People We'd Rather Avoid

Metta (lovingkindness) is to be extended towards all beings and all manifestations, yet most of our difficulties lie with people. It is much easier to love birds, dogs, cats, and trees than it is to love people. Trees and animals don't answer back, but people do, so this is where our training commences. . . . Sometimes people find they don't feel anything while practicing metta meditation. That is nothing to worry about; thoughts aimed often enough in the right direction eventually produce the feelings. All our sense contacts produce feelings. Thoughts are the sixth sense, and even if we are only thinking metta, eventually the feeling will arise. It is one means of helping us to gain this heart quality, but certainly not the only one. In our daily activities all of us are confronted with other people and often with those whom we would rather avoid. These are our challenges, lessons and tests. If we consider them in that manner we won't be so irritated by these experiences. . . . When we realize that such a confrontation is exactly what we need at that moment in order to overcome resistance and negativity and substitute metta for those emotions, then we will be grateful for the opportunity.

--Ayya Khema, in When the Iron Eagle Flies.

turtle power

seriously, why do I have such an allergic reaction to bug bites...I have some on my arms and they look super gross and big. They appeared after I walked through Happy Hollow last week, what the heck?

Anywho, I need to see if the library has some french vocabulary and english grammar books that I can copy some pages out of for my student. He tried arguing with me about possessives and commas and I feel as though I have the upper hand on that even though I'm also Korean, but you now what I'm getting at=Þ And I need to get a cd burned for Jenny and Lisa and Ross & Rebecca...oy. My computer has been weird lately and has not taken three or so discs well and I know they were blank, but good ol' Nero has now made them trash...boo!

Ah well...off to be productive now that I am done with work for the day.

laters!

not again

Seriously, every time I go to blog I just don't feel like it. It's like at 5 this morning I had such great ambitions for the day ahead of me. But here I sit not really having done much of anything on my "to do" list. I don't even feel like walking outside I'm so lazy right now...geez. Anywho, to recap the day I had fun at work, except for early in the morning when I delivered some pretty bad customer service.

Lord knows I try very hard to be kind/patient with Sweeter Than Chocolate, Mary (you may know her by any of her new names/sons names - Chocolate Thunder or Sexual Chocolate), but today I just didn't want to see her get another free cup of coffee (oh if only she knew which direction was what). So she came in with one of her sons and had a really gross looking coffee cup and she had not been into the store at all that morning (it was only 6 or so in the morning) and I asked her how she was, rang up a coffee with a cup discount (gave her a new cup because the one she brought in was way grunge) and rang up another drink for her son. Well she said that she should be charged 53 cents for it like always. I tried to explain that if she had been in earlier at the store that I wouldn't mind, but that I can't give a refill just because she was at another store (this is what happens when we try to appease her and let her have refills even after she leaves the store and comes back hours later and I guess now whenever just so we don't have to "deal with her"). She told me that she goes to all the Starbucks all day long and that if it wasn't 53 cents she didn't want to pay for it and that she would never come back to this store (darn!). She told me she had been to the west side store already (Sagamore) and that is where the coffee cup came from. I gave her the coffee anyway because I don't like to waste it once it is poured (free cup of coffee). I also tried to reason with her that if I find out that she can bring a cup in from another store at any time and get a refill price then I would be more than happy to give her coffee for 53 cents, but I don't do that for every customer that comes into the store. So I was curious and I called Sagamore to see if she had been there...I should have just left it alone, but this woman has a history with me and Starbucks that I just can't shake whenever I see her or have to take her order. Heather answered and told me that to her knowledge Sweeter Than Chocolate had not been in and she asked Ginger, which Ginger replied that she would have remembered seeing her *heh*. So I went out to Mary and told her that I didn't mean to make her upset, but I felt like I give her a lot of free coffee because she brings in old cups when she hasn't been to the store and that I had called the west side store and they said she hadn't been there. Oh gosh, she was like, "well you've done it now. I'm going up to West Side right now." So I'm thinking to myself, I've made a terrible mistake. I called Heather to warn her she was coming up and that she had insisted she had bought coffee there which baffled Heather. I felt really bad, but not as bad as I would feel around 9am.

Abby called the store and I asked her if she had talked to Mary and of course she had. (Abby who is now out at the new store in LAFAYETTE, NOT THE WEST SIDE. Apparently Mary does not know west from south, or West Lafayette from Lafayette and unfortunately that is where she had bought her coffee earlier in the morning *cringe*. oy. I felt so bad, I apologized to Abby for making such a fuss about it, it's just that I feel taken advantage of by Mary almost every time I see her. And that she had told me that she had been to Sagamore, not Creasy. I guess Mary went on about how I called her a liar, etc. Which I did not, I was trying to be very patient with her as to not make her more upset, but I honestly thought she had not bought coffee from Sagamore. But I guess I just need to get over the stuff that has happened in the past - wanting a pair of pants because she spilled coffee on them and because I could not authorize that she called corporate on me, arguing about policy with me, and trying to get Starbucks to pay for a "broken tooth" caused by a toffee almond bar sample. I know that this woman has probably not had a great life so far, I would think partly due to her own actions/behaviors and very pessimistic outlook on life (ask her how her day is and she tells me she is dying) , but I didn't make it any better today for her. It's just sometimes I don't know what I'm supposed to do, follow policy as closely as I can and probably make her upset, or just give her coffee for 53 cents because she is probably very poor and gives me a hard time about it, although I can't do the same for all customers. bleh.

anyways. I think I am going to either get Moe's or Chipotle...mmm.

Get It Together

Well you love me and I love you
So what's the problem?
Can't you see that I'm sinking fast
And I'm near the bottom?

Whenever you feel me slipping away
Then that's when you should hold me tight
If you sense that there's something wrong
Then why not make it right?
Make it right
Maybe we'll get it together
Maybe it will last forever

Well you can't hide what's inside
I can see right through you
And I know every reason behind
Everything that you do

Whenever you feel me slipping away
Then that's when you should hold me tight
If you sense that there's something wrong
Then why not make it right?
Make it right
Maybe we'll get back together
Maybe it we'll make it last forever
And maybe this way things are better
Things are better

Girl, you could say that I'm hard to please
And maybe it's so
But look at you, your life's a breeze
And what do you know?

--Brendan Benson

well I had something good to write earlier, but the thoughts are gone.

Anywho, anyone who wants to see Wilco here in town, best get on it and buy their tickets. A guy from Purdue Convocations said that ticket sales are really low and if they don't get selling they might have to cancel the Wilco show, which would be really sad considering most ppl I know love Wilco. Hopefully though this won't really happen, because I will definitely be bummed out.

I'm looking at making my own meditation pillow instead of ordering a new one, it looked pretty simple when I found some instructions online. Maybe I will get Anna to help me out and we can both make one!

Off to pay a bill...yay!

Much Love!

um yeah...

The VMA's were quite bad last night. Off and on James heard me scoffing and asked, "why are you watching this again?" I watched it because The Raconteurs were supposed to perform in between commercials/breaks and what not and I wanted to see who else was performing, plus Jack Black was hosting. It seemed a lot of things went wrong during the show, like where skits and sections were supposed to fit together, but got chopped together and it looked pretty bad. The highlight of the show was seeing OK GO perform Here it Goes Again and hearing tiny bits of The Raconteurs, but even that wasn't a highlight, it was choppy and I thought it kind of insulted the band because they weren't even given airtime to play a complete song (the opener featured Lou Reed and then later they played with ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons). I guess they were featured as the "house band", but their playing was really limited. Ah well.

Time to run errands and then go to work.