Monday, December 17, 2007

Little Tortilla goes Vegan

Well that's not true at all. But she is trying to limit her amount of dairy. So this weekend I made a vegan fruit smoothie (fruit,tofu,soymilk,sugar) and vegan mac and cheese. Well the smoothie is delicious and the mac and cheese was much like velvetta shells and cheese. So it was all great edible alternatives but of course it wouldn't be my first choice. . But my stomach hurts right now, just like it would if I had lactose. So what gives? This so defeats the purpose of leaving out the dairy. Am I alergic to soy? *pouts*

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Hide and Seek

Well my roomie and boyfriend are planning something for my birthday. I swear they are terrible at trying to keep a secret.

My cellphone acts crazy all the time and never rings. On Thursday I sat waiting for his call since we were going out that night. So he calls the home phone and she answers it. We don't have caller id but he's the only one who ever calls it. So she starts talking to the person on the other end which I know is him. Then she hands me the phone. I talk to him for a bit. When I was finished, I asked her what he wanted. She says "He wanted to hook me up with one of his single friends." Well that was a blatant lie. So I knew then they were planning something. Great, because I didn't plan a party this year.

On Saturday I was at his house and I went to log into Gmail. Well when I pull up the website it goes right into a mailbox. I see there was an email from my roomate but the title says "Aisha's Present". Then I remembered that this was his computer so thus it's his email. I sit for a second and debate on opening the email but I decide to not ruin their surprise what ever it is. But they are doing a sucky job at hiding whatever it is from me.

Friday, December 14, 2007

Citibank can kiss my ass

So I have all my bills set to be paid automatically. I check my statement and I realize my bill is late...this can't be so since I have it set to pay auotmatically. I look and the last payment was processed a day early. Therefore when the next bill was due it wasn't paid because on time because the payment I made was reflected in an earlier billing cycle.

So I call Citibank to resolve the matter. I've never paid my bill late in over 10 years so it shouldn't be a problem. I talked to the lady and we got the matter resolved fairly quickly. "I'll take the late charge off for you but don't you ever do this again." What happened to customer service? She reprimanded me like I was stupid and she was my momma. I'm like well isn't that funny. It was very early in the morning so I didn't flip out on her. I am just going to write them an email and just change my automatic payment date so I don't pay the bill too EARLY!

Thursday, December 13, 2007

First Big Day as Manger: Failed!

I had a meeting out in Rockville. I've been to this place before. I know how long it takes to get there. I did metro trip planner just to be sure. I gave myself an extra 15 minutes just in case something happened. Well Metro politely ate that up and wouldn't even say what was going on. We are just waiting on the platform went from saying "Shady Grove 2" to "Shady Grove __." So I was late to my first meeting as manager. Well by the end everyone had forgot it happened. It was such a good meeting. So next time I will give myself 30 minutes grace period. I'll just sit a little longer in the lobby if need be. Being late is not a good look.

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Since I wasn't born unti 1978 I had no idea about this part of her life.

From the Los Angeles Times
Maxene McGinnis, 1926 - 2007
Group home founder turned around lives of troubled girls
By Jocelyn Y. Stewart
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

December 8, 2007

In the end, Maxene McGinnis did more than offer a home to girls nobody else wanted. The founder of Jacqueline Home for Girls offered the girls another way of seeing themselves, a view from a different mirror.

The girls questioned their worth; McGinnis never doubted it. They said they couldn't achieve; she said she expected no less. They hung their heads; she told them to lift them high.

With that view, McGinnis wielded a power that transformed the lives of troubled girls.

McGinnis, who helped raise 210 girls in her group homes, later operated child-care centers that served 160 families and was honored with a star at Staples Center's Star Plaza, died Nov. 27 of stomach cancer at her home in Los Angeles. She was 81.

On Tuesday, the nearly 200 mourners who packed Grace Chapel at Inglewood Park Cemetery heard of the lives McGinnis helped salvage.

"She never made me feel like I was her job," Debra Johnson, who spent some of her teen years in McGinnis' home, told the mourners. "She made me feel like I was her child."

For former group home "girls" like Johnson, Phyllis McNeal and Sharon Cameron, time spent at the home was the best experience of their childhood.

"I never saw love like that. . . . I thought it was just on TV," said Cameron, who at 15 was labeled the "worst of the worst" and sent to the home.

If McGinnis had followed conventional wisdom, the Jacqueline Home for Girls might never have come into being.

Born in 1926, she graduated from UCLA in 1948 with a degree in sociology. She was eventually hired as a social worker in the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services. The Texas-born McGinnis, who was raised by her mother with the help of a close extended family, grew up in Dallas during a time when opportunities for African Americans were few. Jobs like hers were an accomplishment to be proud of, not to leave.

But in the 1960s, McGinnis was young and ambitious and had a vision of running a home for children in need. That vision began in her youth, grew after a stint teaching Sunday school and kept growing and refining itself; it would not let her rest.

At the social services department she was placed in charge of a unit that trained the daughters of welfare recipients to find work. But she found the girls' life skills so meager that "we had to begin with proper dress, personal hygiene . . . proper grammar and the most basic manners and social skills," McGinnis wrote in her unpublished memoir.

The girls were eager to do well, but they needed to get out of their chaotic surroundings to achieve, she said. So she gathered them together and helped them find an apartment and stayed in their lives to help them. Later she learned that a change of environment would benefit youngsters who were in juvenile hall and other locked facilities simply "because there were no other places to go."

Driven by her vision, McGinnis left her job and rented a home in the Wilshire district, opening the Jacqueline Home in 1968.

The home would eventually be filled with as many as six girls from various backgrounds, all wards of the court, referred by the county Probation Department. For each girl, she received $307 to $355 a month, according to a Los Angeles Times article.

"She was a black woman in the '60s running this home for girls," said her daughter, Michelle McGinnis. In the beginning "most of the girls were very affluent. Most of them were white."

At the house, McGinnis was "mom," and she set out to raise the girls. She disciplined them to correct behavior, visited their schools to make sure they were performing, encouraged and rewarded them and listened to them.

"It's a happy house," McGinnis said in a 1969 Times article. "People always expect something dreary and sad, and they're surprised to find that it's not."

In 1969, she married Essic McGinnis, and the following year she gave birth to Michelle, now a prosecutor in the Los Angeles city attorney's office assigned to a program through which she assists youths at Markham Middle School. In addition to her daughter, McGinnis is survived by numerous cousins.

Over the years the house earned honors for its work. McGinnis expanded to three houses, but in 1977 closed them and moved into child care, in which she continued to work until retiring this year.

Long after she closed the homes, some of the women who had lived there as girls remained a part of her family. In the end, their reclaimed lives were a testament to her work.

"She gave me hope, encouragement, pride and unconditional love," said McNeal, who holds a master's degree, is a probation officer and runs a program to dissuade young people from crime. "If not for my mom, I wouldn't be working for the system. I'd be in it."

Monday, December 10, 2007

Daily Horoscope for Sunday December 9, 2007

Your life is continuing to change and today's New Moon can send you into the next phase of ongoing personal growth. Whatever opportunities are presented to you should be received as a message directly from the cosmos. It may take time to understand the significance of the next few days. In the meantime, be gracious as you accept what arrives on your doorstep.

.....

Well today is my first day as Project Manager. I've never been as excited to go to work as I was last night. I feel a renewed sense of commitment and I really think it's my time to shine. I haven't been that confident at work these days but this new development is just the infusion I needed in my life. It doesn't come with a raise but we were all scheduled for raises this week anyway. Wish me luck.

Sunday, December 09, 2007

R.I.P

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/18/AR2007111801496.html

The summer before I left for UNC I gained about 15lbs. I had stopped working out and I would spend all of my time at Ben's Chili Bowl. It's a DC institution and the food is expensive for what it is but I would go there mulitiple times a week. I would go because it was the place where everybody knew my name. The staff members made me feel at home. Often times I was served by Timothy Spicer because he had a crush on me. I would walk in and he was tell the other guys that i was his customer. He tried several times to get me to go on dates and he would flash his charming smile. Last night I learned that he had be killed in a car jacking. I shed some tears because he was a good kid. He went to work everyday and enjoyed what he did while trying to craft away through music and art to a better life. I'll miss you Tim.


Earlier my my dad called me to tell Ms. McGinnis past of a heare attack. Ms. McGinnis owned Bene Pre-School where myself, my niece and my 2nd cousin attended. At this school I learned all the basics. It wasn't daycare it was true learning. Ms. McGinnis was all about learning but she also employed many people that wouldn't otherwise have a chance. Besides my family, this is the person I've known the longest. I'm truly going to miss her. I don't have that many ties to the old neigborhood since my mom died. This is one less.

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

It's been two years since I posted on my old blog. I noticed that and decided to get out my old posts. well most of them are gone. I'm so sad. I do have some entries printed it out but that was the craziest time of life so i'm sad that my "journal" is gone.

Well today was also crazy. Somehow I managed to put my tampons into the fridge at work. I meant to put my lunch in there but I put the wrong bag in. Secondly, I was talking to some of my coworkers and one asked "what's that near your belt?" Well it turned out to be a random piece of a tampon wrapper. Whoa is me.

I've noticed that my life has been much better since I started riding my bike to work everyday. I do not have the "how not to holla experiences" anymore. I look like a dork with my helmet on and well i'm on bike so no one is going to talk me. Well sometimes other black bikers talk to me. Mostly the bike messengers messing with me because my bike is so cutesy.

I never thought I would be an outdoorsy person but I love riding my bike. It's like 30 degrees outside and I'm still riding to work. My coworker is going to bring me some cold weather biking gear. The only thing is that I just wear my regular work clothes. I haven't gone so far to wear bike gear because I'm not that hard core. So hopefully it will all pay off. But I really don't care about all that, I just love it.