I realize a) I have just completed 1/4 of a semester of Gen Chem and, in unrelated news, b) I have quadrupled my daily intake of caffeine. I'm leaving in 5 minutes to drive to school to take my first exam. I feel like I have enough information that I'm likely to pass it, but I make no predictions beyond that. Considering on Wednesday afternoon I felt convinced I was going to fail out in Week 1, I'll take a 'pass' and run with it.

A plea for those who are coming tonight: I'm not sure if there are any tables in the room where the party is being held, so if you happen to have a small table and/or television trays, can you please bring them with you so there is a place to put food/drinks? Thanks!

Longer last day post will undoubtedly follow at some point today. For the moment, HOLY CRAP will have to suffice.

(Including today)

A list:

1) I wrote to the woman who is fostering the cats I've applied to adopt to ask more questions about the cat with the 'unique personality' or whatever.

My note to her:
Also, I wanted to ask more questions about Grey. His description on the website hints at possible behavior problems, and I'd rather not be surprised if that turns out to be the case. Does he have problems with peeing/pooping outside the litter box (either chronically or when he is dissatisfied with something) or with property destruction? Is he likely to have any behaviors that will make life stressful for a fellow cat?


Her reply:
( got long )

She got me at 'nerdy.'

2. I've been watching various interviews with American Idol winner/runner up Kris Allen & Adam Lambert. Like you do when you are a sheep and all of fandom is posting to your flist. How much do I *adore* the interview (is it with TV Guide?) where they're sitting beside each other and responding to various questions from the internets. In response to: Who will take the top bunk on the American Idol tour bus? Kris starts to mumble something and Adam gleefully jumps in and says, with great energy, 'I LOVE the top!' or something to that effect, Kris glances at him and smirks, and Adam cracks up. YAY, say I. But you know what is really, truly awesome with awesomesauce on top? The five-part Idolatry interview. Love. It.

3. Yep. Here I am. At work. Obviously working. Mmmmhmmm. Really dedicated to the...oooh, shiny!

4. My sister has my car today, so she can drive all over creation to have meetings regarding the law school symposium she is organizing. Poor thing thinks she can have a meeting in Arlington at 4:00 and be back in Silver Spring to pick me up at 5:00. (Not to worry, locals, I do not think this is possible, and thus retained my house keys when I forked over the keys to the car and have arranged to have a coworker drive me home.) I *do* need to get to Costco tonight to pick up some vegetables/dip/snacks for the Last Fucking Day of Work Thank Fucking Christ party tomorrow, but I think awesome roommate S might be able to hook me up.

5. There is no five. Wait, I lie! There IS a five! Bandit Lee Way was born yesterday. Ridiculous and utterly awesome name, and I am so excited to see various members of MCR wax poetic about the new baby. Plus, come ON, pics of any one of them with the baby will be absolutely amazing.

ETA: ( But who's counting? )

Just a small coworker Kate moment today. She was trying to schedule an appointment to fit a hearing aid on one of her patients. There is only one computer in the office that is currently equipped to program hearing aids (the other computer has been an ongoing saga of Not Working), and so there can only be one programming appointment at a time between the two of us. She was unable to fit her patient in this week because at all the times Coworker Kate is available, I am booked in the room with the hearing aid computer.

She just said - no lie - "You might have to take some of your patients during lunch."

Um. Wait, I have an alternative suggestion: You can go fuck yourself! You can schedule your patient for next week, when I won't be here taking up all the good time slots. ::eyeroll::

Work was fine yesterday. You know, a standard work day that doesn't require commentary. I spent quality time between patients watching clips of American Idol, like you do in your last few days on a job when you are DONE OMG DONE. *kof*

Got through the last appt of the day with a difficult patient. (Bless his heart, the patient is unfailingly pleasant and yet still fucking needy and exhausting. I dread seeing the name on my schedule. And now I never will again. \0/) Then I sped home to change and get to the Metro. Met my sis at Kramer books where we had dinner. While we floated the idea of wandering around downtown and doing something else, both of us were way too tired to contemplate shenanigans and so as soon as dinner was over we hopped the train back home.

My floor is taking me out to dinner after work tonight, which will be lovely. (Sorry, peeps. My guess is that if Coworker Kate comes to dinner tonight, she will feel her responsibility is discharged and you will not get to meet her on Friday. I know how sad that makes you!) I think it is a busy work day, which is just as well, since I have pretty much no motivation to come up with things to do around the office.

Things I DO need to do today include: get a prescription for the ADHD meds (because - stop laughing! - I lost my prescription over a month ago and have forgotten to do anything about it); contact the school about health insurance. Again. Hope they return your call this time; pack up little things like your state licensure and diploma and credentials; contemplate the AIs8 college AU some more; Send in my in-school student loan deferment paperwork.

I had a lovely weekend. Got my hair cut on Friday, thank god. It was looking shaggy and poofy and...well, let's just say when I looked in the mirror I saw my mom looking back. I love my mom, but that is still not what I hope to see in my mirror, you know? So, I got my hair cut and the event was interspersed with text messages from my sister. greenegirlcr was supposed to land at BWI at 4:30, but her flight was delayed by such tiny things as the fuel farm from which all planes are refueled was struck by lightning.

Her: They won't refuel while it is lightning out
Me: ...that seems wise

She finally texted with an ETA of 8-8:30. After my haircut I hopped the metro back out of the city, all the while planning on casually stopping for groceries, etc before heading to the airport. As I stepped off the train, I checked the time and realized it was already around 7:30. So I peeled out and headed straight to the arrivals area. She texted to say she'd landed when I was just a few minutes away, so it worked out well.

Well, up until the point I got run off by a cop for loitering at the pick up zone and, in my attempt to circle around I got lost in the short-term parking garage (these things happen, okay?), which I both didn't mean to enter and couldn't manage to exit.

Finally found the way out of the goddamn garage and picked up sis. Stopped for groceries on the way home and then puttered around a bit before doing the evening thing - namely setting up shop w/ the laptop and the teevee. Fortunately she'd brought her computer too. She checked out the dvd offerings and popped in BTVS s.1. She's never seen any of the show before.

As of my bedtime last night she's watched apx 24 episodes.

The weekend has been pretty chill and all kinds of awesome. Saturday was lunch w/ the GF (insert heart hands here) and sister and uschickens and trixie, followed by the new Terminator. Audience reaction was mixed after leaving. I think it was awesome with awesome sauce, and it did right by Sarah Connor, which was one of my personal criteria despite her not actually being in the film. (Mmmm, Sarah Connor. My first experience with the 'do her/be her' conundrum. *sigh*)

Then Sunday was even *more* low-key and involved going to visit kitties at a cat adoption fair nearby. So, I've applied to adopt some cats. (giddygeek, you're totally surprised, right?) There are hilarious descriptions of them on the website. The cat I went to meet is fluffy and orange and beautiful and described as 'the most low-key cat some of our volunteers have ever met.' He is all of those things and I luff him and want him to be my very own. <3 He's been available for adoption for 1.5 years. When we asked why he hasn't been snatched right up (he's seriously *beautiful*), she said 'I think that maybe...people found him a little boring?' Awww, poor little low-key doobie. Come home and sleep on my lap!

The other cat I ended up applying to adopt was in the same cage. He was smaller and gray-and-white and freaked the fuck out. He had lodged himself firmly between the two chill-and-snoozing cage-mates and periodically ducked his head under one of the other two cats when he was really overwhelmed. (It was, apparently, his first time at an adoption fair.)

His description on the website goes something like, 'an intriguing companion for someone interested in a cat with a strong, complex personality.' Dude. Did he just get tagged with 'but she's such a nice girl' description or what? I'm not sure what I'm getting myself into with him. In person, the volunteer who's been housing him describes him as 'quirky.' I pressed her a bit on that (quirky as in, 'gonna pee on all of your shoes and then tear up anything made of fabric in your whole house' or quirky as in 'hilarious cat stories ftw!'?) but all she said was 'when he's feeling affectionate he'll let you pet him, and when he's not he won't.' So, like a cat, then? I don't even know.

So there was that, followed by hanging out around the house. Yesterday involved lunch with lightgetsin & cmshaw, wine and booze shopping for the party on Friday (four more days!), and low key hanging out w/ trixie, abka, & sis in the evening.

So far not a lot of sight-seeing for sis, but she'll be doing a lot of that on her own while I'm at work. She's actually really excited about the prospect of riding public transportation. It's way cute.

Now getting ready for work. Only four more! My plan for the week is to bring home something every single day so I can just skedaddle on Friday.

abka emailed the photos she took during our first visit to the tattoo studio and they are awesome. There are many of the early process of adjusting the stencil and laying it out on my arm/shoulder/back. Naturally, I wanted to post them immediately to the internets, but came up against several problems.

The first 'problem' was that, you know, I didn't so much want to post shirtless pics of myself for all the world to see. Call me crazy. I know that there's an option to friends-lock photos in the LJ scrapbook, but herein lies the real problem - several months ago, I let my paid subscription lapse. At that time, my bayleaf account reverted to Basic: No ads, but also no features like pictures. Mostly I get around this by uploading pictures to the scrapbook on my fic-journal, but very few people have that one friended. (And I'm good with that. It isn't meant to be anything but a fic journal, and I'd be kinda freaked out to have some of my RL friends reading over there.) So friends-locking photos on an account where I haven't friended people is...counterproductive to say the least.

Being the special snowflake that I am, I flailed my way through several faily attempts to fix the issue. First I upgraded my account to Plus, which meant HUGE BLINKING ADS appeared all over my journal. Not On. I dithered for awhile about upgrading once more to a paid account.

And, while I haven't really decided about whether or not to buy another year of time on LJ, I suddenly realized: dude. I can't do anything about this right now anyway. I'm at work and while I totally abuse the internets to surf LJ, DW, Facebook, and check email, I am NOT about to download shirtless pictures of myself to my work computer. Dear. God. No.

So, sorry internets. This post is really just to tell you that I have awesome pictures and you can't see them. Nahnahnahnahnahnah.

I'll totally post them later, though, no worries.

My plane landed :handwave: sometime after midnight, and I arrived home around 1:30. In bed after 2AM. Alarm went off at 6AM.

Hi, My name is Bayleaf and I hate everyone right now. ::clutches coffee to chest and glares::

To make myself feel a touch more human, I've been thinking on such happy-making subjects as: THIS IS MY LAST FULL WEEK OF WORK. Because, you know, next week is a four-day work week on account of Memorial Day.

Segues are for people who are more brainful and/or caffeinated. Here, ( have a bigass cellphone picture of the massive swelling and bruising going on post-tattoo. )

I've got five dreamwidth invite codes available to the first five people who email bay_leaf @ lycos dot com.

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I am feeling crusty and seriously behind the times. Look! I just spent, like, twenty minutes figuring out how to post a picture to LJ so I can post to DW! Amazing!

( After all that time, I'm not bothering w/ the resizing. Instead, I give you this cut tag. )

Day two (of this trip; day 4 total) of tattooing went swimmingly well. Although I could have tolerated one or two more hours of needle time, my wallet could not, and thus this trip was limited to 8 hours of work. Cedre got a ton done during this trip, though, and I'm very excited with the work-in-progress.

(That said, we both agree that there is more than 8-10 hours of work left, and so we've booked a fourth visit in August. I'm going to wait to buy a plane ticket until I'm out here in June, just in case we're wrong, but there's still a fair amount left to go.)

Diving Swallow is a fabulous space. The artists are all women, and they are set up in a loft above a long, narrow room. There's tons of natural light, and it feels open and airy and friendly, which I think is awesome. Cedre told me during this visit that they set out to create a space that was different from the stereotypical dark, dingy, intimidating tattoo studio.

This visit's Music To Get Tattooed By list includes (but is not limited to) artists such as Beirut, Thao and the Get Down Stay Downs, The Weepies, Modest Mouse, Radical Face, Siouxie and the Banshees, and Fol Chin.

We were working primarily on my biceps area, and the combo of the easy area and my jet lag means I dozed through most of the first day and even a bit of the second. Possibly because I was sleeping, and thus didn't need to take as many breaks, we were done hours earlier than we were during the first two sessions (which were three and five hours respectively).

Poor rissymonster and E have been kind enough to host me when essentially I show up to eat, and then I go to bed. Last night I was in bed by 8PM. (What? Technically speaking that was *hours* past my East Coast bedtime!) If I do come back in August, we've agreed that I'll book a longer visit and actually hang out and do some sight-seeing. (Sekrit message to aerye: you have been specifically invited to come, too.) Imagine, having a house guest that one actually sees! That's just crazy talk...

I did manage to contort enough to take some cell phone photos which I'll set about getting up online once I'm home. As for now, It is 5:30 and I begged off socializing yet again in favor of sitting on the couch, eating leftovers, and going to bed early. If I really get wild and crazy, I may watch some TV before I fall asleep. Don't try to stop me. I'm just crazy enough to do it, too.

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Until I'm leaving on a jet plane. ::hums a few bars, excrutiatingly off-key::

I get out of work at 1:30, at which point I'll run home to change, toss my suitcase in the car and head to the airport. It's time again for a whirlwind tour of approximately 8-square blocks of Oakland, CA.

I'm scheduled for 8 more hours of needle-on-skin time (as opposed to the time spent physically in the studio, which is likely to be closer to 18-20) spread over tomorrow and Saturday. I don't actually have any pictures of my tattoo, which is why I haven't posted any yet. Hopefully I'll fix that soon. :)

Leo chose me as his human when he was 8 weeks old. It was the summer between High School and college, and my parents had agreed to let me adopt two cats for my 18th birthday present. We looked around and found a shelter that fostered their animals at volunteer's houses. We made an appointment to go look at some kittens at one woman's house.

The kittens were kept in the laundry room in the basement. It was a small area, with an exposed staircase running up to the first floor. As soon as we walked through the exterior door, a white kitten separated himself from the pack and ran up the stairs until he was at head height, and then he leaned towards me as far as he could without falling off. He purred so hard I could see his body vibrating from across the room, and I said, "I want *that* one."

He clearly thought he was the king of all he surveyed, a huge lion that could sit in the palm of my hand, and he was named Leo before we even made it home.

( Long, rambling post about Leo under the cut. )

(Also affectionately known around these parts as the 'Fuck all y'all, I'm outta here!' party.)

So, now that I'm starting to pay attention to the real world again, I realize that the date of the party is only *three weeks away*. Holy crap! I'm going to finalize a location for the party this week. It's looking likely that it will be a potluck or a 'throw cash at some delivery dude' kind of event with a generous dose of BYOB thrown in for effect. While I'm finalizing locations, I'd like to get a sense of the number of people who might be coming and, for folks who are coming from out of town, if you need a place to stay, etc.

Only three more weeks! \0/

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So, I've spent much of the past, oh, two months or so feeling kind of shut off and stressed and depressed. Most of my downtime over those two months was spent on escapism and doing everything possible to not engage with my real world.

Healthy. I know.

That is in contrast to how I've been feeling yesterday and today. I'm going to school, you guys! In only three weeks! That means a whole host of things, including what is obviously the most important: I get to go shopping for school supplies. I get to buy pens, you guys! I love buying pens for school! And I can pick out 3-ring binders and maybe some folders and wheeeeee!.

Nerd whatnow? I don't know what you're talking about.

Yesterday I drove up to check out an apartment complex near school, and then met with one of the current students to give her a check for her books. Allow me to explain. (There is too much, but I'm gonna explain anyway. No summing up for you! Neener.)

One of the things that has been getting me excited for school to start is the way the program formally facilitates an informal process of transitioning between classes. The program director gave to a member of the outgoing class a list of email addresses for the incoming class. That student set up a google group on which all of the two classes are members. The outgoing students are listing items they have for sale, including the full complement of textbooks for the year, class notes, zip drives with notes from previous years, etc. (Some of the listings talk about 'notes in the margins from previous years of postbacc students,' which cracks me up even as I don't want my textbooks to be written all over. When I was in high school biology, we used a text book called The Earth, which was, of course, a creationist text book. Given that it eliminated many, uh, science topics in favor of, you know, long screeds about how science proves the existence of The Great Flood and therefore, by an amazing leap of logic, all fundamentalist Christian philosophies ever, the book wasn't actually that long. In fact, it had approximately a million blank flyleaves in the beginning and end of the book in order to, I assume, make it look more imposing than it was. I was nursing quite the anger-management problem at the time and rather than spend any time reading and/or studying for that class, I turned my imagination to filling up those pages with things like fake endorsements from Dan Quayle who, if I recall correctly, I had say, 'I would rather put my eye out with an icepick than read The Earth again.' I passed the book on to a friend in the year behind me who not only added to my work, she also passed it on to a student behind her and so on. The point of this rambling is just to say, awwwww, nostalgia!) We now return you to our post already in progress.

I just bought a year's worth of science textbooks for $290. I win!

She's still using her books, though, so there's *also* a routine process of transition that involves the outgoing students boxing up their books, labeling the box w/ the name of the incoming student who purchased same, and leaving the box in the secretary's office. On my first day of school I'll pick up my books from her office. \0/

The outgoing class has also posted files with, like, a list of free things to do in Baltimore, area restaurants, directions to various things like hardware stores and movie theaters, etc. They've posted pdf files of all the equations we'll need in our physics classes. It's just *cool*.

One of the nicest things about the exchange yesterday was I was able to chat w/ her a bit about the program. She's two weeks from the end, currently studying for final exams and the MCAT, and she's still enthusiastic about the program. She talked about how during entrance interviews, they really keep an eye on how a given applicant will fit with the rest of the class and try to come up with a supportive, collaborative group. She also provided more info about the daily schedule: Summer will be class from 8-11, Lab from 1-4, TA runs a study session from 5-6, study study study. Lather, rinse, repeat. She said we'll be covering a chapter a day during the summer with an exam every Friday. The fall and spring get progressively harder, what with having 3 lab courses at once, but in different ways.

And then she also had more info about linkage programs and finding a research job during the glide year. (In the latter case, it sounds like most postbaccs pass their research gig onto another postbacc and the positions are never even listed. Many past postbaccs work at NIH or the FDA. Students from past years will come back to talk to us over the course of the year about what they are doing now and how to get there if we want to do that too.)

Anyway, the point of all this is to say YAY I DO NOT FEEL DEPRESSED AND AM STARTING TO FEEL ACTIVELY EXCITED! What I've been feeling lately does not even scratch the surface of the horrible dark depressions I've had in the past, but I still don't like the feeling of being *muffled* all the time or of being vaguely far away and checked out. It's nice to be back.

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Today's time-waster of choice is a combo of craigslist and google maps in street view. I have not, in fact, finalized my housing situation. I *have* spent a longass time on craigslist reading apartment ads and then checking the area out with streetview. That, right there, is a good time.

Awesome roommate S. and I talked again several days ago. I said that I was leaning towards moving out in August, and she said that she, too, was leaning towards moving out in August. Given that we were on the same page, we basically said, 'well, okay then. We're moving out in August.'

So now my housing search is not at all hypothetical. I'm looking in Baltimore and in Towson, both for potential roommates and potential housing situations. My estimated move-date is around the week of August 10-15. I will, of course, keep the internets apprised of the situation. (I can see that you are all really excited for my updates. Don't even lie.)

And now ::huge sigh:: I guess I have to do work. Feh!

When one is perusing rental property ads, the phrase 'private security force' may not come across as the exciting feature that you seem to think it is. I'm just saying.

Regards,
Alanna

So, a question for my New England peeps. A good friend of mine from college has a son who is almost 1 year old. It was a difficult pregnancy and now he's (in M's words) 'special...but not special in a way that there are organized mother's groups to help.' He cries most of the time, and she is exhausted and stressed out and can barely find the time to shower and do laundry/other things around the house because he requires most of her attention. The most difficult part is she lives far from her family, and many of her friends have moved away in the past year as they have found jobs out of the area.

Here's the question: is anyone in the greater-Hartford area (I believe she lives in Windsor Locks) who could help her out a couple hours a week so she could get more done around the house and/or find a few hours to escape? I do not know if/how much she could pay but would be happy to ask if someone wanted more info.

If you happen to know of other places to look or other resources that might be useful, I'd appreciate those too. Thanks!