Valentine's Day

I was going to go on a date Sunday, then came to my senses regarding driving down to Baltimore after a date in NYC and Josh and I met up Saturday night (after I picked up new hiking boots at Campmor in Paramus), we went to a bomb Vegetarian restaurant in Greenwich Village called Gobo, then we hit Smalls, which is a live little hole-in-the-wall jazz club for a really lovely set. I had a really amazing time and am looking forward to seeing this guy again soon sometime! Other than dating, I've been swimming my 550 in preparation for the summer and also I am breaking in my new hiking boots and practicing carrying around a backpack full of stuff for the work expedition that's in a couple of weeks. Did I mention I hate swimming and can't wait until it's over and done with, my lifeguard cert? I was also blessed enough to go work in Trenton this week, and I was so excited to see them! Yesterday one of the children who came up to PBC with the Donelly Initiative and was in my group for a week earned his shirt at Foundation Academy, meaning that he proved himself to be a part of the school community. This is a student who often finds himself in a yellow shirt and on the bench, who thinks he knows all the answers, but I cannot help but love him, he's so smart and clever and vibrant. It made my week to see Frederick wearing a Foundation Academy shirt.

Dates and Dar

I have a lot of great people in my life, and I am thankful for those people. However, so many of my friends from school are starting to, or have already moved on. And here I am, getting ready to take one last class, waiting with baited breath on pending student loan applications. As I sit and type this, off to the southeast cotton-candy pink clouds reflect the sunrise across the field behind my home. I am starting to meet more and more people, and that's a great thing. Though the first date is an ever-vexing event, games of Scrabble and sharing the planetarium of stars outside my house break the ice fairly easily. Still, I wonder what you all are up to. Working at Urban Outfitters? The Apple store? Getting ready to move to the big, bad city? Will things always feel this way? I have a 10-year plan, but G-d doesn't give a damn for the best laid plans, much less those of mine. Also, if you like folk music, you probably already know Dar Williams. I didn't. Check her on Pandora, you might be surprised.

Another WFR dream.

I dreamt that my mom and sister and I were visiting a house in Chicago that was turn-of-the-century yet got moved in 1951 and had beautiful gardens and somehow stone and stained glass worked into the foundation. Suddenly, the current owner began having a "heart attack," IE he was doing a scenario and testing me, and I remember doing chest compressions and asking if we had an epi pen since he was losing his airway and I needed to delay death which is what you use epinephrine for, and we had epi, so I pretended to give that to him....it's always strange to do scenarios because there are huge differences between what you do when you're pretending and what you do when someone is actually hurt. I still think that maxi pads make great trauma dressings. Did you know that a disposable scalpel is just over $1? Needless to say, I'm putting together my first responder kit and having a pretty good time of it browsing the Moore Medical site. Oh! I have an uber-cool date lined up today with this guy Jacob! Let's hope the weather holds out so we can do something outside!

Lots of choices!

I just finished putting my resume onto higheredjobs.com. I'm getting my Wilderness First Responder in March, but I don't have enough climbing experience to work with Educo, and I can spend my summer applying for fall jobs, which can be either reslife or part time reslife and outdoor ed or all outdoor ed. There are advantages and disadvantages to wanting to do many things with your life. You can always mix it up, there are forever options for places you can look for work, you have lots of unique skills that set you apart from a typical job applicant. The disadvantage is that I feel like I'm being pulled in two different directions simultaneously. Once again, I am the girl who thinks she can have everything she wants. I think I can be leading young people on wilderness adventures, and saving up money and living on-campus someplace. Reality is, it's probably got to be one or the other. I am thinking of going back to the camp I worked at last year for the summer simply because it will be easy. It will be doing something I know (even if camp is never easy 'cause of the long hours and low pay), and I will be able to concentrate on finishing thesis and packing up my Baltimore life into a couple door-to-door storage units before heading out to beautiful Northern Colorado. I'd love to see the girls who were in my camps last year, I'd love to work with Blue, who's a great peer leader and will be at her third year at this camp. There are so many little reasons that it makes sense to go back. It'll be nice to leave some things behind, lighten my emotional load, and be someplace completely different after graduation. Openings aren't up yet for the fall positions at colleges and universities, but I've got a start. I've got to try and leave my club at least as good as I got it a few years ago, and I gotta fledge from the place I love at some point. The date I went on the other night, I basically did the admissions schpiel for him as I showed him my campus and introduced him to fellow MICAns and grads at the local pub over some cider. I love the place that I chose to go to school, and I hope to one day work for an institution that inspires some of the same feelings in their students, for the same reasons it did for me: MICA was a place where I could fumble, learn, make mistakes, and start to grow up. And if I don't leave it, I'm never going to be who I'm supposed to.

Well-adjusted? who?

I'm doing some more packing, then heading back to the new place for a coffee-doughnut-Scrabble-Top Gun date. Moving sucks, but the new Sonic, playing Zelda, all these things pretty much rock my socks. I'm going to be okay. Of course, the more time that passes, the less consequence my actions have, the less it makes sense me resigning, the more bizarre and surreal my situation becomes. Which is, generally, where I stop thinking, defrost some butter, and make cupcakes.

W

W W & I K T W L sparks. I H V day. Since the most recent lesson is that there is such thing as sharing too much, I've decided to start doing mad-lib entries at some point...invent myself a form(ula) for recapping the day in a witty way. Maybe think a little bit about Ira Glass.