Saturday, February 20, 2010

Furious

Mark went into work this evening. So he's working from 11 to 7 tonight and then 11 to 9 tomorrow. =|. Not only do I think this is RETARDED but I'm also extraordinarily frustrated because the weekends are really the only time we get to hang out. Apparently, he didn't care for that this weekend. Well unfortunately little does he know in these next couple of weeks he won't be seeing much of me because I will have to be conducting my data collection during the week. Whatever, I'm frustrated and disappointed and extremely aggravated. He ruined my evening so I'm going to go sulk.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Shaun White

Is the ONLY REASON to watch the Olympics. He smashed on everyone's face this evening and it definitely sealed him a spot as an idol for me. He is so ridiculously good at what he does. The best part is that he absolutely loves what he does and I love that. How can you be bad if it's something that you are absolutely obsessed and in love with doing?! My congratulations goes out to him and Lago, I think, who placed third this evening. This two dudes are fantastic. If you haven't seen them you need. Shaun White's height is incomparable. He goes so hard and the tricks he lands are perfect and smooth. What an awesome and amazing snowboarder and athlete!

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Slug Bug PURPLE - no slug bugs back




your suppose to tag people to do this but I don't know anyone to tag so TAG YOURSELF. Find a pic of a slug bug and post it with the color!

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Research update

I got a perfect score on my Sampling Plan assignment which covered where I was going to get my sampling pool, who is was going to be and the informed consent and debriefing forms. I had to make a slight change but everything seems to be well on track with this experiment. I am still pretty stressed out about it because I have to finish one more assignment due Tuesday that will determine whether or not I will be given permission to go through with the whole thing. This experiment requires a timeline from me and I'm experiencing a lot of commitment phobia with it. I don't want to say that I will have something done by a certain date and then not be able to follow through with it. It scares me. There's a lot to this assignment and I've been working on it a lot but I'm still not done. I've been really busy at work too so it hasn't really been helping that I'm stressed out there and then come home to be stressed out about school work. =[

Speaking of homework, I'm going to get back on it.

Expenses

I went to my sister's house last night and she gave me some awesome advice on my expenses and budgeting and saving. I was planning on getting a new car when I graduated however as you know I've been applying for credit cards and I keep getting denied so I was not so hopeful about getting that. Well, my sister turned me onto this guy Dave Ramsey who is a financial advisor or something. His tips are awesome, his ideas and advice are fantastic. I watched a video on his website explaining that you don't have to have a credit card or credit at all to be able to buy a car. He explained it like you buy a $6,000 car out of pocket with cash, then instead of paying a monthly car payment for however long, you take the money that you would be spending on that and put it into a savings account and save that up for several months to be able to buy another car outright. It makes a HELL OF A LOT MORE SENSE to me! I don't like credit cards. I don't believe in them. I figure that if I can't afford to get something right then and there then I do not need to get it. His philosophy is mine. It's NOT the American way to be in debt. . .despite the facts of how many people are, it's just a myth.

So my sister also turned my onto a website I think it's called expenseview.com and it's free. You can enter your daily, monthly, and yearly expenses, as well as your salary and do a budget report and everything. I'm also using an Excel worksheet that she sent me that she uses as well. Instead of keeping a daily money journal that I write I've decided to do this. I've learned the hard way that NO ONE is going to do this for me. The best way to save myself is to put in the work to be able to do so. It's important that I do this because not only do I not want any more debt than what I already have from school, but also because I need to learn how to manage my money a lot better. I'm excited, but I'm also not really looking forward to it. I have to practice keeping EVERY SINGLE ONE of my receipts and I've already failed at this lol. I need something in my car that can hold onto my daily receipts and then each night I will empty it out, notate the expenses in my expense reports and then I'll need another thing to hold onto the receipts after. I have to remind myself to keep up with this because it's easy to give up with frustration just like I did with my money journal.

Wish me luck. Also, if you are interested in any of these websites or reports feel free to let me know and I'll email them over to you. Dave Ramsey's website is daveramsey.com.

Monday, February 8, 2010

Crunch time

Next Tuesday my Designs Methods is due for my experiment. It has a lot to it and it basically finalizes all my ideas for conducting my research. I mean finalize like I can't go back and change anything unless I have a legitimate reason to do so and it has to be approved by my teacher. This week I will be spending a lot of time working on that and then next week I will be working on a take home essay test for my history of psychology class. I've really gotten into the reading for this class because it addresses, history, philosophy, history of philosophy, and psychology all my favorites [=. If I didn't make it in the psychology world I would definitely go for history or religion. I'm not overly religious at all, I can't even honestly say what my beliefs are for sure however I find it all incredibly interesting and I absolutely love how it's so tied in to so much of what happened in the world.

Today has been an incredibly long day. I had to open the office at 7am and I had A LOT of work to do. It was non-stop the whole day. I'm going to rest. Hope you're days went well.

Sunday, February 7, 2010

Photographer?

I'm not much of a photographer and I definitely do not have any amazing up scale camera however I've decided that I need to document more of my life with pictures. They are the best and closest things we can have to re-experiencing all of our memories and I don't want to miss out on that opportunity.

One important thing that I'm not going to do though is uploading every single online. I don't believe that others in the online community, regardless of whether or not I know them, need to see every aspect of my life. I honestly think that a lot of pictures are inappropriate for the online community, especially because of the networking capabilities that is has. Consider this, how you would feel if you were turned down for your dream job based on the fact that your pictures on your Facebook were deemed inappropriate and not something they wanted as a part of the company? Wouldn't feel you like shit and go change those pictures immediately? Why not take preventive steps first.

I will pick and chose what I show though. And I will keep ya'll updated as much as possible. I plan on just making a lot of photo albums. Old school like. [=

Sex on the dance floor


Mark and I went out downtown last night with two friends, Natasha and Rachel. We had a good time for the most part. We went to this place called Swanky's that sells slushies with Everclear Vodka. They were really good, however from my old alcoholic days I remember how strong Everclear is and I did not taste that shit at all in my slushy so I'm fairly certain mine just had regular vodka. We then went over to LoDo's which is a club/bar neither one of us really like but we sucked it up because I really wanted to go out and dance.

This is us dancing to some random song. We basically had sex on the dance floor and it was fantastic. I love how into each other we look. Well, I love how into my titties he is [= hahahahah. I label this picture sex on the dance floor, titties, cleavage, love, and finally EST. October 2008.

I love this man. Everyday he makes me incredibly happy to be apart of my life. He is such a wonderful addition and a perfect fit. [=

Snow Day


It's finally snowing in Colorado. Not nearly as bad as the East Coast is/got hit though. We went outside and played in the snow for a while. He raced around the backyard showing me how fast he has gotten. Every time I threw his toy he would run back and forth jumping over it but never quite picking it up.

This image is from him digging his nose through the snow. It was the cutest thing. This is by far one of my most favorite pictures of him. He makes my heart smile when he does stuff like that [=.

Today, we were watching the puppy bowl on Animal Planet. He jumped down from the couch and started begging. He wanted to play with the puppies on the television. Then he jumped back up on the couch and watched the television action with intensity. He's too cute!

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Experiment/Research update

I'm really happy because I just got some feedback on an assignment that I turned in for my research study and it was really good. It seems as though I'm right on track for this whole thing to come together. To give you in detailed information of where I am right now:

I proposed my revised idea to my teacher of does learning the statistics of gambling, increase or decrease the likelihood of risk taking in gambling? This idea got approved once I finally pulled together all of my operational definitions, meaning I explained in detail how exactly I was going to go about measuring my independent and dependent levels. So, my independent variables are going to be gender (male and female) and whether or not the participant receives a little course in statistics before performing a specified task. My dependent variable is the Columbia Card Task. If you would like to know more about this task you can look it up in wikipedia or google whatever. But basically you pick a card and as long as you pick a "gain" card you can keep picking unless you decide to stop because you don't want to pick a "lose" card. When you pick a "lose" card you can no longer pick. Once the participant stops choosing I count the number of times the individual turned a card. That average is the measure of the level of risky behavior.

So, the thing I just got back was the justification for my research. This was my attempt at explaining why I am conducting this study, how it will further expand or add to or bring up any new topics within broader area of research that it is in, for example problem gambling, and so forth. My teacher basically said it was all really well developed. She recommended that I clear up one of my paragraphs but other than that, that the justification would look good in the introduction section of the report that I am going to have to write for this study.

Today, I completed a sampling plan. The sampling plan covers the informed consent and the debriefing forms that will be given to the participants as well as any ethical concerns or positive or negative effects on the participant and the types of participants I will be using. Because I have easy and convenient access to them, I am just going to use our schools pool from the psychology 101 pool. So I'm targeting college aged students based on research that has identified mid to old adolescents and young adults as more likely to engage in risky behavior. I have to examine ethical stuff because I am drawing a blank on how a study like this can be unethical, but well see.

[=

Monday, February 1, 2010

Calling all tech geeks!

I need to figure out what the fuck I'm going to get my boyfriend for valentine's day. I got him mixing bowls already and a lingerie outfit but other than that I don't know what the fuck to get him. He is a big tech geek so any recommendations would be awesome. He already has an iphone though just so ya know.

My research ideas that I proposed didn't really get approved so now my research questions look at risky behavior and decision making in gambling when the person knows the statistics of gambling. Hopefully, this will work out alright. I'm just about to finish typing up the justifications for my research idea and turn that in and then I have to get started on the sampling plans and the consent and debriefing forms.

Nothing really exciting is really going on right now. I've realized how out of touch I am with the world and the news lately. I just saw that one Tila Tequila is pregnant, two her fiance died, and three the babies daddy is The Game? I'm out of touch with the unimportant gossip news really. That shit gets boring so fast to me though because I don't understand how people can get so wrapped up in that shit. Tila Tequila's lame has been desperately trying to crawl her ugly ass back into the light for sometime now. . .she's just desperate for attention and to be something again even though she was never anything. What the fuck else is going on in the world? I'm out of touch with the real news too. I haven't been looking at the bbc because of how wrapped up in work and school I've become and when I'm not wrapped up in that shit I'm on tumblr trying to release my stress on there. Apparently a jet landed on the New Jersey turn pike today? WTF happened?

I miss my bestfriend Janet who lives in Mississippi now. That bitch moved there before I even graduated high school and now she has my god son and I still haven't met him =[. It makes me super sad when I talk to her and she's always talking about making plans to come back to Colorado but then whenever she does she says she's about to buy herself a ticket and something else comes up. she invited me to Florida with her for Spring Break but my Spring Break is the week after hers =/. Maybe I'll make a trip down south somewhere and stop through there to see her, see my god son, and meet her man. I wish I had money like it was nothing so it would be easy to make a spring break trip somewhere but I doubt that will happen =[. I need to be saving money for when my happy ass gets of school so I can get an apartment and a car, shit. Can't be doing all this traveling and shit.

Mark and I started are "eating better" diet. It's going great so far. The other day when I weighed myself I had lost like three pounds so that's awesome! I uhm had a massive hang over all day yesterday so I wonder how much I weight today cuz i feel extra skinny hahah! I'm going to get on this homework. buh bye.