4-letter word for “unambitious”

I was pretty surprised when I went to upload my new pictures when I found under the first set it said, “This set has been viewed 185 times.” I didn’t know there were that many people who existed that wanted to see pictures of me.

Here’s the second set

Too many of them didn’t turn out, but I suppose that’s what I should expect when using a disposable digital camera.

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I still don’t have a job, and haven’t made an effort to get one. I’m still good for surviving, but it’s getting to be about that time. It was just so discouraging before, when I was half-trying, but now I need to make a real effort to get a job I want. I’m still not to the stage where I need to get any job, but I know I’d have that locked down if it came to it.

I said “flatmate” twice the other day without thinking about it, and also referred to my apartment as a “flat.” I blame all the (2) British diarists I read, but I also blame America for not having a convenient word for that. “Roommate” isn’t appropriate, because I don’t share a room, and “apartmentmate” is unwieldy.

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Having a strange sleep schedule and being really tired on Friday night, I had gone to bed early, and got woken up at around 11:45 pm by a continuous beeping noise. I couldn’t identify what it was to start with, and finally made out that it was a car horn by the time I heard intermittent, distressful female “helps” coming in between the breaks in honking. I jumped out of bed, and grabbed my phone and my knife (I sleep in my clothes pretty often), and ran out the door not knowing for sure what I was going to have to deal with. I thought I might be about to have to stop some sort of rape-in-progress, but after I hopped the back wall to my complex, all I saw was this bitch sitting in her car at the gate across the street, unable to get in for some reason. About the time I figured out what was going on, I guess someone let her in, because the noise stopped, the gate opened, and she pulled through. I was pretty fucking pissed. Seriously, who the hell does shit like that?

I hate people so much.

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For a while, we’ve been frequenting the Taco Bell that’s right down the street from us, despite that it’s only open until 1am, which is pretty annoying for what’s supposed to be a 24-hour city. There is a girl who works there as a shift manager that has been a topic of discussion as things have unfolded between her and my crew.

From the first time we met her we’d been discussing what a difficult spot she was in, because here in a city where much of your worth is based on your appearance if you’re female, she had such a raw deal it hurt us. She’s 19 or 20, petite (maybe 5’1″ or so), dark-hair/blue-eyed and pale-skinned with a pretty face and good figure (from what I can see in the unflattering fast-food uniform), and some slightly distracting crooked (not gapped) teeth. Crooked teeth are such a breaking feature that’s so easily fixed, with modern orthodontics. We couldn’t imagine, aside from their short-sightedness or a situation we just couldn’t know about, how her parents couldn’t scrounge up the money for some braces sometime in middle or highschool. I think she could probably work as a cocktail waitress or one of the million other get-paid-to-look-good jobs available in Vegas, and have a lot easier and better-paid time than at Taco Bell.

I decided she was pretty cool in one of the first few times we went there. Andy greeted her with a standard “How’s it going?” before he ordered, and she gave this funny, obviously ungenuine smile and said “Awesome.” in the most dry, dead delivery imaginable, and made us all laugh. Tim joked with me for a while about how I should pick her up, and I kept saying “nah, nah… for one, teeth, and also I don’t have anything to offer for us to do. But I think we should get her to hang out with us, we need to expand our crew.” Anyway, as things progressed I started talking with her two minutes at a time, making her laugh here and there about some of the idiots that came in, and really her teeth started to bother me less and less. Tim prodded me further about asking her to do something, and had picked up on her liking me (Tim is probably the least people-astute of us three, but it’s hard not to be, considering the competition), and finally I said I might once we got a couch and I got a job.

Several interactions we had are of note.

The first being a time early on, where I gave her a “How’s it going?” as we were leaving (she didn’t take our order), and she smiled, but looked at me like she wasn’t sure who I was. “What was that about?” I said to Tim, afterwards. “I don’t know what to make of it.” Tim said.

The next time we were there, maybe a day or two later, as we were leaving, she went out of the way to give us an across-the-restaurant shout goodbye, which Tim and I both considered significant.

One time not too long ago when Tim and I went, I was picking Andy up some food since he was playing a big tournament online, and so I went back and got his food after we had eaten and talked to Shera (that’s her name) the whole time while I waited for his food. I asked her about how much she worked and what she did on her day off. “Absolutely nothing.” she said. “I just sit around all by myself.” I told Andy about it later and he said “She told you that? She said that to you?” “I know,” I said, “I couldn’t just leave her hanging so I said ‘You should hang out with us sometime’ but changed subjects really quickly and didn’t specify, so I didn’t commit at all.” What she said was somewhat forward, and I got a kick out of it. She also tried to inquire about what I did, but left me a spot out and I artfully dodged her question. “Why did you move here?” she asked, “Do you have a job out here?” Without hesitation I say, “I love it here!” and go on to talk about why Vegas is the greatest city in the world, completely ignoring the second part.

I’d been talking to her for a while about sending in a comment in Taco Bell’s online customer comment system about her, but I kept losing my receipt or forgetting. A few days ago, I finally managed to do it, and said something like We go in all the time, Shera’s shift is friendly and efficient, etc. no one is grumpy or miserable but longer and better-worded.

So, I go in tonight with Andy, and as soon as we get in, she smiles really big and says “Hey! Did you send in that compliment?” I look suspicious and say “Maybe.” She says, “I came in yesterday, and they had hung it up on the wall in the back!” Her manager was there and took our orders and gave us free drinks. Shera asked me how things were going before Andy and I sat down and discreetly laughed and talked about how much of an impact that comment had made. I had joked on the way there about how she was going to instantly jump me as soon as she saw me because of how awesome my compliment was, so after we had sat down, I gave an appropriate “I told you that internet thing was for the win.” He laughed and agreed. Shera was sweeping the front, so she had a chance to bluntly ask me, “Do you work?” I had told Andy about my dodge from before, so we both laughed and I said, “Damn, you caught me… No, I’m still looking for a job.” She looked puzzled, so I added “I

saved a lot before I came out here.” She said some more things, and I asked her what hours she kept since she worked a late shift. She told me she usually stayed up after she worked and then didn’t get up the next day until 2 or 3 in the afternoon. Then she pressed with a “Why do you ask?” which was significant, in that it was an attempt to get me to say something, or ask her somewhere. I didn’t really answer and said that we usually stayed up pretty late too. This must have frustrated her, because she pressed harder, saying “You should come see my apartment.” I asked her where she lived, she answered, and, being put to a decision I went ahead and pulled the trigger. “What are you doing tonight, what time do you get off?”

So now, I’m supposed to go “see her apartment” at around 2:30 tonight. Andy and I laughed at how hard my internet comment had conquered, and that she more or less put it out there that we were going to do something. Tim’s still asleep, but he’s going to have a good laugh when he wakes up.

I feel odd going back on my original assessments of things. I’ve talked before about how high my standards are for girls, but her teeth have bothered me less and less each time. Some might think it’s awfully superficial of me to care about something like that, but I prefer to think of it as not lying to myself and everyone else. Plus, I can’t really see a relationship working where I’m not physically attracted to my partner.

I can’t help but think this whole thing is a bad idea, but I think that thought is completely unfounded and based on nothing, so I’m ignoring it. I think it’s funny that none of you are going to find out how it went and what happened for forever because I don’t ever write. But half of you quit reading anyway, so I’m not so worried.