Thursday, March 20, 2008
Random Musings
I am a bit bored at work, mainly because I apparently work too fast. I did have a HORRIBLE dream last night that I was volunteering at my old place of employment. Ugh. About half-way through the dream, I realized I didn’t have to volunteer. They weren’t paying me. And I could quit. Quitting again was rather nice. And CEO was of course being a snot, as always. I probably somewhat dreamed about it because I was trying to decide if I could go to Vegas with CW and her friends. Sadly, I don’t think I can. I want to, I really do. But I’m trying so hard to keep my debt not only under my original goal, but $15,000 under. Whee!! Which is so much more manageable. More like an expensive car-splurge than a “dear God, was it all worth it and can I pay it all back?” experience. Or basically, a little less than one year’s salary. Or considerably less, depending on what kind of job I get. [crosses fingers]. But anyways, spending a whole paycheck on a long weekend trip just seemed a bit exorbitant. I could probably swing it, but I’d spend the whole time feeling guilty and trying not to whine about money. And I didn’t want to hold them back from doing exciting things they could afford and I can’t.
I should be excited about Sunday, what with the whole Easter and being able to have sweets thing. But I didn’t miss sweets nearly as much this year. Of course, I did cheat, kind of. See, you’re supposed to be able to eat what you gave up on Sundays, which I didn’t. I did, however, take the number of Sundays and called them cheat days, which I then sprinkled in. But no desert on Valentine’s Day? That just seems sad. The other cheat days, I probably could have done without, but whatever. I think I may try and keep up this whole approach to sweets, though. I mean, if I haven’t missed having them more than a few times in several weeks, why not always eat like that? Though I did already by myself a Cadbury egg… SB is supposed to give me an Easter basket (I’m making him one, too), but we’ll see. I’d rather have at least back-up on that.
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Pro-Hill: Or why I refuse to jump on the Barack Bandwagon
Now, some might be wondering how I could possibly be uneasy about Barack. “He is such an amazing public speaker,” you say. “His message of change is SOOOoooo inspiring.” First of all, I don’t care. I don’t need a president to give me goose bumps, I need a president to give me real policies. Public speaking is a useful skill. I, as my mother so frequently reminds me (at least a couple of times a year), have been known to bring tears to my listeners’ eyes. Does that mean I should be president? I would think not. For one, that’s not even legal, due to my young age. Second, public speaking just means you can work a crowd. We have a president who can work a crowd and I don’t like him. He’s been awful.
As for the message of hope, here’s why it doesn’t work on me. The system is in place. It has been for 200 years. Yes, there are things about it that I’m not fond of. There are flaws. But a good portion of those flaws and things that annoy me (minus things this administration has done, which can’t be blamed on the system but only on their assedness) are flaws within the Congressional system. How is he going to change those? He’s in an entirely different system (executive versus legislative, for those of you who don’t remember social studies well). He can try, but I don’t think it’ll work, and really, his energy should be elsewhere.
Then there is the dearth of experience. Foreign experience is hugely important to me right now. The world hates us. I’d like to change that. Navigating the treacherous waters of foreign politics is hard and takes practice and knowledge. He listed living abroad as part of his foreign experience (I mean, seriously. Another reason I should be president. I too have lived abroad. Twice. TWICE.)
Add to all this that I genuinely like Hillary, and it’s not surprising I hope she overcomes the numerical odds and gets the nomination. She makes me feel safe. She’s experienced. She’s tough. She’s proven herself willing to take on challenges, willing to try hard even when failing is likely. And for the argument of how divisive she is and how Congress won’t work with her. She has managed to get a remarkable number of bills through for a junior senator. Conservatives in New York love her. And she has worked her butt off for her constituents. What more do we need? Change? Hah. Call me bitter, but you can’t change the system. We vote on a message of change and we will be disappointed.
Of course, according to the History Channel, the world is ending in 2012, so I guess it doesn’t hugely matter anyways.
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Where are the weirdos?
Not that I buy anything there anyways. Like I said, they are too rich for my blood. Plus nothing there fits me right. And I don’t like the cashiers.
Of course, that doesn’t seem unusual as I seem to be liking people less and less these days. Which I’d be okay with (after all, people in large clumps ARE insanely annoying, and teenage girls giggling loudly are a bit ear-piercing), except it all seems to be accompanied by a loss of my weirdness. Not that I’m not still strange, but I used to find the strangest things funny. I’d smirk walking around the streets, all by myself. Now… I just walk. And I’m not okay with this. I mean, you can say it’s just a part of growing older, but I don’t believe that. I think it’s just that the people who brought out that side of me are all spread out over the country. (You quirkies know who you are… J) I’m tired of talking about serious stuff, like politics and global warming and budgets and taxes. I want to be giddy, to say things and have people look at me oddly (I know that’s a strange thing to want, but that’s a part of my point). I want to hang out with a bunch of people and wind up making a hat out of a knife and a napkin again. Basically, I need to find the weird people here who can make me laugh and remind me about that part of myself. You’d think my program could do it, but no… we’re all shockingly normal, besides the whole being completely nerdy thing. (I mean, really. I would hate to come to our parties as an outsider. Three fourths of the conversation is literature or class related, and the other quarter leads back to classes or literature.) I wonder where they are all hiding….
Thursday, February 21, 2008
And yet happiness abounds
I am seriously getting SO excited about this weekend. It really is all that is keeping me awake right now (lack of sleep? Just a bit.). I mean, I’m stupidly tired, as in couldn’t really figure out how to run the mail machine and had to ask our office manager person like 6 questions about it. It’s not like I’ve not used it before. Okay, maybe only once and that was several months ago. But still. And I used the meter at my old office a ton before we moved. I knew how to work that thing. Up until you had to put in codes or zones or something. But not today.
Plus having whined to several people in my program about how it’s “making me doubt myself” and all that other crap like that, I feel better. It helps that my boss used a draft I threw together for her in a couple of hours nearly word for word. The other draft I rewrote seems to have been made messy, but a good portion of my work is still there. I don’t entirely agree with the changes, since it’s made it all confused and not crisp, but not my decision. And I was told that I’m too fast of a worker (as in they can’t keep up with giving me assignments to do, not in that my work is shoddy) and my former supervisor now coworker keeps telling me that not having me as an intern and working with the others makes her realize again how wonderful an intern I was. Not that I want to be a superb intern my whole life; I’d much rather be a superb upper level, well-paid and trusted employee, but it’s a start. A salve, if you will, after crap last job.
Which I actually kind of find myself missing. Not the job itself and DEFINITELY not some of the people. But CW and J and occasionally T. CW and J and I spent a lot of time chatting, particularly about politics and whatnot. I can hear J’s responses to some of the things going on now. They’d be pretty entertaining. T I worked with less, and working with her could be difficult, but she’s still a good egg.
ALSO EXCITING. My brother’s sister-in-law just had her first baby!!! Who is healthy and cute and a girl. I’m so happy for the couple. She was a big baby, too. Eight pounds 13 or so ounces, 21 inches.
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Help, I'm trapped in a malaise
See, here's the problem. I never expected grad school to be so hard. I knew it would be a lot of work, but I didn't know it would screw up your head. Maybe I should have. But every single professor wants you to write in a different style, with a different focus on a different type of criticism. Not only do you have to write in a different style, you have to excel at it nearly immediately. You don't get to find your own voice, because the base of what you're writing is constantly shifting.
And, even more fun, this is apparently effecting my work skills, since when I write stuff there, the whole style confusion comes through. It just is exhausting, mentally, physically, and emotionally. I'm tired of being told that I have the ideas, but the style or voice just isn't quite right. All the training I got in undergrad, all the writing skills I learned still just aren't up to snuff.
Plus SB seems to be having some sort of "I'm getting old" crisis, so he's all not helpful and creating other stresses. Add to that the fact that he hated grad school, so all my whining tends to get a very bitter response... And I just found out an old flirtation is engaged. I'm happy for him, but I really wish I hadn't found out now.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Renter's Rights? What renter's rights?
So yeah. My house has no heat. Which is just INSANE, especially since our landlord and his assistant have absolutely no interest in actually caring about us. The heat went out Tuesday afternoon, when the furnace nearly blew up. J, one housemate, immediately called our landlord, his assistant, and the furnace guy. She could get the furnace guy’s number because rather than our landlord actually DOING his job, he’s been trying to get us to organize switching furnaces. Which has led to T, another housemate, spending hours upon hours calling back and forth between the oil company to get them to drain the oil they stupidly put into the tank after we told them not to, our landlord to try and make sure this lack of heat didn’t happen, and the furnace guy when what our landlord said made no sense.
But yes. Furnace nearly blows up, heat gets shut off. Now by
Our landlord is in
The thing that really sucks is that they are going to completely get away with this shoddy treatment of us. We’re all tempted to bring in our parents and let them yell at him, mainly for the satisfaction of him getting yelled at by someone he may actually respect, but beyond that? The system is stacked against us. It’s ridiculous that we can be treated so shoddily with no real recourse. This guy keeps on taking advantage of us and there isn’t a huge amount we can do. Big stinking jerk.
Monday, January 14, 2008
Culture Shock
Class has officially started and so far, I'm very pleased with one of my classes. The other I'll have to see about. I like the professor, who is hideously cheesy and entertaining, but it seems like an immense amount of work. He has no qualms about assigning 5 pages of writing per class, and doubling the assignment for this week because he messed up in writing his syllabus and assigned homework for the class last week when we didn't actually get the syllabus until the class itself. So we have both for this week. I wish I could tell more about how he was going to be as a professor. Luckily the reading isn't incredibly page heavy, since it's a poetry class. The class I got shut out of I'm actually thinking might have been too much reading.
Thursday, January 03, 2008
I What?
I've been thinking a lot about people getting married/engaged. Not me. God knows, the last thing I need right now is a major change in my life. But the marriage of friends and people in general. Partly because I've decided that so many people around me are potentially setting themselves up for a failed marriage. Not that I really have a huge amount of right to say anything. But first of all. 18 year old? You don't know everything. You think you do. And I think that's a little sad and boring, and I hope you are wrong. I know many 18-year olds think they know everything (strangely, not a delusion I ever suffered from, aided probably by the fact that I haven't known what I want to do with my life since I was 9), which is in and of itself boring. Then one of my friends may or may not be expecting a proposal, which I disagree with for a number of reasons but which I won't go into here. Not because I can't nicely outline them, but because they didn't choose to put their life online, so I won't do that to them.
Also, I REALLY don't like people asking me when I'm going to get engaged. Yes, I know SB and I have been dating for forever, and most people do it because they care, but still. I am okay with the question from friends. Particularly good friends who are more asking about the status of my life. But adults with whom I have a fond, non-substantial relationship, not so much. I mean, what am I supposed to say? "Are you going to marry him?" If I say yes, then it's as if they are proposing for him and no one asks if someone loves someone else randomly and I just am not comfortable answering that personal of a question. I'm going to start asking married people if they are going to divorce their spouse.
I do have a theory about getting engaged. See, I think you can either get engaged before you enter the "we have issues and crap to work through" stage, or after you have worked through a good portion of said crap. And I don't want to be talked down to or pitied by those around me who are still in that obnoxious honeymoon stage of having dated for only a few months. Listen, we went through that, too, and you are going to have problems and you will have to deal with them, so stop acting like your relationship is better than mine because you don't know each other that well yet.