Big steps, baby steps

To my great delight I have discovered that living three blocks from work means 45 min more of sleep. My boss thought this would mean I headed in 45 min earlier. I laughed. Funny man. He should know better. Especially considering the evidence: This quarter I have a class that is located in Bellevue. I have to leave at 330pm to get to class on time. Rather than get into work early everyday to make up the time I've been going in on Saturdays. I get a lot done, and I get to sleep. I'm liking this arrangement.

I am about halfway through my second quarter of grad school. To my surprise I'm doing better in my Business Calc class than I am in the other class I'm in. Turns out with the right prof math is understandable, and I'm doing really well. On the flip side I have discovered I have an adverse reaction to touchy-feelly classes. I never really thought much of self-help books, and I'm now up to my eyeballs in debt to take a class involving one. Ug.

On the bright side I'm meeting people. There is one guy in my math class that works for my company. He helped me pull a prank on a coworker and is easy to work with in class. I also am starting to bond with people in the icky class. One girl has invited me to a girls night she's having, and to attend church with her and her boyfriend. She is a complete doll and I really hope this develops into a friendship. I also ran into a guy from that class while out with my boyfriend. It was fun to be the person that did the introductions.

All in all school is good. I'm signing up for next quarter's classes next week. When going through the listing I found out that there is a chance for me to go to Italy to study next summer. It's only two weeks, and is another touchy feelly class, but it's in the Italian Dolomite's. I'm going to look more into the course, and see if there are other class options, before talking to my boss. Taking two weeks off during peek price change season is going to take negotiating. Have to say life can't be too rough when one of the big decisions involves which class to take in which beautiful country.

My boyfriend switched jobs recently, and not entirely by choice. He's not thrilled with his current job, but it pays the bills. It also pays for school, which he's considering go back to at night. Right now he is considering if he wants to look for a position he actually likes, or if he wants to stay and get a BA. He's leaning towards going back, but I think it will be a while yet.

More importantly we've been having more serious conversations about the long term. Expectations and norms come up a lot, which is good. As much as I don't like the self-help section I'm thinking of getting a book on premarital stuff. We're not yet at the point where he's ring shopping, though he has wanted that for about a year now. The way I'm looking at it asking questions is the only way to make up my mind either way, and we both need me to.

Today we went for a walk and passed through the farmers market in Ballard. I pointed out all of the cute dogs, and corrected him when he pointed out one that wasn't. We also had went to a new restaurant called Señor Moose Cafe. I can't begin to describe how happy I was to find good salsa in Seattle. Even better its within walking distance of home. YAY! It amused my boyfriend how happy that made me. The poor boy grew up eating only okay Mexican food so I have to overlook this. Fortunately I'm here to help correct this misfortune. Now if I could just find good sashimi I'd be set.

Life's a joke, and the joke's on...

I drive a soft top Jeep. Basically that means I drive a giant Tonka Toy. I can remove the back windows, remove the roof, remove the back seat, remove the doors, pop the hood, and fold down the windshield (not kidding) without the need of the car key. Locking my car doors is only a source of amusement for me when my friends do so out of habit.

My favorite incident of this involved a childhood friend of mine. We had just returned to my car and after I put my bags behind my seat I climbed in. The whole time my friend had been speaking to me. When I looked over to the passenger seat I realized she had been speaking to me while standing next to the car. It was summer, the roof was off my car, and both front windows were rolled down. When I asked her why she was just standing there she told me she was waiting for me to unlock the car.

I paused. My brain simply couldn't compute what she said in the current circumstance. When I started laughing she asked me what was funny. Once I calmed down a bit I pointed out there was no roof or windows! All she had to do was stick her arm inside the car, which I never lock, and open the silly door. I think she was bright red for a good half hour.

The point of this is that I have no way of preventing people from getting into my car. To counteract this I have a club that locks the steering wheel and a removable face plate on my radio. I also buy cheap radios. Investing in a high quality one seems to be an exercise in frustration. Two or three thefts and one death by water balloon (long story) only confirm this. So I wasn't surprised that after two years only half the buttons on the latest model worked at all, those when they wanted to, and even then didn't always do what they were labeled.

Previously my radio used to bring up a number of different options if you press a series of buttons in the correct order. If I were more of a music snob I could have made the radio do all sorts of nifty things. Most of these nifty things were discovered recently when I pressed the button for station two and saw gibberish appear on the screen. Half the time the on button worked when it was good and ready to and not before. Getting the face plate to go on had become a challenge, and removing then replacing it only made the on button crankier. Switching between radio and CD often resulted in switching between FM and AM. Just so you know, AM doesn't work well in the very hilly area of Seattle in which I now live.

Fortunately since it always eventually turned on or did whatever other command I issued I didn't really care. Which is why it didn't really bother me to discover this morning that my radio no longer lived inside my dashboard. Someone had decided they wanted it more than I did and took it. Considering the radio's recent behavior I've decided the jokes on them.

Catching Up

First things first. I moved. Currently I live about three blocks uphill from my work. This is great right now and will really be annoying in the winter. I will try to track the number of bruises from slipping then. For now I enjoy seeing the beautiful sky on the way down hill to work, and I like working off my frustrations on the way up hill to home. Other than that the current draw back is no internet access at home. It likely won't get it set up for another month, maybe more.
Forth of July was nice, though I miss the fireworks in my favorite aunt's small town. A really good friend came up that weekend and it was nice to have a girlfriend around again. I did get to see fireworks, but it wasn't impressive.
I'm still working too much. My computer system at work has decided to go haywire. The day we discovered the scope of it I nearly cried. All the work I had done over the previous month, all the long hours and lost weekends, down the drain. I had manager after manager call and ask what had happened to the pricing. Finally the pricing manager sent out a message explaining what had gone kablewy. Sadly that was July 3. Not a great start to the holiday. On the flip side when I told my boss that I was taking a the afternoon off his only response was "me too, don't tell."
My boss is great. He got an iphone and was so impressed with himself when he finally downloaded a song that he announced it to everyone. He even walked from cube to cube to show us. It was cute.
I went camping this past weekend for the first time in a very long time. My favorite tour guide's entire extended family goes every year. That was interesting. For the most part I had fun just hanging out with him, and occasionally one of his cousins. His mother is still campaigning for a wedding, but she's getting better about being subtle. Largely I pretend I don't notice and try to chalk it up to her being nice.
There's more, but it will have to wait. The cafe I'm at is closing.

Tired, Overwhelmed and Jealous

I work a lot. Some weekends I go into work, some I don't. On normal days I work a little more than 8 hours. Most days I'm doing normal stuff. Placing orders, transferring excess inventory, and taking care of whatever problems pop up. On good days I find time to clean up lines a bit. On bad days I don't finishing placing orders. Today I worked 12 hours. I managed to get my orders out and transfer out excess inventory all before my official end of day. I even had time to work on a line clean up that was due two months ago.
Yeah. I'm behind, and not just a little. I've got two price increases that were due back in early April, and another increase due on the same lines on Aug 7. Just to make things more fun I have about ten more increases due between July 1 and 7. Recently I've had to work hard at not feeling overwhelmed. For the past couple of days I haven't had much luck. The good news is that I made some progress today. Not much, but some. The bad news is that I have about four weeks of work, and three business days to do it in. Sadly that means I'll likely be working through the entire weekend, and that only gives me two more days.
There is one bright spot this weekend. My one friend from work is dragging me to some event downtown so I'll see some of the rare sunshine.
In other news my younger sister had a little boy a few weeks ago. He is so very precious and has a full head of hair. I got to see him for a bit, and wish I got to spend more time with him. I talked to my mom today. My newest nephew is opening his eyes now and starting to look around. He is growing like a weed and I wish I could be there to see it.
I’m looking forward to the next time I get to go home. He’ll be even bigger and hopefully more awake. Although I did have fun squeezing his cheeks so he made a fish face while he slept. Mostly because he would curl his lip afterwards and looked like a cute baby Elvis. It was adorable.

Found it!

I came to Seattle a few years ago to visit a friend. While here I was shown around Seattle Pacific University. It is a beautiful campus, and I was impressed by one court yard in particular. The acoustics of the court yard were set up so that if you stood in the middle it would amplify your voice and everyone sitting on the surrounding steps could hear you easily.

I've wanted to go back and see it. Mostly because it is the one place here that I knew. It is something I could show to someone else for once. There are signs posted clearly (for once) on a couple streets I use pointing the way towards SPU. I never followed them, I only seemed to spot them when I was expected somewhere.

Yesterday my church group met at Gas Works Park for a bbq. I grabbed directions off the net and went straight from work. Starting out I drove up a steep hill and just over the other side was a view that took my breath away. Two blocks later I found SPU. Somehow I wound up driving through the center of it by accident. I was so excited when I found it I stopped the car. Fortunately no one was around. A couple blocks farther I found a road I knew and eventually I made my way to the bbq. That means I'll be able to find my way back.

Should have known that it would be in the last neighborhood I explored.

Are you kidding?

My grade in my first grad school class was based 10% on a one page paper, 30% on participation, and %60 on a term paper. I got an A on the first paper and got full credit for participation. That means I may have alienated my classmates, but it turned out to be for a good cause.

Then there is my term paper. It is no where near my best work. I've done much better. The hard part about it is that I've gotten used to business style writing. So now when I write on serious topics it tends to be short and sweet. Flowery emails and memo's annoy me so I keep mine straight to the point. This resulted in my paper only being 12 pages long. I wasn't really bothered by that until I got to class and my classmates had all written 15-20 page papers. All I could think was that not only had I done a poor job writing it, it hadn't even been long enough.

Fortunately I long ago learned to not stress about papers I have turned in. There is no point. It is literally out of my hands so I might as well move on and not think about it. Which I did, until today. Today I went on-line and checked to see if grades were posted yet. I got 58 out of 60 on my paper. My first thought was: I got an A for that?

I think grad school is going to be easier than I thought it would be.

One, maybe two

I think I finally have friends here that I haven't met through my tour guide.
Last weekend my department went to a professional baseball game. Since I was given two tickets I decided to invite my roommate. I haven't seen a lot of her lately. She is pretty much living in another town right now, about 45 min away without traffic. She got a summer job working as a juvenile defender. It is a really long commute so she is staying with her fiance most of the time. When we were at the game we spent most of the time laughing at talking and having fun. Afterwards we walked home and part way I realized we had managed to form a friendship while living together.
The other friend (maybe) is the woman who has been training me at work. I enjoy her company and we are supposed to go to a concert soon. Unfortunately I'm not sure I can trust her to be more than someone to hang out with. She's a bit of a gossip and there are some things I would rather not have people at work know.
Other than that I still just have acquaintances at church. Haven't really connected with anyone yet, but I'm not giving up. School seems to be the only place I'm not making headway. My classmates won't talk to me. I'm not really sure why, but now that I'm at the end of the school quarter I know its not in my head. As people file in and out of class they ignore me. During break they will slightly turn away as I pass, just enough to discourage me from joining the conversation. Worse, a couple of them make comments under their breath whenever I speak in class. At this point I'm writing the class off and looking forward to the fall. Hopefully the next group of classmates are kinder.