Twitter / atb20

Thursday, August 31, 2006

little miss squiggley pants

i finally met little miss squiggley pants (aka my niece, aka lmsp). it sort of felt like internet dating in that so little of the person was contained in the pictures i'd seen. she was so much cuter in person... so much sillier and squigglier and gassy. my brother is convinced that she can already talk, stand, and compute the square root of pi -- just like any proud father. apparently, she says "ap ap" when she looks at the fan (though i did not hear it in my four days with her), and she is referring to the fact that the fan is an appliance. not bad for 6 weeks, eh? we're expecting a harvard m.d. by 2007.

we also saw two other babies on our vacation (hence the subtitle of our west coast trip -- "baby tour 2006"). my cousin's and my oldest friend's. both had boys, and they dwarfed lmsp by many ounces. all were cute and well behaved.

otherwise the trip was a success. no car wrecks despite 2 nyc drivers clocking in over a 1000 miles. i saw 3 good friends, 6 in-laws, 4 cousins, 1 sibling, and 1 niece in 10 days. i will try to get some trip pics online tomorrow...

Thursday, August 17, 2006

the old me

i'm falling back into the patterns of a non-student. i forgot what had motivated me to start grad school in the first place... the desire to grow a little, learn something new, try on a new hat for a change. now that i'm back out of school i'm rediscovering that familiar longing. i want to try baking again... making elaborate meals just for the fun of it. i also wonder if perhaps i should have taken courses in computer graphics or landscape design while i was still a full-time employee here. as my age creeps higher, i still can't seem to imagine what a dream job would look like. i'm much more the type for a dream hobby. "job" just makes me picture being stuck in an office for hours and hours, days and days, weeks and weeks, until next thing you know your fifty years old and wondering where your life went. hell, i'm 29 years old and wondering where my youth went. wasn't i just that fresh young thing out of college with nary a wrinkle to my brow? how could seven years of adulthood meandered by unnoticed?

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

save the children, knit

as if by magic a friend emailed me this link yesterday. anyone else a knitter? or know one?
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btw, i've come up with a new resolution for myself (perhaps magic will help with this one, too). i need to go to hawaii. fate, i can be found one storey below ground at approximately 43 degrees north, 75 degrees west. i can be at newark airport with bag in hand in three hours flat.

Monday, August 14, 2006

thoughts on knitting

i've decided that from this point on i should only knit things for babies. i knit a whole dress for my niece in a matter of maybe a month... and meanwhile i've been working on a skirt for myself for the last eight and a half months. and after all that time, i'm maybe halfway done. my patience is wearing thin.
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for those of you on the east coast, i hope you were able to spend a good chunk of the weekend outdoors because the weather was just dreamy. the arid breezes called-up visions of falling leaves and pumpkins. mm... i was ready to grab my leather jacket and some warm apple cider...
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for those of you who used to keep track of mil's comings and goings via his practically defunct blog, he'll be giving that mcat a double-take this weekend. wish me luck!

Friday, August 11, 2006

guess what movie we're going to see tonight... here's a clue: ab & mil picked it. this was my first choice.

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

hi

it's me! over here. that's right. i've managed to remember that i have a blog. not sure how long it will last, though mil and i are seriously considering making podcasts to put on youtube. what do you think? far more entertaining than my usual meandering ramblings... and mil's usual silence. any intro episode suggestions?
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anyway, my masters work is complete, so now i get to sit by the mailbox eagerly awaiting my my degree. ok, so i'm not sitting by the mailbox... i've got far more important things to do... like find a job. one that doesn't bore me to tears, pays me lots of money, and makes me feel good about myself... hmm... tall order. i was reading this interesting article in the times, and it made me worry that if these really smart, highly qualified women are having a difficult time finding a job that is suitably challenging, high-paying, and part-time, wtf am i going to do when i have kids? i don't know, but i sure as hell am going to stay far away from "the street."
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so, i have a niece. did i mention that? yeah, she's pretty darn cute. mil and i are heading west in a week and a half so we can finally meet her in person. ichat is great and all, but they still haven't figured out how to teleport small children across the continent... maybe in ichat 4.0.
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um... yeah, that's all i can think of. so... stay classy, san diego.

Friday, August 04, 2006

done



so, yesterday was my last day of field. it was a rough one... not for the usual reasons, but because i had to say good-bye to some people i've become very close to. it's amazing what happens when you spend an hour a week with someone talking about their hopes and fears and daily struggles. one young client started crying, and that almost brought me to tears as well. there was little comfort i could offer when all he wanted was for me to stay... a child who's had more upheaval in the last six months than i've had in my whole life. what could i do? i'm graduating, moving on with my life. i almost lost it again in my last meeting with my supervisor who offered me a hug and "best of luck with your future." last summer i couldn't wait to get out of field. my final ride home on the d was like heaven... i think i might have been singing. this summer, i just feel lonely and sad, and i just want to go back next wednesday and see my clients one last time... give them one last hug. it's a weird feeling to just walk out on people you've spent so much time getting to know. i'll likely never see or hear from any of them again. i won't know how their first year of high school went or whether they got that job they've been waiting to hear back about. i know i'll get over it, move on, etc., but all of the people i've met over the past year will stick with me, and my world is just a little bigger because of them.

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

posty posterrific

here i am... sitting at my computer... still not really coming up with anything to post about. there's no news on the job front other than i've made an appointment to spend some quality time at the office of this executive recruiter person next week provided my jury duty doesn't extend beyond the 3-day mark. mil is still studying up a storm for the crap-cat. and we played hooky from the city over the weekend, so we could sit in the pool at my parents place and play ping-pong with the metsfan clan. and it was good.