I’m a Very Exciting person, Not Really

Well, I made it four days before failing. Being an unemployed person who rarely leaves the house right now, I guess that shouldn’t be very surprising. If I don’t do anything, what do I have to talk about. My never ending job search? “Today I applied for four more jobs! Two of them were part-time, on-call gigs because I’m desperate for any experience in the field I went to school for!” Not really exciting stuff.

I have found that I have a serious lack of experience for PR jobs. Everything I’ve looked at wants minimum three years experience, and these are entry level positions! Not just stuff I’ve found on Indeed, but actually googling “San Diego PR agencies” and going through one by one looking at the career pages. Either internships or account person jobs with minimum three years experience. HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO GET THIS EXPERIENCE IF NOBODY WILL LOOK AT MY RESUME SINCE I ONLY HAVE ONE YEAR EXPERIENCE!? It’s very frustrating. I’m about to just start sending my resume out even if I’m not actually qualified, don’t know what else to do at this point. I’ve considered applying for the internships, but I can’t afford to work for free. I have zero income right now and Sallie Mae is threatening legal action if they don’t get a payment soon.

On another note, I’ve had some luck with my back pain management. My birthday was in January and the parental units got me a 10-class package for a local yoga studio, Reach Yoga. I go three times a week, and to make my classes stretch further I pay for one of the $5 drop-in classes (they do them on Tuesdays and Thursdays). That has made a huge difference; I really think not only does it stretch everything out, but increasing my core strength helps support and protect my spine. I have no idea if that’s actually the case (I’m not trained in science or health), that’s just my theory, either way it’s helping a lot.

A friend also told me about turmeric; she takes if for acne because of its anti-inflammatory properties, but suggested it might help with pain, rather than taking ibuprofen. I started taking that in the morning along with my iron and probiotics and it seems to also be helping. I hope it is, the more I can avoid chemicals and ingredients I can’t pronounce, the better. And I still drink my skullcap tea when the pain flares up.

Right, well, that’s about the extent of my life right now; send out applications, go to yoga, stop myself from mindlessly snacking because of boredom. I don’t even have Netflix of Hulu right now, no money in the bank, so the payment didn’t run. Hopefully that will change soon!

Day Four- Pain Management

Well that was pathetic, I only made it three days before failing. I think that was my longest streak on PokemonGo too, plus that was how many days I lasted doing yoga every morning when I signed up for Daily Burn. I think it’s safe to say I have commitment issues ha!

The Saturday after Thanksgiving my back went out. I was in a car accident in 2012 and since this was pre-ACA I didn’t have health insurance, so I never went and saw a doctor. I also turned down an ambulance on scene because I knew I wouldn’t be able to pay the bill. Because of those decisions my back will flare up from time to time and hurt for a few days, but it didn’t really start getting bad until about a year ago; before that it might hurt for a day or two and mostly just uncomfortable. Now it will last for a week or longer and be absolutely excruciating.

The last time it flared up was in August, about two weeks after I moved back in with the parents. I went to a massage therapist, swam in the ocean for about an hour, then went on a bike ride. The next day I was back to normal. People really do underestimate the healing power of the ocean. My theory (please keep in mind, I’m not a scientist, this is just my opinion) is that floating in the water helps take gravity and pressure off my spine. Salt water has more buoyancy than fresh water, so you can float with more support. Sitting and standing contributes to the pain because it puts all the pressure on the base of your spine, whereas floating in the ocean helps take that stress off my body. (Again, I’m not a scientist or a medical professional, this is just my theory and opinion!)

But since it’s December and the water is COLD I can’t go float around right now. And that really sucks. I don’t like using painkillers or other types of pharmaceuticals; I’m not a chemist, I don’t have the training or schooling to understand how all those ingredients work and how they will interact with each other. I also drink, and there are a lot of things you’re not supposed to take with alcohol, so I’m not going to push my luck with that.

Here is what I do feel comfortable doing:

Massage Therapy: Every month I see my therapist and work on my back. She’s awesome, she’s really strong and really gets in there and works everything out. I ended up double booking my November appointment with paddle board yoga and cancelling my massage. Within a week I was in pain. Never again will I skip an appointment. I was able to get in about a week later, but with a different therapist and it just wasn’t the same, she didn’t get in there as aggressively. For anybody in the San Diego area who may need a good massage therapist, I highly recommend Jen at Healing Arts Massage and Wellness Center in Pacific Beach.

Skullcap: This is an herb I got at a little shop in Ocean Beach called Bountiful Herbs. It’s great for nerve pain; it can help soothe muscle tension, relieve anxiety, and calm spasms. I make it as a tea a few times a day and it has definitely helped. Plus it’s cold out right now and tea is always nice when it’s chilly!

Breathing: I do some breathing exercises and light stretching throughout the day. Sitting really bothers me and standing for long periods can get painful. I can feel muscles in my back, especially between my shoulder blades, tighten up so I’ll just stop whatever I’m doing and do my stretches. I did some digging on the old Google and found multiple pages/sources stating that breathing can be a big help with pain. While it doesn’t necessarily fix the cause of pain, it can help release other muscles that have tightened up.

Some things I want to try:

Float Therapy: While at the herb shop I picked up a flyer for a float therapy place in OB called Reset and they do sensory deprivation therapy. Now, as someone who watched Stranger Things, this kind of freaks me out lol! Plus I have a fear of dark pools, so the idea of being in water in total darkness is unnerving. But it also seems like the closest I can get to floating in the ocean this time of year, so I called to see what they’re all about. The guy I talked to told me it’s actually really beneficial for pain relief since they use medical grade Epsom salt and the water is body temperature. The flyer is advertising $50 for 90 min. Still thinking about that one, maybe I’ll ask for an early Solstice present.

Yoga: I would love to start doing yoga on a regular basis again. I’m a chubby girl, I love beer and pizza, and I’m comfortable with myself, but I think strengthening my core muscles will help support my back better. But this comes down to money, yoga gyms (are they called gyms? studios? I’m not sure) are expensive and I can’t afford that until I get a full time job.

Medical Marijuana: I would like to get my card, but as California just legalized recreational marijuana I’m going to see how this one plays out. I also get migraines and chronic tension headaches, I’ve been told marijuana is really helpful for that too. Plus being unemployed right now, I can’t justify the money.

If anybody has any other suggestions for pain relief please feel free to share!

Uncrustables Make Great Tits

Well, day two of my personal writing and biking challenge! I feel so accomplished, lol.

It was actually a semi-busy day today; the electricians came out to work on the kitchen, did some laundry and other chores. I’m so domestic y’all. I did go on a bike ride, it was a short one, but I got a lot of other stuff done today too, so I’m not upset =)

Just toodled around the bay, then up the boardwalk, wandered out on the pier (they’re getting ready to put up the Solstice (or christmas, if you prefer holidays that STOLE pagan traditions) tree. It was gorgeous out, but the wind was pretty chilly. Jeez my life is dull…

Where is the Metro Service?

I’ve said it before and I will keep saying it until it happens, THE PEOPLE WHO RUN TRANSIT SYSTEMS SHOULD HAVE TO USE THOSE SYSTEMS ON A DAILY BASIS!!! If they had to rely on the bus, subway, light-rail, train, etc to get to work on time or run an errand that should be simple but takes an hour, I honestly believe public transit could run so much smoother and more efficiently.

These people are so detached from who their customer base actually is. I don;t understand why everything stops running so early on Sundays, do they really think the poor only work M-F? No! We’re the ones who work two jobs and usually go straight from one to the next. We also work 7 days a week. I usually end up having to walk two miles on Sundays after woke because my connection stops running at 7pm. That’s insane!

While I do think expanding lines into all areas is important (especially the beach, get people in and out more efficiently), ignoring the people who actually NEED transit is pure BS. It’s just like how in my city we don’t have sidewalks and streetlights on a main fucking road, city leaders don’t see us as deserving these basic safety services because we’re poor, which means we don’t equal tax revenue.

From the Los Angeles Times, posted June 21, 2016

Opinion

Metro’s transit plan gives short shrift to L.A. County’s working-class cities. A state bill can fix that

Passengers ride the Metro Gold Line train from APU/Citrus station to Los Angeles Union station on March 5. (Los Angeles Times)

Karina Macias

Imagine there are several Los Angeles County cities that make up one of the densest urban areas in the country, where much of the young, transit-dependent, ethnically mixed population commutes daily to jobs in other parts of the county. This would be one of the first areas to get a new rail line to the regionwide transit hub at L.A. Union Station, right?

Not if it’s the board of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authoritycalling the shots.

This sums up the situation for residents of the Gateway Cities of southeast L.A. County, a collection of dense (my city, Huntington Park, has about 60,000 people packed into three square miles), mostly working-class communities conspicuously absent from Metro’s plans to build out its rail system over the coming decades. In fact, Metro’s board recently delayed its projected completion date of the long-sought Eco-Rapid light-rail line 20 years to 2047. This line would span from Artesia to Bob Hope Airport and connect the points in between to L.A. Union Station; by one estimate, Eco Rapid would be the second-most-traveled line in Metro’s network.

Meanwhile, Metro is spending billions of dollars chasing so-called choice riders in West L.A. and the San Gabriel Valley, opening the Expo Line to Santa Monica, the Gold Line to Azusa and slowly (and expensively) tunneling under Wilshire Boulevard to extend the Purple Line subway. Although it’s important to entice more drivers out their cars and into trains or buses, these areas can’t be described as economically transit dependent — and they’re getting rail decades before communities that are, including Huntington Park, Cudahy, Bell, Bell Gardens and other cities.

Metro’s plan for L.A. transit would be transformative… with one small fix

This is why those of us pushing to restructure Metro’s leadership believe that the agency’s governing board needs to be balanced with more voices.

In their June 1 op-ed article, Zev Yaroslavsky and Richard Katz accuse state Sen. Tony Mendoza (D-Artesia), who has written a bill to expand Metro’s board, as “meddling” in the agency, which they describe as “on a roll.” Those of us who live in the ill-served Gateway Cities don’t feel Metro is on much of a roll; Yaroslavsky’s and Katz’s insistence otherwise shows just how important it is for the agency’s board to gain new perspectives.

The Metro board currently has 13 voting members. Five are L.A. County supervisors and four are members of the Los Angeles City Council. The remaining four voting members directly represent the residents of the 87 cities in Los Angeles County that account for 51% of the population. This imbalance is reflected in Metro’s decision-making and priority-setting, such as its two-decade delay of the Eco-Rapid line. Mendoza’s bill (SB 1472) would, among other things, add five more members to the Metro board from those 87 cities. This is not a local issue, and it’s certainly not a power play, but rather an update to the original state legislation that created Metro in 1992 that will provide better representation for those who live in smaller, under-served cities.

For residents of the Gateway Cities, representation on Metro’s board and better transit service is about more than just fairness and social and environmental justice; it matters to our everyday lives. As a young woman growing up in Huntington Park, I thought of owning a vehicle as a luxury; this is still the case for many families in the Gateway Cities. I didn’t own my first car until I graduated from college in 2010, so bus and rail were the only transportation options available to me throughout my middle school, high school and college days. Yes, Los Angeles County has “progressed a long way toward developing a regional transit system,” as Yaroslavsky and Katz believe. However, that progress is still an elusive concept in my community.

The lack of progress isn’t for a lack of effort on the part of the communities in southeast L.A. County and elsewhere. These communities have worked tirelessly to make projects such as Eco-Rapid a reality, and yet they barely register on Metro’s radar. Sen. Mendoza’s bill to bring more voices onto Metro’s board will go a long way toward changing that and bringing rail transit to the residents of Los Angeles County who need it most.

The Bicycle Hubitat

Shop gears up to help cyclists fix own bikes

The Transit Center has the newest branch of the area’s Biking Alliance.

By RYAN HAGEN, Press Enterprise/ SB Sun

 A low-cost bicycle repair shop that shows people how to fix the problem themselves the next time it occurs opened May 9 at the San Bernardino Transit Center.  

Called Bicycle Hubitat, the workshop uses largely donated parts and is run by volunteers, said Mark Friis, as he waited for the day’s first customer.  

Friis is executive director of the Inland Empire Biking Alliance, a nonprofit organization that aims to make biking and walking safer and more accessible, and which runs the service along with Omnitrans and the nonprofit group San Bernardino Generation Now.  

“We supply the tools and show them how to do it themselves,” Friis said. “It’s like the saying: ‘Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, you feed him forever.’ ”  

The day’s first customer was Levi King, 46, of San Bernardino.  

Friis walked him through tightening his brakes and fixing his kickstand.  

“I really appreciate it,” King said, saying he had needed to fix the problem for a while. “I didn’t have the money to do it.”  

The service was free Monday. Going forward, the cost will vary by repair but be low cost, Friis said.  

The “Bike Hubitat” expands on other services the Biking Alliance offers in Loma Linda, Rancho Cucamonga and its flagship, the Redlands Bike BBQ, which started in 2010 and offers bike repair lessons Tuesday through Thursday and Saturday.  

“Our clientele generally is students – college and high school – and homeless people,” Friis said.  

It also will help the large number of Omnitrans riders who use bicycles, said Omnitrans spokeswoman Nicole Ramos.  

“Some of them are dependent on their bikes for transportation, so lowcost, expert advice right here (at the transit center) where they already are should be a huge help,” Ramos said.  

Ramos also asks people to take a selfie with their bike and share it on Twitter or Instagram with the tag #bikehubitatSB to be eligible for prizes.  

The San Bernardino Transit Center location, at 599 W. Rialto Ave., will be open from 3 to 6 p.m. Monday, Wednesday and Friday.   

PHOTOS: JOHN VALENZUELA, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER   Mark Friis, executive director of The Inland Empire Biking Alliance, and program drector Nina Mohammed repair a bike during Bicycle Hubitat’s workshop at the San Bernardino Transit Center in San Bernardino on Monday.

Friis looks through his tools. He says clients of the shop are typically high school and college students, though a large number of Omnitrans riders also use bikes.

http://www.pe.com/articles/friis-803202-san-bernardino.html

I really need to get my bike fixed before next week! It needs a good tune-up and Bike to Work Week seems like a good time to get that taken care of!

Kudos to Metrolink! I still think they need wifi and to work with other public transit groups to make fares more affordable, but they have done a lot to get bicyclists on board in the last few years. So for this one I will say “Goodonya!”

Metrolink offering free rides during Bike to Work Week

By Steve Scauzillo, San Gabriel Valley Tribune

POSTED: 05/11/16, 11:58 AM PDT | UPDATED: 22 SECS AGO

0 COMMENTS

Metrolink is offering anyone with a bike a free ride during Bike to Work Week, May 16 – May 20.

Train riders must board with a bicycle and accompany their bike during the entire trip.

The promotion includes Bike to Work Day, Thursday, May 18.

May is National Bike Month, established in 1956 by the League of American Bicyclists.

Metrolink has transported 1 million bicyclists since the multi-county agency introduced its bike cars in July 2011, according to the agency. A bike car is usually on the lower level of a train and is equipped with multiple stalls designed to hold three bikes in each stall. A bike train can hold 18 bikes. A bike car has a decal on the side of the train or a train wrap.

Metrolink operates seven routes of commuter rail service in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties. For more information, go to http://www.metrolinktrains.com.

Next year, you can take train to Coachella, Stagecoach festivals

From the Press-Enterprise:

This is really exciting. I still can’t believe there isn’t an Amtrak line to Palm Springs, but if there are enough people who use this for Coachella and Stagecoach, then maybe Amtrak will get serious and build a regular line for the desert cities. This is a growing region and Palm Springs is becoming more popular with younger adults for weekend get-aways.

Maybe those famous words from Field of Dreams will ring true again, “if you build it they will come.”

CHOO-CHELLA: Next year, you can take train to Coachella, Stagecoach festivals

Funds have been approved to underwrite LA-to-Indio ‘demonstration trains’ for both events in 2017 and 2018.

Transit and air quality officials say there will be special train service next year and in 2018 for both the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival and the Stagecoach Country Music Festival to help reduce air pollution from the massive traffic both events bring to the desert. RODRIGO PENA, CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

By RICHARD K. De ATLEY / STAFF WRITER

Published: May 2, 2016

Updated: May 3, 2016 7:07 a.m.

Two of the desert’s most popular, and traffic-jamming, events will get train service for at least the next two years with special event runs from Los Angeles to Indio for the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival and the Stagecoach Country Music Festival, transportation officials said Monday, May 2.

Don’t sign up yet. Still in the works are ticket prices, the round-trip schedules, and possible stops along the way. Amtrak trains are planned for the 2017 and 2018 versions of the festivals, which are a week apart at the Empire Polo Club in Indio.

A festival train as a way to reduce traffic air pollution has been in discussion during previous years, said Riverside County Traffic Commission Deputy Executive Director John Standiford.

Now there’s money to fund it. The multi-agency member Mobile Source Air Pollution Reduction Committee has approved $1.2 million to run demonstration trains both years, said Greg Pettis, who is chair of the committee.

Pettis, who is also mayor pro tem of Cathedral City and represents the Coachella Valley on the RCTC, said in an email that the funds will subsidize ticket sales to make the trains possible.

Transportation and air quality officials have linked before for other special-run trains to venues that draw huge crowds and put lots of cars on the highways, such as Dodger and Angel games, the Orange County Fair and Fontana Speedway races.

The just-ended version of the Coachella Festival drew 198,000 people over two three-day weekends, and the Stagecoach Festival drew 75,000 for its single weekend.

For the two festivals “the trains will run from L.A. Union Station to Indio, where folks will either be bused directly to the site or go via taxi or other means to their respective hotels,” Pettis said in an email.

Planners are currently looking at outbound from Los Angeles on Friday and return trains at the end of the weekend’s performances, Sunday night or Monday morning.

“Price has yet to be determined but we want it to be cost effective vs driving, traffic, and time considerations,” Pettis said. He said a three-car train can carry “hundreds” of passengers, but more cars could be arranged, depending on ticket sales.

There is no passenger train platform in Indio, and the Riverside County Traffic Commission will build a temporary one to handle the three weekends of passengers Standiford said. The cost is still under review.

Festival promoter Goldenvoice, the RCTC and others involved will begin discussions in a few weeks to lay out details.

“We have a lot of work to do,” Standiford said. “I know it’s a year away, but it will be very busy between now and then.”

Plastic Microbeads

I’m going to take a step away from bikes for a minute here to talk about something else important, plastic microbeads. They’re used in a lot of skincare products to exfoliate. However they end up going down the drain and are too small to get captured at water treatment plants and end up in waterways.

In 2013 the 5 Gyres Institute released their first report about microbeads in the Great Lakes. Since then they have continued their research and education about the dangers the micro-plastics pose to marine ecosystems in both the Great Lakes and our planets oceans.

Assemblyman Richard Bloom, D-Santa Monica, introduced a bill in California in February 2014 that would have required microbead products to be off shelves by Jan. 1, 2016, but it fell one vote short of passing the state Legislature. Bloom plans to carry a similar bill in 2015.

To read more about plastic microbeads, visit the 5 Gyres Institutes website at http://5gyres.org/how_to_get_involved/campaigns-microbead/