Amethyst Jones

He complains all the time, and generally mopes around about how bad our economic situation is because we're both tied to temporary jobs (his is set to end before the summer). We're both college grads getting by on ten dollars an our apiece. We live below the poverty line, as we also have a child in daycare. We are not on any kind of government assistance and get absolutely no outside financial assistance, not even babysitting, as we don't live around any family. He has a STEM degree, recent grad, and works "in" engineering (but is an intern/contract) and I have a degree in a Foreign Language and work on the insurance side of the medical field. Full time hours, no benefits of any kind. What do you suggest we do to better our economic standing? Right now my husband is registered for an actuarial exam as he dreams of becoming an actuary (his background is weather forecasting) and in my case, i'm open generally to anything that offers secure pay. We don't have ANY credit card debt (we've never owned credit cards), we do have student loan debt, and we've got hospital debt (no health insurance for the last 4 years). We don't owe anything on our raggedy (200k miles plus) vehicles, and my car is about to break down. our only "superfluous" bill is internet, but i would argue that we need that to stay connected to job opportunities, as there's only one library in our town and it's NOT nearby, and we have NO transit system in our town. Thanks in advance for your help!

I'm looking for a song that I used to hear all the time during the 90s whenever i would go to the skating rink. i heard it recently too on an rnb station on one of their throwback days, but unfortunately i couldn't pick up and remember any of the lyrics to the song. i would know the song if i heard it again but i couldn't even hum how it's supposed to go. :/

What i can tell you about it is it's a female artist. The song is from the late 90s, possibly early 2000s. It's rnb/hip hop. The song is up-tempo and the singer's voice is very soft (but i don't think it's ciara, because i believe i've heard all of her popular songs). This particular song might be from a one-hit-wonder, although i can't be sure. it's definitely a ghost song though!

So i can rule out Beyonce, Keyshia Cole, Alicia Keys, I really don't think it's Janet Jackson or Mariah Carey. I think it's one of the lesser known singers because i've never heard her mentioned before, much less the song in question but when it came out it was a popular enough song that it was played ALL the time, if that helps.

It's a black singer, as well.

I know i haven't given a whole lot of clues here, but if you can help me out i'd appreciate it, as i've pretty much been obsessed with finding this song ever since.

Black women's hair is notorious for its structural weakness relative to straight hair types. I was wondering, because i've never seen it before, if white women's hair ever breaks? i'm not talking about shedding, i'm talking about hair that breaks off from the ends, usually from damage and manipulation.

and if white women's hair does break, about how many strands per day are broken in your personal experience, if you're white? for black women it tends to be about 3-10 a day, depending on how the woman cares for her hair.

non-white/non-black women are also encouraged to answer!

thanks! :D

I have written a 300 word document in MS 2010, but many of my paragraphs are off the margin set up. I'm having massive issues trying to get everything to line up and I really want this to be a sharp looking document. How can I fix this without line item going through and fixing every paragraph one by one.

I recently graduated college with a degree in Spanish. To be honest, college was something that my parents wanted for me, and i didn't know what i wanted to do coming out of high school to choose any differently. So now, five years later (i changed majors from Biology to spanish at the start of junior year), i have a bachelor's, and though i know what my dream job is, for now it seems to be just that. a dream, because i have no idea how to get to where i want to be from where i am.

I speak spanish moderately (advanced low), can have a conversation in it but it would probably be obvious that i learned spanish in the classroom as opposed to from everyday people, but for reference, i could say everything i've typed here in fluid spanish without interruption.

even with that said, though, i feel hesitant to take up a translating job because there's still so much more vocabulary i feel i have yet to acquire in order to stand a chance against, say, a native speaker.

Looking back, i feel as though had i not been pushed into university, i would have opted for tech school, as there are many more options afforded tech students and the job training is hands-on, and now as i think to what type of work i could see myself doing for many years or decades, I know i would love to work with houses (not real estate, but more along the lines of contracting). The problem is that i am unemployed, with only about 3 grand to my name, two cars, a husband who also is unemployed (he is a college student with another year to go, as i entered college before he did), and a two-year-old. Plus, i have no skills related to housing, although i am eager to learn.

I would love to go to tech school and totally switch gears to either do something else altogether (in line with housing, preferably, but at this point i'm desperate enough to take almost any job if only i could find one), or find something that will gainfully employ me that i can pair with my degree.

i talked to a guidance counselor at the local tech school but she was of no help and didn't know how to advise me specifically to my situation, and career services at my school is totally useless.

What can someone do if they are running on E in the funds department and if they have little to no relevant work experience (all my experience thus far has been strictly customer service, and waiting tables, but i would not want to work in food service ever again if it could be avoided), but they need to find work fast? So far i've applied to a fair number of jobs with no response (customer service, administration), and most of the jobs i applied to instantly responded back saying that i don't meet the requirements for work experience (which is a given, since i've been a college student since high school).

so in summation:

1) how can i get job experience (barring unpaid internships or volunteering, because i have a family to support)?

2) how do i find a job in general, given that the market where i live is very horrid (valdosta, GA)?

3) suggestions for career taking into account my dream job and how i can get into that line of work? Some have suggested real estate, but i need money for that...is there something i can do now that doesn't require me to invest money that i do not have?

thank you!!!

Plus, if you have advice for beating through the online application process, it would be appreciated. i have next to no connections, as the people i graduated with are in roughly the same boat as me.

Whenever i apply online i get the feeling no one is actually reading the application- it's just so impersonal. is there anything i can do to work around this, or get through to a real live person who can make that difference even if they don't know me from Eve?

My baby is 21 months old and we haven't heard him say a single word yet. Sometimes it seems he understands us, because he will put things back up when we tell him to put away something he's thrown on the floor or forgotten about, and he'll clap at the ends of songs such as "If you're happy and you know it" and the "Itsy bitsy Spider", etc. But my concern is that he does all of this out of imitation of our actions, like in the sense that if we get onto him about leaving something on the floor, i'm not so sure that he puts it away because he inherently understands what we're saying, or if he's complying out of a sense of repetition because he's seen us act it out. If that makes sense.

I don't yet have a strong feeling that he understands, because when i try to read books to him he's more interested in flipping pages and never focuses on the colors on the page or the objects or numbers or whatever it may be. We're forever trying to get him to say words, repeating stuff over and over, but he makes no effort to say them back and i'm worried that something may be wrong. He voices frustration by crying, and hunger and all of that, so we've been getting by on distinguishing his different cries. He babbles a LOT, as though he's giving speeches to objects, and he'll give like babble commentary over objects, but should i worry? Or does he sound like a late talker?

He's intelligent, and can imitate anything after seeing it once, like putting keys in locks, figuring out electronic stuff (plugging stuff here and there or swiping on cell phones), putting tops back on bottles, etc; he can feed himself, almost put his clothes on (the motions, anyway), but it's mainly just the speaking that lacks.

Most recently i tried to get him to say "keys" and he said the "eez" part, but didn't pronounce the "K". So at the very least, i think he's solid on vowel sounds, just not consonants? But i wanted to know if any of your experiences with children matched this, because i'd like to rule out hearing problems as the source of delay.

If you can, could you give me advice on how to test at home to see if he has hearing problems? I've tried to see if he recognizes songs in the absence of me miming them out, and he can, but is this a thorough enough test? thanks!

i've checked the website, and there's still no status information for me. What could be wrong? Any ideas?

i filed march 7th this year, with a tax person. So...by mail, i guess? And it was supposed to be direct deposit. :(

more well versed in the subjects than their fellow American counterparts? it makes no sense to me. like, there was this post i was reading on a math forum and there was this kid who was in high school but aspired to major in math in college even though he's not that good at it, as he says. there was this asian guy who came on there telling him "don't do it!" if you can't do real analysis yet then don't bother, you'll SUUUUCKKK! i took that class in HIGH SCHOOOOOL cause i'm so SMAARRRT!!! WHAAAT your high school doesn't offer that course!?!? then gtfoh!" (keep in mind that real analysis usually is an upper level college undergrad course but whatever) i'm paraphrasing, of course but this really seems to be the attitude that many foreigners have. i know they realize that they're more further along in their knowledge of the material than americans in those same classes, so why do they come to american universities if their own schools have apparently taught them so well? isn't that like a downgrade? i'm confused!

and how will i know how successful i was at installing them? I'm trying to get rid of my ugly NPCs and townies using downloaded default face templates. All of my other custom content installs successfully, but i don't know what i'm doing wrong with my default faces. am i supposed to see them in CAS?

how does one know that they've done everything correctly in order to acquire the military pay advance, besides the money showing up a few days later?

i ask because my husband is in the reserves and in another state, and though he's been there for four days now, his advance still isn't in yet, even though he's been assured he's gone through all the proper channels. Now we've had to dig into our personal accounts just to finance his expensive stay in this uber expensive state (Hawaii) and we're now overdrafted because we can't afford it any longer. he'd put his paperwork in as early as he could, under the circumstances, but now my question is what do we do?

Is this normal for it to take so long?

i know this sounds contrary to popular belief, but i think my hair has the potential to grow for at least a decade. the answer is in the hair dye. for those of you who dye your hair, especially if you typically let it grow out for at least 12 inches if not more, then you can estimate your potential maximum hair length from your shed hair rate. so if you dye your hair, and you notice three years or so after you've dyed your hair that the majority of those strands you dyed are still over your head and have not been replaced by sheds, imagine the implications for your potential hair length mathematically speaking! if you still have red or whatever color you dyed there comprising the majority of your strands, that means that realistically your hair can grow for at least double if not triple or more what your current length is. i thought about that while noticing that my dyed strands, three years later, were still dominant- that if i wanted to "grow them out", it would take FOREVER for them to shed out naturally all the way. that means that if you want looong hair, you're more than likely not confined to just the 2 to 8 year average that scientists have proposed. what do you guys think?

my parents pushed me into it a few yrs ago and now i'm reading scary stuff. just wondering if there's anyone out there, like me, who has NOT had any problems or side effects from it?

right now it's at my armpits, and my shortest layers (from nape) measure about 8 inches, if this helps!

i have naturally kinky curly hair, and i have felt forced to leave my hair in minitwists to combat the breakage i'd been getting. but i want to get a feel for how much hair breakage (not shedding, but breakage) is normal for you guys to see if you're manipulating your hair with fingers only each day? before i kicked the comb to the side, i was seeing about 10 broken hairs a day. now that i have it in twists i get only 1-5, tops. is this normal?

I still have employment with the Navy Reserves? I only get paid 300$ for my drill weekends which I have just once a month. But the job which was my income source laid me off, so am i still eligible for unemployment?

Pls only answer if you actually know the answer. Thank you

it's like, i know what steps i should be taking with my hair in order to grow it long and healthy. i just chopped off a considerable inch from my hair today, and it just made me think about how involving the process is to grow long hair. i just want to enjoy my hair (but i can't lest i get split ends and breakage when my hair tangles!) , and i feel like if i wanted to maximize my hair growth i'd have to give that aspect up. i get so frustrated with these warring concepts that i just want to shave my head bald and start over! or just simply forget...

and then i wonder, do any of you go through this when trying to grow your hair long?

My husband just got laid off, and despite my many job applications that i've sent out i have yet to hear from anyone. i've been applying on and off, simply because when i send out applications on the internet i feel like no one's reading them. and when i go to the places in person to inquire, i'm told that the store is not hiring and am invited to apply again in a few weeks. is it just my bad luck? to make matters worse, we have a baby, and my husband is trying to get back in school online in another state. we're thinking about taking out private loans at this point just for survival, because we don't want to have to apply for welfare (though if that's our only recourse, we'd consider it). i'm in school full time myself, and in these 4 years have taken out 16,000 dollars and my husband has about 20,000 himself. our only other debt is hospital debt, roughly 8000 from my son's birth.

what can we possibly do to get employment? right now i'm taking unemployment benefits and my husband's about to draw unemployment as soon as he gets his pink slip, and he's a chief in the US Navy (can you believe it? not all chiefs are rich.) ...his last job only paid 10 an hour. so he has drill that only affords us about 300 dollars a month. but apart from my unemployment, which totals about 350 a month, and my husband's drill weekends, we have no other income source at the moment.

does anyone have any help to offer besides "just put in an application"? i've tried that. it's not working, and i'm getting desperate. thinking about robbing a bank or something here. :(

my baby like NEVER takes naps. this can't be healthy can it? i mean, he sleeps okay at night, averaging about 8 hours, but damnit what can i do to make him sleep already? he's driving me positively insane because he has more energy than i do! and all he does is go around touching every thing and knocking stuff to the floor and he's just on super HIGH energy level all day and it's wearing me out because i can't get anything done. does anybody recommend anything to slow his speed down some? or a way of coping?