Epitome of testing my patience

It has been forever since I have posted. I have been busy with work and life and didn't really feel like posting. And, I am a little burned out on posting on my own blog since that's what I do as my job.

Well now that school has started again, I inevitably ran in to.. school parking lot traffic. UGH. That is the only thing that I can say. People are ruthless. And annoying. And selfish. And rude. Completely, udderly, rude. They create their own lanes which not only jeopardize their safety but others as well. They push their way in without a thought and flip you the bird. They peel out and do donuts and race and weave through traffic in their brand new cars. I have a theory that all highschoolers except my friends live life as though it is bumper cars. They can crash their cars in to others and their mommies and daddies will just buy them new ones.

Now, I am a pretty level headed person. The only thing that makes me get irritated (other than social injustices and all that jazz...) is irresponsible drivers. You think you own the road, I get it. But the minute you try to swerve in between two cars and you spin out and kill someone, I hope you get in HUGE trouble. Like jail time, baby. Why must you be so freaking ignorant!? Your "joyride" could quickly become a "deathride" for an innocent person. Or their young child.

Yes, I know people who have been killed by ignorant drivers, or who have killed themselves in driving accidents.

I wish people didn't just write "R.I.P Joey who died in a car accident" on their Facebook or MySpace or back window and leave it at that. I wish they would change their outlook on how they live their lives. I wish everyone who knew someone who passed because of a driving accident changed their driving habits.

So anyways, I feel like this is the thing that makes me want to scream. There are 3 people in particular who I see at school on a daily basis who are incredibly horrible at driving. They are rude and inconsiderate to the max, and it takes every ounce of self control (and help from God) I contain to keep myself from politely telling them, "Hello *****, I just wanted to tell you that you are the worst driver ever. And, I hope that one day, you are pulled over for your ignorant driving and given a huge, fatty ticket." UGH! But, alas, I contain myself. Instead, I smile when I pass them in the hallway and keep FAR FAR away from them in the parking lot.


the end of my rant.



And remember. We must be the change we wish to see in the world- Ghandi.
I hope to be that change.

Dear Ms. Oprah.

I've been getting a lot of comments about why I'm so angry with Oprah, so I decided to sit down and type it all out at once so you can have the full perspective. I should probably wait to write this till I'm not so angry with her, but I wanted to get it all down so you could know where I was coming from. 

So on April 25th, a BUNCH of kids went out to their city centers and rallied in support of the Invisible Children in Uganda, Africa. I'm not exactly sure how the whole situation of "The Rescue" worked, but a celebrity was chosen from each area to "rescue" the area, kind of in a symbolic way in order to make the world of Hollywood understand and step-up to the plate. SOO, in San Diego, Vincent Jackson rescued our lovely city.. 

Chicago has been trying to get Oprah to rescue them SINCE THE 25TH! She has just dilly-dallied and has not done one thing nor given them the time of day. These kids have been camping out and some have been sleeping on the streets since the 25th! They're trying to get her to give her face to the Invisible Children campaign (as she has done before, she had the three guys that started the club on her show few months ago..) and she is not doing ANYTHING for them! 

The IC kids in Chicago even went to HARPO studios and tried to talk to her.. they stood OUTSIDE her door and waited for her for a while.. she didn't even send a producer out to talk to the guys, her HARPO people threatened to call the cops!!

SO, the newest update is that she is going to rescue the kids today on her show. Which, this really irks me because she didnt want to do anything to help these people with the cameras off, she wanted the whole world to see that she is all high and mighty and has a heart. Which, after this situation, I feel as though she is completely ridiculous and hypocritical.

If you "have a heart" for impoverished people and kids who are needy, HAVE A HEART ALL THE TIME. You can't just do it when the world is watching you.. that's not what being a good samaritan is all about.

So, bottom line- the kids waited 7 full days for Oprah to come to their rescue. Not only did kids in Chicago wait (they're the ONLY city in all of the participant cities that haven't been rescued yet) 7 days, but kids in Africa waited as well. Now, she's only helping them for publicity it seems. 

It's quite disappointing, Oprah. 

The end.

The Importance of a Mentor In A Girls Life

I grew up in the Church and I have always had women in my life who play a large part in not only my spiritual life but also in my life as a whole. They helped shape my choices and warned me against the poor ones, I am forever grateful for these women. 

Because I've always had mentors along with a wonderful mom whom I could tell anything to, I can't imagine how my life would be without these influences. Then I think about my friends and I realize- my life would not only be different, it would be empty. My mentors opened new doors for me and listened to me when I needed an ear. They always gave me advice but allowed me to choose my own paths. 

I have friends in my life who were not as lucky as I in regards to mentors. My friends don't always have close relationships with their moms and they are consequently left with no real women's wisdom except what their friends can give, which is not really wisdom-influenced. I have one friend in particular who not only doesn't have a wonderful relationship with her mom, but also has a pretty shaky relationship with her father. I don't blame her for this by any means, but I do see the difference in in influences behind her choices and ultimately her life compared with how I am influenced. 

I wish with all my heart that she had a good mentor in her life that she could talk to, (secretly I wish she had a mentor so she would knock some sense in to her), because sometimes her choices negatively influences how our friendship works. I think the fact that she does not have a close relationship with God cause her parents don't makes her and I butt heads sometimes. Her choices with who she dates, who she hangs out with, how she treats me are all affected and I truly believe it would all change if she had a girl she could talk to and that would give her advice. 

That being said, I feel like God has put me in girls' lives so I can grow up to be their mentors. I think that because of the experiences and hardships God has pulled me through I am destined to somehow be involved in high school girls' lives so I can be there for them like I wish someone was there for my friend. I feel like I am going to be in the position to "pass the baton" as Brian Berry says, to influence girls' lives like others have influenced mine so they can turn around and do the same. 

I might expand more on this later, but right now I need to finish homework.

I got this link from Brian Berry's blog

Apparently my favorite word is "Starbucks"

What I'm Doing To Be "Green"

I actually get asked quite often what I am doing to make my life more "green". I am trying to recall the things I do in order to make my life simpler and more eco-friendly. It takes some huge changes as well as some super minor things that everyone can easily achieve.

1) RECYCLE! I love recycling- It's a way for me to make money and help the environment! My parents have always offered us the money from recycling cans and all if we sort through it, so that has always been a part of my life. But-- in the past year or so, I have taken recycling into my own hands in many different aspects of my life. My school just received blue recycling bins for every class thanks to the ASB and we now recycle regularly. Unfortunately, not only cans and bottles are thrown into the recycling cans, so my school ships the recycling off to some plant and they sort it and get all the profits from it. I've become labeled the "greeney" at my school, so whenever I see someone throw a plastic bottle or can into a regular trash can, I pick it up with my bare hands (gross, I know... but I always carry hand sanitizer and I wash my hands immediately after) and place it in the blue cans. It's pretty ridiculous how people don't take the extra 3 steps to throw the recyclables into the blue bin. It's ridiculous and frustrating.

2) Take shorter showers: I used to take 10-15 minute showers. Now, it's about 1:30 to 2:00. (Yes, I time myself...) It all started when I started to be involved with WalkTheirWalk (http://www.walktheirwalk.com/) and realized how truly precious water is to our world. So, I cut them down. For a while, it was a game for me, I would race my time and see how much i could cut the time down by. Now, it's routine. I have yet to calculate how much water I am actually saving, but my logic is that the shorter I can make them, the more I offset the water Starbucks wastes! Woohoo!

3) Turn off the light! My mom always got mad at me for leaving my lights on, (I have a feeling she was actually the one that planted the 'live a greener life' seeds into my life, although she would never admit that) and so now I am more conscientious of how much electricity I waste. Although turning off the lights is a great start, replacing all your light bulbs with energy-efficient fluorescent bulbs makes a HUGE difference in our energy consumption. They pay for themselves-- TRULY!

4)Unplug it! If you unplug things when they aren't in use, it really saves a bunch of electricity as well. Things left plugged in, even if they are not in use, still suck energy current out of the socket! (They now sell super nifty 'current stopping' power strips at stores but they're pretty pricey- I say just unplug it!)

5) Save gas- drive smarter! There is this rad thing that my family found out about called "hypermiling" which increases your MPG pretty dramatically. Google it- you'll be surprised at how much you squeeze out of your tank. My MPG went from 19-20 to around 23-27. It's pretty cool! Even though gas has hit under the $2 mark, it's still necessary for us to be conscientious of our carbon emissions and our gas consumption!

These are just the 5 that I could think of off the top of my head right now, I'll update this when I think of more.

The most important thing that I have learned from this whole experience of "greening" up my life is that this saves money! Everything that I do is so much easier and more cost-efficient for me and my family, so it's completely a win-win situation.

Yay life.

Yay GREEN life.

My Starbucks Boycot

So after a few months of Starbucks boycotting, I am still on the verge of whether I am going to be returning or not. Brian Berry asked one of the Starbucks' managers some questions regarding recycling and their water consumption, and it answered some of my questions as well as confirmed the sad reality that water is in fact being wasted. 

I started to receive tweets from Starbucks and she said something about their (PRODUCT RED) campaign and all that that involves. Apparently, 5 cents from the purchase of the (PRODUCT RED) drinks is going to be donated to Africa charities. Cool? I'm not sure.

I mean, obviously, that is AWESOME. Starbucks and Africa-- two great things put together! But.. 5 cents from these drinks is approximately 1% of the price of the drink, if you get a Grande. Which I think is pretty ridiculous. Come on-- you're a multi million dollar company, you can afford more than 5 cents per cup. AND, it's only 3 specific drinks from the whole list of all the drinks available. That is even more ridiculous to me. What if I don't want a Peppermint Mocha Twist but I still want my 1% to go to the kids in Africa? This whole campaign is very confusing. 

So, I tried to put it in perspective. I figured (with my mom's help, of course) that I should try to figure out how much Starbucks donates to charities aside from this new campaign. So I googled it and didn't find jack. I'll have to get back to that later- but here is what I did find...

     Starbucks has the campaign "Grounds for your Garden" and has since 1999- a great thing for our environment and our landfills because coffee grounds make up an astounding percentage of our landfill space believe it or not... 

     In 2004, Starbucks reduced the size of their napkins and store garbage bags which reduced their solid waste by 1.8 million pounds. That's pretty sick...

     Apparently, the FDA approved the first ever approval to use recycled content in food packaging for Starbucks coffee cups. That's a major thing for me too- although they don't allow us to readily recycle the cups they give us, at least they've been recycled once before!)

   The 2005 National Recycling Coalition Recycling Works Award went to Starbucks because of their contributions to the environment. (the pessimistic part of me says that the NRCRW doesn't have very high standards but good job Starbucks..)

   Starbucks beans are COMPLETELY AND SOLELY FAIR TRADE. To me, the people and the environment and the economy all work together. It all works together and this is super vital to the eco-friendlyness of Starbucks to me.

     Starbucks was ranked #15 on the EPA's Top 25 Green Power Partners for purchases of renewable energy. Interesting...

On a negative note... Starbucks wastes 6,181,626 gallons of water a day (according to the UK Sun) In some ways, that outweighs some of the above things..

Thus, my quest for eco-frendliness continues. Hopefully a "green" coffee-house comes close to me because I really am missing my coffee. 

I'm sure this will be an ever going debate for me, this is not over yet!

Just some thoughts

Have you ever wondered why the "peace sign" (the circle one with the lines not the finger V) is so much of a fad right now? I thought about getting a peace sign for my back window of my car; two seconds later I realized that I had said some not so nice things to the guy who cut me off on the freeway and relinquished the idea of the peace sign. Mostly because I would feel hypocritical, and partly because I would feel like I was just another one of those people with the peace sign on the car. To me, "peace" is not just a little thing or a cool sticker to put on your car; it's a way of living. It's a time for one to deliberately live in a "peaceful" manner. It's deliberately altering every aspect of your life in order to live peacefully in the world.  So, I guess, yeah in a way I am what Todd Tolson calls, "a 21st-century hippie." I never wanted to admit that because I don't want to conform to the trends of America. Being a "hippie" is so "cool" right now, it's the "hip'' thing to do, and being "hip" is so not me. 

(P.S. I bet you haven't actually wondered that, honestly.. but oh well)

Buddha put it like this: "Better than a thousand hollow words is one that brings peace." Man. Talk about a loaded statement. He was wise.

A Psalmist put it like this (and I personally like this one better): Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it

So you can't just say "oh yeah, world peace, world peace" you have to pursue it and live it out. 

That's enough of that.  

So another tangent: 

My new favorite CS Lewis quote:

   If I find in myself desires nothing in this world can satisfy,

   I can only conclude that I was not made for here.

AGAIN! What a loaded statement! I can't even begin to imagine how to dissect that statement. God is good, that's all I can say. 

And I guess I'll end with that: God is good.