It’s Just Micheal

Last week Jenny and I flew off to San Francisco, CA to be with her brothers during their liver transplant. Trent donated 60% of his liver to their brother, Nick. Both are still in the hospital, but recovering very quickly and will be going home soon! I came back to Missouri yesterday, but Jenny will stay in San Francisco to help out with taking care of her brothers during the long recovery from home. Today I’m driving to Springfield to pick up Kodi so that Jenny won’t have to worry about it when she gets back, so tomorrow I will be making a larger post with pictures!

Over the past couple weeks, there have been some significant updates for several Apple products. Most times we see one product receive an upgrade and others in following weeks. This time however, Apple released updates to six products. Visits to the apple page early Tuesday morning were welcomed with the familiar yellow sticky. For those that haven’t seen this before, this is Apple’s way of building excitement and getting everyone to talk. On the yellow sticky is a message, “We’ll be back shortly.”
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I am well overdue for an update, so here we go. Yes, it’s 2:30AM on a Sunday night, I’ve become quite the night owl recently. Every day I convince myself to go to bed earlier, but I end up staying awake until 3am, or a slightly later. I have been able to stop sleeping until 2PM and get up between 11AM and Noon. I realize that this is still too late to be getting up on a daily basis, it’s just so hard to get out of bed in the morning!
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We are coming close to the end of the Holiday season. In just over an hour it will be Christmas Day. Children will be waking up with anticipation of opening their gifts and playing their games. Parents will be elated with the joy of their children. All will be happy, for at least a few hours. There will at least be more happiness at one time than most other times.
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I decided to take a trip home for a couple days since I wasn’t able to spend much time here while home during Thanksgiving. I left work Monday and drove to Blue Springs. I enjoy being with my family and don’t get to spend much time with them. I was going to have dinner with my grandparents Tuesday night, but the snow came Tuesday morning and made it difficult for people to drive, so dinner had to be cancelled. It took my grandma three hours to get home from work, which normally takes her 45 minutes. It was not a good night to be out driving. The snow is really pretty though. I think we got more than what was predicted, it covered everything! So Tuesday I slept in, sat around and watched movies. It was a great day! Read more…

So winter has set upon us in Missouri. I always enjoy winter for about a month before I want it to go away. I’m still in the loving winter state right now. Especially when it snows, I love it even more.
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In the most populous state in America there is a proposition to reverse the Supreme Courts decision that a ban against same-sex marriage is unconstitutional and discriminatory. Proposition 8 is titled “Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry.” If you are unfamiliar with the courts ruling, refer to this here. I could rant for a long time on why it’s wrong to allow people to vote on allowing gay marriage or denying gay marriage to citizens of the United States, but I’ll focus on the positives. Today, Apple released this statement:

“Apple is publicly opposing Proposition 8 and making a donation of $100,000 to the No on 8 campaign. Apple was among the first California companies to offer equal rights and benefits to our employees’ same-sex partners, and we strongly believe that a person’s fundamental rights — including the right to marry — should not be affected by their sexual orientation. Apple views this as a civil rights issue, rather than just a political issue, and is therefore speaking out publicly against Proposition 8.”

I can’t express enough how extremely happy I am with Apple, AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and many other companies that have donated money to help the fight against proposition 8. This is the most costly ballot measure campaign in the country this year with $60 million raised total, for and against the measure. Between 2004 and 2006, 22 states had similar measures that all together totaled $34.1 million, so you can see how much attention this has received in CA. This is HUGE! Not only have companies donated money, but several individuals have as well. Brad Pitt, Steven Spielberg, T.R. Knight, Dana Delaney, Eric McCormack, Pete Wentz, David Geffen, America Ferrara, Tony Plana and Ana Oritz have all either donated money or have helped defeat proposition 8. It’s extraordinary how much support has come from companies and individuals.

I encourage everyone that lives in California to go vote NO! on Proposition 8 and be sure to take 5 other people with you. If you don’t live in California, then talk to those that you know that live in California to go vote no and encourage them to talk to their friends about the proposition. This is not only a big initiative for California, but will make a huge impact for all of America.

So Justin is amazing at photography. It’s purely a gift. He can see almost anything and photograph it in a way that no one else can see. Tonight we drove around trying to find some homes that we could easily photograph showing people living their lives, but we didn’t have much luck. Once we got back to his apartment, we started taking pictures of me and playing around. The first was to take a picture of me like he did of himself. Then we started to use the light box for portraits. This box has lights in a circle so that there are no shadows and it does an amazing job. Of course we had to photoshop a few blemishes off, but I love the way that it came out.

As I was watching the video on Justin’s site, I thought of something that I haven’t thought before. In the debate of same sex marriage, the simple argument should be happiness. When someone is denied marriage to the person that they love, they are not being allowed to be completely happy. For everything that America stands for, everything comes down to allowing people to live their life to the fullest, and that includes happiness.

I want to be happy.

I can’t believe it’s been almost a month since my last post. It feels like it was a week ago that I was camping, but it’s been three times as long. A six day vacation isn’t long enough, but a five day work week is too long. It’s funny how time is different when you’re enjoying life.

Work is stressful. It’s stressful because I always seem to be short on money when the bills are due. The bills are due when I have no money. Every day I go to work telling myself, “Today is the day!” hoping that it will be the day that I have the magical sale that will make all things better. But that day never comes. Instead I realize that I’m wasting my time staying in Columbia. I need to face reality. I won’t finish school at Mizzou, I won’t be happy in Columbia, and I can’t stay for the few friends that I have left here. The first step to getting out of here is Kansas City. It’s not my dream, but it’s a start. I will be able to go home, save money and pay off debts while I live with family for a few months. Maybe even my car, less than $3,000 remaining in payments! I may stay in Kansas City for a while, although not ideal, it makes the most since. I need to let my career take me around the world, not take my career around the world.

I applied for a position at an upcoming store in Overland Park, KS. I took half a day off work to interview for the position, and I felt that the interview went well. The manager and assistant manager showed that they were very happy with my responses and sales role play. They had very encouraging comments, I felt sure during my drive to Columbia. I felt that everything was working out and I started to get excited about moving to KC. Today I spoke with Danny, the manager, and he felt that I needed more experience with the company and lacked excitement during my interview. He stated that I did very well during my interview, that I nailed all the questions, but felt that I needed to practice interviewing with my manager. He decided to go with other applicants, but encouraged me to not give up. This, of course, was a huge blow. I didn’t want to work the rest of the day, just wanted to stay home. That wasn’t an option, so back to work I went. I decided to see if there were any new job postings, and there were. A few in STL, one at another Circuit City, a few management positions, a few customer service positions, and one sales representative position in KC. The State Line Rd store at Ward Parkway. I applied for it and emailed the recruiting HR manager in Kansas City and asked who would be interviewing for the position. After she replied, I emailed the manager right away to get my name out there. I wanted to show her that I was excited about moving back to KC and wanted to work at her store. I’m not going to get shot down twice. I’m waiting to hear back from her to schedule my interview with her.

As much as I don’t want to leave the people that I have come to love here in Columbia, I need to get out of here. It’s time for me to leave.