Ami's journals

is it tomorrow, yet?!
i have 5 DIY sets that are all ready to go!  tomorrow i'll be shipping it off and patiently awaiting feedback.  i'm so excited that i got a camera that wasn't a pile of crap! i can't stop using exclamation points...i'm that excited!

sad news for the day from good ol' rockford: 
Three teens arrested in ice cream vendor slaying
ROCKFORD REGISTER STAR

ROCKFORD — Three teens have been arrested in connection with the killing of Isidro Duran, an ice cream vendor who was shot Sunday.

Justin L. Dismuke and Michael C. Jennings, both 18, and Rafael E. Santos, 17, are in the Winnebago County Jail on $1 million bond.

The teens approached Duran as he was selling ice cream and flashed a handgun. When Duran tried to flee, they shot him multiple times in the back and leg area, Deputy Chief Greg Lindmark said. Two of the men were found near the scene and the other was arrested later, he said.

Duran, who was known as “Roadrunner,” might have been the victim of an armed robbery, the statement says.

The shooting happened in the 700 block of Loomis about 6:20 p.m. Bullet casings littered the ground near Duran’s ice cream cart, which he used to peddle treats, those who knew him said.

“He was shot several times,” the statement said.

Duran, 47, of Chicago was transported to Rockford Memorial Hospital after the shooting, where he was pronounced dead about 7:10 p.m., according to a statement from the Winnebago County Coroner’s Office.

While police were piecing together the man’s life, a teenage boy who also sells ice cream and knew the man said he was from Chicago and on weekends stayed at his brother’s house in Pecatonica.

All his other family, the boy said, lived in Mexico. “He’s pretty cool. He makes people laugh.”

The boy said the victim was in his 50s, had a mustache, wore a straw hat and was a staple at major festivals throughout Rockford. The boy and other peers called him “Roadrunner” because of how fast he pushed his cart.

“Everybody has seen him at the parks,” another boy who served ice cream and also declined to give his name said. “Everybody knows him.”

Near the man’s ice cream cart were four bullet casings. What appeared to be his trademark straw hat lay in the gravel alleyway leading to the house.

Epperson called this a neighborhood that is usually safe from violent crime. But longtime resident Bryan Krieter said violence appears to have returned to this neighborhood.

“There’s gangs over here, all sorts of stuff going on,” he said.

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Yeah--I used to buy granita ice from this dude when I was in grade school and had to wait a long time for the bus.

i only got 3.5 hours of sleep last night, but i surprisingly don't feel like shit.  what gives?
i was so locked into watching the 'lockdown' epsiode about pelican bay that i lost track of time.
why am i so obsessed with documentaries about prison? 

t-minus 2 weeks until bri and i get the best fucking tattoos on the PLANET!

i can't tell you exactly, because it is a HUGE secret, but here's a hint: rockford.
get ready.  i swear its going to be awesome.

the wind is blowing just right, because i can hear the traffic from I-90 clear as day. :skull:

had a good past couple of days...and full, which would explain why i just slept for 14 hours.  remember how i said i was going to take a nap on friday?  i didn't.  i watched "to catch a predator" and "forensics files" all night until my friend called me and said "lets go to heartbreakers, a porn star is going to be there!" :heartbroken:  for anyone who lives remotely close to COMPTON, ILLINOIS, you KNOW what heartbreakers is.  fucking BAD strip club...BAD!(*Q!$!!  for a while last year, bri and i got kind of obsessed with going because there was one really hot girl working there.  it isn't a nude club, so bri decided to buy me a lapdance from this girl for my birthday.  biggest bush.  smelliest vag .  worst lapdance EVER, so we quit going.
friday night reminded us why we quit going, and added a new one...WEIRD BOOBIES!  00|  one girl had like...marbles in a sock.  and another girl had nerf balls.  joe said the nerf ball boobies look like when you draw a stick figure and you put two circles for boobs.  i gave him $1 and told him to go check out what they're like.  he didn't get her...he got some girl he called "raver tits" because she had glowsticks through her nipples and she smelled "spicy".

oh, and the porn star? jessica linn.  ::yawn::  joe said her costume made her look like a renaissance  biker.  i thought her dancing made her look like she was having a seizure.  bri said she had the worst looking extensions EVER.  the only thing that cracked me up was watching large men suck off a rolled up autographed picture...and watching guys pay $20 to have her pretend to fuck THEM in the ass while some dude takes some shitty polaroid "memories".

saturday we spent allllllll day at magic waters waterpark.  it really isn't a place you would spend all day at because there's only a handful of things to do, but we were all hungover and slow about stuff so it worked out that way.  i'm kinda sad bri and i didn't get a funnel cake...but we deicded that we'll get a BETTER one at the boone county fair (so what, i know its hillbilly style).

speaking of which, can i say that i am SO FUCKING PUMPED for the boone county fair?  for those of you who aren't aware (which is 99.9%), the boone county fair happens every august.  there's 4-H exhibitions, TRACTOR PULLS, and your basic carnival shit.  bri and i go loaded with money and we eat...a lot.  and go look at pigs. :pig:  whatever, we're surrounded by farmland.

i got home from work last night at about midnight, and was back in by 8.  i love how 8 hours between a shift doesn't mean 8 hours of sleep.  it means 4. 

so i drag ass all day at work, and think about taking a nap the whole drive home.  i walked in the door and decided to shoot yet another DIY set instead.  i'm pretty happy how it turned out, but the kink in my back is yelling "get a tripod!".

nap time sounds good right about now.  goodnight.

why isn't it friday at 4:30, yet?  i am dying for a day off, here...and i just had one on tuesday.  yesterday was shitty.  shitty enough to undo all of the calm i had on my day off.  sometimes work just frustrates me to the point of wondering why i'm trying so hard to get a promotion.  i suppose i could have been ok once my time card punched out, but sometimes people say things to fuel my fire that make me rage all the way home.  once i got in the door, i walked straight to my room and collapsed into my pillow.  i didn't even realize i walked right past joe.  when he asked why i was so mad, i drew a diagram of all the BULLSHIT i had to move--just me and one other person, while two other people just had to unbox and put out merchandise.  he didn't understand, but it made me calm enough to go grocery shopping in a packed store with out any outbursts.

so now i'm not even looking forward to going to work today because i will somehow have to explain why the project didn't get done.  no one really care about what factors lead to it being such a disaster.  they basically want me to say "i'm a moron and i'm a bad worker and i can't do anything right".  its so far from the truth.  i know it and they know it, but they don't want complaints. only compliance. 

i'm really looking forward to this weekend, though.  i'm going to a fucking WATERPARK on saturday, which is always WAY more fun than it should be after going there for all these years and sunday i'm riding bikes with my best friend down this ridiculous bike path that goes something like 8 miles north of my house to this great state park...and about 14 miles south past a bunch a big-box stores, protected prarieland, and the town my sister lives in!  anyway, i'm riding my bike...but my friend is on roller derby and she's rollerskating. 

i guess i have to shower, now...sometimes i do that before i go to work!

2nd update in a day.  glory be.
eventually, i may also lurk the forums but for now i'm content with writing randomness that maybe 3 of you read.

i made a DIY set today...hopefully the first in a series of many.  i actually did two, but ditched the first one for blurriness and irregular lighting.  i completely trashed the apartment looking for things and rearranging furniture to accommodate my set.  after going through and picking out all of the pictures i didn't like, i just didn't feel like putting the apartment back together again so i ate dinner and am rotting my brain on the computer.

i am NOT looking forward to going to work tomorrow morning at 6.  i have floor sets to do and they're always such a pain in the ass.  i wouldn't mind it so much if i could work 3rd shift and do it, but its hard to move fixtures and huge bins of merchandise with old people pacing the floor.  that's right, tomorrow is the WORST kind of day...senior discount day.  that means the women's bathroom will smell like geriatric diarrhea and jovan musk.  however, i must say that last week i was seriously entertained while walking behind two women in their 70s talking about hemmorhoids.  i ducked into the lingerie department with one of my coworkers and we were laughing so hard we cried.  two minutes later, an old lady pulled up her shirt and asked the lingerie department manager "do you make this kind of bra anymore?"  true story.

have a lovely evening.

its so damn hot out.  got up early this morning and got my car washed and grabbed my every tuesday triple grande caramel macchiato at starbucks.  by 9am it was 82 degrees...or at least that's what my car told me.
worked on the deck garden for a little bit, but decided to discontinue that activity in favor of sitting in the air conditioning and fucking around on the internet for a while.

check this out:


i'm not sure how much i agree with these, but its fun anyway!

can i say that cuizinier is fucking amazing?  i want to marry him.  i'm willing to brush up on my french...i'll learn how to say dirty things again.  i still have my french slang dictionary.  ok, i know it will never happen.  moving on.

so lets see here.  since my last real update, i have moved and settled into my fucking wonderful apartment.  i love it. but i know i can't get attached.  its huge, and only in this town will you find two bedrooms, two bathrooms and an attached garage for $700/month.  obviously, this is not where i want to be for the rest of my life...  eventually i move somewhere where $700 just barely gets me a studio.  but here's the catch:  i don't need a huge apartment if i actually had things to do.  i need this huge apartment to contain entertainment devices...because rockford, il is fucking BORING.

i applied for a promotion at work and i'm waiting for my boss to get back from vacation to interview and see where it gets me.  i could use some extra cash right about now, so i'm secretly hoping i get it (while trying to not get TOO over-hyped so i'm not let down if i don't get it). 

my birthday is in september, so to celebrate i bought myself a ticket to LA to spend a long weekend with a good friend of mine from college.  i'm hoping to see a lot of people this time around, so get in touch if you wanna chilly-chill.

i've gotta take a nap now... i've been going on 2-3 hours for the past 3 days and work has been REALLY hard on those 3 days, so i'm almost in zombie mode!

(p.s. i finally sifted through something like 200+ add to community requests...its all taken care of.  sorry it has taken me 8 million years!)

i always write saying i'm going to write more, and then i don't.  i don't even log on for god knows how long.  it's stupid of me, really and i apologize.

maybe this time i'll try.