At some point, I will post about my trip to Texas, Thing 1's graduation, Sunday night kickball, and everything else that happened in May. I need to pay bills, though, and after that I need to walk around and decompress and have some me-time.

My grades from last semester just posted:
Western Civ II: A-
Am. Lit. II: B
Major Authors:Poe/Melville: B

I'm a little bummed that I didn't get an A in every class, but I'm also grateful that my Am. Lit. grade wasn't worse. The professor in that class gave me so much trouble a few weeks back that I really didn't know what to expect for a grade, and was pretty much just hoping he wouldn't fail me.

Summer classes start in two weeks. I can probably count on B grades for the rest of my time here, though I'll still try my best. It's hard for me to balance work and school, and it has everything to do with having enough time and being able to focus on one thing at a time. Working all day makes that damn near impossible, but since we count on my paycheck for the mortgage, I don't have a choice. My inborn impatience won't let me slow down and take longer to work on this degree, either. So, I'll just make the best of things and get used to seeing B grades on my transcript.

I've finally figured out the best way to explain my job to non-research people: "zoo-keeper for the animals on campus."

I made it official, declaring minors in Sociology and Psychology. Those, combined with a Lit major, should make me a wonderfully overeducated barista or bartender, someday. Maybe I'll never have a job that matches my studies. However, I've seen too many people work for several years in the exact field for which they studied, and then snap and play 52-pick-up with their lives, eventually settling into a job that's nothing like what they did before. As I told a new acquaintance the other night, "I'm doomed to be perfectly suited for really satisfying, but low-paying, jobs." She understood, as she started out in journalism and then discovered she was better suited to sales/customer service. She told me about one of her doctors, who quit healthcare and moved into something completely different, because he just wasn't satisfied with his life or what healthcare has become. One of my co-workers is leaving research and going back to school for a degree in Environmental Education. I'm still waiting to hear that my brother has tossed his medical degree in the trash and gone back to firefighting.

So, yeah. Loads of people figure out too late that the career they chose in high school or were pushed into by family isn't really what they want, that stress follows money and creates more problems that only more money can assuage. I've pretty much stayed in a technician-style position for most of my career, becoming specialized but never rising through the ranks. What I make now at the university is roughly what I made working in a factory fifteen years ago, only now my job is way more interesting and not killing my body (as much). That means I skipped the high-stress part and went straight to down-sizing my life, right?

Classes are DONE.
My desk is cleared of all bills, surveys, renewal notices, and various detritus. Everything's, paid, answered, renewed, or tossed.
The season finale of Fringe is WATCHED.
Textbooks have been returned or sold.
Nothing to do but catch up on magazines and wait for books to come in from the library.
Also, attend Thing 1's graduation next Sunday.

Not really, but yeah. Saw Portugal. The Man. last night with Nikki and Zach. We had fun, but it was so awkward. The guy who carpooled with us spent much of the drive up complaining about his crazy and emotionally exhausting ex-girlfriend, and supposedly giving us a ride would keep him from doing something stupid since he'd have to come back to Lawrence after the show. Then he met up with her at the show, and she pretty much dry-humped him through the set and he made zero effort to fend her off. Then she proceeded to call him every ten minutes on the drive back to Lawrence. Mixed signals, anyone? So yeah, don't come crying to me next time you feel like filling out a restraining order because she's pounding on your door at 3:30 a.m.

People make no sense, but I've figured one thing out: if they secretly like drama, they'll stick around for it, and complain the whole fucking time. It's best to step back from those situations. I'm too old for that shit. But, at least I got to see Becki and Jen, and Becki gave me a poster that the band had signed during the meet-and-greet. Finally, at the end of the show, some drunk guy kept photo-bombing mine and Zach and Nikki's pictures, so we made him take ours, instead. It stormed all the way home, and I passed out cold as soon as my head hit the pillow, but not before I snuggled up with Nick. I fell asleep smelling his t-shirt, because I missed him and I'm a dork.

So, this is my last day of classes, then it's finals all next week, punctuated by a Nerd Nite in which Nick will be presenting. I have two final papers to write, and an exam on the 10th, then I head to Texas to see Donna get hitched. Then it's back to work, Tony's graduation, and wandering around the house bored and irritable until summer classes start.



People think I'm exciting. They don't know me.

Here comes summer.

C2E2 was exciting, informative, exhausting, and fun. Visiting Chicago is always a treat, and we didn't get to do 1/3 of what we planned, but that's okay.

We came home to a letter from Kansas SRS: in answer to the State of Kansas' petition for 14 years of unpaid child support, Anthony is suing us for $1,000,000.00 for mental anguish and suffering and deprivation of a father/son relationship with Thing 1.

May I respectfully submit the last 17+ years of my journal(s), in which I have documented quite the opposite. As Nick said, "[We are] unsurprised, and a little amused."

If for no other reason than the desire to put off writing critical essays provides the resolve needed to clean my desk, pay all the bills, and wash a couple loads of laundry, it's worth it to take Literature classes. Trust me on this.

I plowed through more to-do list items, in preparation for the next few weeks. Middle of the Map Fest, C2E2, and Donna's wedding are just a few of the things I'm doing in lieu of actual homework. But the homework still needs to get done, so I'll be carving hours out of the day to write papers, skim readings, and keep up with my classes. For the record, I'm probably not going to pursue a Chemistry minor, so I need to decide between Psychology and Sociology.

I did two levels of inventory at work, today, and discovered that I currently care for 867 animals. Fortunately, they're very small, and most of them are group-housed, but that's still a few hundred cages to check every day. Now I know where the time goes.

Knocking out my to-do list. I weeded 95% of the yard over the last two mornings, working in between sunrise and sun-comes-over-the-treetops, because I can't stand wearing sunscreen but don't want to burn. I'm going to try and stay on top of the weeds and flowers this season. Putting more mulch on the beds will help, so I'll need to do that in a few weeks. It's going to get really busy: Middle of the Map fest, C2E2, and Donna's wedding, all within the next six weeks.

Last night was fun. We watched the game at the Replay and ran into a few people we know. I'm glad KU won, but Nick and I headed home pretty soon after the game finished. There's only so much of drunk people screaming that I can stand. I'm almost glad I have class tomorrow night, though I wonder how hard it will be to get back into town tomorrow night.

Work is going well. I passed the ALAT exam and we hired someone to replace the girl who left. It's someone who used to work at the ACU, so she only needed a week of getting used to the routine.

School is winding down to the end of the semester. I need to pick classes for summer, and one class in particular looks intriguing: PSYC 502-Human Sexuality. It's a 4-week class that meets every M-F for two hours in July. The fact that I'd have to get permission to leave work in the middle of the day is the only hiccup. KU offers an online version of the class in the fall, but I would really like to have face-time with the instructor. I'll have to think more about it. There's a Writing about Graphic Novels class that also looks good.

Okay, I need to finish Moby-Dick. It's coming along better than I thought, though I can't say how much I'll actually retain. I only have to write a paper about it, so it's no big deal if I don't have every detail committed to memory.

The professor didn't read her own syllabus, so I spent the week reading Nietzsche's Twilight of the Idols and then was given 24 hours to read and process an entirely different book, W.E.B. DuBois' The Souls of Black Folk. I passed out at page 95, and now the two books are all kind of mixed up in my head. I still have to read the next portion of Moby-Dick, as well. Blargh.