As I sit and go through youtube, it hits me how people no longer have to try to make their way on tv or for their script to get picked up by a movie company. All they have to do is go to youtube. Like anything in life, youtube has it's down sides but it also has it's ups. I think it's so cool how all you have to do is take a little bit of time out of your day to make a vlog, talk about the news or make mini movies.
There is so much creativity out there and it is being put to use because of the Internet. Some examples: There is a guy named Phillip Defranco, he talks about the news, stupid things people do, women he likes etc. He is very entertaining. He started out just doing his thing like anybody else and now he has sponsors and is pretty much making a life from it. All because thousands of people watch his little few min show. Here is one of his videos.
There are other people that make cartoons, misc things using graphics & their technology just because they can. I am pretty sure some of these people can actually do something with their creativity if they wanted to. Some people even make little music videos or just sing in their front room. Some get discovered, some don't. Here is a video someone did that is a little series that they throw together. They use Mario Brothers stuff animals and graphics to create a story. They are up to episode 11. This is just one way how people can be so creative with their videos and imagination.
Then there are people who say they have seen an UFO, aliens or of paranormal things. When it comes down to it, it's just pure entertainment. Some of the stuff though can seem pretty real and even creepy. Although some of the UFO footage can actual be real. Remember, UFO doesn't always mean aliens, just something unknown in the sky. There is this one girl who calls herself "Sunshine". She says her house is haunted. She puts videos up some with just talking and some with evidence of the paranormal going on. She is only 17. As you watch the videos, you know it's fiction. The thing is though it is pretty entertaining (I think it is anyways). It is one long story being played out and she even evolves her mom and other people. Some think it's all very real. They say why would she go through all of this if it wasn't and how the mother wouldn't be involved. In the videos, you can just tell that they have the type of relationship that she would help her daughter out in making these videos. Yes I think Sunshine would also go out of her way to go through the trouble of making them it if was fun for her and if it's something she wants to do for a living.
I love seeing how much creativity people put into their videos, even the simple ones. Some of these people have a really good imagination. Who knows, someone might get discovered and really make it big. The only thing I don't like are the rude comments people leave but that's another thing.
For about a week, we have had the pizza place open. It has been so many emotions wrapped into one. For a good part, bored we have been. Since nobody really knows we are there yet, we haven't had much sales. Every once in awhile I stand out by the street waving a sign to try and get people's attention. It has brought in some. We now are going to have a direct mail go out on the 13th that will reach a huge area. We may even print up some flyers and door hang.
Right now the only people we have working at the store are my husband, me, our oldest son & his boyfriend, a friend of ours that we got to know & work with when we had the comic book store and an actual lady we hired who started today. We are going to have another driver that starts on Monday. Right now we don't have a full menu because we ran out of money due to starting late because of the first store front stalling (see previous blog 'End of one journey start of another') which is hurting us some. There is another Pudge Brothers that has our delivery area along with theirs until we really get going. They are supposed to be transferring calls to us if it's just pizza but sometimes they send us people from their area and I am sure not sending us some of our customers but not on purpose. We now almost have a reg. menu going. The things we still need: wings (which we are getting tomorrow), salad stuff, stuff for Cinnamon & reg. bread sticks and a few different toppings for pizzas like the chicken pizzas etc, oh and banana peppers, artichokes & green olives. We also need to get more containers with lids, a couple of small stainless steel tables and a computer system. There are other things too like seating etc for the front of the store but those things are not needed to actually run a place. Pudge Brothers carries so many other foods that we will also start carrying when we can. They even do hamburgers & fries!
I have never made pizzas before except for mini ones etc at home where the crust is already made (or by using hamburger buns) and at Subway but again the crust is already made. I am starting to get the hang of it. The hardest thing is working with the dough. It starts out in a round ball like and you have to stretch etc to get the shape of the pizza. Man is it hard. Michael is teaching me & working with me every step of the way since he knows how to do pizzas. Even though we have only been open for a week, we have already had to deal with a couple of annoying people. I hate this part of fast food. At least with the book store we only had 1 real rude customer in one year. Last week someone called the store for a pizza but after taking the order, we discovered that it wasn't in our area. So Michael calls the other one that is "working with us" to transfer the order. Someone on that end didn't do their job. Not only did the husband called us back twice but his wife called us once also. They were complaining about not getting their food, was told the other place didn't get the order : / etc. Michael tried to explain things to them but for some reason they didn't get the fact that we couldn't deliver to them & they were not our customer. They even said that they will not order from us again. Michael clearly said that we couldn't anyways. They still didn't get it! They were even raising their voice.
Last night (Thursday) while Michael was on a run, someone called, I took the order then called Michael on his cell to see if it was for us or the other place. He wasn't sure so I had to wait until he got back which was about 5 min give or take. When he realized it wasn't for us, he called the other place to transfer the order. Now this kind of thing happens all the time at every pizza place, it's not a huge deal. The other place had a delivery time of a little more than 1 hr. The customer did not like this. Again they called us to bitch us out. Michael tried to explain things once again and again they didn't get it. Again the wife calls too and she starts yelling at Michael. He tried to explain things to her but she also didn't get it. The guy calls back once again as well. Same story as the first time but doesn't end there. Today the lady calls yet again still wanting to bitch. Seriously the next day bitching about a pizza?!? She is yelling and cussing at Michael and still can't understand that we can't deliver to her, she is not our customer and we transferred it. They didn't like that it took so long for it to get transferred and then had to wait even longer for the pizza. We get that but seriously acting like this over it is unnecessary. When she wouldn't listen or stop, Michael told her she had to stop calling us or he would report her to the police for harassment. She dared him basically. She ended up calling the Pudge Brothers company. For some reason instead of letting it go, the guy that helps run the company got mad and calls Michael. So now Michael and this guy are getting into it. It was a simple mistake that happens all the time and for some reason everyone acts like it's the end of the world over freakin' pizza.
I so hope we don't have to go through this every time there is a problem. People make mistakes. Yes it's annoying and all but still to carry it over to the next day and have that kind of attitude is uncalled for. For now things are worked out but man it bugs us to no end how this all played out. Anyways, it is late so I must go. I just needed to get everything out. Our sales have picked up some since we are now on the Pudge Brothers web site. We just need to be able to hang on and get through this rough patch so things can hopefully really kick in. I miss talking to everyone. We don't have internet yet at the store so I am not able to get on until late at night when I get home. Take care and hope everyone is good. Big hugs. xo
Hey everyone. It's hard to believe that I have been married for 14 yrs already. Time really does go by fast. My marriage is better than ever. Or coarse we have our days just like any couple and marriage but talking, laughter and respect are key things to make any relationship work and that is what we have. I have an awesome hubby even though there are times he drives me crazy. I am so lucky to have him in my life. I can't wait to spend many more years with him.
Since we don't have the book store, I was hoping we could actual do something today. We couldn't do what I would have liked which was go to something called Garden Of The Gods and 7 falls. One, the car isn't in good shape to be driving all that way (it's a long ass drive) and we didn't want to get stuck somewhere. Two, I slept in late because I haven't been getting enough sleep these past few days and three, we are still trying to figure out what is going on with the pizza place (I think I've blogged about it recently called end of one journey and start of another). We did however went to the comic book store that we love to go to (they have one of the cutest dogs) and we got some comics. My stack was bigger and I could have gotten a lot more since I am missing a lot of older issues. Then we went to McDonalds for lunch, saw 'Cowboys vs Aliens' (good movie by the way will blog about it in my review section)and then had dinner at TGI Fridays. I am so full. That was my day. Even though we couldn't do exactly what I wanted, I am still glad I spent it with my hubby and that I have him by my side. That's all that matters.
Hearing and seeing the footage of the riots in London makes my heart break. It is so disturbing & I will never ever understand why people feel the need to do such a thing in any part of the world.
Protesting is so much safer and doesn't cause harm to others (mostly). I understand that some countries are not allowed to protest but if there are thousands and thousands protesting, it will be harder for them to do anything. Either way people may get arrested but innocent lives, business etc won't be destroyed. Rioting will do no good and will not prove anything. All that says is that you now have stooped down to their level. Not only is it disturbing to see/ hear these riots but to also know that most (if not all) are really just for nothing. One of the things that really gets to me is when a police officer kills or seriously hurts someone and right away the victim is innocent. I realize officers are people too and can be racist and even do racist things. That still doesn't give ANYBODY the right to go and start these crazy riots just because someone thinks an officer did wrong or they hate officers. What really puzzles me is that these cop haters will spit out their comments etc until one day when they need or someone they love needs one. Then they are begging for help. Not every cop is bad just like not every white, black, Hispanic, gay, etc etc are bad. Not everyone is racist either. Officers actually have to use force however it might be sometimes to protect themselves and others. I would so like to see anyone who hates cops to try to be a cop for a day or two and see what it's really like. If you think a cop did wrong, protest in a good way & let the law handle it. They actually do investigations every time a cop uses force to make sure the cop wasn't out of line.
Then there's riots when sports teams win or even loose but mostly win. Tell me again how this is good celebrating? I realize drinking plays a part but still. You can party in the streets without destroying other people's property and causing fires. Having riots because you need to fight for your rights in your country, for me I can understand this BUT it's still very wrong and innocent people get hurt in so many ways.
When it comes down to it, please people never riot. It's never good and nothing good will ever ever come from it. You won't be heard that way. You end up being the bad person. We humans can be so much better than this. All that EVER comes out of riots is innocent lives get hurt, people getting arrested, innocent people loosing their loved ones & their place of business. Think about it, would you want your loved one getting innocently hurt or loosing their business or home just because someone decided to use their anger & frustration towards them? No you wouldn't and in fact you would be wondering where the police are while it happened. The police will be to busy trying to control the riot. Another thing, if police ambulances etc are so busy trying to control riots, then if someone has a heart attack or some other real problem, there will be no one to help them. Again if it was your loved on in serious trouble, wouldn't you want an emergency person to help them out as fast as possible? You will wondering where they were when it's needed and get pissed because they were to busy trying to control the riot.
If you get pissed at something and want to be heard PROTEST PROTEST PROTEST, in a RESPECTFUL manner. Stop with this useless violence and hurting innocent people just because you want to be heard. You will be heard if it's done respectfully. That outcome from rioting is soooooo not worth it. Think before you act. This is not how to get things done.
It has been revealed, the album cover of Darren Hayes's upcoming album 'Secret Codes and Battleships'. I absolutely just love the cover. When I first saw it, I thought of Michael Jackson's 'Dangerous' album. It's full of color, has all kinds of different images together making one awesome cover.
When I saw the cover, I got all excited again for the album. I can't wait to hear what Darren has to say. Darren has a very unique voice. I love how he can do all these different ranges and has so much control. I just love it. He also knows how to put things into words when know one else can. Darren just has such amazing talent. I really hope this album soars everywhere. He truly deserves it. He puts so much hard work into everything he does. Darren's talent is just one part of him. He is so down to earth, funny and sweet. Very interesting guy as well. I have never met him but I hope I get to some day and if/when I do, I really hope my shyness doesn't kick in or I become overwhelmed.
This has been an amazing journey. I didn't know about Darren's solo career to have been on the past rides (just thought after Savage Garden that was it, see past blog about my Darren journey 2009 Dec.). I love how Darren revealed everything. Sending out coded messages couple times a week having us trying to break the code. Whoever was the first one to guess each code, not only got recognition, but also got a canvas painting that went with the message. On the canvas was the message and on the back his signature. I was lucky enough to be one of the people to guess first. I never win things like this. Even if we didn't get anything, I still would have done it and been just as happy. I am also not to big on signatures simply because celebs are just people like us with really cool jobs. I do have to say though, the painting & message I won does mean a lot to me. I didn't think I would win one. Darren didn't have to do this and yet he did. The vlogs Darren has been doing to take us along the journey have been awesome. Every little step that has been taken has been exciting and I am truly grateful for being able to be apart of it. The other fans that I have gotten to know has also been an awesome journey. I love getting to know everyone. This journey has also been helping me deal with my insecurities. I have a ways to go but have come along way. A big thank you to all the connections I have made. You know who you are.
Darren if you happen to read this, I would just like to say a very big thank you. I know I say it a lot and so do others but it's true. Thank you for taking time out of your day to go in the chats, interacting with us in other ways, sharing a part of you with us and just being so real with us. You're an awesome guy and truly deserve the best in life. Big love. XO @tjt72 (or just tjt depending)
So much has been going on this month, especially this weekend. Having the book store has been a blast. Lost of hard work, some lazy days, tiring, some struggles but still had fun (even dealing with the lazy people and the kids destroying the kids area to no end). Last year we got a little behind during the really slow periods and expected to get caught up in Dec. When Dec. came, we did not do holiday sales which made it hard to get things caught up. We were working on it and even told the mall people that during the summer, we would have everything caught up. They agreed to let us do this. Our sales started to pick up especially in June. We were hitting record sales. Apartments are being built right across from where the store is ad couldn't wait to get business from there as well. Then we got the news.
We were told someone else wanted our spot and we needed to move. The people that want our spot can and will obviously be able to pay more rent than we can. We could have just moved to another spot in the mall but all of the empty spaces are not built. Meaning, there is an outer shell but inside the walls, floors, widows, doors etc are not there. Completely hollow. We so don't have the money to build up a place and since I guess the other business didn't want to (or couldn't) fork over the money to build a place. So naturally they came and ate us. We had until the end of July.
We decided to keep the store open, tell our customers, take the money we make and invest it into another business. Pizza. My husband knows pizza better than ANYTHING (job wise people ), knows how to run one and make money doing it. Plus we wouldn't have to worry about digital pizza taking over (or do we hehe). There is a empty pizza place right by our house. It used to be a Pudge Brothers. The guy that used to have it, got stupid with his money and had to close it. We basically got handed this place for free. We are all ready to go with the company. Even the web site and flyers are ready and waiting for us to open. The people we are now having to deal with are the leasing of the store front. Everything has been going good about both things until we hit the last few days of July. Here is where gets crazy.
The company that does the leasing at the shopping center where the pizza place is, is stationed in CA. They have an accountant to handle things here in CO. They told their accountant that everything was ok, we were good to go and to collect the money and get the copies of the lease signed. We do all of that and so happy and scared. The lease gets signed and mailed to CA. Now they are saying they need to check my husband's financing again! They already approved us and made a verbal agreement! So now we don't know what's going on with this place. We are looking at other Pudge Brothers that are for sale as a back up plan. If these people for some reason go back on their agreement, we are going to sue them. Simply because there was a verbal agreement, everything was already checked out, we signed the lease and wrote the check. They haven't cashed it. We do plan on trying to re-open the book store but after we have a little more money or if we just can't get this pizza thing going right now.
As for the book store. The original owners of it are still involved because we didn't have the money to just buy it from them so we were making payments on top of the rent etc. They said they wanted to take as much as they could to their house. We were happy about that. They wanted us to start tearing down the store before 6pm (we were staying open until 6pm Sunday the mall hours to make money). My hubby told them no, we were not going to close and loose the money that we needed. That was one conflict. We staid open till 6, they weren't happy. They wanted the back computer so I deleted all my stuff from it, they decided they didn't want it because it no longer had the store program on it. There were other little things here ad there but meh whatever. They had something to do so couldn't stay after 6 (I think the wife had to work). They took a lot but not nearly as much as we thought they would or hoped. So now we were left with more than half the store.
We did what we could n' boxing up the books and started tearing down the shelves. We ran out (there were 300 boxes!) so we had to stop. When we went to go grab more boxes from a box warehouse, no one was there and we were already running behind. The Uhal we rented didn't have a ramp so it made things harder. We had to start putting books in bags. We had a ton of them. We even used garbage bags. My 2 sons, my oldest son's friend and a mall helper started working our butts off trying to et things done. There was a verbal agreement to be out by 5 on Monday but then the mall manager left an email saying 3. We thought we could be out by 5 maybe a little later. Little did we know that with all the little crap that happened, it slowed us down. We were there until after 11pm and still didn't finish. We were about 65% done. We physically couldn't do any more work. We did mange to get 100 more boxes.
The next day (today Tuesday), my hubby sent an email to the mall manager explaining that we still had stuff there etc etc. He didn't go into all the details. She sends one back we need to get our people there TODAY and get the stuff out and was upset because of the agreement that was made. My hubby then told here we don't have "people", it's just us 2. She wanted the keys. She was so pissy about everything too. We have not had any good dealings with her in the past. Luckily we got the important stuff but still, how very fucking annoying. I can understand that there is another store waiting and there was an agreement made but things happen, we are not robots and there is only 2 of us. We were willing to get the place cleaned out things out of there in a few days but she can't just wanted the keys. I so hate it when people like that don't understand how business are done especially small ones.
So that is the whole story. We got things done but there were those ruff patches. It could have been worse but I am still very annoyed about how it all played out. I will keep everyone updated about the pizza place that wants to know. Thanks for listening to my rambles. -Me
Fantasy art, how I love the. I am always finding new people that I like. I can be picky at times when it comes to what fantasy art I like. I will probably do more than one blog about it but I just wanted to introduce some of my favorite fantasy artist.
Jim Warren - This guy's work is so unique and different from the others that I like. A lot of his work have hidden things in them. Sometimes I am still finding things in his art that I never noticed before. He loves to have things in the backgrounds and blend things in with water so they to be as one. Here are a couple of his paintings. If you like, google him and check out more of his awesome stuff.
Boris Vallejo - He is one of the first people I saw the art of and started liking. He does a lot of dragons, women, some men, etc. Sometimes it's hard to believe they are actual paintings because they can be so detailed. I think he also does some superheroes too but I could be wrong. Here are a couple things of his work.
Luis Royo - This guy is one of my favorites. He does mostly half naked women. Sometimes he adds guys or some kind of dark demon like guys. A lot of his work can also be sensual and sexy in a weird way. He also has so much detail in is work.His paintings are pretty dark but I love it. Here are a couple of his paintings.
Greg Hildebrandt - Greg has a brother Tim who also does fantasy art and sometimes they team up on paintings. Greg's work is also a little different than the others that I like. He likes to take things from movies and add his own style/vision to it. He has also done superheroes and one of the famous Star Wars art posters that he did with his brother (I wonder if Mr. Darren Hayes has it). Here is a couple of Greg's work.
This is all I have right now but at some point I will put up some more by some other people. I just like way to many. :-)
