BDM's Xanga

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 13:31:23 GMT

it's been a long while since i've felt this hassled and out of sync.
it's been a long while since i've put so much on my plate.
and you know that i don't like to do things that are so out of the way.

monday, i metroed for one hour (crushed amidst business people) to sonali's house so i could help out with her school.
yesterday, i biked from foggy bottom to anacostia boathouse (approx 5 miles) through rush hour traffic to go to dragonboating.
today i will walk to dupont to meet up with doug about networking for jobs. then i will go home and help rachel dismantle her bed.
tomorrow will be a night of moving heavy boxes of books.
friday will be another long day of working with sonali to get her school up and running.
at some point before the weekend i need to find time to head over to my new apartment to pick up the spare key so i can start moving things in.

i have yet to decide if i'm going to go to both saturday and sunday dragonboating practices. i suppose it will depend on whether or not my parents want to try it out on sunday at the fun paddling. if anyone in the dc area's interested, come on out to anacostia boathouse (1115 O St, SW) at 10:30am. it's totally addicting!

i received an email from my aunt yesterday that stated, "i heard you found a nice place to live with 2 girls. congratulations!" i assume my uncle told her the news. and i assume he heard it from my parents. thing is, i NEVER ONCE said that i was living with girls. i only told my parents that i found a place. one of my roommates works for DOD. the other one is in the process of getting a masters from georgetown.

also, my mom's been bugging me about working on my resume. still haven't told her that i'm going to be working for sonali part time for at least 6 months.

it's one of those things. it's something i want to do, just like i knew i wanted to live in that apartment as soon as i visited. but deep down inside, i know that my parents will disapprove. "you're not using your full potential"

yeah, okay. i'm going through my rebellious teen years.

bite me.

Friday, July 17, 2009

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 16:57:11 GMT

dragonboating is awesome. i discovered a group of people who really care for each other, and dormant muscles on my body. my ass hurts from the hard wooden bench. i also think i unwittingly ate a whole kebab of chicken hearts (tastes like sausage with an odd innards sort of flavor tacked on the end).

flying high and hard.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 02:13:01 GMT

met up with matt on monday morning to sign the lease for the new apartment.

been making a lot of new friends lately and feeling pretty good about where it's all going. as rachel says, i'm getting to be all social this weekend. i've got stuff lined up thurs, fri, and possibly sat. i'm especially excited about dragon boating on thursday. it'll be nice to build up core and arm strength, esp since i've definitely gotten the leg workout down pat.

ride in october in la plata, md. (http://www.active.com/page/Event_Details.htm?event_id=1657974&assetId=0896A6E1-29DD-4DA0-BE18-4F8327297C46&dart=F#Summary) michelle said she'll try to make it. that would be totally sweet. i'd shoot for riding 60 or 80 miles. :D

despite not making much progress on actual job apps, i'm feeling pretty good right now. after looking through organizations' websites, i feel like i have a more defined direction of the type of project i want to eventually work on.

i'm also looking into getting involved with dvrp, which would be sweet.

tomorrow and thursday will be days of administering exams of sorts. yay to reading all day. lol

Thursday, July 09, 2009

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 02:31:48 GMT

this is one of those weird limbo times in my life. my job AND my lease are both about to run out. this means, if i don't get my butt into serious gear soon, i'm not going to have income or a place to live.

it totally feels like catch-22. i don't know where i should live if i don't know where i'll be working. yet, i have no idea where/what i want my job to be. it's so frustrating i just want to curl up in a ball and avoid it altogether.

i've found a couple of viable places on craigslist, but i can't decide if i want to stay in VA or move back into DC. i think i might want to stay in arlington. i rather enjoy the commute, even if it's 40+ minutes and i curse every single hill on the ride home. i think what i really want to do is buy and house and settle down. but clearly, that's out of the question at the moment.

something else that's been bothering me. i care too much what my parents think. like, right now, i'm considering a room in an apartment with 2 guys. me and two guys. and i think my mom would have an aneurysm if she knew. fuck them. i'm old enough to make decisions by myself. but at the same time, i still value their opinions and know that they care a lot about me and my well-being. hence the hesitation.

it's so fucking tiring, you know? but instead of talking it out, i shut down. i hide it all inside. and suffer alone.

Wednesday, July 08, 2009

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 02:18:23 GMT

it's funny how i can feel like total shit after lounging around for a weekend and not biking or doing much of anything. i think i used to enjoy downtime, but now i feel like i've got so much stuff i need to be doing that i can't just enjoy relaxing. i also think i must be eating more or something and that's why i'm starting to feel gross after a couple of days of inactivity.

didn't sleep well last night because i spent the whole night thinking about this job interview and how i hope i get the job, despite my mom's crap talk about how i need to better utilize my skills. also, last night i found on craigslist a house with a $350/mo room, roommates being a bro and sis who graduated from osu, and they seemed to be quite into biking, beer, and progressive politics. plus it's like 6 blocks away from where i live now, so that would be super sweet if it worked out.

basically last night's dreams were my ideal situations.

imagine my letdown when i checked my email this morning and had no news from either the job nor the housing option. sigh.

on a better note, i started the evening with a smorgasborg of veggies left over from erin's visit that i wanted to use up and had no idea how, and ended up with yummy mifen (essentially, stir-fried vegetable rice noodles). i was super proud of myself. :D

Saturday, July 04, 2009

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 01:48:14 GMT

erin came this past week to visit for about 3 days.
she said it was essentially yo-yo bootcamp!

lol. well, she's an awesome student. she's the one who kept saying, hey, let's go yo-yo!
:D

i think she learned about 5 new tricks in the 3 days. impressive, no?
it was so great having someone to yo-yo with. we were at it prolly close to 1.5 hours each session.

plus, erin taught me 2 very easy and very tasty dishes. one pasta, one chicken. and now i actually have more spices than just salt and pepper! :)

she's a bananagram convert now, too!

Friday, July 03, 2009

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 01:35:35 GMT

when beanie returned my bro's bike to me, i realized two things:

1) that bike is heavy as fuck

2) i am no longer used to bikes that have a kickstand

Monday, June 29, 2009

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 01:15:19 GMT

i've been having odd dreams lately. still can't figure out if it's because of where i moved my bed or what. or maybe i'm just feeling restless. i tend to go through odd cycles like that.

or maybe i've just been watching too many episodes of csi.

erin's coming into town tomorrow evening. we plan on hitting up the botanical gardens, maybe 1 or 2 museums, artomatic (possibly with jabeen and laura), and definitely doing as much yo-yoing as the weather will allow. :D

tomorrow my group paper is due, and then i'm officially DONE with grad school!!

oh, and wish me luck on my job interview on wed. i really hope i get it. i'm furiously brushing up on my german skillz.

Friday, June 26, 2009

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 02:31:22 GMT

okay. so i'm finally up to speed in terms of what i'm reading. and yes, i did finish 'breaking the surface' today.

i cooked and cleaned and baked and did laundry today. made me feel like i was actually productive. of course, what i didn't do was look over stuff for the group paper that's due on monday. BUT... our meeting tomorrow at 9am seems to have been pushed back to saturday. i'm still going to the office to do some work since i totally slacked off this week (and i'm sorta gonna slack next week, too, since erin's coming to visit).

so what made me mad at myself today... i'd rsvp'd to go to the german language group. and i was totally ready to go, too. i looked up the bus schedule and it said bus coming at 6:25. i got there at 6:15 and waited until close to 6:50. of course the bus arrived when i was about a block away. it said "out of service" on the side. so i don't even know if it picked up any of the waiting passengers (we're the first/last stop on the route). i convinced myself that i'd end up being about 30 min late to the meeting if i did go, so i headed home. upon getting home, i kept thinking to myself, well, 30 min isn't really all that bad cuz people will probably be late, and i have a good excuse anyway. public transportation can be screwy sometimes. but, it was my first time attending a gathering and i didn't want to be late to it. that's one reason i turned back. there was another bus coming in 13 min, but that'd make me close to 45 min late. so i just sat and home and fumed at myself.

then i went online and searched for some german tv to watch. at least i could mostly understand the news reports. one talked about how the french are one of the highest pill-popping countries in the world. equivalent of 23 pills/person/day. that's crazy. and then they showed these students visiting a water sanitation plant where they put bacteria in the water to eat up the bad stuff (thus resulting in clean water that they can recycle). however, stuff in the pills and medication repel the bacteria so they can't do their job. and then there was a picture of the revolving arm in a big vat of water and all this nasty brown foam scum being swept across the water. this particular news report was interesting to me because when i was in germany for high school, we took a trip to a water sanitation plant and actually got to stand on the catwalk and see the vats of water and the arms go 'round. it was pretty neat and not as stinky as i'd imagined (the bacteria stuff they put in the water neutralized the smell).

so at least my german hasn't completely deteriorated. at least my listening skills are 60-70% intact. that made me feel better about missing the convo group. now i just have to hope that listening to german tv will revive all that long-forgotten vocab in the dusty recesses of my mind and i'll be able to make them roll off my tongue effortlessly as needed by wednesday.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 01:12:19 GMT

wasn't feeling quite up-to-snuff this morning, but decided to stick it out and bike to work anyway. figured (and hoped!) that by the time evening rolled around, i'd feel better and have the energy to huff and puff all the way uphill to home. it was a good gamble and i saved yet another couple of bucks of metro money! :p

so when i was at pride 2 weekends ago, i put on this tattoo and since i was out in the sun virtually all day, i now have distinct tan lines around the tattoo. you can almost make out the letters. it's actually kinda neat, but really, not a tattoo i need to be having on my arm. i guess another reason for biking to work all this week was to allow for more sunlight on my arm. i thiiiiink it's slowly fading...

it's funny, since rachel hasn't been around all this week, what i've been looking forward to most after work/school is to bike home, take a nice cool shower, watch an episode of csi (currently on ny) while eating dinner (yeah, blood and decomp don't faze me one bit), and then settle in bed with a book. as a result, i've also been going to bed around 11pm instead of 12:30 or 1am. it's nice!

lynn (cleaning lady for 2129) left me some viet eggrolls on my desk today while i was in class, so tomorrow i'm gonna bake a cake for her (as lea says, can't return a container empty!), then go to the german convo group happy hour in georgetown in the evening. if there're any german speakers in the dc area who're interested in checking it out with me, let me know! :)

arg. irks me when xanga can't find the exact verison of the book i'm reading. anyway, 'breaking the surface' is pretty much greg louganis' autobiography, though it says with eric marcus (he hasn't shown up in the book yet, as far as i've gotten). according to xangazon results, i'd surmise that eric and greg eventually got married. if so, good for them.