Thoughts on the Journey

The weather this weekend has been windy and at times quite rainy and apparently knocked out the power at my school. Last night I had a hard time getting to sleep, I was just awake, which meant I stayed up to finish reading my latest Christie mystery and kept the bedside lamp on to insure I didn't oversleep. I didn't, I even got to school earlier than I did last week, but almost no one was there and the middle school head told me there was no school. They were meant to have called me to let me know but I didn't see any message and now I have the day off. I went and actually had breakfast at my hotel and am now sitting in the Starbuck's in Birmingham, which is becoming sort of my local cafe. Due to sleeping oddly, I'm a bit sore and I'm considering going to a movie later today as its that sort of day.

Yesterday was unexpectedly exciting as I got hugely lost, while the storm was raging. There are two Barnes and Nobles not too far from where I am and I decided to explore the one I hadn't been to before. It turns out that one is sort of close to where I'm staying and has a much bigger selection, so I plan on going there more often. On the way back, I decided to stop at a grocery store as I've been feeling sick and getting some good herbal tea seemed a good idea as well as a chance to grab a quick dinner.

At this point I was on one of the big main roads and I knew that if I turned around, I should be able to get right back on the street I needed. That didn't happen because when I finished grocery shopping, it was pouring sheets of rain and windy enough that it was going sideways. There were points when driving that I felt my car shift from the force of the wind. I thought I knew where I was well enough to find my way back, but sadly this wasn't true. Instead I ended up going the wrong way, but it wasn't easy to figure out due to rain and most of the streets look the same.

I pulled over and got directions back to where I needed to be but somehow either didn't take as many u-turns or too many u-turns and ended up on the right street going the wrong way. I didn't catch just how far off I was until I hit the end of the road. I need to explain something about Detroit streets to show just how far gone I was. The big streets around Detroit go by something mile, the Detroit city limit is 8 mile, the place my hotel is on is called Maple and 15 mile. So I turned onto 15 mile and took it to a point that it dead ended into another street, I think I was actually close to the shore of Lake Michigan. Basically I ended up in the next county over as I work and am staying in Oakland county. I'm posting up the map, because I'm still kind of boggling at how I was on the right track but so much the wrong way.


View Larger Map

The weather was amazing to drive through as I kept going in and out of the storm, which meant sometimes the rain was in sheets, then drips but the wind was always there and the light was fantastic. I ended up getting two beautiful pictures of it and getting home to find out that I actually bought a tasty frozen dinner and had a nice hard cider. It was the sort of adventure that was good to have on a weekend when I didn't have anywhere to be, but it left me feeling a bit worn out today. Batty reminded me that I can make my phone directions tell me when I'm going wrong, which would probably help. Though when I had a GPS that spoke to me at the job interview in Rhode Island, it annoyed me more than it helped me. It's just a matter of figuring out what works for me.

I have my Yuletide sign up pretty much set, I know my requests; two that I keep doing in hope that I'll finally get them and two new ones. I'm still debating on my last offer and need to put in the details of my Yuletide letter. My offers haven't changed that much either as I've learned what I can write and there are some I'd love the chance to write.

I'm also posting in this post a list of what I have accomplished since starting at my new school and what's in the works. In time, this list will hopefully grow into a professional blog post, but for now as I'm feeling tired and worried about what parent-teacher conferences are going to be like, I need to have this down.

( What I've done )

Last night I didn't actually sleep. I meant to, I planned on it but it never happened. The darkness in my apartment was just too deep that I didn't even try. Instead I wore down the battery on my phone and laptop watching The Hollow Crown, which is amazing and reading Courtney Milan novellas and listened to the NPR music app, I love that app.Though my two cheap purchases yesterday were amazing, the little flashlight from 826 Michigan, which has yet to need new batteries. Then I also bought one of those handheld fans which have water in them, useful thing.

I've spent the majority of my day cafe hopping in search of AC and free wifi and feeling almost pummeled by the weight of the heat today. I also just realized that I somehow missed dinner and after work have to get my car from the parking garage, pick up a person for Kids Reads Comics and drop them where they're staying then head home.

According to DTE, my power should be restored between 9:30 and 11:30 tonight which would be wonderful. I think my frozen food should be okay as its all precooked stuff.

I've yet to get an estimate from Two men and a truck, so I'm guessing they lost power and haven't had a chance to email me. This worries me as I really want to get the moving company settled. Depending on how things go, I'll either email them or phone them tonight just to go, I want to hire you, please don't forget me. Since I've been up almost all day today, I've written a lot of FridayFic as they're a wonderful distraction from everything.

( Tweeted stories )

One reason I decided that I never wanted to work back to back closing shifts was because of how it completely messed up my sleep schedule the first summer I did it. Due to doing some trading to get to interviews, I had to do it this week, Wednesday and Thursday nights I didn't get home until about 12:25 and sleep came far later. Last night it was even worse than usual, I think I might have slept by about 5 am and then I woke up at 8 am, I even got out of bed and was picking out my clothes before I really looked at the clock. Then I was able to sleep a little more until a little after 10 am, the school in Ohio called to say they went with someone else, but they did tell me I was very gracious. I'm oddly impressed with myself as I wasn't that awake when I spoke to them, but I've always been good on the phone. Then I managed a little more sleep but I spent the night grinding my teeth and so woke up with my jaw feeling sore, not terribly rested and grumpy.

yakalskovich, this is why I wasn't that happy to be greeted with random RP squeeing when I was pinged.

The weather has also set in for summer and is hot and gross, but I had Thai iced tea with lunch and am reading an amazing book by Lindsey Davis about Vespasian. Tonight after work I'm going to call my very best friend and then I have a long weekend.

Life is feeling long at the moment, but things have been accomplished this week. I haven't missed a shift, I wrote a librarian blog post: Where I fit as a librarian: not either/or but and. I'm quite proud of it as a lot of those thoughts have been sloshing around in my head since I started doing these interviews and it felt nice to write them.

I have a wonderful new iPhone that I'm enjoying and I'm going to actually start spending my tax refund. It's this weird thing where I'm used to watching every penny so I'm careful about a book here, a movie here, groceries bills that when I have a good chunk, I sort of want to hold it. Which to me feels silly, so my plan is upgrade LibraryThing-add in all my books, get myself a proper massage, wander around Barnes and Noble and Dawn Treader and buy books, buy apps and books for my iPhone and remind myself that I will find a job. I'm also trying to get up the nerve to go bug the bank again, I was going to do that today before work, but honestly don't have the energy.

Now I'm going to go play around in wonderful FridayFic prompts and fantastic tags and feel better.

This morning I woke up feeling unsettled after a dream of being back in New Zealand in a hospital but being chased down. Something had transformed a lot of people there, many I considered friends in the dream to take me down for some reason and it was terrifying. I had to hurt people which really bothered me and I woke up feeling sore and a little tired. I think part of this dream comes from the fact that the nervousness of waiting to hear about the jobs keeps bubbling up in me as I would love one of these jobs.

Thankfully or not, it depends on the shift, this week all the shifts I traded out come due and I worked yesterday afternoon and will work Thursday closing on top of my other shifts. At least this keeps me busy and yesterday's DE promptfest is also accomplishing that. One of the things I was doing this weekend was going back through prompts I've filled and posting them on Archive of our Own on the Milliways' collection. In the process I almost doubled the amount of fic I have posted, which makes me smile along with discovering older fic I'd forgotten about.

My prompts that I'm still working on are over here. I adore that the first one I filled could fit perfectly into the Erik and Charles meeting OOM, that makes me feel like my writing is going in the right direction.

My big project for today is to update my phone to a smartphone, my parents and I decided that its best to do it now instead of waiting until I get a job. My current phone isn't dying but its not been working as well as it might so I'm going to get an iPhone. I'm looking forward to it and would love recommendations for apps I need to get.

This week I'm also going to be brave and head back to the bank to see if I can do anything with them. I haven't talked to them in a while with life being so busy but I'm going to do one more try to get my money back.

I think today will improve, its just that dream left me ill at ease. I have books I want to write about as well, I'll try and manage that later.

I always find it interesting to do this year in review meme so I'm going to post it as my sister in law and nieces play hearts. Life is feeling pretty good at this point. My banking stuff is finally sorted after another phone call where someone reversed the overdraft charges and sped up my credit for stolen money. It's progress which I'm grateful for.

Also I've created mirror journals for all of my RP ones though the only differences is that Tiwa and Jane's journals don't have their underscores. I started some of the imports but then realized that honestly those can wait as with some of them that will be a project. Today was wonderful, our family went for a walk out by Cape Henlopen and I split off at one point and had a nice quiet second half of the walk and took some gorgeous pictures along with having an idea for a fic. The afternoon has been lazy and since the weather in Delaware is amazingly good, my father set up the chiminea we have outside so the girls could have s'mores.

We spent some nice time being chilly, drinking wine and eating sugar, I also took some good pictures. I love having my family close and discovering my brother and I have very similar music tastes as he gave me a playlist full of Ryan Adams. Currently there's lamb cooking in the oven and lots of delicious wine. I hope everyone's New Year is wonderful. I feel blessed to have spent this year with all of you and hopefully next year I can meet more of you.

( Looking back on 2011 )

I just got off the phone and finally have my wireless connection set up, which is a relief. I had to call Linksys since apparently I have to do clone thing for my Mac and had to pay them some money, but its set. Also it was that weird feeling of I've set up a lot of wifis and fixed my parents so I know a lot of the basic steps and I think the tech lady appreciated that she didn't have to explain a lot. I wouldn't have known to do that but I think my mother mentioned having to do the same when she got her new laptop as well. Honestly calling Apple probably would have been simpler as I have AppleCare but I'm not used to thinking about the fact that I have a computer company that will help. Either way, my apartment is now wifi ready again.

Oh and I found out that one of my debit cards' numbers has been stolen again. It sounds like from the fraud guy that there has been an uptick in this happening in general as thieves are stealing from merchants which is hard to protect against. Its annoying but the banks I work with have been very good at getting me reimbursed and a new card, which is good as I had a scare of thinking I'd overdrafted today.

Today I also started reading a book that so many other people on my flist will love-historical cross dressing, world exploration, botany, science, gender roles and tall ships. Its called The Discovery of Jeanne Baret: A Story of Science, the High Seas, and the First Woman to Circumnavigate the Globe and the writing is fantastic which is a nice bonus as the history itself is fascinating. bookelfe, this is right around your sweet spot and one reason I have it is because I'm trying to read more nonfiction as inspired by you. So at the Borders' going out of business' sale I got myself a pile of interesting nonfiction, this is one of them.

Since this is all rather serious and I'm feeling a little jittery, I think I'm going to finish this post with some beautiful pictures that I've taken lately.



This was the beautiful place where the reception of my brother's wedding was held.

( Grapes and Butterflies )

I'm two days out from my last assignment and I already feel so much lighter and tired. This is the feeling I'm used to at breaks as my body goes, no more classes and then I fall over. I don't think the realization that I'm fully done will feel real for a while yet. My plans for doing things are slowly progressing.

I have ideas of yummy dishes to make from the neglected vegetables in my fridge and plans for tidying my flat and getting some new clothes. Does anyone know good pea dishes? I know what I want to do with the cabbage and sweet potatoes but I'm stuck on the peas.

On my way to work today I stopped into a local martial arts place to pick up a sheet about Tai Chi classes. This is part of idea to finally take a dance or something class to get moving again as there's such choice in Ann Arbor. It should be much more possible as I won't have classes just work and job searching and I know I'll enjoy it.

Also in terms of fun things I get to play with, I have a hundred dollars to play with at the app store and on iTunes from my new computer. So far I've bought one rather silly game but I'm not sure what else, there are so many things. Oh and with the caveat that I don't have a smartphone of any sort just my MacBook. For those of you with Macs, what are you favorite apps and why?

Also my mother sent me a generous gift card to Lush, which I'm having lots of fun playing with. I'm thinking that I'm also going to send some books back to amazon for some spending money on there and maybe finally get around to selling the bags of books in my hallway. If I get really productive, I might even clean out my closet too.

One of my other plots for this week is to pick the next round of jobs to apply for and send some more hopes out there.

After I wrote my last journal entry on Monday night, things started to slowly get better. Since dynastessa and I have been playing Tom and Jane from Becoming Jane, we've been plotting how to give them a happy ending. I started to write a possible what happens next fic and its at 1299 words and I had more ideas when I was walking to campus. One thing that's helped with getting this going is reading Georgette Heyer's The Corinthian and I'm going to be happily reading her books for years. The characters are charming, the details are perfect and the plots make me giggle. I think I might for fun toss Penelope Creed into Mixed Muses at some point if I can find the right PB as she's an utter pleasure. I quite understand why Richard Wyndham fell in love with her.

Yesterday was quiet, I went grocery shopping but chose to walk to the local health food place instead of driving and so I have fresh peas and more chickpeas with which to make glorious summer dishes. The best part of yesterday was the Milliways' love meme and I feel truly, incredibly blessed by Milliways, because it introduced me to so many of you amazing people that are my friends. Thank you and I'm lucky to have you in my life, which I can never say enough.

Today started a little rough as I introduced my ipod to my new computer, I'm going to email Apple about it since they helped before. Its rather silly, when my brother years ago gave me a big gift certificate to iTunes, I used my aim screenname for it but when I purchased an iPod, I created an Apple id. My music is divided between the two and my ipod and computer are confused as the iPod used to belong to a PC and so while some of my music is on my computer, most of it isn't and my playlists aren't there. I'll be able to make it work out, but it made me grumpy. Once I've got it set then I'll do the awesome music meme. I need access to my A Bit of Everything playlist for it.

Oh and I haven't heard anything from the guy at North Quad, which is making me antsy. I sent it him a completely casual email about wanting to talk again and maybe have coffee on Monday, nothing as yet. Its bothersome and is starting to make me get all doubtful and nervous.

Good news is that I just received an email from the University of Victoria that says: Your BAHONS degree was granted at the 27 June University Council meeting and the degree certificate were sent out to you by courier yesterday.

Now to start the next step of job hunting and working on my grant writing as I have the next week fairly open thanks to the semester break and holiday.

Today has been a hopeful day for me in a lot of ways. I began by doing all my normal computer stuff on my new laptop, which was wonderful. At the moment I'm using Google Chrome and really liking it as it seems to do all the things I want. I do miss colored tabs a lot and so might go back to Firefox later or go between them, it all depends.

Now the first big thing I had today was a meeting with a woman in the SI Career office and I got there early and since I'd brought Lark, my new laptop, got online. I love that I can actually just carry my laptop so easily, it makes me feel rather professional and good. The meeting I had was fantastic, she basically told me, you're doing everything right and now its time to start writing cover letters and applying. I think I impressed her with all the things I'd done so far.

After that I headed over to the main library as I needed to turn in my timesheet and discovered that I'm going to have a lovely boost to paycheck from helping with the Ann Arbor Book Festival, which might go towards a new office chair and a pad for under it. My current one's wheels have been breaking since I bought it and at some point it was shifted and now sits oddly with my desk and doesn't work. The rest of my afternoon has been spent transferring files to Dropbox and thus to my new laptop and its going so quickly, I love it.

Tomorrow I get to see X-Men First Class again, yay for more James' being Charles Xavier and that's all. Saturday will be terribly busy with the book fair but there's the break between the semesters coming up so I'm going to have some more time. I have a whole bunch of answers to the five question meme to post but I think I'll do that separately so its neater.

Now I just need to figure out what moment in time to post Jane in from in the Mixed Muses' post, I think in Plymouth.

I have a new laptop and I'm enjoying switching over from one laptop to another without being in the midst of a crisis. Its rather relaxing. My new laptop is a MacBook Pro that's silver and has a 13 inch screen and is named Lark since she's light and quick. When I bought her, I got iWork and Microsoft Office for Mac while she has iLife and the normal Mac OS already installed. So far I've downloaded AIM, Firefox, Chrome and Dropbox, which I'll be upgrading as its a better way to transfer files than my external hard drive as that can't go from PC to Mac. I also need to figure out why my wireless router and my laptop don't seem to talk to each other, its probably something simple. Once I fill out a rebate form I'll get 100 dollars to spend at the app store and I need to introduce my iPod to the laptop. What's a pain is I actually have two accounts for iTunes and will be creating an Apple account, I really hope they figure out a way to merge them at some point.

So Mac users and lovers of my flist, what are your favorite programs and add ons that I should go find?

In other news, I had a fantastic visit with my parents and they left me with lots of great bottles of wine and a bottle of gin, as it gets hotter, I'll be having some gin and tonics. I drove them to the airport this morning and I'm currently finishing up some slide shows for Manga Mania, which is coming along really well. I love having a chance to go find images of heroes to share with kids.

I recently finished rereading The Wizard of London from Mercedes Lackey and it reminded me why I enjoy her Elemental Masters' series so much. The plots tend to be vaguely related to fairy tales, on this reread I noticed that this book has some of the Snow Queen story inside it. The first book of this series that I read was Phoenix and Ashes and it kept me awake since I just was so deeply into it. The idea of being able to connect to nature and the creatures and worlds in there clicks with how I see the world. I admit that not all of these books are as good, but Lackey's world building for the Elemental Masters makes sense for me. When I'm walking and feeling really angry, one of the things I say aloud is; Fear, Fire, Wind and Water and it helps to center me. I think this is an area I need to explore more.

I've also been reading A Tale of Time City by Diana Wynne Jones and I'm enjoying it. As always its her characters that I love more than the plot and this is a rather classic quest plot though the ideas and settings are wonderful. I enjoy that I can see variations on these characters in other books and its making me want to go read more Connie Willis since time travel is a tricky thing to write.

Since I've collected some more questions, I'll soon be posting another round of the five questions meme and might go find some more. My flisters, you always ask questions that make me smile and think. Also today I plan on doing some writing as I'd love to actually post a Sameth OOM this week.