So Midwestern

I can't get up off of the couch. My night will be deemed a success if I don't fall asleep here.

Jon and Kate Plus Eight is on. My brain is off.

I'm done with classes. My Tuesday professor decided that we wouldn't meet next week. We took our oral final exam (one silly question - I didn't do that well) last night. I took my other final exam tonight. And now I am free.

I have five weeks off, I think. My grand plans consist of going to the gym more, reading a book or two and watching season four of Grey's Anatomy once it comes out on DVD.

Did I mention that Lucy and Chet bought a house? They got the keys earlier this week. I'm really excited for them. A tad jealous, yes, but mostly excited.

I'm going over to help paint on Friday night. I've never really painted before. I haven't told Lucy that just yet.

I need to go to the grocery store.
I need to go to the bank.
I need to figure out my financial aid for next semester.


My mom is wearing a heart monitor. She's still having episodes. I wish the doctors could figure out the source of her problem.

I am feeling really sick of my hair. It is totally long. Sort of hot. But I'm 25. And my hair is parted down the middle 75% of the time. I feel like TV cameras are going to come crashing in to give me a makeover at any moment.

Anna is gone for the weekend - camping with her boyfriend. Having a boyfriend sounds like fun. Camping does not. I like hotels.

I love Greek yogurt.

Labels: the random

I wouldn't dare blog at 5:15 this afternoon, just as I wouldn't dare call anyone. I was hanging precariously from the end of my rope, blinking back tears and staring into an infinite abyss.

At 5:15, I was finishing up a workday that I simply cannot describe. I don't have enough negative words in my vocabulary. That is how good it was.

I needed to stay for two more hours if I wanted to make even the slightest dent into what I needed to get done, like, three weeks ago.

Instead, I left. To the library. To work on a project. Due tomorrow. The largest chunk of my grade. Not even half done.

First, I stopped at Chipotle for vegetarian burrito brain food. Then, I banished myself to the library.

It is quite amazing.

I left the library with a new lease on life. Yes, my job still blows. And I still have a few finishing touches for the project.

But it is my last assignment. And tomorrow is my penultimate class.

So I guess I'll just be grateful for The Great Homework Miracle of 2008.

Labels: pursuit of higher education

Anna and I rent an adorable flat. Below us lives a couple. They're nice enough. They coach youth sports for a living, so it sort of seems like they're always there. During the day when Anna is home. In the evenings when I'm home.

What I'm getting at is this: I'm not sure they ever work.

And they have a housekeeper. But that is another story.

Today's story is about The Battle of the Lawn.

It is a lack of a battle, actually, and that is why I am so bitter.

Because our landlord is totally hosing all of us, both flats are responsible for mowing the lawn and shoveling the snow. I always though that it was curious, through the winter, that Anna or I always got to the snow first. Even though they were always home.

I continue to think that it is curious that, at this point into the summer, they have not mowed the lawn once.

For real. And they are home all of the damn time.

I got back tonight from my soccer game, exhausted and dehydrated, and I tried (unsuccessfully) to start the mower. Pulled a muscle in my back. Wanted to fall to the ground and throw a temper tantrum.

Instead, I went inside and wrote a cheerful and polite note - pointing out that we've mowed the lawn for the first half of the summer and suggesting that they take over the duty in the second half - that I'll stick on their door tomorrow morning (they're never up when I'm getting ready for work).

It isn't like they don't know that we're doing it.

I totally caught the chick peeking out the window at me the last time I mowed the lawn.

I really should have thrown a rock at her.

From: Darren
Sent: Tuesday, July 08, 2008 1:57 PM
To: Alyson

I need help planning a party


Sent: Tuesday, July 08, 2008 1:58 PM
To: Darren

Keys to a good party:
1. Cupcakes
2. Confetti
3. Streamers
4. GHB


From: Darren
Sent: Tuesday, July 08, 2008 2:17 PM
To: Alyson

5. Hard Liquor to disguise the GHB in


Sent: Tuesday, July 08, 2008 2:23 PM
To: Darren

Good call! You have obviously done this before!

1. Cupcakes
2. Confetti
3. Streamers
4. GHB
5. Hard Liquor to disguise the GHB in
6. 1-3 sketchy dudes
7. 2-5 easy girls
8. Karaoke machine
9. Pudding


From: Darren
Sent: Tuesday, July 08, 2008 2:55 PM
To: Alyson

15. a game that involves spinning a bottle and making out with the person it lands on, in the closet

whats the bucket for?


Sent: Tuesday, July 08, 2008 2:56 PM
To: Darren

SCANDALOUS!

I will definitely add it to the list.

Buckets can come in handy for a variety of reasons.


Sent: Tuesday, July 08, 2008 3:37 PM
To: Darren

1. Cupcakes
2. Confetti
3. Streamers
4. GHB
5. Hard Liquor to disguise the GHB in
6. 1-3 sketchy dudes
7. 2-5 easy girls
8. Karaoke machine
9. Pudding
10. Psychedelics
11. A lava lamp
12. One person that nobody really likes
13. A minimum of one (1) game that involves heavy drinking as a requirement for success
14. A bucket
15. a game that involves spinning a bottle and making out with the person it lands on, in the closet
16. A location with little or no parental supervision
17. Hot tub and/or steam room
18. Ethnic food, preferably Mexican or Korean
19. A minimum of one person who knows the Heimlich maneuver
20. Pogo stick


From: Darren
Sent: Tuesday, July 08, 2008 3:39 PM
To: Alyson

whats the pogo stick for


Sent: Tuesday, July 08, 2008 3:40 PM
To: Darren

Oh, you know. Fun and stuff.


From: Darren
Sent: Tuesday, July 08, 2008 3:47 PM
To: Alyson

yeah...I do know.

Our party also needs a theme???


Sent: Tuesday, July 08, 2008 3:49 PM
To: Darren

Theme ideas:
1. Mexican hat dance
2. Field of Dreams
3. Armed forces


From: Darren
Sent: Tuesday, July 08, 2008 3:55 PM
To: Alyson

haha

I was thinking...Naughty Nurses


From: Darren
Sent: Tuesday, July 08, 2008 3:57 PM
To: Alyson

I was thinking MY MOM IS A NURSE and also YOU ARE A PERV.

Labels: boys

It is 9,007 degrees here in southeastern Michigan and I don’t have air conditioning.

I didn’t change my clothes when I got home from the gym yesterday. Why change out of sweaty clothes just to sweat through another outfit? I bumbled around in a humidity-induced haze. Ate some Indian food. Packed up what I would need for my weekend (I am going to Mom and Dad’s where they have: a. air conditioning and b. a lake). Watched Grey’s, followed by Hopkins, which I had to try really hard not to weep through because that baby was so. sweet. Oh, and his personality! Bubbly little guy. And he needed a heart transplant. And his mom put her head on her husband and sobbed. There was also an old man with bleeding in his brain because of a fall. They told his wife. She cried. I cried.

I seriously should not be allowed to watch medical dramas, real or fictional.

After the sobfest, I took a shower and went the hell to bed.

Am feeling much better than I did yesterday.

Am looking forward to the weekend. Plans include (but are not limited to):
-Movie date with Lucy and Colleen
-A lesson with my skating coach
-Balancing my checkbook and paying bills
-Golfing with Meg and my dad
-A trip to GAP
-5:00 pm soccer game on Sunday
-Starting, and getting dangerously close to finishing, the final project I have due for class on Tuesday
-Painting my nails
-Baking something, probably muffins

I would like to hammer out my schoolwork at the Hatcher Graduate Library, which happens to be situated right in the middle of the Ann Arbor Art Fairs. So I guess I’ll get in a little bit of culture and a whole lot of people watching.

And if I get really lucky, a parking ticket, too.

Labels: the random

I have been running. Literally, physically, running around my office since last Wednesday. My boss found out – pretty much on the most inopportune week of the year – that his stepmother (who has been very ill for months) wouldn’t likely live through the weekend. He took off to Manitoba. And left me here, trying to navigate the first of five insanely hectic weeks. All on my own.

I am doing okay. I am getting everything done. I am running down the hallways so quickly that office doors turn into a blur. But I’m keeping my head above water.

This morning, I hit the wall. I’ve been mostly comatose since I have been here. I’m still getting work done. It is just so. damn. hard. It is hot out. I went to bed too late last night. And I’m worn out from all of these hoops that I’m jumping through.

I want to sit at my desk and read blogs. I want to each chocolate out of the candy dish. And I want to go home.

Labels: work

Today I applied for a job that I have no chance of getting.

My qualifications fit the position pretty well, actually. And, since the job was just posted yesterday, I expect it to be received in the first batch of applications.

Still, I probably have no chance of getting the job because I have had absolutely crap luck in finding a new job. And this one really interests me. And is in a great location. And would really mesh well with what I am studying in graduate school.

So I won't even get a call. Probably not even a rejection letter.

I'm just not good at this. Finding a new job. I don't know why (surely it isn't my obscenely expensive yet useless liberal arts education!) I'm quite so bad. But at this point it is pretty much past denial.

I suck at getting a job. The end.

Normally, I'm not quite such a pessimist. I happen to really like that honeymoon period in which I apply for a job and then spend the next 7-10 days dreaming of putting in my two weeks notice. It's that deafening silence that follows that nearly kills me.

This time around, I'll go into this absolutely sure that I won't get so much as a phone interview.

Maybe I can be pleasantly surprised.

If not? Well, it was what I expected.

Labels: job search

Awkward, in the mirror, trying not to twist, just home from the gym and the library shot of my ink.



So there you go.

Labels: eye candy