295 Federal Crimes on the Wall, 295 Federal Crimes..

Hello, fellow bloggers.

Well, it pains me to admit this.  I pride myself on being a law-abider, but, since my last writing, I have performed 295 federal crimes.  I know, I know.  You’re all shocked and surprised if you’ve even taken my word for it.  You probably think it’s some kind of joke.  But I’ll explain in short, because I have 22 minutes until midnight.  Let’s do this.

So, what I’ve been planning on doing for a while but never mentioned on this blog (because I was pretty sure it would be unsuccessful) was start a personal assistant service around the Eastbluff (specifically “the Bluffs”) area where I live.  Like pet sitting/walking, errands, around-the-house help for old/regular people.  And it turns out that there is a lot of community interest after all.  Earlier this week, Devin and I and then Shane and I passed out fliers (394 to be exact, but we’ve printed 500) to a whole bunch of houses, and since then I’ve gotten some calls and emails, and some business.  Basically, you are (digitally) looking at (the words of) a successful entrepreneur-ess.  I made a whopping $53 this week, but bear in mind my fliers have only been out for 48-72 hours or so.  And after tomorrow it’ll be more like $89 because I’ve got a job.  So I’m not displeased with those results.  I was pretty certain no one would call.

My dad helped me make this epic flier. I thought the GPA
thing was a little pretentious (and inaccurate, it's 3.95) but
I am offering tutoring so he included it anyway.

This is the almost final draft- we took out the blissful summer bit. Yes, that's Rosie.  Gotta love her.

But nope.  I’ve gone on 8 dog walks, met an older librarian whose stuff I’ll be packing up tomorrow, and an older couple who have DVD/TV/Computer wiring/general inquiries about.  I’ve talked to a few neighbors-of-neighbors who are interested in pet sitting.

But my most alarming email was from a friendly neighbor who cared to inform me that using people’s mailboxes as a distribution method was a federal crime, supposing that I am not an employee of the US Postal Service.  After checking my resume, I realized I was not, in fact, an employee of the US Postal Service, and became concerned that I had unknowingly committed 295 federal offenses.  So, like it or not, I had to start taping or door-matting (verb.) all the fliers, and as a successful Entreprener-ess, I don’t think this will be as effective, because I think people will just throw it away.  But this is not a business I could run well out of jail, so I switched my method for the latest 99, though it was nothing less than a pain in the ass.  Funny that we did exactly 99 that way.  If it were earlier in the day, I would try to construct a “I Got 99 Problems but a Snitch Ain’t One” (like no one will snitch me to the police because I’m not breaking the law?) joke, but it’s not worth the effort.

Being home has been nice.  For Mother’s Day, we went to my grandma’s, and my mom really wanted to hike a lot.  She didn’t decide to tell us this until we were already down there, so I only had moderately useful shoes with me.  Since it was her weekend and all (somehow doubled the length of Mother’s Day I guess) we did two hikes, a three-miler on Saturday and a six-miler on Sunday.  Derek would’ve been proud.  I have pictures I’ll include in the morning.  Don’t worry.  It was pretty.  Haven't seen Jason yet because I thought I was going to stay with my same grandma for a few days as she recovers from cataracts surgery (she can't bend over), but she insisted she and my grandpa were getting along fine, so I stayed local and put in a lot of "Bluffs P.A." (dorky name, but what else can you expect from yours truly?) time.

Other than that, like I said, being home has been nice.  This weekend is SoCal High School Mtn Bike League State Championships, sorry that was so many words.  It’s in Los Olivos and should be lots of fun.  I’ll be driving up with Mr. May and my brother, because the two baby Somervilles (that’s us) can’t go at 6 AM tomorrow when my dad is leaving.  When I apologized to Mr. May that he’d be stuck with both of us on the ride up he responded via text, “Yes, well, life is difficult sometimes.”  So there’s that.

I finished Pride and Prejudice on audiobook and started Sense and Sensibility.  Devin thinks I'm insane, but I think he's okay with it.  This week we watched some quality movies and ate bad-for-you food like french fries and milkshakes.  Funny, when I was at school, I assured myself I'd be eating super healthily here and I'm not sure if I want to dwell on if that has consistently been the case or not, haha.  This week Devster (it'll catch on) had 3 AP tests Tues-Thurs and a big final today and he got all his stuff done, so he rocks and you should all congratulate him and such.  Also I gave him a great hair cut.  Maybe I need to add that to my list of things I can do... nah.  I might chop an ear off or something.

I’ve got five minutes to get this up in time and I don’t want to cheat.  Good night!

-Rachael

P.S. Derek, looking over old blogs, you were super vague about that date.  As in, that date with that girl, not a calendar date, because I know you'd be evasive about it if I left so open ended as to just say "date".  I want to know more.  I fear you were being intentionally vague, and that's fine.  Just remember if you don't tell me, I'm not unwilling to commit a 296th federal crime.  My days outside of the slammer are numbered.