Chiquita on Shutter Island

Last weekend I saw the craziest movie ever. Its called Shutter Island. It starts out with two investigators landing on an island off a ferry. The lead in the movie is played by Leonardo Dicaprio. He is one of the investigators. There are all kinds of crazy twists in the movie. He is there because he's looking for a prisoner/patient that seemingly vanished. Everything seems super shady. Dicaprio's character (who's name I don't recall) has never worked with his new partner before. The story goes that his wife (Dicaprio's wife that is) died in a fire and he keeps having flashbacks and nightmares about it. In the end, it turns out Dicaprio's character is actually a patient at the asylum. He's acting out this crazy hullicination, and all the employees at the asylum/prison are pretty much letting him do whatever he wants according to his fantasy because a few of the doctors are convinced it will bring him back to reality. The fantasy he's acting out involves the patient that disappeared. She killed her three children, drowned them in the lake behind the family home. In reality, Dicaprio killed his wife. Why? Because SHE killed their three children, in the lake behind the family home. The whole reason the employees were allowing him to run about recklessly on the island and come back to reality is because if he doesn't he has to go to the lighthouse to be experimented on. The doctor's thought they could help him without having to experiment on him. Towards the end, it seems to work. They get him to say who he really is, and to admit to what he did. So now he doesn't have to go to the lighthouse, right? WRONG. In the ending scene, his partner who turned out to be one of his doctors, and him are sitting on the steps of the mens ward. Dicaprio whispers to his "partner" that its going to be really tricky getting out of this place, its a lot worse than he thought. The doctor looks across the lawn, and shakes his head at all the other doctors. They all come over and lead him away to the lighthouse.
I'm not really sure what to think about the ending. I'm not sure if he really is crazy and thinks he's still a well to do detective, or if he does realize and remember what he did, and he wants to go to the lighthouse because he can't live with what he did. Pehaps when the movie comes out on DVD, I'll watch it again and blog about my conclusion. That's all for now!
Here's the trailer, but it does the movie no justice.

Chiquita on Prom

If someone had told me last year around this time that this is how it was going to be, I probably would have laughed at them. I'm talking about prom. Things are going to be perfect. Honestly, at this time last year I wasn't even planning on going to my senior prom. But now, I'm actually really looking forward to it. Aside from graduation, its what I'm looking forward to the most right now.
My boyfriend is a couple of years older than me, he graduated from Kennedy in 2008. His name is Cory Saunders. When we started dating, I figured he would refuse to go. That would mean I wasn't going, because I'm not really down to go to prom with one boy while I'm dating another. Luckily, two of Cory's friends, Jason and Gary, date two of my friends that are in my grade and go to school at Kennedy (Shelby and Beth). Gary and Jason are going to prom with Beth and Shelby, so it all is working out really perfectly. I'm really excited. I get to have a good time because I get to take my boyfriend to prom (and he will come willingly) and I dont have to take some other guy, and he's going to have a good time because his friends will be there. I'm really happy with the way everything is working out.
To make everything even better, I found my prom dress, ordered it, and have already picked it up. Cory's tux has been ordered, and we're pretty much all set. I'm really glad everything worked out this way, its shaping up to be the perfect prom.

Chiquita on the New Job

I've been working at Lowe's now for a couple of weeks. The beginning was pretty boring. It was mostly training on the computer for hours at a time. Finally, after four days of staring at the computer screen, reading and listening to information then taking quizzes over it, I was put with a trainer on a cash register in lumber. I learned about LAR lookups (don't ask me what that acronym stands for). Lumber mostly deals with commercial contractors, and the LAR look up (which you access by pressing F8) is used to look up a business credit account without having to have the customer actually have the Lowe's Business credit card with them. There are all kinds of buttons on the cash register that i have to learn. I never realized all the stuff that cashiers have to do when even the simplest of purchases is made. ITs all pretty interesting.
The people are also very nice. Everyone is really helpful, and if I have a question, pretty much all I have to do is look confused and someone is rushing to my side to assist me right away. I get along really well with everyone I've met so far. A lot of different kinds of people work there. I work with an older woman, maybe 55, whose daughter i went to school with. Most of the cashiers are in college and most of them are girls, although there are a few guys. One of them is also a lunch lady at Kennedy!
Another thing I like about Lowe's is seeing people I know come in. I've rang up several of my classmates or their parents in the two weeks I've been working there. My most favorite person I've had come in has to be the art teacher I had in elementary school, Mrs. Weaver. She's one of my all time favorite teachers, and for years I haven't seen her and I've always wondered what ever happened to her after she retired. When she came through my line, she recognized me right away. It pretty much made my day.
So that's pretty much all I've got to say about my new job so far. I'll keep you updated!

Chiquita on Checking ID's

So now that I'm 18, I'm starting to notice the perks of being legal. I can buy cigarettes, although I don't smoke so I never have. I could go to the strip club if I wanted to but that's um, weird. I can't say I have any interest in ever going there. Anyways, the reason I'm even talking about this is because I have a friend whose parents work at a bar. They needed extra help last night because it was St. Patrick's Day and it was really busy, so I offered to help them out, and because I am now 18, I was able to.

It was a pretty interesting experience. I worked a 12 hour shift, from two pm to two am. I sat at the door the whole time and checked ID's. It was actually very entertaining because some of the people that go to bars are pretty funny. Also, I got all the free food I wanted. They had brats which were SUPER tasty. I didn't have to wear anything special, and all I had to do was say, "Can I see your ID?" to anyone who didn't look 21. I caught one person who wasn't 21 and I got to get the bouncer to kick em out. Pretty exciting stuff.

I got my job at Lowe's (officially!), so I don't really need a job anymore, but I think I'm going to be working at the bar on the weekends just for some extra cash. I am happy I got the opportunity to work there, because it gets me some experience working in a bar, and that's good because eventually I would like to try my hand at being a bar tender. I'd like to do that during college. So yea... St. Patty's Day was good, I'll keep you updated on my bartending career! haha



PS. Check this song out by one of my favorite bands, the Notwist. They rock.

Chiquita on a bunch of really random stuff that i find pretty funny.

Me: i'll leave one head phone out in case you have anything intelligent to say.
Paige Hagemann: I have everything intelligent to say.

Me: I have really simple humor. Cory had three pennies, and he said "Want three pennies?" just as one fell on the ground, so he goes, "two pennies?" and i laughed. I thought it was really funny.
Paige Hagemann: Hmm. Who's Cory?
Me: My boyfriend.
Paige Hagemann: That's why you thought it was funny.
Me: NO!! It really was funny!
Paige Hagemann: Yeaahhh hormones don't play a role in it at all.

Check this out. Its a half female, half male chicken. Yea. Crazy right. Paige showed it to me. Apparently its supposed to help with research about sexual identity. But Paige says that sexual identity has to do with peoples' hormones, not chromosomes, so that argument doesn't make sense at all. Read about it here if you're confused.

I went to dinner the other night with my grandmother and my mom. When we were leaving, my grandma stumbled when she got up and laughed pretty loud about it. I said to my mom, "I think Grandma's been drinking," to which my grandmother replies, "Well you know I did have that big tall glass of ice cold.... WATER!" Love her.

In case you were wondering, this is one of my favorite cartoons of all time. Another favorite is this one.

You should probably see this video. Anyone remember the llama llama duck song that was emailed to everyone in the world pretty much? Yea, this song reminds me of that.

Guess what!? I found the llama llama duck video. Its right here!

Chiquita on My Bucket List Again

Ok, I have a few new things for my bucket list.

I want to adopt a child. (Ok, I know you're probably thinking this is very unrealistic. But I'm serious, if I ever have enough money to adopt a child, and the time is right, I want to do it. My mom was adopted. If she hadn't been adopted, I probably would have never existed. My mother would have never had the opportunities she did. Her life could have been very bad, and because of the kindness of one couple who wasn't able to have their own child, she grew up happy. I want to be able to give that opportunity to a child.)

I want to go to a huge sporting event. (Yes, I watched the Super Bowl tonight. Could you imagine being there? That would be crazy! I've never even been to a Hawk's football game. Its sad, I know. I went to a Twins game one time, but there wasn't very many people there. I'm talking HUGE stadium, completely packed. Like, don't let go of my hand or we might lose each other.)

More specifically, I want to go to a Cubs game. If possible, I want to take my grandmother. (My grandmother is a huge Cubs fan, as am I. We love the Cubs. During the season, our lives consist of a lot of baseball talk and game watching. If I could think of one single thing that my grandmother and I have bonded over the most in my life, it would be the Cubs, no question. I think it's safe to say that its one of my biggest dreams/goals for the next year/season. I hope I can make it happen.)

That's all for now, I'll let you know when I think of more!! PS, I am knitting a scarf and its coming along quite lovely!

Chiquita on Mormonism

So long story short I'm looking into Mormonism. I'd like to say I'm baptist, although I don't currently attend a baptist church. I went to a baptist church with my grandmother my entire childhood, and I also went to a (different) baptist church with some people I babysat for during middle school and the first two years of high school. I'm not going to lie, I don't really understand the whole baptist thing. Its not that I don't understand Christianity, that I have at least a decent understanding of. Its the whole baptist, Methodist, Lutheran thing that I don't understand. But anyways, my friend Mikayla recently converted to Mormonism, and I find it rather interesting, so she gave me The Book of Mormon, (who's actually a person, I didn't know that!) and I'm supposed to be going to church with her sometime. Its not necessarily that I want to be Mormon, its just that I am curious, so I'm going to find out more. We went on a small road trip to Des Moines, so I learned a little bit on the way there. She happened to have The Book of Mormon in her car, and she has another, so she gave it to me. I read the introduction and the testimonies of the eleven people who saw the plates (I know... if you're not Mormon, you might be lost... sorry...) as well as the testimony of Joseph Smith (a Mormon prophet). I read the first two chapters of the first book. That's as far as I got tonight (I had some knitting to get to), but tomorrow I hope I can make time to read more. Oh holy crap!!! I just thought of something! I could potentially pull a research paper topic out of this! (Mr. Ayers, there may be hope for me yet!) I'll keep y'all updated about this whole Mormon exploration thing. And if you'd like to explore as well, this might help.