Update

It has been over 2 months since I posted here, and I was inspired by March. Most of my socializing is done on Facebook and most of my blog friends are over there (Dim is the holdout). I've been busy with summer classes. I told one that was over on July 3rd and then the current one started July 6th, so there wasn't much time to catch my breath in between. The good news is that I will be officially finished with school on August 7th!!! All I have left is 1 quiz, and that's based on presentations that aren't due till July 31st, so I have a little bit of a reprieve. I'm not sure what I'll do with myself when I don't have school work, but I know I'll figure something out. It'll be so nice not to be tied to the chains of school anymore.

In the time I was absent from my blog, it turned 4 and I passed the 6 month moving out on my own point. I've really liked being on my own; I'm the sort of person who needs a lot of alone time. On the other hand, I've been doing more with friends, which is nice. I think I had been in a funk and didn't feel like doing too much, but now I have more energy and motivation. Rusty was here in June, but unfortunately I don't know when I'll see her again. Right now she's in the UK, lucky bitch :). I'm going to D. C. in October for my graduation present and I'm excited about that since D. C. Mile Gravel bumper sticker..is my favorite city. Honestly, that's pretty much it, but I figured I should check in with my legions of fans.

Update: I can probably update by currently reading book and my recently watched movie and take down my Mike Gravel bumper sticker

Thanksgiving

Sorry it has been a while...I think everyone's sort of slacking on the blogging front. I tend to do most of my communication on Facebook, so hit me up if we're not friends there yet. I also started a private blog a few months ago, but my use for that is over. To get you up to speed, I'm having minor surgery next Tuesday and I'm moving out on my own in January. I was using that blog as a place to gather my thoughts.

I went out for dinner with a friend from high school last Tuesday and then went to dinner with Rusty and her family on Wednesday. Thursday was Thanksgiving dinner with just my parents due to some extended family drama. Rusty and I huge out briefly after our respective family meals, but we were both in a tryptophan-induced haze. On Friday I cleaned and stayed as far away from malls and shopping centers as possible in the morning, then Rusty and I went out to dinner and to some stores...things calm down in the evening. On Saturday I cleaned, did laundry, watched movies, and did some school work. Sunday was more of the same and then I took yesterday off and ran some errands. Today was total insanity at work and I was NOT glad to be back. December is going to be completely crazy starting with bloodwork tomorrow (they can NEVER find my veins), dinners out with friends, surgery, transferring from the Harrisburg office to the York office, post-op appointments, Rusty coming home, Christmas, New Year's, winter semester... I would love to crash in January but there's moving and even more class. I don't think I'll have a chance to relax till June, but it's ok...idle hands are the devil's workshop.

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and I'll try to check in as much as possible throughout December!

Things That Make You Go Hmm...

I was talking to a co-worker about working as a librarian and she said the thing that you never want to say to a librarian, "You'll get to sit around and read books all day." When I told her that librarians don't read books at work she told me that I could just have staff people shelve the books for me so I could go read. Oy. If you thought the same thing, please check this blog post out.

We were doing a discussion board assignment for my online class, and I made the comment that I am against banning anyone from looking at anything on the computers in the library outside of child pornography because it is illegal (there's more to it than that, but it's not interesting). One of my classmates in my group said that just because child pornography is illegal to me doesn't mean it's illegal and that it's the library's job to decide what's illegal, not mine. Whaa??

Job Interview, Part Deux

I have an interview with the Department of Public Welfare on the 17th. I'm not nervous at all; because of the way this works, the job is pretty much mine if I want it. Basically I have one week to think long and hard about what I want. I'm leaning toward not taking it for various reasons, among them not wanting to lose vacation time, having upcoming medical appointments, possible issues with leaving early to make it to school on time, and the fact that I made some connections in class this past weekend with people who work in various libraries in the area. Plus, if I turn the job down and change my mind later, I can just re-take the test. I can't even decide what I want to order at a restaurant; how the hell am I supposed to decide what life path I should take?!

More Stuff

There still isn't too much interesting going on in my life. I got my results for the civil service exam and I applied to 4 different counties, but there are really only 2 where I would want to work. For York, 11 people did better than I did, 1 did the same, and 200-some did worse; in the other county 21 people did better and 645 did worse. So basically, I'm tied at 12th for the York list and I'm 22nd for the other list. But, like I said, it probably wouldn't be the right move for me to take this job right now. For one thing, I'd lose all my time off, and we do get massive amount of time off to make up for our lousy pay. For another, there would be a lapse in my insurance, and I have a dentist appointment and a couple doctor's appointments coming up, not to mention that I'm on a couple different meds, one of which is a psychotropic, and you generally don't want to randomly stop taking those.

School has officially started, and I am not in school mode yet. I had my school e-mail rerouted to my Gmail because my school e-mail is a pain to access and some e-mails from my professor ended up going to my spam. Luckily they weren't sent that long ago and I didn't miss any deadlines because of it, but I could have gotten an early start. I like to stay ahead of the game, because if I don't, I feel like I'm drowning. My professor is making podcasts for our online course, which is very nice. I used to have to sit at the computer listening to hour-long lectures and now I can put them on my MP3 player and listen to them while I watch dishes or do other inane things.

I'm definitely leaning toward starting a private blog. I have a bunch of things going on right now that I need to vent about, and I have a crew of awesome, supportive blog buddies. And it's cheaper than therapy! By the way, for those of you who have private blogs, I just did some catching up over the weekend. Bloglines refuses to show when private blogs update, so I had assumed people just stopped blogging.

I'm Alive

Rest easy, blog peeps; I'm alive and my hiatus is over. March wondered WTF happened to me. I finished my Cataloging class (got a B, one point away from an A, dammit) and have been taking two summer classes. One is already over (A) and one will be over next Thursday. Rusty came to visit, but we didn't do too much since I was busy and she had to spread herself around. I was cat-sitting for her two little bastards and they managed to pee on my floor, and steal a chicken breast and shortcake that I stupidly left on the counter. Rusty's coming back in July though, and I'll be class-free (in both senses of the word), so we'll get to do all kinds of fun stuff. I was looking forward to having life go back to normal after Rusty left with the cats and my weekend class was over, but our fridge broke this past Monday and was finally fixed yesterday. Being without a fridge totally sucks ass! That's pretty much all that's going on right now, considering my summer hasn't officially started yet. I've only had one week without school since January and I spend part of that week in D.C., so I've been pretty busy. I don't have any plans for the 4th, except maybe going to Hersheypark on Friday. My friend at work and I are waiting to see what the weather's like and trying to decide how insane it is to go to Hershey on a holiday that falls on a Friday. I'll update more frequently if anything cool goes on, but I've been reading your blogs even if I haven't been commenting. I hope everyone's having a good summer!

The little bastards, in a rare moment of not being little bastards:



Shortcake carnage:

Where Have I Been?

March was wondering this the other day; I can only assume it's because he's secretly hankering for more Idol Thoughts. May is usually my busiest month because that's when I come out of hibernation and there are always a lot of birthday dinners for myself and a couple of my friends who share May birthdays. This May has been no exception. As you all know, I've been having nervous breakdowns over cataloging since January. I handed in my final paper in the end of April, then headed off to Mooresville to see Rusty. Two weeks after that, Chris and I went for a long weekend in Washington, D.C. and then right after that, my first summer class started. My second summer class starts June 3; yes, they overlap. And the birthday dinners haven't even started yet! The first one is today, I'm still waiting to hear back from L. (If you're reading this, thanks for ignoring me!! :)) and another friend, there is a breakfast pending with some old co-workers, and an outing to see Sex in the City with a current co-worker coming up. That's a lot for someone who is as adept at sitting on her ass as I am.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. D.C. pics are forthcoming; I don't have too many because the weather was horrible. Steady rains and temperatures 25 degrees below normal sort of marred my big plans, but I had a good time nonetheless. I ended up getting an 88% in Cataloging. I'm usually not happy with a B in a class for which I did so much work, but that was hell and I had D at one point, so I can't complain about a B. Especially since he ripped my paper apart... It's also a little annoying that he considers an 89% an A, so I just missed it. But, as one of my co-workers told me (remember what I said about working with therapists?), I need to let go of the negativity and move on.

I had my first session of my first summer class this past weekend and it was the best class I've had so far. I adore the professor (and I think she really likes me) and only looked at my watch about 3 times, compared to 3,000 times in my other weekend classes. I'm actually considering switching the class I chose in the fall to have her again. On a side note, I just found out that someone else will be teaching cataloging next time it's offered. Arghh!!!!!!! If I had waited, perhaps I could have had a professor who doesn't have such an arbitrary grading system. Sorry; letting go of the negativity... I'm dreading having these two summer classes overlapping (the first one is three weekends and the second is online) because we have to do as much in 5 weeks as we would normally do in 4 months, but by July 3 I'll be 6 credits closer to graduating. By Christmas I'll have 7 out of 12 classes and all I'll have left to take is electives, so I can take things that actually interest me.

There aren't any Idol Thoughts for last week because I worked Tuesday night and my Ti-faux is still out of commission, so I taped it and only watched David Cook's performances. No surprises Wednesday night; Syesha should have gone weeks ago. The Office season finale was Thursday and it was great. Pathetically, I'm glad that I'll have my life back after Wednesday. I rarely watch TV in the summer, and I won't have time to until July anyway. I even bumped my Netflix subscription down to 2 at a time.

Work is still insanely busy, compounded by the fact that I've been off so many days in the past month. I'm off again on Monday, so next week will be crazy again, but I'm hoping that things will calm down after that. Obviously we're closed on Memorial Day, but there's a huge difference in the amount of work required when I'm off on a vacation day compared to a day we're closed. It hasn't helped that they were switching the servers, so our MIS has been down a lot and 95% of what I do requires the ability to use it. The only other thing on the work front is that we got new computers (our old ones were castoffs from the state, so they were probably about 10 years old).
Now it takes less than 2 minutes to open a new window and I have a flat-screen monitor so I have free space on my desk! Woot!

So, with everything that's going on, I'll be posting D. C. pics and Idol Thoughts next week and then probably won't be around too much till July unless something awesome or stupid happens. I expect it'll be the latter. I hope everyone has a good beginning of the summer!

Fuck You, Melville Dewey

I had my last class from hell today!!! What did I learn? That I do not want to be a cataloger. This class has pretty much consumed my life for the past 2 months, and now all I have to do is write a 3-page paper by the end of April...and await the grade from my final *gulp*. As of right now, I have an 89.3% in the class, so unless I royally fuck up the final and the paper, I'm good to go. Not too shabby, considering at one point I had a 60%. He took a picture of us that I'll post as soon as he posts it unless I look like ass, which I probably do. Who wouldn't look like ass after spending almost 14 hours discussing the finer points of Library of Congress Subject Headings, Sears subject headings, Dewey, DDC call numbers, Cutter numbers, and Library of Congress Classification. I'm 1/4 of the way finished and by Christmas I'll be halfway there! Woot!

And be warned: if you tell me the Dewey Decimal System isn't used anymore, I'm going to punch you in the face.

At least I get to look forward to Rusty and V.'s visit to York next week!

Things I've Learned in Library School

Cataloging is like a scavenger hunt. But not like a fun scavenger hunt. More like a scavenger hunt that makes you want to suck on the business end of a .22.

Stuff

I've been MIA lately because there isn't really much going on. I hate January, so I usually spend it hibernating. I slept through my alarm for 2 hours this morning and went in an hour late and put in for some vacation time to make up for it. Oops. Chris finally finished building my Ti-faux, so every day I have a new gift from the TV gods. I hadn't been watching TV lately, but now I have episodes of "Good Eats" (which go straight to a DVD-R...beats shelling out hundreds of bucks from the DVDs on Food Network's website!), "Anthony Bourdain No Reservations," "Intervention" (AWESOME show), and "Twilight Zone." John Cusack is on "Inside the Actor's Studio" at 1AM, so I get to come home tomorrow, curl up on the couch, and lust after my man. Just what I need...something to make me waste even more time. I feel like I've finally caught up to the 21st century now that I have a digital camera, an MP3 player, and a DVR. And yes, I'm fully aware that there is more advanced technology available, but let me bask on being somewhat current. On the Netflix front I just finished "My So-Called Life," which now goes on my list of TV shows that were canceled too early along with "Freaks and Geeks" and "Arrested Development."

The semester officially started today, but I'm only taking one class this semester and it's one of those three-weekend classes so I don't have to go till next weekend. I'm sooooo dreading it. I'm also afraid we're going to get massive snowstorms. The professor hasn't posted anything about the class yet, and I'm sort of worried. I always feel like everyone knows what's going on except for me. I have no idea what books to buy, what building the class is in...you know--information that might be a tad helpful.

That's pretty much my life right now--watching TV, hating winter, and dreading school. I hope everyone else's life is not as massively lame as mine!

Weekend Update

I hope my American readers had a good Thanksgiving and my international readers had a good time working while we were over-indulging...it's the American way! On Thursday I stopped in at Chris's family's house to say hi and then ate with my parents and my grandma (extended family drama, remember?). On Friday I cleaned; made a pumpkin roll; did laundry; did some other boring, productive things; watched part 2 of Planet Earth; and then went out to Red Lobster with my parents. I don't remember doing much on Saturday, so that must have been the day I spent hours playing Sims 2 *hangs head in shame*. I did, however, make Thanksgiving dinner for me and Chris--Cornish game hens, mashed potatoes, stuffing, brussels sprouts, and the 1 square inch that was left of the pumpkin roll that I made the day before.

On Sunday I went to lunch at a Mexican restaurant and then to IKEA with my mom. I got a bookshelf, a lamp to replace the one that broke, and some other odds and ends. I took Monday off work, so I put the bookshelf together and did some other productive things around the house, then I had class at night.

Which brings us to Tuesday. I went back to work and it was busy as hell. On my way home I got a phone call from Chris. My letter was in the morning paper and someone called our house and threatened to kill me. He said something to the effect of when I die it will be at the hands of a Jewish man. Apparently sarcasm is not taught in the Torah. It's ironic because I am totally fascinated by Judaism and the only group I love more than the Jews are the gays. There was an article in the paper tonight about Hanukkah cooking. I told Chris I was going to write to the paper and register my disgust about it...he didn't find that humorous. Anyway, Chris *69'd the guy and called the cops, but I wasn't part of any of this because Tuesday was Chris's 25th birthday and I was running all over East York trying to find the Futurama movie for him. The officer said we have to decide if we want to file charges or not. I don't; Chris does. I say the guy's a pussy, and if he really wanted to kill me, he would have done it. I called the station and the receptionist said the officer contacted the phone company and that number is disconnected and unavailable and he's supposed to call me when he comes on duty this afternoon. There's never a dull moment. Well, that's not true; there are plenty of dull moments, but the non-dull moments are massive clusterfucks.

So for now, I'm refusing to be afraid in my own home, standing up for the First Amendment, and looking forward to going to the Bears game on Sunday when I get to see my boyfriend Louis Robitaille punch some people.

Aqui Esta el Titulo

Yeah, long time, no talk. That's because a.) I've been busy and b.) I have nothing to write about. Most of the things going on in my life aren't really blog-worthy or blog-appropriate.

The receptionist came back today after being off since September 19 for foot surgery (for once I'm living by the axiom "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all"), so hopefully work will go a little smoother and my hair will start falling out a little less. BUT, one of my coworkers messaged me on MySpace and said she (the receptionist) is taking Wednesday off. Serenity now...

If you haven't already, head on over to Rusty's blog to check out her two new additions. I hate cats, but these guys are adorable!

School is coming along. I've handed in and gotten back all the papers for the on-site class, so now all I have to do is an online final the week of December 3rd or somewhere around there. I have 28 1/2 pages done on my big-ass paper, and that's without proofreading anything (I can bs an extra page or so during the proofread) and without adding page numbers.

Now that I'm in school, I've noticed I'm much less anal about the house. For example, I usually have to have all the clocks correct to the second (insane, I know) and now they're all off. Although now that I just wrote that, it's starting to bug me...

I'm not voting tomorrow. Feel free to call me a hypocrite or, if you're hot, come spank me.

It's getting to be SAD time again. I can't stand non-daylight saving time.

As far as the holidays go, Halloween was pretty uneventful for me. It's my second favorite holiday, but I wasn't really feeling it this year. I don't have any big plans for Thanksgiving; dinner this year will just be me and my parents because of some drama in the extended family. This will make some people want to bludgeon me to death, but I'm almost finished with my Christmas shopping...I usually have it all done in the summer though. New Year's eve and day are going to be, as always, spent on the couch watching the Twilight Zone marathon. Unfortunately New Year's Eve is on a weekday this year, but I took the afternoon off so I didn't have to miss much of my precious TZ. Wow, I'm lame.

Speaking of Halloween, the Simpsons Treehouse of Horror was on last night. Not the best one ever, but Heck House was definitely the best of the three, although I'm biased because of my love of Flanders. My all-time favorite vignettes are The Raven (even though they didn't do my favorite line--"'Prophet!' said I, 'thing of evil — prophet still, if bird or devil!'") and the Shinning. The Office hasn't really been doing it for me too much this season. Hopefully the writer's strike won't affect everyone's shows too much.

The Raven:

Weekend Update

Friday night and Saturday were spent sitting in class wondering if anyone has ever actually died of boredom, but the great news is that was my last in-person class till next semester! Woot! Now all I have to do is a methodology section for a theoretical study that we're making up (or, as I was told in an e-mail at which I laughed out loud, we can actually do) and then take an online final during finals week. Right now I have a 93% and the final is pretty much a guaranteed 100%, so I'm not too worried about the methodology section. Plus, I have a massive advantage because as a psych major I actually conducted research and wrote a research report. It seemed like a lot of people in my class had never heard of some of the stuff we were learning before.

Now, for my big announcement: I am finished with my rough draft of my 30 page paper for my online class. Ok, I have 27 pages written, but I can easily bullshit 3 double-spaced pages in Arial. I was a little concerned about making this paper Arial when all my other ones were in Times, but the only specifications he gave were that it had to be 12-point or less, so fuck it. I want to tie up everyone I know and make them read this damn thing because it took me so freaking long to write it. So far Rusty wants to read it (I give her two pages before she stops and I'm taking bets) and the state representative I interviewed wants to read it too; I'll send it to him, but I highly doubt he will.

I've heard some very scary things about the class I'm taking next semester. One person even heard of someone who failed, and when you fail a grad course, guess what? There's $1,000 down the drain. Another girl said it wasn't bad, but I of course choose to believe the people who said it was. Luckily, some of the people I got to know in class are taking it with me next semester, so I won't be going it alone.

I went for a nice long drive today. The weather was gorgeous and the leaves are starting to turn. I found two things to add to my "only in York County" file. The first was when we were detoured onto a one-lane dirt road. I had to pull off the road for 20 times for cars coming in the other direction. The other thing was a sign announcing a shooting competition at the local fire hall. I ended up at Otter Creek; if you're a Live fan you've probably heard of it.

I also went running/walking again. I should do that more often, but laziness usually takes over. Plus, by the time I get home in the late fall/winter, it's only light for about 20 minutes.

That's pretty much all I did today besides laundry and going to get gas. I wasted a lot of time today, but I'm totally fine with that.

I loved the Office on Thursday night! I haven't watched it a second time tonight, but I liked the balance of humor and heart. Jim talking to Dwight was great, and of course the kiss was great. I also loved Darryl and Kelly, the whoever/whomever conversation and Michael telling Toby (paraphrasing), "No one has ever asked you anything, ever." Poor Toby!

Something very weird is going on: I'm happy. I'm not sure what's going on, but I feel pretty weird right now. I'm even listening to bad music...mid-90s top 40 bad. I'm just trying to make the most of things because, as Bjork said, there's more to life than this. We'll see how long it lasts.

My brain is broken; time for bed!

Misc.

I was trying to describe to my dad why the only sport I like to watch is hockey, and it mostly had to do with the fact that the players don't have egos. I found these quotes in a 2000 article from Slate that summed it up nicely.

"It is straightforward and unpretentious. Hockey players, all sportswriters seem to agree, are the nicest bunch of guys in professional sports—accessible, courteous, refreshingly modest, if not terribly interesting. Canadian, in other words."

and

"Crass commercialism is destroying the NBA; the final periods of the Stanley Cup finals didn't even have commercials, because the NHL doesn't allow TV timeouts during overtime. Lazy crybabies abound in baseball; the Stars' goalie tried to blame prescription drugs he was taking for his sub-par performance in the first game, and he was roundly denounced—by his own teammates. Sanctimonious God-squadders, when they're not under indictment, are ruining the NFL; I have never heard an NHL player thank God for his help putting the puck in the net."

I have a very bad cough right now and I'm short of breath. I feel like a 400-lb. man is sitting on my chest and I took a 3-hour nap this afternoon. So much for getting schoolwork done! Although I guess I can't complain, because I did write my daily paragraph...never mind the fact that I haven't written anything in days. BUT, the great thing is that I don't have to write anything new till October 22nd. Everything I have due before that is finished!

Chris talked me into getting a new printer/scanner/copier/fax. It was originally $400, but on sale and with rebates it came down to $150. It's much better than the printer I've had since high school where I had to clean the ink jets after every page. I'll have to find some pictures to scan.

I haven't talked about The Office yet! I'm a bit behind...I'm still working on my second viewing of the first episode. I liked the first episode a lot (Toby as Satan, Creed with the painkillers, fettuccine alfredo to carbo load, Jim and Pam!), and I liked the first half of the second episode. I'll have to get better at posting my thoughts while they're still fresh.

Liberry Stuf

The nice thing about taking an online class is that I can sit here and blog while I'm in class. Multi-tasking, baby. The on-site class, on the other hand, blows massive donkey balls. 6-9:45 on Friday night and 8-6 on Saturday. Thank Jebus it's only 3 weekends and 2 of them are finished. Grad school isn't hard, but it's an assload of work. My web class is a 3-page paper every week and then a paper of at least 30 pages by the end of the semester. I have about 13 pages of the big paper finished, but every time I sit down to work on it, I write a paragraph and then think, "I can't take this anymore!" I suppose if I write one paragraph per day I'll have it done by the end of the semester though. Next semester I have to take Cataloging and Classification, and it's on-site, so it'll be another 3 weekend dealie. 14 hours in a 24-hour span on learning to catalog? Kill me now. I'm only taking one class at a time from now on though.

One of my professors makes fun of undergrads a lot. I know I was an idiot when I was an undergrad (I still am), but I don't think I was that immature.

Happy banned book week! Read a banned book this week: Animal Farm, the Bible, Call of the Wild, Lolita, The Lorax, Mein Kampf, Nineteen eighty-four, Tom Sawyer, Uncle Tom's Cabin...just to name a few. I'm reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Here is a list of the 100 most frequently challenged books from 1990-2000. I've only read about 13 of them, so I better get reading. Not that I feel the need to read The New Joy of Gay Sex (not that there's anything wrong with that) or What's Happening to My Body?

Stuff

Hi, everybody! (make sure you read that in a Dr. Nick voice.) I had my first online class tonight. It was pretty interesting; I like that format. For the next class I have to do an outline of my research paper that has to be at least 30 pages (gulp) and write a 3-5 paper on "Given the demographic changes in the United States, what will rural American look like in three years; what issues will it confront; and how will community libraries be affected?" I'm going to do my paper on public/school library combinations. I also have to finish my reading for my in-person class. We had to read 4 chapters, I've done 3; and 4 articles; I've done two. I'm a little overwhelmed, but I'm a Taurus. We put our heads down and plow through, which is the only way I was able to get through 3 chapters of that dry textbook. It's a dry as the Sahara (I was going to compare it to a part of an elderly woman's anatomy; be glad I spared you.)

I just realized that my work does match our contributions for our 401(k). Well, they match 50 cents on the dollar up to 6% and I contribute 8.5% because I want to retire by 50 (it could happen!). That was a pleasant surprise. And all this time I've been ranting about how my work doesn't match. Sorry, work.

That's it, I just had to get out of school mode for a little bit. I hope everyone is doing well.

Book Geek and Other Things

Yay for free and/or cheap books! I just got the Chronicles of Narnia box set ($27.65 retail price) from Ebay for about $13 and I got another free book ($24.95) from the LibraryThing early reviewers program. It's The Guardians by Ana Castillo. LibraryThing kicks ass! I paid about $25 for a lifetime membership and have received $50 worth of books so far! And the greatest part is that the membership fee would be worth it even without the free books.

I have been sick for a little over a week. I woke up with a cold last Sunday and I felt pretty decent by Tuesday, but I can't shake this hacky, phlegmy cough. I suppose it would go away faster if I didn't smoke so much. Monday was the worst day, but luckily I had taken the day off because I was having some maintenance done on my car, so all I had planned to do was sit on my ass and watch bad daytime TV. I used Zicam swabs on Sunday and Monday morning. I don't know if it helped or not, but it was a pretty short cold.

My online grad school starts two weeks from today and the in-person one starts in about a month. I'm a little nervous, mostly because I prefer not doing stuff over doing stuff. Everyone is telling me to kiss my free time good-bye, but I can't imagine it will be that time-consuming. I've never really had a hard time in school. I hardly did any work in high school. In college I did more, but I was rarely stressed about the amount I had to do. I think sometimes people like to exaggerate their war stories, but my parents are the only people I've talked to who didn't give me horror stories. They like to nag and criticize though, so I know they would constantly be telling me how difficult it was going to be if that were the case. I guess I'll find out for myself.

Chris downloaded Counter-Strike: Condition Zero for me. First-person shooters are a great way to get your aggression out. Unfortunately I get a little addicted.

I repayed Chris's kindness for doing that by running his cell phone through the washer. It's so strange because I never check his pockets, but this time I actually did and apparently I missed his phone. We have equipment insurance, but it's a $50 deductible. I'm trying not to think of all the other things I could spend $50 on instead.

The other day on the way to work I saw a guy with a bumper sticker that said, "My other toy has tits." Eww. That bothered me and I'm most definitely not a feminist. Of course this guy was driving a massive SUV that barely fit in one lane of the highway. I wanted to walk up to him, knock on his window and say, "I'm sorry you have a small penis, sir."

Woot!

Guess what I got in the mail today?

Dear Ms. (ugly German last name that everyone pronounces incorrectly even though it's pronounced exactly as it's spelled):

It is a pleasure to inform you of your full admission to the Master of Science in Library Science/Harrisburg program at Clarion University of Pennsylvania.

Yay!!!

The Point of No Return

Wish me luck because tomorrow I'm mailing my grad school application. I wonder how long it'll take to hear back. When I applied for undergrad it was within a week, but I doubt it'll be as fast for this. I'm pretty sure I'll get in since it's just a PA State System of Higher Education school, it's not like it's Harvard, and my undergrad GPA was good (that sounds snobby but I did undergrad at a PSSHE school so I'm allowed to say that). I'm actually more worried about what comes after I get accepted. You know, the whole coming up with thousands of dollars and doing school work thing.

I just can't stand the fact that I'm spending so much time at the front desk at work. I didn't do all I did in school to be a receptionist. It's time for a change.

Less Talk, More Action

Ok, I've finally decided. I'm going to go for my MS in Library Science at Clarion University. I chose Clarion because MSLS programs are few and far between. The only schools in PA are Clarion, Drexel, and Pitt, none of which are within driving distance. Drexel's program isn't what I want and Pitt doesn't have an online program. The University of Maryland also has a program, and it's within driving distance from York (which doesn't help as I'm working in Harrisburg), but the school itself is more expensive and it'll be even more since I'm out of state. Clarion has an online program and a satellite campus in Harrisburg.

I think I might start in the spring of '08. I could do fall '07 but I have to look into grants and loans and taking the GRE if I need to (and thankfully I don't think I do). I don't have the first clue about how to pay for school since my parents paid for my undergrad, for which I am eternally thankful. I'm not looking forward to having student loans, but I only have about $200 on my credit cards and the only other debt I have is an interest-free car loan from my dad. When I go to work tomorrow I have to talk to my supervisor about the possibility of having evening classes and not being able to work at night. Obviously I have no idea what night my classes would be, but I'd rather take care of that now than have to panic because the class I need is only on a Thursday evening.

My goal is to do more research on the school and degree requirements by the middle of this month and to know what to do about the financial aspect and have my application ready to go by the end of this month, and if it's ready by then I might as well go for the soonest semester possible. The only possible roadblock is that if I want to do 100% online (which I would prefer), it's a cohort program, and I think it's full till '08, but that's where the research comes in. Wish me luck as I prepare to embark on my journey as a coffee- and cigarette-fueled grad student.