Gearing up...

school starts on Tuesday for me. For my second year as a doctoral student, I'm expected to:
- spend 24 hrs per week off campus working as a counselor (practicum)
- spend 10 hrs per week in research assistantship
- spend 10 hrs per week teaching counseling skills to master's students
- take 3 courses

Mondays and Tuesdays will be my days on campus, and I'll spend Wed - Friday at my practicum site. Undoubtedly, Tuesday will be my LONG day, since I have class at 9a, and a class that ends at 930p. I'm hoping most of my other days are 9a-5p kind of days.

Anyways, I hope everyone is enjoying their Labor Day weekend. check this video out... i giggled like a schoolgirl.

They're coming to take me away...

You know something is wrong when you HOPE that someone is coming to take you away to the looney bin. It would really be a refreshing break. I'm blogging from school, so that I can take a break. I'm sitting in a conference room instead of my cubicle, because I'm convinced the imprint of my behind is molded into the chair in the cubby...

I have pics of my sock to show.

I'm much further along now. I've turned the heel, decreased the gusset, and am knitting the foot. I love love love the yarn (100% merino). From Spirit Trail Fiberworks, which I purchased at Rhinebeck last October. WHY DIDN"T I GET MORE? Of course, the color doesn't hurt. Pleasing shades of blue and olive green. Very sproingy yarn!

Ever have those moments when you KNOW you are getting sick? Because you're wearing yourself to the bone? Tuesday night, I stayed at school from about 9am til about 5am the next day. I had meetings from 9a-2p, class from 430-7p. Then I worked on the paper until I turned it in. I went home to shower and feed the cats. Sad life. Sad sad life that I WANTED. I'm throwing myself a huge pity party. With confetti. I like to have a fancy pity party please.

Oh. I had a comment from angelpix about my clessidra sock. However, you (she?) didn't leave an email addy for me to contact you with my modifications! How am I supposed to give you the information? I emailed the Clessidra KAL blogmaster, and she didn't have contact info for you either!! I'll cross post over on the clessidra blog, but you need to leave a comment WITH contact info please!!

I hope everyone else is having a nice week, and has some fun plans for the weekend! I've got this paper due on Monday, and a final exam due on Tuesday. Then two more projects over the next two weeks after that... and I think I'll have succeeded in at least developing a large ulcer.
Cheers!

ps. Some? None? of you have known me long enough to recognize the signs. But I'm back on the sauce. After abstaining for 6 years, I am back up to 2-3 a day. My limiting factor is my old stomach and lack of protective lining. The stuff is GOOD. SO GOOD. GIMME MORE!!!

You won't believe...

I called my brother a couple times this weekend to gloat about my 'find' in Boston this past weekend. An authentic Taiwanese brunch place! He didn't answer when I called him, but he called me back tonight. Not to ask what I had called HIM about... his opening line was

"you won't believe what Dad did..."

wanna bet? Remember this? I guess my dad has perfected his "my children are really busy RIGHT NOW and it would be the PERFECT time to call repeatedly" timing, because that's exactly what he did. He called my brother seven or eight times on Saturday while my brother was trying to finish his take home final for his... um. Some class in his MBA program.

Anyway, I've been MEANING to blog. I really have. I can't even think up all the reasons why I haven't been blogging. Feeling blue, feeling exhausted/overwhelmed, traveling, visiting friends... those are all some of the reasons. Let's play catch up, shall we?

1) I went out to CO to spend time with Stacey, her family, some other friends, and of course, my little red headed monster (LRHM).





The pic on top is the view from the balcony of the house I stayed at in Edwards, CO. The bottom pic is the LRHM... he's obviously quite unhappy with me, b/c I forced him to model the Robin Hood Jacket for me. Too big, but I love the color on him. It'll look great next Fall.

2) Knitting project update: I have some FO's! How unfortunate that the pair of socks that I finished don't match.




That's one finished clessidra from Knitty (love love love the pattern still), so I'll have to order another ball of the sock yarn from Webs. The second sock I started... a long time ago. I've finished the first, and have cast on for the second. I'm almost ready to turn the heel. Decided it was time to let the sock yarn do the work and it's a plain stockinette.

I've also got some mitered squares, using Harry Potter colors, but I'm running out of my allotted blogging time. School is over in about 2.5 weeks, and I'm really excited/dreading it. Dreading all the work I know I'll have to do in the next few weeks, the sleepless nights... but so looking forward to being FREE.

with friends like these....

I'm sure all of you think you have great friends. I feel very bad having to do this, but um, you lose. I am absolutely, positively, eleventy billion percent sure that I have the BESTEST of friends.

Over the last three weeks, I've been fairly non-existent. School, sleep. Those were just about the only two domains of my life. This week, I had to prepare an hour long power point presentation on conduct disorder (otherwise known as very difficult teenager disorder), a 10 page paper on the same topic, and a two hour long power point presentation on cognitive behavioral therapy. Wheee! What fun, right? I've had quite a few sleepless nights and many long days.

On top of all that, one of my furbabies has been pretending to be anorexic lately. He's lost a lot of weight and is too skinny... so when I have a moment to breathe, we've been schlepping to the vet. Did you know they have vet specialists? It'd be kinda funny to watch me chasing after him with bowls of food (wet and dry) if I wasn't so worried about him.

I've never been so happy for a Wednesday in my life as I was this week (I'm on 'break' now... which means a week of no classes during which I can catch up with all the schoolwork and stuff I've neglected.)

What did I see when I got home from my long day? (I'm at school from 9am til 7pm Monday through Wednesdays).

Sheep mail!!
Stacey, Tiffany and Carmen, and Michelle sent me a care package!!! I love getting sheep mail, b/c Stacey always takes the time to make the box very distinctive and cute. The cute sheep (so that I know it's from sheep in the city)

Then the cute little icons of them... I especially like how she felt she needed to put their names under them... like I couldn't figure out who was who? :) -- oh! you know what I just noticed (shame shame). I just noticed that Michelle doesn't have her glasses on... b/c she got her eyes fixed!



What was inside? Two lovely skeins of some new yarn at the shop, which is very soft and in BEAUTIFUL colors. They knew I had lost my so called scarf during my last trip to NYC, and got me this yarn as replacement!!



Aren't these CUTE?? I don't use straights that often, but I do on occasion. And I don't have US10s... so, these'll work in a pinch! I'm not really sure I want my cats to love my knitting... but the needles sure are adorable.

the rest of the package included my favorite Lexie Barnes pattern (little Miss Perfect) zipper bag, another pair of needles (US11s), a couple bags of my favorite Easter candy (the Cadbury mini eggs), and a bunch of homemade M&M cookies (thanks Carmen!!!)

Umm... maybe the cookies are not pictured because there are far fewer cookies now than when I unpacked. And maybe someone didn't want photographic evidence of how quickly someone might've scarfed down some cookies. Maybe.


A second box at my door was chock full of books (I can imagine no better vacation than to snuggle in my bed for a week, with a pile of books) from another friend. I can't wait to dig into the books and knit up a new 'my so called scarf'!!

And, when it rains, it pours, b/c my friend from NYC is coming up this weekend for a visit! We're gonna shop and eat and hang out and gab and shop and gab some more.

Happiness truly is.... great friends. No one could want for better friends than the ones I've got (b/c I'm also expecting a care package from the mom of the LRHM... containing Thin Mints). The only thing I could really wish for is that they lived closer!

Ok. Will update on some KNITTING content tomorrow. Front and back of Kolsva!

*Time, time ticking, ticking, ticking away…

It would be too difficult for my tired brain to separate my first and second weeks from each other... so I'll just talk about both weeks. The report won't be much different, seeing as the past two weeks have been one huge long blur.

Saying so, however, here are some impressions...
1) we had an orientation meeting on my first day, in which I became even more unoriented (still didn't know my schedule, still had no idea about the lay of the land, still had no idea about the classes, professors, my classmates, campus facts, etc)

2) after figuring out that I did indeed have 6 classes this semester, but only met with 4 or 5 of them every week, I enthusiastically downloaded the syllabi, ordered books from the best online textbook store ever, I then found out that the professors like to keep us on our toes by changing textbooks the day before class. Nice, huh?

3) I have 5 of my 6 classes in the same room. Is that so my doctoral program resembles, as closely as it can, a prison?

4) I have a 4.5 hour break on my Wednesdays between classes. Or, at least I thought it was a break. no no. That time is time to meet with professors, go print out articles to read for the next class or day or week (depending on how far behind I am already), and go to my research meetings.

5) My brain can actually hurt. Kinda like how I'm sure my muscles that become flabby from disuse, did my brain become flabby? and is now sore b/c I didn't exercise it enough? I kind of hope so, b/c that means that after about 2 weeks, my brain can stop hurting and it'll be a lean, mean fighting machine.

After being assigned an unimaginable amount of reading to do, freaking out b/c some professors seem to think we'll have time to finish reading EARLIER than class and are requiring us to turn stuff in 2 days PRIOR to class (hullo? i'm a procrastinator. having the reading done EARLY does NOT work for ME)... oh. er, I kind of lost my train of thought. sorry.

I did enjoy my weekend. Bookish invited me over on Sunday for a day of entertainment. Namely, watching her DH watch football. Sounds weird, yes? But I can assure you, watching her DH and their menagerie of animals during the football games is indeed, highly entertaining. Who knew that watching competitive sports when you don't really care who wins could be so enjoyable? I mostly worked on the scarf for my ISE 3 pal, after ripping out about 10 rows I had knit after classes my first week. I'm a quick learner, so no more knitting from a chart on school days.

The only other moment that is worth mentioning this week... my mild myocardial infarction. Boston College might be a highly revered/respected institution of higher learning, but they need to learn a thing or two about organization. I knew I was missing paperwork from the school, but wasn't too worried. My cohort and I went out to dinner on Wed night to get to know each other, and when I got home, I had the missing paperwork in my mailbox. These papers were supposed to detail who my faculty advisor is, how many course credits they were going to pay for, how many hours per week I would be enslaved to my faculty advisor, and how much they were gonna pay me for said enslavement. I had been told the amt when they made me the offer, and the actual letter only awarded me HALF the monies. HALF is not enough to pay for my rent, much less any portion of other living costs. The only reason I got any sleep at all, is b/c I was so freaking tired (class for 6 hrs, 2 meetings, and dinner with 6 ppl I don't know very well... I was bone weary).

For those of you that know me...I was in bed by midnight. MIDNIGHT! Unheard of for me. To make my longer than necc. story longer, the director of training told me not to worry, that the faculty were aware of the error, and that I was going to be awarded the original amt offered. Dude. If they KNEW there was an error, why didn't they warn me about the erroneous info that was gonna be coming my way BEFORE it got to me? BEFORE I spent an entire day with my anxiety levels cranked up to level RED?

So. No classes tomorrow, but I stayed up to do homework. What is this world coming to?

*borrowing from my friend Joanne. Anyone care to guess? WITHOUT googling?