, sue me), I thought I’d give one of their products a shot.

   The detoxifying cleanser has bursting beads inside it that are supposed to release antioxidants and make your skin feel all fresh, clean and healthy. When I first applied it, I felt very clean, felt the tingle, and totally thought “WOW, I DON’T REGRET BUYING THIS AT ALL!”

   Two days later? Yeah, I got a big ass pimple on my cheek that’s actually still stuck on my face. I’m also having smaller breakouts around my mouth and on my nose, and seeing as I haven’t even had a breakout for months, I’m going to blame it on this product. It also dried some of my skin in the same areas where there are now pimples. Maybe I didn’t wash it thoroughly enough, or maybe the ingredients are too strong for sensitive skin, but I would not recommend this product to anyone who isn’t planning on joining a chess club.

   So, while it does wake you up, soften your skin and make you feel fresh, it does nothing good for your complexion.

   Price: $6-$8
   Verdict: No, just no.

3. Clean & Clear Oil-Free Dual Action Moisturizer

   I bought this moisturizer with the cleanser to help make my skin softer and protect it a little better. For the most part, my feelings on this are mostly apathetic, because it is supposed to keep my skin healthy and help protect it from breakouts, the latter of which has clearly failed (i.e. giant cheek pimple and smaller breakouts). It’s also supposed to keep my skin from forming those dry patches, which it also didn’t do after the cleanser did its, uh, thing.

   So really, my skin hasn’t really improved or been exacerbated as a result of using this product.

   Price: $4-$5
   Verdict: Eh. It’s pretty ineffective, so I wouldn’t recommend it to you, but it could just be me, too.

4. St. Ives Apricot Scrub (Renew and Firm)

   I actually bought this on a recommendation from a YouTube video, because the girl actually went through and explained how it helped and I felt like I could really trust her. I know that sounds weird, but I’d rather buy something on a recommendation than on a random whim. So anyway, I bought it and brought it home, and… it’s amazing. There are grains in the cream that smooth your skin out (though don’t scrub the hell out of your skin with it, and it’s precisely because of those grains that you don’t want to do that) and make it so the cleanser can penetrate the skin and actually get down in there and clear it out.

   On its own, the scrub made my skin really soft, and I noticed a difference in my skin within the first few HOURS. The clear bumps I had on my forehead vanished and my skin became really polished. It has also been very helpful with getting rid of the Clean & Clear massacre that was my face. My pimple is still here, but now it’s more of a dull patch of color on my skin as opposed to the pulsating volcano it was before I bought it. (I bought the scrub a few days after the cleanser, so it hasn’t taken that long for it to kick in.)

   You might be thinking that the renew and firm is a bit ridiculous for me to have when I’m 19 right now, but trust me, I’m not using it because I think I look totally old (people think I’m 15 at work, dude). I chose it because it has alpha hydroxy in it, and so it gets rid of all my gross little dead skin cell thingies. It also made my skin look brighter (I didn’t think it was possible LOL), but in a good way!

   Price: I bought mine for $2.99, but it’s also a sale item at my store. :3
   Verdict: BUY IT.

After all of this, I’m ironically still using the Clean & Clear products in conjunction with St. Ives and Neutrogena. What can I say? I’m cheap! Plus, there’s still a lot of stuff in their containers and I’m thinking that I wasn’t rinsing well enough when I first started using the cleanser, which certainly couldn’t have helped the Squidtastic version of the Red Scare. However, once they’re through (or if I get another breakout), I’ll be switching to a more gentle cleanser and hopefully a more effective moisturizer.

Anyway, I hope this has been helpful or at least amusing to read, and I’ll be sure to share any further notable results.

The list so far…

1. Making bead creatures without templates.
2. Watching all of my movies three or four times and then watching all commentaries and extras the DVDs offer.
3. Experimenting with makeup.
4. Playing Pokémon obsessively.
5. Drawing, drawing, drawing.
6. Roleplaying with original characters.
7. Reading Stephen King book after Stephen King book.
8. Writing or beginning short stories that I tend to leave in perpetual hiatus.
9. Cross stitching.
10. Playing piano or trying to play my violin.
11. Reading fan translations of manga on One Manga.

Sometimes I drop a hobby and then come back to it later. I find it all very frustrating because I have wanted a strong interest in something new for some time now and simply can’t seem to find that rock. Oh well. Maybe now that I have some money in my pocket, I can experiment more. I’m thinking that I can probably find something more in art, but with a different approach. Bah humbug!

I was amused because I realized that I had been having a silent flashback to the old days when I was six or seven and used to lie awake in bed just like I was, only back then I had a frame for my bed instead of just having my mattress on the floor. I was a really imaginative child back then and believed in magic and ghosts and everything to the fullest extent. And back then, one of my core bedtime beliefs was that, if I slept with my feet near the end of the bed, the devil (or another entity that could easily hide itself under my bed, like the bogeyman) would grab me by the ankles and pull me into his world. I was especially afraid because it was based off of a story that my mom told me from her own days as a kid. Apparently a man died by his bed and a priest declared that the devil had pulled him off of it and onto the floor, intending to take his corpse hostage. This frightened me.

I used to believe there were monsters in my closet that were waiting for the opportune moment to strike. I also used to think that Chuckie the Red Headed Horror Doll™ was underneath my bed with a knife ready to slit my calves like he does to some unfortunate character in one of his many movies.

My other overbearing fear was that vampires were planning to sweep across my bedroom at night to suck my blood. I of course took countermeasures for this, stuffing a pillow over my head and holding it there with my arm, and as an extra safety precaution I held the blanket over my head, too. This way I would be woken up if one tried to attack me while I was asleep.

In spite of no longer fearing these things, I still curl my feet underneath me before I go to sleep. I still wrap myself in a blanket so that my neck won’t be exposed. And if I had my bed frame, I would still jump onto my mattress in order to evade any chance of contact with Chuckie’s knife or an extended rotting hand. In spite of having grown a few inches taller, of having been on the Earth for several more years, that part of myself still lives on. Is it just me? Do we ever grow up? Or, as children, are our imaginations so vivid that we cannot overcome our oldest of fears in spite of knowing that ye olde logic no longer holds true? I’ve slept with my head underneath the covers for so long that it’s hard to think about surfacing. But then, if I were to do so…

Would it all go away?

Yes, Google. I have loved Google since I was nine and discovered that there were rivals to Yahoo and Ask Jeeves. I search something in Google and it finds what I’m looking for. It has always seemed to produce better results than other search engines both in terms of on-topic quality and quantity. So they are tracking my personal information, big deal, a small price to pay, really, for such a useful commodity. But then, I’m not exactly on a super secret mission, either. I don’t care that it knows I am looking for information on papaya fruit at this very moment in time. No, I will not tell you why I am researching papaya.

Anyway, I’ve been much more involved with Google for the past two years. I opened a Gmail account in February of 2007, and really, I again can’t help but compare it to Yahoo and love it all the more. I love that I have tons of space that I have barely touched even though I have only deleted spam emails over the past two years. I love that I can label my emails and color code them, even if I am too lazy to actually take it up on the offer. I have also found it very useful that I don’t have to refresh it in order to check for new emails. GTalk is also nice for when I don’t share an instant messaging program with someone or if someone I haven’t entrusted with my user name wants a quick chat, though I use it once in a blue moon.

So far, the thing I’ve found most helpful is iGoogle. The fact that I have so many options and different ways to customize everything just rocks my world. The apps are my favorite part because I can keep a lot of tabs on different things. I log in, there’s the weather, a quick notification of my Gmail’s current state, personal notes for myself, a quick Wikipedia search, my horoscope that is eerily on target rather often, and as of tonight… Google Reader.

Sfljdsklfjdsf Google Reader is the most amazing tool ever known to this giant squid. Larissa said it before: I don’t know how I ever got along without it. Granted, before tonight, I was never subscribed to feeds. Sure, I’ve got one, but for your convenience, not mine. I know they’re useful because things are ten times easier to keep track of, but I’ve just been so used to visiting websites for their updates that it put me off a bit. Because then it seems less personal; why go to the website if you can read the update right in your feed?

Ah, but this entry is about Google and its various and lovable tools, not the pros and cons of feeds, so bah humbug to you, random but interesting topic #47! In any case, Google Reader is amazing. I like that I can read one feed separately or altogether depending on the date of post (or whatever other means I want to organize them by, really). I’ve already got 11 feeds added, but that’s not counting webcomics because I’m not sure if I want to ruin the fun of making myself wait to see them. On the plus side, this will make me 95% more likelier to read all the websites I mean to and possibly make more internet friends. My theory on that is, the more I read your blog, the more I’ll want to comment and get to know you instead of focusing on my own petty interests. Like papaya.

So, yes. I love Google very much and it is the very first thing I sign into after I reach my homepage (CNN, which I find I read less and less as more days pass after the election). It makes me much more interested in the internet and makes my life far easier regardless of how stubborn I am about change. And that is awesome.

When I get home I throw off my work clothes, get into my comfortable Amber clothes and curl up in the corner in silence, not wanting to move, think or speak for at least two hours. When my parents see this, they think I’ve had a bad day, but more often than not it’s just me being entirely consumed by drowsiness after six hours of talking to people I don’t know. I suppose the smile I wear reminiscent to the Cheshire cat’s when greeting customers also plays a small part in this. If anything, the only time I’m aware of my annoyance is when I’m sitting in the truck on the way home, and all I want to do is sit in silence and stare at whatever is being pretty at the moment, and yet dad keeps talking and talking and talking, and in a circle too, more often than not.

One of the things I’ve noticed is that I feel ten times more drained when I have had a bad experience with a customer. I’ve had an angry old lady call me asinine, I’ve had an old man tell me I shouldn’t work where I do, one man told the next customer “good luck” in line, and I get a lot of silent “Why did I choose your lane, why can’t you go faster, I hate you very much” stares. Though, that’s not to say I haven’t had a lot of nice people too. I mean, on my first day, a man tipped his hat to me and thanked me very much because I did an awesome job bagging his groceries. A lot of people have told me that even though I am obviously new (I practically have a sign on my forehead) I am doing a good job. Then again, they might also be cursing me miles away.

Another thing I’ve witnessed is the rate at which smiles catch on. I always greet the customer with a “HI!!!!!” so jubilant that even the most intimidating looking ones smile back and say “Hi!” and so on, but then they go back to frowning afterward when I start putting their stuff away, so… heheh.

My coworkers are very kind to me too. Even when I do something incredibly (why not use the old lady’s word here?) asinine they fix it for me and show me how to do it properly, after which I usually never do it again. A lot of them give me tips on the spur of the moment too, which is very helpful. The only thing I’m really still having trouble with is categorizing where food should go in bags and doing it in a fast manner. Larry is constantly asked for advice on this matter. XD

So, yes: I am generally doing well at work, it’s just that small amount of customers that are draining my lifespan away. If you have any tips for this supermarket cashier, please do feel free to give them because I am in desperate need of any help I can get. I wish there was an online handbook of PLU codes so I could memorize them, though… I already memorized bananas, broccoli crowns, tomatoes on the vine, green bell peppers, cucumbers and green beans. I’ve almost got bagels and donuts down, but not quite. Damn items priced by weight and quantity!