Buying textbooks at a cheaper price

Ok so school is starting back up, which means buying the dreaded textbooks. You know, those wonderful, huge books which you have to carry around for classes which barely ever even go into the readings, so you wonder why you had to buy the stupid thing at an exorbitant price at the bookstore because the teacher just demanded that you buy it now because you were going to need it for the next class meeting...yeah, those books.

So I decided to share my little secret (partly because my mom said that I should tell because she always talks to people that say they don't know any other way of saving on books), a secret which I have no doubt a lot of you already know anyways.

A few years ago my mom told me about this really awesome website which actually does the price comparing for you when it comes to deciding which online store is selling the book at the best price; this site has literally saved me and my mom hundreds of dollars a semester when it comes to buying textbooks for school. It's called cheapesttextbooks.com.

There are basically a few steps to help with using this website and getting the best price for your books.

1. You need to get the ISBN off of the book. This has actually gotten easier now because most school websites are now supplying you with the course textbook that is need when you sign up for the course, so that's cool. There are usually two ISBNs, one which is about 7 numbers in length (I believe) and the other that is 13 numbers in length. You want to get the longest one to be absolutely sure that you are going to order the right edition of the book.
2. Go to the website and enter in the ISBN on the search engine and make sure you select the ISBN bubble next to the search engine.
3. The site will come up with all of the website that are selling this book, ranging from USED to NEW and the price of each. It usually shows Amazon Marketplace, Half.com, Textbooks.com, and so on. Cheapesttextbooks.com will even show you what that site will charge for in shipping and whether there are any deals or coupons that are going on as well.
4. At this point you just click on the link of each site, and sometimes I will find that there is an even better priced used book that someone is selling that cheapesttextbooks didn't find.
5. After you've used the book for the entire semester and you know you won't need to use it again, you can sell it through Half.com or Amazon Marketplace for about the same price as what you bought it for, maybe a few dollars less. This way, you've essentially bought the book for nothing.

I hope this helps. This website has seriously been a life saver on many occasions (I've already looked at the books I need to buy this semester and where it would have cost me about 150 dollars to buy the used books at the bookstore, it's going to be about 70-80 when I went through this site). The only thing I would warn about is making sure you give yourself enough time to order the books, because you are buying it from some other student from who knows where and sometimes it takes a while to get delivered to you because it depends on when and how they ship it. There has been one time where it took my book a while to get to me. But that's also why there's reviews on the people selling the books.

At last, my love has come along....

Oh man it has been such a while since I decided to write on here...but I just had to write about this week because it has just been so amazingly excitingly awesome!! One of my best friends got married to one of my other friends and I felt so blessed to be able to attend the reception and be a part of it.

sorry about the blurry :(

She looked so happy! These two have been together for almost ten years. And I also got to finally meet baby waylon...who is one month old and a friend's son. He was the spotlight of the whole night lol...stole the whole show. I also got back into touch with an old friend and I'm hoping that this is the new start and we can be friends again...but I do also still hold some walls and know that we can't entirely go back to how we were but I still hope. I know that on these blog things I'm usually supposed to come up with some sort of witty paragraphs that make me sound smart and shiz...but I find that every time I come on here I can't do that so I don't. And seeing as how I'm probably the only one reading this..I'm cool with that. This has been my week. There was a lot more that happened but I'm tired and I am going home for my birthday week tomorrow to be with my mom. So ciao bella!

Anyways, these are my words and feelings. These are my beliefs and the thoughts that I live with.  For now, this is what I have and, you know, don't read if you don't want to. Or do read if you do want to. If you don't want to read and you do anyways...well that's your own problem :)

Peace out...I'm gone.

Talkin bout my generation

So school is starting in a week and a half and my roommate/best friend of ten years has decided that she is going to move out and leave me with our other roommate, a person that I like very very much but who also has a lot of personal issues and drives me up the wall...we'll see how this semester pans out.

Said best friend and our other friend's beautiful baby boy

On another side note it seems that my other roommate (the one who drives me up a wall) has, all of the sudden, decided to bring a bunch of boxes up from her parent's house to our small apartment...an apartment which already has a garage full of her stuff that she'd brought from storage as well as her boyfriend's place last year. We really have no space and she has decided to do this without really talking to me about it..the only way I knew this was happening was because our other roommate (the one moving) told me about it. I dunno about other people but I would think it would be a good thing to kind of...I dunno...talk to the other parties of the household to see if this is something that would be okay with them. I know that me and my bff had wanted to use the garage for it's actually purpose, to hold a car, not to be a storage unit. So now I don't know what to do. I'm a hard person and I don't quite know how to tell her, nicely, that I don't want her stuff up here and that she should get a storage unit if she wants to bring things that she doesn't plan on using up.

Dilemma, dilemma, dilemma.

I guess if these are the most problems I have going on in my life right now, I should be thankful...because it's really not that bad.

Anyways, these are my words and feelings. These are my beliefs and the thoughts that I live with.  For now, this is what I have and, you know, don't read if you don't want to. Or do read if you do want to. If you don't want to read and you do anyways...well that's your own problem :)

Peace out...I'm gone.

put your hands up to the sound....

important ladies in my life

So the school is almost over!!!! Thank the lords that be!!!!!! Can't wait for this fucking year to finally be over. The absolute WORST school year ever!! But I made some great AWESOME friends, which was the one good thing to come out of this whole fiasco.


Small side note here: I just wanna say RIP to my cat Mickey who died last Wednesday. I will miss him dearly, he was only like 6 years old, not that old. He was poisoned and died from the same thing that my dog died from 3 years ago.  I will miss him a lot.

So anyways, what's been going on this past week....other than losing two pets that meant so much to me.

Well I ended up getting bronchitis last week, not so much fun and I'm slowly feeling my strength coming back but I do still have some weakness in the chest. It turns out all three of us, my 2 roommates and I, ended up getting. It was not a fun house last friday lol.

where did you go?....

yes I am...but is that a good thing?

Awww...thank you yet again CSUMB. You've somehow managed to fuck me over for yet another semester. I don't know where you find these teachers, but may I say, you've definitely found the pick of the litter. Well it looks like its going to be official; I will no longer even be a Music major at CSUMB, but an ISSM major if this works out the right way. Otherwise I will no longer be a student of CSUMB at all, because I won't have any other alternative but to transfer.

I seriously no longer understand the CSUs hatred for their students. Do they not understand that the only reason they're getting paid the few hundred thousand they're getting is because of us and our parents paying the ridiculous tuitions???

So why not start treating our students with some more respect than thinking of them as being stupid 20 year olds who don't know anything (I must know something, because I managed to get my ass into college!)?

Why not helping them graduate on time by- oh I don't know- offering certain courses more than once every other semester?!

Or how about not canceling a class and then deciding not to offer that class until a year later, because that class is only offered in the fall semester, so if your class is canceled that fall..."oh well you'll just have to wait till next fall because we can't have is messing up our order".

And God forbid we mention to the students that when a class IS canceled you can opt to take it as an independent study. "Nope, we're just going to make you wait and add an extra year onto your schedule because that class is only offered in the fall."


If you couldn't tell already...I needed to vent some frustrations.

Number one question- why don't I just leave? If I have to stay longer, why not just go to a better school?
Mostly because I've met some really awesome people here and I just don't want to have to make new friends...

I know, I know... coward's response.

But when you've never really made friends easily, it's kind of hard to just decide to pick up, move to a new school (where you'll only be there for a year) and make new friends...

Another reason is because my bff (<3) is here (she's really the reason I came here) and I just don't wanna leave her....we're attached at the hip lol.

So for right now, I'm just going to get through the rest of this semester (2 MORE WEEKS) and I'm going to pray that I can get into ISSM and graduate at the time that I was supposed to...well really I was supposed to graduate this year, but if you couldn't tell from above, I was otherwise prevented from doing so due to good-'ole course cancelations.

RIP Usat

So today does not seem like it will be a good today. My roommate's cat...who was also me cat, has passed away. She was only a year old and I am going to miss her very much. She was beautiful, and named after the goddess Isis (her name was pronounced Ee-sa), and a goddess she definitely was.

beautiful Usat the day after we got her

I love you Usat and I'm so sorry that you are gone and won't be around to make those klutzy mistakes that you always made. You were the most ungraceful cat.

the moment of truth...

Today was definitely an...ummm....interesting day??! I dunno how else to describe it I guess. I went to work then had my service learning, which is a course requirement for my college. I really love my service learning site, which is at an elementary school. The kids I work with are so much fun, they make my day every time.

awesome words to live by

So I find that no matter how hard I try, I can't seem to stop thinking about this specific person who, apparently, left more of an impact on my life in one month than I thought he would. Now I've honestly never had a boyfriend...I know, almost 24 and never had a bf...talk about embarrassing.  Anyways, so this is really the first guy who, I thought, showed an honest interest in me.... but I was WRONG... sorely sorely wrong.  He hasn't talked or texted me in 2 weeks. So now I can't seem to stop thinking about him, which is something that I never thought would happen. I'm not really the type of girl to get all giggly or girly or shit about another person that I'm into....probably why I'm still single.

"It's a beautiful lie,

It's a perfect denial,

Such a beautiful lie to believe in,

A beautiful, beautiful lie makes me..."- 30 Seconds to Mars

If you haven't heard of this band...you definitely need to. Amazing lyrics that get me through every day.

Sitting here watching 'A-Team' the movie...I love it. One of my fave movies and I don't even know why. Bradley Cooper is so hott in it. "Close that door, I know you're airborne rangers but that was ridiculous!" I love it. "Alph Mike Foxtrot, in other words Adios Motherfuc***."

This was a Buddhist prayer that a friend of mine sent to me to help with shit that I was going through:

May I be safe and protected.

May I be free from danger.

May I be peaceful.

May I be happy.

May I be healthy.

May I live with ease.

"May I be happy".. this is a prayer that I always say to myself, but so far it doesn't seem to be helping so much. I find that no matter how hard I try, I just can't seem to find myself truly happy. Or when I do find something or someone that does bring about true happiness, I cling to, maybe I cling to it a little too much.  Maybe I need to learn how to let go a little bit, so that I can be sure to hold onto that thing/person.  

Now I don't want you guys to think that I'm like feeling low on myself or anything, because I definitely know that my shit is no different than any other person's.  So, please don't leave comments or anything that says I need to get over myself, because I definitely know that I am lucky to be where I am. So yeah...there ya have it.