School things

First off, I really want a hamburger. All over the city, the smell of hamburgers has been following me until no other food sounds like it could compare.

I said it on facebook but it bears repeating. I really love being a student. I wish there was a way I could be paid to go to school forever without being a teacher.

My one class today was awesome. Not because of the subject matter, though I think that will be at least mildly interesting, but because I knew about 50% of my classmates, and I love *love* being in a class where people I know come and sit near me/by me and ask how my summer was and tell me about theirs and chat with me before class. It was great last year, even when I didn't know anyone, but it's fantastic this year, already.

Also I love that my job is actually proving to be kinda useful to my friends as they start their TA's (teaching assistantships) I was able to give lots of decent advice today just in the five minutes before class about Blackboard and experts and training classes, which was so nice. Huzzah.

Also either I or my supervisor have a stalker, so that's interesting... on the "Springfield Bear Confessions" page:  

4890- There is this lady I think is insanely cute who works in the library. Sometimes she teaches classes in a room on the second floor, sometimes I see her in Cheek, and her office is in the back corner of The second floor of the library. She is so hot, I think about her while out with my girlfriend, I dream about her in my dorm room, and I cannot get her lovely body out of my mind. I know a wonderfully cute and married woman like that would never give a guy like me the time of day, but now that I have her in my mind I cannot seem to get her out of it. I have fantasized about her all summer, even when I tried not to. How the hell do I get her out of my head. I dont wanna seem like some stalker but I cannot live a normal life when every thought is of her. I wrote a paper recently that mentioned the library, when I reread it I realized I had changed at that mention and wrote 7 pages of fantasy about her.

 ...Yeah. Pretty sure it's about my supervisor, but our office is in the "back corner of the second floor" of the library, we have tech training in a room on the second floor, our other training center (and most of computer services) is over in Cheek so we are over there all the time. (She teaches classes way more often, which is why I think it's her.) The only thing that isn't accurate is that neither of us are married, but ours is the only office in any corner of the library on the second floor... so I'm almost positive that it's her.... it's too many specifics not to be.

And that's pretty much everything I wanted to say...  Now to find that burger!

Parenthetical

Yesterday's word was phantasmagorical. Seriously, Paula, why are your comments disappearing? I get e-mails about them but they aren't on my posts... it's starting to weird me out.

I hemmed a pair of dress pants yesterday. I'm glad I'm too short, rather than too tall, but having to always hem pants to make them the right length is annoying. I wore said dress pants today with a pair of heels. (I normally just put on heels when I get to the office if it's a heels kind of day, but for some reason I decided the first truly rainy day we've had in months was a good day to wear heels across campus.)

I sorta expected to get blisters, but my feet are fine. However, on the way back to my car, (After the whole world had hours and hours to get good and misted.) I was leaving Carrington. (I cut through Carrington every day I work on my way to the library from the BSU parking lot.)

Man! I'm loving the parentheses tonight!

As I was saying (before I interrupted myself with parentheses) I was leaving Carrington this evening and that cement just at the entry of Carrington is crazy slick! So I took a couple of steps and suddenly my foot wasn't stopping and suddenly I was doing the American splits (and surprisingly adroitly, considering that I had no control over my foot as it slipped out from under me.) Well, not quite the American splits because one of my knees was bent... I don't think there was anyone around who saw it... Which I'm both relieved and sad about.

So now my knee has a bit of skin scraped off it, and there is a spot on my slacks that is a little roughed up, but my dress pants can apparently double as yoga pants? I was kinda impressed with them.

Long weekend... but I'm gonna try to actually use it to get homework done... I have to get back in the habit of doing homework, because it takes longer than I guess it will. I also need to take advantage of the fact that I can stay up so late, rather than trying to go to bed and do homework in the morning cause that just never works out well for me... mainly because I think that I can do it faster than I actually can.

That said, I still love it... and I also love that my ga-ship is all about lots of projects that take a day or two or a few hours... I love projects that I can just put my head down and plow through. I just worked on one thing all day today... one thing with 12 little parts and some of those little parts also had little parts... it was great. And I couldn't finish it all at once, so Wed. here I come!

Oh... I wonder where all my parentheses went... Sad. (I kinda miss them.)

Gushing

I love college.

I love my job.

I'm really excited to be going back to school.

I know that at some point in the middle of the semester when my life is happening all around me and I feel completely overwhelmed, I'm not going to be so thrilled, but right now I *love* it.

I said before that it feels like coming home, and it really does. I wasn't ready to leave college when I did. But it was time to graduate, so I matriculated and away I went.

But I'm back and it's just wonderful.

My supervisor is like constantly impressed with me.

And she would have guessed I was 22. She was visibly shocked when I said I just turned 29.

Of course, now that she knows my real age maybe she won't be so surprised at my competency.

But still.

I learned a new word today: Parvenu. It means "a person who has recently or suddenly acquired wealth, importance, position, or the like, but has not yet developed the conventionally appropriate manners, dress, surroundings, etc."  (according to dictionary.com) The Beverly Hillbillies were parvenus.

I also learned that a group of alligators is called a congregation.

That's funny stuff.

In conclusion, Grad School = the shizzle.

Also, the restaurant is pretty fan-freakin-tastic, too.

Oh and my mom got me nail stickers for my birthday... and I did these last night.

Sah-weet!

Contested and Exhausted

*beep beep beepity beep beep beep!*

We now forestall this blog post to bring you a contest of epic proportions!!!

Kara decided yesterday to give me a word of the day to work into my blog post. I did, and now I've decided to make it a challenge for you!

So hidden somewhere in this blog will be the secret word of the day. You can try and guess what the word is and the first person to 100 (either you or me) will win a fabulous prize (dreamed up by Kara.)

Points go thusly:
1 point for a correct guess
2 points to be the first person to guess correctly.
1 point for me for each day that no one guesses correctly in a row. (So the first day no one guesses correctly I get one point. The next day if no one guesses correctly I get two, the next three, ect-- but anytime someone does guess correctly my counter is restarted.)

Only one guess per blog post. Everyone keeps track of their own points and only comments made on the actual blog post count. (It's way too hard to verify points if facebook comments are also allowed and there is no way to track them.)

Every day I will announce what the secret word for the previous day's blog post is so that you can keep track of your points. Tomorrow I will make the announcement for both this blog and yesterday's blog. (You can make a guess both for today and for yesterday in the same comment if you want. Melissa, you can't vote in yesterday's since you already know, obviously.) No guesses count if they are posted after I've announced the word- duh.

The secret word could be just about anything. It could be tennis shoe. It could be handshake. It could be stir-fry or laundry or giggle or English or ponder or seestor, even though that's spelled completely nutso.

I will promise that it will never be an article (a grammatical article, not one in a newspaper or of clothing) and it will never be a pronoun... but other than that the world is your oyster, or clam, or a ladel..

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog post.

*beep beep beepity beep beep beep!*

I am trying very hard not to take a nap right now.

Being a grad assistant will be fun I think.

For one, I think I'll be good at helping people learn to use Blackboard. I get it pretty instinctively, and others apparently do not. And they *want* to learn it... it's useful to them, and gosh darn it if I don't like being helpful. Plus, it's a little like whoever I'm helping thinks that I'm magic.

Also, I'm not yet overwhelmed with classes and things that have to get done so it seems totally do-able.

And I feel productive.

And it's so nice to have co-workers who go to the same place as me and who have desks near mine and who I can say hello to.

That said, I'm super tired because I went to the mall after work to augment my dress pants selection. Not that I mind that I had to buy dress pants because my other ones were too big....

And after I left the mall I realized I'm completely exhausted. I've not slept well or enough for 3 nights in a row now... which I'm hoping makes for a much earlier bedtime tonight, considering that I'm going to have to be on a "normal" schedule for several months.

When I got home I changed into pjs but then decided that I was going to order pizza and decided my pj shorts were a little too short for opening my door to a complete stranger. So I'm in jeans but I've promised myself that the pjs are coming. Just like the pizza.... and the British.

Orientated

So my printer is busted... error code b200. I've looked it up and apparently it has something to do with an the printhead getting too hot and burning out a nozzle. That or the printhead could just be clogged, but I've cleaned that thing within an inch of it's life and it's still not working, so I'm pretty sure it's that the printhead got burnt out somehow. Evidently every printer should also come with a radiator so it doesn't overheat? Now, I have to order a new printhead. boo.

I love that Google makes me sound like I know what I'm talking about.

Orientation was today... I wish there was some sort of test you could take to opt out of orientation. I really didn't need to go to it... I think I was already fully orientated. It made me think of Nathan a good deal... just knowing that he went through this all... and remembering the stories he told me, and how much he complained about orientation, too.

I'm really happy with my life. I think I'm in a good place, but there are still days when his absence is still *so* tangible... I really miss him, and that's never going to go away. It's not as if he's just some friend who I've lost touch with... Sometimes I think about how much I'd just like to be able to talk to him. Just a few minutes.

But I know it wouldn't be enough. And it would probably make focusing on my future pretty hard.

But sometimes I don't care about all the justifications. I just want to talk to him.

Hmmmmm maybe I should stop listening to this sad Pandora country station?

I'm in

Last night I had my standard college dream. At least once a year (usually a few days before classes started) I would dream that I was in school and it was the end of the semester and I suddenly discovered classes that I'd been skipping because heretofore I'd forgotten of their existence.

Every year.

It was really hard for my poor little rules-bound self to handle. Talk about stress!

I had this dream last night and I woke up and complained to facebook about it.

Then I checked my mail this evening and guess what was waiting for me?

My acceptance letter.

You are now reading the blog of a MA in Creative Writing. Or, as I like to refer to myself now, a master in the making.

Ok I referred to myself as such one time.

But you gotta admit it has a ring to it, right?

Sure it's not the most prestigious school ever. Sure it's not the most amazing thing anyone has ever done.

But it's a big deal to me, because it feels like my life is getting kick-started again. Things that had gone awry are finally getting back on track, and it just feels so good to hear the click click click of the wheels finding the track again.
 
Jeremiah 29:11 " 'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.'"