The Elbow Chronicles

New Year

2012-01-03T23:22:00.004+01:00

Happy New Year!! (or as V would say, "Happy Nude Rear!")

It's been a crazy year. I feel like I blinked an suddenly it was December. School took up so much of my mental and physical space that when I think back on 2011, all I can see are images of me sitting on my couch, huddled over my laptop; me, sitting in class, feeling both energized and overwhelmed; and me, somewhere along my commute to or from school.

2012 promises to be a big year - I applied for graduation this morning and god willing, I will start a new career this summer. I am really really excited about all that 2012 holds. I love new beginnings. Though every day and every minute is a chance to start over, there is something about a new year that truly seems to wipe the slate clean.

I've decided to not focus on New Year's resolutions this year; instead I've come up with 10 goals for myself or 10 things I'd like to learn, try or experience. Inevitably this list will change after graduation and I have more "free time" (is there not a more beautiful phrase in the English language than "free time"? I think not.) but this list stems out of where I am at present. Though it's fun to think of the future and all that it holds, I am very aware that I live now, today and here.

1. Take a class on yoga arm balances. I've been practicing yoga consistently for a year and a half and I am so proud of how much I've learned about my body and how much it has helped me gain a little peace. I am constantly amazed that I can do poses now that I could barely even understand when I started. One area that continues to be a challenge is arm balances and I'd like to take a workshop to really break down the poses so I can start practicing in earnest.

2. Travel somewhere new. I barely made it out of my county this year. Fortunately when I did make it out of the county, I went to many new places: Copenhagen, Stockholm and Halifax and visited some favorites including Maine and Western Mass. I love exploring new places and I hope to find a few new places to explore this year.

3. Wear less black. I have been in a style rut for over 25 years. I've worn all black for years because at various times I've thought it was cool, slimming, or simply the easiest color to pick out in the stores. I really don't like to shop so whatever is easiest sometimes wins. I took a class in change management this fall and as part of the class we had to pick a personal change that we wanted to make and use it to investigate change theories throughout the entire semester. I picked "inject more color into my wardrobe." I weeded a bunch of aged black t-shirts and have slowly begun replacing them with color. It was scary at first, but I've found that I feel better about myself when I wear a little color - I feel more confident, more stylish and feel like I don't simply disappear when I walk into a room. I still own a lot of black clothing and I've noticed that when forced to pick a black shirt out of my dresser I'm a little disappointed that I have to wear all black "again". Crazy, I know :-) I'd like to continue the progress I've made and continue to inject a little color into my wardrobe.

3. My hair grows really fast so I've had about 15 haircuts this year. None of them were great cuts though I am mildly pleased with its present state. One thing that every hair stylist has agreed upon is that I don't have good hair. It's thin and fine and there isn't much of it. There is also a steady increase in the amount of grey that's growing in. I'm not ready for grey hair. Popular opinion among hairstylists is that if I were to color my hair it would give me "better" hair (I think this was complimentary?). I bought a box of hair color over the summer but I've been too chicken to use it. This year, for sure.

4. I've set a few sewing goals for myself this year. I only set five but there's so much I want to do and learn that it was hard to even identify some things that I don't even know that I want to learn how to do yet. I am really looking forward to being done with school so I can continue to learn and create.

5. Live band karaoke. The last time I did karaoke was in September 1997 in Japan. Karaoke is part of the Japanese culture and it's generally assumed that you're going to suck and have a great time while doing it. A couple of weeks ago one of my friends organized an outing to a bar that hosts a weekly live band karaoke. The band plays and you sing along with the lyric sheet. I didn't know what to expect so I watched the first 10 or so singers. They were amazing! It's clear that a lot more people practice singing popular songs in the shower than I do. I was totally intimidated and didn't put my name on the list until it was too late. I really want to do this. I don't have a particularly good singing voice but I like performing and I am kicking myself that I just didn't go for it when I had the chance. We're going again in a few works and mark my words, I am going to badly belt out some pop song if it's the last thing I do.

6. Graduation is on May 19. Yay!!! I can't wait!! Unless I flunk all of my classes (unlikely), I am going to get my MBA this year. I took a huge leap leaving libraries and starting a new career and it's been a wild wild ride. I am so glad that I didn't accept complacency and unhappiness and that I went back to school to learn something new. I cannot wait to see how my new career comes together.

7. I need to widen my circle of friends. In some ways, I have never felt more lonely than I have in my life as I have felt in the past year and a half. My promise to myself: I will not allow myself to keep feeling this way after May.

8. I'd like to take a class in the fall. I know this seems nuts - I've been in class quite intensely for the past year and a half. Those are business school classes. While they've been interesting and at times fun, I haven't enjoyed them in the same way I'd enjoy taking an improv class or a belly dancing class or a Japanese class for fun.

9. (I'm reserving this one for some magical discovery/remembrance of something I've always wanted to do!)

10. I've been mulling an entrepreneurial venture for a few months. I'm not sure if it's the influence of business school, because I have something to prove to myself or just because I have an idea that I think might be kind of fun, but this is the year that I figure out how to make it work and if it's possible to start a small (very small) business.

fall semester wrap-up

2011-12-11T17:06:00.002+01:00

It looks like I am going to survive the semester! My last class is tomorrow night and I'll hand in my last group project. As far as I know, class-wise, everything else is done. Unfortunately, work-wise, I'm still in the thick of things. I'm working at my internship until the end of December and I still have about a million hours of my research assistantship left to complete, starting with a grading marathon that begins on Tuesday. Some thoughts on the semester, in no particular order:

- In retrospect I think I can say that 4 classes and 3 jobs was a little too much to take on. Things started to get really rough in November when my Saturday class started. I got it all done, as I always do, but not without a lot of tears and many sleepless nights.

- I did make one big mistake that I feel like I would not have made had I not been juggling 7,000 things all at once, trying to do each and every one perfectly. There's a lesson here that I need to have tattooed on my forehead.

- This was the first semester where I've heard my classmates really complain about other group members not pulling their weight. I don't know if everyone was on their best behavior during the first year or if its because now that most of us are taking electives where we're more mixed with part-time students who don't seem to care as much about the program (many of the part-time students' companies pay for their MBA). At least three of my friends let loose a stream of fury over a group member's lack of performance and my friend K told me that two guys in one of his groups skipped a big group meeting because the Patriots were playing (and no, these classmates weren't actually in the game)!

- This was my first semester taking two back-to-back night classes. Last spring I had two Saturday classes and three 4-7pm classes. It made for a long week, trudging into school all the time so I thought I'd try having 6 hours of class (4-10pm) back to back on Monday nights. I should have known better! My 7-10pm class was deadly boring and awful and my brain really doesn't think very well past 9pm, and frankly getting home at 11pm sucks. In all my classes we get a 10 minute break about half-way through the class. After one break early in the semester, I sat back down in my seat and realized it was only 8:30pm and we still had another hour and a half to go. That was a really really long night!

- Over the course of the semester I have graded 97 2-page case analysis essays written by undergraduates, nearly 70 graduate marketing midterms and nearly 70 graduate marketing finals. Grading is so unglamourous and really tedious! Grading sucks even more when you haven't been in the class all semester and you can only go by what the professor has told you is the correct answer. Undergraduate students in particular are terrible writers. The majority of undergraduate papers that I graded read like extended Facebook status updates. No joke.

- Trying to balance 4 classes, 3 jobs and a boyfriend was really really tough. The one good thing about it is that D and I have been dating for five months and we're still in that getting to know you phase because I never get to see him.

- The ideal yoga - school - work balance is taking two yoga classes/week. Anything more and my body feels like it's going to fall apart; anything less and I feel like I am going to fly into a murderous rage if we hit one more red light on the bus to school. I love yoga but it does take time to go to the studio, take the class and come home. When I go running I leave from my front door.

- I'm not sure if I had a favorite class of the semester. I'd like to say it was Business of Social Media but I mentally checked out of the class after the worst feedback I've ever received in my life on my first paper. (Though I note that my re-writes of my papers thus far have received As and were filled with compliments. Go figure.) My change management class was interesting and I got a lot out of it but I wish that I had had a real job where I could test out some of the theories we learned in real time.

- There have been times during the semester where I've really wondered if going back to business school was a good idea and if it was worth it. By changing careers at age 37, I am trying to do something really really really hard, and sometimes the enormity and difficulty of what I'm doing was really really overwhelming. Deep down I know it will all be worth it, but on the days were I'm surrounded by 30 20-year-olds at an Internship open house and stick out like a sore thumb, it's really hard to see the forest for the trees.

- I think I owe every single person I know a phone call, an email or a visit. Nearly all socializing had to take a backseat to everything else I had to do. I think I kind of shot myself in the foot with this one, because I feel completely disconnected with the rest of the world.

- Thank god I like quinoa salad, roasted tofu and homemade applesauce. Unfortunately, making the time to eat dropped down on the priority list as my to do list increased.

- It's really hard to explain what being a full-time MBA student is like. It's literally like being on a parallel plane as everyone else. Most people go to work during the day and their non-work time can be used in anyway they like. For business school students, there is no "non-work time". There is always something that needs to be done - papers, group projects, reading, etc. I've spoken to my classmates about this and I know I'm not alone in feeling like this. We could go to a movie but 10% of our brain is still thinking about what needs to be done. We could go out to dinner with friends or have a nice day doing something non-school, but then have to make up the time by working like crazy until midnight and then getting up at the crack of dawn to keep trying to chip away at when you missed while doing something "fun." Holidays and birthdays don't really mean much. I did homework on Thanksgiving and on Black Friday I spent a fabulous day with my beau, only to then work like a dog the rest of the weekend. MBA students like to be busy busy busy with a lot going on, but I know I speak for all of us when I say that I can't wait until that busy busy busy time is directed by what I want to do, not what my professors want me to do.

- Everyone complains about the workload and being busy but everyone is really busy and has a lot going on. For the past year I felt like I was the one who couldn't hold everything together and I was the only one crying over my laptop because I was so overwhelmed. A few weeks ago my friend N, a finance major who's taking 5 classes, told me he hadn't been out on a Friday or Saturday night the entire semester and spends all of his time in the Library. His friends have told him he's started to act like a "jerk" because he's so miserable all the time. And two weeks ago my friend K, who's kind of a tough girl with an attitude, told me that she's at her parents' house every weekend crying about how hard her classes were. I really thought I was the only one. Not that I want to start an MBA support group, but it felt good to know that I wasn't the only who having a really tough time.

- There's a possibility that I might have a 4.0 gpa this semester. My hardest, most busiest semester? The one that nearly kicked my ass in November and I get a 4.0?? This would be so awesome!

- A few weeks ago my friends and I all declared that we were going to walk across that stage at graduation and party to celebrate that we were done. It's nice to have something to look forward to! Three! More! Classes!

Nat King Cole

2011-12-05T00:47:00.003+01:00

I screwed up. I screwed up Big Time. I don't want to go into details but suffice it to say I made a mistake that took me a couple of months to discover. I found the error on Saturday morning and as soon as I saw what I did, I burst into tears and remained weepy all day long. You know it's bad when you tell exactly two people what happened and they respond in nearly the same way: Oh no! Oh no! Oh no!!!!!!!!!

My internal voices have been raging for about 24 hours. They go back and forth between anger, disappointment and despondency. There isn't really anything I can do to fix what happened, other than check and double check all future work. I could chose to keep wallowing in what I did - and it's really tempting to keep doing so - but it won't change the past. Instead I'm taking a deep breath and making a new plan of action and take a little comfort from Nat King Cole.

Pick yourself up...
Take a deep breath...
Dust yourself off
And start all over again.

Nothing's impossible, I have found
For when my chin is on the ground.
I pick myself up,
Dust myself off
And start all over again.

Don't lose your confidence
If you slip
Be grateful for a pleasant trip
And pick yourself up,
Dust yourself off
And start all over again.

Work like a soul inspired
Until the battle of the day is won.
You may be sick and tired,
But you'll be a man, my son.

Will you remember the famous men
Who had to fall to rise again
They picked themselves up
Dust themselves off
And start'd all over again.

Work like a soul inspired
Till the battle of the day is won.
You may be sick and tired,
But you'll be a man, my son.

Will you remember the famous men
Who had to fall to rise again?
So take a deep breath...
Pick yourself up...
Dust yourself off
And start all over again.

28 - friends

2011-12-02T21:21:00.002+01:00

I've never had a lot of friends. Sure, I know tons of people and have lots of people to hang out with but I am not sure if I would call most of them friends. I've never had someone in my life that I was so close to that I could call just to chat or spontaneously go somewhere or that I could tell anything to. Like a friend. Sure, there's Facebook. But really, how well do I know any of my 158 friends? Or they know me? I find it difficult to let people close to me; my walls are higher up than they should be. And at this point in my life, creating a friendship requires more time than I have to have. And making new friends at age 37 is pretty hard.

This has been a difficult year in many ways. Not having someone I can just call to vent to or hang out with has been really really hard. Everything I've gone through I've held inside. I've made friends since I've been back to New England but I've already moved a few times which tends to strain the bonds of a blossoming friendship. Babies also changes the dynamic when one person has one and you and your partner take about getting a cat someday (and not a baby). Another group has sort of welcomed me into their group but I am aware that my place standing waxed and waned depending on a series of complicated social maneuvers. And there's that whole no time and no money to do expensive, extravagant things. And honestly, I'm no longer sure if I want to be part of that group (What's the quote? I wouldn't want to be part of a group that would have me as a member?) anymore. I miss my friends in SoCal but time and distance changes friendship dynamics.

I am crying as I write this. I've had a tough couple of days and just got another really bad haircut. I shouldn't be crying - this is about things I'm grateful for! There have been a few unexpected developments in the friends department, those who under different circumstances just weren't there and those who've been there right along. I am truly grateful to this year, for showing me who my friends really are. And I'm grateful for the friends that I do have, old and new, near and far. I miss you all so very very much.

27 - limited budget

2011-12-01T22:31:00.002+01:00

(I know I've passed my Nov 30 deadline but I'm going to keep going until I hit 30)

As most of you know I'm in school full-time. That means no job and no steady paycheck. I have a small job working 120 hours/week during the semesters earning minimum wage. It's not a lot but it keeps me in laundry quarters.

Have you ever really watched your budget? I mean really watched your budget? As in paid attention to every single thing you purchase, every bill you pay and every penny that flows in and out of your wallet? It's a humbling process. It's also been one amazing year. When I had a paycheck I didn't really think all that much about buying the things that I wanted or needed. Toothpaste going to run out in a month? Might as well buy it now. Cute top I kind of like that's on sale? I'm game. Now it's more like Is that toothpaste on sale? Do I really need to buy it now or can I wait a couple of weeks? and Audrey Hepburn was fabulous and stylish with just a few tops in her wardrobe, I can certainly attempt to be the same.

To be sure, this year has been hard. Friends and family members with good jobs and good paychecks don't always understand how hard it is to just go to the movies (and not even a matinee!) and there have been things I've wanted to buy for other people that I just haven't been able to. One's social life in one's 30s tends to revolve around going out and doing things. When you don't have the bottomless wallet to go out and do the things your friends can easily afford, well, you don't see those friends all that much. On the other hand, I've taken more long walks than ever before in my life and have loved watching the seasons change up close and personal. My cooking repertoire continues to grow and I'm learning to make some of the things that would at one time covet. I am proud to say that some of the items of my holiday "give" list will be homemade.

Since I'm fairly far out of the consumer culture this year, I realize how much less stressed I am (to be fair, this is probably the only area of my life that I'm less stressed about!). I feel an absence of wanting, or shopping and of owning things. When you stop to think about what you really need as opposed to what you kind of want, you realize how little you truly do need and how much you really have. I have so much - what else could I possibly want?

26 - flannel

2011-11-29T21:04:00.003+01:00

It's no secret that I don't like to be cold. In fact, I hate being cold! Since moving back to New England, my tolerance for the cold is practically non-existent and winter terrifies me. The weather is completely opposite from that of SoCal. There you get 9 months of summer and here you get 9 months of winter. One of the best purchases I made when I moved back to the East coast was a couple of sets of flannel sheets. These sheets are so awesome and I am so intolerant to the cold that I keep the sheets on the bed from September - July (unless summer is cold and then it's September - August). I adore these sheets! I put a fresh set of flannels on my bed over the weekend and was reminded yet again how awesome it is to get into a freshly made flannel sheet-ed bed. It's like nirvana. In fact, the sheets have been so awesome that I've been waking up nearly every hour congratulating myself on how cozy the sheets are. Whoever invented flannel sheets deserves my undying gratitude and admiration.

25 - family, part 2

2011-11-29T20:44:00.002+01:00

My parents are pretty cool. I don't think I was always their easiest child to raise and as an adult, I know how much it bugs them when I'm unhappy. I spent most of my 20s living far, far away from my parents. I grew up and grew into an adult on my own and then moved back to New England 3+ years ago. We now live about 3.5 miles away from each other, which isn't at all strange (really!). It's been cool getting to know my parents as an adult, though the road has not always been smooth. My parents have given me so much, and I'm not just talking about a very strange sense of humor (thanks guys!) or my excessive tallness. I think I lucked out in the parent lottery and I am proud that my parents are my parents. None of us are going to live forever, so I'm grateful for whatever chance I have to spend with my parental units.

24 - family, part 1

2011-11-27T16:18:00.002+01:00

When I was little I used to beg my mom for a sister or a twin. I thought it would be so cool to have someone who was more like myself than my brother. My brother and I are really different, in some ways as different as two siblings can be. Growing up was tough - my brother is ridiculously smart and I was his pesky little sister who wanted to be included in his fun. Our relationship changed for the better when he went off to college and we both grew up a little. My brother is still ridiculously smart and sometimes I feel like a total airhead in his presence. He has so many great qualities - he's funny and kind and if one of his friends needs help, he's the first one to volunteer. And my brother is always true to himself, a quality I greatly admire even though it drives me nuts sometimes. I worry obsessively about my brother, namely his weight, his health and his happiness and I would give anything to help him achieve whatever it is that he wants to achieve. Though my brother and I aren't particularly close, I'm proud he's my brother and I'm glad that I never got a sister or a twin - lord knows the world doesn't need another one of me! - any other sibling would have paled in comparison to the brother I have.

23 - sleep sleep sleep

2011-11-27T16:12:00.002+01:00

After two glorious days where I spent about 3 hours total on schoolwork, I got back into the homework grind yesterday. To say that I had zero motivation is a massive understatement. I had papers to write, reading to do, assistantship hours to chip away at and I wanted to do nothing but go back in time and re-live Thursday and Friday. I was tired, sore from my run and felt like I spent the entire day fighting with myself to take a nap. I took a break in the afternoon for a walk in the most amazing weather (I didn't even wear a sweater!) and then got back to work. I went to bed around 9pm, tried to do a little non-school reading, and was fast asleep by 9:23pm. I slept straight through the night until 6am. I even dreamed! A decent night's sleep does wonders for my disposition and my motivation. I've been working on my paper since 9am and feel like I am going to be able to get everything I need to do today done. I think I just really needed to re-charge and I am grateful that I got my change last night.

22 - school milestones

2011-11-26T15:00:00.002+01:00

The semester is finally almost over!! November was an exceptionally rough month but I'm through the worst of it and the end is in sight. I think it's worth noting a couple of school milestones, all of which I am unreasonably grateful to see:
- I have just three classes to finish up this semester and just three classes left to take next semester.
- For my 4:30pm Monday class, I just have some reading and easy writing left to do. Our last class is Dec 5.
- For my 7pm Monday class, there's still a group case and a group paper left to do but my team has been pretty great so I think both pieces will go smoothly. Our last class is Dec 12.
- I still have 51.5+ hours left to go on my research assistantship. This has me pretty stressed out but my family gave me some ideas about how to get through it with as little pain as possible.
- I was hired by a professor I worked for last semester to do some contract grading (for $25/hour!!!). I'm about 1/5 done and feel confident I'll get it all done by Dec 17.
- I'm on the downhill side of my internship. I have a big paper due on Sunday (I'm nearly done) and some little writing things to do in another week or so. They've asked me to stay on but I'm ready for a new challenge so I have just a few weeks left to work. I'm looking for new opportunities for the spring semester.

It's been a good semester though far more busy than I could have imagined. I'm grateful that I've nearly made it through the semester - I honestly wasn't sure at some points that I'd be able to get everything done.

21 - November weather

2011-11-26T14:57:00.003+01:00

We've had some unseasonably warm weather this month. In New England, November is usually the month that is gray and cold, almost an impending doom of winter weather and snow. We've had a series of mild days that I wish could last forever. It's the perfect weather for a long walk or sitting outside by the river or driving around with the windows rolled down. I know it won't continue and I know winter is right around the corner, but I am grateful for all of the sunny and 50-60 degree days we've had.

20 - Thanksgiving

2011-11-26T02:49:00.002+01:00

As I looked around the dinner table yesterday that I was pretty damn grateful that we all managed to get through another year, happy, healthy and full of spirit. As an extra treat my brother arrived home from a two month work trip to Australia the night before. After all those years celebrating Thanksgiving as an outsider, it was nice to be surrounded by friends, family and loved ones and feel "home." I could not have asked for a better Thanksgiving.

19 - love

2011-11-23T19:18:00.003+01:00

Quite unexpectedly, I met a guy this summer and fell in love. When I say "fell", I mean "FELL". Hard. I adore this guy of mine. He makes me feel safe, smart and beautiful. He makes me laugh. He makes me want to be a better version of myself. I think about him all the time and curse my school schedule for keeping me from seeing him as often as I'd like. He's seen me at my most goofy and my most stressed and he loves all of it. We've gone on three mini-trips together and not once did I think "I need some space" (very unusual for me) - it was more like "I don't want this to end." I have no idea how or why the gods conspired so I could meet this man, but I am so thankful that D is part of my life.
* We found this picture while walking around downtown Halifax on a 4-day trip to Canada to meet his mom and see his hometown. After seeing this chalk sign on the ground we both agreed that Halifax was a pretty fantastic city :-)

18 - public transportation

2011-11-23T00:31:00.003+01:00

I live in a city where the communal past time involves complaining about our public transportation system. I myself have been reduced to tears on more than one occasion after waiting a half hour for a bus in a snowstorm, a derailment effectively bringing the entire system to its knees and closing down a portion of the subway for "maintenance" and packing people into overheated, over-crowed shuttle buses that proceed to get stuck in traffic. We have the oldest public transportation system in the country and some days it really shows it's age. Did I mention my fellow passengers? Not everyone adheres to the strictest of hygiene regimens, others feel the need to shout their entire cell phone conversation for the entire length of their journey and if you dare smile at a fellow passenger you are more likely to get a scowl than a smile in return.

It's not a perfect system but I love it. I love public transportation and I love that I live in a city that has such an interconnected system. I love the view from the windows, I love the crazy mix of passengers. Some days I even love that the bus is late so I can sit at the bus stop a little while longer to people watch. I don't like to be in a car for longer than five minutes so I gratefully accept whatever service I can get. Some days that service means careening down one of the main streets of my town to beat all of the lights while passengers hold on for dear life and other days that means last night's bus driver who waited the few seconds for me to catch up to the bus stop so I didn't have to wait another 20 minutes at 11pm.

17 - elbow

2011-11-21T16:31:00.002+01:00

Exactly five years ago today, I crashed my bike and broke my elbow. It would be weird to say that I am grateful that this happened. But I still maintain that this was one of the best things that ever happened to me and I would not be where I am today without having had broken my elbow. You know that movie Sliding Doors? Where Gwenneth Paltrow's life follows two paths depending on weather she misses her train or not? Well, I made my train.

16 - Thanksgiving guest

2011-11-20T00:57:00.003+01:00

Thanksgiving is in less than a week. In just five short days my family and extended family will be gathering to celebrate Thanksgiving with a feast of sorts. This year, we will have a new guest - my cousin P will be joining us. It's been a tough year for P and I am unreasonably happy that he's going to spend Thanksgiving with my family.

15 - another class is OVER

2011-11-20T00:44:00.003+01:00

This afternoon I had my last Saturday class of the semester. About ten minutes ago I submitted my final paper for this class. This class is OVER - I finished another class!! The class was on the business of social media. The class was fairly interesting and I learned a lot, despite the soul crushing feedback by the professor on our papers. Saturday classes are great because they usually only run for five days but they're intensive as each class lasts about 7-8 hours. And a Saturday class means I have one less day I can spend working on all my other homework, paper and projects. I am beyond grateful that this class is over! Not only do I got a small portion of my life back and ostensibly have more time for more school work and social life, but finishing this class means I have just three classes left to finish this semester and three classes left to take next semester before I graduate - YAY!!!

14 - sleep

2011-11-18T14:07:00.002+01:00

I have not gotten much sleep this semester. Or to be more precise, I haven't gotten much sleep since September 2010. My schedule this semester is zany. I have class on Monday nights until 10pm so I don't get home until at least 11pm and then I work all day on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and spend each evening trying to make a dent in my homework. Add in group meetings and the occasional date or activity and I feel lucky if I can get 6 hours of sleep each night. I like to exercise first thing in the morning and do my best thinking and working between 8am-11am so I get up early to maximize the day. When I do sleep, the stress from the semester makes me toss and turn all night. Last night I went to bed at 9:13pm. I was asleep by 9:14pm. Though I did toss and turn a bit, I slept through the night until 5:23am (no joke - I could be the sunrise's alarm clock). A solid night's sleep does wonders for my disposition and my ability to manage my workload. I am grateful that I got in a solid night's sleep last night so I can face the day with a clear head.

13 - MBA friends

2011-11-17T19:55:00.002+01:00

I honestly don't know I would have gotten through business school with K, L, S, A, K and N. The one good thing about business school is that you are surrounded by your peeps - you know, those people who have the same drive, the same passion and the same work ethic that you have. I've bonded with the greatest people over crazy business ideas, passion for what we're learning, entrepreneurial musings, complaints about the workload and complaints about the professors. I've been really lucky in that most of my classmates are pretty awesome and even in the throes of group project hell, I love being part of the MBA shared experience with my classmates. I am grateful to K, L, S, A, K and N in particular for making me laugh, letting me vent and supporting me in only the way that people going through the same hell can understand.

12- yoga

2011-11-14T16:50:00.002+01:00

I have to admit, sometimes I don't really like going to yoga. There are days (weeks) where I find yoga classes to be an endless stream of torture and clock watching. I keep going because I know I need it. My body needs it and my head needs the peace and quiet. I haven't really been enjoying yoga that much this fall. Twice a week is my ideal but my schedule has only allowed me to go once a week for the past couple of months. So when I've gone, there's been no momentum; it's like I'm starting over again every class, teaching my body how to move for the first time. I've even been wondering if I should bother to keep going to yoga. Last week I went to yoga twice, one of which was a class I adore but hadn't been to in ages. It was a tough class but it was like my motor got kick started. I don't know if the motivation carried over from last week today but this morning's class was fantastic! I felt powerful and strong and awake. The only time I thought about the clock was when a woman showed up late - she shows up 15 minutes late to class Every Single Week - but I was otherwise engaged in my practice. I'm glad I've stuck with my yoga practice this fall and happy to feel at home on my yoga mat once again and I am grateful for this morning's class.

11 - a Fall afternoon

2011-11-14T01:23:00.005+01:00

Business school is hard on my social life and hard on my relationships. I met an amazing guy on July 31 and it pains me that I can't spend as much time with him as I'd like due to my school schedule and his work schedule. So when the opportunity presents itself to take an hour on a beautiful fall afternoon to go for a walk through the woods with my guy, I don't think twice. I'm grateful for any time I get to spend with my beau; the gentle fall breeze and beautiful scenery were just added bonuses.

10 - a day off from school

2011-11-13T20:40:00.008+01:00

I took my first day off from school yesterday since September. No paper writing, no group wrangling, no millions of chapters of reading, no stressing out about my to do list. I took the entire day off. And it was great! My beau and I took a mini road trip and spent more time with one another than we probably have in a month. I am grateful for this little taste of freedom and I'm really looking forward to having more freedom in December when classes are done.

One of the things we did was check out a really cool exhibit called The Art of the Brick, or rather Legos as art. All of these "sculpture" are made from Legos! It was so cool!!

9 - yoga

2011-11-11T14:38:00.003+01:00

Yoga.
Exactly what I needed today.

(*I adore this view from my yoga mat!)

8 - tea

2011-11-10T23:52:00.002+01:00

Rainy afternoon. Pile of schoolwork to be done. Hot cup of tea.
Grateful.

7 - last summer run

2011-11-10T21:15:00.003+01:00

Though winter doesn't actually arrive for another month or so, we've already had our first snowfall, our first freezing temperatures and the first thoughts of "I hate winter!" Fortunately, the weather extremes went on hiatus this week and we had lovely weather - 60s during the day, 30s/40s overnight. I run outside all year long and I am a cold weather wimp. I've been wearing my running jacket and gloves for a couple of weeks and any day now I'll be wearing two pair of pants. We got a tropical rainstorm today so when I checked my weather before my morning run (at 5:30am - some call it "crazy"; I prefer to think of it as "can't wait to get out there and run!") it was 58 degrees. I haven't had 58 degrees on a run since June. I wore shorts and short-sleeves and worked up a pretty good sweat. I'm grateful to have had the last opportunity for a summer run before winter really comes.

6 - I'm not "disappointing"

2011-11-09T01:13:00.002+01:00

I'm taking a Saturday class this semester on the business of social media. It's actually a pretty interesting class and I've been amused at how much more I know about social media than my classmates who are a decade younger than me. Though the class content has been interesting, the papers have been brutal. My first paper was returned to me last week. If my friend L hadn't warned me about the feedback, I think I literally would have thrown up. My professor added two pages to my document, filled with such "useful" feedback as "This is a waste of time", "I am disappointed in this", "This is useless" and "What on earth were you thinking here?". I am not exaggerating at all and believe it or not, my paper got one of the better grades in the class. It was brutal and not at all constructive. It's one thing to be told that your paper sucks but it's another to be told your paper sucks but not give you one hint about how to improve it. I'm working on the re-write tonight and my heart isn't in it - my ego has been pretty hurt. The good news is that my professor emailed me my comments for my second paper tonight and I am happy to report that she didn't use the word "disappointing" anywhere in her comments. In fact, she said "This is improved but you can do better." I am grateful that her comments were vaguely positive so I feel ever so more motivated to write the last three papers for the class and I will survive this class.

Sometimes it's the little things in life . . .

5 - my parents have heat

2011-11-08T14:23:00.002+01:00

No, my parents didn't lose their power and heat during the pre-Halloween storm. This year they decided to convert their oil heating system to gas. They did a lot of prep work over the summer and then waited until the plumber's schedule opened up. I think the plumber actually forgot about my parents and their drafty home because during the coldest weather of the season and the first snowfall, my parents were without heat (or a cat to keep them warm! *hint hint*). I am grateful that the plumber spent quality time with the gas installation last week and my parents no longer have to huddle around a hot stove to keep warm.

4 - time change

2011-11-06T20:36:00.002+01:00

I'll be honest: I have no idea if we just started Daylight Savings or just ended it. Honestly, I don't care. Here's what I do know: somewhere in the dark of night we got an extra hour of the day. One beautiful, luxurious hour. I know we have less daylight and I will resent this when I know have to walk home from work and school in the dark. But today? I am grateful for that one extra hour of sleep and the shocking amount of progress I've made on my obscenely long to do list, all thanks to that extra hour.

3 - glutenfreegirl

2011-11-04T19:12:00.003+01:00

Is it wrong to be grateful for having someone in my life that I've never met? Whatever. It's my month of gratitude and I am plenty grateful for those that are in my life, real or imaginary.

When I stopped eating gluten I was beyond overwhelmed. I spent hours in the grocery store, a place that I had never spent much time anyway, reading labels and thinking about cooking. I realized I was never ate many packaged foods before, so why start now? With a new attitude in place, I spent a long time checking cookbooks out of the library and reading recipes online. I stumbled upon Gluten-free Girl's website (and a number of my friends pointed me toward her website too). As you might imagine, she posts recipes and writes about all things gluten-free. Sure, I was grateful to add some tried and tested gluten-free recipes to my repertoire (see below), but more than the recipes, I became addicted to GFG's attitude. GFG does a total mind shift - not woe is me, look at all the things I can't eat that have gluten, but Wow! Look how lucky I am that I can eat so many healthy and flavorful things! I found this attitude really inspiring and it has opened up a world of ingredients, recipes and cooking options. I've tried things that in my previous life I never thought I'd eat (um, hello? Brussels Sprouts Salad!!!) and hungered for more. Sure, I desperately miss ice cream and fresh tomato mozzarella sandwiches and yes, my diet has had to change quite dramatically in the past few years. But thanks in part to the GFG, I really am truly grateful for all of the things that I can eat.

Even if you aren't gluten-free, I dare you to try one of these recipes:
Gluten-free pie crust
Brownies (These are Amazing! Just don't over-bake!)
Brussels Sprouts Salad (I substitute tofu for the cheese and walnuts for the pine nuts - Yum!)
Linguine with Shrimp and Slow Roasted Tomatoes (I don't slow roast the tomatoes and this is still delicious!)
Rice Salad (I used the base and just add whatever veggies are in season and tempt me in the store)
Baked Kale Chips
Roasted Tofu
Black Bean Roasted Poblano Hummus
Broccoli Slaw

2 - power and heat

2011-11-02T15:16:00.002+01:00

Some of my more far-flung readers might not have heard but we had a freak October snowstorm over the weekend. Some areas got very little snow and others got close to 2' of snow. That's right, two feet of snow in October!! Millions lost power and many of my friends in the center of the state are on day four of no power.

I was lucky to be in the area where we just got a wet dusting of snow. It's almost all gone already. I never lost power. I complain about my condo a lot, but I'm really grateful to live in a place where I've never lost heat or power due to freakish weather.

Day 1 - morning

2011-11-01T19:34:00.002+01:00

I am a morning person. Most mornings I wake up before my alarm clock and wait for it to go off. You know, to make sure it's still working. When my alarm goes off, I get right out of bed and get the day started. I have no idea how the snooze button works and though I fantasize about lazing around in bed until dinner, in reality, this idea sounds very boring. The thought of wasting a perfectly good day lying in bed all day makes me cranky.

I love mornings. I am grateful to have a new morning everyday to erase whatever happened the day before and to start over again with a clean slate.

Happy Halloween and . . .

2011-10-31T20:33:00.003+01:00

I haven't posted in ages. I guess it's been a combination between being busy with school and not having much to say. I realize these two things are related. I don't really do much that isn't school related to post about and I promised at the beginning of the year that I wasn't going to post MBA agony here, thus the silence.

Good news! Tomorrow is November! (Actually, this is slightly depressing news. November means winter and snow are coming and I am not really a fan of either.) I will have something to say in November! Last year I made a failed attempt at a week of gratitude, to post every day for a week about one thing I was grateful for that day. I actually found this exercise to be kind of hard and I'm pretty sure I never finished it. In my typical fashion, I over-thought this process and beat myself up for not being grateful for more or being grateful for the "right" things. I was also not in the greatest mental place because of school. I think back on that process and I can't believe that I couldn't identify 7 things for which I am grateful. Lame.

This year, things will be different! I promise! There are 30 days in November. My intention is to post about 30 things that I am grateful for sometime during the month of November. I realize I am setting myself up for a monumental amount of posts around November 29, but I am going to take the challenge. School has kicked my ass over the past year+ and in a lot of ways, I haven't been in a great head space since I moved back east (but in a lot of ways, I realize I am so much happier than I ever was in SoCal!) but despite all of this, how lame would I be if I couldn't identify 30 things that make me think "thank you for x" every damn day? If I can't take 5 minutes every day to reflect on how lucky I am, then I need a swift kick to the head.

See you in November!

May

2011-10-17T21:52:00.003+02:00

I am so behind. In everything. I haven't posted in months. I owe about a million emails and a couple of phone calls (though I'd owe more phone calls if I actually enjoyed talking on the phone). I'm behind in my friendships and in my family. And just lately, I've started to get behind in being a girlfriend. I am kind of overwhelmed by school. The semester started out ok, but my Saturday class started this week. I'm taking four classes, have one internship and one job and I suddenly don't feel like there's enough time in the day to do anything. And as some of you know, I am also a bit of a perfectionist and never feel like I'm doing enough or am prepared enough. I have MBA stress and I have it bad.

The end is in sight, however. I met with my adviser this afternoon and my math was correct - I only have three classes left to take during the spring semester and I am going to graduate in May!! Yay, freaking yay!!! I nearly hugged my adviser and we totally don't have that kind of relationship :-P I also found out that I've taken enough classes to have a concentration in organizational behavior so it's possible that a company might actually want to hire me to figure out how to make their company function better. So yes, I am totally overwhelmed and stressed out and behind in life, but the end is in sight! I am going to graduate in May!!! *happiness*

road trip: Montreal

2011-08-24T13:24:00.016+02:00

I made it out of the county! For the first time since Memorial Day, I made it out of the county, went through two additional states and crossed the border into Canada. Man, I miss roadtrips and traveling! I took a super brief road trip to Montreal on Sunday and Monday and had a fantastic time. Excellent company, great weather, lovely sights, good food and the total lack of school stress made for an awesome trip.

We left for Montreal on Sunday morning at a little after 6am. After a futile hunt for the mighty and elusive beaver we arrived in Montreal around noon. The last time I went to Quebec City we had stopped at a random rest stop that had a ginormous stuffed beaver in the lobby. No road trip can be without a bizarre quest. Though we didn't find this beaver, it made for a lot of silly jokes throughout the weekend.

Our first stop was at the Montreal Museum of Arts. The museum had an exhibit on fashion Designer Jean Paul Gaultier which was unbelievable. There must have been at least 50 of Gaultier's pieces on display. If you look at the following pictures you might think the pieces were modeled on real models. Not so. Recorded images were projected onto the mannequin's heads which made for a very creepy and lifelike model. The "model" spoke, sang, and made a lot of lifelike facial gestures. The models were almost as captivating as the dresses! Each outfit was a complete work of art. Every one of them was handmade, each taking between 53 and 1050 hours to create. They were mindblowingly beautiful. These are some of my favorites:

We spent so much time at the Gaultier exhibit that by the time we were finished wandering around, the museum was closing. We found some delicious vegetarian food and then spend time hunting for Canadian candy. Damn you body, damn you!!! You have no idea how much I love trying new candies when I'm in new countries and everything we found was chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate, none of which I can eat. Fortunately, I am something of an enabler and quite happily bought more candy bars for D than he probably wanted.
Sunday turned out to be a beautiful, breezy day; a perfect day for going to the top of the Tower of Montreal. It was built in 1976 for the XXI Olympics in Montreal. Leaning at a 45 degree angle, the tower is a true engineering feat and the funicular to the top is not for the faint of heart. The views from the top were spectacular:

After spending way too much time enjoying the views we wandered over to the botanical garden and enjoyed the fresh air, the flowers and the Japanese and Chinese gardens:

Like many cities, Montreal has a ton of graffiti, which I adore and find to be art in and of itself. Montreal also has many amazing murals. These were some of my favorites:

The drive home was not nearly as smooth as the ride to Montreal. When we finally got in the car to drive south I asked D if he thought we'd hit much traffic. He responded that it wasn't likely since we weren't traveling at rush hour. Famous last words. We immediately sat in a parking lot for the next hour in a half just trying to get out of the city. Oi. Despite the traffic, this was a great trip and I'm looking forward to more adventures with my new travel partner!

summer update

2011-08-16T13:48:00.006+02:00

I haven't posted much this summer. Too busy, I guess. Doing what, I have no idea. I have a little over two weeks left of summer before the fall semester starts so it's safe to say that the summer has just flown by. It's been a good summer, even though there haven't been a lot of huge fireworks moments. To be honest, that's been a-ok with me. Here are the highlights:

classes - I took two classes this summer, one during each of the two summer sessions. During the first session I took Leadership & Team Building. Yes, I am paying $3,500/class to take classes like "Leadership & Team Building". Actually the class wasn't too bad and I got to meet a lot of the part-time MBA students who I haven't really mixed with yet. In less than 24 hours I will be done with the second class, Finance. It's a required class; if it wasn't I wouldn't be taking it. The professor has been pretty good and I've at least been able to find patterns and plug in so I'm going into tomorrow night's final with an A. It will be interesting to see what happens after the final - bond valuation and options are really blowing my mind. I am really glad that I took Finance on it's own, without juggling three other classes and a full semester's worth of obligations. I have just seven classes left of my program - 4 in the fall and 3 in the spring - and I'm done.

internship - I survived an unpaid, non-credit internship for 10 weeks. It was awful; a really bad fit all around. I did learn a couple of things, mainly what I don't want to do with my life, which sometimes can be as helpful as learning what you do want to do. I don't want to work for a company where I have to manage the needs of multiple clients. I'd rather work for one client, a client in whom I really believe, rather than a bunch of clients who I only have to care about while they're still paying their bills. I have two interviews this week for two companies for a fall credit internship, both of which I'm really interested in. *fingers crossed*

volunteering - After I quit my internship I started volunteering two shifts/week at the local food bank. I am so happy I am doing this - I really love the work. I've been thinking about volunteering all year and I've made a million excuses. Once I was freed from my miserable internship I suddenly didn't have any more excuses. I love it. Love, love, love it. I haul boxes, stuff food bags for needy seniors and kids and sort donated food. I work my ass off when I'm there and leave feeling like I *worked*. I've learned that there are actually very few staffed employees at this food bank and without their army of volunteers they can't feed the millions of hungry in the area. Lately we've been doing a lot of sorting of meat. That's right, this nearly 20-year strong vegetarian is hauling around boxes of meat, looking for recalled ground turkey. I wear gloves. And take a very long shower as soon as I get home.

travel - I've done none. I haven't left the county since Memorial Day. Crazy, I know. I've been busy and my wallet hasn't been all that interested in going anywhere. This is going to change this weekend - I'm going on a roadtrip with my new beau!!! I am very excited :-)

instagram - This is so not me, but I've become obsessed with an iPhone (Mac only) app called Instagram. It's a photo editing/sharing app and it's so much fun. I love looking at other people's pics and playing with my own. I am a total hack but it's making me look at things a little more closely than I normally do. I like noticing my surroundings more, even if I don't always take the pic. I noticed this picture on a fence pole and enhanced it slightly with Instagram. If you know story of my real name, I hope you'll find this as amusing as I do!
yoga - I've found a really good groove with yoga this summer. Earlier in the summer a friend and I went to a few outdoor yoga classes which was really awesome. There is something really amazing about feeling the breeze on your skin and the sun on your face while you're working on crow pose. I've found that two yoga classes a week is the perfect number to keep me balanced, pun intended.

boys - Did you notice the reference to my new beau in the travel section? :-) I like this guy! He's even seen me get falling-down drunk exhausted and said "You're not scaring me away, just so you know." I rewarded this comment with non-sensical stories about pi (yes, the mathematical symbol) and why I find it strange that MIT has fraternities despite being filled with nerds, both of which he claimed to adore. Oh yes, he's a keeper.

food - Turns out that I can't really handle eating xanthan gum or guar gum, two gums that are commonly found in gluten-free baking to help bind the gluten-free flours together. Let's just say after some at home cooking experimentation that my body and stomach are better off without them. Thank god I like vegetables. My latest obsession is green curry rice noodle soup with broccoli and tofu. I love this soup and have had it daily for the past two weeks! My diet is so healthy it makes me sick. Sometimes I just want a Kit-Kat. Or a dozen Kit-Kats.

sewing - I finished my two quilts for Project Linus and have just started a couple of other small projects. In the next two weeks I'm going to learn how to make an a-line skirt, a pair of pajama pants and a square for a quilt at Gather Here. I can't wait! And after learning to knit last month, I am about half-way through my first scarf. (pic by Instagram)
The West Wing - I don't watch a lot of tv. I either have ADD and lose patience too quickly or there's nothing on to watch. Did I mention I don't have cable so I have like 3 channels and haven't a clue as to what's on? Last fall I started receiving The West Wing on Netflix. I thought watching a 42 minute tv program might be good downtime from school and 42 minutes wasn't as big a time commitment as a 90 minute movie. It's taken me nearly a year to get through 5 1/2 season. It's really really good!! I don't want to be one of those jerks that gets all of their information from tv but I have to say watching the West Wing has been one huge eye opening experience on how the government works (or doesn't work). I should not be so hasty to criticize our government for not moving fast enough on issues that I care about.

Harry Potter on cd - Confession: I haven't seen any of the Harry Potter movies. None. I've read all of the books and loved them. But I imagined them all in a very specific way and didn't want to see my version get ruined by someone else's vision. I checked out Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone on cd from the library and it is fantastic!! I forgot how wonderful the first Harry Potter book is and how delightful it was to learn about Hogwarts and all of the magic along with Harry. I hardly drive anymore - in fact, I only put 7,417 miles on my car in the last year - but I'm finding myself driving an extra block or two just to hear a few more minutes.

I know I'm missing a lot of news, but honestly, I can't think what it might be. I'm in a good place. For sure, I'm looking forward to having my Finance final behind me and securing a fall internship, and I'm really looking forward to my two week break before the fall semester starts, but right now, in this moment, things are good.

3 things meme

2011-08-03T13:06:00.005+02:00

I saw this meme on another blog I read. I haven't done one of these in a while and I'm momentarily out of topics, so voila! Note: All readers who have a blog are tagged :-)

Three ways I am still a kid:

1. I pick dandelions and braid them together.

2. I still have a really active imagination and love to make up stories.

3. I read children's books and books for middle schoolers (and love them).

Three ways I am already old:
1. I crack and creak worse than a 75 year old man!

2. My memory isn't what it used to be.

3. After reading through my journals I realize that I was a total mess when I was younger (younger being a relative term). If "old" means having lived enough to get your s**t together, than I am happy to say I am "old."

Three things I want to do:

1. Learn to surf.

2. Return to Japan.

3. Dye my hair red.

Three ways I’m a stereotypical “boy”:

1. I. Hate. Shopping. For. Clothes.

2. I tend to be more guarded with my emotions, particularly when it comes to love and relationships.
3. I sweat as much as, if not more than, the guys in my yoga classes.

Three ways I’m a stereotypical “girl”:

1. I have lots of random bottles of smelly things in the shower.

2. I love wearing dresses.

3. I care way too much about what my hair looks like, even though I am powerless to do anything with it.

Three things I want to try within the next three months:

1. Travel somewhere I've never been before.

2. The fall semester starts in four weeks. I'd like to make sure I do one social, non-school activity per week.

3. Make my own gluten-free pasta.

Three things I like about myself:

1. I am very driven.

2. I make a lot of impulsive decisions but this means I try a lot of new things.

3. My eyes.

Three of my everyday essentials:

1. Exercise.

2. Lipstick.

3. A chat with my plants.

Three things that scare me:

1. Squirrels.

2. Dieing alone.

3. Disappointing myself.

3 year anniversary

2011-07-23T00:00:00.003+02:00

Three years ago last week I left California and moved to New England. I cannot believe it's been three years already. It's been a wild three years; if I sat down and thought about all that's happened I'd probably miss something. In a weird and spectacular way, I've made a home for myself here and it feels pretty good.

There are things I really really miss about California. When winter in New England hits, I pine for California winters. I miss the diversity of California. I miss the food. I miss all of my friends. I miss the frenetic energy of everyone thinking, talking, creating and doing. And strange as this sounds, I miss the responsibility I had in my job and feeling like what I was doing made a difference. There are things, of course, that I don't miss. I don't miss planning my life around the traffic and the freeways. I don't miss feeling like I can never be lazy on a sunny day. And I really don't miss ant season (April - November). Most of all, I don't miss myself, the person that I was in California.

When I lived in California I used to say that I liked myself better when I was visiting home. I was worried when I first moved here that that was because I was on vacation and everyone is more relaxed on vacation. Turns out that there was something in the water that made me a little crazy in California and that craziness isn't as intense here. Whether the change is from age, geographic location, about a zillion yoga classes or finally feeling ok with where life is taking me, I am not sure; I just find that I'm a better version of myself here.

All is not a bed of roses in New England. I've put myself into the holy nightmare of business school and along with my super stressful program comes quite a few other unhappinesses. It's all temporary (less than a year to go!!!!!!!) but at times it sure doesn't feel like it. I've found it hard to make true connections here and frankly, I could not care less about Boston sports (seriously, this area is Obsessed with sports!). I grew up here so everything is familiar but even after three years, it still seems very foreign sometimes. And I swear if we have one more winter like the one we had this year, I am going to just walk out my front door and keep walking south until I find a more hospitable winter climate.

But here I am, three years later. I'm not making mad plans to leave (I do have them, they're just the thoughts of the dreamer in me, not the runner) and I think all the time how I can improve myself and my environment here. Here. Not somewhere else, but here. I miss California but I'm Here. And I'm glad I'm Here.

summer food

2011-07-05T14:02:00.004+02:00

It's not summer without a homemade strawberry pie*:

Or a tomato pesto salad**:
Yum!

*Gluten-free, vegan pie crust from Gluten-Free Girl.
**Easiest salad ever: basil, garlic and a little oil in the food processor then toss with tomatoes, red onion and cucumber.

be in the moment

2011-06-30T18:42:00.002+02:00

Be in the moment.

Be present.

I hear these phrases all the time but until this week I didn't really understand what they mean. Perhaps this is further evidence that I am slow and that no one has ever bothered to tell me. Or perhaps no one has ever illustrated what Be in the moment means in a way that I really get.

Yoga instructors are huge fans of telling their yogis to be in the moment. In that context, I totally get it. It's really hard to maintain your balance in a new pose or hold a really challenging pose when your mind is wandering. If my mind wanders, I lose focus and inevitably I end up doing a face plant or giving up too soon. If I breathe into the moment and focus on nothing else but my breath and my body I can hold the pose. I've started to really think about what it means to take yoga "off the mat" and into how I am in real life. I love yoga as a workout and I love how calm I feel after a good class but I want something more. Yoga has so many lessons to teach and I don't want for them to go in one ear and out the other but to really incorporate them into who I am.

My Tuesday yoga instructor always starts off class with a little story. Sometimes it's funny, sometimes it's serious, sometimes I think he makes it up on the fly but all of his stories have an underlying message. It was really hot and humid on Tuesday and K told us that he used to really hate summer and would spend every day getting grumpy about the hot weather and looking forward to fall and winter. By doing this K realized he was missing out on 100 days of his life, year after year. 100 days of only focusing on getting to fall. Only by being present and appreciating each day for what it was, and not constantly pine for something that he can't change and that's so far away, did he grow to love summer.

I was kind of blown away by this story. We're all guilty of thinking too far ahead. Who doesn't start thinking about the weekend on Monday morning? Or who can't wait for your vacation to start in 6 weeks? Who hasn't counted the days until their last day of work before changing jobs? I am just as guilty as all of you. I like to have things to look forward to and I think it's healthy and normal to look forward to things, but not at the sacrifice of the hear and now.

I am exactly half-way through business school (um, YAY!!!!!!). I cannot wait until May 2012 when I finish my last class and graduate. May 2012 is still a very very long way away. I have 8 classes to get through before this, about a million papers, exams and readings. It's not going to do any good to start counting the days and if there is any joy in this whole adventure I am going to miss it if I constantly pine for the end. And 10 1/2 months is a significant part of my life to waste. So I'm going to try to be more mindful and be more in the moment this year. When the professor hands out the syllabus I am going to try not to freak out about all of the due dates; I'm going to try to take things as they come and Be in the moment.

Missy Elliott and me

2011-06-26T03:22:00.002+02:00

I never would have thought that I'd have something in common with a rap star, much less Missy Elliott. Turns out Missy Elliott is my sister in thyroid arms. The tabloids are all abuzz with the breaking news that Missy Elliott has Graves Disease. Hey, I have Graves Disease too!

I love the drama with which the tabloids are reporting this, referring to Elliott's "private battle", "years long suffering" and "debilitating illness." I don't want to make like of Elliott's plight but having been through the whole mess myself, it's funny to read these descriptions in the news. Yes, Graves Disease is a horrible disease and doctors don't understand what causes autoimmune disorders or know how to cure them but I don't really think of Graves as a "debilitating disease". Pain in the neck (literally!!) - yes, debilitating - no. News reports have stated that Elliott is successfully beating Graves through "diet and exercise" which I'm not entirely sure is accurate. I exercise obsessively and my diet is so healthy that it makes me sick but there are still days and weeks where I know something is "off."

The good news is that it sounds like Elliott is in remission. I'm glad that Elliott went public and has brought some attention, no matter how inaccurate or how dramatic, to Graves Disease. I'm going to keep my fingers crossed that Elliott uses her voice to advocate for thyroid and autoimmune disorders so that there's an understanding and a cure in my lifetime. Thanks Missy!

Scandinavia Trip, part 3 - Stockholm, Sweden

2011-05-19T14:12:00.010+02:00

I adored Stockholm! Stockholm was far more modern and a much larger city than Copenhagen and certainly more diverse. Like Copenhagen, Stockholm is situated on a number of canals and islands, the oldest and most picturesque and touristy is Gamal Stan. Stockholm has about a million museums though most open at 11am so unfortunately I only got to visit the modern art museum and the photography museum. I'm already planning my next visit :-)

One of Stockholm's most impressive sights is the Vasa Museum. In the mid-1600s a viking warship was built and launched from Stockholm's harbor. The ship was way too top heavy and sunk about a mile from shore. In the mid-1960s the ship was found after a three year search and brought up from the ocean floor in nearly one piece. This ship is beautiful and amazing!! The ship is so large that the museum was built around the ship.
You can see the level of detail that was involved in designing the ship and you can also see why it was too top heavy to get too far from shore. It's amazing that the ship was preserved so well for so long under water. When they brought the ship up they even found parts of 12 skeletons of the 30 crew that drowned when the ship went under and numerous other affects from the boat.
One of Stockholm's islands has about a million (ok, slight exaggeration) museums. While we were wandering around looking for a museum that opened earlier than 10am we stumbled upon these guys. I love how colorful the "birds" are and the juxtaposition with the metal machines.
Some of the islands in Stockholm are very tiny. In the picture below you can see the island on the left which is only large enough to house two government buildings.
This is Stockholm's City Hall, a fully functional government building. The design is comprised of Swedish practicality and Venetian beauty. You can't tell from this picture that City Hall is right on the water. Unlike in the US which would have fences and barriers there is just a low stone wall where you can sit and enjoy the view (and fall in at your own peril). Interestingly enough at one of our company visits we were told that one of the barriers to entering the US market was fear of litigation. Europeans are much more casual with risks and take a lot more personal responsibility for not doing dumb things.
View of the "old town" island, Gamal Stan.
Stockholm had really colorful buildings in it's old town too. I loved the colors and felt inspired by the warmth of the colors. This is one of the largest town squares on Gamal Stan, and like every other city in Europe, the square had lots of cafes with outdoor seating for people watching and relaxing. Cafes with outdoor seating in Stockholm provide blankets if it gets too cold or windy - the Swedes definitely take advantage of nice weather when they can.
Gamal Stan had lots of small side streets that I loved wandering through. There were a couple of main tourist streets but once you got away from them the island was so quiet and picturesque.

Scandinavia Trip, part 2 - Lund, Sweden

2011-05-18T16:02:00.011+02:00

About half-way through the trip we hit a whirlwind of travel. Within the span of 36 hours we drove from Copenhagen, Denmark to Lund, Sweden where we met with a very cool global company and did our second case. Immediately after our case was presented and we received feedback from the company we drove for an hour and hopped on a plane to Stockholm, Sweden. We were lucky enough to have a few hours to wander around Lund the night before our company visit and case. Lund is a very picturesque college town and I thought it was unusual that such a large company would have their headquarters in such a rural area. I loved Lund and I am not just saying this because while we were there the temperatures were in the high 70s :-)

In the middle of Lund's town center was a beautiful stone church from the 1400s. Inside was an incredible clock that had both the time and the astrological signs.
Lund also had several stone Viking runes outside of one of the academic buildings. Coolest discovery ever!!!
I was amazed to see that in this part of Sweden thatched roofs, while not necessarily commonplace, were used on a number of homes and buildings.
I loved the rebuilding of this home. They kept the original stonework intact and then filled in the missing stones with brick.
In the middle of the Lund University campus was one of these "you are here" totem poles. This particular one had quotations in addition to cities/distances. We all took our pictures here and I thought it was funny that we traveled so far only to have our pictures taken with something decidedly un-Scandinavian.
Here's me trying to look authoritative as I describe technology usage statistics of US teenagers. This case was my worst group experience ever. My group silenced me and marginalized me by giving me meaningless tasks so by the time we presented I had no idea what the hell we were doing. Interestingly enough though, went we first started discussing the case I suggested something that everyone immediately said wasn't a good idea. Lo and behold, that was the idea that the group ultimately went with while I was working on useless tasks for the presentation. Note the displeased looks on my teammates' faces. I love my "I mean business" suit!
On the way to the airport we stopped by an old castle that has this watchguard sitting down on the job. In his left hand is a cup of coffee and in his right hand is a roll of some sort. I love how lifelike he looks!

Scandinavia Trip, part 1 - Copenhagen, Denmark

2011-05-17T22:22:00.011+02:00

One of the selling points of my business school was the opportunity to do a global travel seminar. Global travel seminars are week-long trips to various countries where you make company visits, learn about conducting business in a global environment and work on an actual problem for a few of the companies and get real-time feedback. Last fall I signed up for the Scandinavia trip with a single-minded focus: TRAVEL!! I haven't been out of the country since Belize in 2010 and before that it was a disastrous trip to Amsterdam in 2006, the ensuing pain from which all comes back in a hurry as soon as I get on an airplane. I'm not counting the trips to Canada. Yeah, I know Quebec is in another country but if I can drive there in half a day I'm not counting it as "out of the country".

My trip to Scandinavia was last week. We visited six companies in Copenhagen, Denmark and Lund and Stockholm, Sweden. I learned so much about business!! The companies were so open with us about the challenges and problems they've faced and how they're strategizing for the future. It's going to take me the next six months of my life to process everything that I learned from the company visits. We did two case questions for two different companies and those were, um, an interesting learning experience. I won't bore you with the details but rest assured there is nothing worse than being part of a team where one team member is trying to use the cases to catapult herself into a job at the companies and makes it perfectly clear that she thinks I am a total idiot. Night. Mare. I also learned a lot about myself and what I am looking for in the future and how I work best and which areas I need to work more on. And along the way we got to do some sightseeing.

My plan is to post pictures from the three cities we visited. You'll note that we had amazing weather - 70s and sunny all week. It rained on one day while we were inside at a company visit all day and on the day we left. Copenhagen and Stockholm are farther north than where I currently life so the sun didn't set until about 9:30pm (or later). We went out on our last night in Stockholm and sat at an outdoor cafe. It blew my mind that at after midnight the sky was dark blue, not midnight black like it gets in New England. You can imagine that winter in Scandinavia is pretty grim with the sun setting at 3:30pm. I really loved Copenhagen and Stockholm and would love to return to see and do more. And to be honest, after learning that I've max-ed out my prescription coverage of my crappy healthcare (and will thus be paying full costs of all prescriptions until I graduate in 2012) it is really tempting to considering finding a job in Scandinavia where the take rate is 50-60% but all social services - education, college, healthcare, retirement, etc - are free. I love Europe.

Some of the best pictures from Copenhagen:

I got to Copenhagen a day before most of my classmates so I used it as a true "vacation day", the first I've had since school started in September. I went to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art which was about an 30 minute train ride north of Copenhagen. What a treat! There was an interesting Picasso exhibit and a really cool David Hockney exhibit where he "painted" an entire series of pictures on the iPad and they were displayed in such a way that you could see his artistic process. The museum grounds had a cool sculpture garden and was situated on a bluff overlooking that water. I loved this orange popsicle stick sculpture:
Copenhagen is the birthplace of Hans Christian Andersen. Our hotel was close to Hans Christian Andersen Boulevard. You can take the librarian out of the library but the librarian gets ridiculously excited when she's near the home of a children's literature author!
By the seafront was a sculpture of Hans Christen Andersen's Little Mermaid. Copenhagen has more graffiti than any other city I've ever visited so I was not at all surprised to learn that the Danes had beheaded the Little Mermaid and cut off one of her arms about ten years ago. Today she is filled with concrete which keeps her safe from further beheadings.
This castle was situated in a beautiful park that was full of Danes picnicking and enjoying the beautiful weather. I love city parks because they are always so alive with city dwellers trying to enjoy the bit of nature that they can. The castle was originally the "summer home" of the royal family.
We visited Amalienborg Palace, home to the Queen and one of the princes (the other prince is a farmer near the German border and he receives farming subsidies from the European Union - no joke). There are guards but no police and no fences or other barriers. Denmark is an egalitarian society where there is a very short distance between those who have the most and those who have the least. One of the creeds of Denmark is "Don't think you are better than anybody else". In keeping in this spirit the idea is that anyone can access the royal family with no barriers. While we were watching the changing of the guard a car zoomed across the plaza beeping it's horn. It was the queen and her driver! The car didn't have tinted windows and the Queen rides a modest Mercedes.
I saw these locks on a bridge while I was running on my first morning. I think people hang them when they are in love. I loved these locks and love the symbolism! There were tons.
Copenhagen is surrounded by canals. Nyhavn Canal was the most touristy but also the most colorful.
I was really surprised to see the colorful facades in Copenhagen. I expect these colors in more mediterranean areas, not in cold Scandinavia. I thought they were beautiful and I felt inspired to let a little more color in my life. Since winters are so long and dark in Scandinavia, Scandinavians really take advantage of nice weather and spend time outdoors.

spring

2011-04-25T17:13:00.009+02:00

I'm demoting fall as my favorite season. When I lived in California I really thought fall was my favorite. I fantasized about the crispness in the air, the leaves changing colors, the changing of the light. In my fantasy I failed to remember that after fall comes winter. And we had a long winter with a lot of snow. The winter was really hard and I found myself blaming fall for not providing a more clear warning of the misery to come.

Spring took it's sweet time to arrive this year. It's the last week of April and there's finally (finally!) buds on the trees, flowers blooming and grass growing. I've been on "green patrol" for weeks - anxiously monitoring all of the trees in my neighborhood for that green glow they get just before they sprout buds. I am so glad spring is here. Everything feels clean and new. The sun shines brightly (well, maybe not this week - rain is forecasted every day). All feels right in the world.

Sorry fall. I regret to inform you have been demoted to my second favorite season. Please see the following as my reasoning:

** A goose isn't necessarily a sign of spring. I just wanted to show off my zoomy-zoom telephoto lens. I am the paparazzi of the geese!!

the MBA/triathlon connection

2011-04-21T18:07:00.002+02:00

I'm in the home stretch. This is the last week of classes. I have a final group project and a final next week and then I'm off to Scandinavia for 9 days for school. And them my first full year as an MBA student will be done. It never ends - I'm taking two classes this summer and working about 20 hours a week at an internship. This week promises to be one of the worst ones but I feel like I'm getting a good handle on things.

As I've gone through this first year I've thought time and time again how business school in some ways is very much like doing a triathlon, a marathon or other long distance event. I'm not just talking about the chronic fatigue, the lack of proper training and always feeling so run down that you're constantly in danger of getting sick. And it's not the pitying and/or admiring looks you get from people when you tell them what you are doing.

Back in my triathlon days I used to ride with a few hardcore roadies, one of whom was a coach. His motto for his clients was Keep Moving Forward and Never Think Outside of the Box You Are In. Keep moving forward is fairly obvious - if you aren't moving forward you are standing still. Standing still brings self-doubt and thoughts of quitting. I've had more self-doubt this year than I've ever had before and I've lost count of the number of times I've thought of quitting. Back when I was racing, I never failed to finish a race. I may have blown up spectacularly on the run or shut down mentally on the bike but onward I pressed, knowing that the shame of not finishing would stick with me far longer than the glory of crossing the finish line. It's taken me a while but I've finally started to approach business school much in the same way. Sure I could quit (and believe me there have been times that I've come thisclose to doing so!) but could I live with myself if I didn't finish? No. I quit something 17 years ago and despite all that I've done and all that I've accomplished since that memory is more clear than anything else in my past. So I keep moving forward toward the finish line. School has been just like an Ironman: I push through the pain, the suffering, the joy of finishing things I didn't think I could, I take comfort in going through the journey with others. I keep moving forward.

Never Think Outside of the Box You Are In is a little less obvious. An Ironman is a 2.4 mile swim, a 112 mile bike ride and a full marathon (26.2). It's a very long day. It's also really overwhelming to be in the middle of the swim and realize you still have 138 more miles to go. But if you never look past one stroke during the swim, one pedal rotation on the bike or one step forward on the run it's more manageable. If you constantly stay in the moment of where you are in the race, you don't get too far ahead of yourself and you can manage any challenges (a flat, a lost nutrition bottle, a kick in the face in the swim) as they come. One step at a time. We have a ridiculous amount of work to do in business school. The pace is relentless - readings, homeworks, papers, group projects, presentations. Just when you finish one thing there are 10 more things waiting to be done. It's easy to get lost and feel overwhelmed. But if you keep things in perspective and don't get too far ahead of yourself (believe me - you will do yourself no good by stressing about the final paper during the first month of school) the pace is still relentless but is more manageable.

So here I am, nearing the end of my first year of business school. I got up at 5am this morning to exercise, have breakfast and shower so I get to work as soon as possible. I did an hour + on my research assistantship work, did another hour on Scandinavia pre-work and and another hour starting studying for my economics final next week. Bit by bit I'm getting stuff done. I move forward with each task. If I start freaking about my economics exam next week today I am going to really freak out. I'm sick today (still) and I feel very very sad about something but if I stop to dwell on these things I am going to start crying and then I will get stuck. I've made peace with the fact that I am going to finish school and I am choosing to believe that things will get better. I keep moving forward.

Japan

2011-04-14T21:38:00.002+02:00

I haven't written anything about Japan. It's been over a month since the earthquake(s) and tsunami and I still have no words. What can I say? I am shocked, devastated, sad, angry, hopeful and a million other emotions. The disaster in Japan has affected me more than September 11 did. When I saw the images on tv last month (and since) I felt like my heart was being ripped in two, like I was watching my home be destroyed and I was half-way around the world, powerless to do anything. I want to help but I don't know how and it's too early for the help that I can provide. How can I help fix things when things are still breaking?

I'm writing these words today because I saw a video of still photographs of Fukushima. It looks like a forgotten place. Everything is exactly the same as it was when people left - traffic lights still change, air conditioners still hum, clothes are still hung in the window to dry. It could be any town in Japan, it could have been my city. Everything is the same but nothing is the same at all. When I started writing this post I thought that maybe today I could say how I feel. I still can't. I can't put into words the ache in my chest and the pain in my stomach that I've felt at any mention of Japan over the past month. It just hurts.

There is a teeny-tiny piece of me that feels hopeful. The Japanese are very resilient and I know they will rebuilt, stronger than before. The comfort in this is fleeting - rebuilding will take a very long time and we don't yet know the extent of the damage or how ruinous the radiation will be. But every fiber of my being still projects hope.

"Fall seven times and stand up eight." - Japanese proverb

5 reasons I love yoga

2011-04-08T14:52:00.003+02:00

1. When I'm practicing yoga I am not thinking about how fat I feel or how giant I am in comparison to the other yogis in my class. I feel strong and powerful and as I'm moving about my mat I feel myself growing stronger.

2. While I still have a long way to go towards improving my posture I've noticed that I carry myself taller when I walk. When I stand still I am aware of my lower body strength and notice that I don't slouch into myself as much.

3. I learn something new in every single class. Sometimes it's a new pose, sometimes it's a new way of getting in or out of a pose and sometimes it's something that the teacher will say that brings an aha! moment.

4. When faced with a new pose I don't immediately think "I can't do that!" or "I don't know if I bend that way!" I jump in and try the pose without hesitation. Sometimes I fall over, sometimes I discover that my body won't bend a certain way and sometimes it comes easily. But I always try.

5. I can be in the worst mood or totally stressed out before yoga class. By the time I get through class I am calmer and more focused and whatever was making me super grumpy has faded away.

. . . And one reason I don't like yoga so much:
It's been 4 1/2 years since I broke my elbow and it still hurts to put my entire body weight on my right arm. It hurts just to put bend my right arm with any body weight on it. The nice thing about yoga is that there are modifications for everything so I can alter the pose sequences as needed to protect more poor little elbow.

update

2011-03-25T15:20:00.002+01:00

It's been a while since I've written anything of substance. This was purposeful. How I feel about school, and thus how I feel about everything else, changes constantly. One day I'm on top of the world; the next I am down in the dumps. I got tired of trying to define this roller coaster here. So this post is just an update on what's happening with me lately. Read 'em and weep!

- Before spring break I met with my adviser. If I get through the spring semester and get through the two classes I'm taking this summer I'll only have 7 classes left. This bears repeating: I'll only have 7 classes left!!!! I had thought it was 9 so this is a lot more do-able, particularly if I can do an internship for one of those classes. I cried the entire weekend before I got this news. Since meeting with my adviser I can't say that I am happier in my program in as much as I've resigned myself to finish. We have 6 weeks left of classes before finals and I've already completed one class this semester. I registered for fall classes this morning. Though I fantasize about quitting school all the time, it's not going to happen - I am going to finish. Damn-it.

- Over spring break I read Water for Elephants. I bought this book last year but I thought I wouldn't like it because while it's not historical fiction (which I hate) it is set in the 1930s. I LOVED this book!!! It's so well written and it's about this circus in the '30s which I've always been interested in. Oddly, my least favorite part was the love story. And the hardest part to read was the part set in modern times. I miss my grandfather. (I know this is vague/non-sequitor-ish - but if you haven't read the book yet - and you totally should!! - I don't want to give anything away!!) Read it now before they ruin the book with the movie!!

- I'm going to Stockholm and Copenhagen in May for school. It's a week-long trip where we'll be visiting Scandinavian companies and working on real business problems the companies face. I am really excited but super nervous about what on earth I'll be able to eat while I'm there. The syllabus and class info was posted last night. If I thought this was going to be an "easy A" I am sadly mistaken. There is a ridiculous amount of work to be done!

- I'm looking for a summer internship. It's not going well. I received a lot of conflicting info about a lot of things so now I'm just confused. It's unfortunate that I was a Librarian for 11 years before going back to school because it takes a special kind of company to see past the "L word" on my resume and see that I can do everything they want me to do and more. I'm also torn between two careers post-MBA - marking for a tech firms or organizational behavior/change management. I'm more qualified for organizational behavior but I would totally love to work for a cutting edge tech firm!! I went to a co-op fair yesterday. I think I have a shot at two human resource positions but I am not sure if that's what I really want. Or if I should do the h.r. thing this summer and save an awesome marketing internship for the fall as one of my classes and when it's less competitive. Argh!!! On the positive side, I got a new suit last month and I wore it for the first time yesterday. I love it and I love that it's not the same black suit that everyone else in my program has! (On a related note - I don't know how Hilary Clinton does it but every time I put on a pants suit I end up looking very very butch. No amount of makeup or accessorizing makes me look feminine in a pants suit!)

- I've been doing some sewing. There is fabric all over my apartment and a half-finished bag on my sewing table and a quilt in progress in my living room. I've been fantasizing about a half-dozen or so other projects and possibly a small entrepreneurial venture. This all makes me very very happy :-)

- I'm still going to yoga. I was up to three classes/week at one point and my body got a little burned out. I still love it and love what it does for me mentally and physically but I've cut back to two classes/week for a while. I found a new studio that I adore - the owner is so nice and so cool and the Tues/Thurs instructor is amazing - I just wish it weren't such a drive!

- I still have moments of unbearable loneliness, even when I am surrounded by a crowd of people. I quite desperately want someone to share my life with but the reality is that I have very little time. I find this very depressing and is probably the one massive regret I have about being back in school at age 36.

- Spring, beautiful spring, is here!!!! Or rather, it was here last week. The crocuses around my complex have bloomed! It was so warm last week I went for a walk in short sleeves!!! And typical for New England, it snowed yesterday. The ground is too warm so it didn't stick. We're stuck in the 40s this week and everyone is complaining. Sure, I wish it could be 75 and sunny every day too, but at least the daily high isn't 15 degrees anymore!!

- Do you ever worry so much about someone that you become angry when you think of them because you are sure that they are slowly killing themselves and they're in complete denial?? This is me. I know there's nothing I can do but I am so worried I can't bear it.

- I didn't fail my economics midterm! The class is taught in Greek. Not literally, but it's like one giant graph that I totally don't get. The instructor lectures for about 2 1/2 hours straight with no outline, no slides, no visual aids. He says as long as you have a good set of notes you'll do fine on the exams. The only grades are the midterm and the final. I try to write everything down but then I get confused (or tired) so I stop and pick back up again when I can. The professor is very nice but the class is awful. We had the midterm before spring break and I walked out thinking I failed. We got the exams back on Wednesday and I got a 71. With the curve it's a C+. I am so relieved!!! I know this grade isn't awesome but I literally did the very best I possibly could on the exam so I'm happy with the grade (and there were two people who actually failed the exam!). The professor said that students tend to do better on second half of the class (macroeconomics) and I'm already understanding it more so I feel like a B is not totally out of the question. Yay!!!

I think that's about it for my update. Really, other than school, there ain't nothin' happening. May spring be lovely for all of you! :-)

Mt Auburn Cemetery

2011-03-16T21:50:00.010+01:00

I love cemeteries. I know this sounds morbid but I find them beautiful and peaceful. I am lucky to live near Mt Auburn Cemetery. Mt Auburn Cemetery was founded in 1831 and is both a cemetery and arboretum. There are lots of really old beautiful headstones and it has a fabulous view of the Boston skyline. (I mean no disrespect to the dead by taking these pictures - I think the old headstones are works of art.) I took a walk through here on Sunday looking for signs of spring.

Maine in March

2011-03-14T01:22:00.009+01:00

Spring is taking its sweet time arriving in New England. One day it's 50 degrees, the next it's 30. Spring has barely arrived in Maine - there is still a ton of snow on the ground. I love the beach in the winter. Mother nature has had her way for 6 months and the beach seems raw and beaten but also quite beautiful.

blog it forward

2011-03-01T03:03:00.002+01:00

I'm sharing two posts by blog authors whom I respect and adore:

Gluten-Free Girl and Chef
Enough
I adore this woman! Gluten-free girl is, well, a gluten-free baker; the Chef is her husband. She has a beautiful writing voice and I have learned so much from her about gluten-free baking, about cooking, about eating, about writing, about loving, about living. Her post about enough really struck me, particularly this line: I don’t want to work so hard to create the life I want to lead that I end up not living it. I think about this All The Time. I think it's why I am struggling so hard with my MBA program. I really feel like if I died tomorrow that all I would have to show for my life is a bunch of degrees and a bunch of stamps in my passport. I don't feel like what I'm doing now is living; I'm surviving only to race to the next thing I need to survive. School pounds relentlessly at me and as a result there is no stillness, no quiet, no peace. I'm working on fixing this. For now I will return again and again to this beautiful post.
ps There's also a recipe! For a scrumptious blueberry clafoutis! Which I hope to adapt to my own food problems shortly!

Tea & Cookies
Sometimes You Need a Sign
I found Tea & Cookies while desperately searching for a gluten-free recipe of some sort. Her blog has recipes, but there's so much more. Although if you pressed me really hard I would probably admit that I don't know exactly what her blog is about . . . Yes, there are recipes. There are beautiful photos too. And posts about failures and triumphs and the longing for "home." I read this blog and think that if I knew this woman in person we would be great friends. Or maybe she's just really an amazing writer with a clear voice. This particular post struck me where she writes, "“I just need a sign,” I said through my tears. “Something to tell me I’m on the right path. Because it sure doesn’t feel like it."" Oh, I've been there, perhaps I am still there. There's no recipe, but there is a sewing project of sorts.

Enjoy.

new sewing project

2011-02-28T18:01:00.006+01:00

It seems like all signs have been pointing me to a new sewing project:
- I've been really feeling a lack of creativity in my life lately, so much so that I've thought about quitting my MBA program to get an MFA!
- One of the Border's in Boston is closing and I snagged a quilting book and a bunch of quilting magazines, all of which are chock full of great ideas.
- My mom and I went to a craft/sewing store yesterday and I could have happily emptied my checking account buying pretty fabrics.

Clearly, it's time for a project. I took a study break yesterday to take stock of my fabric supply and wash and iron everything. (as a side note: I have the world's crappiest iron! Seriously, I would have been better off putting the fabric between a couple of books and sitting on it. Note to self: when you buy a $10 iron you get what you pay for.) As I was ironing I put the finished fabrics together and realized they made a fairly good color palate. Voila! My new quilt fabric!

In the picture directly above, all of the fabrics are fat quarters except for the first two (from the left) which were cheap-o one yard-sized remnants that I bought last fall. I'm really happy with the orange-y/yellow-y palate. I suspect that once I pick the quilt pattern I'm going to make I'll need more fabric and I'll probably get a couple of additional fabrics with bold patterns.

I just wish I had time for this project, but that's a complaint/rant about school for another day :-)

lost pictures, part six

2011-02-18T17:16:00.000+01:00

Hollywood sign:

Economics tutor needed!

2011-02-15T21:39:00.002+01:00

I know I said I wasn't going to complain/vent about school and I meant it. I am posting because I need help. I am taking Economics this semester. We are about a third of the way through the semester and the class and I am LOST. Like really really lost. There only two grading components to the class, a midterm and a final exam. I don't do all that well with exams, particularly when they involved topics I don't really understand. I feel like the textbook is written in Greek and though I take a ton of notes during lecture I don't really understand the class content at all. The tutoring center at school yet again does not have any tutors for the graduate level of economics and I don't want to repeat the pain of last semester where I shelled out a million dollars to a private tutor who ended up firing me because I was such an idiot.

I have no idea who reads this blog but I am going to put this out there anyway in case anyone knows someone who can help: I need an economics tutor in the Boston area who can help me pass an MBA-level economics class. Half the semester is microeconomics and half the semester is macroeconomics. Help? Help! Help. Merci.

snow. again.

2011-02-01T18:23:00.003+01:00

Oh look. It's snowing. Again. According to the weather-casters this is our 9th weather "event" in 5 weeks. Weather "event" is defined as a blizzard, nor'easter or snow storm. I'm no mathematician but I think this is nearly two snowstorms a week for the past month? And this doesn't even count the casual inch or two that seems to fall every other day. What on earth is going on?? The local paper has taken to measuring the amount of snow that has fallen to Shaq (he plays for the Celtics now)! It's insane and all the snow has had a decided effect on my mental state.

For those of you west coast readers who think "Oh snow! So pretty!" I assure you that the snow is indeed very beautiful. The First Time It Falls!!! Which I think was right after Christmas? After that the snow gets really dirty, really fast. It is a colossal nuisance. I've lost count of the number of times I've had to clear the snow of my car and from my parking space. The snow banks are so high that driving anywhere means creeping around corners and into the middle of intersections so you don't plow into another driver. Many people have done a good job of clearing their sidewalks and I am grateful to these residents. For those that haven't cleared their sidewalks of the snow I say "(insert the sound of me giving a raspberry)!" Walking to anywhere means walking on icy sidewalks, walking in the snow, walking in slush puddles up to my neck and trying not to piss off irate drivers for walking in the street. And don't even get me started about running! Thanks to my insane exercise habits I haven't missed a run this season - though I have had to do some back-to-backs just to get the runs in before the next blizzard - but I am about ready to start doing an hour's worth of laps around my block simply because there is nowhere else to go! Snow piles are in the streets, sidewalks have sketchy iciness and drivers don't like it when you get in their (perceived) way. I am so done with snow! And winter!

Last night my beau and I were joking about going to Hawaii today and staying there until March 21 (first day of spring!). It was a deliciously fun fantasy until I woke up this morning and realized that the weather ruined our fictitious plans - due to the latest storm most flights have been cancelled. :-P

No more snow!!! PLEASE!!!!!

Bodies in style?

2011-01-20T14:20:00.002+01:00

Interesting article/video on the changing "fashion" of body type:

The article can be found here.

I find it both interesting and bizarre that body types can fall in and out of favor/fashion, like a style of clothing falls in and out of favor/fashion. Our body types are what they are, mostly thanks to genetics and environment. To follow my clothing analogy, if you are a 70's bell bottom polyester suit it's going to be mighty difficult to make yourself into a ladies in waiting corset of the 1700s. What happened to health? What happened to feeling good? What happened to taking care of your body so you can do all of the things you want to do and live a happy, healthy life? Fashionable body types are about appearances and appearances don't necessarily equate health. My true body type is a skin-tight leopard print dress with 7" leopard print heels. Not exactly the jeans and drab tops I've resigned myself to accept as my body type. ;-)

Blizzard! Again.

2011-01-12T22:27:00.008+01:00

We had another blizzard today. My area got at least a foot, if not more. It's a little hard to tell how much snow we got because the wind has been moving it around all day. On the downside I've had to dig my car out three times. On the upside I've gotten a few projects done and did some reading for school. The first picture is to give you some perspective; there is just a TON of snow. I feel like none of it is going to melt until August. The rest of the pictures are close-ups of snow on branches and tree limbs. It's so pretty but a lot of branches have broken off the trees because the snow is so heavy.

yoga breakthrough

2011-01-08T00:26:00.002+01:00

At the end of every yoga practice is Savasana or corpse pose. Basically, you lie on the floor completely still and let the preceding practice "set". It's a time of rest and mediation. I have feared and dreaded Savasana since I started yoga. Only recently have I started to get it.

I mainly fear falling asleep in Savasana. This is a valid fear. You're lying on the floor with your eyes closed, completely still, tired from the yoga practice and (in my case) maybe tired from lack of sleep, stress, etc. The room is totally silent and you lie there so long sometimes it feels like the yoga instructor has forgotten to call you out of the pose. When I first started yoga a friend actually fell asleep during Savasana. I was trying to relax into the pose and I heard a very loud snore. To be fair, the room was dark and my friend had had a large glass of wine before class. Ever since I've been completely afraid of falling asleep during Savasana; it's hilarious when it happens to someone else, but would be terrifying if it happened to me.

Now I go to class in the morning so when it's Savasana time the room is pretty bright and I felt weird about closing my eyes surrounded by 10 other "corpses" so I'd keep my eyes open. Eyes open = brain whirling. Try to clear your mind of anything while your eyes are open and you'll see it's virtually impossible. Equally impossible is trying not to fidget. As soon as my brain starts whirling my body starts to fidget. Somehow over the course of a few months I managed to lull myself into not moving while my eyes were open. Not exactly Savasana, but a start.

About a month ago one of my instructors gave a mantra for Savasana that has changed everything. His suggestion was to repeat "I am" as you breathe in and "who I am" as you breathe out. It is amazing what a dramatic change this simple phrase has brought. Focusing on breathing and on saying the phrase (silently) keeps my mind focused which leads to true relaxation. If my mind does start to wander I bring myself back to focus by going back to the mantra. Focusing on the mantra also gives my brain something to do which in turn keeps my body still. And as long as I keep repeating the mantra there is no danger of falling asleep.

I am
Who I am

among friends

2011-01-07T14:17:00.002+01:00

The other night I went to a Celiac meet-up at a nearby-ish restaurant. There were 5 of us gluten-free-bies. We ate pasta and pizza and talked about food for 2+ hours. It was so awesome! The woman who started the group did it so she'd have friends who understood, who really got what it's like to have to constantly think about your food choices and constantly worry that you are eating safely. The restaurant we went to had an entire gluten-free menu and when the organizer made the reservation she had specifically said we were all gluten-free. The waiter was really attentive, pointing out various things on the menu, answering all of our questions (and deftly dealing with my dairy problems). And best of all, it was incredible to not have to feel like I had to apologize for my food issues or my interrogation of the waitstaff. It was really really cool.

I ate pasta. It was so-so, not great. I literally cannot remember the last time I ate pasta in a restaurant. I felt like standing up and shouting to the other diners "Check me out! I'm eating pasta!" but I didn't. I did say this to my new friends and they all got it. Like really got it. I don't know if I'll go back to the restaurant (oh, who am I kidding, I already have my eye on some of the breaded appetizers!) but I will definitely join this group again. There is safety and happiness in numbers.

Helloooo 2011!!

2011-01-03T23:24:00.003+01:00

Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a lovely new year celebration! Mine was wonderful; filled with spring-like weather, new friends and lots of fun.
I am not posting any New Year's resolutions this year and it ain't because I'm perfect and have nothing I need to work on :-) I have many things I need to work on and spent the better part of the afternoon yesterday reflecting on 2010 and thinking about 2011. I am changing the focus of this blog slightly in 2011. Or rather, I am changing it back to the way it was before I lost my mind and fell into a darkness that I can't shake. I will now be paying someone to listen to me cry and whine and freak out on a regular basis while this blog will act as an oasis for good things - adventures, cooking experiments, pictures, projects and more pictures. I am not trying to gloss over my unhappiness but I am tired of giving it a voice and letting it consume every single thought that I have. I am grateful to you, my faithful and kind readers, for putting up with it all. There's more to me than my unhappiness; I hope to find it in 2011.

May 2011 be filled with laughter, health, peace and joy!

Yoga mat bag - project and pattern

2010-12-27T17:29:00.013+01:00

I made a bag for my yoga mat today! I didn't need a bag for my yoga mat. I just wanted to play with some sewing stuff during my break from school and I thought the yoga mat bag would be a fun, easy project. When I was looking on the Internet for patterns I couldn't believe how much these bags sold for - $25 - $75!! My bag took less than an hour from the initial cutting to completion and cost less than $8. If any fabric stores were open yesterday I am sure I could have found some really bargain fabric and supplies. I am happy with the way it came out.

I based my pattern off another site that I found and made some minor adjustments to the dimensions. The original site said to make the body of the bag 29" x 17" but I added 4" to both the height and width. I've worn out the stickiness on one side of the mat and am now using the (still sticky) back side. Once the stickiness on the back goes I am going to look at a mats that are made of something else that stays sticky no matter how much I use it or sweat on it, so I wanted the bag to be able to accommodate mats that are a little thicker when rolled. I'm 5'11" and I often find myself hanging off my mat while my fellow yogis are firmly still on their mats. I knew that I wanted the bag to accommodate a longer mat (if there is such a thing), thus the added inches. Sorry for all the pictures - I wanted to experiment with my camera too.

All I needed was a yard of fabric, a strap and a cord for the draw-string. I inherited a ton of thread from my grandmother so I probably won't need to buy any thread for any sewing project for the rest of my life. The fabric was on the remnant table but I really liked it. I have quite a bit left over so it might be part of the next quilt I make.
My yoga mat is pink. I didn't buy the fabric to match (because I am so not a matchy-matchy person) but it kind of does match anyway.
Step one was cutting the fabric. The rectangle on the left is the body of the bag and the circular piece is for the bottom of the bag. I have trouble cutting in a straight line and I really have trouble cutting a circle!
I ended up scrapping the hand-cut circle and using a serving plate instead.
I first sewed the seam the long-way. The original pattern said to leave an inch at the bottom and the top. I ended up not leaving any room at either the bottom or the top. The bottom worked out fine but if I make another bag I am going to leave 1 1/2" - 2" at the top for the drawstring.
I sheared the edges so the fabric won't fray.
It turned out that the dinner plate site circle I cut was way too big. Note to self: IKEA cereal bowl size circles are just the right size for the bottom of a yoga mat bag.
The second step was sewing the circle to the tube. It was tricky but not terribly challenging. Slow and steady is a good mantra for sewing. I triple-checked before sewing that I had the wrong side of the fabric facing outward so when I turned the bag inside out the fabric would all be the correct side, facing outward.
Lastly I sewed a 1/2" pocket around the top of the tube for the drawstring. I was on a roll (haha) so I neglected to take pictures of either the sewing or the insertion of the drawstring.

The finished bag! My yoga mat is inside. It's a little long and the strap is really long but I am pleased with it. (pardon the background mess - my sewing machine is set up in my "office" where I've also stored some boxes that I have yet to unpack)
In this shot you can see the drawstring at the top. If I make another bag, I'll get a slightly longer drawstring and slightly shorter strap.
I had to really contort myself into a yoga twist to get his shot. You are actually looking at my backside. Thanks to yoga I can almost completely spin my torso around so it faces my back.
I am really pleased with the way this bag came out! It's not perfect by any means but it was a really quick and easy project and I learned more about sewing in the process.

Blizzard

2010-12-27T16:12:00.009+01:00

New England got a blizzard for Christmas. Santa also brought a new camera! Voila - blizzard + new camera:

View from outside my condo:
The snow blowers have already cleared a lot of the sidewalks. It's going to take forever for all of this snow to melt.
Neither rain nor sleet nor snow nor hail . . .
Despite everyone being trapped in their homes (we're in a "state of emergency", meaning "stay off the roads") the snow is kind of pretty.
I like the fire hydrant's snow hat.
I pass this house almost daily on my walk. Somewhere under all that snow is a sidewalk, a set of front steps and a driveway.
The trouble with getting a ton of snow all at once is you run out of places to put it pretty quickly. I am so glad I don't live in one of the ground level apartments in my building.
I believe this is my car? I have no idea how I'm going to get it out of my parking space as I don't have a shovel and the snow plow keeps kind of plowing it in.

Thoughts on the fall semester

2010-12-21T20:30:00.003+01:00

I am done! Done D-O-N-E done!!! My last group paper was turned in Thursday and I finished grading for the professor I work for on Friday night and got the last "all clear" email from him on Saturday morning. Just like that, the fall semester came to a close. Grades were posted yesterday so if there was any doubt, it's gone.

I am so glad it's over. It's been a wild semester and I can't even begin to describe it even though I'd very much like to. In no particular order, some thoughts and observations about the semester:

- The worst feeling in the world is needing a hug but not having the time to find one or having anyone around to give you one.

- Looking back on all the reading, the papers and exams I have to wonder "Was there a point? Was it all busy work?" Is the idea of business school to crush you with the workload and then set you free into the world with the confidence that if you survived business school you can do anything?

- A friend of mine who graduated from a top-10 business school a year or so ago has been hounding me all semester about summer internships, telling me if I haven't applied or done informational interviews by now that I probably wouldn't get one. Like I needed to hear this. I wish I had the guts to tell him to back off.

- My school is right in Downtown, in a very historic part of town. It is pretty awesome to get off the subway every morning and walk through the areas that tourists flock to, knowing it's my second home.

- The second worst feeling in the world is crying on the subway. Monday mornings were horrible as I knew I was in for about 6 hours of material that was way over my head. Sometimes the tears just came and not a single person looked at me, said anything to me or even acknowledged that I was there. It felt like adding isolation to lonliness.

- I honestly thought Operations & Data Analysis was going to kill me. The workload was unreal: 4 homeworks, 4 group papers, 2 individual papers, a lengthy Excel assignment and ALEKS. Miraculously I soldiered through and survived. I still have no idea what it was that I studied or if I actually learned anything. Somehow I ended up with an 89.8/100 as my final grade. The professor gave me a B+. He couldn't have given me the extra .20 for all my pain and suffering so I could have an A-?? More likely, he probably looked at my grade and couldn't fathom how somewhere who was so openly clueless about the subject as I managed to do so well and kept me at a B+.

- My school offers a dual JD/MBA degree program for those who really like to suffer. Oops, I mean for those who really want an edge in the work world. Aside from the JD students in my class, every single one of my classmates at one point or another expressed serious thoughts about dropping out, quitting, going part-time, etc. The JD students all said they looked forward to a "relaxing" semester after successfully finishing their first year of law school. I don't know of anyone who's not actually coming back next semester.

- One of the weirdest classes I took was Organizational Behavior. I think we were supposed to learn how to look at different workplace situations through different lenses. We actually spent a ridiculous amount of time sitting in groups, talking about our "personal stories" (don't ask). As my friend A said, "We've got Accounting, Economics, Operations & Data Analysis and Let's Sit Around and Talk About Our Feelings. I've got seven projects to work on and I am supposed to make time to think about thinking about someone else's personal story!" This description was dead accurate and I am glad that we all got As in the class.

- The third worst feeling in the world is feeling like you've let yourself and your family down because you can't handle your stress and keep your shit together.

- The library at my school is a pretty nice one, even though it's impossible to find somewhere to sit on a Wednesday afternoon. The library does a lot of things right and my old library could take some notes from this library. The library has a huge reserve system - every single textbook for every single class is on reserve at the circ desk. Students check out the book for two hours and the next student who comes looking for it is given a pager that buzzes when it's been returned. If the student who has it checked out doesn't return it on time the circ staff makes an announcement like "Attention patrons! If you've borrowed the book for Business Law please return it, your time is up and another student is waiting." Apparently they use the loud speaker for other notifications because as I was studying one afternoon I head "Attention patrons! If you have taken the stapler away from the printers please return it immediately!!" I thought this was hilarious.

- My favorite class turned out to be accounting. The first half of the semester was awful - balance sheets, income states and the like. Way over my head and I still cannot balance anything. My professor was really nutty and funny and rambling, which I loved, but not for teaching a subject I don't get. Then we started cost accounting where we figured out break even points, created "what if" models (what if we raised our prices? what if we hired another person?) and it all started to make sense to me in a huge, awesome way. My entrepreneurial spirit was alive and well as I ended the semester and my professor has almost convinced me to take another accounting class!

- I made time for yoga and exercise, for cooking nutritious meal and for crying all the time. I failed to make enough time for getting proper sleep (hellloooo nightmares!) or doing non-school stuff with friends. I need to work on this next semester. Even when I did make plans with friends I felt stressed by what was waiting for me at home or so depressed and melancholy from the whole semester that I probably wasn't much fun to be with anyway.

- Funniest moment of the whole semester: All MBA students have to take a one-credit required class on "career planning". It's one of those know your strengths and weaknesses, know yourself kind of classes. During the second day's lecture, the professor asked rhetorically, "Who knows you better than you?" A student (an MBA student!) raised his hand and said tentatively "Your mom?" I laughed so hard I cried!

- Class participation is a huge part of every class grade, ranging from 10% - 40%. I made a point of speaking up in every class, asking questions, contributing to the discussion, etc. Some of my classmates never said a word! Not one word! In my IT class it wasn't until we had group presentations that I heard some of my classmates' voices. I sincerely hope their grades participation grades were lower than mine.

- My research assistantship was kind of a nightmare. I got it as part of the scholarship package the school gave me. When you apply for a placement you aren't told anything about what you might be doing. On the faculty side, apparently it's a big coup for a professor to have their own research assistant. I've long felt that faculty are severely out of touch with the world. Yes, it's great to have a research assistant but you have to be prepared to actually direct the work flow your student and not assume that the research assistant is going to know what you mean by a vague email. I think a lot of training on both sides would have made the entire experience a little less painful. As it is, my professor is calling me his "teaching assistant" (which my school does not have) so I am basically doing everything but actually teach the class. For $13/hour. If I'm awarded the same scholarship next year I am putting in for a transfer!

- It's weird to be back in school. I am old enough to be some of the undergraduates' mom. On the bus and subway I see everyone else in their suits and business clothes while I am in jeans. On a morning trip to Target all I see are soccer moms. I study at the library at school, study at the library in my town or study at home. I don't have a lot of free time and when I have free time everyone else is working. It's like I'm on a planet of one that is revolving around the sun at a different angle than everyone else's planet.

- At various points during the semester my classmates and I would look at each other and think "This class [lecture] is taking too much time away from all that I have to do!"

- My school did a very evil thing this semester. There were two Monday holidays. Since the MBA classes only meet once/week for three hours the time needs to be made up. I have no problem with this. There are no classes held on Friday so the make-up classes were held on Friday. I don't have a problem with this either. What I do have a problem with is holding the make-up classes on two Fridays in a row during midterms!!! At the end of October, my schedule looked like this:
Monday classes
(Tuesday class, Wednesday class)
Monday classes on Friday
Monday classes
(Tuesday class, Wednesday class)
Monday classes on Friday
My worst classes were on Monday so it was a special hell to have them 5 times in a two week period!

- I'm glad I survived. I'm glad I didn't drop out or quit. I am very glad that I have a fairly long break during which I plan to do a lot of nothing. I've picked some interesting classes next semester and only one that's math-centric so I'm hoping it will be a little easier *fingers crossed*

(untitled)

2010-12-04T15:32:00.004+01:00

I found out yesterday that someone I knew in high school killed himself in 2008.

I cried when I heard this.

D was an exceptional human being. Sweet, funny, kind, mischievous, talented, hard-working, passionate, humane. I could probably add another hundred adjectives to this list. Everyone in high school is pretty miserable. Sometimes you can look at someone in that miserable state and know that they are destined for other things. Better things. Like they're too smart and have too much soul to be stuck in the minutiae of high school. D was one of those people.

And he killed himself. I don't know why and I don't know how; we lost touch long long ago. And yet his suicide makes me feel profoundly sad.

For D.

Day 6 of Gratitude - health

2010-11-24T02:46:00.003+01:00

I had an appointment with my endocrinologist today. My Graves' Disease is fighting hard to make a come back. This is both a surprise and not a surprise. I recognized some of the symptoms but I chalked them off to a stressful semester at school and lack of sleep. As things are now, I am actually closer to how I was when I was diagnosed almost two years ago than I was two months ago at my last appointment.

I am really really disappointed. I had been really hoping that today would be the day my endocrinologist says the Graves is in remission. Instead we talked about how long to continue treatment before it's time for thyroid surgery or radiation.

Yes, this is a huge set back and I'm upset. However, if I look on the bright side I can also see how lucky I am. Yes, I've got a couple of annoying diseases. But, thanks to modern medicine I don't see any of these diseases as getting in the way of doing anything that I want to do. I am very active, both mentally and physically. While Graves' may shorten my life in the long run, it's certainly not a death sentence. Smoking my crack pipe every morning so I can breathe (that's a joke - it's not actually a crack pipe, I just call my nebulizer a "crack pipe") is a pain in the neck but it's not an oxygen tank or iron lung and I don't have to live in a bubble. My food allergies are beyond frustrating but without them I would not have fallen in love with kale this week (Yes, kale. If our relationship progresses as I hope it does I swear I am going to ask it to marry me.) or the joy that is quinoa. I am very very grateful for my health. I am also very grateful that my family is also very healthy. Sure there are aches and pains and annoyances, but my parents and brother are in ridiculously good health. I can't ask for much more than that.

Day 5 of Gratitude - ??

2010-11-23T02:17:00.003+01:00

I almost didn't post anything today. I've been sleeping poorly lately, have not felt well for a couple of days (yeah, I'm casting blame on you Gluten, even though I don't know why/how), nearly got bus sick on the way to school this morning and I had a minor pity party for myself last night. So really, I was kind of thinking "screw it" all day.

BUT THAT'S NOT THE EFFING POINT!!!!! Sorry for the all caps, but I really had to remind myself that the whole point of this exercise is to find meaning in everyday things that I am thankful for, not to get caught up in all the misery.

So voila! Today I am grateful for:

- There are only 2+ weeks of classes!!! YAY!! I am almost done!!!! Today my accounting teacher said our final presentations and quizzes will be on Dec 6 and then we're DONE!!! And my operations & data analysis professor said it seemed likely that we wouldn't have class on Dec 13 even though our final group papers will be due on Dec 16. I am so grateful that I have nearly survived my first semester of business school!! And I am super grateful that I am almost done!!!

- I stopped at a different branch of my yoga studio on the way home from school. I ended up taking a hot yoga class, my first ever. The heat itself wasn't that bad but let's just say I sweat. A lot. Like rivers down my face and puddles on the floor a lot. It was unreal. But it was also kind of fun and kind of challenging and there is nothing in the world that's better after working up an unearthly sweat than to take a hot shower and get into cozy pjs.

- Strangely, today I am also grateful for technology. I belong to a couple of Celiac/gluten-free meet-up groups. When I can I try to go to events, though with my schedule I haven't been to many. Yesterday I got an email through the meet-up site from a classmate! P is an international student (from Germany) (and exactly my age!!) and was just diagnosed with Celiac and is totally freaking out. She was searching for information, found the meet-up group and found my profile. She's also a vegetarian. I am so happy to make this connection! I've been wanting to get to know P better all semester. We're already making plans to get together and share info.

I guess that wasn't so difficult after all :-)

Day 4 of Gratitude - Sunday mornings

2010-11-21T20:44:00.003+01:00

I adore Sunday mornings. It feels like the whole world is lazy on Sunday mornings. I love the quiet and feeling like you have the whole day ahead of you, like there's nothing but time.

My favorite part of Sunday mornings is my newspaper ritual. After getting some exercise I walk to the local liquor store (I think it's also a convenience store but the sign for the liquor store part is bigger so I always think of it as "the liquor store") for a Sunday paper. This is the only time during the entire week where I appear in public unshowered and in sweats! The store is usually pretty crowded with people buying lottery tickets. The owner is very pleasant but exchange is always terse:
Him: 3.50 please.
Me: (handing him the money) Thank you!
Today he mentioned it was getting cold and I was so stunned that I couldn't say much more than "uh, yes it is".

I trudge home and plop the paper down on the floor, right in front of the entry way, and sit down to separate the ads for recycling and the "good parts" (the Magazine, the Opinion/Books section and the Movies section) for later. I grab my cereal and start reading. Yes, I have a comfortable couch, a kitchen table (and chairs) and a coffee table, yet I always start reading the paper sitting on the floor, right by the door. I read a section or two, finish my cereal, head to the shower and start my day.

There's no hurry, no rush, any tasks on my "to do" list can wait another hour. It's Sunday morning.

Day 3 of Gratitude - warmth

2010-11-20T18:05:00.003+01:00

Today I am grateful for some very insignificant things that make me extremely happy:

putting on warm socks right out of the dryer . . . Earl Grey tea . . . finishing my run before the wind picks up . . . saying hello to the dog walkers/owners in my neighborhood . . . flannel sheets on a cold night . . . working heat . . . listening to the wind blow outside . . .

As you might have guessed it's cold today :-)

Not every Day of Gratitude has to be a big, momentous thought!

Day 2 of Gratitude - November

2010-11-19T23:33:00.005+01:00

I've never thought much of November. It's kind of a nothing month, trapped between the foliage of October and the snow and winter of December. Sure, November has Thanksgiving but I've always seen Thanksgiving as the gateway to the rest of the December holidays rather than a holiday of its own.

With my class schedule, I have a more flexible day. If I'm not at class, I'm either studying at home, studying at the local library, doing quick errands or in transit, usually on the bus, to one of these places. While I was working full-time I was usually trapped inside a building for the better part of the day. Most of my jobs have been in the basement of the building so I only saw the outside world at lunch. With my new schedule I'm outside more during the day so notice the changes in nature more. I can see the difference between September and October and November. Subtle changes, like how the leaves turn and then fall and then the branches are bare. The air smells differently from month to month too.

Today was a beautiful day. Low 50s, clear blue sky, breezy but not windy. The sun sets here in November around 4:30 (or before?) so when I went for my afternoon walk study break at 3pm it already felt like it was getting dark. And now, just two hours later it's pitch black outside.

My walk was wonderful. Energizing and head clearing. Breathing in the fall air in New England is nothing like breathing in the fall air in SoCal. Most of my neighbors have been raking so the sidewalks were nice and clear. Yes, the trees were bare but they didn't feel dead or empty. I said hello to a very overweight cat sitting on a neighbor's steps and walked by the local high school's field where the football team was practicing. It was the kind of day where everything felt right, like all of nature was in accord.

November.

Day 1 of Gratitude - yoga

2010-11-18T17:49:00.002+01:00

Yoga.

Yoga, yoga, yoga.

I started going to yoga again in September. I was long overdue. This yoga is a bit different, a bit more advanced than the yoga I did last fall. I love it!

Physically, yoga has been a real eye opener. I've always thought of myself as a physically strong person and I've prided myself on my muscle definition. There's muscle definition and there's holding the chair pose until your quad and glutes are screaming in pain and then pushing yourself to hold the pose a few seconds more. My posture has always been kind of poor. I'm a sloucher. Turns out I am not the slacker I thought I was, I just have very weak muscles in my back. The day after every class I feel a new soreness in a new muscle, one that I didn't even know existed. I've long been plagued by running/triathlon injuries, namely as tight hamstrings, tight IT bands, tight hips and tight quads. All summer my running was awful because my left hamstring has been so tight. Yoga has loosened all of these tight places up. When class is over I feel like I could ooze out of the studio.

Mentally, yoga has been amazing. When I started going in September I went once/week. I am now going 2-3 times/week. The Thursday instructor, Alex, is incredible. I always feel like he's talking directly to me when he's talks about noticing how active your mind is and when he talks about breathe as a measurement of frenetic energy. School has been awful this semester and I internalize everything. For an hour and a half two to three times a week my mind quiets. It doesn't go silent, it's always humming, but it quiets. I leave the studio feeling calm, focused and grounded. The feeling doesn't last forever, but one day it might.

I am grateful for the quiet yoga has provided.

week of gratitude

2010-11-17T15:00:00.002+01:00

Thanksgiving is next week. In honor of Thanksgiving I've decided to challenge myself to a week of gratitude. I saw this on another blog and it struck a chord. This semester, last month, this year, this two years have been a struggle of at time unimaginable proportions. At times it's been really hard to see the forest through the trees and remember what I'm made of. So for the next week I'll (hopefully) be posting about something I am grateful for each day. I have no idea what I'll be posting about; I'm going to go with whatever strikes me each day. My "week" starts tomorrow but here's a preview for today:

A very nice man sat next to me on the bus today and struck up a conversation. Usually bus time is review-for-school-time but instead I returned the smile and returned the conversation. Amid a completely silent packed bus we had a lovely talk about traveling and various cities we've visited. I've been riding the bus on this route at least three times a week since August and not once have I ever had a conversation with another person on the bus. Everyone is so caught up in their reading, their phones, their music, their naps that we never really see the person sitting next to us on the bus. I worry that we're becoming an ever-increasingly isolated society and it bothers me greatly. Today I am grateful for a renewed faith in people.

lost pictures, part cinq

2010-11-06T01:37:00.001+01:00

Slot canyons, Page, AZ, April 2007:

math math math math

2010-10-23T02:16:00.004+02:00

Business school is kicking my ass. The workload is unreal; the amount of required reading is obscene. I never feel like I am on top of things or ahead of things because there's always something I *could* be doing - reading my textbooks, working on sample problems, prep-ing for presentations, getting started on papers, etc. It's like a never-ending avalanche. I have no life. I get up ungodly early to exercise (without which I would lose my mind) and then either go to school and have classes, tutoring sessions, study sessions, homework time followed by home, dinner and more homework time. Or I have days "off" where I go to yoga (also without which I would lose my mind) and then spend the rest of the day sequestered in the library studying. There is also a series of required lectures, workshops and trainings designed to give us the "competitive edge" in getting a job after graduation. I don't feel like I have time to do anything fun, much less run a quick errand or read the newspaper. I average about 6 hours of sleep a night and never have time or the interest to eat. I feel like I am constantly teetering on the edge of something. An abyss? A breakdown? Tears? Vomiting?

And then there are my classes . . . Actually my classes are ok, except for the workload (see above). Two classes in particular are really killing me. I knew accounting would be challenging and it is. It is particularly challenging because I don't have the greatest teacher. She's very nice but very unfocused in her lectures. She starts lecturing on something, gets sidetracked and goes on about something that happened in the news 20 years ago and then gets back to the lecture in a different place where she left off. In class she shows us a lot of addition/subtraction things but I don't understand the overall concepts of accounting. The classes are 2h 40min and boring, tedious, long and confusing. Accounting is a popular topic among my classmates and it's not because we're pumped about financial ratios, we mostly talk about how strange our teacher is and how awful the class is. There is a midterm in two weeks which terrifies me. I suspect my saving grace will be that she generous and subjective with her grading and on Monday she explained how she's going to curve our final grade.

My ultimate nemesis is Operations & Data Management. Don't ask me what the class is about because I have no idea. I only understand about 20% of what's going on. There is an unbelievable amount of work!! Two individual papers, 4 group papers, 1 Excel assignment (all about discrete numbers, whatever those are), and 5 homeworks. Attendance and participation are a big part of the grade. We also have ALEKS. ALEKS is a self-paced mathematics program. It is hell in a laptop. I have spent about 20 hours on it so far. There are 77 modules all together and after taking the assessment test I placed out of only the first 17 modules. It's a particularly evil program because it only allows you access to work on a few modules at a time and you have to get a certain number of questions right (ranging from 3 - 5) in a row before it lets you move on and open other modules. The explanations are written in "math-ese" so I do a lot of Googling. I am actually paying a Standford grad $40/hour to help me get through the damn thing and it's worth every penny. Each week we meet to work through the modules and I feel vindicated when he says that it's an awful program or that it's not explained well. I am almost done - 10 more modules left, I think - and then I get 20% of my grade just for having completed it.

The content of the course is math, math, math. And not math as in addition and subtraction but math as in random variables, standard deviations, and a bunch of other higher math, probability and statistics things that I don't really get. I hired a tutor that a classmate recommended and the first time we met we spent two hours getting through 5 homework problems. The problems were relatively easy in that once he explained the formulas I could just plug in. I did the second 5 problems on my own and when the tutor double checked them he thought they were all correct. I got the homework back today and I got 100%. I can't tell you how foolish I felt for grinning like an idiot fore getting all of the problems right but I was super psyched. The tutor also spend a solid 45 minutes explaining the content of the chapter, trying to help me understand enough so I could complete one of the individual cases. Over and over he explained it and over and over I just didn't get it. I felt so stupid. Finally when our time was up he said "I don't know what to tell you. Talk to your professor, read the book, find a study group, look online." I told him my professor said to do the same thing he was suggesting and it wasn't helping (um, that's why I hired the tutor) and the tutor accused me of being passive aggressive and stormed out of the cafe where we had been studying. As soon as I left the cafe I burst into tears and to add insult to injury got back to my car to find a $25 parking ticket from the City of Boston.

Fast forward a week. We went over the same material in class again on Monday and I guess a tiny bit of what the tutor explained sunk in because I was actually able to follow along to my professor's speed session on using Excel to figure out optimal quantity ordering. And a day later when I sat down to figure out the rest of the data I actually sort of got what I was supposed to do. I didn't understand the concepts but I knew what to do. My classmate told me how to approach the second part of the number crunching and yesterday I actually finished all of the data part (well, the minimum data part - there's another (optional) piece that we can do but I only get parts of it and don't understand the overall concept and can't seem to recreate enough of what we did in class to do it on my own) and wrote the associated paper for the assignment!

It's hard to explain how relieved and happy and nervous I am. I really have no idea what's going on in class. These are higher math things that I've never heard of, much less used or learned before and I hope to hell that I won't have to use them in the workplace at some point. The pace is brisk and there are a lot of assignments. Even the group assignments are hard because everyone is expected to pull their weight and I don't want to be the idiot of my group and hold the others back or cause them to get a bad grade. If you don't get the concepts in class right away you are kind of screwed as there is no time for leisurely thinking about everything. Lecture, assignment, case, next topic, in rapid order. And I've come to learn that my brain simply doesn't do well with numbers. There is a block that I just can't get around. And it is very very frustrating! This class is the one class that has made me think many times that I don't belong in business school and should drop out. I can't tell you how many times I've cried, sobbed actually, about this class. The class meets on Monday and every Monday morning on the subway I can feel the tears of dread start forming. I finished the number crunching and paper for this case but I have no idea if what I did is right and if it's wrong I don't understand enough of what's going on to fix it and we have another case paper due next Friday so there's no time to dwell.

Despite all of this pain and suffering, I want to do well. Scratch that. With all this pain and suffering I had better get an A!! Academically it's the most challenging class I have ever had. And faced with a challenge like this I want to kick it in the butt and do well, if only to prove to myself that I can do it. I seem to be on track to doing fairly well despite not really understanding the majority of the class content but I keep questioning if all of this is worth it. Or more specifically, is killing myself to do well in *this* class worth not doing as well in my other classes? Is it worth the headaches? The constant nausea? The chronic stress? The feelings of inadequacy and stupidity? I hate to say it, but if I get an A it's worth it.

Sometimes I wish I was clever . . .

2010-10-21T23:05:00.000+02:00

. . . so I could make videos like these!

apple picking

2010-10-10T23:10:00.008+02:00

Fall is definitely here! The leaves have sort of started to turn colors but not in a way that I really notice. Or perhaps now that I spend all of my time commuting around the city, rather than driving out to the boondocks on a daily basis I just don't see many trees anymore? I went apple picking today at a great orchard about half-way between where I live now and where I used to work. Apple season came early this year so there weren't as many apples to pick from as there were last year or the year before. I still found a ton of apples and am planning on making apple sauce, apple crisp, apple cake and other apple treats until apples come out of my ears.

The apple orchard also has "pick and chop" Christmas trees. They smelled great but it was a little weird picking apples while surrounded by Christmas trees.
I think this was where Charlie Brown got his tree!

36

2010-10-05T02:00:00.002+02:00

Libra: Happy Birthday: Helping others will be satisfying. Let your creativity lead you down new avenues, opening up greater opportunities to make new friends and to explore professional proposals. Stop letting your inner turmoil hold you back. Discuss matters that are eating away at you so you can finally put them behind you. You call the shots for a change. Your numbers are 1, 8, 13, 20, 24, 29, 36

This was my horoscope for today. Today is my birthday. I am 36. I am officially closer to 40 than I am to 30.

I've always had trouble with birthdays. It's not getting older that bothers me, it's feeling like I haven't met my own standards for myself for where I should be at my age. Birthdays are a time to take stock but it's hard to take stock of my own life and not feel like I come up short. And I'm in a pretty tough place right now so on this birthday I definitely feel what's missing, rather than what I have.

I actually had a good birthday. It was very very low key which I liked. My mom and my brother called. My two most difficult classes meet on Mondays and in both I got homework back that I did waaaaay better on than I thought. I took a quiz in Accounting that I either aced or failed. It was a beautiful cold, gray fall day and I loved walking to the subway after my last class, fighting the wind and exchanging "Can you believe this wind?" looks with my sidewalk mates. I didn't do any birthday celebrating, but more importantly I also didn't do any homework! I got some stuff organized for school but it seemed wrong to start reading 6 chapters of accounting tonight so I watched a movie instead. I am probably going to be wracked with stress and guilt about this choice all day tomorrow but for today it was the right thing to do.

I got two delightful surprises today. A long-lost friend sent me a very funny poem that she wrote and it's made me smile all day. I also got a wonderful, thoughtful email from a friend from afar. The email meant a lot to me and it both mirrored some of the things I've been thinking about lately and it fits in so well with my horoscope's advice to "Stop letting your inner turmoil hold you back."

This bears repeating: Stop letting your inner turmoil hold you back. I don't usually set goals for myself on my birthday like I do at New Year's. It's enough for me to get through the day without crying (too much). But considering how unsettled I've felt lately and considering the direction I've been heading lately I feel like I should get this phrase tattooed over every inch of my body so I can be mindful of it. If I could set one goal for myself for the year of age 36 it would be "Stop letting your inner turmoil hold you back." It's always easier to recognize what needs to be done but much more challenging to actually do it. I have started taking a few steps, baby steps actually, toward channeling the turmoil and quieting the noise and every so often I feel a tiny bit lighter. I am always aware of what's missing but I today I am also keenly aware of what I do I have and am very grateful for everything and everyone I have. Thank you.

There are a couple of hours left of my birthday so you'll have to excuse me if I cut this short (long?) to go lie on my couch and stay up too late, reading a novel. :-)

the other side of the (reference) desk

2010-10-02T00:42:00.002+02:00

Philosophical question: Can I still call myself a librarian if I no longer work as a librarian?

Philosophical answer: I hope not.

I have a paper coming up in my accounting class. As soon as I heard the assignment I knew exactly which reference source I needed and headed off to the library(s) to find it.

Take #1, academic library: I could have tried to locate the book on my own but I have so many things in my head that I didn't think I could possibly remember another thing like a call number. Besides, my library doesn't have stand alone terminals to look up books - I'd have to wait in line for an eon for a free computer or fire up my laptop and remember what I was looking for. I thought it would be a pretty straightforward transaction so I strolled purposefully up to the reference desk and told the librarian what what I knew: the book was called "Industry Surveys" and I knew it was published quarterly in a 3 or 4 volume set and last I knew it was published by Mergent (and was formerly published by Moody's). The librarian searched the catalog a few different ways but didn't find the book so she then showed me an online database that supposedly had the book. She searched the database a few different ways and half-heartedly said "Oh, I guess you need to know the SIC code" (this was my cue to realize she was looking for the wrong thing) and sort of gave up. She then sent me away to the reference collection armed with a call number where the books *might* be if they had them. Needless-to-say I didn't find the book.

Take #2, local town library: I like to study at my local town library. It's clean, bright and quiet and has very few distractions; perfect elements for marathon study sessions. Yesterday afternoon my study agenda included writing a paper and completing a set of slides for the professor I work with for my research assistantship. On a whim I stopped by the reference desk where the overly helpful librarian spent about 15 minutes searching the catalog every way to Sunday before giving up with a sigh and recommending I check the huge library downtown.

Take #3, huge library downtown: This library has a dedicated business library so I felt hopeful that the third time would be a charm. I told the librarian what I was looking for and she said she thought it was something they had. She immediately got up and led me on a ten minute parade around the library looking in all the places she thought the book would be. Yup, ten minutes of random staring at shelves and wandering around. The librarian finally decided to "look it up" and actually had to consult a paper card catalog! You know, like the ones in the drawers! Armed with a card supposedly containing information about my book, we spent another ten minutes wandering around looking for it. I tried to tell her what it was about the books that I actually wanted but she wasn't listening or didn't care because she kept pulling stuff off the shelves that was clearly not what I said I was looking for. Finally, finally!, she thought of something they had behind the reference desk that fit the description of what I was looking for. It was what I was looking for! Turns out Industry Surveys is now published by Standard & Poor's. And it's no longer published in print; they print it off their subscription site. They have me a paper index (paper index!) and I rifled through the boxes until I found the industries I wanted. Exhausted, I sat down to read.

Take #3, part #2: I found the information I wanted and asked the librarian about the photocopying procedures. They had a print card system but mercifully the machine took change and/or bills. The document I wanted was long so I figured a $5 bill would cover it. The change machine didn't accept "new" $5 bills so then I had to go begging around to other patrons if they had change or would be willing to change their "old" $5 for my new one. Someone finally took mercy on me and I got myself set up at the photocopier. I put my bills in the machine, lined up the document and hit "start." The machine had been idle so it took a while to get started. While it was warming, the change machine decided I was taking too long and ejected my $5 in quarters. All Over The Floor. By the time I picked up all the quarters the machine was ready to copy and I finished without further incident.

It was very weird being put through all the paces that I have put patrons through when I was a librarian. All I kept thinking was "Why do we make all of this so hard??" Libraries are going to die out not because of the internet but because librarians and their customers don't speak the same language and librarians don't want to give up librarian pride and just make things easy rather than doing things "right." I am also guilty of all of this - so so so guilty. But seeing other librarians so through the drama I went through when helping customers made me ill. As a customer, I also found it incredibly frustrating. I feel like I should go back in time and apologize to every customer I've tried to help by over-explaining and over-complicating things. Libraries are moving forward but simultaneously moving backwards. I just wish while we got our act together we made things easier for our customers.

big fluffy clouds

2010-09-19T03:38:00.005+02:00

I was in Maine over Labor Day. Hurricane Earl was supposed to hit but fizzled out at the last minute. There was some rain and lots of wind and the waves got HUGE. A day after the "hurricane" I went to the beach. While sitting on the beach trying to avoid the sandstorm I was mesmerized by these lovely clouds. So dreamy :-)

My mom's quilt!

2010-09-16T15:36:00.002+02:00

My mom made a quilt this summer too! My mom has been sewing since birth and is a much more experienced sewer than me. She used scraps of fabric that she's been collecting since forever and made this awesome quilt. As you can see the pattern is a lot different than mine was. Her pattern involved about a million 2"x 1" pieces of fabric. Then she had to sew them all together in groups of five and then sew four groups of five into a block. It was a lot more sewing than I had to do (and her quilt was a lot larger than mine) and I think all the cutting and measuring would have made me take up drinking. I think the quilt came out awesome! The turquoise border really pulled together the colors in all of the blocks.

First week of classes, part 2

2010-09-15T15:20:00.002+02:00

Lest you all think I am in the depths of despair, I thought I'd post a quick update to yesterday's post.

I met with my advisor yesterday and dropped my economics class. From what I can tell there are five required quantitative classes in the MBA program. I had three of them on my schedule this semester. When I explained my math background and how lost I am by all of the math concepts my advisor agreed that I should drop economics "posthaste" and take it in the spring, followed by the last required quantitative class (finance?) next fall. I am still a full-time student but now I have 5 classes instead of 6.

I am breathing slightly easier today. Instead of feeling like I am going to burst into tears at any second I feel like I am going to vomit at any second. Trust me, this in an improvement. Economics might be off my plate but I have 5 other classes that I haven't really wrapped my head around. I've read through a case for a class three times and I don't really understand what's happening in the case nor do I really understand what the professor wants us to do with it. It's a group project so I am terrified that I'll be the "dead weight" that brings the group down. My entire body is beating with my heart (thanks thyroid). I really do wonder if I am slow or dumb and only faking it very well has allowed me to get this far. Or maybe I am in the wrong program? Or maybe since I don't have a business background I don't yet understand how to think about business problems and I'll either figure it out or be pulled along as I go? Either way, I feel like my quantitative load is much more manageable. Spreading my ineptitude across 5 classes instead of 6 is going to make the other 5 easier, right?

I am still concerned that there is no joy in my life. Most people have something that motivates them to get out of bed every morning - family, kids, a job/career, a hobby, contributing to society, etc. The thing that motivates me to get out of bed every day is fear of failure. This doesn't seem like enough. There has to be something out there that I look forward to, that gives me peace or that I just simply enjoy. Life is short and going through the motions and holding my breath all the time hoping that I don't fail isn't enough. It's not how I imagined my life to be at this point.

At orientation last Friday the dean of the MBA program said that we should expect to spent 10 hours/week on homework/studying outside of each class. So that's about 13 hours a week total spent on each class. Ostensibly without economics I have 13 "extra" hours a week to spare. My goal is to use some of those 13 hours to find joy; to find something that makes me happy and gives me peace and gives me a break from not worrying about failing all the time. I still plan to re-evaluate my attendance in the MBA program at the end of the semester but I suspect if I can find something to balance the unbelievable amount of work and difficulty that I am (already) having in my classes, then the program will be part of a whole life, not just the only thing.

First week of classes

2010-09-14T17:12:00.002+02:00

Yesterday marked the official first week of classes. Due to the holiday we started classes on a Tuesday. How can I summarize the first week?? Well, I have cried every single day. Yup, every single day, sometimes twice and three times a day. I've also woken up at least an hour before my alarm every day, worrying worrying worrying.

If you are a long-ish time reader of this blog you might remember a post I wrote after taking the GMATs. I believe I said something like "If the content on the GMATs is required to succeed in business school or to succeed in a job afterwards, then perhaps I am not a good candidate for business school." I actually don't think I said that in the blog post, but I sure was thinking it. And it looks like it is very very true.

I'm taking 6 classes this semester. One of them is a one credit required class that will be over mid-October. The other five are hardcore business classes. Three of them are very heavy in math, graphs, equations, probability and/or statistics. This is math that I have never ever grasped and don't even know how to read a question, much less discuss the concepts in any meaningful way. My classes meet once per week for 2 hours and 40 minutes. About half way through the class the professor gives a break. At the break in my economics class I walked out of the classroom and all I could think was "I am screwed." Less than two hours into the course I was already completely lost. Graphs, equations, math. I didn't get it. I tried to do the reading for the class over the weekend and I couldn't get past the first page. The two other quantitative classes - accounting and supply/demand - are similar, but have better professors and are set up in a way that I think I might be able to be pulled along into sort of getting it (although the supply/demand class requires a math self-placement component. I took the pre-test last night and apparently only understood 17 out of 77 of the concepts and after two hours of tears and frustration I only improved that to 20 out of 77. And I have until the end of the semester to bring the results up to 77 out of 77 and its not a multiple choice system. Yup, I am screwed.) There is no tutor available for the economics class and my professor hasn't returned my call or email. I am meeting with my advisor this afternoon to drop the class. My advisor already warned me not to get of track to graduation and economics is a pre-requisite to all the rest of the classes I have to take.

The thing is while I do think business school is a good idea it was also something of a lark. I was so totally miserable at my last job that I had to do something, and going back to school seemed like a good "something." I picked business school because it seemed like a good degree to have and because I didn't know what else to do. I have a lot of interests and I have a lot of skills but I have absolutely NO IDEA WHAT I WANT TO DO WITH MY LIFE. Everything interests me in a vague way but there's nothing out there that sparks my passion and makes me think "I can't wait to get up every morning and do X!" And when I say this I am referring to both a job/career but also hobbies and interests. Long ago I was into triathlon and sports in a big way. Now I'm not and I don't really miss it. But nothing has ever taken its place. So here I am blindly fumbling around for something to do with my life and have absolutely no idea what I'm interested in or have anything else that gives me joy that I can focus on so the career stuff can work itself out. So I am ridiculously stressed out on many levels and just feel so lost. Like I am making one ginormously expensive mistake where I am going to graduate and still be lost.

After my first economics class I told myself that at the end of this semester I will re-evaluate whether business school is right for me. It might not be and I am willing to accept that (I don't know if I can accept the amount of debt that I've already accrued to test this theory). Or it could be something that I should be doing on a more part-time basis where I spend the rest of my time seeking joy. In the meantime all of it is completely eating me up - the lack of career goals, the completely insane workload. I am also really hard on myself and put a ridiculous amount of pressure on myself which isn't helping. I can feel my thyroid spinning out of control and I've already lost weight. The MBA diet is not a good look for me - I actually think I've dropped a pants size in a week. Stress feeds my thyroid which feeds the weight loss. Add in no time to eat/cook and not feeling like I can take 30 minutes out of my day to go grocery shopping and you've got one unhealthy mess on your hands waiting to explode. And it's only been the first week of classes.

So, yeah, I'm dropping the economics class. If this screws me over for the rest of my program, so be it. If I was really passionate about business or knew exactly what I wanted to do at the end maybe I would push through, but killing myself just to get it all done in two years just doesn't seem worth it.

Summer goals - the verdict

2010-09-03T00:53:00.006+02:00

I have no idea how to classify this summer. Some things have been fantastic and others have sucked beyond sucking (namely my job). I think all-in-all there were too many tears and not enough laughter. At the beginning of the summer I set 10 goals for myself. I am pretty goal-oriented but I hesitate to set certain goals for myself because I become obsessed about achieving the goal and forget about the journey. After writing that initial post about my summer goals I totally forgot which ones I set so I ended up just doing stuff that I wanted to and not getting hung up on the achievement and yet still managed to accomplish everything I set out to do.

Here's the outcome on this summer's goals:

1. "Go away for a weekend, other than to Maine for Memorial Day, July 4th and Labor Day."
I went to New York City. In July. It was great! I also went on quite a few day trips.
2. "Re-join match.com."
I joined. I went on quite a few first dates and dated someone for about a month. I have to say in all the years I've been dating and all the years I've been trying to date by meeting people online I have never ever feel like such a weirdo freak as I have in the past couple of months. In the profile I wrote I think I was pretty honest - I've lived in a lot of places, done a lot of things and am interested in a lot of things. However, when I meet guys its either been a rapid-fire questioning of everything I've done or he's clearly not ever done anything but go to the gym or hang around bars or go to Sox games leaving me to wonder what on earth he thought he was going to get from me. I have never felt so hopeless or so despairing or so freaking worried that I've missed my chance and I am going to be alone forever.

3. "Run a 5k or 10k along the Charles River."
I ran along the Charles River a lot, two or three times a week. I love it. I never found it in me to find a race. I still think about it but the reality is that that part of my life is over and I don't really pine for shared athleticism as I used to. And injury has a way of getting in the way of things. At the beginning of the summer I did something to my calf. I recovered, started feeling good running again only to do something to my hamstring. Perhaps this is my body's way of telling me to just run for me?

4. "Play hooky from work one day and go to Plum Island."
I did this! I called in "sick" (and did not feel guilty AT ALL) and went to Plum Island and spent the day getting stung by mosquitoes on the marshes, walking on the beach and then exploring Newburyport. It was so lovely and I would really like to return this fall!!
5."Find decent Korean food somewhere in the state of Massachusetts!"
I'm still working on this one. One of the freebie Boston magazines put out a "best of" issue recently and there was a listing for best Korean food. I tore out the page with the info but haven't made it there yet. Soon! Must go soon!!!

6. "Go out more socially."
I think I've done this, to a degree. I gave up making plans with friends in the town where I worked and started doing things as a "hanger on-er" of some of my brother's friends. I've also gone out and done things just to do them. Let's face it - if I wait around until someone wants to hang out with me or be with me, it has become painfully clear that I am going to be waiting a long, long time.

7. "Learn and experiment more with gluten-free flours and baking."
Nailed it! To master gluten-free baking what you need is a little bit of patience, some experimentation and a huge dash of humor. After like 10 tries I finally nailed a brownie recipe I'm happy with (I took them to my goodbye party at work and everyone there raved about them and told me under no uncertain terms was I taking the extras with me when I left!). I also made a blueberry pie and a vanilla cake with chocolate frosting. I've made two loaves of bread from two different mixes with very mixed results. Fine for a sandwich but nothing I'd serve to others. Next up is a zucchini bread which I feel hopeful about.

8. "Host get togethers for three separate groups of people."
I hosted two get togethers for two different groups of people. I'm not sure about how my guests felt but I felt they were both successes and have given me a lot of confidence in my cooking skills. For the first set I made roasted gazpacho, two different kinds of tacos, coconut rice and a blueberry pie for dessert. For the second set I made roasted kale, white asparagus, salad, a lasagna, and a vanilla cake. The lasagna came out great! I used tofu as the ricotta cheese and even my non-tofu-eating-dad liked it. It made a ton so the leftovers are in my freezer, waiting for a cold night when I don't want to cook. I never hosted the get together for the third party. I thought about it a lot but couldn't stomach having a certain person who's part of that group in my house judging me and making me feel inferior. Hosting was really fun and I was able to work through how to time everything so it's all done at the same time, which dishware to use (and which ones I lack!) and how to plan everything out. Things I need to work on: relaxing with my guests more and worrying about everything less and leaving the damn dishes in the sink alone!! I hope to make some opportunities this fall for having people over.

9. "This summer I'd like to try a new dish at least every other week."
This didn't happen exactly, but I certainly did add to my repertoire of things I can cook. In addition to the foods I made for my two dinner parties I also tested out a bunch of recipes, namely dips and sauces. I am immensely proud of the pasta sauce I created - with tomatoes, zucchini, artichoke hearts, capers and other random things - and I am pleased that I thought of a million (a slight exaggeration) different salads to make with quinoa for lunches. Not everything I've made has been a success but my confidence in my cooking skills has grown so immensely that I am not afraid to try and take my failures as learning experiences.

10. "Make a quilt."
Yay! I made a quilt!! I love my quilt and can't wait to turn it in to Project Linus!!
Goal-wise this summer has been a success. I have mixed feelings about this. Great that I achieved my goals but in other ways this summer has also been the mostly lonely summer (or any other time of year) that I've had in my entire life. Ever feel so trapped by yourself that you become powerless to change what bothers you most? Yup, that's been my summer. I can say achieving all of my goals has been a better way to get through a lonely summer than not doing anything at all.

Fall is traditionally a hard season for me. It's one of my favorite seasons - my birthday is in October, I love the leaves changing and I love the chill in the air - but I struggle with the loss of daylight. I am super excited about school!! I've deal with most of the nervousness and anxiety I've had during the past two weeks while unemployed (aka "on vacation") and now I am just ready to go and looking forward to starting a new chapter!!

the summer of the quilt

2010-09-01T17:34:00.009+02:00

This summer I sewed my first quilt! This has been a dream of mine since forever and it took a serendipitous moment at a fabric store in Maine to give me the incentive to stop talking about it and DO IT. I am extraordinarily pleased with the way it came out! It's a child-sized quilt and this weekend I'll be dropping it off with Project Linus, a charity that collects quilts to give to children who need them.

I probably should have taken pictures of the whole process but I thought that might be too much info. All of the colored fabrics are "fat quarters" (quarters of a yard) that I picked up at a 75 cents bin at the fabric store in Maine. I find selecting fabrics to be pretty overwhelming - I love how they all look when displayed together on their individual bolts but once I separate one from the crowd it sort of loses it's magic. As it turned out I bought the wrong number of fat quarters and didn't buy nearly enough of the main fabric (the white fabric with the red design) but I think it all worked out. I bought the fabrics over the 4th of July weekend and finished the quilt this week. It actually took a surprisingly little amount of time - I mainly sewed for an hour once a week. I think taking my time with the quilt helped me visualize the process and understand what I was doing. This was a really great project for learning my sewing machine, learning about fabrics and understanding the sewing process.

This is the front of the quilt:
Detail of the main fabric (white fabric with red pattern) and the borders. I actually wasn't all that impressed with the quilt until I sewed on the red border - it really brought all the fabrics together in a cohesive way and I totally fell in love with the quilt!
A closer picture of the blocks. I love the white bubble fabric (upper left) and the red flower fabric (lower left).
I must have spaced out when buying the fabric because I bought way too little of the main fabric. Maybe I was looking at the wrong pattern dimensions? Unfortunately I didn't realize that I bought too little until it was time to make the back of the quilt. Fortunately my mom had some leftover white fabric that I used. Normally backs of quilts are one fabric - either a solid or something matching the fabric used on the front of the quilt. Because of the weird amounts of fabric that I ended up with I chose to do a geometric pattern that reminds me of a Mondrian painting. Having two patterned sides makes the quilt reversible.
Detail of the back:
More detail of the back:
This was a great project and I am so proud that it's going to be used by a needy child! I am definitely going to do this again next summer and I've already started planning the next pattern!

First day of school!

2010-09-01T17:33:00.005+02:00

Today is my first day of school! My first class as a full-time MBA student is today at 4:30pm. Unlike first days of school of years ago I don't have a new lunchbox, haven't purchased a special first day of school outfit and won't get any recess today. Instead I've spent the past week or so getting familiar with Blackboard and my textbooks and starting my homework. Yup, classes start today and I've already completed the readings due for my classes this week. So much for easing into school after a ten plus year hiatus! :-)

I am really excited about going back to school. Sure I'm worried about managing the workload and keeping up with my classes while simultaneously having a life. But I really feel that getting an MBA is one of the smartest ideas I've ever had. While I realize that not every class is going to be interesting and useful in whatever my future career may be (ahem, economics = most boring textbook EVER!!!) I am sure that if I focus on the program as a whole I will get a lot out of it.

My AP US History teacher in high school used to tell us to "make love to our books." At the time I was an immature high school senior and though this was a silly and embarrassing phrase to hear from my *teacher*. The meaning however was always clear: do the readings, know the material and be prepared for class. With textbooks as exciting as these how can I not succeed in business school?!? ;-)

day trip to Provincetown

2010-09-01T17:05:00.010+02:00

I took a disastrous day trip last Friday to Western MA. I wanted to check out a museum and wander around an area I haven't ever visited. The exhibit at the museum was lovely - a comparison of the works and styles of Picasso and Degas. The grounds surrounding the museum were also lovely - it was a beautiful day for a nice tromp through the woods. Sounds great, right? Wrong. What made the trip disastrous was lack of planning and massive road construction. I thought the museum would be about a 2 1/2 hour drive from where I live. I think it was supposed to be more like 3+ but with unbelievable road construction, road closures and traffic it took about 4 hours to get there. I was cranky beyond repair once I arrived and couldn't seem to rally no matter what. The "college town" was more like a "college block" and since I was literally in the middle of nowhere there was nowhere else I could make a quick jaunt to. Did I mention I didn't bring any snacks and couldn't find anything I could eat? And it took more a little over 4 hours to get home? If you read my last post about 25 imperfections you can also probably guess that I shed tears from hunger and was in such a massively foul mood when I got home that even if I didn't lived alone I would have sequestered myself in solitude.

Day trip, take two was on Monday. This time I planned things a little better - I checked to see how long it would actually take to get there and planned my journey so I wouldn't get stuck in the worst of the traffic. I am happy to report my day trip to Provincetown was a raving success!

Provincetown is on the very tip of Cape Cod (for you non-Massachusetts readers, it's at the tip of the arm that juts off from the rest of the state). It's got some beautiful beaches and sand dunes and the town center hasn't (yet?) been taken over by corporate chains. It's a funky mix of vacationland for families and vacationland for gays. Helloooo hot shirtless men!

We're suffering through a small heat wave in New England. A week ago I was so chilled that I actually wore socks to bed but this week I am trying to figure out how to wear as few clothes as possible but still remain dressed. This weekend we might get some run off of a southern hurricane. I continue to be confused by New England weather. I got to Provincetown EARLY so I could wander around the beach and enjoy the water before the temperatures and sun got to be too much. The beach was wonderful! Not as much fine sand as I would have expected but millions and millions of beautiful rocks.

I am the biggest cold water wimp. It used to take me hours to get in the pool with my swim group and when everyone else is jumping into the ocean exclaiming how nice the water is I am taking deep breaths to get in up to my knees. I knew the water would be cold so I didn't bother bringing my swimsuit but it was very hot and the water was so inviting that I actually managed to get in up to my knees with fairly little fuss.
Provincetown town was fun. There's basically a main drag right next to the harbor with tons of shops, restaurants and entertainment places. As I mentioned it's a gay vacation destination so I was able to to a lot of ogling of the well-gymed men from behind my sunglasses :-) I even found a cafe that had a gluten-free hummus burger on gluten-free bread! I also checked out the harbor and some of the fishing boats. It was late(ish) afternoon by this point so all of the fishermen and their boats were in for the night.

25 imperfections

2010-08-28T17:34:00.002+02:00

I am totally stealing the concept for this post from S. Does anyone else spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about what you *should* be doing and then looking at others who appear to be doing what you've been avoiding and then feel like a failure? No? Then it's just me, I guess. I am obsessed with being perfect, though I am so far from being perfect it's almost tragic. If it looks like I'm keeping it all together and doing everything "right" then in my next blog post I'll transcribe my Oscar speech. Women in particular are prone to feeling like they have to do everything and do everything well. You'll never catch a man feeling guilty for not plating a a slice of lasagna just so or looking at a friend and feeling like his hairstyle pales in comparison to his mates'. While I was running this morning I got to thinking of my own (self-perceived) imperfections and failures and by then end of my run I actually thought they were all pretty laughable and injected a nice dose of reality into what started off as a pretty crappy weekend, mainly due to 8 hours of obsessing yesterday.

Behold - my imperfections and failures! (Thanks S!):

If I don't eat at regular intervals I get extremely cranky and will cry at the drop of a hat. Worse yet, I know the warning signs but usually ignore them and don't stop for a snack.
I hate driving. Let me repeat that: I HATE TO DRIVE!!!! Driving around all day (either behind the wheel or as a passenger) can put me in a funk for days.
If I don't feel the destination was worth the drive then I am going to be extremely crabby on the way home.
When I cry I am not pretty. Crying makes my nose run faster than Flo Jo. I can go through like 40 tissues during a sad movie and a box and a half when I'm really upset about something. It drives me nuts when a movie heroine can cry with a solitary tear running down her face and still look fabulous. I look more like an extra in a horror movie.
I loathe talking on the phone and will avoid it all all costs. Please don't think that I don't want to talk to you. I do. I just can't make myself pick up the phone, dial a number and talk into the phone.
If I don't know how to spell a word I will completely rearrange the sentence to avoid the spelling. This mainly happens with plurals involving "e"s or adding "ly" or "ing" to a word that has an extra "e".
I have no idea how to use the comma. I just guess. If a sentence looks like it has too many I just take one (or two) out.
I have a very low tolerance for books that don't catch my attention on the first page. I used to make myself read to page 50, then it was to page 25 and now I am lucky I can get through the first page if the books starts off slow/lame.
I have never hugged my brother as an adult (or child?). We don't have that kind of a relationship.
This (#9) bothers me a great deal but I don't know how to fix it.
I cannot relax until the dishes in the sink are done. It drives me insane to have dirty dishes pile up and I physically cannot let them sit there for more than a few hours. It's taken me years to be able to eat first and then wash the dishes rather than let everything get cold so as to not let the dirty dishes sit there.
I rarely if ever wash the bathtub. I'll do it if I know someone else is going to take the shower or if it starts to get really really bad but I'd rather wear flip flops in my own tub than scrub it regularly.
I read a lot but it's mostly current novels, mysteries and nonfiction. When people talk about "the classics" I either pretend I've read them or act confused like I can't keep an author's books straight. It's more like I've never read them and likely never will.
I waste a lot of food because most leftovers revolt me.
I haven't been to a gynecologist in fifteen years and I lie when other doctors ask me about it.
When making plans with other people I always defer to them. I always think that if we do what I want to do and it sucks then I'm responsible and they're not going to want to be friends with me anymore.
I hate talking about my accomplishments. I find it embarrassing. In my mind I haven't accomplished anything.
When friends tell me they're pregnant I always have to stop myself from asking "on purpose?"
I've never given money to a homeless person on the street.
I stress out and freak out about way too many things. It's the anticipation that kills me, not the actual event. After the event starts I feel foolish for making too big a deal of things.
I get jealous of women with great hair.
Makeup confounds me. When I wear anything besides mascara and lipstick I think I look like a child playing in her mom's makeup.
Even though I say it doesn't matter, it still bugs me when a guy shows up to a date and is a few inches shorter than me.
Sometimes I wonder if I am slow and just don't know it. It takes me a long time to think about things and come up with a good response to questions I've been asked and I still end up saying the wrong thing and/or tripping over my words.
I don't like confrontation. When I have to have a serious conversation with someone about something that's been bothering me I go for a run and have the conversation in my head instead. It makes me feel better but nothing ever really gets resolved.

I could easily add another 25 (or more!) things to this list!

two years

2010-08-21T00:49:00.002+02:00

Yesterday was my last day of work. The past few months of work have been absolutely miserable for a number of reasons. The frustrations that had been brewing since day one became unbearable and knowing that the end was so close, yet so far was really difficult to bear. Once I gave my notice I became absolutely invisible. Physically I was at work; but no one seemed to see me. It was like everyone had already counted me as gone; no one gave a damn what I was doing. I did what I had to do, finished up projects and tied up all of my loose ends but it all felt so useless, knowing that whatever I did was going to be changed the instant I left.

It was really hard to see what I accomplished, even harder to feel like I made a difference. It was only when I started to tell people I was leaving that those outside of the small department I worked for came forward to offer their thanks and their congratulations. Some of my favorite students were around over the summer and those who I told I was leaving looked at me so sadly and asked "Is there anyone else here as good as you?" which made me feel really really good. I know that I should seek validation from myself before seeking it from others but it's hard to validate yourself when you don't know what you're doing, don't know what you're supposed to be doing and don't get any feedback on anything.

As I was saying my last goodbyes to my co-workers, one of my co-workers told me she was really happy for me to be starting "the next chapter of my life." At this point I've had more chapters than a Tolstoy novel! It find it both frustrating and exciting to be in my mid-thirties and still have no idea what I want to be when I grow up. When I think about all of the things I've done and all of the places I've lived and all of the choices I've made I can honestly say I don't regret a single one. (To be sure, I regret choices I haven't made or had the opportunity to make.) Life is really really short. And it can be really really hard. There is so much out there that I can't imagine living without trying out all the things I am interested in. I took a risk moving back to MA to start my last job and from the very beginning I knew it was a mistake. It's very difficult to push through something when you know from the start that it's not right and it's even harder to push through when you're dealing with some pretty profound lifestyle changes at the same time. I don't regret any of it though. That which doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right? I put in two solid years and learned quite a bit. Without this job I never would have been able to put together the outline for the next chapter.

I have two weeks off before school starts. Mentally I've been ready for the time off for months. I've got some things planned but not enough to be busy, busy, busy. More than anything I need the head space to process my job and all of it's related drama and to put it behind me so I can start mentally preparing for school. This summer hasn't been all that great but I think two weeks is long enough to turn it all around :-) And now that I am done with work things can only get better!

lost pictures, part quatre

2010-08-10T01:16:00.010+02:00

Zion National Park, April 2007:

lost pictures, part trois

2010-08-09T01:31:00.009+02:00

Amsterdam, November 2006:

lost pictures, part deux

2010-08-09T01:25:00.006+02:00

Joshua Tree, December 2006:

lost pictures, part une

2010-08-09T01:11:00.005+02:00

I bought a new computer a couple of weeks ago. I bought a Mac. Depending on your PC point of view I've either joined the Dark Side or escaped it. So far I love it! Apple has very kindly offered to transfer all of my files - pictures, documents, etc - from my old PC laptop to my new Mac laptop. I've started going through everything to delete and edit before the transfer and I've re-discovered a ton of lovely pics that I've never posted, never shared or haven't thought much about since I transferred the pics from my camera to my computer. I've got a lot on my mind lately, but nothing I really want to depress anyone with so in the next few weeks I am going to be posting my "lost pictures". Enjoy :-)

Mammoth Mountain, Fall 2006:

loneliness

2010-08-03T19:22:00.005+02:00

Below is a video I originally saw on a blog I read (I can't remember which one now). Andrea Dorfman made a live-action adaption of Canadian singer-songwriter Tanya Davis’s inspirational spoken word poem “How to be Alone.”

The video made me feel sad and happy and strangely, less alone.

Plum Island

2010-07-30T14:43:00.010+02:00

Plum Island is a beautiful, picturesque island about an hour north of where I live. I picked the perfect day to go - temperature was about 10 degrees cooler than it had been for weeks and the sky was cloudy but not gloomy. Plum Island is a pretty unique place; one side is all marshland and the other has lovely beaches. I believe it's also a bird sanctuary. While I did see a few interesting birds I also saw a lot of another native New England species, the mosquito.

The marsh side:

The beach side:

sewing projects

2010-07-24T21:14:00.004+02:00

This seems to be the summer where I learn to sew! Actually I've known how to sew since I was a kid and have had a sewing machine since 2006 but due to lack of time, lack of motivation, laziness, and other interests competing for my time I've never really gotten into it.

My renewed interest in sewing started over Memorial Day with a trip to a store in Maine that has an amazing fabric selection. While I was fondling the fabrics I yet again mused aloud that I wanted to make a quilt. I'm completely captivated by handmade quilts and have always wanted to make one. The salesclerk overheard me and then next thing I knew she was telling me about a quilt charity called Project Linus. The store is trying to collect 4,000 handmade quilts by September 18 for babies through age 18. It was the perfect motivation and the next thing I knew I was wandering around the store picking my own fabrics.

The quilt is coming along nicely. I still have two borders and the backing to go but I really like how the fabrics are working together. The quilt is living on the ironing board I've set up in my living room and judging by the pictures I see that I should make more use of the iron.
I'm not quite ready to take on sewing a skirt or other piece of clothing (though I got some interesting ideas for both a skirt and a jacket at an art fair last weekend) but now that the quilt is helping me learn my machine and learn how to work with fabric I see how easy it is to sew. I am really surprised at how much I am enjoying sewing and how much I am enjoying learning something new and stretching my brain creatively. It's been a while since I did anything creative and I've missed it. This week I made pillow covers for my ultra cheap IKEA pillows. The fabric is reminiscent of my college days but I think they (sort of?) go with my couch and the cover the hideous original white of the pillows. It's ridiculous how much satisfaction I got making these covers! (the fabric on the back of the couch is part of one of the borders for the quilt)
The only challenge of the summer of sewing is the heat. It's been a pretty hot New England summer so far and my condo gets very toasty. Between working over my sewing machine (conveniently located in the hottest room of my house), running between the sewing machine and the living room floor where I cut and measure and ironing all the seams I am literally working in a sweatshop. I am thinking of unionizing and advocating for better working conditions :-)

New York, New York, part 3

2010-07-21T16:26:00.009+02:00

No tourist trip to NYC is complete without a visit to Times Square. It's insane - like Disney on speed. They even have a viewing area! I never visited NYC when Times Square was still seedy but I'm sure I'd prefer that version to today's version. Today's Times Square is a combination of Disney, The Mall of America, and Las Vegas. It's still fun to visit and people watch but it's also very jarring. I went both in the afternoon and at night.

I like New York. I've already got a list of things I'd like to see/do next time I visit. I feel like even if I lived in NYC I could never know it as intimately as I'd like. I've never felt this way about any other city. Maybe because I've only been twice in my adult life? Or maybe because it's not really the city of my dreams. Speaking of dreams, I saw this sign in MOMA. Sage advise from NYC.

New York, New York, part 2

2010-07-21T15:50:00.012+02:00

My hotel was pretty close to Central Park so I started both Saturday and Sunday off with a run in Central Park. Running heaven! There are tons of trails and pathways in Central Park but two main ones for running and cycling. On Saturday mornings there is also a bike race. It was pretty awesome to be running along and have a huge peloton come up from behind. Central Park is one of the few places I've ever run where I pass a significant amount of people. It's a nice ego boost but I definitely no longer speedy!
I spent a lot of time walking through Central Park on Saturday. I love love love Central Park! It's such an odd feeling to be in the middle of acres and acres of greenery and look up to see skyscrapers looming overhead.

After wandering around Central Park I went to the Guggenheim Museum. I like the Guggenheim a lot, for both it's design and it's exhibits. From the outside it looks like one of those foldable cups you'd take camping. You walk around the inside continuously going up a big spiral. There are several smaller galleries on each "floor". It's mostly modern/contemporary art and they were featuring a big exhibit on photography which I really liked. In one of the smaller galleries they had a small exhibit on Kandinsky and another gallery had a small exhibit from the Thannhauser Collection which was mostly impressionist paintings. Both exhibits were a real treat.
I also checked out The International Center for Photography. It's a small museum but they had some interesting exhibits. Upstairs was they had five featured photographers and downstairs was a collection of memorabilia and photographs from the civil rights movement. The civil rights exhibit was excellent if a little jarring to look at photographs of lynchings while hearing "Let the Sunshine In" playing in another part of the exhibit.

Who goes to NYC and doesn't do a little shopping? Not me!! Haha - those of you who know me know how much I hate shopping and how mortified I would be to enter enter these stores but it was fun to look in the windows.

. . . to be continued . . .

New York, New York, part 1

2010-07-21T14:49:00.007+02:00

One of my goals for this summer was to get out of town. I've never really cared for traveling during summer. There's usually too many tourists and I live to see places as they really are, without a massive swell of humans clutching cameras and maps. And invariably when I travel during summer I pick the most oppressive heat wave possible. So it was a little surprising to me when I chose to go to NYC for a long weekend. In the middle of summer/tourist season!

I love the idea of NYC. I love the idea of a million busy intense New Yorkers bustling here and there, working on interesting projects, participating in cool cultural events. For the longest time I wanted to live in NYC when I grew up. For the longest time I was also obsessed with living in Montana so I am not sure if the NYC dream was something real and something desired or just something that I felt every 20-something pined for. The reality of NYC is that it simultaneously makes me very quite invisible but also like anything is possible. I'd have to figure out a way to reconcile these two sides before I gave up my life for a 200 sq foot closet in the Lower East Side. For now I am content to visit. My last visit to NYC was last April. I realized I never posted pictures which is too bad because not only is the battery situation in my camera becoming a big problem but the pictures themselves are looking pretty grim. I assure you that while NYC was slightly overcast/cloudy while I was there, it did not have the weird murky haze that the pictures show. NYC is a much sharper study of contrasts.

I took Mega Bus to NYC. This is really an ingenious way to travel. For $9 each way (that's no typo), Mega Bus picks you up in South Station in Boston and drops you off near Penn Station in NYC. It's about a 4 1/2 hour ride (with no stops!). Priceless to not have to worry about driving in the city, stopping for gas, locating parking and paying for parking. One note - Mega Bus is a double decker bus and if you are even remotely prone to motion sickness do not sit on the upper level!! I sat on the upper level both ways and really thought I was going to die. Penn Station was about 20 blocks from my hotel which is about how long it took me to get my land legs back and not feel like I was going to vomit all over 7th avenue.

I stayed in The Pod Hotel which was a really good choice. There are lots of pod hotels in Japan and they were just large enough for someone to get in and lie down and sit up (but not stand), kind of like a larger version of the cadaver drawers you'd find at the morgue. The Pod Hotel in NYC had a variety of rooms. Mine was a tiny single - I could touch both walls at the same time! - with a shared bathroom. Nice hotels are nice but when I go to places like NYC I don't tend to do much in hotel rooms but sleep so though tiny, it was perfect for me. What the room lacked in size it more than made up for in views from the hotel roof!

My first stop after checking in at the hotel was a visit to MOMA (Museum of Modern Art). We didn't have a chance to visit MOMA when I was in NYC last April so I knew that I would make a visit during this trip. It's been ages since I've been to a museum; an embarrassing amount of time has passed since I visited my last one so I really enjoyed just wandering around from room to room and from floor to floor. I always get a kick out of seeing famous paintings and wondering how they ended up in that museum. I spent a lot of time checking out the impressionists and seeing an exhibit on design and furniture.

Before my trip I spent a lot of time investigating good gluten-free/dairy free restaurants where I could have dinner. Quite stupidly it never occurred to me that maybe I'd want to eat lunch or possibly a snack. It was really really hard to be in the middle of NYC, surrounded by bagel shops and pretzel stands and not being about to have one bite. Good thing I brought almonds and dried cranberries but it just wasn't the same as having a fluffy yummy bagel. On Friday night I ate at a restaurant in the East Village that had gluten-free/dairy-free pizza. Ah pizza, how I miss you. It was pretty good and I was starved and I think I kind of surprised the waiter by eating all of it. After dinner I wandered around the East Village, checking out shops, people watching and fantasizing about living there. I also stopped at a relatively famous bakery that makes vegan/gluten-free treats. I was pretty pumped to find the bakery because I'd heard so much about it and who doesn't fantasize about going into a bakery and being able to eat nearly everything they sell? The cupcakes were hands down the worst cupcakes I have ever eaten. Their being gluten-free didn't make them bad, they were just gross. The frosting tasted like glycerin and the cake was try and tasteless and chemically. I paid $4.25 each for two cupcakes that I could barely even take a bite of. The cupcake experiments I've been concocting in my kitchen were much better and I am even more inspired to come up with a even better tasting cupcake.

. . . to be continued . . .

Shark attack!

2010-07-07T00:03:00.003+02:00

I was in Maine again over the 4th of July weekend. My camera is on the fritz so I barely took any pictures. Of the pictures I did take these are the only ones worth sharing. I thought this sandcastle was ingenious!! I hope you can tell the clever sand-builders made a sand shark and then threw a dummy head in the shark's mouth. From the approach it really looked like someone's head was in the mouth. I am happy to report there were no shark sightings at Wells Beach over the weekend :-)

glutenized by a pickle

2010-06-30T17:07:00.003+02:00

There is a certain amount of complacency that sets in when you have a food allergy or food intolerance. You read labels religiously. You spend an obscene amount of time reading cookbooks and food allergy blogs. You develop a diet and culinary repertoire that is designed to keep you both fed and healthy. You start to carefully experiment at restaurants, confident in your interrogation of the waitstaff. You take all these careful, tightly controlled steps and start to feel well. You start to feel so good that you develop a somewhat egotistical swagger like you've figured out the whole intolerance-free eating thing and it's really no big deal at all.

In fact you start to feel so good that you begin to wonder if your food intolerances are all in your head. "I haven't been glutenized for weeks," you think and wonder if you really are gluten intolerant. The more time that passes where you successfully avoid gluten the more you wonder what would happen if it's psycho-somatic. Everyone knows gluten intolerance is all the rage in the food world, right? Maybe last summer you just hit a bad patch. Wasn't there a stomach bug going around? You think about eating a regular piece of pizza and imagine yourself enjoying it. Eating pizza just like everyone else does and not getting sick. The more you think about eating pizza the more the fantasy becomes real and the more you become convinced that the blood test that showed positive for Celiac was a fluke. You want that pizza so much that you can taste it. And you start to fantasize about the moment when you discover that you're suddenly and miraculously cured.

You don't eat the pizza. Intellectually, you know better and if you are wrong you will be sick for days. Emotionally you struggle and wonder if all the drama over your diet is really necessary.

Enter a pickle. Actually, enter a party for a co-worker where deli sandwiches have been ordered. You don't order anything because you can't eat anything on the menu (right?). But your co-workers have ordered the most delicious looking sandwiches you've ever seen. Piled high with veggies on pumpernickel bread. Yum. Two of your co-workers have a pathological disdain for pickles and offer them for grabs. You don't think twice and claim them. The pickles are wrapped in their own little paper, right next to the sandwiches that are wrapped in their own little paper wrappers. Two little dill pickle quarters. You eat them.

It's not until later, the next day really, that you realize the pickles were probably cut with the same knife the sandwich was cut with and probably touched the bread or shared crumbs with the sandwiches. You don't realize this until you feel so sick that you can barely stand. You are so sick that you feel like you are going to vomit everywhere and when you speak to your co-workers you make sure there is a nearby wall on which to lean. Your stomach hurts so much you think you are going to cry. The nausea comes in waves and once it subsides the ache in your gut lingers for hours. You review everything you ate yesterday. It was nearly identical to everything you ate on Monday. The only difference was the pickle. The pickle that came from the deli with the amazing bread and delicious sandwiches.

In a way you are happy that this happened. It's a strong slap to the head to remind you that you are gluten intolerant and it hasn't disappeared overnight. You are reminded of the importance of remaining ever vigilant and not taking things for granted. You are relieved that you didn't eat the pizza you long for. You can barely function from the ingestion of some crumbs; the pizza would have leveled you. You also feel like an idiot. You wonder if maybe you really haven't accepted what's happened to you and worry that you're cracking. You feel stupid for breaking your self-imposed cross-contamination rules. Your confidence has been shattered and you feel like you are starting from square one.

But mostly you just feel sick. From a pickle.

real estate

2010-06-18T16:52:00.002+02:00

I just finished reading Meghan Daum's latest book "Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived In That House." I think I gave it 4 stars on Goodreads. Actually, that's not true. About half-way through the book I was still in the two star zone but last few chapters made some excellent points, thus the inflated stars.

Meghan Daum is my soul sister in that she's moved nearly as many times as I have (if anyone's keeping track I moved three times in the 16 months since I moved to Massachusetts). While I've been busy flitting from coast to coast, searching for a city to call home, Daum has flitted from apartment to farm house to sublet trying to find the perfect house. She's obsessed with real estate and decorating, spending obscene amounts of money in order to achieve a "look" that will make her house perfect and thus her life perfect. To some extent I get this. I get this in the way that, to quote Ani DeFranco, "you know I have left everywhere I have ever been" because I too am always searching for a city that makes me want to stay. It's only recently have I figured out that it's not just the city streets and the city feel that make me want to stay but it's also the people in those cities who make me feel like I'm home. Both parts are equally important, a great city can shelter me from the fact that I am alone but it can also emphasize how lonely a place can be when you have an awesome city with no one to share it with.

I don't think I am alone in feeling once you buy your first home you become slightly obsessed with real estate. You wonder if you made the right choice, if another house wouldn't be better. I've taken many many many long walks around my neighborhood dreaming and fantasizing. I like the neighborhood that's immediately down the block from where I live. It's pretty quiet and I always see kids out playing or people walking their dogs or doing yard work. I see these tableaus and I pine for the houses in my neighborhood. The town I'm living in is divided into three different real estate areas. In the east end are the two family and multi-family houses. In the center of town are the huge expensive houses that may or may not be multi-family. In my area are the duplexes and little cottage houses. I fantasize about owning one of these one-family cottages and work out elaborate schemes about how I'd get some neighborhood kid to mow the lawn.

The condo complex I live in has 10 buildings with 11 units in each building. Directly across the street is another 6 or 7 rental buildings, each with 11 units apiece. There are a lot of people packed into my little block. I knew buying the place it wasn't what I wanted and it still isn't. If fit my criteria in exactly one place - I could (barely) afford it. It is so far from what I want it's not even on the radar. There are way too many people packed in to such a small space. There are so many cars parked in the lots and on the street that it's hard for me to leave my own parking space. The neighbors I share walls with smoke so my kitchen and bathroom always smell like smoke. If my downstairs neighbor douses herself in perfume one more time and leisurely ambles through the hallway, leaving her scent in her wake one more time . . . And I live in a box. Other than cosmetic changes there is nothing I can do to the place to make it mine. It is exactly like every other apartment in every other complex I've lived in and I hate it. For the most part I've made peace with the fact that it's serving it's purpose and will get me through grad school but I'd be lying if I said I didn't send off the mortgage check every month with a quick calculation of how many more payments I have to make before I can sell it (31).

The cottages are adorable. Some have garages, some don't. Some are one floor and some might have a second floor bedroom. They're tiny, perfect for one or two or three people but a tight squeeze for most people who've come to accept the "bigger is better" real estate mantra. There's some yard space, but not a lot. The houses are pretty close together so you're in your own space but it's not like no one else is out there. And I want one of these houses. Badly. But I know if I bought one (and this is purely fantasy talking - there's no way I could ever afford one now unless it had been struck by a meteor and the owner really wanted to sell) the novelty would wear off and shortly thereafter I'd be looking to buy a different house. It would be like moving to a new city - in my metaphor the house is the city. I am still the same person no matter where I live and if I can't find peace within myself, no city and no house will ever be right. This is the point Daum makes at the end of her book and I completely get it. Self-awareness, however, is one thing, actually knowing how to find peace and then doing it is quite another.