PolarGrrlPurls

Guten Abend!

School started! On Tuesday I went to the Uni. and spent 3 hours registering for 3 classes. It was an adventure finding three classes that I could get into (most were full) and that did not require a prerequisite class that I do not have and that also fit my schedule. I ended up with German 101, Intro. to Asian American Literature, and Intro. to Management Information Systems (MSIS 101). I attended my first class yesterday morning and really enjoyed it! (Though, I'm still a bit nervous about my ability to learn German. Hey! Maybe I'll get one of these and label the German names for everything in my house!) I managed to score all my text books at half price by buying them used online and now all I have to do is wait for them to get shipped to me. (Hopefully soon!)

AND! I'm going on vacation soon!! *Insert jumping-up-and-down emoticon here* Marikal and I are taking a few days off and heading out the very end of The Cape for our anniversary next week. We found a room available in a B&B with beautiful views. The fur babies have been entrusted to a good friend who adores them and we are counting down the days. I'm so excited! (Can you tell?)

There's knitting news, too, but that'll have to wait for when I'm posting at home.

Ruminating

I'm in a bit of a philosophical mood today, so bear with me please. (Or, if you prefer, go read something else and wait for another post in a few days....go ahead, I won't be offended.)

When I was 15 I got it in my head that I wanted to record a few of the songs I had written. I had a plan to record them in a real recording studio, with live musicians, a good sound engineer, with cover art on the CDs/tapes; I wanted the whole nine yards. So, I found musicians, made a ton of phone calls, booked studio time, practiced, and hoped to heck that I could pay for it. (I had no $$ to speak of at the time.) The entire time I was setting everything up, I just put aside from my head the fact that I had no way of paying all the people I had just hired. None. I just trusted that I would find a way to make it all work. Five days before the recording session I got a suprise check in the mail from my great grandmother for $3k. It was the largest amount of money I had ever seen at  the time and I was excited beyond belief! I had no idea that she would send me $$ (in fact, I had only met her a handful of times, as she lived out of state and was a bit estranged from the family).  I guess you could say that the universe was me helping fulfill a heart-felt dream. Someone up there was looking out for me, anyway. ;-)

What am I getting at? All the times in my life when I have had success it has been because I just put aside my fears and all the rational and irrational complexities of life and did what I wanted to do. I had faith that it would all somehow work out in the end, even if I didn't have a clue as to how to make it all happen. Each time I have done this kind of blind leap things have always shaken out okay. Not to say that it was easy or even necessarily pleasant; and every time there was certainly a great deal of hard work involved on my part, but the end result has always been primarily positive.

I guess I'm thinking about this in light of the fact that school starts this week. Getting everything set up for school has been a trial I was not really expecting. I have a lot of anxiety and fears about going back to school.....the debt, the cost of tuition, the serious lack of free time, the hours I'll be cutting from my work schedule, how this will impact things with marikal, etc. And there is no way to get real reasssurance and answers for these fears and questions about the unknown. I just have to step out on a faith that somehow, some way, things will all work out. Though, I must say that it seemed easier to have this kind of blind faith and reckless disregard for rational thought when I was 15 than it does now. Why is it that as we get older we get more conservative?

Still Here

I realized the other day (when I got an email from typepad billing dept. telling me that my credit card had expired) that I have not posted in ages. I blame it on complete and utter exhaustion from walking around, first on crutches, and now in an aircast. I realize this is a lame excuse (haha), but I'm sticking to it.

There has been a great deal of knitting going on! I'm on the last half of the second sleeve of Nina. All that's left is the rest of the sleeve, a collar, and the finishing. (It's really less than it sounds, as the sleeves and half the body are knit in the round.) I finished half of a new pair of Trekking socks and started swatching for Fall's brown raglan crewneck pullover.....which needs a name because Fall's-brown-raglan-crewneck-pullover is just too much to type. I'll call it Fall's Fall Sweater (FFS). I hope to have pictures of all these and possibly a few baby items (which I haven't even bought the yarn for yet) soon. Yes, baby crap. A&T are expecting. I've found a few cute (and quick!) patterns for baby crap, but I'm worried that they might not find them as cute and funny as I do. I may make the duck and frog booties from each, but make a regular aran style hat and aran cardi. I think the booties are cuter (and less disturbing, not to mention blackmail-picture-inviting) than the hats. Then again, duck feet booties, duck hat, and yellow onesie would make a very cute baby Halloween costume...either way I really ought to get on the yarn buying and knitting pretty soon, no?

School! I've really cut it close to the wire, which is likely a more accurate reason for why I've been MIA. I received my acceptance letter from State U. 2 weeks ago and sent in the $200 deposit today. I also sent in my request for registration and placement testing (required, apparently), but haven't yet gotten a response. And I'm still waiting on the accountant for the financial aid stuff. Why, yes, classes start in 11 days, why do you ask?

Back and Rested, With News

I am back from my mini-vacation. Actually, I've been back for a few days, but I've been savoring the moment. Even with the arrival of an impressive downpour on the second day, I had a great time. We did a little shopping and I picked up some very cool postcards that we may use as the RSVP cards when we get hitched next year. (Oh yeah, did I mention I'm getting hitched to Marikal next year?) I also found a t-shirt that I just had to special order in my size (they were low on stock when we were there). In Northampton, there is a very cool store called Cornucopia selling organic foods and natural products. We stopped in to browse and I picked up a couple bags of Baji's Papadum Chips. I'd never had them before, but they are delicious! I will definitely be hunting them down locally. There was another store there that sells discounted name brand stuff...a little like a Big Lots, but a local business. I found a very cute pair of black Birkenstock sandals with rhinestone buckles and Marikal got a pair of Dr. Marten slides, both for a steal. In fact, the next time we heaad out that way (hopefully in the next month or so) I plan to bring extra $$ for shoe shopping, as they had really great brands there (Ecco, Naturalizer, Dr. Marten, Earth Shoes, Dansko, Birkenstock, etc.) and a reasonable selection of sizes. Lastly, I paid a visit to WEBS, where Marikal sat in a comfy arm chair and read her trashy tabloid magazines and I wandered around petting yarn to my heart's content. I spent a gift certificate that I've been saving for three years and bought enough superwash wool for a sweater for my friend Fall, and two yummy skeins of Trekking XXL for socks for me.

And now onto the news of the land.

I had a nice luncheon yesterday with my friend SongBird who was up from Atlanta to visit her mom and I had the opportunity to meet her charming and wonderful partner. I also spoke to my dad in the afternoon, who had some upsetting news....my grandmother who is 88 and a very tough bird had a heart valve replaced about 10 years ago. Long story short, the valve is starting to wear out and my grandmother has decided not to get it replaced again. This means that she has a weak heart and it will only get weaker as time passes. The docs have given her about two years, but as with anything health-related, that's only the grossest of estimates. I respect her decision, but the news still makes me sad. We are planning a full family visit around Labor Day weekend...a bit of a reunion, if you will.

In biz news, I have picked up another client (Yay!!). This means even less free time (*sigh*) and more money for expansion and marketing (yay!). Scool is also going well for this second session of the summer, though it has been even tougher to find time to stufy this month than it was last month. Urgh.

I've also decided that I should stockpile some prepped meals in our large freezer for when school starts and work picks up so that we are not eating take-away every day, like we did a few months ago when life got ridiculous. To that end, Marikal and I made three meatloaves and a huge batch of meatballs and red sauce for the freezer yesterday afternoon. I also plan on shopping the sales on TV dinners to have easy work lunches. After all, we have a ton of freezer space, may as well use it, no?

I Made It!

Yesterday morning I turned in my term paper and took my final exam for Western Civ. I. I can't believe I made it through! The prof said that he's email/call each of us today and let us know our grades from the final and for the class. I'm hoping I got an A, but I'd be just as happy if it were a B, seeing as I've been away from school for so long. The past 5 weeks of school has taught/shown me a few things, though:

1. I need to better manage my study time
2. I need a desk for schoolwork; the coffee table and kitchen table are not comfortable enough for long stints of reading/note taking
3. The kittens must be banned from the area when studying, as they like to play and get in the way and generally distract me
4. Term papers take an average of 3 hours per page in research and writing; best to plan accordingly
5. It is not necessary to re-write my class and text notes as long as I reread them once a day
6. Paying attention to the prof's teaching style can save a lot of time and aggravation in planning my studying
7. Make sure your printer and laptop are communicating long before your term paper is due so as to avoid printing problems at 3:00am the night before it must be turned in
8. Ditch the idea that you'll be able to study at work on your lunch break; it's far too distracting an environment
9. Establish study goals for each day so as to avoid doing too little one day and having to catch up the night before the next class
10. Establish a repertoir of fast, easy, cheap meals to make at home, or you will be eating take-away and delivery food far too much

The next few weeks are also shaping up to be rather busy. I'm taking a mandatory 1 credit class in research and study skills for the second half of the summer, as well as working on getting together a work space as referenced in #2, above. I also have a meeting with an accountant and then a financial aid advisor to see how many internal organs I'll have to sell on the black market to pay for school in the fall.

In my knitting world, I've gotten the first sleeve of Nina up past the elbow, but then stopped, due to the term paper and the heat. (It's been 95+ with a dewpoint of at least 70 for the past three days. Yick.) I have been giving some attention to a long neglected straight-knit sock and have gotten it almost to the toe decreases on the second in the pair. After the Desk Project, as it will now be called, is complete, I'll be taking the sewing machine in for a tune-up/cleaning (nope never got around to it last winter) and then I'll be starting on a super-simple quilt top. Even I can sew straight lines, right?

10 Days!

The first summer session of school starts May 23rd. Yikes. I'm looking forward to it, but I'm still completely nervous. I'm trying to choose classes, as I have to go down and register this coming week. I'm on the fence a little. I have an option of Macroeconomics, Western Civ. I, Italian I, World Religions, and English Comp. I. I'm thinking no to the Macroecon. as I know it won't be an easy class and cramming it into 6 weeks seems like hell in the making. English Comp. is required, but it's also offered in about 5 sections every semester, so I don't need to do it right now, as there are plenty of opportunities to take it later. I'm most interested in the other three...Western Civ., Italian, and World Religions. If I took Italian I, I could take Italian II in the 2nd session of the summer and have 6 credits in a language by September. OTOH, it's not the most useful language and I really need to fill "Arts & Sciences" components for my degree. (For those of you not in school, languages fall under the "Humanities" portion of degree requirements.) Hm. Maybe I'll take the Western Civ. I know it will fill some of my required credits and it's likely to be fairly interesting. And I can take English Comp. in the 2nd session this summer and get that out of the way. Sigh...I'd better talk with my advisor on Monday before I register.

In kitten news, we had a few mishaps with the litter box useage in the first few days after she arrived until we realized that the adult sized litter box was too high for her to easily get into and out of. We found a few little baby kitty poop presents around the house until we figured this out and went and bought her a kitten sized litter box. We did a little litter box-kitty tutorial for her (put her in it 30 minutes after meal time and scratched her little paws into the litter) and after that she figured it out. Kali and Cocitta have been starting to interact a little more. Kali harrasses Cocitta and Cocitta puts her in line. Then, when Kali is better behaved, they chase each other around the house and play. Until Kali starts harrassing Cocitta again...:-)