Mm. Food.
Foodie Farm Girl
Pretty pictures
Yummy food

Ack!
So, apparently I can't blog anymore. I just don't have time and I don't have access to the internet. This makes me sad, but it is a sacrifice I had to make this year. Along with the tv. The upside is that I am working a LOT and I really like it. I am also getting to catch up on a ton of netflixed movies and tv shows that have been accumulating. I've been watching all of the seasons of Sex in the City, Scrubs, Frazier, The Muppet Show and Fraggle Rock, and when those are finished I'll move on to Ballykissangel (great British show that Todd introduced me to) and maybe some other 80's shows that I grew up on.

So... I don't know if I'll write on here much at all for awhile. I had high hopes of doing the cafe thing on a regular basis, but so far that hasn't panned out. I also have a bunch of recipes for the food blog that I really want to get up soon. Broccoli casserole and apple-cherry cobbler. I have this tomato soup cooking in the crockpot at home right now. Mm.

Anyway... so...yeah. I don't know. I don't have a ton to say these days. Work is good. I love my internship. I've made some really awesome/intelligent/creative/hilarious friends that make me laugh until I cry. I feel like I'm actually learning something in my seminars for the first time in any of my training experiences. I'm getting really great supervision for the first time. I have actual resonsibilities. I feel like I'm not the bottom man on the ladder anymore. I'm supervising practicum students, which is a little scary. *I* am their supervisor. Yikes! I'm responsible for being on-call for a week at a time, on a rotating basis all year. Which means I get crisis calls at 2am. Not fun! Scary! But people trust me to do this. Oof. I have 13-15 individual clients a week, and I'm starting 2 therapy groups, one for undergrad women, and one an eating-disorders group. It's hard work, and it's exhausting, and I work 50 hours a week, but I love it and I'm so glad I'm here and that I matched where I did.

And I'm starting to look for my next position. I'm looking for post-doc positions and/or real jobs with supervision so I can earn my hours towards licensure. And I'm trying to get my dissertation done. I NEED to get it done or else I can't go on to a post-doc next year. Ay. So, this is one good reason for not having cable or the internet at home.

Anyway, so I guess my point is that I WANT to blog, but I don't see it happening, and I wouldn't blame anyone at all if they stop checking in here, because there isn't likely to be much, and it won't be very often. But I will try to check in with everyone as often as I can. I miss everyone!

The Money Question
So, the "more-frequent updates" thing hasn't really happened, huh? Sorry about that. In theory, it's pretty easy to just go to the local coffee shop and sit and blog, check up on my email, read the blogs *I'm* interested in reading on a regular basis.... but in practice it obviously hasn't been happening. I wish I had the internet at home, but I need to conserve resources as much as possible. So, yeah. I'll check in as much as I can, but it probably will be once a week, or possibly every other week. We'll see how it goes. I do miss reading the sites I read daily, though. I feel out of touch with my friends- my real friends and my internet friends, and the news, and all the fun sites I like to read (like feministing.

But anyway... things are going pretty well in NY. The clompy guy upstairs has only woken me up a few times, and has not kept me awake for hours on end for at least a week. I have a new system. I turn on the fan and put in earplugs BEFORE going to sleep. It's easier for me to sleep if I don't get woken up in the first place than for me to fall asleep one he starts doing his thing. And I'm less likely to wake up if I have earplugs in to start with, whereas if he wakes me up and THEN I put in the earplugs, I have a hard time falling asleep again. So, there it is. We'll see how it goes. I did draft a little note to him, though, and the next time he keeps me up, I'll deliver it. I still haven't met him, or even seen him for that matter, and I don't feel comfortable going up there in the middle of the night. So, we'll see how this plays out. The good news, though, is that I no longer hear my neighbor the baker leaving for work at 5am. I seem to have acclimated to that sound. Oof.

So, not much else to report. I did most of the things there are to do in my city last weekend. We went to Lake Ontario, a few recommended restaurants, the indie theater, a museum, a fun little town on the canal, a AAA baseball game, in which my new city was playing the AAA team for my hometown major league team, so Todd and I were the only people in the stadium cheering for the opposing team. We kicked their butts, by the way. :)

And then there was the great trivia disaster of 2006. Since last weekend was a long weekend, Todd was able to stay until Monday. We went to a British pub near my house that has trivia on Sunday nights. Teams pay $5 each to enter, and the winner takes home the whole pot. The pot that night was $165. And we tied for 1st place. And then we won the tie breaker. At which point I get extremely excited. Because we won $165, right? But then the guy says "ok, and now for the money question." Wait. What? We just won. We won a 3-way tie for the win, right? What's happening? So, apparently we had to choose from 3 envelopes, and only one of us could answer. Todd chose the envelope, and ended up with a question that he couldn't answer. I couldn't answer it, either. So the announcer says "hey, thanks for playing. See you next week!" Wait. WHAT???? We had no idea what just happened. I mean, one minute we thought we had $165, and the next minute, "thanks for playing." Who gets the money? What kind of scam is this? Apparently if the winning team doesn't get the "money question," all the money rolls over to the next week. Which the guy never explained. Ugh. So, that totally sucked. Todd was all sad and said he really wanted to win the money for me. Which made me sad. And it's not like I'll be able to go again, unless I round up some NY people to play with me. But really, it's totally Todd's brain that wins us trivia. It's not the same with other people. But perhaps we'll try. One of the other interns and her boyfriend offered to go sometime. We'll see how that turns out.

So, that's about it. I'm home this weekend for a wedding, and I have to leave at 6am tomorrow to get to work on time at noon. Fun for me. Whee!

Shut up, Mr. Clomp-Clomp-Clomp!!!!
OMG. I am going to freaking tear someone's feet off, or cry, or move or something. I can't stand it. The guy who lives above me is... aargh. It makes me so angry. Ok, so... I moved in at the end of July. The first weekend was quiet. Then the first three days that I had to be at work, I couldn't sleep at night because the guy above me was freaking square-dancing or something. I don't know. Dropping bags of sand on the floor? Practicing his tap dancing? Moving furniture back and forth. I don't know. Whatever it was, it was loud, and it was happening between midnight and 5am, for hours at a time, and it was horrible. So I called the landlord to ask him what the guy's name was, and what his story is. Apparently the guy's a bouncer, so he's likely to come home late every night. Fantastic. But then, miracle of miracles, the guy goes away to Europe for a few weeks.

Well, he came home last night. I heard him upstairs in the evening, which is fine, but then he went out and came back home at 3:30 am. And commenced with the sandbag dropping, furniture-moving, and tap dancing. And he had another guy over and they were carrying on in very loud guy voices, which made me wonder if they were standing directly outside my door. it was so loud. I turned the fan on louder than it already was, put the earplugs in, and wished for the sleep fairy to take me back to dreamland. Which did not happen, of course. Because somewhere along the line I must have annoyed someone SO MUCH that now I have to pay for it. For a whole year. I don't know what I'm going to do.

I mean, of course, the obvious answer is that I go talk to him about it. But I don't know him, and I don't want to be like "hi, I just moved in, nice to meet you, now please SHUT THE **** UP!" But that's really what I feel like saying. Even though I really don't want to talk to him at all, because I'm non-confrontational. Instead, apparently, I am choosing to sit on my bed at 5am staring at my lease and wondering how to fck I'm going to get out of this situation, because I can not live like this for an entire year.

And the thing is, that if he really does come home from work at 2am or whatever, and then he decides to stay up and do stuff all night and sleep during the day... i can't make him change that. That's his life. But his life is preventing me from sleeping, which means I can't function during the day, which is totally unacceptable, and I don't know how to solve this problem. Ugh. I'm going to give him one more chance tonight, working under the premise that maybe in the beginning of the month he was packing for Europe, and last night was his first night back and he had some partying to catch up on, and some unpacking to do (really, it's a stretch, but I'm trying to give him an acceptable excuse other than that he just has feet made of lead and an an inability to stop clomping around all night). But if I can't sleep tonight... ugh. I'm not happy with this situation. I don't want to have to complain about noise. I don't want to get woken up in the middle of the night every night. I don't want to fall asleep in work every day. I don't want to have to ask my landlord if there's anything I can do, like put insulation in the ceiling. Ugh. Why do these things happen to me? These people are supposed to be adults, and yet the people in my house go around slamming doors and clomping around and leaving the door unlocked, and blah blah blah acting like idiotic kids and it's making me very unhappy with my living situation. Very unhappy as in "can't live like this for a year" unhappy. AARGH. Cranky. Sigh.

Bam!
There are plans! I have things to do! I met 2 of the other interns at the public market this morning for some mad produce buying and lunch. And then I met another person for coffee and presentation-planning. And THEN I'm meeting someone later this afternoon to make vats of sauce out of all the cheap produce we got this morning. So what is that? Three plans in one day. Oh, and I was invited to see Little Miss Sunshine tonight, too, which I turned down because I had already seen it. So, basically I went from staring at the wall to having more plans than I could handle. :) Awesome.

AND (and this is extremely exciting to me) the place we met for coffee...has free wifi. Which I am utilizing to write this entry. And which I will be using frequently, as it is 3 blocks from my apartment and I can't afford internet at home. I think I may be living here at this coffee shop on the weekends and evenings.

Anyway. So... yup. That's my update. I went home to Philly last weekend, and had a nice dinner out, went to a baseball game, and grilled on our patio. The five hour drive isn't horrible, but it's not fun, either. And it costs a lot of money for gas. So....yeah. It's going to get old fast, and I'm going to have to spend a lot of my banked car-karma not getting a speeding ticket. So, I have 2 Todd-free weekends before I get to see him again. So far I've got plenty of things to keep me occupied this weekend. Next weekend might be a challenge, though. There are only so many times you can sit in B&N reading magazines for free, and I've watched the first two seasons of Scrubs in less than a week. I need to find things to do that I also feel motivated to do by myself. The market this morning was awesome, so I might have to make that a weekly Saturday morning thing.

Stay tuned for (hopefully) more frequent posting, now that I found a method of connecting for free. I'm all about the free these days. Free is good.

Oof.
Ok, so...yeah. I don't know. Internship is going well. I like all the people I work with. My new apartment... questionable. My neightbors are loud and keep me awake. My kitchen window doesn't lock. My neighbors don't like to keep the outer door locked, ever, and Thursday night a strange guy came into our house and knocked on my door and I was stupid and opened it, and luckily nothing bad happened, but it was totally sketchy and I don't think he belonged anywhere near my building, so when he left I locked the door behind him and called the police. My landlord must think I'm a pain in the arse because I call him all the time about stuff like, oh, my window not locking, the door not locking, the loud neighbors, blah blah. He doesn't call me back anymore when I leave a message. But come on. A stranger came into our house and knocked on several doors at 11:30pm. That's not right. Don't ask me why I opened the door. I know. Stupid.

So... yeah. Oof. I still do not have internet access at home, and frankly I don't know if I ever will, because I discovered today that after I pay my rent, car payments and student loans, I'm going to have $25 left each month. So, I don't know what I'm going to do for food, let alone pay for the internet. I've cut out everything I possibly can. I've used up all of the money I had in my emergency funds, which suuuucks because it was borrowed money to begin with.

sigh. I need to find another job, or something, I don't know...something I can do after my internship day is over, and somehow find time to work on my dissertation, too. I don't know how to make all this happen, but I need to find some money somewhere, somehow. Blargh. I feel like this has been the theme of my life for the last 3 years, and I'm ready to be out of this phase of my life and into a place where I can get a real job with real money and benefits and whatever, so I don't have to worry about how I'm going to buy groceries or fill my gas tank so I can get to work.
Hrm. Sorry for being Little Miss Crankypants. I get to go to a baseball game tonight, though, so there's that.....

Yikes!
I live in New York now! I'm not sure how I feel about that. I mean... I'm supposed to be excited about my internship, blah blah, new city, new things to do, etc, but mostly I am bored and lonely and I don't know anyone here yet, and I don't have A/C, and I don't have TV and I don't have the internet and I don't have a couch because it got rained on during the trip up and we had to chuck it and I'm very whiney today, aren't I?

I miss being at home where I know people and have things to do and I have the internet (I'm at the public library right now, with a time limit on my usage).

Sigh. I'm bored. Come visit me or send me mail or call me or something, okay? Ok.

Surprises
I am terrible with surprises. I love surprises. Feel free to surprise away. Just don't tell me about it ahead of time. Like "I got you a present, but you have to wait until next week to find out." I can't stand that. Like...I literally can not stand the suspense and I turn into a super-annoying child asking questions like "is it bigger than a breadbox? Is it something you can wear? Is it something you use in the kitchen?" And I go on and on and on because I can not tolerate knowing something exciting is coming and not knowing what it is. And for crying out loud, send it to the neighbor's house, because if *anything* shows up that will give me the slightest hint, I will figure it out. My parents learned this early on and kept my Christmas presents at a neighbors house.

So, last week Todd came home to go to trivia, and I say "Because you were so nice to come home in the middle of the week, I got you a present!" It was a peach melba muffin from a place in Lancaster that he likes. But Todd blurts out "I got you a present, too!" And that began the week-long question-fest from me. And then an envelope came in the mail with a return address that gave away a clue about my present, and I figured it out immediately, but I had to wait for the Fed-Ex guy to deliver it today.

When we were on vacation in the San Juan Islands, we went into a tiny art gallery/shop place and there was a painting on the wall that I really liked. Apparently Todd tried to track it down after we returned, but couldn't find any information anywhere on the web. So eventually he emailed the editor of the local newspaper on the islands, described the shop he was looking for, and voila! The shop owner called him the next day.

And today, this arrived:


I don't know how to turn the flash off on Todd's camera, so the colors look a little washed-out in this photograph, but it's very pretty in real-life, and I think I will hang it above my bed in my new apartment.

Packing
Nothing exciting going on here. I haven't worked since before our vacation, and I had big plans to pack everything and clean the whole house and cook amazing food and yada yada with all my free time... but it's not happening so much. The packing is taking a long time, since I sort of have to go through the house and sort out what I want to take and what to leave behind, making sure I have enough in Rochester and leave enough at home for Todd. I babysat H's baby for a few days, and it makes me sad to think that when I return next year she'll be talking and running around and being a really independent toddler. I'm going to miss everything between "I just learned how to sit up on my own! I just got my first two teeth!" and "You can't catch me as I run around the house and then have a terrible-twos tantrum!" I'll have to try to see her on some of my weekends home.

We went to our last trivia night last night. Actually, last week I asked Todd to drive home from Maryland to go to trivia "for the last time." He did. We went. There were big storms that knocked out the power and trivia ended up getting cancelled. We hung out in the dark bar for a couple of hours anyway, but the power never came back and Todd basically drove all the way home in the middle of the week for no reason. So of course, because he's wonderful, he did it again this week. I honestly thought we could go out on a high note since we had him back on our team, but a bunch of other people bailed at the last minute and we couldn't even manage to bring in a 3rd-place finish. Trivia has been super hard lately, and I guess it was somewhat gratifying to see that we couldn't do it even with Todd...makes the rest of the team feel like we're not quite so pathetic if even Todd couldn't pull in a win for us. Oh well. Trivia guy brought us a giant plate of nachos on the house, since this was our last shot for awhile.

That's about it. Not too terribly exciting. Went to the beach for a day. Bought Jersey corn from a farm stand. Got chocolate coconut fudge on the boardwalk. Mm. I never used to like coconut, but it is quickly becomming a favorite. Especially when it is folded into gooey buttery fudge. Yum.

Oh. And in my boredom from being stuck in the house with nothing to do, I've rediscovered the tv. Specifically, I have discovered Pr0ject Runway, and I am sorry to say that I feel the NEED to watch it now. NOW. When I am moving away to a place where I will not have cable. Because I am po'. And because I felt all high and mighty proclaiming that I did not need to get cable because I do not need to watch television. (I have also recently gone off the other show...the one I have been watching every day since 1994... the show of the variety that comes on in the afternoon...the kind of which we do not speak, nor admit to watching...every day since 1994. Yes. My recent declaration that I could go off tv entirely prompted me to give up that show, too.) So...I do not know what to do about the PR thing. I may have to befriend someone with cable.

Ok. Back to the packing. 3 days to go until the move. I am tired of moving. I have moved a zillion times in the last couple of years.
Hey, let's move in with Todd! Hey, wait, when your move is half-way complete, let's buy a house! Now let's send you to NY for a year! Isn't this fun! And in a year you can move again and move back to PA! Yay! I love moving! Yay Yay Yay!

Why lying is stupid
Ok, there are lots of reasons why lying is hurtful, manipulative, exploitative, etc, which everyone knows, *or should know. But here is one reason why lying is stupid. You can get rubella.

So, it's 1995. I'm filling out the paperwork required at the beginning of college. They ask for my immunization history. My mom has everything written down in a little book. Fantastic. Except that the form from my college says I should have two dates for the measles, mumps and rubella vaccinations. An initial dose, and a booster. My mom only has one date written down. "Oh, but if it was something you were supposed to have, I'm sure you had it. I probably just didn't write it down." Ok, well....I couldn't find the second set of dates anywhere, so I sent in my immunization record as is- just the dates I had.

End of the first semester comes, and I get a letter in the mail stating that the college won't release my grades until my immunization records are complete. They also tell me that I should have a second set of dates x-number of years after the first. Crap. So, wanting my grades and not wanting to have to get another shot, I called the records department, and gave them the missing dates over the phone. They didn't ask for anything on my doctor's letterhead or anything official. So I gave them dates. Made-up dates. I mean, my mom SAID that she was sure I had everything I needed. I just couldn't find the dates. And I wanted my grades. More importantly, I did not want a shot. So I made up that teeny little part of my medical record. And then when I graduated from college and found my own real grown-up doctor, I had my college records transferred. With the made-up information.

Besides, MMR vaccinations are mandatory now, right? That means that everyone else is supposed to have them. Which means there is no one for me to catch these diseases from. That was my theory, and I liked it.

Except, a while back Todd and I were talking about all of the places we would like to travel to at some point, and I started thinking "I bet not everyone THERE has had MMR vaccinations..... hmmm...." And then I read a news report a couple of months ago about a mumps outbreak somewhere in CA (I think). And so it goes. I was finally going to suck it up and find the truth.

I googled my old pediatricians names and couldn't find them anywhere. I couldn't remember the name of the practice. I looked through my old records and couldn't find anything. And then one day my mom brings me a pile of "important papers," including my baby records. I found the pediatricians' letterhead, and it had a phone number. Ok, it's probably been 20 years since I've been to the pediatrician, but it was worth a shot. I didn't really have anything else to go on. I called them, they have a new name, but they're still the same practice. I told the woman my story and she laughed, and said she had to get my records out of storage. Three days later I had an official copy of my immunization records from my pediatrician. And the dates matched my mom's notes exactly. Crap. This still does not tell me anything. I started going to a different practice at some point, and maybe I had the booster shot there? I still didn't know.

So last week I had an appointment with my current doctor, and I brought along the copy of my immunization record. I explained that I wasn't sure whether I had the booster shot. Of course, he looks in my chart and says "no, we have the second dates here." And, well...I couldn't tell him that I lied so I could stay in college. I told him that I wasn't sure if those dates were legit, and that there had been a question about my records back in college and that I don't remember it getting resolved. So he says "You think these dates are made up?" And I said "um, it's possible...I'm just not sure where those came from." Which is true-I don't know if his records reflect the dates I made up in college (and then subsequently had transferred), or if they really did come from somewhere in my legitimate medical records.

So my doctor tells me they can draw blood and see if I have the antibodies. It will only take a few minutes. Great. I am convinced that my mom was right- I must have had the vaccine, but she didn't write it down. This is all just a formality, so I have actual proof.

Except that my doctor's office called yesterday and said that the results of my bloodwork show I do NOT have immunity to measles, mumps or rubella. WTF? I tried to call my mother immediately to yell at her for sending her only child out into the world unprotected from disease, but she didn't answer her phone...and the voicemail didn't pick up. Perhaps she knew what was coming.

Dude. I could have gotten measles or mumps or rubella. "I'm sorry sir, I can't come to work today. I have rubella." WHAT?????

So now (now that I have no health insurance) I have to wait until I get to NY, get my crappy student health insurance, which will probably not cover a MMR vaccine for a twenty-nine-year-old. I am sure I will have to pay for this out of pocket. Aargh. Unbelievable. If I hadn't made up the dates in 1995, I would have had to get the shot then, and it would all be over by now, and I wouldn't have to pay for it. Oh, and I wouldn't have been walking around for 11 years vulnerable to these diseases which were supposedly wiped out decades ago. Blargh.

Speechless
So, I always thought that the whole reason for having "talking points" is that they gave you a tool to use to back up your argument...succinct "points" (which I apparently always thought meant facts) that give you something to talk about- something to help you convince the other side in the argument.

But these talking points on gay marriage...just leave me speechless.

just... wha???

Sorry to go all political after the nice happy fun vacation photos, but... whaa?

And we're back
Whoo-whee! I highly recommend the two-week vacation. You will completely forget what day it is, what work is, what tv is, what cell phones do, etc. Our vacation was fantastic. I have hundreds of photos, but here are just a few.

We started out in Portland and spent a day in the city before heading out along the Columbia River Gorge. We stopped at a bunch of waterfalls and lookout points. Very pretty. The weather was perfect. We ended up at the base of Mount Hood, where we camped and I woke up in the middle of the night convinced a bear was snuffling around outside out tent. Honestly, I was terrified. It turned out to be Matt snoring from the next tent over. Snoring bstrd nearly gave me a heart attack. Next day we went on a nice little jaunt... which turned out to be a 7-mile hike in 103 degree weather. Which we were not prepared for. Moral of the story- always bring plenty of water, no matter what. The views of Mt. Hood were (almost) worth the trek. Almost. I was semi-incapacitated for the next several days, though. Sore all over and could barely walk.

Next we headed out to the Oregon coast. Very pretty. Highly recommended. This is Cannon Beach. The Goonies was filmed here.


Ooh, pretty.....


Then we drove up through Washington, past Mount Saint Helens, bipassed Seattle and headed into a 2-day, 400-mile loop through the Cascade Mountains. There was a quirky little "bavarian" town (read: tourist destination) where we stopped for German sausages and beer and goulash. And fudge. We stopped at more waterfalls, and stayed in a cute little cabin with views of the mountainss behind us. We also ate in another themed town (I know, it was weird, but apparently that's what these little mountain-towns do to sustain themselves. It was odd, but it works for them). This one was an original honest-to-goodness wild west town, and it decided to run with that. Everything looked like a movie-set saloon or some such thing.

On our way out of town we decided (I never agreed to this, but whatever) to drive up to Hart's Pass. Heart-attack Pass, more like it. It's a one-lane (so if someone comes in the opposite direction you have to wiggle by somehow), all gravel (slippery and dusty), curvy as all get-out, crazy road that goes 15 miles up the mountain, with VERY STEEP CLIFFS off the side... and no guard rail. I seriously (no drama queen about it) thought we were going to die. Cars did come from the other direction. The person driving our car did try to go in reverse to let another car pass, mistaking neutral for reverse sliding forward toward the edge of the mountain, there were danger signs warning you of the Very Dangerous road conditions. Ugh.

But the views from the top were nice.


After that, we headed to Seattle for a few days. Went to the market a few times, ate lots of salmon and cherries, saw a Mariners game, toured the underground.

Next, we took a ferry out to the San Juan Islands, where we camped for 4 days. One day we went sea kayaking, which turned out to be my favorite part of the trip. We saw bald eagles and seals. A seal popped its head up right next to our kayak. On the second half of the trip, after lunch, we saw a few whales out in the water, pretty far from us. As we're all stopped to look at the whales, we heard a "Whoosh!" behind us, and turned to see the spray from a blow-hole just behind our kayaks. And our guide's only response was "Whoo-hee!!!!" So we sat for a few minutes until the whales swam away from us. They were the orca whales- the black and white "shamu" type. So we continued on our way. Todd and I were the fastest kayak in our group (Todd, apparently, thought he was on his college crew team again). We quickly caught up with another kayaking group. They all stopped. We stopped. Whoosh! Blow-hole, right in front of us. Holy mother bleeeeep! There was another orca, right in front of us, which means 30 seconds earlier it was probably right underneath us. "Whooo-hooo-eeee!" says our guide. Awesome. I wish I had pictures to show you, but a) we only took a cheap throw-away, which I have not gotten developed yet, and b) when an orca surfaces that close to you, your first instinct is to say "holy mother bleep bleep bleep", and not necessarily reach for the camera. So... I doubt we got any really good shots of the orcas anyway.

Anyway, here is a picture of our campsite on Orcas Island. We were right on this rock that jutted out into the sound, and seals hung out around the rocks in the morning. Hence the name of our campsite: Seal Landing. That's our tent in the bottom left corner.


And then we spent a relaxing couple of days on the islands before heading back to Seattle for two nights in a fancy schmancy hotel. After 4 nights of camping, it was culture shock to look out the window of our 24th-floor suite at the Marriott (thank you rewards points for giving us a free hotel room with a shower and running water and a bed to sleep on). It was a nice way to end out the trip. Oh, and Scott took us out for tasty seafood. Yum. I love fresh seafood, especially when it comes with a nice waterfront view.

And now we're back. :)

PS. Also, there was fun art:

That picture was taken by the salmon ladder that has been set up to help the salmon get upstream and around the dams. The salmon have to find the hole by the edge of the water, and then they shoot through the ladder into separate little cubicles, where they then have to launch themselves "upstream" into the next higher level, etc, until they get to where they need to be in order to lay their eggs. We watched them shooting through the gate and also flipping themselves up the ladder. It was pretty cool, in a "March of the Penguins"-it shouldn't be this hard to reproduce- kind of way.

There was also much pottery to be had in the northwest. The place where these mugs live is an incredible pottery utopia kind of place, complete with lots of pottery scattered around outdoors, some with little frogs playing in them, swings, 2 yurts out back behind the studio, awesome views of the water, a swingset, and a gigantic treehouse with multiple levels, a bunkbed, and glass windows.

We're leavin'... on a jet plane...
don't know when we'll be back again. I suppose it could be July 8th, but that's just a rumor. ;) But don't even think about coming to steal our house, because someone will be living here while we're away. For real. We have a house-sitter, plant-waterer, hopefully not party-having-er.

So... yup. That's the story. We're leaving tomorrow night for 2 weeks in the Pacific Northwest. What's on the itinerary, you ask? Why, the largest independent bookstore in the world, of course. And then driving along the Columbia River G0rge, hiking at Mt. H00d, checking out Astoria (G00nies town), Mount St. Helens (no whammies, no whammies, stop!), the Cascade Loop, Seattle (complete with Mariners game), taking a ferry to the San Juan Islands, sea kayaking, more hiking, camping in a hippie enclave (we couldn't get into a yurt, though...), and then more Seattle, with a fancy hotel (thank you, Reward Points program). I want to go horseback riding, too, if we can find a place on the islands.

Very exciting, indeed. But I probably won't have access to the internet, except perhaps when we're staying with friends in Seattle. Which is a-ok by me. I will have my phone with me, though, so feel free to call if anything major happens in the world, or in your own personal world. I won't be completely cut off from civilization.

Mm. And I do hope to have some yummy food out there. Like...yummy seafood. I had lots of yummy seafood the last time I was out there... salmon and crab and more salmon and... mm. Ranier cherries. What else?

The bag is packed. And I do mean PACKED. A giant backpacking backpack doesn't seem so giant once you try to pack 2 weeks worth of stuff into it. Or, rather, 1 weeks worth of stuff and a prayer for a washing machine somewhere along the line. :)

I'll bring back lots of pictures. Whee! Be good!

I take it back
Ok, so...I've been reading a ton of books lately. Mostly since I finished my dissertation proposal and sent it to the IRB. I have a lot of free time now. Not only did I submit my proposal (and now have to sit and wait to hear if it was accepted), but I also wrapped up 3 of my 4 jobs in the last 2 weeks, and the last job only requires an hour and a half of work this week. Ok, so.... I've been reading. I read everything on my shelf that I felt like reading (who really wants to read The Decameron for fun?) Anyway. So, then I started hitting up the library. And let me tell you, I was EXCITED about the library. Like the way little kids are excited about the library. They have everything you want. And it's FREE. And you can take as many as you want. For free. Super exciting in my world right now. We love free.

So I've been reading. One of the books on my bookshelf was a memoir-type thing by this woman who had a rough life growing up, poverty, drugs, abuse, you name it. When she started trying to turn her life around, she needed money. So she put out a general "please, world, I need some money" kind of thing, and voila! The money arrived. As in, she needed $925 for something, and the next day exactly $925 arrived in her mailbox. Um... right. Ok. Makes a good story, though, right?

So then I finish that book, read a few more, and then I get to another memoir. (I've been reading a lot of memoirs. You should check out Marley and Me. You know- "you'll laugh, you'll cry." That sort of thing). Anyway, so.... completely different type of life story, but at some point this author also puts out a "please, universe, I need this much money and I don't know how to get it. Please help." And, guess what happens? Voila again. The money arrives.

So today I'm driving home from the bank, where I deposited all the money I made from our yard sale this week (see, all my jobs ended and I have no money. And yet, amazingly, I still have bills to pay. So we had a yard sale, where I beg strangers to take away my stuff and give me money in return. I made $300.) And I'm driving home, contemplating the fact that all the money I just deposited will not cover (or maybe, if I'm lucky, will juuuuust barely cover) the checks I just mailed for my car payment and student loans. And, well... crap. Now what? Because I have no more money coming in until sometime after I start my internship. In August. Cer-raaaa-aap. Hm. Ok. So I start thinking about all these women (2) in these memoirs and their stories about how the sent out prayers to the universe asking for money, and I was thinking about how that, too, is crap, because that never ever happens in real life, but hey - it makes a good story! And this only makes me bitter because I don't know how I am going to get some money to cover my bills, AND we're going on vacation at the end of the week and I will have no money to pay for food or anything. (just so the poverty police don't think I'm being reckless, I am not really paying for much of anything on this vacation, as T bought my plane ticket, we're camping and staying in free hotels with reward points and crashing with friends, etc). Fine. Right. So... aargh! I need money!

And then tonight I got home and opened the mail and there was an envelope from my grandfather with a check for $50. No note. Just a check. Whaa? And I mean... ok. It's not a ton of money, but it's enough to ensure that my student loan payment won't bounce. That's all I needed immediately. I'll work on the rest later. And then I called Todd and opened with "you're going to think I'm a complete nutjob, but listen to what just happened." He, of course, thinks it is just a coincidence. :)

And so this is my public apology to all the memoir writers who told a good story. I am sorry I did not believe in your story the way you believed the universe would send you money. Apparently sometimes it really does happen.

what's in a name?
I have always had a weird obsession with baby names. Even when I was a kid, I would read my mom's old baby-naming book...the one with a pencil mark next to the name they chose for me. When I was a teenager I bought another baby-naming book, and I've read it (yes, read it, all the way through) several times. I put little dots next to the names I liked, each time, so that some names have many dots now. I don't know where this comes from.

But now I have found a new tool. The Social Secur1ty administrati0n's website of baby names. You can find out how the popularity of your own name has changed over the years. You can search for the most popular names from each year going back to the late 1800's. You can look for the most (or least) popular names over the entire period they have tracked such things. You can even look at the most popular names by state. For some strange reason I find this oddly fascinating....

From my new apartment, I can walk to:
The Eastman House - museum of film and photography
The Memorial Art Gallery
Fun places to shop if I had any money
The Susan B. Anthony House
A "National Museum of Play" - must find child to take me here
The Craft Company has my name written ALL OVER it

I can't figure out if my new place is in the Park Ave neighborhood or the Neighborhood of the Arts (NOTA). NOTA, according to the interwebthingy, is noted for its diversity, walkability and activism. Awesome. The Park Avenue neighborhood bills itself as the Greenwich Village of Rochester. And also claims "a charming old-world ambience that looks and feels as much like Europe as any place this side of the Atlantic." Hm. I'll take that. I think my neighborhood is just between these two places, which is super fantastic and gives me a ton of stuff to do. Whee!

Apartment Hunting
was joyfully completed in one day. Huzzah! I was so prepared- spent hours researching apartments online, set up appointments all day long, had copies of my landlord references, my checkbook, directions from each apartment appointment to the next. And they all sucked giant sucky suckiness. Seriously. Imagine the worst apartment you've ever seen... I probably saw something similar on Saturday. Ugh. What a waste of time. And I didn't want to drive all the way back up to Rochester in two weeks to do it again. As I said to Todd, every time I've moved somewhere, I've always felt like "hey, I could totally live here." And then I do. You have to have that feeling, I think. Our first appointment was at 9am. By 3:30pm we had seen between 20-30 apartments. And I said to him "I didn't have that feeling with any of them." Ay. Must keep looking. Very frustrating. So, we drove to the neighborhood I DID like (nice streets, gigantic houses, many of which were carved up into apartments, walking distance to very cute cafes and stores and a cheese shop (Cheese, Grommit!), etc, etc). We parked the car and got out, armed with a pad of paper, a pen, and my cell phone. Tons of houses had signs out front advertising apartments for rent. Very few of those people actually answered the phone when I called. So we kept walking, and I kept calling. I must have called 20 places. I'm sure I am going to get at least 10 return calls tomorrow, when people return to work and return their phone calls. So we walked "Hi, can you tell me about the apartment you have for rent? Where did I hear about it? I'm on your front lawn right now." Ay ya. So much work. I just called and called and called, every single sign I saw, and there were a lot of signs. By 5pm we were totally exhausted, and I had 2 "backup plans" and nothing I was really excited about. But, there was one more guy who said he could show me a place at 5pm. Fine. We're out here. But this is the last one. We can't do any more tonight. We were prepared to get up Sunday morning and try again. So we meet the guy. We go in through the side door. The entry way is kind of small and dark. I'm not impressed. We go up a few rickety stairs. Still not impressed. The door to the apartment is half the width of a regular door. It's as high as a normal door....but for skinny people. Ok. Ugh. Already planning what time to get up the next morning.

But then... I go into the apartment. And it's cute. Hardwood floors. It's a studio, but it has a pretty large main room. The bathroom is pretty good, too. The whole apartment is cute, and very clean, especially considering someone still lives in it. Kitchen is small but adequate, and cute. Current tenant tells me she brought in most of her larger belongings through the very large window in the main room. Ok... kinda weird, but it totally worked. Window boxes outside the very large window. Very nice landlord. Storage space and laundry in the basement. Tons of free parking. What? $445 a month, all utilities included? Who do I make the check out to?

I have an apartment! It is quirky and cute and clean and in a great neighborhood with very nice houses and within walking distance of cute stores and restaurants and blah di blah the cheese shop. Mine! Whoo!

Also, we spent the weekend with two friends-of-fiance-of-friend who lives on other side of the country. And they were *sooo* nice and welcoming and make awesome buttnernut squash gnocchi for dinner and I feel like maybe I might actually have some new friends in Rochester before I even move there. Which is awesome, because I am slightly on the shy side. Shh- don't tell anyone. WhoO!

Ok, so... yeah. Come visit me. It's far away as hell, and you will have to sleep on the floor, but...you get to sleep on the floor! And I will cook you butternut squash gnocchi because they were so good and I copied the recipe. :) Plus, I will be bored and lonely in my cute apartment with the funny door and you can come and play with me and each gnocchi.

Bleh. Hot.
I hate being hot. When you're cold, you can put on more clothes and plug in the heated blanket. There's only so much you can do when you're hot. And I'm hot. It makes me cranky. Bleh.

Anyway...so I see there has been no blogging here lately. Oops. I haven't really been doing anything terribly exciting. My mom came one day and helped me with the garden. We pulled out piles and piles of weeds and dead leaves and other assorted nonsense, and then our very nice neighbor divided his columbines and gave us tons of them, which we transplanted into the spaces that had previously been a disaster. I'm sure he did this in part because the area we were working on faces their side yard and they've been wanting us to fix it up for awhile. Not that they said that directly, but I could tell. So, it looks nice now. The last people who lived here did some weird things, like edge out a circle in the middle of the yard where they put a statue, illuminated by a spot light. We also dug up all that stuff, pulled out the electrical line, removed the stones making the circle, and put down grass seed. I moved the stones to the lamp post, edged out a circle around that, and planted some vines and petunias in the circle. And then we mulched. I mulched. Everything. Lots and lots of mulch. I will maybe post some more pictures at some point. Our yard looks nice.

Which was the goal, since we had our Memorial Day party on Monday. Last summer, every single BBQ we had was affected by torrential downpours. This year, it was just hot as (whatever). It did start to thunder and rain just a bit, but not until the end of the evening when most people were leaving anyway. So, hurray for our first dry BBQ.

Other than that... I'm just wrapping up all of my jobs, getting ready for vacation, trying to find an apartment in Rochester (guess how much fun that is?), waiting for my dissertation proposal to come back from IRB, hopefully approved (eh, I've only been working on the *proposal* for 3 years. Sheesh). Yada yada, nothing exciting to report here. Just lots of yardwork, winding down everything else for summer.

But, we're going to NY this weekend for the Great Apartment Search: Part I. If I'm lucky, there will not be a Part II. We'll see. I have a couple of appointments lined up for Saturday. I have resigned myself to the idea that I may just have to accept an apartment that is available for July 1, instead of the end of July. It means I will have to pay an extra month for no good reason, but if it means I can get a cheaper apartment and not have to make a second trip up there, so be it. Finding an apartment where you don't live totally sucks. Blargh.

Did I mention that it's hot? I'm hot. Bleh.

Yucky
I'm torn between wanting to show this ridiculous children's clothing website to people and invite snarky comments, and not wanting to give them any more business. But seriously... is this *really* about having your kid feel cool, or about getting attention for yourself? If I ever hear of one of you dressing your infant in something called a "lil beater"... we're going to have to talk. Especially if it says "my mom is a milf," or anything with the word "pimp." Yuck.
* link from Broadsheet

More on baseball, and feminism
Apparently I have become obsessed with baseball. Who knew? I used to make fun of someone for having a life-sized cardboard Derek Jetr in her apartment. I apologize for the mocking (although, you know... he is a Ynkee, so perhaps the criticism wasn't so far out of line). But I did not know this baseball thing. Now, I am obsessed with the baseball. I need to watch it every night. This has been a most disturbing discovery, right up there with turning into a dog-person. And my return to eating hot dogs. All of these things were unforseen.

Right, so...about the feminism. And baseball. 11-year-old Gabby Means wants a ballfield as good as the boys'. "I think that everybody should have a fair chance of becoming as good as another person." Well, so do a lot of other people. Gabby has been selected as a finalist in a contest to improve youth ballfields. Gabby decided to enter the contest after her a baseball hit a patch of rocks on their field, and her little sister got a black eye from the wayward ball. "That made me feel more determined, so in time less girls would get black eyes trying to play baseball."

Hi. She's 11, and she's using her voice to even the playing field (ba-dum-dum). Vote for Gabby's story and her ballfield here. If she can get the girls a better ballfield at age 11... I wonder what she'll be able to do as she continues to grow up.

Peanuts and crackerjacks
And pink bats! Awesome. I wonder which of my Phillies will be swinging pink bats this week. We're not going to the ballpark again until next weekend, so I think I'll have to watch the action on the tv this week.

Jersey Girls
Hm. Apparently it was the weekend to spend in Jersey. Todd and Pam and I started out the weekend by driving to the Relay for Life at a community college in Raritan. The walk was mostly fun. We grilled hot dogs and burgers for dinner. Sadly, the veggie burgers did not survive the grill. We walked. We (mostly) enjoyed the live band that played for the first few hours. We played board games. We played frisbee. I broke the frisbee. I don't even know how. It was a particularly bad throw and it broke in two when it crashed down in the grass. And then at 2am we tried to sleep. Except...our team leader had thoughtfully chosen our campsite.... near the entrance, easy to spot, near the bathrooms and the grilling area...and directly in front of the stage where the DJ was playing allllll night long. It was so loud that the ground we were "sleeping" on was vibrating. At 5am the man was playing the theme song to Gilligan's Island. And then Green Acres. And so on and so forth. It was cold, and damp, and we were exhausted, and he was blaring Gilligan's Island for all the world to hear. It made for cranky campers.

Me to Todd: Hey, your ear is all red. You must have slept on it funny.
Todd: No. That's where I tried to rip it off so I wouldn't have to listen to this crap any more.

Hrm. Yes. Fun, no? But our team managed to raise almost $3000, and the event raised $43,000. Not bad for an event with only a dozen teams.

And then after that lovely adventure, we had to drive all the way up to Fort Lee to help Todd's friend move out of his apartment before we could finally sleep. Except I couldn't sleep. I was exhausted. I was comfy in my bed. But I couldn't sleep. Until the magical moment when I did fall asleep.... the same moment that Todd decided it was time to get up, and that we had things we needed to do before the next day. Doh! And then on Sunday....

We got up at 6:30 in the morning and drove (back through the "lovely" state of NJ) to New York to go hiking. It was the perfect day for hiking, and we met Angie and Joel at my favorite hiking place, and had a really nice, fun hike. We saw a big snake sunning himself on a tree stump, and lots of giant birds, and not so many rich people at the fancy schmancy resort because apparently it's a little early for rich people season. So, the mountain was much less crowded than usual, which was nice. I came home a little battered and bruised (managed to get my leg stuck in a crevice in a rock, which was a little scary, as I was about 40 feet up in the air at the top of an even bigger crevice... close enough that I could taste the sunlight coming in from the top, but far enough up that I would have broken my neck and completely taken out Angie and Joel below me if I fell. Which I wouldn't have done, because *I was stuck*).

Ay ya. Such a long weekend. And the plague that I've had 4 times since Christmas has returned. Some kind of upper respiratory thing... lots of goop. I stayed home today. Contemplating calling the doctor. But other than that... I think I am going to enjoy my day home. Catch up on some sleep from the weekend. Pay bills. Cook some good food. Maybe do a little work in the garden. Recover from the weekend.

Relay Update
The Relay for Life is this weekend, and I think I'm getting sick. Blargh. Staying up all night (and they're calling for rain) is not going to be fun/good for me. Bleh. So, I've been sleeping a lot the last 2 days in an effort to fend off whatever illness is trying to plague me now. I swear I have been sick more this past year than ever before.

Anyway, so our team goal was originally $2500, then got moved up to $5000, which proved to be way too optimistic. We just barely passed the $2500 mark, so we lowered the goal again back to our original figure. BUT, you can still donate if you would like. :)

Donate here

And huge thanks to everyone who already donated. You guys were fantastically quick to donate after my original post. I was very impressed with your generosity. You rock. Thanks!

Photo Crazy
Ha ha. Now that I know how to do it, you can't stop me!

These tulips are so tall they come up past my knees. They're gorgeous.


And these are my azaleas. :)


And this is the cutest baby I've ever seen (ok, more so when she's smiling and the flash from the camera isn't dilating her pupils) and I have to remember that I can not put her in my pocket and take her home with me, even though I really, really want to. I'm not going to use her name here because I didn't ask her mommy if I can put her on the interwebthingy, but this is H's baby and I watch her two days a week and she doesn't look at all like her mommy but she giggles for me and I can't stop touching her cute little button nose and talking baby talk to her, which I find utterly disturbing and I hate when other people do it but for some reason.... I just. can't. stop. Because it makes her giggle, and that's the coolest thing in the world.

Spring Fever
So, while I haven't been blogging, I have been doing lots of fun outside stuff. Last weekend we went and had a Saturday night mini-golf/batting cages date. I swear we were the oldest people at the mini golf place, aside from families with small children. And apparently I'm a very competitive mini golf player. I was doing a little "I'm kicking your butt" dance at the beginning, but then midway I started losing with a big L. I got so frustrated that I accidentally hit my ball into the artifically-blue river that runs through the course, and then I didn't have a ball for the rest of the course. Doh.

We also went to a double-header at the ballpark, which was also "dollar dog days"- hot dogs for a buck. (yuck). And I've been doing some work out in the back yard.

And...for the very first pictures ever posted to Girl Meets World...I present... my back yard.....

Relay for Life
So, I'm doing a Relay for Life (for the American Cancer Society) with a group of my friends from school (our team name, appropriately, is the Freudian Slippers- thanks to the person who suggested it here). And now I need to raise money. Our team goal is $2500, but we only have a few weeks to raise the money. Please visit my Relay for Life fundraising page and contribute whatever you can. I hate asking people for money, so this part will be much harder than staying up all night walking around a track. Really, anything you can donate will be greatly appreciated.

** 4/11/06 update: Whoo! Our team leader just increased our team goal from $2500 to $5000! Yikes! Thanks to everyone who already donated. Keep it coming!

Monkey not working
aargh. I need (NEED) to be finishing my dissertation proposal. Yeah, I still don't even have my proposal done. Other people in my class have collected and analyzed their data and defended already. But not me. Nope. Not even finished with my proposal...because I am a lazy bum. Or, I have 4 jobs and a giant house that is always a mess and needs a lot of cleaning and I'm trying to eat healthier foods so I've been spending more time going to the grocery store and cooking and I spend a lot of time in the car driving to all of my ridiculous jobs and that's why I don't have my proposal finished. One of those things is correct. Or maybe a combination of the two. I don't know, but it's getting ridiculous at this point. Today I was supposed to work on it all day. It is now 4:45 and I've typed about 3 words. I spent all day cleaning because I felt like I couldn't possibly work on my dissertation when the house was such a disaster. "Once it is organized, I will be able to get right to work and be more efficient and focused and in the zone." Um...not so much. I cleaned, I organized. I stared at the computer screen for 20 minutes. Ugh. I am totally stuck. Not that what I'm doing is any more difficult than anything else I've already completed... I think I have more of a mental block than anything content-related. And it is making me stressed out and cranky and I don't like being stressed out and cranky. Bleh. I want this to be over and finished and written and defended and done and paid for and shoved in a box and filed on a bookshelf and... never to be something looming over my head constantly ever, ever again. Sigh.

Yum Yum Yum, Delicioso!
(someone please get Dora out of my head!)
So, today Todd and I went outside to do some work on my car, and our favorite neighbors were just leaving for a walk with their 2 kids and asked us to join them. After walking around the neighborhood, they took us over to another neighbor's house to introduce us. These other neighbors have 5 pet chickens that run around their yard. Our neighbor's kid, Andrew, just turned 2, and the newly-introduced neighbors took him to the chicken coop to collect eggs. Todd and I managed to come home with 2 just-laid eggs, which we will have for breakfast tomorrow. One egg was brown, and the other egg (from a different kind of chicken) has a slightly bluish-green tint, and the neighbors like to call them Easter eggs. Either way, I'm eating them for breakfast and I'm very excited. Our neighbors rock.

Happy Anniversary...
to me. Hee :) Two years ago today I met Todd for lunch at this little cafe, and tonight we had dinner there to celebrate our 2-year anniversary, and we sat at the exact same table in a little nook by the window, and we had striped bass and crab mornay (and a questionable dessert, but that was my fault, I ordered it).

hee. 2 years. :)

Cartoon Revisited
So, Stephanie McMillan, the artist of the cartoon I linked to last week, has been inspired by the interest the cartoon has generated, and has decided to auction off the original drawing on ebay and donate the money to women's health clinics in South Dakota. Three cheers for creative fundraising. :)

Backpack! Backpack!
So, for one of my 4 current part-time jobs, I supervise custody visits between a dad and his 2-year-old daughter. When I first started the job the kid would only watch Elmo, and I walked around with Elmo songs in my head for weeks. Months? I don't even remember now.

But now there is no more Elmo. Now there is Dora. Over and over and over and over and over. The same tape. Over and over, on the same day, back to back. And the next day, and basically every single time I go there, we watch Dora.

And for the life of me I can not get "Hay-Barn-Apple Tree" out of my head. Or "Backpack, backpack." And unfortunately, those are the only words to those songs. I swear. It's just "backpack, backpack" over and over. I'm going to go insane. I miss Elmo. At least he had more words.

Funny cartoon
The issue behind the cartoon, not at all funny. The cartoon, though...has been making me laugh all morning.

Click here.

A plague on both your houses
I have the plague. It is disgusting and not fun and I don't like being sick. I can't breathe and everything is congested and yesterday I swear my eyelids had a fever and were going to burst into flames. The fever seems to have subsided today, but the coughing and gunk and sneezing and everything else is still here. I'm taking my gatorade and going back to bed.

Updates
Ugh. Sorry no blogging lately. For some reason I just haven't really felt like talking much lately. I haven't been returning phone calls and I haven't been blogging. I just want to come home from work and take a bubble bath and watch a movie or read a book and go to bed. I've been working a lot lately and trying to get my dissertation proposal finished and I'm tired. Bleh. But anyway. If I had been blogging recently, maybe it would have been about one of these things:

Wednesday was the 1-year anniversary of being in our new house. Mm. House. Our house is nice. In the past year we have painted the living room, 1 bathroom, master bedroom, my dressing room and my office. The kitchen is next on my list, but I don't know if that will actually happen or not. It's a huge project and I don't know if I want to spend all my time between now and when I move to Rochester painting the kitchen and hallway by myself. I have the paint color picked out already, though. :)

In the last year we also planted a lot of stuff, edged out a vegetable garden, accidentally killed the wonderful raspberry bush when it got buried under heavy snow and all the branches broke off, replaced the funace on the second floor, installed central air conditioning on the second floor, replaced the dishwasher with a fancy schmancy new K1tchenAid one, and made the sunroom one of the nicest rooms in the house with lots of wicker furniture and plants galore. We like to eat breakfast in there.

Sometimes it seems like we've done so much here in the last year, and other times I feel like we got a good start and then punked out. There is so much more I want to do, but there never seems to be time to get to it. We've had lots of parties here, and I like having people over. I would like to have people over for dinner parties, but we haven't quite managed to get past the BBQ-and-beer types of events. Speaking of which, I think we need to have another Memorial Day party, because that was fun. :)

What else? We were planning on going to eastern Europe for 3 weeks with a bunch of T's friends, and they all bailed, so now we're trying to figure out if we're still going to go there on our own, or go somewhere else. I'm leaning towards Greece or France. I could easily spend a couple of weeks in either of those places. :)

We've been going out to see a lot of live music lately, which is fun. We saw the P0gues at a sold-out show in Atlantic City last weekend, and last night we saw my friend Antje open for Ellis Paul. Ellis has taken her under his wing, so to speak, and got his manager to manage her, and he is producing her next album. It's finally finished and should be available in April. I am so excited for her, because she is so proud of this record and I really think this was the break she's been looking for and working so hard towards for the last 10 years or so. She's fantastic and I can't wait to hear her new album. She played some of her new songs last night and they were great.

Last thing. I'm doing an American Cancer Society Relay for Life in May and I'm going to have to, um, fundraise. I'm terrible at fund-raising because I don't like asking people for money. I used to hate selling g1rl scout cookies for the same reason. But, I'm going to do it, so stay tuned. The more pressing issue is that we need a team name so we can register. What would YOU name a team of psychology grad students doing a Relay for Life? So far the only suggestion is "nut clusters." Can anyone do better than that? Please? :)

Date Night
Tonight after work I met Todd at the movie theater to see Mrs. Henderson Presents. On the phone on the way over we figure out that between the two of us we have enough cash to get in. Our local indie theater only takes cash, but we're both members so we get in cheap. But then we hit the concession stand. Which is also cheap, compared to the giant multiplex concession stands. Now, *I* am used to paying for things (like my lunch) with whatever spare change I have in my wallet (which is usually very little). There were many days when I was an extern at the hospital that I paid for my lunch (read: a cup of soup) with quarters and dimes. I haven't done that for a long time, mostly because I work odd hours now and I pack my own food every day.

Me: How much is a small popcorn?
Girl: $2.25
Me: Great! I can afford that. I'll take one. And how much is a bottle of water?
Girl: $1.50.
Todd: Do you have enough for that?
Me: I think I have enough for two, so we can each have one!
Me to girl: I'll take 2 bottles of water.

The girl rings it up.

Girl: $5.25
Me: (counting out 4 dollar bills, 4 quarters, and as I reach in for one last quarter, I discover my last quarter is really a dime. I have five dollars and ten cents. I hear Todd fumbling with change in his pocket. He pulls out 8 cents. He looks at me and says

Todd: are you serious? Are we short 7 cents?
Me: Um... yup. :)
Girl: It's ok. Have a good time.
Me: See? It's fine.
Todd: But we come here all the time! We're members!
Me: It's fine. She said it's fine.
Girl: Enjoy the show. Have a good time.

Heh. See... for me, that was completely normal. Todd, however, hasn't been Student-Poor in a long, long time. I thought he was completely mortified, but he laughed once we got into the actual theater.

Note to self: Keep extra couple of dollars in car for popcorn emergencies.

Yikes!
I am moving to Rochester, NY! I got the notice this morning that I matched at the Univers1ty of Rochester for my internship. So, this means that I will have to wrap up all of my jobs by the middle of June, find an apartment in NY, fit in this 3-week trip to Prague/Vienna/Budapest with Todd and his friends, and then move all my stuff up to NY in time to start on July 31. I do not understand how that is all going to fit, but I will make it happen. I'm not giving up a 3-week trip to Europe. Whoo!

Bittersweet
So, I found out this morning that I did match for an internship for next year. Anyone who has talked to me in the last 6 months knows what a horrible, horrible process that was. 30+ page application, a zillion essays, transcripts, additional supplemental materials, audiotaped sessions with my clients, letters of recommendation, certified mail that never got scanned so I thought it hadn't been delivered on time, etc, etc, etc. It was horrible. And then, hundreds of dollars spent on a new suit, airline tickeets for interviews, other travel expenses, etc. The last few months my fingernails have been chewed down to the skin. Mm. Yummy coping strategy for stress. Whoo!

Anyway, so, I won't find out until Monday morning where I'm going. The choices, though...not wonderful. There were 2 sites I really liked a lot (good), but would require moving out of the state for a year (bad). The other two sites were more local (good) but I didn't really like them very much (bad). So... either way, I am going to be sad about one aspect or the other.

But the worst part about this whole thing is that a lot of really fantastic, intelligent, motivated, skilled women that I am lucky to consider friends did not match. So, it is a little difficult to be excited about matching when I know they did not, and the system seems so unfair because I know their qualifications and their personalities and those sites are stupid, stupid fools for not choosing them. I hope that they all get good sites through the clearinghouse on Monday, and then we will all be able to celebrate the way we all should have been today.

"It was memorable"
So, I spent the long weekend in New Hampshire with the girlfriends, and had a fantastic time...despite the fact that the power was out for most of the weekend. I guess when you live in New Hampshire and 75,000 people lose power, you can't really expect a quick response from the repair people. Anyway, the place we were staying had a generator which powered some rooms of the house, and we managed to navigate the bathrooms with a flashlight. Which is no small accomplishment when you have 6 women and 1 bathroom. It was fun, though. We went to Maine, did some shopping, braved the (really freaking cold) coldness that is New Hampshire, walked on the frozen beach, ate some lobster, and mostly just hung out being really out of control and loud and funny and fabulous.

I think all the loud and funny and fabulous is what led to our hostess saying "it's been memorable" after we got the last suitcase and sled and bag of food loaded into the car. Memorable. Not exactly what we were going for, but accurate nonetheless.

If (they) had a million dollars
I'm working 2 days a week in a public school in the city, which... while it provides me with many, many stories, I'm not exactly sure that anyone else would be interested. :)

Take for example, the fact that the school has no kitchen. All of the food come prepackaged, and on the days when lunch is supposed to be hot, somehow they manage to nuke everything to make it warmish. One day, the entire lunch consisted of a package of meat sticks (I have NO idea what they were. They looked like Slim Jim's from the corner convenience store), a fruit roll-up, and a package of peanut butter crackers. This is what they get for lunch. Also, almost the entire school is on the free-lunch program, so this is what everyone eats.

Half of the rooms are freezing cold in the winter. The other half have the windows open because it's 120 degrees in their room. Half of the kids wear their coats all day because it's so cold. The other half freeze because their teachers won't let them keep their coats at their desk.

When a teacher is absent, more times than not the kids from their class get divided up and sent to other classrooms for the day. Not necessarily of their own grade, either. I was in a third grade classroom and 2 6th graders came to spend the day there because they had no teacher. They sat in the corner and drew pictures all day.

There are no art or music classes. There is occasionally gym class, but only if the kids are good. If the kids act up, teachers remove gym as their punishment.

The first week I was at the school, I got pegged in the cafeteria with a ketchupy cheeseburger. The kid apologized. Not for throwing the cheeseburger, but for hitting me when he meant to hit someone else. He had even removed the top bun before throwing it, to increase the likelihood of plastering his target with ketchup. I learned that day that it is acceptable for me to wear jeans to work.

So, two days a week I go to this school and try to teach the kids social skills. Because that's really what they want and need, right? To sit and listen while the whitest person ever to walk the halls of their school tries to teach them to not beat the crap out of each other. It's going well, as you can imagine. Sigh. Actually... some days are pretty interesting. One of the other grad students on this grant project has made arrangements to take all of the sixth grade students and all of the kindergarten students to an arboretum in their neighborhood. The plan is to teach them to use their senses. To identify items by touch. To close their eyes and listen. To find objects in their surroundings. We have the trips planned for the week just before Earth Day. Hopefully it will be open their eyes and help them learn to see their world differently, and also introduce them to the green spaces in their neighborhood. Hopefully some of them will want to go back, and bring their families.

That is the kind of thing that make it worth it to go to that school every week, flying ketchup and all. Unfortunately, the grant we have doesn't allow us to spend a ton of money on special projects or trips. Most days, we try to get by with free activities, small projects with items we can make or bring from home, etc. These kids deserve better schools than this. I think it's great that the school district is investing money in grant projects to teach them social skills. But honestly, I wish they would have taken all that money and maybe, I don't know... upgraded their heating system, installed an elevator (not one in the entire 4-story school), converted an empty classroom into a working kitchen, or hired an art teacher. Because most days, I'm quite certain that a warm building and healthy food would make a much bigger impact than a bunch of suburban grad students could ever do with a million dollars.

Story of the Day
"10 Steps to a Successful Career
Step #1. Follow your heart as long as the money holds out.
After that, sell your soul to the highest bidder.
It won't be forever.
They can only keep you so long after you die before you start to stink."
Brian Andreas

Would YOU walk 60 miles in one weekend?
Helza no, but Shannon will. Did. Will again this year. Help her reach her fundraising goals, so her adorable 3-year-old daughter (and yours) won't have to worry about walking to raise money for the cure.

Go here. or here.

D'oh
You know that saying "it's one of those days." I am definitely having "one of those days." Oof. First of all, I couldn't sleep last night. For 3 nights in a row I haven't been able to fall asleep. I toss and turn and mess up all the covers and I look at the clock and I can't fall asleep. I finally fall asleep, and shortly after I wake up in a fit of coughs that won't go away. (T: "you ok? (Snore....)") I debate moving to the guest room so I don't keep him awake all night, but I must have eventually fallen asleep again. I know this because I woke up coughing again. Fell asleep again, then had to pee. Let me tell you, no one goes anywhere quietly in an old house. Squeek, squeek, squeek, pee, squeek, squeek, squeek, back in bed. I *finally* get to sleep, and of course, the alarm goes off.

I actually get out of bed the first time, and hop in the shower. Everything is going fine, I'm on schedule to get to work on time... but then the hair.

I just got my hair cut on Friday. My hair looked great. On Friday. Saturday and Sunday, eh. I tried to make it look the same. I failed, but I was ok with what I could produce. This morning? Not so much. My new haircut is supposed to have all these cute layers framing my face. For some reason, this morning the layers decided they each wanted to go a different direction. While I am highly supportive of people doing their own thing, marching to their own drum, etc... not the hair. Come on, hair! Do what you're supposed to do! Or, barring that, just DO THE SAME THING! It was bad. I put it in a clip and ran out the door, now 10 minutes late to work. Already I was thinking that this day was not going well.

How right I was! How right I was. I got to work, taught my one class in the morning. Tried to go to my other class, but the teacher forgot I was coming, or wasn't prepared, or something, so that was a no-go. And then something else happened and the 2 other things I do in the afternoon also got canceled. Ok, that's not so bad. I get to go home early. Whoo! So I go home, have some lunch, and basically waste the afternoon waiting for a meeting I'm supposed to have with my dissertation chair in the afternoon. When it's time, I drive back to school (which is very close to the job I left early). I get all the way back there, and I'm climbing the steps to his office, when it dawns on me that this is 1/31. I thought my appointment was February something. But I wanted to schedule myself for today. I had to come today, because next Tuesday won't work. I had everything planned out. It has to be today. I get to his office... OF COURSE it's not today. But I meant to sign up for today! I signed up for next Tuesday. Next Tuesday, when I have to be at two different jobs in two different counties, and can't possibly fit in a meeting in between. Except I have to, because there are no other options.

Grr.

When the hair was going all willy-nilly this morning... I should have just gone back to bed. Damn you, hair! GRRRRR.

Early birthday goodness
So earlier tonight I was sad that I wasn't going to get to see any of my friends for my birthday, because most of them live far away and my birthday is in the middle of the week. But then we went to Trivia Night and a bunch of my friends from school showed up and surprised me and... it was just nice and fun and now I'm not sad about not seeing anyone for my birthday anymore. :) Also, we came in second place again (whoo!), and we totally beat Synergy by 10 points, and the waitress brought me a giant plate of chocolatey goodness with a candle in it, and everyone sang happy birthday, and yay! Fun! I love surprises. :) Just not when I know there IS a surprise, but don't know what the surprise is... that drives me insane. But actual honest-to-goodness surprises are really fun.

Yay! Thanks for coming out tonight. :)
Also, I'm so excited that we won again tonight that I'm not even going to beg Todd to let me open my presents early, or to stay up until midnight to make a legitimate request. Which I'm sure makes him extremely happy. :)

Wishes
Everybody knows that if you tell someone your wish, it won't come true, right? Well, that's what we've all been told, but I don't know if it's true or not. I always say (when I'm trying to get a wish out of someone else), that if they TELL me, I can help it come true, but I can't do anything about it if it stays a secret. But really, I'm just nosy.

Anyway, at the risk of ruining the wishes and not having them come true, I think I'd rather put them out there and ask everyone to send their very best cyber mojo so that they can come true....
1) my mom needs a new job. Like, right now. A good one, that makes her happy, and pays her enough and has good benefits. With nice people who aren't mean to her and don't make her feel bad about herself and question her strengths.
2) I need an internship. A good one, that matches my interests and won't make me miserable for a year and will enhance my skills and give me new ideas and motivation and confidence in my ability to practice what I've been learning for the last 5 years. Preferably one of the APA sites that I interviewed at this month, so that I won't have wasted a zillion dollars and all the time I've spent on the application process and interviews and a suit.

Ok. That's all. I'll leave the rest to the wish fairy, because I know she's listening (at least at 11:11 and 12:34), and I don't want to press my luck by asking for too much. I don't think the above 2 wishes are too much. Mostly, though, I just want a new job for my mom, because she is very sad right now, and that makes me upset.

Ack! Hack!
I'm sick. Again. I blame all the little rugrats that I spend my time with all week now. Ugh. I got sick the day after I started working in the school back in the fall. Literally. I was perfectly healthy for months and months, because I was working primarily from home. One day in the school. Sick. And it's been coming in waves ever since. Got a little better, got a little worse. Had something weird in my throat for awhile. Got better. Had something different in my throat over Christmas vacation. Got better. And now I'm sick again. Brittany was sick last weekend when we were watching her, too, so that could be it.

But.... ugh! I hate being sick. My ears are itchy on the inside where you can't reach it, and I'm constantly coughing and my nose is all sore and red from blowing it every 2 seconds and I feel tired and run down all the time.

And really, I just can't afford to be sick. I have 4 part-time jobs, which add up to full-time hours, but I have no sick days, and I don't get paid if I don't go to work, and people get mad/disappointed/whatever.

The worst part, though... is really the part where my ears are itchy on the inside and I can't reach it. That part is driving me insane.

Damn you, Mart!n Bash!r
So, last night was Trivia Night. No one else could make it, so it was just me and Todd. Every week we leave dejected and consider going to trivia at the dive bar up the street instead of continuing to get our butts handed to us at the good restaurant bar with the really hard trivia. But the thing is... we come SO CLOSE every week that I feel the need to keep trying. There are 2 teams that we just can't quite overtake each week. The same teams, every week. Ok, fine, so we go last night. At the end of round 1, we're tied for first place with Synergy, who usually wins every week. Whoo! At the end of Round 2, we're *beating* Synergy by one point, and beating the other good team by 3 points.

And then there was Round 3, where everything fell apart. We only got 2 points for the whole round. I have to say, however, that one of the questions we had right, and the announcer had the wrong answer. The question was, what does the Sanskrit word "yoga" mean? I said union, he said breath. I looked it up when we got home. It's union. That one question would have changed the whole game. But there was another problem.

Another question in this round was asking who conducted the famous interview with Prncess D!ana in 1995? I immediately said Martin Bash!r. I even wrote down "Martin." But then I started thinking about it too much, and I decided that Martin Bash!r was the guy who did the famous tv interview with Michael Jckson. We discussed it, and decided that Martin sounded right, and maybe the guy who interviewed Diana had the LAST name of Martin. We couldn't decide. We handed in the paper with just "Martin." No last name, in case that WAS his last name.

And, of course, the correct answer was Martin Bash!r. He interviewed Princess D!ana AND Michael Jckson.

And that is how I ended up spending the rest of the night with THE RAGE, because in the end, we ended up coming in second place, ONE STINKING POINT behind Synergy (Damn you, Synergy). Had I written the last name, or had the announcer had the correct answer on "yoga," we would have come in first place. And really, the whole point of going to trivia is just to beat Synergy.

The only thing that helps (just a little) is the fact that we technically (in my mind) beat Synergy, and they had a table full of 7 people, and we were able to beat them with just the two of us. Now if only we could round up some more people on Tuesday nights, we'd be golden.

Damn you, Martin Bash!r! Damn you, Synergy!

To Do List
So, my old car died last summer. Very abruptly. I had to get a new one. I couldn't really afford a new car, but I had no choice. So, I got a new car. After the initial shock of having to make car payments again (and much higher car payments at that), I finally figured out how to do it. I took on another job that would pretty much pay for my car payment and my insurance and not much else over the course of a month. Ok, but at least the car is taken care of.

Ah! But then I received my car insurance payment. Hey, guess who didn't realize that her car insurance payments would go up when she got a new car? Right. Not only did it go up, it was high to begin with and it went up over $60 a month. When I'm already putting out more money than I bring in each month. So, I write on my white board in my office: Find new car insurance.

That was July. It is now January.

I go to Er!e Insurance online, find the closest agent, and drop in on Friday. I hand him my old policy, tell him I want something cheaper, ask him what he can do for me. He plugs in all the numbers, he scratches his head, he says "I must have missed something," he looks again, he decides he hasn't missed anything. Apparently, my old insurance was charging me $1000 a year more than what this guy could give me. For the *exact* *same* *thing*. 1000 freaking dollars. Which is a crpload of extra dollars when you are living off of money you've borrowed from your friends. And the government. But I don't consider them friends.

And of course, if you're keeping score, that was $500 I could have saved myself if I had followed up on "find new car insurance" back in July. Because it's been right there at the very top of my white board... for six months.

But hooray for Er!e insurance. They are my new best friends. I heart them.

Are we there yet?
I had plans this weekend to visit my aunt, uncle and cousins in New York. I see them once or twice a year, I had Christmas presents for them, and this was the first open weekend had I could get up there. So, I wanted to keep these plans, even after Todd's brother asked us if we could watch his daughter for the weekend while he's out of town.

Now, we also don't get to see Todd's niece all that often, though much more frequently than I see my cousins. So we decide to keep the plans, go to NY, and bring Todd's niece with us.

We take her to the bookstore Friday night to make sure she's armed with plenty of things to do in the car. Chapter books and a quiz book so she can ask us questions, or just fill in the answers with a pen on her own. Gas in the car, and every single thing the kid brought with her to our house, just so we don't miss anything. Directions. Music. We're ready to go. Halfway there...

B: I'm hungry!
Me: Uh.... I didn't bring any snacks....
B: You didn't bring snacks?!? Why not?
Me: Um, because I don't have kids, and I didn't think about it.
B: You didn't even bring Oreos? Or Doritos?
Me: Um, no. (And even if I had remembered snacks, it would not have been Oreos and Doritos. It would have been a granola bar and some crackers. But I forgot, so it doesn't matter.)
B: Ok. Fine.

5 minutes later:
B: I'm hungry. Are we almost there?
Me: We should be there in about 30 minutes.
B: (sigh). Ok.

2 minutes later:
B: Are we close?
Me: You just asked me that. I told you 30 minutes. Look at the clock. It has only been 2 minutes.
B: Ok.
Me: Ok. I'll tell you when we're close.
B: Ok. But I'm hungry.

(Aargh! She's always hungry. It was cute the first couple of times. Especially because she's a tiny little elvish stick figure of a kid. How can she always be hungry?? But now it's driving me insane. If she would eat even half of the food you give her at meals, she wouldn't be hungry 5 minutes later. But she doesn't. She eats 3 bites, says she's done, and then 5 minutes later "I'm Huuuuunggggggry." AARGH!)

Lesson:
I am so not ready to have children right now. Although, maybe if I have them under my power from day 1, I can teach them to eat their food (and eat good food) and not put their shoes on other people's furniture and to say "Thank you" without being prompted every single time, and not to leave popcorn crumbs in the cracks of my new car and to pick up their slimy tissues that litter the back seat of my car.

Yeah.

Or maybe I should start with a goldfish and see how that goes.

Cat Lover
I've had cats since I was young, she said & I still love them. See, I said, you don't have to be smart to be happy.
- Brian Andreas

So, I was always a cat person. Always. Defended my cat person-ness with a passion. And then...somewhere over the last couple of years, I started to become a dog person. I don't know how it happened. Part of it was Bella, without a doubt. But there was a definite shift in my affinity for dogs. I still liked the cats, but I did not despise the dogs anymore. Even kind of liked them. Some of them.

But last night, Todd's brother dropped off his cat for us to watch for 9 days while they're out of town. Great! A cat! In our house. Don't tell the allergic people. (I'm convinced they'll never know.) It was great. I coaxed him out of hiding long enough to make sure he knew where the litter box was. And then we went to bed.

6am. "Mow. Mo. Mo. MOWWWWWWW" "Mow. Mow. Mow. Mow. Mow." I get out of bed, walk out into the hall, see two glowing eyes at the bottom of the steps. He runs upstairs, starts rubbing against my hand, purring. It looks like he used the litter box in the night. Fantastic. I go downstairs to make sure he has food and water. He does. I go back to bed. He jumps on the bed, gets gently pushed back onto the floor. 4 times. Less gently when he jumps on Todd's side of the bed. "Mow! Mow!" "Mow mow mow mow mow." "Be quiet, Spooky. It's not time to get up yet."

This goes on for an hour, until Todd's alarm goes off. I stay in bed. I've been travelling a lot in the last 2 weeks, and working every day and almost every evening at my different jobs. I'm tired. I'm sleeping in. Todd goes to work.

I haven't seen or heard the cat since. I can't find him anywhere. Granted, it's a big house with lots of places to hide, and he's a black cat. But still. I refuse to be worried about the thing that kept me awake for an hour when it was still dark out and I should have been asleep. Now he's just trying to mess with my head.

A dog would never do that.

Auld Lang Syne
Ok, so we're home from vacation. Ah, vacation. You were so nice. :) We finished up the second half of the week by driving to Savannah by way of Hilton Head, paradise of golfers everywhere. Note to self: when driving through a town "just to check it out," have a game plan. We picked up some yummy cherry butter (like apple butter, not butter butter) from a stand on the side of the road, but other than that, it was a lot of aimless driving around and irritation that we weren't in Savannah yet. Once we did get to Savannah, we found tons of stuff to do. Our hotel was right on the river, at the end of the "River Walk." Basically, it's an old cobblestone street lined with 3-story brick buildings that used to be the cotton exchange, and now it's full of shops and restaurants. Pretty good restaurants, too. I maintain that the food was better in Charleston, but the difference was between Very Good (Savannah) and Excellent (Charleston). Yum. Lots of fresh seafood, crab everything, all the fried southern food you could hope for (which I tried to avoid in favor of the seafood), pecans, yum. It was great. Definitely check out these cities sometime.

While in Savannah we also trekked around the historic district quite a bit. We toured the Juliette Gordon Low birthplace, which satisfied my inner Girl Scout's vacation plans, as well as the Mercer Williams House and Bonaventure Cemetary(anyone see Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil?)

For New Years Eve, we had a really nice dinner with a table overlooking the river, and then strolled around the city market with all the drunken crazy folks before heading back to our hotel. We were on the landing outside our hotel, on the river, at midnight. I wasn't sure how we would know when it was exactly midnight, as there were no televisions, no D1ck Clark, no Auld Lang Syne, etc. But just before midnight, one of the river boats passing by turned on a loudspeaker and counted down the last few seconds of 2005, which ended with an eruption of fireworks over the river, and the honking (is that the right word?) of the river boats. It was quite different from any other New Years I've ever experienced. We came home the next day, back to the cold, dreary weather, and the piles of presents we abandoned under the tree when we left for vacation.

All in all, though, it was a great holiday. We got to see both of our families, cooked our first big holiday meal in the new house, got some really awesome gifts (whoo Kitchen Aid immersion blender whoo!), and took our first real (read: on a plane, longer than 3 days) vacation to two really cool cities. Yay. Definitely a good holiday. The only thing that could have made it better was being able to see the friends more, but soon there will be a long weekend in NH, right? :)