Elle's mini mobile 'blogging for today...

06:35 condolences to friends of Jamie Heard, UMBC student and reslife staff member died of complications of diabetes in his sleep monday night. 08:57 Happy wednesday! 10:40 I need a quick lift to Hampden today, can anyone help me out? Sima? Liz? 12:03 Desperately in need of aloe tissues and body butter and way stronger sudafed. 15:42 Oy, napping, paper writing, and passing the arabbers cart on mount royal. 18:37 Still ill and my throat and tongue feel swollen it's horrible. 20:57 I feel as sick as a dog right now, i hope the ibuprofin kicks in soon so i can drink lots of fluids. 21:11 I am warning you to drink lots of water you do not want what i have. Seriously. 21:11 I feel as sick as a dog right now, i hope the ibuprofin kicks in soon so i can drink lots of fluids. 21:12 I am warning you to drink lots of water you do not want what i have. Seriously. Posted every 24 hours by LoudTwitter

I have no idea why I get sick all the time.

Maybe it's the stress from finals, but I am snorting Zicam congestion relief nasal spray (PS I hate nasal sprays!), drinking orange Triaminic, and breathing as close as possible to my humidifier, which means in bed. For some reason, where normally I would be eating lots of matzo ball soup and drinking OJ, for this cold I appear to be on a home-made dumpling kick. Making dumplings is not hard, four parts flour to one part water makes the skin, and one styrofoam take-out container from whatever the hell is downstairs and could be oriental...Quick food this is not, but it's worth it, comforting and warm, and let me tell you I got SO damn good at rolling out those thin little wrappers, my friend Annie Song would have been proud. Eww, the nasal spray burns and is dripping down my throat in an unpleasant way. I've got to go to the station building and put together my photography set up in a little bit, I've got some work to do to prepare for a mock interview tomorrow morning. Friday we are going down to Washington, D.C. for the first time this year, checking out some shows with the PERGA crew before final crits next Friday. I'm sorry my blogging is pretty lazy right now, untagged. I just have way too much to do and on my mind right now to be an even-mediocre blogger. Ahh, and as for my rice paste resist that I silkscreened? It still needs to be washed out more, we'll see. (Really, I am very sorry that this post sucks.) Oh, also, I wish I'd taken some journalism classes so I could work for Gawker. Even though I suck at deadlines, maybe being a pro blogger would make me less of a wannabe-perfectionist about the whole thing. Clearly, I am on a lot of medication right this second.

Elle's mini mobile 'blogging for today...

23:47 Resisting the urge to become engorged on cherry blossom ice cream in bed while watching sex and the city. Stay strong, magpie! 04:50 I can't breathe through my nose! 05:20 Falling over light kits and digital slr's getteing dressed so i can make a sudafed and ludens run, ugh 05:33 Found soup in my freezer, thank g-d 09:54 Grabbing pie and ginger beer for breakfast, sporting my short shorts just to spite the foul weather. 10:31 Does anyone know somewhere I can crash around Allentown or Reading PA next monday night? 13:09 Hooray, i got out of work tonight! I can lay in bed and rehydrate 15:03 I think i want the new justin townes earl cd 15:10 Heading to lexington to rent 27 dresses at the mcd's redbox and grabbing some fruit. 15:43 Nothin like a white girl in shorts and legwarmers at lexington to turn heads. Thank g.d for headphones! 21:04 Who wants to watch 27 dresses and cuddle? Posted every 24 hours by LoudTwitter

Also

I wish I were spending today beating up hookers and stealing cars in the newest Grand Theft Auto game. But it doesn't come for the Wii. I can see it now--you could actually physically beat the hookers with the Wiimote.

Apparently it's too early in the year in Baltimore to show that much leg.

I went downtown to pick up 27 Dresses from the RedBox near Lexington Market and I suppose that it's just too darn early still to wear the short-shorts because let me tell you, the guys can't keep their comments to themselves with that much of my leg showing. I am really glad that I got a new pair of headphones, because it gave me a reason to ignore them. Not that I don't love guys twice my age making passes at me, or the boost of confidence which counters the miserable feeling of being utterly congested and full of snot that hit me this week. It's just that I don't really know how to respond to come-n's that are not standard. and sometimes include expletives. I really wish I were all-up-on updating you on my life, but it's the week before the last week of classes, job interview on Tuesday, I'm staying with a friend from MICA's orthodox family in Allentown, PA the night before. I got sick Sunday night, so here's hoping I can shake this thing before the weekend. Oh! Also, I will be in Baltimore through June 6th for one last little Art History class. Which means I will have a prolonged time in campus housing to go ahead and job hunt from my Baltimore home base. Who knows where I'll end up after then, here's hoping G-d's looking out for me.

Elle's mini mobile 'blogging for today...

05:34 One more application down, sixteen to go? 05:59 Back to bed! I kind of wish i had a typewriter sometimes. 09:33 Super allergic to something in the hoff today, full of mucuous 13:46 Shit, i burnt my rice resist paste in less than three minutes. I shouldn't have added so much water. 13:58 I think the rice resist paste will be okay. So much to do! 17:56 Forgot my power cord in graphic design class, brilliant! 20:48 Dropping off the laptop and picking up a light kit. i am thinking of heading to the tavern for a fountain coke. 21:15 Attention baltimore! Rickroll more! 21:19 Swallowing snot and making matzo ball soup 21:35 @RENEEpie whatever my ludens flavored postnasal drip is hot. Brings all the boys to the yard. Fo real. Posted every 24 hours by LoudTwitter

Elle's mini mobile 'blogging for today...

01:22 Great performance, chatted with the roomy and going to itchy bed. 10:27 I'm up i'm itchy wish it weren't foul out so i could go riding. Bikes not horses 13:57 Coating screens with eric. 14:51 Weather in baltimore sucks today 17:45 @capearce81 I feel your job market pains. 21:32 Napping before the midnight shift Posted every 24 hours by LoudTwitter

Student leadership award

I know that there are lots of seniors who are more involved in the community, who do humanitarian work, who do amazing jobs at running their clubs and organizations. But at least in the last three years I've helped continue the existence of the Jewish Student Union at MICA, and that's important, too. Maybe not world-changing, but it has meant a lot to me to create my own fellowship here at MICA. And there's always being a better student leader during graduate school, and learning to groom student leaders using my experiential education skills. The yellow and blue honor cord is a Leadership Award which I will be wearing with my graduation gown come a few weeks. When I get my machine back, I really must make sure to mock up a sweet little peter-pan collar to go underneath my gown. Or a shawl collar. Maybe just a white blouse with a yellow bow-tie or schoolgirl tie and the woodgrain skirt. We'll see. Definitely a bright blue wide belt with the skirt though. Anyway, working on more applications until my shift.

Elle's mini mobile 'blogging for today...

14:33 Working till 7 when i go to the closing reception of stuttering in carroll mansion you all should come! 17:42 Making lemon curd 18:00 Boca burgers at sav a lot! It's a baltimore miracle! 21:39 I've now reached the itchy phase of my surface-depth burns. Posted every 24 hours by LoudTwitter

Today's Tweets

01:12 I have tried all of the standby's but i'm still awake # 12:44 Hates the current job market. # 12:54 @RENEEpie i'm looking for jobs in student affairs and experiential education and outdoor guide jobs. I have other skills too as an artist. # 15:45 @baltimoregal you and your love of puppies astound me. # 16:02 @baltimoregal you just love puppies so much! My parents are vets, i am slightly over them # 21:39 funny. She doesn't look druish. # 21:56 10 jobs applied for, 15 to go. Maybe tomorrow? # Automatically posted every evening by LoudTwitter

Don't count on it.

(Regarding the open job at MICA I applied for. Oh well.)

I have a confession to make.

My life is like a romantic comedy. I mean, not with the happily-ever-after part of things. More like the "zanyness ensues" aspect. Or, more specifically, I have seen so many romantic comedies and comedy films with strong romantic elements or romantic dramas with sarcasm and irony that I can find a quote for almost any situation, emotion, or angsty 'blog that lies within my ribcage. Joe from You've Got Mail: Have you ever become the worst version of yourself. That a pandora's box of all the hateful things, your spite, your arrogance, your condecension has sprung open? Someone upsets you and instead of smiling and walking away... you zing them. "Hello it's Mr Nasty".... Wouldn’t it be great if I could pass all my zingers to you, then I could always be nice and you could be nasty whenever you wanted to be. Although I must warn you... when you eventually have the pleasure of saying the thing you want to say at the moment you’re wanting to say it... remorse eventually follows... Clearly, I should have just ignored the late-night text message. Instead I got in to a passionate, silent argument where self-preservation motivated my own unkind behavior, when all the sender wanted was someone to talk to. I just can't be that someone right now. One day I will have to make a massive post on all the best Romantic Comedies. Christmas in Connecticut, anyone?

I am almost out of matzo, go figure?

If you've ever felt the need to see inane pop songs analyzed and the info contained theirin in the form of visual diagrams (charts, graphs, etc), get thee quickly to Damien Jones' flickr set . And all the other images people have created (one of my favorites is Friday I'm In Love as a Windows Calendar.) Thanks to Lux Nightmare of Boinkology for helping me not pay attention to Arts in Japan this morning.

Hosts in PA?

I am looking for a place to couchsurf to late on Monday night, the 5th of May, and to leave early from in the morning to get to Blairstown, NJ. I have relatives in eastern PA, south of Allentown, but wasn't able to contact them today. If you or someone you know may be able to help me out, please let me know.

Thank G-d!

Baruch hashem I finally have a job interview! This one is as an experiential education facilitator in Blairstown, NJ. Two weeks away! I am amazingly relieved. If I can get paid more than $15,000 a year to do something I love, I am -there-. Here's hoping some other jobs come down the line as well. My job would be to work as a facilitator on trips (canoeing, backpacking), as well as facilitating ropes elements, initiatives, and doing a lot of traveling during the school year. It's a fulll-time job that promises a wide range of experiences, and I'm excited to be a candidate.

Bad timing on my Kenmore.

Rainbow sunrise reflected in MICA's new Gateway building. Whenever I go to the Sears repair center at 41st and Chestnut, I know I will get two things: slow service and the urge to buy discount power tools and TV's. Don't get me wrong, I trust the Sears name, my mom taught me to sew on a 1970's Kenmore and I had that same one till I got tired of lugging a machine that weighed 30 lbs so often. I know that they service everything, pretty quickly, and there is a guarantee on labor for 12 months. I think it cost me less than $60 last time to get my sewing machine serviced (last year). And I'm hard on my machine, I sew harnesses and belting and nylon and paper and other things you're not supposed to sew, I think. I biked to Hampden this afternoon to bring my Kenmore sewing machine in for repair. I biked the scenic Jones Falls Trail then took a detour through Stone Hill before hitting the Avenue and recalling where I was. My chest is still tight, I didn't take my inhaler with me so I took a nap when I got back and am doing some cooking-cleaning tasks, downloading of podcasts, and working on classwork this evening. It was about 3 miles. I'm growing increasingly aware that if I don't replace my little Schwinn, I don't have the kind of gears I need to bike around Baltimore. It's too small for me and I wonder if I could get $100 for it--after all, it's got personality and streamers! I digress. This is not the time for my machine to be broken, but I put off taking it in for too long, when itn too temper mental then it is indeed time. It should be ready in a week, so I'm going to be printing and cutting things out all week. I should be around Baltimore through the 6th of June, after some more cleaning and GD I'll be filling out more applications, and that's all I can do. For now, though, I am indeed looking forward to my little Kenmore purring like a kitten when I get back. The 3 mile bike ride? Not so much. Can I say that the Jones Falls makes me want to make a four-hour kayak and a PFD. Though I gotta say, the new portable commercial-grade Singers are really pretty.

I hereby forbid myself to do any job hunting tomorrow.

My life is consumed with the paltry task of sending out Cover Letters and Resumes with the vague idea that I want some school to like me so much they want to talk to me, make love to me, and have me for an on-campus interview. I did, however, discover a site today that's called SimplyHired and gets jobs from multiple student affairs (and other?) job site, in a searchable database. Hopefully it can let me decrease the time I spend looking at a bazillion different student affairs job sites and instead I can write great letters and get them off. Two more letters done this morning. Please, I beg of you, shoot me now? Elle

Nothing makes me happier than fresh sheets and a well-made bed.

It's finals and I'm overwhelmed but it did have time to wash sheets and make my bed and here is a gratuitous image post of the wisteria I stole from someones fence with my pocketknife while eating a matzo and cherry blossom ice cream sandwich (it was awesome). I also cleared out the space under my Murphy bed so I could take before and after pictures. I finished listening to one of those cliche chick-lit-cover break up books on CD and I wish I'd had it like a year and a a half ago. Also I am working on job applications (what's new?) and I may have to say no to this counseling job in Colorado and that sucks because I love love love it there. I have to note that 2008 is not a fun time to be graduating from school, it's not that there aren't tons of ResLife positions (comparatively, you must understand student affairs is a very small field which sounds like something entirely different than what it actually is), it's just that people aren't really vacating low-level openings in an economy as crappy as this one, or perhaps they are waiting to say they are leaving and there will be more jobs open later in the summer for unexpected openings. Either way, I'm not putting all my eggs' in the MICA basket, and I hope I at least get an interview for experience's sake.

Sink or swim: Elle Sinks

I just got my second terrible critique from my performance garment instructor this semester. This was supposed to be my final critique, my presentation of the pancake manifesto. I silk-screened it a half hour before class. I made pancakes. I broke down under my professors' scathing critique (which I don't think I deserved in front of my peers or before the work was responded to), had to take a moment, got passed over and instead got no critique, lost any lingering interest I had in performance-garment work, and am seriously considering saying "fuck it" and going back to bed. Clearly, performance art is not for me. I suck at it, and I would have been better off spending the past three weeks figuring out how to visually display my travels as blogger and comment on, well, anything, instead of hemming and hawing over something that got me nothing.

Six down, ten to go. Job hunt rant ahead.

Three more applications out the door! I wish I had more of a handle on how many more people are still looking for reslife jobs and how many more there will be, because it feels like there's not a whole lot of new jobs going up at the moment (I'm searching at the Chronicle of Higher Ed and Higher Ed Jobs). Of course, people are also snagging jobs at their colleges which will soon be their alma maters, so for me it looks like taking a summer job is getting to be a better and better solution. Still haven't applied to outward bound baltimore, I suppose I'll get on that and be done in the next hour on that. Maybe there is still a chance I can be a assistant instructor for the summer and maybe even into the fall. I could always apply for Semester At Sea, but I don't know that I want to be on a boat for that long. Even I draw the line someplace. Few greater are the buzz-kills to graduation than actually having to move and find a job, decide where to settle or how the heck I'm going to make my way. In addition, the job I'm applying to at my own school has gotten no response to me. I've seen the heads of reslife and student affairs more than a few times but have no idea where I stand, if I stand at all as a candidate. I would really love to know whether or not I'm even in the running, considering in the past my performance has been less than perfect as an employee of residence life (I've learned! I swear!). But I tell a lot of my friends and acquaintances that I applied, and they are excited about me potentially being around. It doesn't hurt that my love Megan, my own RA from my freshman year, has decided not to compete with me for the position, a huge sigh of relief, though word on the street is the position is not free of competitors. But I know that I want what's best for the residents. Recently MICA ResLife redid it's goals, and I have to say that if this is how Scott's running the joint now, then I want in! We will offer the best housing program in the country for students specializing in the education of visual artists. (okay, the grammar could use some work)) We will become experts on our students. We will appreciate the gifts that they bring to our community and educate ourselves on perennial challenge areas within this distinctive population. We will share what we have learned with our colleagues through both publications and presentations. We will keep an open mind, promote inclusiveness, and challenge expressions of intolerance. We will educate the whole student. We will provide an atmosphere, augmented by structured activities, that encourages introspective exploration and personal growth. We will promote personal and community accountability, model effective communication, and stress the importance of responsible citizenship. We will be teachers, students, advocates, and allies. We will dedicate ourselves to issues of accessibility and excel in serving students of all abilities. (One I'd personally like to see in student affairs and academic affairs here at MICA). What did you/do you like about your on-campus college experience?