Quiet River Raging

Things I WANT to do today:

1. Leave work. Now.
2. Go straight home.
3. Take a nap.
4. Play with my scrapbooking stuff all night
5. Stay up late and sleep in tomorrow.


Reality:

1. I'm stuck here for another 2+ hours.
2. I need to go to the gym.
3. I need to prepare for my oral comprehensive exam as much as possible. It's next Friday (OMGs!! OMGs!! OMGs!!).
4. I have to open the store tomorrow morning, so sleeping in isn't possible, therefore staying up really late isn't advisable.

It's almost over, it's almost over, it's almost over...

If nothing else, it has been a very productive day, and it's not even over yet. ( boring domestic crap follows )

( boring love life crap follows )

( not-so-boring-but-far-off trip planning follows )

Anyway, those are my activities and musings for the day - it's dinnertime, and I have one last serving left of the venison stew I made last week (mmmmmmm...). Then it's back to MP/comp exam studying for the evening.

Hope you've all had a great weekend!

I am in full-on study mode right now, and my Population Ecology notes have been my near-constant companions for the last week. Seriously, they've been with me everywhere.

I've gotten a bit frightened in looking at some of them, though. I've been reviewing the homework assignments I had for the class and I'm at a loss when it comes to explaining how the hell I learned to do all that stuff. Even though the tests were take-home, you still had to know which equations to use and in what order. I'll turn a page in my notes to find a sheet full of numbers and tables and graphs and my mind starts going into panic mode.

It's calculus, coming straight for us! Shields up! Take evasive action!

Guess I need to contact the prof who taught that class and see if he can send me a couple of practice problems that I can play with.

Saturday I spent the day scrapbooking at a breast cancer benefit crop called ScrapPink. I didn't do any photo work this time, but I did get a lot of the journaling done for the pages I did at the crop I went to last month. I estimate that my Scotland album is about 40-50% done. I'm really pleased with how it's turning out.

This week will be pretty uneventful until Saturday, when I plan to drive to Williamsburg for the Scottish Festival (Albannach! WOO-HOO!). Other than that, it's business as usual.

Holy cats, I need a nap.

Busy weekend. I worked at the store 5.5 hours on Friday night and 12.5 hours on Saturday. Then I returned to the store yesterday afternoon for a special event/demonstration, which was fun, but it really cut into my normal Sunday routine of domestic Goddess chores.

It was worth going to the demo yesterday, though, if only for my mode of transport alone. I went with a friend (also a neighbor) – she drove. If you were in the Central Park mall area in F’burg yesterday around 5:30-6:30 pm and you encountered a black mustang convertible with the top down, 2 women and 2 kids, and the sound of Led Zeppelin and Def Leppard blasting from the stereo speakers, well, that would have been us.

Now I’m here at work (the only one on time, as usual – lots of traffic on 95 north this morning, though), struggling to stay awake. I woke up from a very odd and intense dream around midnight and it took a little while for me to go back to sleep. Guess I’ll be hitting the sack early tonight.

Not much else to report, other than to say ONLY 11 DAYS AND A WAKE-UP LEFT!!!!

It was a quiet, but fairly productive weekend. Friday night I worked the crop at the store - good sales that day, plus I managed to get out a bit earlier than usual.

( Saturday )

( Sunday )

In other news, ( More updates - refrigerators, cats, travel planning, etc. )


That's it for now, I guess. I expect to be hearing from genevieve2006 about her newest pending arrival (son #3), whose due date is next week, but could probably show up at any time.

I came home from the store last night and immediately went downstairs to the circuit panel. Flipped the switch off, waited a few seconds, flipped it back on, then returned upstairs. Pulled the fridge away from the wall, (not as scary a situation as I thought it might be, dust- and grime-wise), unplugged it, unscrewed the back panel, and vacuumed the floor and fridge coils. Cleaned out some of the ruined food and put it in the garbage bin (thank goodness for Wednesday trash days). Put a plastic bottle of water in the freezer as a sort of gauge. Went to bed.

The fridge appears to be working now, and the bottle of water is frozen. Thank ALL the Gods. I have no idea whether it was the switch-flipping or cleaning that solved the problem, but for right now, I'm pretty happy. I really didn't want to have to shell out $500+ for a new refrigerator right now.

Busy, busy, busy...

( New-sy, but kind of boring )

I guess that's it for now. Time for another cup of coffee. At least I get to leave early today for a dentist appointment - I have a feeling I'm going to be in bed by 8:00 tonight...

Between having Friday the 21st through Tuesday the 25th off, work for 3 days, off for two, work for one (today), off for another, work for two more, then have my regular Friday off (in addition to the weekend), I'm not completely sure if I'm coming or going.

Yes, of course I love having the time off - who wouldn't? I just think I would have preferred the time off all in one chunk, instead of broken up like this. It just feels weird.

And I get to look forward to another 4 day weekend in January (MLK Day, with my regular Friday off) and in February (President's Day, with my regular Friday - my birthday! - off).

No major drama at work, which is always a good thing.

Found out that my request for a time extension for my Master's degree was approved. That was getting down to the wire - I was originally supposed to graduate in January. Yeah, right. Plus, my request to change from thesis option to Master's project was also approved. YAYYYYYYY! That's stress relief like you wouldn't believe.

My cat Boomerang apparently has nothing major physically wrong with him. I took him to the vet on Friday, where it turns out he's lost 2.3 pounds since last year. Not so good. Decided to spring for the whole lab work-up for him, which was NOT a cheap proposition. All tests came back within normal ranges. The litter box issues have improved through my adding an extra box. Still need to call the vet back today and find out why she thinks an antibiotic might put him back onto a normal, um, elimination pattern.

Dance class last night was good. M. (the instructor) surprised me and my classmate (A.) with "Most Improved Dancer" trophies. A. and I have been pretty active with the dance stuff - we've both done the Christmas parades for the last two years, and we both participated in a special workshop this past February. A. has arranged dance demonstrations and volunteered at a local competition, and I did the medal test this fall and performed in front of a couple dozen people whilst camping a while back.

Not a bad start to the week - hopefully the trend will continue...

It's been a heck of a week. Not necessarily bad, just frustrating at times.

Today was my Friday off, which I typically use for extended workouts at the gym and errand-running. Today's workout was a good one - 30 minutes of running on the treadmill, 25 minutes on the rowing machine, and weight training. After I was done with the weights and sufficiently sweaty, I headed off to the locker room for a shower.

I'd chosen a locker near the showers and a couple of curtained changing stalls. When I got there, there was a woman who looked to be in her late 20s-early 30s and a little girl who looked to be about 7 or 8. As I was getting my shower stuff ready, I heard the little girl whispering and her mom answering "Yes, she does look like Princess Leia, doesn't she?"

I turned around and the mom was smiling at me. Me?, I thought. Princess Leia? Turns out they were serious (I guess it was how I had my hair styled at the time - you Four Quarters folks are familiar with the pigtails I wore this summer).

I told the little girl "thank you" with the biggest smile on my face and told her it was the nicest thing I'd heard all week. The mom said "It's true, Carrie Fisher is gorgeous and so are you."

TOTALLY made my day. Completely. And yes, I told her so, and complimented her on her gorgeous daughters (an older girl - about 10 - had just come out of the showers and agreed with the Princess Leia assessment) and the fact that the good genes must run in the family, since mom was beautiful herself.

It's one thing to be complimented on your looks when you're dressed up, have make-up on, and your hair done, but it's something else entirely to have someone tell you that you're beautiful when you're wearing sweaty workout clothes.

They left the locker room before I was finished dressing after my shower and the older girl called out "Bye, Princess Leia!" as they did so. I walked around with the silliest grin on my face and misty eyes for the rest of the afternoon.