whirlwind of craze

i've been blogless for a literal age and that upsets me.  it's not intentional and is certainly not due to our lives being stable and boring lately.  sadly, on or around the last day i posted, my computer stopped recognizing the internet.  this should probably concern me more than it does, but surprisingly, i don't really care.  or, rather, i don't care enough to take the laptop to an apple store or call time warner.  it's been over a month now and i've cracked my laptop open a grand total of two times, each time hoping that it had miraculously healed itself as spontaneously as it broke.  nope.  however, i'm kinda enjoying it.  i'm using my phone for the basics, like email and facebook, and am stealing luke's computer for bigger projects (such as watching "extreme makeover: weight loss edition" while stuffing my face full of cupcakes).  reasons for my lack of interest in computer problems: in addition to my being hugely lazy now that the school year is over, i also kinda love not staring at my computer screen all the time.  gone are the days of checking facebook and watching tv and talking to luke at the same time.  honestly, no one needs that much stimulation.  i'll probably need to figure out the computer situation by the time school rolls around again, but in the meantime, i'll survive.

recent happenings:

1) i finished my first year of grad school with a 4.0.  yipee!  this last quarter was one for the record books, in terms of all-consuming stress and anxiety.  i have never in my life felt anything like it before and i have never been so grateful to leave a quarter behind (especially because it might as well have been  ten years long, rather than ten weeks.  so.  horribly.  long.).  apparently, the first year is the worst.  here's hoping!

2) i had planned to have a low key summer of odor patrolling and reading cool books i'd ignored throughout the school year.  this was going pretty well until about a week ago and a half ago, when i bounced back into the landfill's office on a friday morning after work and was casually told that my full-time job was essentially deleted.  cue a tailspin into crazytown that took me through the weekend and halfway through the following week.  i cannot believe how difficult it has been for me to just hold down an effing job for two seconds while in school.  however, there was a major silver lining to my four days of abject panic, because while scouring craigslist for some leads for myself, i came upon a fantastic librarian opportunity for luke and forwarded the link to him, thinking we could both just through caution to the internet job application wind.  as it turns out,

3) luke applied last tuesday, immediately heard back about the resume he'd submitted and swiftly climbed the interview ladder (totally three or four interviews in all).  by friday, we'd had a hugely nerve wrecking week, staying up most of thursday night due to nervous anticipation, the likes of which don't come around unless it's christmas morning.  this position was pretty much a dream come true for luke, and waiting to find out if he got the job was. so. hard.  it was all insanely worth it though, because HE DID!  he got the job and i am so proud of him and so excited for him.  it's definitely a career-making move and i'm thrilled that he finally has the security he deserves.

4) luke getting this fantastic position helped to chill me out, so i've stopped sending out mass responses to internet postings for administrative assistant jobs.  tomorrow, i'm going to head over to the local school district classified employment office to hand in a resume and perhaps charm some people in person, because i've decided that it's damn near impossible to stand out and be selected, even just for an interview, when you're competing on the interwebs with ten bazillion other faceless people who also swear that it's been their lifelong dream to file papers at some undisclosed corporate office.

5) i spent today cleaning up after our impromptu mini fourth of july barbeque, catching up on crappy tv and reading a book.  after having what may have been some of the most emotional weeks in recent memory, things are looking up.

barn owl csi

i worked this morning, but since getting home at 10:45 am, i have done nothing.  true, i've thrown some laundry in the washing machine and i just got home from some light marketing (i needed veggie refried beans and an avocado for a mexican feast i'm eating solely to justify the margarita i wanted*), but other than that, i have done absolutely nothing at all.  i read about two hundred pages of a terribly awesome mass market paperback true crime book i borrowed from lab, took a nap, caught up on tv, and lounged.  i'm currently watching dvr'd episodes of tosh.o and drinking the margarita i've longed for all day.  luke had a book club and then a dinner with friends tonight, so i'm by myself with the animals (hence the need to justify the margarita).

yesterday, i worked in the morning and went immediately to campus to work on mr. artemis hoot.  i did his torso.  i'm leaving his little head for next week because i'm terrified that his beak will go the way of the talons - namely, dissolve into nothing in the simmering water.  i had a much better day with him.  nothing was particularly broken or destroyed and everything came clean pretty easily, meaning it was way less stressful than last week.  also, i found a mouse skull in his abdomen, which, being the weirdo that i am, i found pretty effing amazing.  i felt like i was on barn owl csi.

tomorrow morning, i'm walking with some friends in a march of dimes five-mile walk.  i'm really excited about seeing my friends and all the babies and, for once, walking for miles early in the morning with people to keep me company (my only complaint about odor patrolling at this point is that it gets a little boring alone).  what i'm not looking forward to tomorrow is the hours i'll be spending in the lab organizing for "lab clean-up day."  yipee!  however, by tomorrow afternoon, all three previous pirates movies luke and i ordered should arrive and we're marathoning them with his brother.  i suppose i can handle a few hours of craziness in the middle of an otherwise fabulous day.  you'll hear about it, i'm sure.


*i ended frying up two corn tortillas into taco shells (like my mommy used to).  couple those shells with the marg, rice, beans and my couch, and i'm practically on vacation.  the only thing missing is luke.  :(

it was a hoot

as it turns out, the barn owl (who i've creatively named hoot) was dead and tagged and shoved into a plastic bag in catalogue room in 1984, making it a mummy for longer than i've been alive.  it's entire left  side was crushed (skull, pelvis, wing, etc) so now i get to obsess about how i'll probably fail my project on the (incorrect) grounds that i snapped all his bones while cleaning them.  awesome.  also, apparently bird talons don't hold up well while being simmered in baking soda and meat tenderizer.  just fyi.

suffice to say, i did legs and wings and stopped because the whole enterprise was stressing me out.  this means i have to dedicate another full day to the boiling and stripping of an ancient animal carcass, but until that day comes, i've decided not to think about it.

i am not a freak. i am a scientist.

interestingly enough, today is wednesday and i actually have an answer to the full-time work question.  (things rarely work out as i envision them, obviously.)  that answer is i'm full-time again, which is super awesome.  i'm a little sad that the sleeping in i'd envisioned for tomorrow morning and friday won't be happening, but honestly, getting up at 5 am is far less brutal than wondering how i'm gonna pay the bills, so i'll handle it.

tomorrow, i'm starting my "maceration project" in advanced osteology, which means i will essentially be cutting apart a mummified barn owl and boiling its bones in baking soda until they sparkle.  that makes me sound like a psychopath, i understand, but it's actually the merging of two very important parts of my life; namely, learning how to process skeletons and doing things for the tar pits, as the animals we're working on are going to be part of the page museum's comparative collection.  see?  museums do this stuff all the time, guys, so i'm not a freak.  i'm a scientist.

a friend of mine just had an adorable baby girl, so there has been much baby-crafting going on around here lately (and by "much" i mean "when i find the time" - it's taken me two and a half weeks to applique three burp cloths, which is not only shameful but also very sad).  there has also been much talk about not sleeping at night.  my friend doesn't sleep at night because she has a human baby.  i don't sleep at night because i have a dog that snores and a gluttonous cat (i say this with love) who can no longer wait for dawn to get his breakfast and instead spends the hours of 4 am and 5 am swatting me in the face until i throw him off the bed in a rage, feed him and then feel guilty about my said rage for the entire day.

also, as luke and i were eating breakfast this morning, we were talking about countering bethenny frankel's "skinnygirl" empire with something called "fattygirl," which would promote eating what you want and not obsessing about being a shadowy stick figure when all you really want is a margarita.  then, luke said, "and you could be the spokesperson."

i nearly choked to death on my poorly microwaved oatmeal.

ocho de mayo

i guess i'm feeling better than i have been.  i guess.  there are some irons in the job fire, but i think that until i can land a stable adult job after graduation (read: probably in 2013), i won't be totally ok with how my financial life is playing out.  i should know by the beginning of next week whether or not i can work full-time again, so i will either be in a super fab mood come next wednesday or a super horrible one - which i suppose is sorta the story of this blog recently, right?

on thursday night, luke and i hosted a cinco de mayo pot luck at the house for my forensic peeps, in an effort to help us all blow off steam by chugging margaritas and punching pinatas (and yes, pinatas were punched).  it was a really fun time and even i approved, which is rare because i almost always feel like i could have done something better or been a better hostess or handled things less awkwardly.  all the significant others got along, there was much tequila and i wore a sombrero fascinator that i made with my mom, so pretty much everything was right up my alley.

tomorrow is our first wedding anniversary, which is blowing my mind.  a) i can't possibly be old enough to be married in the first place and b) it's already been a year?!?  i can't believe it!  well, actually, i can.  this year has definitely been a doozy, what with the moving and the starting school and the business starting and the no stable jobs for either of us and the dog and OMG NO STABLE JOBS FOR EITHER OF US.  i think, as cheesy and horrible as this sounds, all the insanity of the past year has truly brought luke and i closer together.  we lived together for years without making significant progress on how to reliably split up housework or accurately manage our time together and now, in the span of about nine months, we have legitimately worked through most of our b.s. and actually grown.  as people and as a couple.  granted, i could have lived with reaching this point without freaking out constantly about having zero dollars for practically my entire first year of grad school, but honestly, i'm very, very happy that this maturity hit us, however it happened.

i've had a fabulous weekend thus far, full of studying and family and friends and parks and foods and royal weddings.  things have been good.

another thing this weekend has been full of thus far is job applications.  full to the brim.  and this leads me to part two of "why i've been a (more) miserable bitch for two weeks."  drumroll please: my odor patrolling hours were cut from full-time to two days a week.  this was due to no fault of my own (i assume), because they hired several more people despite only opening up six more shifts per week and in order to accommodate all the new peeps, my schedule needed to be pruned.  got it.  my issue is this: i am really, really tired of looking for stable work.  i mean, at this point, i'm obviously willing to do anything (as i was getting up at 5 am monday through friday to walk six miles through neighborhoods trying to catch smells). and even that apparently isn't enough dedication to secure me more than two months of reasonable paychecks.

it has been outrageously stressful to be riding a seemingly never-ending wave of excitement about new jobs followed by horror and despair when they are either eliminated or downsized or otherwise rendered moot.  it has made me sick (as in, actually).  compound my consta-anxiety with the collective delusion of the entire world that my "being in school" somehow serves as a barrier against needing to work to finance my life and you have me not wanting to go anywhere or see anyone or do anything that is not explicitly required of me either in my current job description or my master's program.  (this delusion is perhaps perpetuated by the lucky few who get stipends when attending graduate school.  suffice to say, i'm not at one of those schools.  if we use lab disposables, we need to replace them personally.)

i'm so frustrated by how difficult it has been for me to find a job i can rely on and even more so by the fact that i always seem to be just on the verge of getting on top of things (such as paying off credit cards, planning trips/events/backyard makeovers, etc) when i suddenly find myself without funds.  blarg.  for realz.