Ashlee Simpson?

Now, I'm not saying Ashlee Simpson makes good music, (because she doesn't actually "make" anything, she's merely a pretty face representing and taking credit for a gaggle of writers, musicians, and innovators) but this new single she has seems to have it's own character. You see, music lately has been bubbling over trying to break out of it's current style into something new, just as the 80s did when they turned into the 90s. I think this song represents a new style, a new sound that will catch on and progress for years to come. This song seems to be more pleasing after a few listens. Just an observation. So that, is that.

We will all laugh at gilded butterflies

We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage…
…so we'll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too,
Who loses and who wins; who's in, who's out;
And take upon 's the mystery of things,
As if we were God's spies…

Just a post revolving around many thoughts...

Before today, I had never made a pros-and-cons list and I felt like a Gilmore Girl while doing it. I am currently at a crossroad that may determine the course of my life forever. (I say 'may' understanding full well that everything changes everything; it just sounded way more "in control", which I think I need right now.) Anyhow, I have many decisions to make regarding many things and my mind is a blur of confusion.

Skipping to something totally random, I feel that I put too many eggs into baskets not yet weaved... I'm not sure why exactly I do that, but I think for my own well being that I need to find ways to dampen that urge. Some may call it the act of being hopeful but I think it's more prudent to call it inexperience. So in defining this as inexperience I should naturally come to the conclusion that time will cure this. I feel helpless in this sense, as I succumb to the urge to hope when I should be taking a normal path. Something in my past has formed this in me, and I feel like I know what it is. I just don't know how to get over it.

The path to what I will become and where I want to be is very open to interpretation. I do not usually plan, and as a result, things fall into place exactly how I feel they were meant to, yet lately I feel the urge to plan. Planning, in every sense of the word, creates expectations, and stunts confidence when one has failed. My parents have always been planners, and I take certain umbrage with that. They are, as well, both perfectionists. Of course, perfect plans seldom happen, and as a result, almost everything in my childhood was known by them to have a flaw. Though I knew that my mother and father would never admit this, there is truth in it. I have no doubt in my mind that it has and always will be a subconscious effort on their part, but it is quite hard to live in a house where you know nothing you do can ever be seen as perfect. It's always nice to be able to look at something and see no flaws, no problems to solve, and take no issue with it. Unfortunately, I feel like I have garnered some of the former from the old crones, but I have tuned it out for years now.

On friends. My best friends have almost all left for the colleges of their choosing. I need now to figure out exactly where I will be this time next year. Will I be at Mercer University, studying International Business from people who have lived and breathed everything I would like to know? I do feel that being able to gain knowledge through seasoned veterans is the best way to learn but at the same time, is it worth the debt I'll be incurring? The other positive to moving away from Jacksonville to Macon, is that I will finally have the independence I need to truly develop into who I want to be. In my other hand I hold these truths: If I stay in Jacksonville, I will attend UNF, I have a chance to develop in a different way, my business prospects in real estate will remain intact, and the possibility of growing closer to many people I already know all exist. I feel that in the long run, if I attend Mercer, I will have an opportunity to become great. I also feel that if I stay in Jacksonville I will become great. Just possibly not fully what I want out of greatness. I say greatness with humility, and not in any way attached to greed. My definition of greatness is to be able to benefit as many people as possible while still reaping the rewards of my work.

On another note, I would like to put a story down in text as it, in particular, has caused my thinking, whether directly or indirectly.

The day was Monday, It had started quite silly. I had gone to bed thinking it was Saturday, when it really was the start of a new week. I ended up missing work.

Lets backtrack, The night previous had been a strange one. Have you ever known somebody and one day you see a new side of them that really strikes a chord.. Anyways, I feel like this gal and I clicked quite well. The witty banter was there, the sense of adventure was also there, the perfect imperfectness of being awesomely quirky was there (the love of lowercase g and the hate of Z really stick out), and as a bonus I could use my 'big words' as they've been put, without feeling condescending. Anyways, we ended up talking for hours; and the most of it was quite meaningful. I was very surprised, and happy at the same time, for if I had known this about her earlier, I would have been slightly jealous.

Back on track. I suppose I really slept good, since I did not wake up on time. I had asked her the night before if she'd like to meet up before my class the next day. I had to get warmed up for my piano class anyway so I played for her on a grand piano in one of the college's rooms. I think she thought my playing would have been less desirable than it actually was. I don't fully play by ear, but my ability to introduce sound as I feel it is completely there. Witty banter got the best of me and before we knew it, the clock struck three. My class was over. At this point, I had nothing more planned, and a very nice evening ensued. I had no way of knowing what would come of this, but I decided it was best to go with what I felt. We walked out of the building in pitch black. The feeling was much like, as she put it in a few less words, going into the movies and coming out in the black of night. It was quite interesting that we had talked for five hours at that point and the night was feeling like it would end. I didn't feel like it should end, but more so that it should just be getting started. It was. I asked her to dinner though I doubt either of us knew it would feel like a date later. We went for pizza at this amazing small Italian cafe near my side of the city. The name is Nora's Pizza, but as the many signs inside remind me, the name will be changing to the poorly thought out and apparently overused "Big Mikes" pizza. I thought this was sad. Nora's Pizza has been a staple in my house for many a year. Though the name is changing, the menu is not, nor the cooks. The pizza ordered came out exactly as I had remembered. This pizza, the pie of all pies, has a thin crust, hand tossed with mozzarella cheese and the normal Italian pizza sauce. It has ricotta cheese, mushrooms, and spinach on top. Black olives may accompany, but not this night. We enjoyed a nice quiet dinner and some great conversation. About 2 hours later we decided we had had enough sitting and I can safely say neither of us wanted to go home at that point. We drove around while thinking of something fun to do. We ended up going into the depths of the Fort Caroline area and basically just drove. What I thought was awesome, was that it didn't matter where we were going, it was just about being in that time. It's a very good feeling. At this point, we pull over to check a gas station for blue Gatorade. For some, it is a myth, for others, pure awesome. Anyhow, we kept driving. I'm not sure how we decided it was time to do something adventurous but we did; the end result being us hopping the seven foot tall fence to the Fort Caroline monument. We parked off to the side and jumped the fence. I'm not sure if I have been there before, but I seem to remember a little bit of the area. I think I had been to some of the nature trail type areas around there when I was younger. We got to the monument, which was very dark until our eyes adjusted. Most of this area is dense woods, but there is a perfect view of the St. Johns from the ledge where we ended up sitting. We sat for an hour or so and more good conversation arose until we heard some strangely conscious footsteps. This definitely sounded two legged and in Florida, only two things are two legged besides crippled squirrels and they are people, and Chupacabras. Neither of which I had any intention of seeing at that point. I will give you this, though, we escaped, but being followed is a strange feeling.

For now, you lot will have to deal with this much, There is a possibility this will be edited later, but for the time being I've gotta go help someone.

As always, have fun!
~Curren

And for searching purposes this post includes topics on Speculation, Females, the fact that nothing good ever happens after one a.m., and 8 points that should have made me feel better but sadly did not accomplish their task.

This is reality, not racism.. Suck it up and promote change

I snagged this article off Fox Sports. I don't actually read Fox Sports but it had an interesting hyperlink, so I clicked it :). Anyways, this article speaks volumes. Don't take it as racism, but as truth based on years of statistics based on an entire population. Besides if you are a racist Abraham Lincoln will apparently attack you with the north. ("The Office" reference, if you don't get it, you should!) Anyhow, here goes...


"There's a reason I call them the Black KKK. The pain, the fear and the destruction are all the same.

Someone who loved Sean Taylor is crying right now. The life they knew has been destroyed, an 18-month-old baby lost her father, and, if you're a black man living in America, you've been reminded once again that your life is in constant jeopardy of violent death.

The Black KKK claimed another victim, a high-profile professional football player with a checkered past this time.

No, we don't know for certain the circumstances surrounding Taylor's death. I could very well be proven wrong for engaging in this sort of aggressive speculation. But it's no different than if you saw a fat man fall to the ground clutching his chest. You'd assume a heart attack, and you'd know, no matter the cause, the man needed to lose weight.

Well, when shots are fired and a black man hits the pavement, there's every statistical reason to believe another black man pulled the trigger. That's not some negative, unfair stereotype. It's a reality we've been living with, tolerating and rationalizing for far too long.

When the traditional, white KKK lynched, terrorized and intimidated black folks at a slower rate than its modern-day dark-skinned replacement, at least we had the good sense to be outraged and in no mood to contemplate rationalizations or be fooled by distractions.

Our new millennium strategy is to pray the Black KKK goes away or ignores us. How's that working?

About as well as the attempt to shift attention away from this uniquely African-American crisis by focusing on an alleged injustice the white media allegedly perpetrated against Sean Taylor.

Within hours of his death, there was a story circulating that members of the black press were complaining that news outlets were disrespecting Taylor's victimhood by reporting on his troubled past

No disrespect to Taylor, but he controlled the way he would be remembered by the way he lived. His immature, undisciplined behavior with his employer, his run-ins with law enforcement, which included allegedly threatening a man with a loaded gun, and the fact a vehicle he owned was once sprayed with bullets are all pertinent details when you've been murdered.

Marcellus Wiley, a former NFL player, made the radio circuit Wednesday, singing the tune that athletes are targets. That was his explanation for the murders of Taylor and Broncos cornerback Darrent Williams and the armed robberies of NBA players Antoine Walker and Eddy Curry.

Really?

Let's cut through the bull(manure) and deal with reality. Black men are targets of black men. Period. Go check the coroner's office and talk with a police detective. These bullets aren't checking W-2s.

Rather than whine about white folks' insensitivity or reserve a special place of sorrow for rich athletes, we'd be better served mustering the kind of outrage and courage it took in the 1950s and 1960s to stop the white KKK from hanging black men from trees.

But we don't want to deal with ourselves. We take great joy in prescribing medicine to cure the hate in other people's hearts. Meanwhile, our self-hatred, on full display for the world to see, remains untreated, undiagnosed and unrepentant.

Our self-hatred has been set to music and reinforced by a pervasive culture that promotes a crab-in-barrel mentality.

You're damn straight I blame hip hop for playing a role in the genocide of American black men. When your leading causes of death and dysfunction are murder, ignorance and incarceration, there's no reason to give a free pass to a culture that celebrates murder, ignorance and incarceration.

Of course there are other catalysts, but until we recapture the minds of black youth, convince them that it's not OK to "super man dat ho" and end any and every dispute by "cocking on your bitch," nothing will change.

Does a Soulja Boy want an education?

HBO did a fascinating documentary on Little Rock Central High School, the Arkansas school that required the National Guard so that nine black kids could attend in the 1950s. Fifty years later, the school is one of the nation's best in terms of funding and educational opportunities. It's 60 percent black and located in a poor black community.

Watch the documentary and ask yourself why nine poor kids in the '50s risked their lives to get a good education and a thousand poor black kids today ignore the opportunity that is served to them on a platter.

Blame drugs, blame Ronald Reagan, blame George Bush, blame it on the rain or whatever. There's only one group of people who can change the rotten, anti-education, pro-violence culture our kids have adopted. We have to do it.

According to reports, Sean Taylor had difficulty breaking free from the unsavory characters he associated with during his youth.

The "keepin' it real" mantra of hip hop is in direct defiance to evolution. There's always someone ready to tell you you're selling out if you move away from the immature and dangerous activities you used to do, you're selling out if you speak proper English, embrace education, dress like a grown man, do anything mainstream.

The Black KKK is enforcing the same crippling standards as its parent organization. It wants to keep black men in their place — uneducated, outside the mainstream and six feet deep.

In all likelihood, the Black Klan and its mentality buried Sean Taylor, and any black man or boy reading this could be next."

How to Tell Difficult Truths So People Thank You

Honestly, I think this article is spot on when it comes to relating how you feel to other people in a way that diffuses possible confrontation while still being assertive. The post delves into merely relationship advice, but you can relate this to anything that comes across your path. So look deeper than the examples here, and see the overall lesson. Try to implement it when confrontation arises and you'll be all the better for it.



There is a piece of wisdom about life and relationships so important that it should have been posted on the walls of our elementary schools and taught us every day: Our lives are shaped by the significant truths we say or don’t say.

Most of those life-defining truths can be spoken in ten seconds with one out-breath. Think of the difference in the life of Bill Clinton and all of us in America had he said, “Yes, indeed—I had lots of sex with that woman.” That’s an example of a ten second, one out-breath truth that would have saved us all considerable time and money. In the aftermath of a ten-second lie, “I didn’t have sex with that woman,” came fifty million dollars worth of hassle and a year of partisan bickering.

Most of our truths are not the fifty-million-dollar kind, but in the context of our lives they have that same level of importance. That’s why it’s important to learn how to speak the truth. The barrier most people face in speaking the truth is that they don’t want to do it in a way that hurts other people and stirs up trouble. From three decades of helping people speak difficult truths to each other, we’ve learned a few simple techniques and principles that can make the process much easier.

When You Speak The Unarguable, People Don’t Argue

If I say to you, “My stomach feels queasy,” you’d have a difficult time arguing with me. If I say to you, “You make me sick to my stomach,” you’d probably find plenty to argue with me about in that sentence. The difference is intention. If I say, “My stomach feels queasy,” my intention is to reveal my inner experience. If I say, “You make me sick to my stomach,” my intention is to blame you for my experience. In speaking difficult truths so that people thank you afterwards, the trick is to reveal your inner experience and stay out of blame.

Breakthroughs in relationship communication are always brought about by saying unarguable things and never by blaming. It’s possible to communicate the most difficult truths in this new way, so that people are literally filled with gratitude afterwards.

The Technique

The trick is to speak first from your three major feeling-zones:

Zone 1 is made up of your neck, shoulders and mid-back. When you’re tense in this zone it’s because you’re holding onto anger you haven’t communicated.

Zone 2 is your throat and chest. This zone tells you when you’re feeling sad by signaling you with constriction (“lump in the throat”) and a sense of heaviness.

Zone 3 is your stomach and beltline area. Tension and racy-queasy sensations (“butterflies”) tell you that you’re scared.

Let’s say you want to break up with your lover. Your main complaints are that he never helps around the house, he has a perfect record of forgetting your birthday and he is unwilling to make a long-term commitment to the relationship.

Scenario One: You say to him: I’m leaving you because you’re lazy, disrespectful and commitment-phobic. Would he be likely to thank you for sharing this “truth” with him? Probably not. He’d probably argue with all three of your labels for him. You’ve provided him with a perfect way to avoid learning anything from your communication, because you’ve communicated it in arguable terms.

Scenario Two: You say to him: For a long time I’ve been feeling sad and disappointed. I can feel it right now in my chest, and I can hear it in my voice. I don’t think I’m getting what I want in our relationship. I feel angry a lot at you, and although I feel scared about being by myself, I think I’d rather face that fear than continue to feel what I’ve been experiencing the past year.

There’s no guarantee he’ll thank you for speaking those truths, but we can give you a pretty solid guarantee that he won’t argue with you. We know, because we’ve coached hundreds of people to speak like that in sessions, and it stops arguments cold.

With regard to thanks, we’ve seen many situations in which people felt upset at hearing unarguable truths. However, they registered the impact of the communication and learned from it. Later, when they’ve digested it thoroughly, they often thank and appreciate the speaker for being courageous enough to speak the truth in a way that didn’t produce arguments.

Why Your Plans Fail

I feel like this article on planning is pretty good. Read it if you're interested in understanding aspects of planning.



Business plans, diet plans, plans to get a degree and your plan to get rich. Life is full of planning. You’d think that all your practice planning would make you at least somewhat good at it. Then why do so few things go “according to plan?”

Your business can’t make money the way you intended. You quit your diet on day three and start eating the chocolate cake. You realize that you hate the subject you’re studying. The map rarely matches the territory. “Okay,” you might say, “I’ll admit some of my plans didn’t work out perfectly, but it can’t be that bad, can it?”

The Planning Fallacy

People are notoriously bad at planning. The worst part is, we don’t even know it. One psychological study conducted asked students to predict when they expected to complete an assignment, almost none gave enough time. Other looks into financial analysts show that few can consistently beat the market.

The real problem is that these planning failures aren’t recognized. People make wildly overconfident projections but fail to notice their abysmal track record in predicting. The question is, what can you do about this?

New Planning Techniques Aren’t the Solution

The problem isn’t a better planning method. We’ve all had a great deal of practice planning. Different planning styles can help, but they can’t solve the core problem of uncertainty. That is, you have no idea what the future holds.

The planning fallacy creates two major problems – the inability to plan and being blind to that incompetence. The real solution is to keep a careful eye on your track record and learn to stomach uncertainty.

Watching Your Track Record

The way to tackle overconfidence is to be aware of your success rate. Whenever you make plans, keep a record of occasions you were forced to deviate from them. I’ve done this, and the differences between your map and reality can be surprising.

How does humility help you? We’ve all been told to have faith and certainty in our efforts, otherwise it is too easy to give up. I’d argue the opposite. When you are motivated to do something, being humbled about your ability to predict forces you to be highly flexible.

Stomaching Uncertainty

Does risk make you queasy? Stomaching uncertainty is the next problem. Once you become aware of your inability to plan, you need to find a way to make the unknown tolerable. There are a couple ways you can do this: worst-case planning and flexible planning.

Planning for the Worst

One way to mitigate the actual risk is to plan for the worst cases possible. The point of this is to make you aware of the negative outcomes, and knowing you can handle it. The worst-case rarely materializes, or if it does, it usually happens in a way you didn’t expect. Worst-case planning can’t give you a look at everything that could go wrong, just a bit more confidence in knowing you can handle it.

The other benefit of worst-case planning is it balances the built in optimism plans have. Most people can’t distinguish between their best-case plans and expected plans. In other words, when predicting the future they imagine the most optimistic scenario possible.

A common rule I heard in software development was to figure out how long it should take. Then double that time and add six months. For your best-case. This adjustment was another method to offset the natural optimism in predicting.

Flexible Planning

The second option is simply not to plan. This may seem crazy, but I’ve found using what I’ll call a “flexible planning” model to be ideal for areas where there is a heavy amount of uncertainty.

Flexible planning isn’t planning in the traditional sense. Traditional planning involves looking at your outcome and devising a route to reach there. Flexible planning defies this entirely by not focusing on an end result. Instead, the emphasis is placed on doing actions that will place you in more favorable positions.

Flexible Planning VS Traditional Planning

Traditional planning starts with your objective and works backwards from that. Let’s say you were planning out what career choice you wanted. A traditional approach would be to work out your career choice, possible firms to work with, education you’ll need, classes you’ll need to take and how to fund your education. Each step determining the one before it.

The problem with this method is it cleanly erases uncertainty along the way. What if changes happen in the industry and firms you want to work for start downsizing? What if your school of choice doesn’t accept you? What if you don’t like the classes or eventual career? What if you can’t fund tuition?

Flexible planning starts where you are and works forward. So your current position might be limited post-secondary schooling and funds. Flexible planning suggests that many outcomes are favorable and that the paths to get there are almost infinite. Instead your job becomes to put yourself in increasingly more favorable positions.

The next step might be to get some schooling, apply to different Universities and scholarship programs or work to earn money for tuition. The best step is the one that has the most favorable options flowing from it.

In a business context this would mean planning your business so that it would have the largest amount of opportunities available. This way if one of your original plans fails, you can easily switch to another.

Philip Glass

Most of you know that I play the piano. Just thought i'd share one of the peices im learning. I really like this one!

Soulja Boy Is About To Blow

Even Twista is trying to get some of the Soulja Boy beats, this guys beats have blown up. He's supposedly unsigned and repping ATL. He's huge in the 404 right now and getting wider support from more and more artists. I would expect him to become signed very soon.



And the original

Snoop-a-loop

Check this new spin from Snoop with his trademark west coast sound. Snoop is basically a pimp, no lie.

My Toe, Cute Asian Chick, and Vicodin

So definitely, my toe hurts... like mad serious bad. I'm writing to you under the influence of 25 mg's of Vicodin, which the doc prescribed. Well... he prescribed 5 mg's per 6 hours, but it still hurts, so meh. How my toe hurts through that, I will never know. I think I'm allowed this as my toenail has been half removed.

But I've gotten off topic... the Vicodin... it saved me from Retard Girl #1's ridiculous banter just now. I've just come back from class tonight where we worked on our group accounting project. The entire time we were working, Retard Girl #1 was talking fucking yell-talking at the top of her lungs, as usual. Luckily I was jacked up on high level narcotics.

Enough about my toe and the vicodin. The cute Asian chick in my class is really cute. Shes also in my group. But even though she doesn't really do that much for the group, she provides the eye candy that everyone needs. She has these really cool blue contacts that are really bright. "The spice must flow" kinda bright. I guess the other thing that makes her cute is her bling. Cute Asian girl drives a MB C280, wears a movado watch, and all kinda finger and wrist bling. I have a feeling it's mostly her parents, but still, shes been taught class, which is good. Thank god some parents are still teaching their kids how to be classy...

But enough of my narcotic induced druther, goodnight and good luck!

Retard Girl #1

OK, so I'm taking a summer accounting course for my transfer to UNF and one of the requirements to pass this course is a semester end group project with a presentation and everything. Each group consists of 4 members, and of course, I just happened to miss the day that the groups were made. I ended up getting put in a group with two people who are cool, and one person who is what I would call "what-the-fck-make-her-go-away" stupid... She is one of those people who will sit there and passively demean you to your face and not realize she's doing it. She is one of those people who will sit there and talk about someone behind their back and praise them when they are present. Finally, she is the kind of person who will call you 4 times in an hour about random stuff you have nothing to do with just to get your approval; and on that 5Th call, you know... the one where you send it to voicemail because you're tired as shit of her shenanigans, she leaves you a 9 minute voicemail that you end up listening to all of just in case she said something that directly pertains to the class you're attending together.

She is, at this moment, the suckiest suck that ever sucked. I detest her. Why, oh why, did I decide that it would be a nice night to go enjoy a hookah with my friends the class they picked groups... Let this be a lesson to you ladies and gents, NEVER, EVER, ditch class if there's any talk of a group project. You almost always will get stuck with the 9-minute-voice-message girl who you'd like nothing more than to tie to a tree and leave in the woods for some gay woodsman to find and turn her into a lampshade.

I think you all can feel how annoying this person is, I can sleep soundly now.

Big Night Out!

And so it came to pass that our group here in Jacksonville would be losing one of our finest to Macon, Georgia's, Mercer University. Bobby leaves Jacksonville on the 4th of August for real college. But thats neither here nor there. This all leads to a going away party. Reservations were set, plans were made, and a fabulous time was sure to come. And it did.

Reservations were made at 8pm for six at the Melting Pot, a fondue restaurant, on Gate Parkway. Bobby, Tanner, Allison, and myself all arrived a few minutes early and were promptly seated by one of three of the most attractive hostesses I've ever seen employed at a restaurant. Jenny and Adam were fashionably late as always. Our waitress kept refreshments coming until the full party arrived and once all were there she began to explain the extensive menu. Our waitress was born in Michigan, attended college in Louisiana, and relocated to Jacksonville after Hurricane Katrina devastated her town. She had one of the only Yankee accents I've ever found pleasing and had personality to boot! To say the least, she was probably one of the best waitresses I've ever experienced.

If you'd like to check out the inside of the restaurant click the link here and make sure you've got quick time!

http://www.meltingpot.com/jacksonvillemain.mov

Anyhow, back to the menu. There were many selections to choose from and some were even full packages with appetizers, salads, main courses, and desserts. Since we were celebrating, we of course ordered wine. The party decided on a 2004 Beringer White Zinfindel, which worked well with everything. After selecting our wine from their extensive wine menu we decided to order the main course. Most of us selected what the restaurant called the "Big Night Out" selections. These were the all inclusive packages. We started with a mix of Butterkase and Fontina cheeses with sake. We were served green apples, pumpernickel and sourdough breads and assorted vegetables for dipping. To say the least, it was amazing. If you ever have the pleasure of dining here, don't skimp on the extras. They make the meal and the experience worthwhile. After we were done with our appetizers our waitress came back and we were brought our salads. I set my sights on the Mandarin and Almond Salad, which was an amazing blend of Asian cuisine all brought together in quite a sizable fashion. As our meal continued, we ordered more wine, the same, White Zinfindel. It was time for the main course. I had selected what they called the "Fondue Feast." They weren't kidding about the feast part. There was a broad assortment of Ahi Tuna, Filet Mignon, White Shrimp, Marinated Sirloin, Chicken, and many vegetables along with dipping sauces associated with all of them. The cooking style I was using was dubbed "Coq a Vin." They utilized a burgundy wine with fresh spices and herbs to flavor the cooking. If you've never had fondue, there is basically a heated stove on your table with an immensely hot pot of boiling magma. Oils and broths too! You skewer your meal and cook it right there. It gives you the opportunity to cook your food how you want it and to season it how you like it. It's a very engaging experience to say the least.

The last and most important part of the meal, dessert, was absolutely stunning. Our waitress brought out three full plates of chocolate decadence designed to fit nicely onto a skewer and be dipped in one of our two selected chocolates. We chose a Bailey's Irish Cream mixture and one made with an Amaretto base. I favored the Bailey's mixture as I have a sad craving for it most of the time. Served on those plates were strawberries, pineapples, brownies, cheesecakes, cherries, marshmallows, and finally what I think everyone in the free world can agree on to be the best tasting thing ever; A fudge dipped, Oreo covered, caramel layered marshmallow dipped in chocolate mixed with Bailey's... I think I heard Baby Jesus cry a golden tear of joy. This was one serious meal.

The best part about it was that the experience lasted over 2 hours making it an unforgettable night.

So, price-wise, for what we got, it was a fair deal. You'll end up with a 2 hour experience, wonderful food, and amazingly attractive serving personnel for around 50-60 dollars a person, with wine. I'm sure you could go in there and come out at 30 a person, but with nowhere near the food experience.

After we closed down the Melting Pot we took a trip over to Island Girl, a wine and cigar bar. We purchased a few top shelf cigars and relaxed in an establishment that I've never seen empty. I smoked a Java, the taste is medium-light, with a chocolate finish, as well as part of a Padron 1926 #1, which was quite flavorful as well. This place is amazing, the service is great, and they have a huge walk in humidor with most cigars you would want. Island Girl is known around Jacksonville for being the "Aromas with comfy chairs." If you like cigars and you feel like a glass of port and a smoke, take a trip on over there for a delightful time. We closed down Island Girl as well and decided to call it a night. It was a fantastically decedent night and worth every penny.

Music!

Hey look, new music! Make broad thoust musical experience!

The gal in the fisrt song has the most amazingly cute french accent!

The first

So basically, here's the deal... My name is Curren, (father named me after a famous surfer) and I'm interested in just about everything. My interests range from playing new century piano to commercial real estate. I am currently working two jobs and attending class at FCCJ in Jacksonville, FL. I'm saving money for my future working at FCCJ as one of a few general computer techs, and also at CompUSA which I would consider a 'Target' of retail technology stores. Not quite as podunk as Wal-mart, but not much better. I am what they call in the biz, a service writer, which includes job responsibilities ranging from selling tech services (people bring their computer to my counter and I tell them what the need to buy from us to fix it, i.e. backup service/labor/software). Its pretty much easy except for the fact that this particular store is hellbent on making work when it doesn't exist. That's why I really like my primary job at FCCJ's North Campus. I have a lot more freedom and people actually value my opinions and take my input. It may have something to do with the fact that my mother happens to be the Dean of Liberal Arts at North Campus but I prefer to think its all due to my cunning wit and linguistic prowess!

Anyways, so I'm saving money from these jobs to eventually start my career in real estate. Aside from all that, I can say with certainty that I would like to end up in some type of leadership position. Hopefully it will be my own company that I lead.

I haven't yet decided if I would like to continue school after my four-year, but open to the idea of an MBA or something along those lines. But hopefully by then I can be working for myself, or pulling a decent wage somewhere.

Enough of this success talk.. I let y'all know earlier that I have a very wide range of interests. Most of what catches my attention is unknown, the 'what-ifs' of the world; things that aren't proven but any educated person should see when presented the facts. It's a big world in an increasingly... oh never mind, just don't be closed-minded! I'm out of time, and hopefully this wasn't too terribly boring!

Thanks for reading my wall of text,