Hot Guys and Cupcakes

OK I am at Starbucks and there is this beautiful specimen of a man a few tables in front of me. He looks about 5'11, 195 solid, brown hair, stubble, blue eyes, and a nice butt. He looks like a guy who likes to watch cage fighting, football, dates skinny tall overly-tanned blondes, listens to Nickelback, Eminem, and has a secret affinity for the Beastie Boys. He could be a student, an autobody repair guy, or a salesman...who knows. I can guess that when he goes out he wears jeans, a tight Tapout t-shirt, and a faux-hawk. In the words of my friends and guys not like him....he is probably a massive douche. He also has beautiful teeth......wow. This is the type of guy that I look at from afar and would never talk to...not even when drunk because his "hotness" freaks me out. I am used to skinny, nerdy, white guys that are into video games, classical and Indie music, and RPGs. Is there really a type that we are assigned since birth and are doomed to be attracted to and attractive to? Soooo here is the weird part....looking at him makes me want a cupcake. I seriously now want a chocolate cupcake. Maybe this is my weird way of replacing feelings of Oh-lala for sweets. This might explain weight gain...hmmm.

Nom Nom Nom

So I haven't written in a while and not much has been going on. I am still searching for a job and am getting a little sick of doing so. I have been rejected and NOT answered by so many people I am becoming slightly depressed. I was also recently even been given the excuse of "not enough hours" by a daycare that made it seem like I had the job in the bag. Seriously employers...be honest! I am so sick of driving far away just to meet another dead end. Also, whoever said education is the way to get a job was full of crap. My graduate degree is more of a hinderance to getting a job than anything. Just because I am educated doesn't mean that I am above making coffee or data entry. The patheticness knows no bounds.

Other than this incessant bitching....there are a few bright spots. A good friend of mine is moving back to El Woods (poor her) and we are going to start training for a half marathon and a triathalon set for March  and May next year. The Tri doesn't look too bad and it is a 200 meter swim, 8 mile bike ride and a 2 mile run. I could totally do all that mess in a year while kicking ass and taking names. I have also be dieting and trying to cut out white foods since they are satan. I have found that by cutting those things out that I have more energy and my stomach has majorly shrunk. I had some bread on Saturday and it felt like a huge lump in my stomach and that was an icky feeling. I am thankful for that feeling because I don't like feeling that way. So I am making an effort to be healthy and I like it. Anyway, I hope I will be blogging about running soon...AHHHHHHH! I am a little scared of it, but we shall see.

When it rains, it pours

So I was talking to a friend (read: she is across from me now) about our patterns with guys and when the inevitible floods and droughts come. She says that usually the fall semester (Aug-Dec) is her flood and the rest of the year you can hear crickets churping in the background. My flood is usually Oct-Feb and around March/April everything fizzles out. I wonder how many other women have their guy "cycles" figured out? This isn't a direct science, but those who observe patterns can find one in the dating world. Now, the new thing is that my friend finds her pattern differeing, perhaps this is just an anomoly OR maybe it will be her new pattern. I remember hearing that the closer a women is to her cycle, the more attractive she becomes, perhaps this should be field tested among my ladies...hmmm...I see a project coming on! Actualy I think it has been scientifically tested before, but this could be fun. If any of you want to participate it would be a longitudinal study with surveys one week before and one week after your cycle where you describe the following questiong: How physically attractive do you feel? (1-10); How many men have approached you in a flirting mannor in person?; How many dates have you been asked on?; How confident do you feel? (1-10).

I probably need to think of what my other questions and variables will be. This will probably never happen, but meh, just an idea.

Next Steps

Sooo my computer at home sucks and won't let me post anything. To update everyone (which is only Aly), TFA gave me the finger and I am still looking for jobs. I am not disappointed since they are an elitist cult. Don't get me wrong, I really don't have bad feelings that I didn't get in, but I am actually relieved. I was freaked out that I was going to be sent to some hell of a school and have to hang out with recent college grads that cry on a nightly basis.

Speaking of crying a daily basis, I had a garage sale last weekend (hot) and it was the biggest bust on the planet. I sold some items of a friend and some stuff of mine and needless to say she made $15 and I made $7. We only had 6 groups come to our house and two of them bought nothing. However, some good came of it since I loaded all of our crap in the car and took it to Goodwill, they can deal with my great aunt's rustic (read: ugly) paintings and bad fashion. After that disaster I went to Chinatown to meet a few buds :) and we indulged in Asian delicacies and watched a mouse that was apparently living in the restaurant....yummy. We also hung out in the herb store (not a code word) and found out that there is an herb for EVERYTHING and I mean EVERYTHING. If you want to know, message me. I am waiting on a few jobs and we shall see the next step for Ashley in my crusade for Justice and the American Way!

Interviews Everywhere

Really?

I got an email tonight from TFA and.....they have invited me to the final interview. Wow. I was more than shocked. There is some poor kid on the east coast sobbing in their dorm room on their Ralph Lauren pillow case and I beat them...weird. This thing is about as hard to crack as a petrified walnut and my crappy interview and candid answers on their stupid internet crap impressed them enough to let me in. Go figure. This is the one thing that I have really put on the back burner and have cared the least about and I really am in awe that I have made it this far. I will say that I am proud of myself for beating out some snotty kids who wanted to put this on their resume to Goldman Sachs, but who knows how it will go. This is pretty much a crap shoot and they may think that I suck in person. I still just want a job and if they can get me there faster then so be it.

Oh yeah...another reject as of recent was from MidSouth Bank...."we had a large applicant pool and we have found others whose resumes more so meet our needs at this time"....blah blah blah. If my resume said GED and manager at Burger King for 2 years I would have been hired. This over/under qualified thing is starting to bug me. Even my father commented on the fact that he never thought it would take this long for me to get a job...me too Dad, me too.

Today I introduced Stacey to Hot Pot and it was OK. Obviously the Hot Pot in Xi'an was amazing and amazingly cheap....Little Sheep here cost us around $50 for 2 people and in China it would have been around $8 bucks with way more veggie and meat options. Alas...we are not in China anymore. I got a $10 off coupon valid through March 31 if anyone wants to go with me...any takers...crickets...crickets.

The Things I do for Money

Well, this may sound lame, but recently I have scowered the house in hopes of finding materials to sell to Half-Priced Books. I have made $24 bucks and figure that I need to find a job ASAP! You know you are sad when you go through your closet and go...eh didn't plan on reading it anyway. I LOVE books and I feel wrong getting rid of some of them, especially if I didn't yet conquer them. Right now I am reading City of Thieves...not bad so far.

In other news, I am still jobless, but I think it might be fun to name all of the places that have deemed me unqualified at the beginning of all of my posts so here are a few gems: Wells Fargo (Teller), Hewitt (Secretary), St. Agnes Academy (College Counselor), and Sylvan Learning Center (Director II). Thanks for playing and good luck in all of your future endeavors. I am just waiting for some place like McDonalds or Sonic to say that I am not the candidate they are looking for at this time.

Finally, tonight a few of my friends and I decided to barhop around our fun area (bleh) and landed at 4 dives today. The diviest of them all told me I had to leave because my drivers liscense is expired and that they could not serve me. I seriously got kicked out of the worst bar in the Woodlands area that has been known in the past to have people snorting coke in the bathroom and plenty of drunken brawls. Granted, they have cleaned up, but COME ON! The girl who showed me the door had to be only 20 and said that any place would tell me the same. The other three places said nothing. We just wanted to watch the bad karaoke and sip on some virgin rum and cokes (haha bad joke). The best part of the evening was when we indulged in a Scotty Thompson from Carrabas..mmmm goat cheese in marinara served with toasted garlic bread. Who needs a boyfriend when there is Scotty....(what Scotty doesn't know...haha)?

I think I need a hobby. I can't really think of one right now, but if y'all have any suggestions besides making a collage of all of my rejection letters in the colorful form of macaroni art. Then again..nothing says classy and summer camp than macaroni art.

So far, so not sure

I have completed all of the steps for my stage in TFA and my phone interview was....interesting. I feel that I sucked...a lot. Well, maybe not sucked, but was trying to drive home a point when I was interrupted to move on and it was short...like 25 minutes which makes me think that I did poorly. Then again, my heart isn't fully set on this program, it is just another step in teaching for me. I mean, I have a license soooo I'm good.

Moving on, there is nothing on TV. I just watched The Blind Side which is an OK movie that shows what wonderful things can be done if you just add rich white people to the equation. I am excited to be seeing old friends tonight and hopefully we will Hobbit it up just right and maybe end up at Half-Price Books and cap it off with the Chocolate Bar. I just don't want to see a bunch of obnoxious college kids from Rice who are all pale with their black framed glasses discussing Sartre and the evils of plastic. They are truly the white peeps in "What White People Like". Not that I have anything against people who attend Rice, they just seem to be an odd assortment of pampered youth.

I will let you know what unwinds in the next few weeks.

No longer in China, but still more to write about

It is 5:30 am and I am still awake. I blame this on my relentless persuit of how to ace my phone interview with TFA. I don't think I will make it past this stage, then again I didn't think I would get a phone interview. I am not fresh out of college, I didn't attend an ivy league university, and this was a last minute application. In fact, I read several articles about how we had to have "a killer letter of intent". Yeah, I wrote mine in 20 minutes and did not proof read it and I actually made it past the first stage. Perhaps, I neglected to inform them that I am immune to brainwashing and tend to have a few (read: a lot) of problems with authority. This doesn't mean the traditional person who can't hold down a job or is disrespectful to elders, but I don't like being micromanaged or lead by someone who is as capable of leadership as Castro is to dying (he will NEVER die).

I also keep reading all of these horrible things about TFA and how I have as much chance of getting in as of getting accepted into MIT. This is a little diheartening, however I lack a certain element of nervousness or frankly caring in this situation. You see, I have been rejected and given the "I wish you luck in your future endeavors" speech through the heartless medium of email so many times, that if TFA hit me in the face with a shovel I would shrug it off. I want someone to hire me badly. I don't know how much more I can take of watching daytime tv and wishing that Jerseylicious would have a marathon. I believe that my IQ has dropped to about 75 and that anymore time watching this type of quality programming might lead to my demise. I believe that my father said that he could see my eyes getting cloudy and me getting dumber, but I digress.

I have applied to so many jobs and I have thought about lying about my education, experiences, and dying my hair blonde and developing a heavy Southern accent. I feel that if I radiate a certain girl-next-door charm instead of having the charisma of Daria, that I could get a job at a restaurant or at a makeup counter. Hell, I am so desperate that I think Denny's sounds like a great alternative. I am not knocking people in the food service industry, I've been there myself, but at this point I feel as though I have been lied to by the educational elite of this country. They say, college will open doors for you...yep, it opened the door to the county. Ugh. Next stop, teaching license and master's degree...no one will hire me. Unfortunatly, I chose a subject that high school coaches all over the United States love...social studies. Who knew? Actually, I did know but persued it anyway (I love a challenge). I didn't know that it would be this hard to get a job once I got home. I am depressed, but I will get over it and just need to do something. Wish me luck on my phone interview and maybe I'll have some good news to share.