The Beach

We are going to the beach! It will be our first time in several years, and miraculously all six of us will make it. We're driving to Atlanta this afternoon, fetching Josiah from his Scout trip tomorrow afternoon, and heading toward Hilton Head, South Carolina, tomorrow night (question: was the comma after South Carolina necessary?). This post is not so much to make you jealous (hehe) as it is to warn about a lack of posts in the coming week. When we get back next Friday, it will be time to leave for T and A's wedding.

And you know what that means...no Sonic for over a week!

Peace out, homies.

Missing You, Etc.

Ohhh how I am beginning to feel it. I'm not going back to Hillsdale! I am parted forever from the joys of undergraduate life. The excitement of moving back into the dorms. Seeing friends for the first time after a long summer. The sweltering heat of Michigan in mid-August. Catching the first glimpses of favorite professors. Long lines at registration. Bewildered freshmen. The bookstore. The glorious few days before classes begin. All no more. I think I'm going to go cry.

Maybe the attractiveness of the new school year is what keeps me coming back. I have always looked forward to it, no matter how torturous the previous year was. New beginnings, new resolutions, new possibilities, new things to learn. As much as I love summer (and I love it a whole lot) I couldn't linger here forever. And this fact prevents me from despairing in my laziness.

One more day at Sonic and two more at the pool before Hilton Head Island with the family. Then it will be time to repack for Aaron and Tiffany's wedding and meeting my host family in Georgetown. When I finally return to Kingsport the pool will be on school hours, i.e. only weekends. I'll have a haircut and a couple more weeks at Sonic, then it's off to DC. Off to the unknown. I have such a long to-do list, but I can't write it down since I don't have a planner. Buying a planner is like number one on my to-do list.

But oh, those summer nights

Nights really are the best of summer. I remember evenings when I was about twelve years old, when our parents were out to dinner and Caleb and I would have the best time running around the backyard with the neighbors. We played tag and caught fireflies and wondered if we could see bats flying around. Being out there in the waning light all by ourselves made me feel cool and grown up. Josiah wasn't allowed to stay up past eight, so he had to go to bed when it was still light outside. He used to sneak out of bed and watch us from his bedroom window...poor JoJo.

Nights at the pool are beautiful, too. The sun has ceased scorching my skin but the pavement is still warm and the sky glows in the west. Most of the people have gone home so the water is peaceful. Only a few families linger, talking and laughing.

Tonight I got to go to Taste of Tri Cities with my mom and Julie. Area restaurants set up a row of tents in a park across from the stadium where Fun Fest concerts are held. Tonight was Gavin DeGraw. We got our sesame chicken with rice and an egg roll, our black bean hummus with pita bread, spread out our blanket, and enjoyed the music filtering clearly over the trees. And now for some pictures.

The tent with the hummus:

American flag over the stadium:

View of the street:

It was a good night. Good night!

Sonic Stories

I just got home from another night of closing at Sonic. I close three nights this week; last week I closed four. Sonic is not my favorite place to work for many reasons: closing at midnight, having lazy managers, and dealing with unwanted...advances.

There's this one other carhop - a short, shrimpy guy with bleached-blond hair and a voice which most people in drive-through respond to with "ma'am". He's really nerdy, but not really going anywhere fast in his life, as he's twenty-two and "thinking about looking into" attending the community college. He's constantly saying things like "Katie," (or whomever it is) "I have a question. Where do you think black holes lead to?" His catchphrase is "or whatnot" and if I hear that phrase ever again, so help me... Anyway, not a bad kid, but not really my type. Out of the blue, he asked me a couple weeks ago if I wanted to see a movie with him. Fortunately I was going to a picnic with my family that day, but I panicked and immediately made plans for the rest of my days off so I'd have an excuse lined up.

Then tonight I found out how desperate he really is. He asked me again what I was doing tomorrow, to which I responded I was working at the pool. He said that the reason he was asking was that he "and a group of nerdy friends were going to see the Incredible Hulk in Johnson City" and I reacted something along the lines of "oh, that's nice". But he apparently had asked another girl if she wanted to see Hancock. So I was a bit relieved that I wasn't being singled out. But still the guy kind of freaks me out.

But the unsolicited attentions tonight became stranger as I was taking out one of the last orders of the night. It was a man and his wife in a pickup. The guy was talking on his cell on speaker phone, and when I came out with their food, phone-guy was like "do you have a pretty little girl serving you there at Sonic" and truck-guy was like "I don't know I can't really see her" and then turned to look at me. He expressed his great appreciation for my beauty, and then phone-guy proceeded to hit on me via...the phone. He even yelled out "Goodnight, honey!" as I was going back inside.

Oh, and I can't forget the car full of guys who always come by after playing soccer. They are really funny but quite obviously high schoolers. Tonight one of them said "My friend wants to know how old you are", and when I responded twenty-two he said "My friend is twenty-two also." Okayyyyyyyy.

Then I came home and my mom asked, "How was Sonic tonight?"

Update!

Days on which no new blog posts pop up in Google Reader are very sad days indeed. I realized how much I enjoy getting updates, because with most of you it is my main means of communication. Then I realized that I should probably update more myself, because (far be it from me to presume, but) maybe other people enjoy reading my blog as much as I enjoy reading theirs.

Today's topic is how terrible it is to be an almost-grown-up.

- Parents want to tag along to friends' weddings so they can meet your new employer/landlord.
- You do not have your own house/apartment nor do you really have a place in your parent's house (nor do you really want a place in your parent's house).
- Your schedule and goals do not always line up with your family's, and yet you are still a part of your family.
- You do not have a real job and have to keep really crazy hours and hang out with drug addicts and drama-enamoured teenagers in order to make money to pay for your continued education.
- There is constant tension between what you think your parents want you to do and what you think you want to do and what you really want to do.
- You have a feeling that you are acting very immaturely to be complaining about parents and your rather fortunate situation, but you can't help the frustrated feelings sometimes.

Sugar Free Month

Whereas I admit my addiction and the fact that I am powerless to change without help...
Whereas eating sweets is one of the main deterrants of me exercising...
Whereas I have personally consumed in less than one summer the sugar quotia of a small country...

...I hereby proclaim July as Sugar Free Month. Updates to follow.

P.S. In the process of writing this post I have acquired two compatriots, Josiah and Julie. All are welcome to take part. ;)

Mainly About Work

So I'm going to try to post more often, but that probably means the quality won't be very high. Just a warning.

I worked 9.5 hours today - not too many and not too few. If I could have those kind of hours consistently it would be nice but it's usually pretty sporadic. That's one thing I'm looking forward to in my future career, whatever it may be: regular hours. I know for a teacher things are not as standardized as an office job and a lot of work comes home for evenings and weekends, but it must be better than what I'm doing now. I'll be able to get up early in the morning and go to bed at a decent hour at night. Won't that take some adjustment!

Tonight at Sonic the head manager was talking about the minimum wage increase coming later in July. He said that companies everywhere are scrambling to find ways to absorb the extra cost that it will entail and that a lot of jobs wil be lost. That's not news to me, of course, but I kind of wish people would think things through a bit more before passing these kinds of laws. Apparently one way Sonic is considering controlling costs is to lower carhops' wages to dining wages (somewhere around $2.15 an hour) and indicate on the receipt to the customer that tips are now expected. I don't know if and when this is going to be implimented, but I don't really like the sound of it. Working for tips doesn't sound like it would be very lucrative at a fast food restaurant. I guess I'm glad I'm leaving soon.