The Residence

Welcome to my apartment!! This is the offical digital tour for all the people who have said they wanted to see the new digs, but don't live anywhere near MN.

The kitchen! (note the bizarre sink)

Living room, please note thats a futon for my many guests. (and by many I really mean very very few)office. (gear room)

bedroom.

and then there is the awkward hallway that only really serves to hold books.

Lost Files

Ok, seriously, I know I can be a major computer nerd when I want to be, so this might sound slightly Windows snobby of me, but who is their right mind thinks its a good idea to put all the files for a department for the year in one folder! hello! We have these things called subfolders for a reason, they are easy to create and help you find things. Instead I have look for a file amidst a hundred files because someone was too lazy to organize their digital office. grr.

The above is why I am having a wretched time trying to come up with statistics for the organization from the last few years. I needed a break.

Life is really uneventful here..... really uneventful. Go to gym, go to office, go to class (two days a week), go home, watch movie, sleep, repeat until monotony sets in. I'm practically begging for work to do just so I can fill my day.

1st classes this week were good though. The professors here are freaking amazing. And all the other sudents come from these really cool backgrounds and have done some really amazing things. Monday night with Scott totally set the tone. "We have alot of reading, talking and thinking to do in this class this semester. For this reason I am giving everyone in here an A. Grades are external motivators, and therefore I don't believe in them. I want you thinking about thinking, not thinking about grading." - Love this program.

Another Friday Night

So at the urging of a few of my friends from back in Boston I decided to try going out again and hitting the bar scene. So I went to the Wine Cafe and sat down at the bar with a glass of wine to listen to some live jazz. This is one venue in which going to Gordon did not serve me well. I have no idea how to react in these places. So when the lead guitarist for the jazz band saddled up next to me at the bar all my defences were rendered useless. We started talking about how I thought the first set had gone. We had been chatting for a few minutes when he asked what I was drinking. I told him it was a reisling. He asked what that was, and I told him it was a late harvest sweet wine. And he says, "Ah, sweet wine, you probably like it because you're so sweet." (I kid you not, I can't make stuff like this up.) He then takes my left hand and runs his thumb over my ring finger and says "so, if this finger is empty does that mean your single?"

Ack! I have never been so blatenly hit on in my life. Seriously. I'm just that clueless that I had no idea what was going on until those last two lines and by then it was too late to put on the fake engagement ring that was in my purse. (After telling Eric this story he informed me that the second I walked into the bar it was too late to put it on, aparently its one of the first thing guys look for, shoota.) I think I need to find a new venue to meet people in, either that or get a better radar for when I am being shamelessly hit on and get out while I still can. Oy vay.

Infrequent

I really should update this thing more often, but considering I really haven't told anyone that it exists yet, there really isn't any external motivation for it. C'est la vive. Lets see, news and events for the last few days.... not much really. I have been at work all week trying to get myself into a groove and figuring out what my job really is. So far though all the 2006 files are MIA from the office computer and i don't have access to the internet site to do any of the updating. I'm kind of at a stalemate. So I'm killing time at the office hoping to get an email back from someone, anyone who might know where these files are. Arg. I don't want to be a pest, but I don't want to get behind my first week either.

I did meet my two advisors for work, and they are hilarious. It's weird because this is my job, but a side project for them, so they have other classes, and meetings and such that require their attention, but this is all I do. Maybe it won't feel so imbalanced once my classes start. More importantly I really need to start meeting people, its driving me crazy having nothing to do and no one to hang out with. PTL that classes start on Monday.

Things at the apartment are going well. All the furniture is moved in and now I have to start decorating, but I realized that I don't have anything to decorate with. urg.

Pictures of the apartment soon.

The Purple Bench

I moved to Mankato on Wednesday. And up until today all I had done really was hang out in my apartment, run errands, try to buy furniture and get things settled here so that when classes start and work starts I’m not trying to get everything done at once. Plus, let’s be honest, I was just bored in Chicago, and figured this would at least be more productive than sitting at home. So I’m pretty much moved in and unpacked (not that there was much to unpack), and all I really have left to do is to tackle decorating. My favorite…. Everything had been pretty boring until today, because today I met Bob Simons.

I decided this afternoon to head over to campus and to spend some time just wandering around, getting my bearings and trying to convince myself that this was home, at least for now. Everything is so new that I was just desperate for something to feel familiar, and I figured the best way to make myself familiar was to just spend time there. So this is how I ended up on the purple (because everything here is purple) bench outside Armstrong Hall with my laptop.

I wasn’t there more than 5 minutes when I heard someone say “not getting ready for school already are you?” I looked up and there was a middle aged man with grey hair down to his shoulders in Levi’s, cowboy boots and dark sun glasses. I said no, that I was new to the University and I was merely getting myself acclimated. He said I was too old to be a freshman, which must make me a graduate student, and I told him I was studying Experiential Education. He said he didn’t know anything about it, and sat down and asked me to tell him about it. This is what started our 90 minute conversation about the American educational system and how it is failing miserably. We had tangents too, we shared stories about bears in Montana, or why Minnesotans dislike Wisconsinites. But by the end of the conversation Bob had left me in charge of revolutionizing the education industry, he said that all he knew was economics, and that the future of education was up to me. We both laughed.

It was getting late and I still had errands to run so I excused myself and he told me that his office was just inside the building we were sitting outside of, and that a few weeks after classes start I should stop in and say hello so we can catch up and he can get my opinion on what MNSU is doing wrong (or maybe right).

Bob Simons folks. My first friend in MN. Totally bizarre, and totally perfect all at the same time.

Starting Over

I don't even know how to be delicate about it anymore. The house burned down. Everything burned and I've relived that story so many times that I don't know that I can do it again, because this isn't about telling the story of what happened, it is about narrating the story that goes on after the ashes have been cleaned up, I've salvaged the few thigns that could be pulled from the rubble and now I'm moving on. Literally moving too, tomorrow I move to Mankato. I can say that im genuinely excited to start the next phase of life and studying and my new job and all those things, but I miss Boston terribly. Boston was my home, and where we had become a family. The are so many unique and special relationships there, and I'm absolutely terrified that the 1400 miles between Boston and Mankato will be the death of them. I'm still not sure if fighting for them is going to work or if I'm better off to acknowledge that those people and experiences were about that phase of my life and that place in time and now I should know that they were great then, but I should move on from them. I guess only time will tell.

I have no furniture, only a few outfits for clothes, an empty pantry and a stereo. So I guess I have alot of work to do before the new apartment even starts to feel like home.

Well.... here's to coming up from the ashes. Or something overly cliche like that.