'Courtesy' interview for much-wanted position at a very nice hospital where there is actually no position currently available...6 days.
Going to Florida for a wedding, which requires flying, one of my least favorite activities...8 days.
Getting ridiculously sun-burned and showing up to a wedding looking more like a lobster than a human...9 days.
Job interview for DREAM position at SUPER NICE hospital where one million other people will also be applying...12 days.
40 page paper, which has been seriously on the backburner, due...15 days.
24th birthday, beginning the downward spiral into my midtwenties, AKA the first time I have really not looked forward to being another year older...16 days.
Parents come into town, mother is extremely allergic to cats, so apartment must be essentially decontaminated...19 days.
Pinning ceremony, at which I will be giving the class remarks, even though I am unclear exactly what class remarks are...21 days.
Graduation ceremony,at which I have absolutely no responsibilities other than grabbing my diploma and not falling over on stage in high heels...22 days.
Third wedding anniversary, for which we have absolutely no plans, and for which Joshua will be lucky if I wake out of my post-graduation-catch-up-on-the-last-4.5-years-of-sleep catnap...26 days.
Having absolutely no special occasions, life plans, obligations, or anything at all in planner (unless I get a job in the next 4 weeks)...27 days.
17 April 2008
13 April 2008
Procrastinating
I do the most blogging when I am supposed to be doing the most studying.
I don't want to work on statistical analysis of income brackets in Rogers Park so instead I am writing this even though it is not helping me achieve my goal of finishing a 40 page community assessment by May 2nd. Basically, I have learned absolutely nothing about time management during the last 20 years I've been in school. I have yet to finish a paper more than 12 hours before it's due, and I have never started studying for a test more than 48 hours before I have to take it. I think I am physically incapable of doing anything school-related when I am not completely stressed out about the fact that I left it until the last minute. Grad school will truly be a catastrophe.
I spend a lot of time thinking about all the free time I will have when school is over and before grad school begins (we're talking years). I am aware that this type of daydreaming wastes more time that I don't have, but I'm also convinced that it keeps me sane.
So in no particular order, here are some of the things I plan to do as a gainfully employed non-student:
Become a better knitter. Knit a sweater. Bonus points if I can finish a Central Park hoodie. Learn how to sew. Take a class at Quiltology. Give homemade gifts. Bake bread. Blog consistently. Throw away junk mail and file bills before they have the chance to sit on the desk for 3 months. Run the half-marathon. Because the whole marathon would kill me. Start swing-dancing again. Work on the Obama campaign if he wins the primary. Have a personal political crisis if he doesn't. Travel with Joshua. Learn Spanish . Write. Roadtrip. Become an expert in my field. Call my grandparents more often. And my parents. And my brothers. Read novels, not textbooks. Make dinner. And dessert. Go to Vegas for the weekend. Volunteer. SLEEP.
I don't want to work on statistical analysis of income brackets in Rogers Park so instead I am writing this even though it is not helping me achieve my goal of finishing a 40 page community assessment by May 2nd. Basically, I have learned absolutely nothing about time management during the last 20 years I've been in school. I have yet to finish a paper more than 12 hours before it's due, and I have never started studying for a test more than 48 hours before I have to take it. I think I am physically incapable of doing anything school-related when I am not completely stressed out about the fact that I left it until the last minute. Grad school will truly be a catastrophe.
I spend a lot of time thinking about all the free time I will have when school is over and before grad school begins (we're talking years). I am aware that this type of daydreaming wastes more time that I don't have, but I'm also convinced that it keeps me sane.
So in no particular order, here are some of the things I plan to do as a gainfully employed non-student:
Become a better knitter. Knit a sweater. Bonus points if I can finish a Central Park hoodie. Learn how to sew. Take a class at Quiltology. Give homemade gifts. Bake bread. Blog consistently. Throw away junk mail and file bills before they have the chance to sit on the desk for 3 months. Run the half-marathon. Because the whole marathon would kill me. Start swing-dancing again. Work on the Obama campaign if he wins the primary. Have a personal political crisis if he doesn't. Travel with Joshua. Learn Spanish . Write. Roadtrip. Become an expert in my field. Call my grandparents more often. And my parents. And my brothers. Read novels, not textbooks. Make dinner. And dessert. Go to Vegas for the weekend. Volunteer. SLEEP.
12 April 2008
Hala Jan Levinson
Since we named our first cat Pamela Beasley, we felt guilty that our second wittle kitty wouldn't also be an Office namesake. Since she is a feisty kitten who bosses Pam around, we felt Jan Levinson was the most appropriate middle name.
Doesn't she look like she has an authority problem and an inexplicable attraction to a somewhat incompetent regional manager of a mid-range paper supply company?
As far as I know, she hasn't had a boob job.
She seriously couldn't be cuter, mostly because she likes to climb up my stomach, wrap her head and front paws over my shoulder, and fall asleep. I am a little ashamed to admit how incredibly hard we have fallen for these cats - of all animals, cats. I can't imagine coming home and not finding Hala and Pam curled up asleep in the living room (of course, the white and tan cat has made herself at home on the one black chair we own, and the black cat spends her time on the tan couch. I would not expect anything more).
Joshua is quite smitten with his girls as well.
Because the cats have taken over our lives, I have little else to say about what is going on in my world except that finishing up senior year sucks and I am not doing a good job of it. I have only one job interview scheduled and that is for my dream job, which is apparently the dream job of many, many other people who are also in the application process for this particular unit at this particular hospital. Frustrating. I like to think that I handle stress with grace and charm, which is a fun illusion until suddenly I have an emotional breakdown and become physically ill for at least 48 hours. It's neat. So was calling out of work today (see: currently ill for at least 48 hours), when I've been cancelled off my past two shifts and have literally contributed $200 to our gross income in the last two months. Stressed, sick, not a financial contributor to our marriage. But I have cats.
Doesn't she look like she has an authority problem and an inexplicable attraction to a somewhat incompetent regional manager of a mid-range paper supply company?
As far as I know, she hasn't had a boob job.
She seriously couldn't be cuter, mostly because she likes to climb up my stomach, wrap her head and front paws over my shoulder, and fall asleep. I am a little ashamed to admit how incredibly hard we have fallen for these cats - of all animals, cats. I can't imagine coming home and not finding Hala and Pam curled up asleep in the living room (of course, the white and tan cat has made herself at home on the one black chair we own, and the black cat spends her time on the tan couch. I would not expect anything more).
Joshua is quite smitten with his girls as well.
Because the cats have taken over our lives, I have little else to say about what is going on in my world except that finishing up senior year sucks and I am not doing a good job of it. I have only one job interview scheduled and that is for my dream job, which is apparently the dream job of many, many other people who are also in the application process for this particular unit at this particular hospital. Frustrating. I like to think that I handle stress with grace and charm, which is a fun illusion until suddenly I have an emotional breakdown and become physically ill for at least 48 hours. It's neat. So was calling out of work today (see: currently ill for at least 48 hours), when I've been cancelled off my past two shifts and have literally contributed $200 to our gross income in the last two months. Stressed, sick, not a financial contributor to our marriage. But I have cats.
06 April 2008
Introducing Pam Beasley
We love dogs. Big, slobbery golden retrievers and smug wobbly pugs. Blue-eyed Huskies and energetic chocolate labs. We stop and pet them on the street. We look for dog-friendly apartments. We dogsit for Joshua's coworkers and the people I babysit, even when it means living in the suburbs for a week and pretending to be commuters. We've talked about our first dog in the same rapturous way some people talk about their first children (you should really hear us talk about our first children!)
So it is kind of hard to explain this:
Definitely not a dog.
This is Pam Beasley, a sweet one year old kitten/cat (kit? catten?)who caught our eye last weekend at PAWS, a rescue shelter here in Chicago. The fact that we even went to PAWS is entirely the fault of our friends Jessica and Jakob, who were looking for a kitten of their own. (Let's be honest, they also lured me in with visions of adorable kittens welcoming us home from school and work and I am a sucker for a nice hello). Joshua and I (the dog lovers) suddenly woke up after falling into the deep dark hole of cuteness that is the Kitten Room at PAWS, and found ourselves the proud parents of a C-A-T.
Pam is entirely a sugarplums-and-fairy-dust sweet animal. She's a rescue from a hoarding situation in Uptown, where she was found abandoned with THIRTY other cats that looked just like her (we are seriously choosing not to think about the genetic implications of that sad feline home). She spent a month at PAWS before we adopted her, which is unusual for a cat as young and as pretty as she is. Apparently, she was very shy and reclusive. But we think Pam was just biding her time before we got to her, because after only a week of salmon treats, a mouse on a string, and lots of love, she has blossomed into quite the social, attention-loving kitty. (I told this to the woman at PAWS on the phone yesterday, and in all seriousness, she GOT.CHOKED.UP.)
The reason I was talking to a woman at PAWS on the phone yesterday was because we are not just casual cat owners anymore, no, we are OB-SESSED. One of Pam's roommates at PAWS was a 12 week old all-black kitten named Hala, who wrapped Joshua right around her tiny paw. Unfortunately, right as we made the decision to adopt her, the tech decided to take her temp because she looked just a little too sleepy. Without saying a word to us, they rushed her right out of the room, into a kitty carrier and off to the vet because she was running a fever of 104.5!
It was a blessing in disguise, because with Hala mysteriously gone, we decided to adopt Pam. However Joshua couldn't stop thinking about our poor sick kitten, and he called PAWS back that day to let them know that as soon as she recovered, we would like to adopt her as a friend for Pam.
So on Thursday, right before THE OFFICE COMES BACK ON AT 8/7 CENTRAL (and Pam can watch her namesake living la vida Scranton), we will be picking up Hala. We have no idea how to have two cats, we have barely scratched the surface of what it means to have one. Hopefully, Pam and Hala get along marvelously and keep each other entertained while we are away. Less optimistically, I will be totally fine if they just ignore each other, as long as they don't turn our happy home into some sort of feline war zone.
As soon as we move into a bigger place, with a yard and room for playing and romping and animals that must do their business outdoors, we are still planning on getting a dog. We will be that family, with the two cats and the dog, and hopefully a bucket of children (small bucket, maybe like a pail) somewhere in the next ten years. And I love that.
So it is kind of hard to explain this:
Definitely not a dog.
This is Pam Beasley, a sweet one year old kitten/cat (kit? catten?)who caught our eye last weekend at PAWS, a rescue shelter here in Chicago. The fact that we even went to PAWS is entirely the fault of our friends Jessica and Jakob, who were looking for a kitten of their own. (Let's be honest, they also lured me in with visions of adorable kittens welcoming us home from school and work and I am a sucker for a nice hello). Joshua and I (the dog lovers) suddenly woke up after falling into the deep dark hole of cuteness that is the Kitten Room at PAWS, and found ourselves the proud parents of a C-A-T.
Pam is entirely a sugarplums-and-fairy-dust sweet animal. She's a rescue from a hoarding situation in Uptown, where she was found abandoned with THIRTY other cats that looked just like her (we are seriously choosing not to think about the genetic implications of that sad feline home). She spent a month at PAWS before we adopted her, which is unusual for a cat as young and as pretty as she is. Apparently, she was very shy and reclusive. But we think Pam was just biding her time before we got to her, because after only a week of salmon treats, a mouse on a string, and lots of love, she has blossomed into quite the social, attention-loving kitty. (I told this to the woman at PAWS on the phone yesterday, and in all seriousness, she GOT.CHOKED.UP.)
The reason I was talking to a woman at PAWS on the phone yesterday was because we are not just casual cat owners anymore, no, we are OB-SESSED. One of Pam's roommates at PAWS was a 12 week old all-black kitten named Hala, who wrapped Joshua right around her tiny paw. Unfortunately, right as we made the decision to adopt her, the tech decided to take her temp because she looked just a little too sleepy. Without saying a word to us, they rushed her right out of the room, into a kitty carrier and off to the vet because she was running a fever of 104.5!
It was a blessing in disguise, because with Hala mysteriously gone, we decided to adopt Pam. However Joshua couldn't stop thinking about our poor sick kitten, and he called PAWS back that day to let them know that as soon as she recovered, we would like to adopt her as a friend for Pam.
So on Thursday, right before THE OFFICE COMES BACK ON AT 8/7 CENTRAL (and Pam can watch her namesake living la vida Scranton), we will be picking up Hala. We have no idea how to have two cats, we have barely scratched the surface of what it means to have one. Hopefully, Pam and Hala get along marvelously and keep each other entertained while we are away. Less optimistically, I will be totally fine if they just ignore each other, as long as they don't turn our happy home into some sort of feline war zone.
As soon as we move into a bigger place, with a yard and room for playing and romping and animals that must do their business outdoors, we are still planning on getting a dog. We will be that family, with the two cats and the dog, and hopefully a bucket of children (small bucket, maybe like a pail) somewhere in the next ten years. And I love that.
05 April 2008
I Know What It Means...To Miss New Orleans
March was an extremely busy month for Joshua and I. It was full of all our usual busyness, school and work (well, barely for me, I have worked a grand total of ONE! SHIFT! since before Christmas. oh yeah, i am ensuring our financial freedom). But it was also full of this:
New Orleans, baby. Ok, I'll be honest - we were on a rebuilding trip with school, so no actual bourbon was consumed on the Rue Bourbon. Which is fine, because the French Quarter is actually quite skeevy and I would be literally afraid to be inebriated with some of the characters around. Like this one:
Yikes. But the real reason we were in New Orleans, the land of jazz, beignets, jambalaya and po'boys, was of course the fact that the city is still (2 and a half years later) devastated from Hurricane Katrina. No matter what natural disaster strikes, after 2 and a half years should an American neighborhood still look like this?
How would we feel if the poorly constructed safety system for our city failed, like these levees that broke and flooded the Lower 9th Ward?
I'm going to bet that if your house was washed away, your insurance didn't cover your home, and your government housed your family in a trailer for two years (and then told you, oh hey! those trailers are full of asbestos! we had no idea!) and then never sent you the money you were promised to actually rebuild your home...I'm going to bet you would agree with the woman I met who stood crying in front of me and shook her fist and said she would like to see George Bush go to prison for crimes against humanity. One of her friends died on a rooftop waiting for help. And another of her friends died in the Superdome, which is where the 'help' was supposed to be.
We worked on several different projects in New Orleans. We helped put up a circus-sized tent over dog kennels at Animal Rescue of New Orleans, which is still working tirelessly with only 3 full-time employees to shelter and care for hundreds of animals that were abandoned in the storm. We also drove all over the city with Greenlight New Orleans, installing compact fluorescent light bulbs in homes for free. This non-profit organization is helping reduce energy use and save residents much-needed money on their energy bills, which are very expensive in New Orleans. We also weeded the gardens at City Park, which is larger than Central Park and a huge source of revenue for New Orleans.
While the needs in New Orleans are overwhelming, there is an amazing amount of hope in the city:
It was an incredible experience, one that Joshua and I want to have again. We've been home for three weeks and our time in New Orleans and the people that we met are burned in our minds and hearts. (and bodies - we wandered into a tattoo place the week after we got back and two hours later found ourselves the proud and somewhat shocked owners of fleur-de-lis body art). It was very hard to come back after an intense week of new faces, new friendships, new emotions, and 70 degree weather. It felt strange to go back to the mundane everyday-ness of life in Chicago, knowing that the needs in New Orleans are still there each time we wake up to go to work and school. We want to go back and we don't know yet when and how.
One thing I do know - five weeks from today I will be celebrating (maybe with bourbon, but probably tequila) the fact that I will have GRADUATED COLLEGE.
And six months and five weeks from today I will be weeping over my first student loan bills. So that may be a good time for a trip to New Orleans, don't you think?
New Orleans, baby. Ok, I'll be honest - we were on a rebuilding trip with school, so no actual bourbon was consumed on the Rue Bourbon. Which is fine, because the French Quarter is actually quite skeevy and I would be literally afraid to be inebriated with some of the characters around. Like this one:
Yikes. But the real reason we were in New Orleans, the land of jazz, beignets, jambalaya and po'boys, was of course the fact that the city is still (2 and a half years later) devastated from Hurricane Katrina. No matter what natural disaster strikes, after 2 and a half years should an American neighborhood still look like this?
How would we feel if the poorly constructed safety system for our city failed, like these levees that broke and flooded the Lower 9th Ward?
I'm going to bet that if your house was washed away, your insurance didn't cover your home, and your government housed your family in a trailer for two years (and then told you, oh hey! those trailers are full of asbestos! we had no idea!) and then never sent you the money you were promised to actually rebuild your home...I'm going to bet you would agree with the woman I met who stood crying in front of me and shook her fist and said she would like to see George Bush go to prison for crimes against humanity. One of her friends died on a rooftop waiting for help. And another of her friends died in the Superdome, which is where the 'help' was supposed to be.
We worked on several different projects in New Orleans. We helped put up a circus-sized tent over dog kennels at Animal Rescue of New Orleans, which is still working tirelessly with only 3 full-time employees to shelter and care for hundreds of animals that were abandoned in the storm. We also drove all over the city with Greenlight New Orleans, installing compact fluorescent light bulbs in homes for free. This non-profit organization is helping reduce energy use and save residents much-needed money on their energy bills, which are very expensive in New Orleans. We also weeded the gardens at City Park, which is larger than Central Park and a huge source of revenue for New Orleans.
While the needs in New Orleans are overwhelming, there is an amazing amount of hope in the city:
It was an incredible experience, one that Joshua and I want to have again. We've been home for three weeks and our time in New Orleans and the people that we met are burned in our minds and hearts. (and bodies - we wandered into a tattoo place the week after we got back and two hours later found ourselves the proud and somewhat shocked owners of fleur-de-lis body art). It was very hard to come back after an intense week of new faces, new friendships, new emotions, and 70 degree weather. It felt strange to go back to the mundane everyday-ness of life in Chicago, knowing that the needs in New Orleans are still there each time we wake up to go to work and school. We want to go back and we don't know yet when and how.
One thing I do know - five weeks from today I will be celebrating (maybe with bourbon, but probably tequila) the fact that I will have GRADUATED COLLEGE.
And six months and five weeks from today I will be weeping over my first student loan bills. So that may be a good time for a trip to New Orleans, don't you think?
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