someone broke my face!

Hello AmeriFriends. I can't believe it's been well over a year since our time in the ATL. That's legitimately crazy.

I'm doing well. Riding my bike a lot. Theatre-ing. Livin' la vida loca. You know, that sort of thing.

I just did a play about zombies. It was great fun. Awesome cast and a really funny script. I got to play the leader of a San Francisco theatre collective that interviewed the survivors of a zombie attack in a small Texas town. And that theatre collective member portrayed the people from those interviews Laramie Project style. So I really got to play five characters. And *spoiler alert* the play ended with my dying screams. So, awesome.

Right after the play ended one of my students fractured my cheekbone. Ahh, the joys of being a behaviorist working with special needs students with severe behavior disorders. I'm ok though. They originally thought I may need to get a face plate put in, but it turns out it's not that bad. So great. Plus, two days after that happened my full time assistant started - so I'm not in those dangerous positions nearly as often anyway since he's taking over that stuff.

I have a boyfriend. We've been seeing each other for about a month now. He's super cool. He's getting his Master's of Social Welfare at Berkeley - with a focus in child welfare. He looks like Gael Garcia Bernal. And his name is Nicolaus. Yes, it happens. It's not that confusing, or nearly as hysterical as my roommate thinks it is.

It's almost Thanksgiving, and I'm off of work for the next five days. Super excited.

Oh hiiiiiiiii!

This post is in honor of my new, tiny computer. With a tiny camera on the top, which I used to video chat with Sterling just a few minutes ago. Video phone calls seemed so amazing and alien when I heard about them on some Disney tour when I was four years old, and now THEY EXIST. It's awesome, too bad no one predicted how shocked we would be by looking at ourselves while chatting (that's what I look like? right now? yikes).

I started my jobbbb two weeks ago. Only two days of training for this one (take note, Americorps). Aside from waking up way early and driving a lot it is really great so far. Also I have started to listen to books on CD which I am enjoying much more than I predicted. The kids at the school are all pretty nice/respectful. It is certainly different than what I have done/expected myself to be doing, but I can't help but really enjoy it. I lucked out getting the opportunity, so I am happy that it seems easy to be grateful for it.

I started classes again last week. Along with work it's going to be a stacked year. However if there is a time to fill up your life to the brim with stuff to do I suppose it is when you are young and unmarried and with no kids. It will all get done. I have to go into buckle down mode, and get as good at writing in a planner as I was for some of our service year.

Hope everyone else is doing well--let's keep each other posted.

Food is my life!

Wow! I haven't posted on this thing for quite some time but Erinn sent me a text and when I looked at it, it was too late to reply so I am just going to post something on here instead.

So, I am super busy right now. First, I am now working with the Real Food Challenge as a Regional Field Organizer, which basically means I help contact schools and get them interested in campaigning for better food at their school. I am also working on the audit program we have called the Real Food Calculator. I have been working really hard on it and now the Real Food Challenge is going to fly me to Denver in October to present on it at the AASHE (Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education) Conference. It is a great opportunity so I am really excited and a little nervous.

At the same time, I am also still working on all this stuff on my campus. I helped to form a committee to start a garden and I am currently auditing the school's food purchases. I also got ahold of some other colleges near mine and we are going to have a conference in September about food on our campuses. It is all really exciting. I even was interviewed by the local newspaper about the stuff that I have been doing (It won't be published until school starts again in September).

Anyway, I am really busy but it is a good busy. I am doing work that I really love and makes me feel like I am accomplishing something. Everything else is great! Carli and I have been married for 8 months already and we are very happy!

Everyone else should update with what is happening in their life. Also, if you haven't heard Tom was moved up to administration and Sadi was named his replacement as drum instructor at Inner Harbour. It is really great news for Sadi and he has made a bunch of positive changes in his life. We talked the other day and he sounded absolutely great, which was really exciting to hear. Just thought I would share that and you should definitely congratulate him and encourage him because I think he is filling a bit overwhelmed with the huge jump.

Miss you friends.

-Alex

i'm still here.

In two and a half weeks I'll have been living in California for one full year. Really? That can't be right. That doesn't feel right at all. Our AmeriCorps year was less than a full year, and yet it seems like it was so much longer. So much more full of moments. Highs and lows. It still feels like I just moved out here.

I think in my last post I wrote that I was eligible for two more levels of promotions - that they just didn't have the openings. I actually skipped those two levels and got promoted above all of that. So all of the people who were above me a couple of months ago I'm now in charge of in some aspects. I write their employee evaluations. I train them. I have to tell them what they're doing wrong and how they can do it better. That sort of thing. I'm now a Clinical Specialist - which basically means that I'm in charge of all things behavioral. I write the students' Behavioral Intervention Plans, I advise classroom staff on how to deal with behavioral challenges, I work on teaching the kids more positive behaviors. At Inner Harbour I was terrified of ever having to do a restraint or having to put hands on a child. Now I walk around with a walkie-talkie and any time a child is having serious behavioral problems I get called in to help. So any time there's a restraint on campus - I'm there. I take behavior data on students, data on how the staff are doing, I can drive one of those big white vans to field trips. I do all kinds of shit now.

I like it. There's definitely a lot of responsibility, sometimes I feel like I'm walking underwater and I just have to fake like I belong there. But it's working. I was hand picked for the position - so at least they believe in me. They told me this position normally only goes to someone with a degree in Applied Behavioral Analysis - or at the very least Psychology - but they still thought I'd be really good for it. So that's nice.

Some guy tried to mug me in San Francisco, and I talked him down and got away safely. When the school's director heard the story she said, "Oh yeah. You're perfect for this position."

Let's see. My friend just got attacked by a homeless guy in San Francisco this past weekend. It was her birthday. Right after her party. She was pretty drunk - so my roommate and I were walking her home. She wanted to stop to get something to eat. We were in Carl's Jr. at like 2:30 in the morning and this homeless guy just walks in, hits her really hard from behind, and leaves. My friend was really upset/scared, the police came and had him in custody, we had to ID him, we may have to testify in court. It was not a fun way to end her birthday. She was having so much fun at her party too.

I went out with this guy from Trinidad/the UK. I like him. He has a cool accent. We're going out again on Friday.

I like it out here in California, but I feel like I'm spread too thin - people wise. I have several diverse groups of friends, but the groups don't intermingle. I spend a little bit of time with each one, and am therefore kept from getting really close to any. I prefer to have a small but close group of friends - you guys were really good for that. I have a few friendships that go deep, but they're spread out amongst groups. It's not the same. I know that AmeriCorps style friendships can never be duplicated - so really I wish you guys could just all move out here.

July, july

Wow it took forever to get to July last year. This year it seems like I arrived at it in no time. I do miss sitting around with Bear and Tilly while we did summer planning, and I'm happy to say I'm not addicted to large iced coffees this summer, but in some ways I am nostalgic for last summer. Incorrectly nostalgic, of course, because at the time I was in super ohmygod I miss New Jersey mode, but nostalgic for everyone I guess. Also it is unbearably hot here this summer, so in a way it doesn't feel meteorogically different.

I think I may have talked to everyone individually about getting the job I wanted for the school year. The people seem really cool, especially the head librarian I'll be working under. It's also an amusingly different environment to work in than Inner Harbour. There is free lunch every day, which I am praying is better than IH. Although I wouldn't have traded in working with Wicasa for anything, I am happy to be working with high school kids. And also to not have to wear t-shirts to work every day, although my clothing hasn't evolved much from my winter bum look (just fewer layers of bummery now). I am looking forward to occasionally reading a young adult novel while doing schoolwork. But mostly doing schoolwork. I am cutting back my schedule but I'm sure it will still be a busy semester

And then there's the book. The only thing I can really be proud of right now is that I am keeping up on writing things down. It would have been easier if I had written things down continuously last year rather than doing it piecemeal by consulting e-mails I wrote and drawings and scribbles in my sketchpad and listing every service project, but slowly by surely I'm getting it down. I don't really think it's good. Maybe I write too late at night, but sometimes when I go back and look at it, I have major ehhh feelings about how I put things. Also I'm not sure of how much I can legally say in some cases (so far I am using real names but I assume at some point I will have to hit some 'replace all'...carefully. Dwigt?) And I haven't delved into things I have some shallow negative feelings towards. August. August will be the solid write-down, cake-bake last hurrah before crazytime school/work starts.

Like I said before, I miss y'all. Mostly I miss sitting on my deck and reading, and seeing different people depending on the time of day. Emily on weekend mornings, Nick on weekday evenings, Alex as we both talked on the phone at night. I am a weird person, and I hope that I'm not the only one who feels like they happily reunite with people who they missed, only to feel pangs about other people they left behind elsewhere.

All Things Ordinary

So! I made all those cupcakes and did all that schoolwork and then I made some MORE cupcakes for my sister's 17th birthday party. 17 is old. Especially when you are one of three sisters who are much older than the fourth sister. Sometimes I read that 17 year old blog and it makes me sad. High school is hard, and ugly. But she has good friends. (Like Americorps friends level good? Maybe...) It is weird living here and watching her grow up, since I was in college and Georgia for the past five years. Luckily she is still 5 inches shorter than me. If she grows those five inches by next May 17th I owe her 20 dollars.

On the topic of cupcakery and schoolery being over I have been plunged into an impressively soul-sucking fatigue. I don't wake up early, I sometimes fall asleep mid-day, and I go to bed by 12:30 almost every night. I know this because I rarely make it through the Law and Order SVU episode that comes on at 11:30. Last night the Yankees game that was rain-delayed preempted L&O and I had a quick panic. I don't like admitting that I am a creature of habit, but clearly...I am. I remember last year a few times I said to Nick "I just want to go home and watch Law and Order on a TV near my bed." I like making good on my weirdo desires from last year. But I don't cook enough.

I am looking to start that librarian related service group. Soon. Also I am looking for a summer job, possibly with test prep. This restaurant/bar near me is hiring (I have only been to the bar part) and that is tempting, seeing as they don't require experience and I've never had a tip-related job. But it would be hard to convince them that I know a lot about food I don't eat. I wonder how the statement "listen, I watch a lot of Top Chef" would go over.

I wonder if Jay still watches LOST. I do. And I am super nerdly excited for the finale. I introduced Brian to the show back when he was Salge, which is what friends called/call him and it will be nice to watch the end together. I would probably be upset if the last episode happened last year and I had to watch it on a computer, or with Jay (no offense Jay, if in some crazy way you have found this blog). The fact that the show will be over will be a blow, cushioned only by the Back Pockets performance live at the Raconteur in Metuchen. Billy remember when you said you would buy the french fries and beer? I am guessing that is not an option as you are required to be in Chapel Hill, NC the next day. Laaaaaaaame.

I guess that pretty much sums it up. I am going to do some leisure reading, which I miss doing in tandem with Nick. Happy Birthdays to all and to all a good night.

oh, life

I always feel like I need to update this site, but I get worried that I'll update too much. So then I put it off, and by the time I actually do update I realize that it's been months and that so much has happened. So here goes.

Erinn, in response to your song of the moment, I thought I would share the song/video that I just can't get enough of right now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WM1RChZk1EU

I'm officially done with the car now. After it was stolen and then abandoned a few blocks away - I decided that I'm over it, and that life will be better without that hassle. So I've been solely working the public transit system for a few months now. I need to sell it for parts or donate it to charity or something. But when my parents (who thought it was a smart idea to keep the title in a lock box in Indiana) mailed the title to me it got lost in the mail somewhere. That was back in January. So now I have to get a new title or something, and the registration is expired. I'm just ready to say goodbye to my car.

I got a promotion at work. So now I'm making a little bit more money. I'm still qualified for two more levels of promotions too - and they would have already bumped me up there if there were a position open. Cross your fingers for two steps up because then I would be making some real money. I still love the kids and people I work with. And I'm starting to get quite a few good stories. Not IH level stories, but more of the kind where I try to keep Jack from pooping on the floor.

I've been talking to this really cute boy. We were supposed to go out this weekend, but that got postponed until next weekend. So we'll see how that goes. I super like him a lot so far.

I have two cool roommates (the boy that was living here moved back to Philly and we replaced him with a really cool girl that actually hangs out with us). We all get along really well. So that's good. Even though I'm sleeping on an air mattress in the living room - I really like my living situation.

I miss you all terribly. I'm starting to get my feet firmly on the ground out here, but it would be much better if you were all out here with me. I hear that there's some sort of New Jersey reunion happening sometime soon. Draw a picture of me and set it down next to you so I can feel like I'm there.

My name is Nick. I'm happy that the sunny and warm weather is symbolic of my life in California right now (as were the cold and rainy winter months), and my favorite Sesame Street character is Grover. Go one.

Breakneck Speed

Is how I feel the semester is going as well as the name of this song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkMIxJrrz10

which I am currently like, sooo into.

Life is books and cupcakes and html and CSS and exercising to compensate for all the cupcakes and trying to soak up as much Vitamin D as humanly possible. The weather has been super-beautiful for the past few days so I true to save up reading assignments and then lay lay lay like a reptile in the sun (remember that lady at that service project where we ran out of things to do?) I don't cook enough, for all the complaining I did last year about the lack of a real kitchen. Baking isn't cooking.

I ran for president of the Rutgers Assoc. of Student (School) Librarians (they only have one S in their name though, which irritates me). And I did not get it. My best guess is that my speech about not worrying so much about speakers about jobs and the future and instead focusing on service and outreach was not what people wanted to hear, as evidenced by one person saying to the current president "We all really appreciate all the speakers you brought in". Oops. Anyway I've said all along that the people in almost every other type of librarianship are much chiller. So I'm going to try to start a Librarians For Good group that is service-oriented. Amazingly no other group has that name right now. Thank you, google. My plan is to seek out the other Americorps alum in my classes and hope that she'll be on board. Now I just need to think about things to do aside from book-themed cupcake-oriented bake sales to raise money and book drives and tutoring. Maybe that's enough for now.

I need a job for the summer.

I went for a run the other night and felt like I was struggling towards the end. Then Halo came on and I pictured doing karaoke to it with all y'all who are planning to visit in May (incl. Nick in spirit) and I got so distracted by it that I wasn't struggling as much. For real, it happened like that.

In that vein I still get lonely here. Too many friends all over the place sometimes. SF, Atlanta, Washington, wherever Emily is putting her very short roots down at the time, and from my past life Boston and Miami. If I lived in a less-connected time in history it would be worse. If I didn't have who I have here it would be much much worse. That being said I have failed to fully bond with library school people. I like a bunch of them, it's just not the same. Maybe my service group will help.

Do I say I miss everyone everytime I post? I think I might. What a nerd.

My name is Erinn, my favorite part of a park is the swings, and my goal today is to give a really great book talk. Go one.

Yes. I am well. a little intimidated by the future, but learning lots I swear. Eating meat sucks so I am going to continue vegetarianism. It worked so well for so long. I am getting pretty busy with different projects but am feeling good about life pursuits and ect. though my head feels a little cluttered. Spring came just on time.
My good thoughts to you.

Happy!!!

Friends,

I haven't posted anything on here for a long time but seeing all of your posts motivated me to give an update of my life. For my update, I decided to just describe what I do during the week because that is easiest. I am busier than I have ever been in my life, yet I still wish I had more time to do, well...more.

But first, let me respond to some posts:

Billy, it's okay if you don't answer. You are busy with bees or worms and they are more important for humanity so I understand. One day we will talk and it will be great.

Nick, you are correct that I would like that pillow fight. In fact, mine wouldn't be filled with feathers. Instead, I would buy one of those buckwheat pillows that are heavy so I could really destroy some people. Shoot, I meet even use a bar of soap like in Full Metal Jacket. Because if it is a fight, I am coming to win. By the way, if gay people really are responsible for killing the dinosaurs, thank god for gay people. The t-rex would not be a friendly pet that we could domesticate. I for one am glad there aren't any dinosaurs alive anymore.

Anyway, so here is my life:

Monday: 9-1 Class.
3-7 Mentoring for Mentoring Children of Promise. The kid I mentor in this program is pure on the go. He is actually mentoring me on how to use more energy faster. However, its good because he lives with his grandparents and he needs to release his energy. Last week we went bowling and he is only 8 and almost always throws himself with the ball.

Tuesday: 9-1 Class.
3-7 Mentoring for Big Brothers Big Sisters. The kid I mentor in this program has the most wonderful imagination ever. He often says things to me without taking a breath such as, "I wonder if scientists could make a dog that is as tall as I am and twice as long as I am tall so that if I am ever in the woods and a bear attacks I can sick the dog on the bear and it will protect me long enough so that I can go get a stick and beat the bear down." So, I have been encouraging him to read because I think he could be a terrific writer someday. Anyway, he is awesome.

Wednesday: 9-1 Class.
2-5 Lab Class.

Thursday: 9-1 Class.
2-7 Working at my new job at Pine Meadows Farm...more on this later.

Friday: 9-1 Class.
1-5 Whatever I feel like, which is usually reading food books and learning to cook stuff. Lately, I have cooked Thai curry (turned out delicious), bread (turned out dense), ice cream (turned out amazing!!!), potato pancakes (turned out pretty good), and cookies (turned out mmmm....).
5-9 Volunteering at the Crosswalk Teen Homeless Shelter, which is pretty awesome. I don't interact with the kids very much but I do feel of some value. We provide kids with a place to go and that is a good feeling.

Saturday: 9-6 Working at Pine Meadows Farm for P.E.A.C.H. Local. This is an awesome job. I have told some of you some about it, but I am so happy to work at it. Not only do I get to bike 5 miles to the job in some awesome country hills, but the people are awesome. We have a potluck for lunch on Saturday's and it is delicious. This Saturday, kids from the juvenile justice system are coming out and I get to put them to work...(Rule 1, Don't step on the garden beds...sound familiar Billy) Anyway, I love it. Our website is peachlocal.com if you want to look.
7-10: Berhe my friend from Eritrea comes over and has dinner that Carli cooks while I am at work. He was a refugee who arrived in the US on November 29, 2009. He was in Ethiopia for 6 years after fleeing his home country. I met his friends at the bus stop and told them if they ever needed help to call me. Well Berhe called and said he wanted help with getting a job and his GED. The first time we met he said to me after I asked him if he wanted to get started on studying for the GED, "No, today we talk and we know each other. So that we may be friends for life." Pretty awesome person. I am trying to help him get into school and things are looking pretty good. He needs to improve his English though. It is getting there.

Sunday: Sleep until noon at least. And do homework the rest of the day. Unless, I decide to go snowboarding like last weekend or find something else fun to do.

That is what I have been up to lately. I am really pressing to get through school. This summer I am going to just work and learn to eat better locally. Plus, I am going to study for the LSAT so that I can maybe go to law school. I am hoping to make some changes in food law. Plus, currently I am working on a big project that I am hoping will turn into something. I really hope I can do something to help other people.

Being married has been great. Things are pretty much the same as before we were married so that is a good thing. We are very happy.

Anyway, that's my update. I am very happy right now and things couldn't be better. I love you all and miss you. Hope everything is well and call me anytime. I like to hear from you guys.

-Alex

Dress for the job you miss, not the one you had

Lately the age range of how I dress has nose-dived. In college I wore heels to class sometimes. Leftovers from my summertime office job. Blouses. Last year I had a hard time figuring out what to wear in the two days a week we didn't have t wear t-shirts. I think I wore the same shirt to taco mac for weeks in a row. (But to be honest it doesn't get much more awesome than a shirt with whale sharks on it. In grad school I wear t-shirts. Jeans. At home I get snowbound and wear running tights and sweatshirts. I wear tights and long skirts and fall asleep in them and wake up warm and confused. I put on a pair of jeans today for the first time since Tuesday. I just can't bring myself to wear nice clothes when the weather is awful and I'm not working. Remember when no one wore skinny jeans? Now I think about how much it would suck to have to wear jeans that go outside my boots when it's super slushy. The water would start on the cuff and travel upwards like a science experiment. Although skinny jeans tucked into boots didn't really do me any good two weeks ago when I got off the bus for school and stepped into an ankle-deep puddle with both feet. Before six hours of class. Because it's Rutgers and a quadrillion people go there no one laughed at me. They just ignored it. Weird.

I was doing great, concentration-wise for the first weeks of school. Now that I am getting deep into cupcake-plannery I feel kind of like Kenny.

S. Dodson: What's cooking in the kitchen, what's cooking in the kitchen, what's cooking in the kitchenn that rhymes with sigh?

Kenny: CAKE!

But replace that with--

Professor: What's an example of instantiation, what's an example of instantiation, what's an example of instantiationnnn in a library or knowledge center?

Me: FROSTING!

Kenny did the catchier version.

This picture has nothing to do with anything, except for the fact that I wanted to let everyone know that I still make the sad lobster face. Even at happy occasions.

sometimes i wish i were a mad hot krumper

Well things have changed since my last post. I moved out of the cat lady's house like 2 days after I wrote all of that (woohoo!). I moved into a cool little apartment in Oakland - it's kind of small and old but in an ultra-bohemian way. I live in the living room on my air mattress behind the couch. Not ideal, but it's much cheaper that way. I have 2 roommates who are actually around my age - one guy and one girl. The girl and I are pretty good friends - we have a lot of similar tastes in music and tv shows and such. The guy we don't see much. He tends to keep to himself. I like it here.

I'm still flat-ass broke. I absolutely love my job - I still don't make enough to live on. They moved me to an autism specific room working with little kids (3-10). Much busier than I was before, but I love it there and that room reeeeeeeeealy likes me. So that's good.

My car is still slowly dying. One day I woke up to find a flat tire. I put the spare on and took it to a tire place to get it patched right after work (all the while being super proud of myself for my quick work to get it fixed). They told me that the tire was fine, but the rim was damaged. So I had to go to a junkyard to get a new rim. When I went to another tire place to have the tire put on the new rim - they told me the tire was damaged beyond repair. So then I had to take my car to a used tire place and get TWO of the tires replaced. Awesome. And now my brakes are grinding and the belt is still squealing and we'll see how long this lasts.

I finished the last play. People loved me - so that's good. I was told by various people that I was perfect, that I stole the show, and that I had perfect comedic timing. Plus I got to wear huge nerd glasses - so it was all good. The next show I'm auditioning for is a musical and I haven't been working on my audition piece and the audition is saturday. Ugh. I'd better get on that.

Oh yeah. I went out with this guy a couple of times. He was cool, but I didn't really see anything going long term. He, however, seems to feel differently. After our first date he told me that he wanted me to be his boyfriend - which - I thought was a little fast. At the end of the second date he told me that he was in love with me. And I said nothing back. He now wants to plan a weekend away together. He has also told me that he's willing to give up girls completely for me (he's bisexual). I've never thought of myself as commitment-phobic before, but this all kind of freaks me out. It may, however, have less to do with the commitment aspect of it and more to do with the fact that I don't really like him like that.

On Valentine's Day I told that boy that I already had plans with my roommate and some friends (all true) so I didn't have to see him. Instead, I went with my roommate and a couple of friends into San Francisco for a several-thousand-person pillow fight. People gathered in front of the Ferry building (pillows in tow), and when the clock struck 6 everyone went crazy. People were beating the shit out of each other and it was all in good fun. I feel like Alex really would have enjoyed this. There were feathers everywhere - about 3 inches high on the ground and in the streets, and constantly floating in the sky like snow. We stayed for the first 3 hours of the pillow fight and it was still going strong when we left.

Poetry speaks to me

When we might ask did we begin to share that existence

What have we overlooked

Nostalgia is another name for one's sense of loss at the thought
that one has sadly gone along happily overlooking some
thing, who knows what

Perhaps there were three things, no one of which made sense
of the other two

A sandwich, a wallet a giraffe

Logic tends to force similarities but that's not what we mean
by 'sharing existence'

-Lyn Hejinian

Oh . . . hi

Oh my goodness,

I'm glad I read all those posts even though I am supposed to be book critiquing. The critique can wait, not sure my online teacher really reads anything I write but . . . not gutsy enough to test that theory out.

Nick! Ah! Sadi would tell you to cover your whole body in Turmeric (which would get rid of the cat pee smell), all I can say is I know things will turn around. You're too cool.

Emily! Ah! Raise chickens and sell their eggs. Don't tell my vegan friends I said that.

p.s. - an anarchist told me I'm a beegan because I eat honey. Have I already blogged about that?

Georgia has been weird but good and sad but happy and horrible and beautiful all at the same time and that's been exhausting.

Farming still, which makes me more happy than I can explain and! and! Mama Judith from love is love farm might be starting an organic garden consulting/building business and she needs a lead shoveler.

Friday I take a bee keeping class. I'm torn between whom I love more, bees or worms.

or myself.

The band is still happening. We reminisced the other night about Nicks performance and How! Cool! That! Was!

Emily Kempf swore in this weeks paper. Check it out.

http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/gyrobase/the_back_pockets_put_juvenilia_on_blast/Content?oid=1372517

Sterling's Mom took that picture. Thanks Mrs. Morris.

Sterling and I acted very gross towards each other for awhile, now we're being polite and not gross. Much better this way, if not exactly following the plan we had in our heads August 7th.

Alex always calls me and I'm total poop about calling him back. Total poop. Sorry Alex.

Terri's new AmeriCorps children claim she is not a vegetarian. She claims she is. I'm way more scared of Terri, Terri wins.

Too long. Too long. For reals, I miss y'all too much sometimes. I started wearing a name tag everyday because I wasn't talking to anyone and it helped. I also have a new moustache that is driving no ladies or boys crazy. But it's a nice compliment to my rat tail.

My name is Billy and I feel oddly hopeful. My goal is to remember how amazing I felt working with everyone last year. I don't remember what else to say.

oh! I'm having a slumber party with Lauren Rench on Friday in Athens. We will stay busy as to not cause her soul a slow and painful death. I wish I could remember exactly what she said.

Academia

Emily...in case you make good on your thoughts of abdicating from vegetarianism, fear not. Terri has decided to go veg. I've been corresponding via facebook about it. She's really into it. It's a great contrast to remembering her consider ordering tofu on her Mellow Mushroom pizza last year and instead going with three kinds of meat.

Also in contrast to being underemployed (as I was for the past several months) I am now fully un. My schedule changes for school didn't work for them. Or the changes they proposed didn't work for me. One of us didn't dump the other. We just broke up. It's pretty insane how much of an impact it's had on me. Aside from the occasional money freakout, I suddenly find myself hungry again after months of feeling like I had no appetite when I came home from work. My school work has picked up a lot in the past week and instead of having breakdowns about when I would be able to do it all, I make myself schedules in my head. And I stick to them. Nothing's perfect, and eventually I'd like another job, but my old one was starting to be a bad scene for me, mood-wise. Although I do miss some of the kindergarteners.

The snow here is deep. Cooper has a look of pure misery world on her face when I take her outside to do her business. My town is bad at plowing. But people are pretty good at driving in it. There are big snowmen all over the place. I wish everyone was here so we could sled together. Now that we've had a proper storm I'm ready for it to be warm again. I'm sick of blow-drying my hair.

I have an Americorps alum in one of my classes. She has dyed-gray hair, huge glasses, and often wears accessories that have bones and skulls on them. I have another girl in one of my classes who never stops talking and it makes me want to die a little every time she opens her mouth. Naturally she is in my favorite class, Materials for Young Adults. We read Twilight in March. So far I've been able to read the books in public, but that one will be done solely in the privacy of my own home. On that note, I need to go to a different library to pick up one of the books for this week. It's about a boy in a juvenile detention center. My professor said to expect that it will take a while to read because it's pretty gritty/disturbing. I think about the things that Alex talked to Neeeedra about last year and I wonder if I'm more prepared for this book than others might be.

I like school. I like being in a busy college town/city twice a week. The people in the program are all pretty nice and open. No true blue A-Corps level friends though. I'm starting to feel like that will be impossible. I won't build a bridge for several months with my fellow student librarians. But on the upside I don't have to play drums with them either. I feel like there are probably some great trivia people in the mix, but who knows how to find them?

Please write things on this, friends.

quickie

playing the dance.

looking for a new car (yikes art car).

started volunteering 2-3x per week at the bike coop in toledo... love love love it.. this place has saved my life here. and im learning so much and am not bored when im there

thinking about donating eggs to buy a new car... oh thats an idea nick. sperm donation... probly would make you pocket change in relation to what it costs to live in sf...

hopefully im going to start serving at olive garden in the afternoons.. soup salad and bread stix anyone

interviewed for a job in MN leading sea kayaking trips for "at risk" youth with Outward bound this summer..

may potentially not be a vegetarian in the near future.. wow

get bored in town here. kinda making shit happen

still looking to SF in the fall if I can save enough money.. aka egg donation :/?

miss my IH family.

Snippet

It is

just so sad so creepy so beautiful.

Bless it. We have so little time

to learn, so much... The river

courses dirty and deep. Cover the lettuce.

Call it a night. O soul. Flow on. Instead.
-C.D. Wright