On Mornings

12 Days. 2 and a half weeks. 22 More Classes. After that, I'm done with college. I graduate in less than a month, in less than a month I'll be walking across the stage at the Sigel center and receiving my diploma. Holy. Shit. It's crazy, it blows my mind. But I feel like I'm better set up than most of my peers. A B.S. in Psychology means nothing really, at best you can get lab tech jobs so graduate school is a must. I have a really good in with Dr. Porter, I've worked in his lab for about 2 years now, I'm doing a study under his supervision, he's even pulled some strings to get me into classes. Either way around the time that grad school applications were due Dr. Porter tells me that funding is tight within the depatment and they may not be taking on new students so I may want to look other places. Of course I procrastinate and end up with 2 weeks to look at other schools. I tried looking into schools, programs, and professors but it was too much and so I decided to take a year off. I think I'd previously mentioned that I wasn't sure if I was leaving Richmond or not.

Well recently I was talking with Cory , with who I had talked about moving to Chicago with, and he still has another semester left so Cory and I decided to get a place together hopefully with a 6 month lease then go from there. So what changed my mind? I may be able to extend the Tech Job I have now with Dr. Bettinger. Things with me and someone else are going well, not to say that I'm staying for them, but I'm not leaving because of them which was the original driving force behind leaving. Cory also said that once he'd graduated he'd go wherever with me so that will be nice if we do end up deciding to move I'd have someone with me.

Speaking of jobs, I essentially got fired the other day. I work at a corporate bakery/cafe, and I've worked there for awhile. When I first started working there it was still a franchise and things were amazing, I came back after about a year of being gone to a new store. The same GM that hired me but this store is top 5 selling stores in the country and fastest order time in the country. So I think the stress have driven her crazy, and her little staff of underlings is not much better. Anyway, we throw away whatever bread the homeless shelters don't come to pick up at the end of the night. The other evening I was working and it was supposed to thunderstorm right when I got out, so I got a friend to pick me up. When he got there, after we'd closed I ran out side and gave him bread. Long story short the next day when I come into work there's a 2 page write up about the incident and the last paragraph says that I'm suspended until the issue is "resolved" I said fine here's my 2 weeks. So I'm actually really pumped, I now have time to myself, I can focus on my school work, and I have another job lined up to start in the summer. I'm pumped.

So all in all things have been going pretty well for me as of late. Cross my fingers so they stay this way.

On How Much Difference 24 Hours Can Make

I've had a really good 24 hours. Like phenomenally, everything is wrapping up nicely. I'll expand more later, possibly tomorrow.

Topics Include:
Post Summer Plans, Professionalism, Panera, Tutoring, Summer, etc.

Tune in. Good night.

On Tattoos

So I've really really wanted a half-sleeve of the greek goddess Athena for about a year now. Now my current tattoo artist has said that he's been really into doing mythological tattoos. And his work is really good the only problem is that he is a goddamed ghost. I've told him multiple times that I am ready and have the money to do this and that I'd like to get it done while I still have the cash. I've told him this maybe three times now and each time I've gotten nothing back. Emails, phone calls, passing messages. Nothing, so I'm wondering if I should start looking for a new artist. I picked up a card from Thea Duskin and checked out her portfolio, she looks pretty good. I've always heard good things about Salvation and checked out some of their profiles.

I don't know, thoughts? Suggestions?

On Bonus Blog Tie Ins

Actually yes I do. I don't like it one bit.

Cig+Bed

Back to school tomorrow. Let's wrap this train wreck up and get the fuck out.

On Arch-Rivalry

Things have been weird recently. Spring break was this past week and I decided not to pick up any extra time at work so I could have some time to myself. This semester has been really draining, bring on campus for most of the day and then a good portion of the evening spent in the library then a weekend full of work and getting drunk.

So I worked all last weekend but I had made plans with someone when I got off work Sunday night. While I'm at work my brother calls me and tells me he was coming down to see some people and that he was going to spend the night in town. I haven't seen my brother in about 6 months and so of course I was really excited to hang out with him. However I really wanted to keep the plans I had already made so I worked out something in my head that would let both work, we would go to a neutral location and things would be fine. But then my brother and I started drinking on the porch, I mean it was the second beautiful night of the season. So I invited the person I'd made plans with over to drink with us. Things were going well other people came over and we all hung out like all of us used to do and it was really nice. Then people started to leave and my brother told me he was going to bed, I was going to try to see the person who I'd invited over home but unfortunately I'd gotten way too drunk and she went home on their own, I feel like I kind of let them down because plans between us are kind of tentative as is and something that had no chance of interruption, did just that.

The next few days were spent catching up with people I haven't seen in ages. Some of them girls, and while it was nice I've come to realize that it's much like having Arch-Rivals. It's not about the actual fight it's about the art. I wouldn't know what to do if a girl actually wanted to pursue something with me. Maybe it's some deep seeded insecurity about myself, this is the first time since I've come to college that I haven't had a steady girlfriend. It's not like I can't function without a girlfriend, I don't feel that I am in any way codependent on another person but I just... I don't know. I feel better when I have something to chase, but I'm like a dog and cars I'm not sure I'd know what to do if I caught one.

I do feel like my life has been kind of a mess these past few months though. Now mind you that could be because of a huge number of factors and while correlation does not equal causation it is kind of weird that things have been so weird now that I'm in this situation. But I'm getting ahead of myself, there's alot on my plate as I've talked about before and I just need to take a deep breath, keep my head about me and finish out this semester.

On a good note though, I feel like the chase is back on. A real chase this time, and while for most the chase is full of uncertainty and doubt, the chase is a welcome change for me. I'd rather have a serious super villian trying to kill me than a hand full of jack asses in costumes who don't know what they're doing.

On Music (Update)

Albums I need to look out for:
Asobi Seksu - Hush
We Were Promised Jet Packs - (untitled)

Shows I need to buy tickets to:
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart (5/4 Chapel Hill)

Artists I downloaded which are now in my listening que:
Portugal. The Man
mewithoutyou
Asobi Seksu (Live Album)
Ted Leo (Two Albums)

Discographies Still Downloading:
The Magnetic Fields
A Shower and catching up on Skins is on order I think.

On Being Sick Again

So whats been going on recently.

This evening I took a "computer literacy" test that my university requires each student to take before they graduate. It's impossibly simple tasks (use word count, delete this column from an excel file, switch between two windows) so simple that I wondered why they required something like this of ready to graduate college seniors? Shortly after I began taking the test a girl sat down next to me and began to take the test as well. I then realize why they set this test as a requirement. I'm not sure if she was just scared by the testing environment or if she was just confused by the poorly worded questions, but she was on the phone with her friend and had to read aloud most every question and ask how to do that task to her friend. I almost wanted to lean over and help her through it all but I ended up not doing it. She was timing out on almost every section and those sections shouldn't have taken more than 10 minuets at the maximum. You would think that by the time you had about 120 under your belt you would have been exposed to enough computer handling that you would know what you were doing. But I guess that's why they have this test in place.
Regardless it took me about 2.5 hours. Grant it I was facebooking and chatting to people while I was doing it but still, entirely too long.

I'm sick again, I was hoping that I wouldn't catch whats been going around and that it was just what I had earlier in the season, but sure enough Friday and Saturday I had a runny nose but nothing more so I didn't change anything, I went out both nights smoke, drank, etc. Sunday I woke up feeling like complete shit, I was weak, cold, and aching. I thought about calling out but knew it would never fly so I got a friend to give me a ride to work. As soon as I got to work I was freezing, even some of my coworkers noticed that I was shaking and people said I looked horrible. A few hours into my double I warmed up a little but my back began to hurt and I was aching all over really badly. In the long run I'm really glad I got a ride in because the snow came and we closed early (gasp!) due to the weather, I got a ride home and convinced someone not to walk (from willow lawn to the fan) in the heavy snow. As soon as I got home I curled up in bed and passed out. Slept for 13 hours and woke up to a snow covered Richmond. University was closed and I decided to take the day off from the lab. Ended up going to Pearly's for breakfast with my roommate and a neighborhood friend and one of our other neighbors was working that morning decided that our money was no good that morning.

I'm beginning to worry about my semester a bit. I'm not doing as well in my classes as I'd like. I really enjoy them but maybe it's senioritis, maybe its everything else going on but I can't find the focus to study. I'm fairly certain that I bombed my Drugs and their Actions test today. Not a good way to spend your second test. Not doing so hot at all in Neurobiology, and I'm considering dropping Asian Medicines and Asian Religions. If I did that then I could work Wednesday nights and drop Saturday mornings which means I could at least come in to run test points or sleep if I have none. I've been missing alot of test points because I can't run Saturday mornings. One of the grad students has been nice enough to tack an extra group for the past few weeks but I feel bad because I'm making him spend more of his Saturday in the lab when I'm sure there's other things he could be doing.

On the upside things are looking good for me to get my Athena sleeve over spring break. I've been talking to Justin alot and I've told him I'm free all break and that I get paid on the Tuesday of. So we'll see how that goes.