coexistapart's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- pickles & olives I know it goes without saying, but let me state the obvious: I get an awful lot of work done when the TV is broken. I can't believe tomorrow is friday! Where has the week gone? It's going to be fairly low-key, nothing too important going on, but it's also the last weekend that I'll be here for at least a month. On some level that's kind of exciting...I don't really know given that I really like New Mexico and this weather has been divine. Ok, let's see: a fair bit to report. Forgive me if this is a repeat of last time. I booked my travel to Boston. I am flying into NYC on March 12, staying with Melinda for two nights, and then taking the early train to Boston Saturday AM. The Thursday I'm there I will just relax, get the hot buffet at Whole Foods and a croissant from Tisserie; Friday I think I will try to get a better look at Brooklyn and I believe there will be some sort of nice dinner worked out for the evening. Saturday I have no real idea of what we're doing when I get to Boston. We leave Tuesday morning, fly to Buffalo where I will drive back to Canada with Stephanie & Amy. This *sounds* dumb, but that's what they're doing, and the flight is half to one third what I would have paid to go direct to Toronto. Plus, I guess it goes with the whole "road trip" nature of the weekend. Tuesday if there's time, depending on the border crossing, I will try to make it to Anna's class from 2-4pm on campus. Later I need to call various people and make plus for the upcoming weeks, given that right now I still don't know what I'm doing in terms of accomodations and firm plans. I spoke with Anthony yesterday, and he is happy to have me stay at his mother's apt, but he had forgotten to speak with his sister; a lot will be resolved once I know where I'm staying. Wednesday I'm leaning towards stacking a bunch of personal appointments: my taxes at H&R Block, a hair cut with Lloyd, and a meeting with my financial advisor. The sooner I get my taxes done, the sooner I will get a refund; and I'm hoping this year it will be close to $500 given that I "only" worked $15K at the pool until August. But we shall see. I desperately need the hair cut, and I'm not so keen to see anyone until I get it done. It's not insanely important, but my hair is being a nuisance given that I have not had it cut since September 13. Seriously, I can't believe I made it that long...even with a pair of clippers. Thursday I'm leaning towards having a bunch of people out for Indian dinner, and spending the day running around working on various projects, but a lot remains up in the air because I don't know if I will be around for the weekend. The pool is having a staff-only everything recert on Saturday, 10am-6pn which is very reasonable and would provide me with the chance to update ALL of my quals, in one go, for the next two years; but part of me doesn't want to. Frankly, I need to go home and see how many are close to expiration, but on the other hand if I'm doing this foreign service app from Toronto in September, where do I *really* think I'm going to be working, huh? I have made no plans to go to Ottawa yet. It will likely be March 31, but I hate raising the alarm and then not showing up. Plus, I'm not quite suer how to deal with my aunt (mother's younger sister) in terms of what I say. I would LIKE to see her, but everything gets back to my mother; need to work on that somehow. Yesterday I was trying to renew my mail redirection with Canada Post online, but I got frozen out of my account because of a credit issue that, as I recall, has happened before. This made me panic and order my credit score online. I've been meaning to do this for nearly a year, but had avoided it thinking that I would wait until my credit is "better"--the idea being that given that I've carried a small balance the past year will have ruined my credit. But not so much...my credit score is 805, which apparently is quite good. Except, obviously, it's not higher--though according to the little explanation these websites through your way so as to validate the $22.95 they charge (you can only get the yearly copy for free if you MAIL AWAY FOR IT; who does that these days?) it has to do with the fact that my accounts have only been open for just under five years. The longer I hold onto my accounts in good standing, the better (higher) my score will become. I've put all calling the cable company all week, but I did that. I also called Anna in addition to Anthony, to check in on them both. I walked over to pay the storage fees, and packaged many items for eBay. I also had the bi-weekly APO boxes to do, plus some cookies for Big's mother for her birthday, a gift for Hx and a gift for Aurelius. Last night I was online quite late, monitoring a bunch of auctions set to end, and I finished some backlogged eBay calculations while watching CSI Season 9 on NetFlix. Do you realize that I've made nearly $6000 (profit) selling items on eBay during the past seven months? That's just so strange to me. On the one hand I totally believe it because I know there was at least $1500 in lithographs included in that, on the other hand it feels dumb because it's not like I've socked that away in savings; some was spent on the car, some was spent in Paris, in NYC, on Christmas gifts. I couldn't even tell you where. Which got me to thinking I feel guilty about how much I've been spendign on coffee & snacks in LC lately (probably $45/month) but on the other hand I'm 22 (gosh that hurts to say...) and it's not such a big deal really. I had a great workout at the gym on Tuesday. I was on the elliptical for over an hour, could have easily made it in the 600 calorie range if it didn't feel so late. The only vaguely annoying thing going on this week is that the Chinese program emailed me and said "Hey, your application IS complete, but we just want to be annoying and ask for ANOTHER reference...you know ASAP so that you can burden, annoy, and destroy the relationships you have with your academic references. And yes, this is completely uncalled for." It's so annoying, yet so random. I was very inclined not to bother given that I got into Hebrew no questions asked, and would prefer Hebrew, but if the world goes to hell in a hand basket, then Chinese will help me apply to the Foreign service in the fall. And even if I don't get in, Chinese can make me work for practically any foreign corp overseas (in China) with basic Mandarin. I have to admit that's 10K well spent, though it irritates me that there was that problem with the scholarship, and I'm going to end up being stuck between "should" and "could." That's it for now. There's too much time left in the day to be wasted on the computer. Song of the Day: Conga 2:15 p.m. - 2009-03-05 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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