well, except for me and a few others. I'm the only master's degree evaluator here today, but I have a feeling the traffic will be slow. Very few people are even here in the office.

I'm looking forward to sleeping in this weekend! I'm not sure what all is going on. There was a plan to go to Ren Fest on Friday and I'm not quite sure if that is on or not. It looks like sillysarasue has taken pity on me, so I'll be going to her house tomorrow afternoon. I am going to make squash casserole, using a simple recipe from Paula Deen. That woman does love her butter, so I'm sure it'll be tasty. I hope so.

I have to stop at HEB after work. Oh lord, let me not kill anyone at HEB tonight, please? I have to get sour cream, and since I'm going into the war zone anyway, I'm going to buy myself a small pumpkin pie to have for breakfast in the morning. Hush.

Not sure what other things will be happening over the weekend, although I'd like some weekend fun times with my friends, so if you're in town and want some weekend fun times, let me know. I know there are movies opening up and other stuff. But I will not go shopping!

I've been doing a lot of reading the last 6 weeks. Not sure if I'll make it to 50, but I'm trying. I just finished one book that was 800 pages, that should almost count for double! Anyway, here's what I've been reading the last few months, in random order:

30. Quatrain by Sharon Shinn. This is Sharon's first short story collection. Not really short stories, rather there are 4 new novellas set in 4 of her familiar worlds, including an novella from the world of Heart of Gold, a Samaria novella, a novella from the world of Summers at Castle Auburn and A Twelve House novella. Of the 4, my favorite by far was Blood set in the world of Heart of Gold. It's the story of a young Gulden man (the Gulden are a rather patriarchal society) who moves to the city with his adopted family and goes in search of his birth mother, who abandoned him to an abusive father and ran off with his infant sister. Kerk is from a society where the men are allowed to abuse their women without real danger of punishment. He is aided in his search by a wealthy Indigo woman (the indigo people are matriarchal). He finds what he is looking for, but also not what he is looking for. This novella could easily be expanded into a novel and continue the story. I have no idea if Sharon has any plans to do so, however. All 4 stories in this collection were easy to read - I got through this book very quickly.

31. Firebirds Soaring, ed. by Sharyn November. Another fine anthology of speculative short YA fiction. There was only 1 story I just couldn't get into and didn't try, but I quite liked this book very much. I think my favorite story was Bonechewer's Legacy by Clare Bell. If you like well-written speculative short fiction, you can't go wrong with this book.

32. Blood Promise by Richelle Mead. The 4th in the Vampire Academy books. Rose has left St. Vladimir's Academy to make good on a promise to her lover, Dmitri: to kill him after he is turned Strigoi during a recent attack on the academy. Her hunt takes her to Russia, where she finds Dmitri's family, hoping to find him. She does find him, but what she finds isn't necessarily what she was looking for, and the question remains: can she make good on her promise? I don't want to say too much except that I overall enjoyed this book. I find Rose annoying at times because she has a pathological inability to think before leaping, and for often over-estimating her own abilities. After a while, I kind of get tired of that. But she may have learned a thing or two while in Russia. I did foresee the ending with about 75 pages left, and I think it was the only ending that allowed for the series to continue into another book (due out next year). Still, this is overall a very good YA series, if you like that kind of thing (and I do).

33. Storm Front by Jim Butcher. I bought this last February at ConDFW, and I figured it was time I give it a try. This is the first Harry Dresden novel, and we are introduced to Harry, a barely-making it wizard who lives in modern-day Chicago. For the right price, he will find things, and he works with the police to help solve crime. He also has some serious bad luck with the wizard's council, because he once killed another wizard (albeit in self-defense, which is why he wasn't killed outright at the time). He's been asked by the police to help solve a series of gruesome (and clearly magical) murders, but the only way he may be able to do this is by recreating the black magic used (which is illegal and would allow the wizard's council to kill him). Doesn't help that he's being followed around by an executioner itchy to take him out. This was a fun, light read, and I'll pick up at least one or two more in the series.

34 and 35. A Stir of Bones and Spirits that Walk in the Shadows both Nina Kiriki Hoffman. Both are YA short novels, and I'm still trying to puzzle out if I liked them or not.

36. and 37. Storm Glass and Sea Glass by Maria Snyder. I was really excited to see these books, the first two of a new trilogy by Snyder set in the same world as the books of Poison Study. The main character in these two books is Opal, who has glass magic, the only glass magician in the world. She is able to craft small glass animals and infuse them with magic so that magicians can communicate from afar via her creations. This makes her very useful to the Academy. I don't want to say too much about these books since they are still new, except to say this: by the end of Sea Glass I was getting pretty tired of Opal for the main reason that she was just a little too passive for my taste, and kept finding herself kidnapped over and over and over by a set of outlaws determined to steal her magic from her - because it turns out she's far more powerful than anyone expected. Her constant frustrations with things being done to her, and the rules being put on her by the Master Magicians, and her whining about it, but not doing anything about got on my nerves. But she does manage to redeem herself near the end of Sea Glass, and overall I like Snyder's world, and her writing style kept me engaged in the story, so I'm willing to give the 3rd book in the series a try when it comes out.

38. Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin. 800 pages of bigger than life feudal fantasy. Most people I know are pretty familiar with this book and the subsequent books in the series. It took me about 200 pages to get into the book but when you're building a complex world with so many characters, that's kind of needed. As I suppose is the 40 page appendix, mostly lineages of the primary houses. I think the story of this is pretty straightforward: the king's Hand (his closest advisor) has been killed, so he goes to his best friend Ned Stark (and brother in law of the recently deceased Hand) and makes him the Hand. Lots of spoiled bratty royal people doing stupid spoiled royal shit later, and at the end, the king has died, is Hand is disposed of, and the book ends with the start of a war between the two major factions (the Starks and the Lannisters, the family of the widowed Queen). I really get tired of reading about spoiled rotten royals with no common sense and bad tempers doing stupid immature shit, and this is especially evident with Prince Joff and Sansa, the daughter of the Hand. Actually, quite a few of the royals were portrayed rather one dimensionally. Martin is rather sympathetic in his treatment of Ned Stark. Sansa comes to some common sense way too late, and she had opportunity very early on to see how she was being manipulated and she chose not to. I rather liked her sister Arya, her brothers Robb and Jon Snow (Ned Stark's bastard son), and her mother Catelyn. I also rather liked Tyrion Lannister, the dwarf brother to Queen Cersei (who along with her twin brother Jaime is a royal, if you'll pardon the pun, pain in the ass).

I'm willing to find a used copy of the second book in this series and give it a go, at least for a bit. But despite so many people telling me how wonderful this series is, if some of these characters don't grow up and stop being so one-dimensional, I'll stop reading.

I'm losing track of the days right now, because I have to get prepared for the last week of classes, which will require a lot of overtime for me. And I'm pretty ready in terms of learning what I need to know, but I would feel a little more comfortable with some low stress "practice" of students turning in their theses/reports (one did yesterday, and I realized last night I left out a part of the check in process, which I was able to complete this morning - I just need to do a bunch of these to get the process down).

So word on the street is that it's Friday. I was awake until 2 last night (and had really odd dreams that kept waking me up) and of course the alarm went off at 6. No amount of Friday love (which there is in abundance around here) can deny the fact that I got around 4 hours of sleep last night.

It's also the Friday before Thanksgiving. It snuck up on me, because I've been looking past Thanksgiving to what's coming after, and suddenly oh look, I'm only working 2.5 days next week (because Tuesday is my appt at St. David Breast Center for another ultrasound on my right breast). Because of the way my office is situated (it's kind of a glorified cubicle although it does have actual walls, just no door) I hear a lot of conversation that takes place all around me, and people are talking today about their plans for next week.

Not that I have any particular reason to look forward to the holiday itself, but I do look forward to a couple of days off, esp before we get slammed the week after with hundreds and hundreds of students trying to beat the Friday Dec. 4 deadline to turn in their theses/reports (and if they blow the deadline, they don't graduate, we don't accept any late submissions).

I haven't had any time off since last March and normally I take vacation in the summer (which I didn't this year for obvious reasons). Which means right now I'm worn out. Students, staff and faculty all get worn out this time of the semester anyway, but not having had any recharge time for most of this year, coupled with all the stress esp since May, I'm pretty tired. Happily after Thanksgiving I only work not quite 3 weeks, then I'll be off for a little over 2 weeks. And none too soon.

I feel like such a scrooge right now, but I find myself disgusted at all the forced holiday merriment evident on television, in the stores, everywhere I go. I don't mean to be such a scrooge, I'm just not feeling it right now.

The cold front moved in yesterday (without bringing me a drop of rain, thank you very much to everyone who so kindly told me of all the lovely rain they got - I never liked any of you!). Last night was wonderfully chilly. Because the weather has really dried out, I was able to straighten my hair, and several folks at work have been commenting on it - for one thing, you can see how long it really it when it's straightened (it's to the top of my hips).

Enjoying some quiet time at work before we get slammed. I expect next week the traffic will pick up (since Friday is a deadline day for students applying for graduation). But the week after, the final week of classes we will be slammed. Friday the 4th is the last day for everything to be turned in, which means we're going to have very high traffic from students turning in reports/theses. And if we haven't already checked their formatting, we have to sit with the students and do that. I'm told as the week progresses, the traffic will pick up, so probably W-F of that week I'll be working O/T.

Next week is Thanksgiving. I'm feeling very blah about the holidays right now, and the hammering of holiday songs/decorations/shopping/Hallmark family moments we're seeing in the stores and on television isn't helping. So many of my friends take off, and the whole Hallmark family get-together is never in my cards. I don't want to go visit my family, for reasons already stated, but I wish people didn't travel out of town (and the ones who are left, if you have a single friend, see if they've got plans, don't just assume they do, because it's a pretty shitty feeling sitting home alone on Thanksgiving).

I can't go anywhere this year - mostly because of finances. I really wanted to go to NYC and get a hotel room, and see the parade and go shopping, but my almost-unemployment (and a month of half time employment) took care of that. Also, my coworker is taking off the day before Thanksgiving, which means I have to be here that day (one of us needs to be here each working day as much as possible, since we're the only two people who work with Master's students currently, although next spring we'll be cross-training the doctoral degree evaluator).

I am taking 2 days of vacation in December adding on to our holiday, which will give me 2 weeks and a day of holiday. Not quite my 3.5 weeks I had last December, but still pretty good.

Because I canceled my vacation this past summer, I have an abundance of vacation hours, and I accrue at a pretty healthy rate (15 hours a month), so even if I'm conservative with my vacationing, by next summer I should have around 5-6 weeks of vacation stored up. There are some things I'd like to do: I'd love to go to Wiscon, I'm thinking NASFiC, but mostly I want to do a real vacation, something that requires traveling on a plane across multiple time zones, with no real agenda in mind. Shoot, I'd like to do something that requires a passport, that would take me out of North America. It's all very early meanderings in my brain, but I want a real vacation next year. The last time I took a "real" vacation (that wasn't for going to WorldCon or some other event-oriented travel) was 4.5 years ago, when I went to Seattle for 10 days.

Next Tuesday I go in to St. David's Breast Center for a 6 month follow-up ultrasound on my right breast. I'm hoping the result is the same as last time - that the tiny lump is a) still tiny and hasn't grown and b) still considered benign. That would be alright by me.

Meanwhile, tonight some folks will be feteing kevinblanchard before he takes off for the east coast for who knows how long. Should be a fun evening.

Now, if only El Nino would deliver a lot more rain to me!

I wasn't sure if I was going to go to Ren Fest yesterday, but I woke up all on my own yesterday at 6am (because I don't get enough waking up at 6am M-F), and couldn't fall back asleep, so I just said fuck it and got up. When I got on the road, a little after 7, it was overcast at my place. By the time I got to 183 and 35, it was seriously foggy. As in, virtually no visibility. To the point that even slowing down, I missed the 290 exit because I didn't see it until I was past it, even knowing it was coming up.

Okay, turned around got onto 290, but the fog, my god it was heavy! Luckily people were driving slowly and sanely (for once) but it took an hour to get out of Travis county, and that should only have been a 20 minute drive. It's interesting how nothing looks familiar when it's all covered in fog.

By the time I crossed into Bastrop County, I was out of the fog and the drive was pretty smooth. Someone had suggested I take 105 from Brenham all the way to Navasota - and I won't do that again! Parts of 105 are being expanded, so down to 2 (rough lanes). And when I got to Navasota, I had to stop and wait for a marching band to walk down the middle of 105 (which at that point is basically main street). Once the band marched past, and I made my merry way, I did see a guy pulling a trailer of cattle into a steakhouse parking lot (I cannot make this up). There was a livestock auction in the building behind the steakhouse, but some part of me of course went to the whoa, they must have really fresh steak!

Eventually got to ren fest, and it was fun. It was hot, sunny and very crowded. I saw some shows I hadn't seen a few weeks before, including the jousts, the Highland Games was actually a lot of fun to watch, saw some musical acts, dancing, that kind of thing. Just roamed around all day. I didn't spend much money, though.

Getting out was ridiculous. They need some method for getting people out of the parking lot, because coming from both aisles, folks were just ramming their way into the street, which where I was made it not move at all. I sat in the same spot for 30 minutes.

So by the time I got on the road (and yes, I took 105 to 6 to 290, a much easier drive!) it was about 7:30 when I got to Brenham, so I stopped at a steakhouse for dinner. They were really crowded, and it was about 8:30 by the time I could do some earnest driving. But I made it home from there in good time, got home at 10.

This is 3 out of the last 4 weekends I've gone road tripping. No more for a while! I hate driving, and I've put more miles on my car the last month than I normally do in 3 months.

So I was good and tired when I got home. Washed the grime of ren fest off me, and fell asleep around midnight. Only to be awakened around 3:30. It seems some douchebag left their puppy/small dog outside on their balcony (it's unclear to me if the douchebag was actually home of not), but said dog barked for over an hour, and the sound echoed off every building. Even with all my windows closed, there was no sleep because of the barking dog. Eventually the dog stopped barking and I fell back asleep, but it wasn't quality - there were dreams of car crashes, and other things that left me feeling unrested and stressed and tired when I eventually got up.

I'll be going home shortly and want to just chill. I need to do some minor grocery shopping, laundry, but mostly I am waiting for the rain to come. There is a promise of a cold front and promised rain, so I hope it materializes later today. And maybe there will be football watching and reading and starting on making Christmas presents. Or maybe there will be a nap.

Whatever, I just want the dissatisfaction and restlessness to go away!

I'm not ungrateful for my friends, but there are just some things my friends cannot do for me. And it seems that I cannot do for myself, either. Or I haven't figured it out yet. But there are times when I am reminded of just how alone I really am. Which is not to take away from my sweet, lovely friends. But there are limits to what friends can do for me.

I had planned to go to Ren Fest this weekend, and a number of friends indicated they wanted to go with me. I was really looking forward to going out with some girlfriends. I even changed a hair appointment I originally had scheduled for tomorrow so I could do this. Going to Ren fest is not the kind of thing I'd want to go do alone (and truthfully, it would make me feel just a little bit pathetic to have to do so). But one by one, the friends all canceled on me. All for perfectly good, normal, reasonable, life-got-in-the-way valid reasons. Nothing I could or should object to (without looking like an ass).

When one is a singleton, we lean on our friends to fill in the social holes. Except of course, those friends all have lives of their own, other friends, families, situations that demand their time. Maybe we singletons lean too much on those friends (I know I often feel that I do), but where I'm sitting, it's that or I go the hermit route. (As it is, I'm already a bit of a hermit, albeit not of the living alone in the desert kind of hermitude.)

When each of my friends canceled on me for this weekend, I felt adrift. And it just helped to emphasize to me that at the end of the day, I really am adrift. I go home alone, I have no one there to talk to about stuff, to share, and also, no one who wants to spend quality time with me. I have no built in date to just go do something fun with.

Which then (at least yesterday), just highlighted the mess that is my personal life. I've been struggling lately with feelings that I don't think are justified - but as we all know, the heart and the mind so rarely agree or talk to each other. As I told my friend John D. the other day in an email, it's really hard not to feel like a failure when a man that you know is crazy about you doesn't want to be with you, that his desire to be "right" and his own stubbornness and his own "victimhood" are more important to him than doing right by someone he said he cared for.

I know it really wasn't about me (despite what R said), far more about him and his own issues, but it cuts pretty deeply nonetheless at my own feelings of worth. And when you add on the way it all went down, me being told I was completely at fault, being blamed for things I had no control over, and the absolute impossibility of there ever being any real closure or resolution of that unfinished business, I'm having a hard time (at least right now) reconciling what my heart and my mind are telling me. I'm so angry at R, for the way he treated me, for the shitty, ugly lies he accused me of. I am so angry at him for being such a fucking coward - because that's exactly what he is. He's a coward, who'd rather send me an email accusing me of things I wasn't doing, painting himself as the victim and then walking away, like none of it ever mattered to him, instead of being a man and talking to me and maybe facing his own culpability. And as much as he paints himself an honorable man, R. treated me dishonorably. And these things reflect poorly on him, not on me, I know. He always said to me that he felt I jumped to conclusions without getting all the facts (and some times I did, and apologized to him for those times). But it's perfectly okay for him to do the same to me and then cry over my bad treatment of him.

So yes, I know what happened with R was more about him than me. But still, the doubts linger. I hate that right now my mind isn't winning the battle over my heart, but these are feelings that go way, way back to long before I ever met that crazy artist. I'm thinking of the upcoming holidays, and how I want/need to get away for just a few days, but I don't want to go see my family. Why? Because everytime in the last few years I've gone home, I've been subjected to ongoing (and yet oh-so-well-intentioned) questions of what happened to you, why are you so fat, being told I'd be so "pretty" if I'd just lose a little weight. Growing up, my dad would always do what he thought was helpful, but has laid the ground work for a lot of where I'm at right now - he'd always tell me how I needed to be, how I needed to act, so that I could attract a guy. Everything I did as a young girl, I was being shaped to attract a man, and mostly I was doing it wrong.

Is it any wonder I'm so fucked up? And yet, I do my best to transcend this, but shit, some programming goes deep. So when someone who accepted me as I am, in fact, who rather liked me as I am, someone who admired me, who told me I was safe with him always (and what a lie that turned out to be!), it felt really good, especially since I don't get a lot of that outside of my friends. And when that person decides he doesn't want me, it's hard not to feel not good enough. That's programming I've been getting (and fighting) all my life.

So that's when I turn back to my friends, and for whatever reason, the stars are aligning this weekend such that my friends aren't available. Which isn't to say that they've done anything wrong, because they haven't. And yet, even now, part of me feels that if I express my own disappointment at how things have played out, I come out looking needy, self-absorbed, and not understanding. And whiny, because right now I feel like I'm a tiresome, whiny bitch and I can't imagine why my friends put up with me (and there is this very primal, childlike part of me that sees my friends cancellations for this weekend as reinforcing that, even though intellectually I know they are not related, or at least I hope they aren't).

So I will say that yes, in a number of ways, things are looking better for me, especially professionally (and trust me, that takes away a lot of anxieties). But there are still areas I struggle with pretty acutely. So if I come across as a bit crazy or over-reacting, or whatever, know that I'm trying not to be crazy, trying not to over-react, trying to take things personally.

I just don't always succeed at that.

Last week I got off to a bit of a rough start with one coworker. It wasn't anything I said or did, and in fact had nothing to do with me at all. The reasons are unimportant. I was unaware of the bad feelings until it was pointed out to me by someone who wanted to help me out here before things got bad. It was suggested I just take a few moments to go out of my way to be a little friendlier with this coworker, find some commonality. Which I did. And it seems to have paid off. I make an effort to chat briefly with this coworker, and we do have things in common that make it easy to do that. And I do think the coworker is a nice person. Yesterday, I was chatting with this coworker (and one other) briefly, and we got to talking about music, our musical preferences, and I was even chatting about my desire to get my colored highlights back. The coworker took their measure of me, and today, as I was heading out to lunch, I was asked if I wore nail polish. I don't usually, but the coworker had some Avon nail polish that had gone unclaimed from an order, and the coworker gave it to me - a deep, deep plum color! Score! Makes me want to stop chewing on my fingers and pain my nails. :-)

Meanwhile, yesterday I got a visit from my buddy Brian and he mentioned some things to me a different, former, not terribly bright coworker was trying to pull as far as putting too many students into lab courses, because said former coworker supervises the person who took over the enrollment stuff from me when I left (and I had warned this young woman there would be times she'd have to say no to her supervisor, and to be prepared for that, because her supervisor has a tendency to pull this kind of thing every single registration period). Luckily Brian was able to nip that in the bud.

At least until next time.

Oh, and I got my new swell Graduate School polo shirt. I need to try it on, make sure it fits. It's dark blue (they didn't have any in the white that would fit me, which is just as well, white and me, that's a recipe for disaster - and lots of coffee stains).

Not much to put here. I'm plugging along, keeping pretty busy at work. A lot of what I'm doing right now is repetitious, which is good, because it's helping me to learn what I need to learn. I've started seeing students now, reviewing their thesis/report formats and letting them know what corrections they need to make. I'm getting pretty good at those now - I've done quite a few now, and I'm getting faster at them (which is good, because the last week or so before the end of the semester, we'll be seeing a lot of students and speed will be important). These have to be in a particular format, with the pages in a particular order, no deviation from the standard.

I'm also reviewing programs of work (basically those courses actually counting toward the student's degree), which after a while makes me go buggy, but I'll have to do these by the end of the semester anyway, and most are in pretty good shape (some need to be sent back to the departments for correction).

Since I started here, I've gone home from work every day exhausted. I've been falling asleep early. Most nights, I've been waking up still in the middle of the night, but for the most part I'm actually getting some decent sleep. I think part of this is the time change, part of this may be that with the anxiety of my job future gone, I don't have that anxiety keeping me awake, and some of it may also be related to the months of absolutely no sleep this summer catching up with me.

Because I'm taking an hour long lunch break now (which I didn't do at my last job), I'm getting some good reading done. At some point soon, I need to update my 50 book challenge, I've read quite a few since my last update.

I'm currently working on GRRM's A Game of Thrones, an 800 page BFF (Big, Fat Fantasy). It took about 200 pages, but now it's gotten interesting, and I'm into it.

Oh and the creepy neighbor is still downstairs. The dude leaves his windows open and lights on, so when walking by his apartment, you can't help but see inside (I saw him in there last night). He has no furniture in his apt - now, he has the exact same layout I do, 1300 SF, and no furniture. If he can afford that apt, he can afford some furniture. I know that in itself does not make him creepy, everything else about him makes him creepy. But since the episode a week ago Sunday, there hasn't been a peep out of him, not even any of his late night screaming. Maybe he got a come to Jesus talking to.

What an action packed, full weekend. I was hardly home at all the entire weekend. It started out Friday night with a feast at Korea House with the lovely and charming schnookiemuffin. I ordered 2 sushi rolls and she ordered off the menu. Which resulted in a cart being brought to our table with piles of food - small dishes of sides, such as kim chee, some pickled cucumbers, tofu stuff, broccoli stuff, pineapple stuff - so much stuff, we could barely eat it all! We then went back to her house and watched Confessions of a Shopoholic, which was cute and charming and a total chick flick.

Saturday I had brunch at Elsi's with reanimated. She hadn't been before, and I think she liked it. I got my usual veggie chorizo plate, and we nommed on the delicious salsa. After, I went downtown to the Austin Celtic Festival to ogle men in kilts partake of some Celtic culture. It was a warm and sunny day and got a little too hot at one point in the afternoon. But it was a lot of fun, and there were some great bands there that I liked, including Raising Jane, Teada, and Buille. I particularly liked these last 2 acts, both from Ireland. I think Buille's sound can be described as contemporary celtic/jazz fusion - they were wonderful, and I picked up one of their CDs. Teada was more traditional sounding celtic music, and they were a lot of fun to listen to.

After leaving the Celtic festival (after dark) I decided I needed pancakes from Kerbey Lane. Amazingly enough, I fell asleep quite early Saturday.

Yesterday was a gray, gloomy day. I laid about in the morning, then met schnookiemuffin to go to Taylor for a Sniff n Swap party hosted by pandorasfox. My nose got a bit overwhelmed and I already had a bit of a headache from the day before (and not enough sudafed). But I enjoyed myself, and it was nice meeting some new folks. Joy had me in stitches with some of the stories she was telling, and there was a bit of girl talk, which is always nice. It was also really nice seeing stinabat there (and briefly on Saturday at the Celtic Festival).

When I finally got home last night (around 7) I had a bit of post-fun weekend letdown, and sure enough, unwelcome thoughts of R were plentiful. I hate this kind of unfinished business, and there's just no chance of finding resolution to that, in part because he never felt he did anything wrong. So I have to find a way to deal with those feeling and thoughts which still linger. I think the whole situation has been very unfair to me, but life isn't fair, I know, so I have to suck it up and deal with it the best I can. Luckily those thoughts and feelings are fewer and fewer and I so look forward to the day when the thought of him brings up only feelings of indifference. That will be a good day.

It's been a busy week filled with lots of learning and lots of training. And coming home at night and crashing. I don't really have anything exciting to add to this, except I am happy to be here, they are happy to have me.

I may have to go to Waco next Thursday for a training on the Texas Digital Library. It's the repository where we'll have dissertations and theses uploaded. We used to use UMI (which is where my dissertation is) but we're phasing away from that. TDL is now housed at UT (which means all the support for it is here) but the training is in Waco because Waco is more centrally located, and we're trying to get all the institutions in Texas to upload their theses/dissertations there instead of UMI.

Last night I had dinner at NXNW with some work friends. It was a fun dinner (and reanimated was able to pop by on her lunch break) and it turned out to be a very enlightening dinner in terms of some information that I learned. No, I'm not sharing.

I had thought about going to see Voltaire at Elysium but I had no steampunk gear, and I was dead tired by the end of dinner.

Tonight schnookiemuffin wants to do something since her Boy has abandoned her for the weekend (it's the opening of deer season this weekend). I'll give her a holler in a bit when I get to my car.

Tomorrow I think I'll be going to the Celtic Festival, Sunday to a Sniff n Swap party.

In general some fun times for the weekend.

I'm feeling a lot better about where things are in my life these days. Not perfect, and I've had a chat with the Universe, it knows what I want to bring into my life (and what I want to finish resolving, esp anything to do with R, in terms of my own feelings about all that mess).

Not to confuse anyone who may not know, I'm not in graduate school I'm working at the graduate school.

So far, I am absolutely loving it. It's only been 2 days I know, but in these 2 days, I've gotten so much more respect for my abilities, my background and what I can offer than I received in the last 2 years at ECE (with some notable exceptions there, I don't want to diminish those folks who really were my friends and advocates).

I've been busy, learning a lot already in these 2 days. My busy time will be coming up after Thanksgiving and then it'll be crazy busy until early January when we certify the fall degrees (and verify the theses/reports/dissertations are all in the correct format and electronically uploaded to the repository where they'll be archived). The Dean even popped by yesterday to meet me and welcome me aboard. I really liked her. And I love my new supervisor and all the coworkers I've met. People here seem happy to be here, seem happy to work here. That is such an improvement over where I was. And I've discovered (for those at UT, you'll know the significance of this) I was hired into the 4th (!) quartile of my title. The downside is that there's only so far I can go in this title with my salary (although it'll be a couple of years before I reach that limit), but it's significant because it's rare to hire past the 2nd quartile of a salary range. It shows a lot of respect for my background that they did that.

And as I mentioned yesterday on FB, I love being back on the West Mall, it really is the heart of campus.

No word on the crazy neighbor downstairs. I hope he's gone soon, he's icky.

Cats are good. I don't like this highs in the upper 70s, but I am loving the lows in the upper 40s, low 50s. That's pretty swell.

Going out Thursday night (7ish) for food/drinks with some folks. If you can read this, and want to know where, let me know.

I've spent a bit of the day cleaning out my old email folders, wholesale deleting. In the end, it'll be easier this way to get my email transferred over to the Graduate School. As I'm doing this (and some of this stuff goes back 7 years), I've run across tons of emails from R, written in a much happier, more hopeful time, and it's bringing up a lot of painful memories and feeling right now. Luckily it's lunch time, so I'm going to ditch this place soon.

Last night the guy downstairs from me was screaming at the kids to go play elsewhere and shut up. Only, he was really loud and foul about it, and the kids actually have a right to be there. I and several others called it in to the office and then the police were called. When the police came, he refused to answer his door, but the management called me this morning and they're pursuing this. Seems the guy is trying to break his lease because of noise. Getting the police called on you for noise, not the way to do it.

Last night I made a fish stew that was heaven, and I expect it to taste even better tonight. I sauteed garlic and onion, added in 2 large cans diced tomatoes (with juice), half pound each shrimp, scallops and catfish nuggets (but I think any seafoods would work), and 3 cans coconut milk, plus salt. Heaven, I tell ya!

Busy at work this morning, but everyone here is super swell! A lot to learn, but a lot already familiar to me, too. This is going to be a good fit for me.

I drove up to Dallas (well, more Arlington) yesterday in record time. Just under 3 hours. It was great driving weather, not a cloud in the sky, and no wind. I got here in time for us to go to lunch. We hit up a pho place Rhonda had wanted to try, and had a very tasty lunch of pho and eggrolls and spring rolls and hot tea. After, we hit up Half Price Books and Barnes and Noble. When we came back, the Simpsons napped and I chilled. We then made eyeball devilled eggs and hit up the ORAC party.

I knew quite a few of the folks there, and had a nice time. It was in Waxahachie, not terribly close to where Rhonda and Jimmy live.

I discovered driving around yesterday that the new Cowboys Stadium is 5 minutes from their house. they also live 5 minutes from Six Flags and the Rangers' Stadium. Today there is a Cowboys home game (at noon) which means there's no getting out of here for me until after the game starts. Which is fine, I'm in no hurry.

I was up until 2, and woke up around 8 (new time) for about 5-6 hours of sleep. It's all good. Right now, Rhonda is making pancakes, eggs and sausage for us, I'm drinking coffee, we're just chillin.

Last night at the ORAC party we watched some bad movies including The Dunwhich Horror, starring Sandra Dee and Dean Stockwell, from 1970. It was awful, but basically Dean Stockwell wants to sacrifice a virginal Dee to the Old Ones to bring them back or some such. I was having a hard time following all the details, but one scene just brought the house down: Dee has been stripped down and just a little robe covering up the bare minumum (it was 1970), and she's drugged and Stockwell spreads her legs carefully (and tenderly) and then proceeds to place the Necronomicon, an old book with all his naughty spells, in between her legs, using her legs to prop up the book. It was so awful it cracked us all up.

Oh just got called for breakfast! Yum!

Free from 7 years of stress, and increasing hell. When I first started working in ECE, I loved it. I loved my job, I loved my supervisor, I love the students. And if the chairman had just left me alone to do the job I was doing very well, I'd still love it there. But the management of that department has increasingly gone downhill in the last several years. A lot of my fun left when my then-supervisor left for the University of Virginia. I still had my friend Brian, and I'll miss him (along with several other coworkers). But the last several years there have been hell, and I'm free of it!

I'm not saying my new situation will be perfect, it won't. But no situation is perfect. But I do think I'll be a very good fit there, and I think I'll be respected there. I wasn't respected where I was at, and I predict in very short order next week, the management of ECE will realize just how much I did, and how well I did it. They have forgotten that if it's going well and you're not getting complaints, that's a good thing. Good luck to them, I say. They'll need it.

Several of my coworkers said they were jealous I was leaving. I actually had one tell me she was jealous I'd been laid off to begin with.

I am glad I didn't separate, that makes things a lot easier for me overall. And there are people I really will miss, including my supervisor - she went out of her way to help me out as best she could, and I think she's in a tough spot right now. But I told her I appreciated her efforts on my behalf, as well as the others in the department who were my advocates.

Meanwhile, I blasted up to Arlington this morning, making it in just under 3 hours of driving time. That's some kind of record for me. I took The Simpsons out for pho, then we went book shopping. Now they're napping and I may doze off soon myself. Soon we'll be making eggs, and blasting out of here in 3 hours for a night of parties. And then sleeping in tomorrow.

Extra hour tomorrow! My favorite weekend of the year!

It's been an interesting few days at work. The week has gone fast - it's already Thursday evening. I am eating out way too much, so I need to get back on a better diet. I'll wait until after the weekend. My back is killing me - it was sore Monday morning, but yesterday I loaded up stuff from my office to my car, and that aggravated it. Plus I haven't been very faithful with my exercise, I need to get back on that. I've been downing tylenol all day today.

I have 4 hours left at my job. 4 hours! You'd better believe I'm excited. Some things are happening very last second and haphazardly and I know it's going to be a rough transition. Meanwhile today I went to the graduate school and filled out some paperwork and saw my new office. It's small, and semi-private - in that it's the outer office to a slightly larger, nicer office, where one of the other degree evaluators resides. That's cool, I'm the new girl. They're going to set me up with a new keyboard, and I have one of those giant Macs (brand new). I don't know how large that thing is, but it's freaking huge.

The last 4 years have been pretty much one giant dose of ugly and unpleasant, personally and professionally. I think this will close the chapter on the professional. I won't miss the department - there are certainly people I will miss, but not being in that environment.

Now, to get the personal shit happening. Dammit.

Meanwhile, I am headed to my friend Ana's house shortly. She's having a trunk show for the jewelry she and a friend design and make. It'll be a really nice time of it this evening.

This weekend, I'm going to Dallas to hang with The Simpsons, and crash the ORAC Halloween party. Not sure yet what I'll do tomorrow afternoon.

(Yes, that's a Nick Cave reference.)

I woke up at 4 this morning, because I got hot (even though it was cold out last night!). Charlie had been snuggling with me all night, and around 4, she got into super cuddle/snuggle/lick my hands mode, which woke me up, plus I was hot. I threw off the blanket, and tried to get back to sleep, but I did what I always do when I wake up: I sneezed for half an hour.

Then I fell back asleep, and had an odd dream. I dreamed I was dating a new guy (but clearly this dream isn't about any new guy). Things were going well, I was feeling pretty pleased about stuff, and then out of nowhere, he gets all goofy on me, and starts to see other women, and become an overall ass. So, I decided to get back at him, but in my dream, I had magic powers. I crashed a party he was throwing for some friends and his new girlfriend, and I was able to use my magic powers to seal off the room and then make these oxygen bubbles that basically siphoned off all the oxygen in the room, and the room just became filled with all these bubbles that were stealing the air from the room.

Now that I reflect upon it, that seems just a tad vindictive, but it was fun in the dream, and I remember thinking how pretty all the bubbles were.

Then the alarm went off.

I have a feeling this week will go by too quickly. Yesterday, cold and rainy FTW. Pho weather, so after getting to my car after work, I went and got pho for lunch. Then went home and was lazy. I took a nap, did a little reading, drank hot chocolate. The usual. I was tired yesterday, didn't feel like going out. Fell asleep early and slept pretty well last night.

This morning has been dedicated to cleaning off personal files from my computer. And email, need to do some of that, but mostly I think I'll just ignore that. They'll make that all go away next week anyway. It's registration, so it's kind of busy, kind of not at the same time. But it's sunny out, and chilly.

The cats have been playing Thundering Herd of Wildebeest on the Serengeti Plain, including this morning at 7am. I'm sure the neighbor just loved that.

I want to do fun stuff this week in the afternoons. Maybe go see a movie. I don't know, just stuff. Any ideas (for the local folks)? Anyone want to join me?

The evenings ahead look to be busy, and I decided to go to Dallas this weekend and chill up there and crash the ORAC Halloween party. I'll need to pick up some kind of food offering to take with.

This morning, I'm wearing my pretty new shoes. Red leather mary janes from Naturalizer. Lurves them!

http://www.dsw.com/dsw_shoes/catalog/product.jsp?productRef=SEARCH&category=&prodId=179188

I figured out all my bills, moved monies from savings to checking. I paid off one of my credit cards. I had enough to pay off a second one, but it would have cleaned out my savings account, so instead, I paid off one, made regular payments on all my other bills. The paycheck I'll be getting on Saturday will pay for rent and food for the month, but I've left myself with mad money for the month and still left $900 in savings. By the new year, I'll be able to pay off maybe 2 more credit cards (for sure at least 1), and then I can get serious on getting the others paid off. The nice thing about the salary in my new position, it's about 2% less than what I was making in my current position, which is minor, and the difference in take home is small, so I'll still be able to put money aside, have spending money, basically not much change in my lifestyle, which is great!

I need to drive in one day this week and clean stuff out of my office. Most of my personal effects are gone, but I still have stuff here that I need to move out.

I'm looking forward to the end of October, and the beginning of November!

Friday afternoon a few minutes after I got home from work, I received a call from the Office of Graduate Studies. I was eating chocolate at the time. They offered me the position that I interviewed for last week. I accepted and I start a week from Monday. I didn't want to start this week because it would have delayed my Nov. paycheck by a week, so I figure just starting out clean on the 1st is perfect. Plus I have a lot to do this week, with just cleaning out files, doing some more training, etc. But let's not kid ourselves, this is going to be a very rough transition for ECE without me after this week.

I plan to enjoy my last week at half time. I want to make the afternoons like a mini-vacation. So if any of you local folks with flexible schedules want to get together for lunches, afternoon playtime, dinner, whatever, let me know. :-)

I am so glad I didn't have to wait the weekend to find out about the job! I interviewed Tuesday, and had a second interview on Thursday with the Associate Dean and the staff of the student division, where I'll be working. I'll be working on getting graduate degrees certified, verifying programs of work, pretty much anything that helps get graduate students graduated.

There's a lot good with this. I felt very comfortable with everyone I met. I feel that I'll be respected for what I bring to the table. I'll have a lot to learn in a very short time, but I know quite a few of the graduate coordinators on campus, so they will be a good resource. Gradu Studies was very thorough, and they contacted quite a few people about me.

They did alright on the salary too.

Now, I've been squirreling away money for my eventual unemployment, and I need about $600 of it to supplement my Nov. paycheck. But the rest is mine to do stuff with! I'm not going to spend it all, but I took a couple hundred of it to go to the Texas Renaissance Festival yesterday. I met up with reudaly and nimrodjcs yesterday and spent the day with them. They never get to just have fun at a Ren Faire, since they work Scarbrough, and Rhonda was especially pleased. I got a pretty hair braid (which has held up, should last a few more days before I have to pull it out), we saw shows, we shopped.

Around 5 I was pretty foot sore, and they needed to leave themselves, so instead of staying for the fireworks, I came home. I'm planning to go again on the 14th for Highland weekend. Men in Kilts FTW! So far, it looks like a number of my lady friends have expressed interest in going. Rhonda gave me a free pass to go back, yay! And I have one more that will be up for grabs, too.

I got home around 7:45, and was dead tired, but went to Kerbey Lane for dinner. Didn't get pancakes, I got their Chicken Kerbey, a grilled stuffed chicken breast with asparagus and mashed potatoes, which was delish!

Sleeping didn't happen much last night. I woke up around 2 because I was hot and couldn't breathe, so I took medicines. Then I waited to go back to sleep, which didn't happen until around 4, when Screaming Man decided to start screaming. Fortunately for only a few minutes.

I'm now at Genuine Joe's enjoying a Bowl o' Joe and some breakfast tacos. I've really had to curtail my spending, so I haven't done many coffee shop visits lately, but I can do my coffee shop visits again, which pleases me.

Later, I may do some shopping, I was thinking of hitting up Tino's for lunch, maybe watch some football. Or do nothing.

I have a new neighbor downstairs from me. That apartment has been empty for a long time, and I found out it rented out a few months ago. A few months ago, and during this time, my daily routine has been more or less the same. As in I get up and go to bed roughly around the same times, I watch the same tv shows, I work out at the same time, cook at the same time, etc.

Except, the guy who lives downstairs from me apparently doesn't want his precious ears assaulted by having to listen to me walk about my apartment. He's made 2 noise complaints against me in the last 2 days (just the last 2 days, mind, never before), that I've been playing loud music, stomping around and banging pots and pans.

I wish I was having as much fun as he seems to think I am. The music from the other night - that was my next door neighbor. I heard the music, but it wasn't playing late, like around 7 Sunday night. Not much later than that, though.

The "stomping around" he didn't like: I did a (low impact, because of my darned plantar's fasciitis) workout at 6 last night. That's right, 6PM. The banging of pots and pans - well I have no idea about that. After my work out, I did empty the dishwasher and then made dinner.

So when the office called me with their courtesy call, I explained this, and then complained that he needs to get over himself, that part of community living is that you hear the people upstairs from you walking around. And me working out at 6PM is a perfectly reasonable thing for me to do, and I'm well within my rights to do that. Which the apartment manager agreed with.

I also told her 2 (unreasonable) noise complaints in 2 days made me feel harassed and I asked her to say something to him about the fact that he has to suck it up and accept that he's not going to have a completely noise free environment when someone is living above him, which she said she would do (but in pretty apartment manager language).

They did say I haven't done anything wrong and that the only way to make it an official complaint against me is if they witness the unreasonable noise themselves during office hours. That's both good and bad (after all, Screaming Man never screams during their office hours). But the office closes at 6, so my 6pm workouts are still safe.

Not that they weren't before.

It was a long, dry 3 months of no interviews for me, despite applying for quite a few jobs I knew I was well-qualified for. Then in the last few days, I've had 2 interviews and a 3rd one about to be scheduled. I had a screening/phone interview last Friday for a position in the Center for Lifelong Engineering Education. CLEE is a self-funding continuing ed program that offers several different executive master's degree programs, plus a number of short course and certification programs, serving the entire engineering community. I'm waiting to hear if I'll be getting a face to face interview next week, should know late tomorrow.

This morning, I interviewed in the office of Graduate Studies for a degree evaluator position. They're doing something different with this position, and they want the new person to come in and learn both master's and phd programs and processes, because they'll eventually be training the other 2 also to do both (currently they specialize in either). They're also interested in someone with a lot of experience using technology and comfortable with process improvement. I met with a VP, an assistant dean and the director of student services. I clicked with all 3 on a personal level, and it was a very comfortable interview which I think went well. But I know I interview well, I've been told this a number of times. I interviewed well in July for a position in a different department on campus, and I received poor treatment in the end from that department. But I don't think I'll receive the same poor treatment from grad studies. My friend Mel, who is our grad coordinator, unbeknownst to me, wrote a very, very complimentary letter to the director of student services about me when the job first posted (and right after I had applied for it). I think that may have helped me get an interview. Plus I did write a very nice cover letter, and I do have a strong resume. Today I also took in a copy of the letter the assistant registrar wrote to my chairman about me, his experiences working with me, the complicated nature of that work, and how effective I am in that roll. As I told the interviewers, I thought they might like to see what someone who works with me from a different office thinks of me, someone who isn't one of my direct references. I also told them I was ready to start immediately if they hired me. I just sent off my thank you notes to each of the committee members.

I will hear something by Friday about the grad studies job. They said they want to make an offer Friday, but if something happens that delays that, they'll at least let me know that on Friday. I appreciate that kind of communication - I've had good communication from CLEE also, and it makes me feel good knowing I haven't just dropped off people's radar.

I also just received an email asking me to set up a screening interview for the position in the Registrar's Office. I'll go ahead and set that up - after all, until I have an offer letter in hand, I'm still looking for a position.

If there's one thing I've learned this year, it's that I can't take anything for granted. No matter how it all works out, which it will will one way or another, I think it's going to be a long time before I feel safe again.