Today is the first day, of the rest of my life.

I haven't blogged in a long long time, but mostly because nothing much was going on with my life. I've living at home, working at the Smart Style salon inside the Walmart by my house. getting a bit over minimum wage, and pretty much just existing. But I don't want to just be. I want to excel. I want to live life and love every second of it.
I've lived back in Richland for just over two years since graduating hair school. My plan was to move straight to Seattle, but that didn't happen.
Yesterday I got a call from someone I haven't talked to in years. My high school friend Roman. He is living in Seattle, taking a break from art school, doing free lance art work for various people. Living in a crappy apartment and barely making rent each month. I woke up this morning and realized that that is exactly what I need to be doing. Roman does what he wants, when he wants. He is on his own with no safety net. Next month him and Molly are going to go to Paris and live for a month. Just for the hell of it. Neither of them speak french. After this trip they will both be beyond broke. But they will be excelling at life.
I don't want to be stuck in the tri-cities for any longer than I have to. I don't want to live, safe and warm, but utterly boring in my parents basement. I don't want to go to a job every day that I only enjoy 20% of the time.

I vow, here and now to the internet and whoever reads this blog that by my birthday next year, March 30th, 2012 I will be living in Seattle.

I want to find a job that can take me places, where I feel my skill is not only expected, but appreciated. Where no one grumbles about the price of foils, where making money is not the main objective of it, rather the goal is to make a positive influence upon the lives of those who enter the doors by way of showing them their inner beauty via hair. I want to live in a town which doesn't boast as one of the biggest events a rodeo or Cowboy Poetry reading. A town where I am not listed as one of the weirdest of residents.
I need to be around people not necessarily closer to my own age, but people who are at a similar place in their lives. I've done with school and want to be around grown ups who pay rent, buy groceries and have bigger concerns than mid-terms and essays.

From now on, the only money I will spend will be the tips I receive. 100% of my pay checks will go to paying off student loans, and saving.

Some random thoughts

Today is February 2nd, my birthday is on March 30th. That is not very far away.

I will be turning 20 years old.... gross, that's old.

Not really OLD but it's not little, I'm not a kid anymore. I have mere weeks left of being a teenager. Soon I will no longer be able to blame my mistakes and blunders on my naivety, ignorance and youth.
Lauri was born when my mom was 20...

Things to do before I'm 30: (things in bold I've done already)

• see a show on Broadway
  

• keep a journal or blog (doing good so far)
  

• touch an iceberg
  

• hug a tree

• sleep under the stars
  

• ride a hot air balloon
  

• change a babies diaper

• watch a meteor shower

• look at the night sky through a telescope

• food fight

• hold a lamb

• visit all 50 states (about 7 down)
  

• steal a sign

• midnight walk on the beach

• visit Ireland
  

• milk a cow

• scuba diving

• be in a movie

• get back on stage

• fire a gun

• go back to London and run into the wall at platform nine and three quarters (I was there once but we were on the other side of the tracks)
  

• pay off my student loans

• get my own place

• collect every Dr. Seuss book (only about 10 to go!)
  

• learn to sing harmony better

• see a show in the Globe Theatre in London (been there, took an acting class but didn't see a show)
  

• take a dance class

• get a job in a high end salon as a stylist and slowly raise my prices as I built a steady clientele
  

I found these on a list of "Things to do before you die"
"grow a beard and keep it for at least a month"
"take a year off and live in the woods"

• send a message in a bottle

• plant a tree

• have my name in the beginning of the tech credits of a movie

• be head make-up artist, and/or hairstylist in a major stage production

• write a children's book

• learn how to say hello and I love you in 50 languages (three down)
  

• see Stonehenge
  

• finish my quilt

• be one of CNN's Heroes

Bucket List of Sorts, things I would like to do before I die...:

• take a ferrari for a test drive

• visit paris

• stay up all night and watch the sun rise with someone special

• see the northern lights

• lol, be on television news program as an "expert"

• eat shark

• touch a sting ray

• See Norbert Leo Buttz perform live (in anything)

• See Fantasticks live

• learn Gaelic
  

• read "Can't Stop Won't Stop" the authoritative history of hip-hop

• be out of debt

• get jury duty

• swim with a dolphin

• have grand kids
  

• have my portrait painted

• be a member of the audience in a TV show

• Put your name down to be a passenger on the first tourist shuttle to the moon.

• shower in a waterfall

• experience weightlessness

• learn to juggle

• donate money and put your name on something, a bench in the park

• scrapbook the rest of the family pictures

• Read then SEE the complete works of Shakespeare
  

• Make a list of 100 books to read, read and buy them all

• own more books than movies or mp3s

• do hair or make-up for someone on the red carpet

• be interviewed by Larry king

• have a street named after me

• donate lots of money to a community theatre

• sleep in a castle
  
  
• get married in the Columbia River Washington Temple
  

• have kids (Kaedence, Joy, Jeremy, Donovan)

• collect all Disney Animated Classics on DVD

• see a platypus
  

• watch turtles hatch and run for the ocean

• have a house with a room for every one of my kids in a place between city and country
  * real wood fireplace
  * large kitchen with big stove top and real tile floors
  * A room just for books
  * a nice piano
  * a french widow in front
  * sliding glass doors in back leading to back deck
  * skylight somewhere
  

• see an opera in Russia or another hug opera house

• have a "photography" bucket list, 12 things to photograph before I die

• have a HUGE collection of something seemingly mundane, door knobs, light bulbs, pencils, things that glow in the dark
  

• send parents on dream vaca