sunday, not-so-fun day

i've made a decision: sunday is my least favorite day of the week. my bff and i were discussing this earlier today over lunch. and see, i actually LOVE sunday mornings (the brunching, the delicious sleep, the puttering about), but once noon/early afternoon hits, the all-too-familiar pit begins to form in my stomach. you know the one i mean—that sense of dread that accompanies thoughts of getting up to go to work on monday morning. and really, it isn't because i don't like my job. it's more about the fact that i have to have a job...that i am beholden to anyone or anything.... to make matters worse, even though i am closer to 40 than 30, the sunday night blues from my school days never really left me.

what i need, dear reader, is to win the lottery so that i can set my own schedule, be my own boss, and write my own story from minute to minute. it's not that i feel 'above' having to work, or that i wouldn't toil over something if i didn't have a job, but any such toiling would be over something (or somethings) that was on my own terms.... see? that's quite reasonable, isn't it?

i thought you'd think so.

'i know you're out there somewhere....'

yes, i just quoted the moody blues. how old am i anyway?

in other news, i'm here to report that there are a lot of freaking people in this world. i was in a beauty products store and the owner was going on and on about 6 billion. okay, yes, it's a number. a very, very big number. but do you ever really THINK about what that means?

during the inauguration this week, i looked at the sea of people that descended on washington (perhaps up to 2 million people on the mall?) and realized that this sea was just a speck of humanity. just a speck. does that ever weird anyone else out, or is it just me??

anyway, then i started thinking about the whole doppelganger theory...you know, that there's at least one other person out there that looks and perhaps acts just like you. which is just weird. and sometimes, when i'm doing something quirky and saying one of my 'isms,' i wonder if my doppelganger is saying the same thing at that very moment. and then my head starts to hurt, because again, there are SIX BILLION people and also, why am i thinking about this in the first place?

right, so anyway, i wonder if there's another person somewhere in this world that looks and acts just like me. that's it. that's all i've got tonight. i did more homework, and now my brain is shot, and i didn't eat any dinner, and i'm thinking about doppelgangers.

k, bye:)

herculean

this weekend has been packed. my mom came to visit me and we have been doing chores nonstop. let me recap:

friday
arrival. chicken parm. hot cocoa and '27 dresses.' hung out until midnight or so. collapse.

saturday
slept in a bit. breakfast/shower. errand running (wine store, drugstore, jo-ann fabrics, trader joe's). lunch out (flying avocado cafe - LOVE). prepping pants for hemming. stuffed chix breasts for dinner. hot cocoa and 'ratatouille.' early to bed.

sunday
early to rise (mom had been up for hours). cutting patterns for quilted appliance covers. lunch at mari luna with salimah. starbucks. four hours of closet cleaning (looks amazing). four bags of stuff for goodwill. four bags of trash. hot shower. more hemming. bread, cheese, and english breakfast tea for dinner. computer work to prep for tomorrow. sleeeeeepy.

my mom is a champion, plain and simple. she's so generous and helpful with her time and talents. my closet was in desperate need of organization and cleaning and she got me three tubs (two hold purses and one holds photos) and several garment bags and covers. so now all my clothes are protected from dust and tucked away in their proper places. and my cleaning lady comes on tuesday to deal with the rest of the dust and grime. what a relief!

tonight i will sleep like a log. this past week was rough and the one coming up promises more long days and late nights. i'm grateful for exhaustion like this, because it means that i did something worthwhile with my time, and i'm one step farther along in the process of having a more orderly life.

oh, and as a side note: my mom found a 9 of spades behind something in my closet and said to me with concern, 'i hate to tell you this, but you haven't been playing with a full deck.'

ain't that the truth....

obviously....

i'm back in school. yes, i know. in this post, i said i was taking a break unless something changed. well, something did. a combination of guilt, gumption, and perhaps general stupidity set in and now i'm back in the game. i'm taking financial management this term, and i'm already feeling like i can't fully comprehend all this information. this class was supposed to be easier than accounting. what a joke. i feel like all this math is making accounting look like a cake walk. and what's worse: in addition to weekly papers and discussion postings (which are, essentially, small papers), i have the equivalent of two take-home quizzes per week. SUCKS to be me right now!

well, let's see....what else? my beloved salimah celebrated her 35th this past week. we had multiple dinners out and some general making of merry. i love a good celebration. specifically, saturday night we went to pazo for tapas. holy delicious, batman! i held my healthful eating at bay for one night and entered into the den of gastronomic sin. some of those little plates were divine! in particular, there were some light-as-air croquetas (mashed potatoes and manchego cheese rolled into balls and deep fried) that pretty much did me in. totally worth the carbs for one night;)

as is typical with sunday nights, i'm wide awake when i should be fast asleep. this should come as no shock to anyone - me included. i need groceries. i need to do laundry. i need to tidy up. these are the thoughts plaguing me just now. what i NEED to do is go lie down and think about nothing. all else can wait until the sun comes up again. goodnight, dear world.

goodnight.

four score and 100 bucks later

yesterday, after getting bella's oil changed and doing homework for a few hours, i went and picked up salimah at her apt. and we decided to drive to westminster. as we were getting closer, though, we saw a sign for gettysburg and decided to keep going. spring drive, sunshine, outlets - what's not to like?

so we made our way up some lovely country roads, even stopping along the way at this awesome little pottery shop where i procured a very unique pitcher/gravy boat-looking container in this glazey honey brown. so pretty.

once we arrived in gettysburg, we made a beeline for the outlet shops, parked at one end, and proceeded to wind our way down to the other, going in and out of stores along the way. in addition to a kitchen shop where i bought a few random little items, we found this awesome leather outlet where i scored not one but TWO new bags with matching wallets. i'm telling you - leather is like a drug to me sometimes. i am ALL about the handbags.

so, i dropped a bit of cash. after that, we made our way back to the car (after a very awkward incident in a public restroom wherein a very elderly woman asked me to help her with her pants), drove through historic gettysburg, decided that we are DEFINITELY coming back for a long weekend, and then drove the country road right back to home, stopping at this little 'greek' place on the way (the food was only mediocre).

the bottom line is that i needed a day away from schoolwork. i'm just tired all the time lately and i'm tired of being so tired. getting to drive in the sun and the air may have set my allergies ablaze, but it was SO worth it just to forget about due dates and papers and analyses and business plans, if only for an afternoon.

and now it is sunday night and after spending an entire day working on school stuff, i'm spent yet again. monday morning mocks me. i shall mock it back by getting into my very warm bed and zonking out like a champ.

just watch me.

to market, to market

okay, so i've been out of commission blog-wise for the last 10 days. please forgive. i had grand plans to update the blogging world on my whereabouts and what-not, but it just hasn't happened. my one and only excuse lately is grad school. i promise it's for reals.

speaking of all of that, i finished my international biz class (thank God!) and have moved on to marketing. so far (and we're about to start week 2), i can say with some assurance that if you want to see me in the next 7 weeks, you're going to have to cross paths with me somehow, because my workload is immense. do these people think i don't work full-time or something? good grief.

let's see. what else can i tell you?

oh, well, tonight i made rice pudding in my awesome le creuset dutch oven (red, no less). i have some pictures of a righteous scrabble tourney salimah and i had last weekend (as well as photos of the aforementioned le creuset), but i haven't downloaded them from the camera yet. friday night i made a salad of orzo pasta, grilled shrimp, cherry tomatoes, feta, fresh parsley, and arugula in a lemon vinaigrette with salty greek olives on the side and chocolate lava cakes for dessert. my friend kim came over, and we ate and played mexican train dominoes (super fun! and she gave me my own set as a gift:)). i'm slowly getting myself addicted to caffeine again. and again, i blame grad school. my apartment is still very tidy. i'm amazed at myself. ask salimah. she's amazed, too. work is still going well and i had my first performance evaluation, during which my boss told me that she's thrilled to have me working there. what a welcome change! and to cap off my non-sequiturish paragraph, i'm moderately obsessed with watching 'the mirror has two faces' in my 'spare' (ha!) time.

now then, off to read 50 pages of some guru's business book before bed (alliteration!). tomorrow i have a teleconference at 7 to work with my group for class. i'm the president of our mock company, so i'll be running the meeting. guess i better find a way to skim through ALL the reading before then, eh? wish me well!