Category Archives: Work

Spring Break Shenanigans

Happy April! :D It’s been a little bit since I’ve blogged – this whole having a job and going to school and keeping up with all my work and having somewhat of a social life is pretty new to me, but I’m starting to get the hang of it.

My spring break is, by now, long over. It went by way too fast for my liking, but that’s just how those things go, right? I didn’t talk too much about what I did, I mainly complained (haha) so here’s a little mini-recap:

  • Work. For those who weren’t aware, I got a job at the Holiday Inn working at the front desk. I haven’t talked about it too much yet just because my first week or so there I absolutely hated it. I was completely overwhelmed with all the information I needed to know and with all of the work I was expected to do – and I wasn’t even doing anything yet! I was just shadowing the other workers and watching what they did. Which, looking back now, was probably part of the problem to me. I don’t really like sitting back and watching other people do all of the work and I felt absolutely useless.However, I’m feeling a lot better about my job now. Over spring break, I was pretty much done with my training so I was actually taking phone calls, checking people in, doing deposit drops, and all that jazz. While I’m technically done with training, I’m still learning and there’s a lot that I’m not sure how to do or just am not required to do yet. I’m just glad I’m not hating driving to work everyday. I’m much more comfortable with it now – something I’m extremely thankful for. I’m also much more comfortable with the my coworkers, which makes working not so much of a drag anymore either, and have got to know most of them – and I love them all!
  • Read the Hunger Games series. Again. I went and saw the midnight premiere of the movie with a bunch of my friends and absolutely loved it, so I wanted to read the books again for like the, I dunno, fourth time? This series I really cannot recommend enough. I can’t pick one series of books that is my favorite but it is definitely in my top three (right next to Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings). So much happens in this series that the books never really get old to me – I’m always catching something new each time. And I get so emotionally attached to the characters, it’s crazy. I haven’t read a book where I’ve had more of a connection to the characters than these. But anyways, I read them again. ;)

  • Watched the first Lord of the Rings movie. My annual tradition to watch the Lord of the Rings movies over spring break didn’t really happen this year, which is kind of sad. I managed to watch the first one, but I really didn’t have the time to watch the others (I mean really, they’re like four hours long). I was also trying to watch them with Becky and Andrew, but because we all have jobs, we couldn’t find any days that we all were off. Growing up sucks. :/ I’m going to try and watch the other two soon, just because I love them so much, it just won’t be over spring break – which is alright. I still have many years to come where I fulfill my nerdy tradition. :P
  • Celebrated mine and Andrew’s two year anniversary. At the beginning of our relationship – as in before we even started dating – we would meet up at a park between my house and his and hang out. He also asked me out at this park, so I think it’s needless to say that the park is kind of special to us. As a surprise, he took me there for lunch and we had a picnic together. We had sandwiches and fruit and some chips, and it was just altogether really, really nice. :)After that we went back to his house and played some video games. Actually, that’s singular: video game. The only games that he has that I’m decent as are his LEGO games, so I played LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean while he laughed at how much I sucked. :P A little bit later, we went out to eat and then rented a movie. It was a really good day. :love:

I didn’t get everything that I wanted to accomplished (like working on my travel site) but it wasn’t too bad. I was able to catch up on some sleep and do a few things for myself.

I have today off from school for Good Friday so it was nice to have a little mini break. I had lunch with Andrew at a local Italian restaurant called Nick and Elena’s. I had never been there before but I’ve always heard good things so we went and tried it. We just split a pizza but it was very good! It’s kind of a hole-in-the-wall kind of restaurant and it’s rather small, but they had good service and good food, so that’s what really matters. :) It’s also just down the street from the Holiday Inn that I work at, and people are always asking if I would recommend it. So now I can say that I do!

I always like finding new restaurants since me and Andrew are both pretty picky. It can get kind of boring going to the same places over and over, and I like going to local restaurants – though we really don’t have that many around my area. We mainly have big chain restaurants. So I’m pretty happy that we both liked this place. Next time I’ll have to try some of their pasta! Sometimes I think I could live off Italian food. 8)

May the Odds be Ever in Your Favor

I went in for my first day at the Holiday Inn for work, and it was overall an alright day. I didn’t do any training mainly because it’s a lot to take in at once. So I mainly just shadowed people, watching what they did and taking mental notes of little things about the hotel. The only thing that I really did was occasionally file a paper or two. It was a short shift, only three and a half hours, but there wasn’t anything I could do yet, so I was fine with that.

I’m scheduled to work again tonight from six to eleven, so what people would call a normal shift, haha. I’m pretty nervous because tonight they’ll start training me and it just all looks so confusing. The workers that I met the other night were nice though, so I think it will go alright. I usually can catch on to things pretty quickly, so I’m hoping that this will be one of those occasions too.

I woke up this morning at 9:30, thinking that it was Saturday and that I had to babysit. I have today off of school (marking the start of my spring break), so that threw me out of whack a bit. It wouldn’t be such a problem, but I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been having some trouble sleeping, so I’ve been really tired lately and just need a good day off to sleep in. Which would’ve been today.

Not to mention I saw the midnight premiere of The Hunger Games last night. :D

I wasn’t nearly excited for this movie as I was for the Harry Potter movies, but I was still pretty excited. I think it’s always a bit weird reading a book and imagining in your head what you think everything is like, and then watching what someone else viewed it as on the big screen.

Overall I really liked the movie, so I’m going to insert a mini-review here (no spoilers, I promise!). Most of the things that I really did not like were not plot or acting related, it was more with the filming of the movie itself and the camera angles. In the beginning, when the movie was showing the Seam, the camera was extremely shaky. I realize that this was intentional and that it helped set the mood, but it just annoyed me. I just wanted to somehow be able to stop the camera from shaking!

The way that the fighting between the tributes kind of annoyed me too. The camera was zoomed real close in so that you couldn’t really see what was happening. You could just see a glimpse of a punch, part of a knee in the stomach, and the rest very blurred – again with the shaking camera. :blink: I was talking to Andrew and my friends about it afterwards and we all agreed that if it would have showed everything in the fighting scenes, the movie probably would have been rated R for violence. But, I thought that they could have perhaps shown a little bit more – but I’m an action kind of girl, so I guess that’s just me. :P

Other than those two things, I really loved the movie. It stayed very true to the book and the things that they did omit I thought were minor and were necessary for the sake of time. I’m glad they didn’t split the movie into two parts. A lot of movies have been doing that which is a bit annoying and seems just another scheme to make more money.

A couple of people I know were complaining that it did not stay true to the book, but they also read the book within the last week, which is rather stupid. There are going to be differences between book and movie, and I learned my lesson after reading one of the Harry Potter books the day the movie came out. I just sat there and critically viewed it, noting every single thing that was different, and I didn’t enjoy the movie because of it.

The casting for the roles and the acting itself was done very well. All of the characters came very close to how I pictured them in my head and my favorite would have to be Haymitch – Woody Harrelson was spot on with his portrayal of his character. The Capitol people me and Becky joked all just looked like a bunch of Lady Gagas, but I thought they were excellent as well.

Overall, I thought the movie was fantastic and I really hope that they are going to make a movie for Catching Fire, too. If you hadn’t read the books or seen the movie, I would recommend both! The Hunger Games are right up there with my other two favorite book series, the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. 8)