Accomplishing Escapism

 So it's been a while.  I feel like I may have overloaded myself with internet projects, but I really like all of them, so I've just gotta balance them better.  To recap:  Boycott BluRay (movie reviews and other stuff I want to say about film), Alternative Read (the book version), My Bird Stands on One Foot (my tumblr, mostly reposted tattoo photos and owls with their heads upside down), and my newest project, If the truth is out there.... (wherein I'm chronicling my venture in re-watching the entirety of The X-Files).

Enough self-promotion. :D

My big news, I guess, is that my mom and I joined Weight Watchers.  I gained A LOT of weight in college, and the people in my family are not known for being skinny - obesity is a danger that I unfortunately face, and it terrifies me.  My way of battling this is to learn how to eat NOW, while I can still lose weight with (relative) ease, so that when I'm older and my already poor metabolism slows down even more, I won't balloon into a hippo and I'll already have established a habit of healthy eating.  I've been doing it for four weeks and I've lost 8.6 pounds; my pants are looser, and I honestly feel physically better.  I was having back pains that are clearing up, it's easier to wake up in the mornings, and I'm getting noticeably stronger and my stamina is better.  And I don't feel starved or deprived; mainly I'm just not snacking mindlessly and I cook a lot more.  Also I don't go out to eat for lunch except on Mondays after weigh-in when my mom and I get sushi.  I'm really feeling good about the program.

My reward for losing 20 pounds is going to be a tattoo - two goldfinches, a male and a female, flying down my ankle onto my foot.  The finches are for my parents; we got a thistle feeder a long time ago so we could watch the goldfinches in our yard, and the first summer colors finches (that really bright, gorgeous yellow) that we see have always been cause for celebration.  We had a little mourning when west nile killed so much of the songbird population in Oak Park, and when they came back we celebrated.

My birthday is on Saturday and that's pretty awesome.  I'm turning 23, and I feel like I've finally got a plan in place for the next couple of years.  Not this fall, but next fall I'm going back to school to get a Masters in Library Science, because I'd really like to work in archives and preservation.  It's nice to have a plan - this coming year I'll be getting my application together, which gives me a clear goal and timeline, which I need to get things done.  I'm looking forward to it.

I hope everyone had a fun Free Comic Book Day! 

 This weekend was not a good weekend for my tech...I have two computers: my PC, which has been my main machine since freshman year and a steadfast companion through many a tv show and essay, and my lovely little Mac laptop.  Both of which died on Sunday - the PC in a fixable way, the laptop in a really, really unfixable way.

Billy did some fiddling with the PC, burning my OS to the ground and installing Vista, and now she runs like a dream.  The laptop...oh Delilah, I'm so sorry I'm a bad computer owner.  I took her to the Apple store and they had to replace the hard drive because the old one was utterly broken.  Guys, I lost EVERYTHING.  Music, photos, word docs, everything.  (Luckily, about 90% of my photos are lurking somewhere online).

I...kinda feel like I should be more traumatized by this.  I mean, I lost two years' worth of school papers, writing drabbles, my THESIS, and maybe 100 songs on iTunes that I hadn't put on my iPod yet.  And yet...I got a new hard drive for free, a free upgrade to Snow Leopard, and Delilah has a new lease on life (extended warantees are AWESOME).  I've got my thesis in hard copy, and any story I want to work on I can just start over; it's not like I had anything fabulous to begin with.

So I'm not too broken up about it.  I was upset when everything was breaking all of the time, because it was really frustrating not to have a working computer at all, but now they've both got shiny new operating systems and I get to fiddle with them to my heart's desire.  So...there's that.

(I am SUPER sad that I have to re-assemble my collection of LJ icons...)

That said, if anyone has a copy of Owl City's Ocean Eyes, it'd be awesome if I could get it (it's the only whole album I've bought in a while, and I lost it with my iTunes.)

Also: blog post 

I went to see two apartments yesterday with my supposed future roommates, and I learned two very valuable things: 

1. My budget concerns are Not The Same as theirs, and

2. They are both ready to move yesterday.

I'm frustrated, because I definitely talked to Rachel and made absolutely clear that the job I will be starting pays $8.25 an hour, and that my price range for rent was going to be between $300 and $400 a month.  One of the places we saw yesterday was $1900 and the other was $1800, neither of which included utilities - apparently Rachel never communicated my financial concerns to the third girl who's involved in all of this (a friend of Rachel's from work who I have met all of twice), and Natasha was looking for places starting at $1500 and moving way up from there.  When I mentioned my concerns Natasha got snippy, throwing out a "Wll, I didn't know we had such tight money restraints" etc.  Which pissed me off, because it's a valuable concern and even though I had thought Rachel and I were agreed on our price range, she obviously didn't tell Natasha.

The second concern I have is that I am simply not ready to move.  I've been home for just over a month, and the idea of rushing out of my parents' home is extremely stressful to me.  I don't intend to live here forever, but the timeline Rachel and I had discussed implied to me that we wouldn't actually be moving until sometime in the fall.  By then I would be ready - I'd have a bit of money saved up, I'd be acclimated to being in town, and so forth.  And now they're both ready to fork over the deposit for this place, and move in like next week, and I simply cannot do that.

I'm angry and a little hurt by the fact that I thought Rachel and I were on the same page, and we're obviously not.  The fact that I talked to her about my constraints and concerns, and the fact that they are being ignored, makes me feel like I'm a tagalong on this whole venture and that it's really about what THEY want (which is a little insulting because I was the one who first brought up the idea of living together with just Rachel, and Natasha is a last-minute addition). 

I'm not looking forward to the conversation I have to have with them today, because they were SO in love with the place we looked at.  But on top of the money and timeframe, it would land me with an hour commute to work, there aren't any grocery stores in the area and none of us has a car, and they don't allow pets, I have solid reasons why this is a bad choice for me.  I dropped the ball a bit when I didn't communicate this to them yesterday, but frankly I didn't want Natasha up in my face again after her shit-fit about my salary.  I'm going to tell Rachel that we're in vastly different places and that I think it would be better if the two of them looked for something to suit their needs, and I'll sit tight until October or November when I can do this without causing massive emotional and financial trouble for myself.  Which I think is frankly more than fair.

Yesterday I thought it might be interesting to look up what it takes to get a paralegal certificate, since that's just the official name for the work I do for my dad anyway.  I was thinking getting the certificate might be a good idea, since I could probably make more money and get work at other lawfirms.  And what did I find out that the average paralegal can make in a year?

Up to $60K.  A year.  My mom said that the paralegals working at CitiCorp when she was there were making <B>$80K</B>.

So yeah.  New plan, guys.  Not just a frivolous one, either - I LIKE working in my dad's firm.  It's interesting work, there's always something to do, and I'm smack in the middle of the city.  I do not want to go to law school or become a lawyer, but yeah, I do find law interesting and I know I can handle the work of a paralegal.  Plus, there are several accredited online programs OR schools in the Chicago area I could attend; with my BA, it wouldn't take more than a year or two to finish the accredation. 

Although, I was very irritated with the Kaplan people yesterday - barely twenty minutes after I requested info from their site, they were CALLING me at work to talk to me.  When I politely explained that I was at work, and would there be a better time for me to call them back? the woman on the phone said it would only take a minute and proceeded to talk at me for twenty more minutes.  I confess to being rather rude, since I was, you know, at WORK, but she seriously just kept going.  I didn't want to hang up on her, since I am interested in their program, but really?  Even after I said I couldn't talk, because I was at work, which is a completely reasonable place for me to be at 3:30 in the afternoon, you had to keeeeeeeeep going?

And then later in the day I got ANOTHER call.  It wouldn't have been so bad, except I indicated on the sites that I was not looking for immediate enrollment - that this was a very in-the-future sort of deal, so no, I am not going to know exactly what I am doing NOW THIS INSTANT.  And repeating your questions about eight times won't get a better answer from me.  So I'm screening my calls for the next couple of days - I don't like being trapped on the phone with nothing useful to say, especially when I didn't ask for the call.

I like BOA.

I also like the false feeling of cleverness I get from copying and pasting code someone else has written into the customizing box, thus creating an awesome layout that I actually had nothing to do with making, but still feel entitled to taking credit for.

The flowers are pretty.

Is it weird that I'm already wondering if the art school here administers Associates Degrees? I think I might want to get one in Creative Writing (or whatever their equivalent is - Fiction Writing, it may be). I talk a lot of shit about being glad to be done with school, but I like the idea of getting a degree for no other reason than it would be fun to get it. I majored in English because I like reading books and I'm pretty good at writing essays, but also because a lot of people told me that it would be useful in finding a job after - as my dad says, reading and writing critically are two of the most sought-after and hard to find qualifications. Might be nice to study something just because I can.

But we'll see. No matter what I end up doing, it's WAY too early to even THINK about going back to school. I wanna play a little before I do any more studying.

Also-also, read my new blog post: http://literacynotoptional.blogspot.com/