I made a nifty little link to the left (beneath 'About Me') that will allow you to go back to my 101 List whenever you want and see how I'm doing. You know, so you guys don't think I am some kind of loser who makes resolutions and then forgets about them.

New Boss went on vacation to my hometown and brought back a world famous cheesecake for the team. It is sitting in the fridge as we speak. We will all eat it together at some point in the foreseeable future.

It is just sitting there.

I am just sitting here

...thinking about it.

I am one of about three people who came in to work today. Everyone is either on vacation or has simply taken today off in order to have a four-day weekend. It is super quiet, especially since I am "holding down the fort," as our HR woman put it, for my department.

I just realized that I never blogged about Thursday knitting. Hmm. There is a cool hipster place where people in my general age group get together to knit, crochet or whatever else on Thursday evenings. It is a former bar that now serves beer, wine, coffee drinks and kick ass pizza. It it totally funky and the people are fun! I have gone about four times, often with Friend From Work's Wife, who is a master knitter. They live in the area and she is the one who introduced me to this shindig. I also took CL and Artsy Friend once.


I know I am still a beginner but I am a perfectionist and I get very frustrated when trying new patterns or stitches because I inevitably screw them up. Normal people would just move on since they are still learning but I tend to throw the piece of knitting across the room and wail dramatically.

My exciting Memorial Day weekend plans include the following: friend drop-off at the airport, friend pick-up from the airport, cleaning my bathtub, knitting up a storm, getting some exercise, taking advantage of M. Day sales to get summer clothes, reading up a storm, going out with friends, sleeping until 10:00 AM or later, finishing up an article I need to finish, and other similarly stimulating activities still to be decided.

Inching our way towards the weekend... :) I can't wait, even if I do nothing but lay around, drink red wine and read good books.

The bosses are out on vacation and New Boss put me in charge of our newest marketing campaign. It's a lot of work but it keeps me busy and it is nice to be trusted with something important. He has just given me a new title, actually, and switched me over to being salaried rather than hourly. Good things in store after my anniversary and performance review in September.

This morning I spent some time looking at a photo of Father and I that is currently on the desktop of my laptop. I was four or five years old, dressed up for church or something, with a white dress on and hair teased very high (it was the 80s - my mother did that to me often). We were sitting on the couch of the first apartment I can remember, one that I haven't seen since my 6th birthday. We looked very happy.

I still can't grasp the fact that people can just up and leave, and you will never see them again so long as you live. What if you forgot to tell them something? What if there was something you had been meaning to ask?

Speaking of which, I met with New Therapist the other day. She seems like a good fit for me. I wasn't in love with her but I remember not being in love with my first therapist in the beginning either, and we developed a great relationship and she helped me a lot. So I am not too worried about that. She said a few things that, even in our first session, made me see things in a different way and think a lot. This is a good thing.

A Sad Tale

Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time there was an honor student. This honor student had to move away from home before she finished her bachelor's degree. She worked and worked to take the remainder of her classes at various colleges in her new city and completed them all with excellent grades. She also took on an internship working on an enormous project that was related to her major and future work. Upon seeing this connection, she asked her college back home to give her internship credit. The Dean approved and forms were filled out and filed. The student was very happy.

One year later, when it came time for the student to graduate, the evil Assistant Registrar told her that she was three credits short for her degree. "How can this be?" asked the student. It soon came to her attention that her internship credit from the previous year was not included in her transcript. The student told the evil AR about this, and he said he did not know what she was talking about. She went back to the others who had filled out and filed her paperwork and though they acknowledged the internship, they no longer had the files and it had never been processed.

The college people wanted to help the student once again, so they filled out the paperwork and gave it to the AR. "You must re-register and pay out-of-state tuition for this, as you are out of state," he told the student. The student fought to ensure that she would pay in-state tuition because the credit was from one year prior, when she was a resident of said state. "It must be re-approved by the Dean," the AR said. The college people tracked down the Dean and got him to re-approve it. The student called the AR for days and days, trying to get her final bill paid so she could get the credit in time for graduation, but he would not speak to her and never returned her calls or emails. When she finally got him on the phone, he told her that she needed to find a professor to give her a grade for the internship - for credit she had been awarded one year prior.

The poor honors student was very worn down and saddened by this. She approached the chairwoman of her department and asked if she would kindly give her a (good) grade. The chairwoman agreed and asked the student to resend all of her materials and then wait for her to have some free time. The poor honor student will do just this when she can find the time, since she works full-time and has many additional jobs on the side. The college has been cruel to the honor student and she will never forget it, and will never recommend that anyone she knows attend the school. She will, however, always remember the kindness of the good college people who fought on her behalf.

I love having a boss who opens the door to his office and throws a peace sign at me before charging off somewhere.

See, this is why I hate stockings. I've got a run a mile long. I need to get me some skin-tone peds to wear with dressy shoes because this is getting ridiculous.

Hello! It's Tuesday. Better than Monday but not anywhere near Friday. Ah well. I am in a good mood today because I finally found a therapist. I don't yet know that she's "the one" but she seems good on paper and was nice over the phone. I am going to see her this evening so I will let you know.

We have entered the age of 90 and 100 degrees here in Texas. Yesterday I got my car A/C taken care of because it was low on freon and I might have passed out at the wheel. Just getting ready this morning, like I always do, caused me to sweat all over. Lovely :P

Speaking of Texas, Bro's Friend is coming for a visit next week and Best Friend is likely coming back (with her boyfriend) in July or August. Yay!

Circe was immortalised in literature (Homer's Odyssey) as a femme fatale, enticing Odysseus to her island whereupon she transformed his sailors to the animal closest to their true nature - pigs.

For modern women, this means Circe challenges you to take responsibility for your own actions and life. Stop floating along with the mindset that "life just happens" and draw on Circe's energy to use your own power to create your own destiny.

Living alone on her island, the archetype of Circe is that of autonomous woman, self-empowered and whole unto herself.

I can make choices

Check out Anita's goddess site. It rocks!

All of the graduates in their slick gowns and honor ribbons walking around campus are getting me down.

To be fair, I can fly back and go to my own ceremony, which is in about a week and a half. I have no desire to, though. I barely know anyone there anymore and it might be depressing, considering how much my father would have liked to see this. So fuck it.

It doesn't keep me from feeling like a bit of a loser, though.

The Mark of a Good Friend

Me: Boyfriend has a new female study partner. I hope she is ugly.
CL Friend: I'm sure she is ugly. And boring too.

At midnight last night I was awakened by a massive storm. I mean MASSIVE. Our neighbors were throwing around the term "tornado" and it sure as hell sounded like it. The wind pounded against our apartment like it was going to rip the door off, and hailstones that must have been the size of rocks kept pummeling the windows. Some people (not us) lost power. It felt like a plague out of Exodus. I was terrified.

It is funny how people adapt to their environments. I spoke with a native Texan friend recently about the differences between here and where I've come from. Here, tornadoes occur often enough so that they do not scare the daylights out of people. If there is a bit of frost or a tiny bit of snow, however, they shut the schools down. Conversely, I think I had one snow day in my entire life, though we got inches and inches every winter. It was normal and they just expected you to deal with it. I do remember getting a day off for a tornado warning though, because tornadoes?? Those were serious!

It's kind of interesting, no?

The Bob

I had it done last weekend. Reactions have been genuinely positive around the office and in my little world.

Things That Make Me Happy: Three Little Words

(Summa Cum Laude.)

Things That Make Me Happy: Home-Made Cookies

Things That Make Me Happy: Diana Krall

I wrote an impromptu poem, which I would like to share:

Oh, Coffee,
thou ambrosia of mortals -
you flush my veins with
sweet caffeine
and buoy me up
when days are long.

Oh, Coffee!
How I love thee
in the morning at my desk
on the weekends at my table
my ever present companion
beside magazines and books.

Oh, Coffee!
I will shout from the rooftops
that were it not for you
I would surely be
unemployed.

(c) Sojourness, 2008.

Oh, Mondays. They are bad enough on their own, but when they kick off a week of 2-hour meetings every day, they are something else altogether. Thanks New Boss! :D

One of Sister's very good friends passed away over the weekend at age 22. She was an epileptic who had a seizure. I am not sure of all the details but really wish that Sister was not dealing with so much loss in such a short amount of time. It is frightening when people die before they are "supposed to."

When it rains, it pours, right?