Erm...Hello?

Somebody give me a minute so I can wipe the dust off this place, and make it look like it still functions.

It does still function. I just do a damn bad job of making it actually function like it should.

Anyway.

Hi.

This is either a revival or a resuscitation or a bit of both. But we'll give it a go again, because I kind of don't know how to quit or give up. It's great.

Right now I'm sitting in a coffee shop, wandering through the Manuscript Wishlist and sending out queries for both FROST and TWO FOR THE RENT. Fingers crossed on that front. I've currently just run out of coffee, I'm craving a pastry, at some point I need to get bread, and later on today I'll go to work because second shift. Second shift is a bit brutal, at times, and this might be one of those days when I don't get home until 3:30 in the morning. Happy Weekend!

So. Let's try again. Because everybody needs a revival now and then, and maybe I'll put some CCR on. Or I'll just stick with country music.

#smallcourage

Hello!

I swear I haven't fallen off the face of the earth. Seriously.

But what I have started doing is #100HappyDays over on Instagram. (I can be found here, and really, let's not talk about how unimaginative I am about creating screen names, though there is something to be said for being able to found across multiple platforms with relative ease.)

One of my favorite hashtags on Instagram is #smallcourage. And it's something I figured out last summer, after having surgery.

Being told you have to be cracked open like a walnut and patched up like a popped tire is terrifying no matter what age, but it's a special kind of horror when you're only twenty-three and feel like either the road will go ever on or you won't see another step of it. Signing all the papers and giving the doctors free reign to do what they need to is big courage. It's bravery on a whole new level (I'll write you a dissertation on the subject if you disagree with me, trust me, I can).

Small courage is different. It's the idea that, despite how much it hurts or how much you don't think it's going to be okay, you get out of bed each new day. It's how you say today will be different. It's how your sternum feels like it's healing together again and you have a few odd beats more in one day than you usually do, and yet you keep going. Small courage is the courage it takes to just keep on keeping on, day after day, even when it seems like the last thing you absolutely want to do. It's sending out one more query letter after five rejections. It's finding a way to go to NYC for a weekend even after your boss tells you no, you don't have any time off to use to take a Friday.

It's stepping onto an indoor soccer field 2.5 years after your last college intramural game, little over a year out of major traumatic surgery, and trying to find your footing again. It's knowing that it might not go like you want it to go, but damn it, you're going to try anyway.

Big courage decisions come every so often. Small courage comes on a daily basis, and it reminds us all that we are very brave, very courageous people deep inside. And that is something none of us should ever forget.

Have a lovely Tuesday.

Little Steps

This isn't what you think it is. Trust me.

This past weekend was, for many colleges and universities, graduation. Which, aside from the fact that it made me realize I've been a year since my own trip across the proverbial stage to get my BA, is a time for new graduates to just bask in their potential. And there's a lot of potential in almost all of those pictures currently flooding my Facebook feed of caps, gowns, and shiny new diplomas.

I'd like to know when I got quite as cynical as I have because my response - and congratulatory status update - included mention of getting slapped in the face by reality.

Because it is coming. Whether you, as a new graduate, want to believe it or not, it is coming.

Unless you're one of the few that have been hired back by the place you did your unpaid internship at, it's a tough as shit job market out there. I have a degree in chemistry, and it took me roughly a year and a half to get a job. My friend, who's a teacher at an all girls Catholic high school in Rochester, took about year after her masters degree to find a position. My other friend is currently still jobless, and she's been out two years.

Nobody is going to hand you a job when you hand them a resume with your credentials on it. You have to apply. You have to get rejected. You quite possibly have to go all the way to Chicago, IL, take two civil service exams, and then come all the way back home to realize, yeah, that might not happen either though you're more than qualified.

It sucks, it really does. It feels like a never-ending uphill battle. In some cases, it really is. But you have to keep trying. Even getting a first interview is a big step. But it's also a little step. And the important thing to remember is that what you might end up doing is not something you would have dreamed you'd do in the first place.

Case in point: I never thought I would work with hot mix asphalt cement for the same employer my father has worked at for thirty years. (Does this mean my father was the one to get me my current job? No. He suggested I put in an application, and he sent it in for me, but the rest of it was my doing. We also do very different things for the same company.)

But it's a job. I enjoy going to work every afternoon (hooray for second shift! Seriously, I love it.) and I find it interesting. Did I also swear to myself as an undergrad that I wouldn't ever work in a lab? Yeah, I did. I also swore I'd never willingly look through scientific literature articles and materials post-graduation, and hey, I do that on a regular basis, too. With excitement.

Times change. Situations change. And you, yourself, will need to be a little flexible at first. It's not going to be perfect, but it's going to be something. You just have to keep trying, and take it one little step at a time.

Striking Out (In a Good Way)

[Hi. I'm going to be utterly shameless and pretend that the past however many months of inactivity haven't happened. I hope you'll indulge me. If you won't, well, there's always bribery by baked goods, so maybe that'll work.]

I'd like to start off by saying, in an answer to the last post on my lovely blog, I didn't make it into Pitch Wars. I did, however, make it into Pitch Madness, and had both some success and some failure there. Overall I was pleased.

Except for when I thought I might actually get a contract with an agent and then got the email that dashed that for the moment. But hey, you win some, you lose some, and you spend more time in life doing an abbreviated cha-cha than probably walking in a straight line.

I have no idea if that made any sense, but I've already put in an hour and a half of overtime this week, and it's only Tuesday.

Good news! I got a job in my degree field (chemistry) and moved out of my parents' house. This is the start of my second full week in my little apartment and, coincidentally, the beginning of the second full week of my new job.

I am a performance grade (PG) binder technician. This has to do with asphalt, and what I do is that I look at the binder, or the stuff that holds what crews later put on the road together. I run lab tests on it (I get to use a blowtorch on a regular basis, how cool is that?) and I ensure that product meets certain specifics. So, if we have a batch of something the guys at the tank farm have made up, I get to certify that it meets certain requirements and can actually be used.

It's pretty cool. It's fun, it's definitely different, and I do enough different tests to where my days are probably not going to devolve into the pattern of "same shit, different shift."

Also, said job pays more than minimum wage (not that there's anything wrong with minimum wage, but let's be honest, minimum wage isn't a living wage, not in today's world), and has a full benefits package. I have my own health insurance. I'm twenty-four years old, a recent college graduate, and I have a job that's got benefits and a 401(k).

With all that good stuff comes the other side of it - I pay my own rent, and my own utilities. I caved in today (because Mother Nature has seen fit to dump snow on CNY like it's still January) and turned up my heat (because I don't need pneumonia), and I'll also pay my gas bill, too. However, I don't have cable, with no real intentions of getting it, either, but I did go get a MyFi from AT&T, because the whole living without internet thing? Yeah, not a big fan of that. I lasted a week, and then realized that I would probably burn through all of my data and going over that wouldn't make my mother happy.

So this is really the first time I've been out and about in such a way on my own. Yes, there was that little apartment my ninth semester of college, but it wasn't really mine. I had to give it back. Granted, if I move out of here I have to basically do the same thing, but it feels different. And that's the important part.

Do I feel like an adult? Eh, sometimes. Usually more so in the morning when I put coffee in a to-go mug, fight rush hour traffic, and park my little Buick between the massive pickup trucks everyone else in my building seems to drive.

I'm quite happy where I'm at, and content to take it a day at a time.

Something to Be Thankful For

Last week was Thanksgiving. We had, as per usual, a boatload of people in the house. We also had a boatload of people staying in our hours for the week, too. My aunt and uncle from Maine, my two cousins and their dog from South Carolina, stayed at our bed and breakfast (what we jokingly call our house in the summer because it's like a permanently revolving door twenty-four hours a day with who is getting up for work, leaving for work, and coming home from work...but that's a different story for another time) and we had something like sixteen or seventeen people for dinner Thursday.

I had to work. It was an utter madhouse at the hotel: we did 685 for our buffet dinner, ran out of turkey, and had fun with each other so we didn't go absolutely batshit crazy. Well, we went batshit crazy anyway, but the highlight of having to work on a day when we were supposed to be with our families - which people continually thanked us for - was sitting down at the end after all the customers had left and the dishes had been taken back to the kitchen, and having our own sort of family dinner from the left overs. We were all tired and punchy and it was one of those things that I'll hang onto for a long time.

What I'll also hang onto is that a week ago Monday was my twenty-fourth birthday. With all that happened this year - and it's been a rough year - I honestly, at some points, didn't think I would see it. But I did. And to be able to celebrate it, and look forward to another year patched up and ready to take on the world is something that will make this birthday the most special that I will ever have. I will always remember this one. Not because of the food or the presents, but simply because I am still alive.

My family, the jokers they are, have hinted they're going to get me a cow tag - like you can buy at Tractor Supply - with the number 23 on it. I have to say I really like this idea, and I'm hoping to find it in my stocking on Christmas morning. And if anybody asks me about it, well, I have a story that's stranger than fiction. But they say the truth usually is.

Hope you all had a happy holiday, and oh, hey, it's December. When the hell did that happen?

Thankful Thursday

I knew, sort of, what a non-traditional family was. I'd  used them a lot in my writing, too: Ralurick spends his childhood with a single mother and his adolescence with his grandmother; Ella's raised by her grandmother; Topher's raised by everybody on his mother's side except his mother, and Matt seems to be the only one who has the seemingly requisite mother-father-siblings dynamic.

I have that, too. I have two parents who are still married, and a sister. But my nuclear family has grown a little bit. It grew six years ago with the birth of my niece. And it changed two years ago when, on the outset, everything went to hell.

We've always been fluid. Sunday dinners during the winter are one of my favorite unofficial traditions, and I can't remember when we started them. Whether they're at our house or my sister's is up for grabs throughout the day, and sometimes whoever isn't responsible for dinner itself brings dessert.

When I first came home from the hospital post-surgery, stairs weren't really something I could handle a lot. The result was that I took a lot of my meals upstairs, sitting in one of my mother's straight-backed chairs. When I gained a little more mobility - and less fear of falling without being able to catch myself - and my mother started going to work for the latter half of the day, I ate dinner with my sister and niece.

That has been, hands-down, one of the best things about my recovery. The ability to see those two smiling faces on a daily basis, to help with homework (we're not large fans of Common Core math because sometimes it feels like two women with four-year degrees don't have a clue what's going on and the kid is only in first grade), to read with her, and to sit on the back porch and look with new eyes on an old, trusted view.

For these two I am grateful and thankful beyond words.

The Windy City

To say it's been a while is an understatement. Rather than dump everything on everybody all at once, I'll go slow.

Back in May I submitted an application to the Illinois State Police to try and get in their forensic science trainee program. I figured it was a long shot - I wasn't sure which option that I would be qualified for - and it was the application from hell. My twitter feed can attest to that. But I sent it off to Illinois and hoped for the best.

Then I graduated from college with a BA in chemistry.

About a week, week and a half later (I think) I got mail from Illinois telling me that I had passed the education requirement and could come take my exams. It was like being accepted to college all over again, and I legit jumped up and down. Then figured out arrangements to get myself out to Chicago for a few days.

I took an AmTrak train for the first time.

One 11 hour train ride later I was in the Windy City for the first time, riding the L and trying not to get lost on my way to the hostel. My sense of direction is a little murky when I first get to a place, and I wound up taking a taxi from, well, the west side to somewhere a little more...safer. All the way to The Bean.

The Bean is really cool because it's this giant steel (I think) coffee bean-looking thing that, when you stand in front of it, reflects everything around you. It's really cool. It's a total head-screw when you go inside because you see yourself in fifteen or so different places.

I hadn't realized there was a time difference between Chicago and New York. Going back in time is not overly easy on the body, and I called it a night early. Mostly because I wanted to let everything just settle and sink before I had to take what was basically two civil service exams the next morning.

They went really, really well. The way that their tests work is that you get your score when you get done, but you don't exactly know your grade. So I walked out of there knowing how I had done. I took two exams because I'm qualified for two options. Then I had the rest of my time in Chicago to do whatever that I wanted before I got on the train that night. I took a water taxi out to Navy Pier, did the swing ride, and then walked the streets looking for a place to have Chicago deep dish.

Which is the best pizza I've ever had.

A couple weeks after I came home I got my grades in the mail. They were quite clear on the website that they only really offer interviews to those who make A's, which means you're extremely qualified.

I have an A on both exams. I'm extremely qualified and just waiting for them to call me to come back for an interview. It's a step. And now it's just a waiting game. Though I'll take any excuse to wander back to Chicago.

Anybody In There?

*tap tap*

*taptaptap*

Anybody out there? Or, should I say, anybody in there? I know it's been a few months. Life got kind of nutzo for a little while - I'll fill you in a little bit - but for now, I'm back. And here's hoping this twenty-something workaholic can remember to type a few non-fiction messages every once in a while.

Blind Leaping Faith

Trying to get a novel published is like taking one flying leap off the edge of a precipice without knowing where in the hell the bottom of the canyon is and whether someone will catch you or you'll crash and burn. You can see the end in sight - that nice display in B&N - but that's on the other side of the long dark tunnel, and there are many times when the light you see is actually an on-coming train in the form of a rejection.

Despite all of this happy happy stuff, which always feels more depressing for some reason, one just has to solider through and keep hoping for the best. There's contests along the way - enter your first 250 words, your first paragraph, your 35 word pitch (which is hard, by the way, to condense 95k worth of writing into one single sentence), and peruse twitter to see what's coming down the pipes next. Sometimes you get lucky. Sometimes you don't.

The point is that while it's not easy, nobody ever gets anywhere by giving up. So don't.

Don't give up.

Have faith that your writing is something someone, somewhere, is going to want to read, and subsequently love. Because, sometimes, at the end of the day, that's all you've got. Along with good friends to help you, too, and give you the boost you need.

Don't ask me where this post came from today, of all days, because I'm impressed I could finally make what's going through my head into something coherent that wasn't a new fiction chapter. Which reminds me that I need to get on that. Writing a series is kind of fun.

Happy Monday.

Hey Speed Racer

I have some exciting news. No, I didn't get a job or an internship that I've applied for (yet, though here's hoping) and I haven't managed to land an agent for Sage yet (though, here's hoping again), but I did manage to finish another novel.

Two for the Rent is a complete first draft at 94,876 words. I don't know which I'm prouder of, that I finished another novel or that I kept the sucker under 95K. It's a little bit of both now, and I'm still smiling, even though I finished it Saturday night. So, while I leave that to sort of cool off for a little while - until I can print it all out and get to it with red pen - I'm embarking on something I've toyed with but never really started.

A sequel.

Yes, there was always the intention to do a sequel to TftR, and, well, because I blame my fellow Sommies and the fact that Word Wars (pick a time, write for 10 minutes, and then share) are addicting, I started the sequel - Three for the City - on Sunday. And yes, because it seems to make life slightly easier, I have planned out some events for it, and it sits at nearly 7,000 words so far.

In other writing-related news, I sent out a query and first 10 pages to an open submission for New Adult. We'll see what happens there. Fingers crossed it's something good.

And I don't know whether to be perturbed or extra-proud of the fact that TftR was written in less than three months.

Yeah. I'll let you decide on that one. My sister has informed me, like normal, "It is what it is." And so it is.

What's even scarier is that it's been suggested that I start planning for, well...life. The different paths and different options I could explore, how I want to get there, and the steps in between. Which is scary as hell for someone who finds planning a bit of a struggle sometimes.

Happy Wednesday. Oh, and if you're interested, here's Two for the Rent and Three for the City.

Cabin Fever

I think I'm getting Cabin Fever. And no, I'm not talking about the wine - though it's local, and delicious - but the fact that I've been mostly cooped up in the house since I moved back home after finally completing college. I had some sub jobs for a while, but it's going on two weeks since I last had one of those.

A few of my friends have suggested volunteering. I'm currently one of the on-call volunteers for my local library, and I have about one set day a month that I go in and volunteer for about two hours. It's really fun - I've already had my training night - and the library is one of those places that I love to hang out at between summer work shifts. Makes sense, considering how much I love to read and write.

Having all this time on my hands has been good for my writing, though. I've gotten at least 20,000 words written since I've come home, so my latest novel has really taken off much quicker than anything else I've written lately. I'm still sending out query letters for Sage, but nothing to the We love this and want to represent you NOW effect has come back my way. Here's hopin'.

I'm not sure if I told you all, but I applied for an internship for this summer. I'm really hoping I get it, and if I do get it, that means I'll be moving to New York City. Another way that I've been using this plethora of free time has been to look at rentals and apartments in the City. I think my best bet might be for something on Staten Island, and just looking at places to live has gotten me excited. But I can't move forward with that until I know about the internship, and I'm not going to hear about that until....I don't really know when, actually. It's one of those rolling with the punches, things.

Excess time on my hands means I have the urge to wander, too, though I'm not sure where I'd end up. Then again, I'm rather okay with that idea.

And, because I can't say the phrase Cabin Fever without thinking of The Muppet's Treasure Island and starting to sing that song, I'll leave you with this.

Crank It

I'm not going to lie, I'm having a hell of a time getting through this paper. But what's helped - other than some extremely useful suggestions from my professor - is that I've been cycling through some staple songs on YouTube. I get the feeling they're going to be the ones getting me through the next few days and my upcoming two exams.

And the rest of this paper.

In no particular order, they are:

Better Dig Two - The Band Perry

Blow Me (One Last Kiss) - P!nk (Warning: Explicit Content)

 Beer Money - Kip Moore

Live While We're Young - One Direction

 

Miss Demeanors

This week was hellaciously long, but so totally worth it. The four performances - including the open dress rehearsal - were amazing. Everything turned out so well and it was an incredibly strong show.

On the last day of tech rehearsal, the night before the open dress, I had a friend and fellow dancer use my phone to take a video of our performance. And that's what I want to share with you all.

Can you find me? Hint: I'm mostly stage right, for those of you who know what that means.

And yes, my mother and my friends were suitably impressed at how well I can shake my rear end when called upon.

Miss Demeanors: Koshare 2012

Three months worth of work. Three performances. An event for the ages.

Directions

There are these certain moments of clarity in your life when, if the time is right, and the situation presents itself, you more or less find a direction in an otherwise dark, unknown place and pull yourself forward. And sometimes that direction matches up to the one you've had for a while, that dream you've been chasing. Other times, it takes you a little sideways.

But sideways can be good.

Recently, I've more or less figured out what I want to do post college graduation. It involves going back to school, and for someone who doesn't plan very well, I'm startling content with the path I'm aiming for.

Which happens to be a patisserie diploma from a culinary school with campuses all around the world. The one I'm aiming for happens to be in London, England.

Well, what about forensics?

The idea of being in a lab day after day - because with this kind of work and the degree I'll have, being a technician is probably what I'd be heading for - doesn't...it doesn't appeal to me. I know plenty of people who work in a cubicle all day, and that's not what I want for me. I want the chance to travel, to try new things, and make people happy. Generally, when people eat good food, they're relatively happy.

I love to bake. I'm good at it. And having taken food chemistry this past semester, I think that really cemented the sort of track I want to follow. Of course there will always be writing, as I'm looking at starting my third draft of Sage either today or tomorrow. My query letter needs to undergo some overhauling, and then I'll start sending out little packets of hope disguised as Publish me, please letters.

And in a few weeks, I'll be returning to college for my final semester. It's not going to be easy, I know this, but having crawled out of the academic basement between fall and spring of last year, I know I can do it. And that, sometimes, is more than half the battle.

So, this is where I'm at. It's been a fairly light summer for me - mostly working - and not a whole lot of blogging, and for that, I apologize. I'm still here, though. And that has to count for something.

Thankful Thursday

It's been a while since I've done either a Wordless Wednesday or a Thankful Thursday, and while I'm sitting here reading an article about working mom's that I picked off of Facebook - because while I really should start my two page position paper for my food chem course, I honestly can't bring myself to even open the damn document at the moment - I realized that I hadn't really talked about anything that happened last month (couple weeks ago, really) during Spring Break. I spent it in Virginia, doing community service in Pocahontas State Park (again) and I really enjoyed it. I did it not because it's going to look great on a resume, but because I enjoy doing things for other people and get a good feeling when somebody benefits from something I can do for them.

And, while I have no idea the true cause for this, I would happily weed somebody else's flower beds but the ones in front of my house. I honestly don't know why, but hey, I think that's the feeling a lot of people have.

The thankful part comes in because I'm thankful I had the opportunity to spend my break doing something like this - working in the middle of the woods with people who's lives are pretty much an episode of Parks and Recreation in the making - and it was fun to meet and have to live with different people.

300 Heart-Shaped Sugar Cookies

A girl can wish, can't she? Apparently the six dozen my dad made for the house and delivered yesterday while they took my car to get it an inspection wasn't enough for the ravenous horde - and I say that with all the love in my heart - I live with. Considering these are also the people who ate their way through 74 homemade meatballs in one meal, I'm really not surprised.

I've had a fairly long day, including a rather awkwardly placed nap (which I really needed), and I've done some thinking. Normally Valentine's Day is a day when I feel more keenly the fact that I don't have a significant other. That I haven't had a date in three, almost four years. A day when it hurts just a little bit more to see girls wandering around with bouquets of flowers or boxes of chocolate-covered strawberries. The idea that they have someone for them in that capacity. And let's be clear, it's not just hetero couples. For those who have someone in that specific capacity, it's hard not to hit this particular day and feel a little left out.

The trick is to say to yourself it's only another day. All day. It's just Tuesday, February 14. Any other day.

There was class this morning. Then roughly two hours spent working on math disguised as chemistry. Looking back on that, my professors are the greatest. Especially for this independent study. They didn't have to take the time - we more or less worked through "lunch" though there was a package of Oreos out in the hallway to snack on - to work through this particular problem, and then work on another to make sure I really understood it, but they did. For that, the faculty in the Chemistry department are incredible.

And playing with little GC machines that used ambient air as the mobile phase? So totally cool. And yes, I will explain that further on down the road at some point, but the gist of it is that it was really cool science and a giant leap away from the monstrosity we had been using last semester.

Bottom line is that when you treat a day you might have problems with like any other day of the year, it gets more bearable. You don't necessarily remember what you think you're missing out on, but you realize more of what you can do. That it's possible to be an independent young lady (in my case) who's had to shuffle and reshuffle priorities and is still, sometimes, shuffling the deck again to find the perfect combination. Only it's probably not going to be perfect; merely workable. And then you work it.

That was for the "Heart-Shaped Sugar Cookies" part of the title. Here's the really fun part for today.

This is the 300th post for the Wandering Sagittarius.

I have this ridiculous smile on my face. I don't know why, but I have this smile on my face that won't seem to go away with the fact that I'm typing the 300th post in a blog that's not-quite three years old yet. That I have somehow managed to find enough in the life of an undergrad to write about for 300 posts. It's a little mind-blowing.

And thank you - a big thank you - to all of my 43 followers. Thank you, essentially, for listening. Ups, downs, those odd movements sideways. Thank you for hearing it all.

On a final note, while I raise my coffee cup to you wonderful people, happy 300th. Here's to looking forward to many, many more.

Crooked Orbit

While I grab the gumption to go back to wrestling with analytical chemistry - which is kicking my ass, by the way, thought you should know - and waiting for my coffee brewed this morning twenty minutes after I decided I was sleeping for another hour to reheat, I figured I should say something fairly worthwhile.

For those waiting on Murphy and Me updates, I'm working on it, but my current schedule doesn't really allow for a lot of time to do anything other than homework. I broke it down the other day, more or less, into what I think I do and wound up with:

Time Usage (Outside of Class and Lab)
95% - Homework
5% - Sleeping, Eating, Soccer, Writing, Community Service, Teaching Placement, and Relaxing

Go figure. Anyway, whatever this might look like on the outside, it's been keeping me much more calm and everything is going great so far. That's on the academic front.

On the Weight Watcher's front, some days it feels like it's working a little more than others. Predictably, I have my good weeks and my bad weeks, but none so bad as to make more than one trip to Cold Stone during the week. That is positively a thing of the past. I'm not entirely sure how accurate my housemate's WW scale is, and as I'm making at trip home this weekend for a little bit, I'll check in on the one in our home bathroom to see if there's been some progress.

Oh, before I forget - and how could I, considering they were moving furniture at lovely times of the day yesterday while moving in (which is expected) - we have 3 new housemates. They're men. No idea who they are, but I have run into one of two of them as they were on their way from the bathroom to the stairs to the third floor, though I don't think any of us have actually met them. We think they play a sport, but as my one housemate didn't see them during hockey warm-ups last night, we're not actually sure which sport they play.

Wandering into the bathroom in the morning just got a hell of a lot more interesting.

The email from our house manager said they would only be staying 1-2 weeks. Knowing our Residential Education system, they're probably going to be here for the rest of the semester, which is just fine with all of us. It's actually feels good to have a full house, believe it or not.

Last but not least, I'm approaching 300 posts. I'm a little excited about that, having been around long enough to have 300 posts. So, because of that - and because I have a love of this particular song in general - I'll leave you with the song I have stuck in my head nine times out of ten.

A Cool Kid Friday Night

It's been a long week. Granted, I don't have class on Mondays, but I haven't heard from the teacher I'm supposed to be in with - I'm debating literally just showing up on Monday because I don't want to continue screwing around with this - and Wednesday's lab was spent making "Bouncing Putty" (Silly Putty, really), but in general, it's been a really long week. Wednesday was the day I stayed up the latest I've stayed up this entire semester - one in the morning - and then had a quick turn around to be in class at 8:45 the next morning with the entire afternoon spent at our Professor's house for food chem.

It's just been a long week.

The constant reminders coming through email and campus mail, along with the signs around campus for the Senior Event: Cap and Gown Measurements got a little difficult to handle. It was one of those days where it automatically gets filed under difficult because, you'd think with the technology we have today it would be feasible for them to get me off that email list. Hell, throw me onto the juniors list in the emails. I'm still a senior by the virtue of the amount of credits I have, but when you're not graduating, it hurts some deep part of you that doesn't quite have a handle on the fact that you're waiting a year.

I'm not entirely sure I'm making sense right now. I'm tired. It's 11:23, and I'm more than ready to crawl into bed. I hesitate to do that, though, because I told some of my friends I would DD for them. So I dropped them off a few houses down from one of the fraternity's and told them to call me when they were ready to be picked up. I didn't want to drink tonight, and I wanted them to be safe - someone was attacked earlier this week - and I figured I would just drive them rather than have them walking back this late.

Not that it's technically late. It's actually probably rather early.

Normal has become a sort of relative thing. My new normal is keeping track of my Weight Watcher's points, doing homework in nearly all of my free time so I can go to soccer, and then getting at least seven hours of sleep at night. So far, two and a half weeks into the semester, the plan is still going strong. The more you believe you can do something, the better you feel about actually accomplishing it.

And at the end of this week, while I'm really tired, I feel pretty damn good.

A Well-Adjusted Individual

Least, that's what I feel like. Or have felt like the past few weeks.

I guess what brought this on is when my friend and I were sitting in the pub this early afternoon having lunch and talking about the issues she's currently having with one of her housemates, and she looks at me and basically says she'd have been a crying hysterical ball of a mess that would have to be dragged out if she'd gone through the past month the way I have - meaning changing the graduation date, the various meetings with professors that I'll have again in the fall, meeting with my adviser, meeting with my adviser and my mother - and she also mentioned I've had to grow up quite quickly with this in a short period of time. That I've done really well adjusting and that's something she wouldn't have been able to do.

Which sort of really got to me because it's one thing to hear it from an "adult" but it's another thing to hear from one of your peers. It was also further compounded by one of my professors from last semester who, upon walking by the airport lounge on the second floor of the science building remarked, "You look a lot calmer than last semester." Which, yes, I suppose I do.

Mostly because I am calmer.

I've had to make fairly big decisions. I've had to give things up. Neither of those two have been particularly easy, and I guess I hadn't truly realized that. I've had my wake-up call - it's kicked me thoroughly in the ass, hard enough to bruise - and that's what we're going with. It's like a New Year's Resolution on steroids, one that's going to stick around a lot longer than just the first week.

That being said, this is week three of Weight Watchers and I'm still going strong. If I lose another pound at the end of this week, that makes five pounds total. I'm pretty proud of that. I'm also pretty proud of the fact that I do my homework very regularly, and I do it in a timely fashion so that my nights aren't quite so late and hectic, and there's a calmness to my life that hasn't been there in three years. I've probably said this before, but I really feel like I have the whole college thing down now.

Too bad it's taken the circumstances it has to get me to this stage. But that's how the story goes, doesn't it?

First Week in Rewind

It's really fantastic when your first week back at college only has three days in it, and lab is not included.

Things have been going fairly smoothly in my corner of the universe. 'Course, I say that, and now things could, according to Murphy's Laws, take a nosedive. But, well, such is life.

So far I've been doing a much better job about utilizing my time - including my weekends - and getting things done starting in the afternoon when I'm done with class and not waiting until the evening. To the point where the play due Wednesday for Modern European Theater was done this afternoon by five-thirty - having been started Friday afternoon - and my Food for Thought reflections on the reading for Bonding With Food was completed tonight and already emailed to my professor. Inorganic readings were done this morning - along with practice problems, though a visit to office hours is in order because I'm a little fuzzy on certain things - and the problems from last Thursday "due" in class tomorrow have been completed. Tomorrow I get to see how right I did them.

It's been a good start to the semester and I'm determined to keep it going. This not waiting to start homework really does make life a little simpler, in terms of getting things done, not feeling overwhelmed, and actually feeling like a decent student.

There is, however, a long way to go until May. But we'll keep chugging along.