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Hello 4 faithful readers.  I have good news.  I'm packing up the tent and heading to a space of my own.  Find the exact same completely unnecessary commentary on life at:

I'm just realizing today that it's July 18th.  That's like, half the summer--over.  For those of us on school schedules, we've got 3+ measly weeks to count down to d-day.  This flitting past of summer this year is remarkable to me simply because usually I sweat the summer OUT. And yes, I mean both figuratively and literally.  So, I thought I should sit down and contemplate what exactly those factors are that are lubricating the usually tenuous, sun-burned path to October and autumnal freedom.  Here we go:
1. 70 degree temperatures.
I am not gonna lie...no complaints from me on this one.  I get so ticked when people dig on this weather.  Something in a whiny voice about not getting to be by the pool.  Ugh.  Are you kidding me?  I haven't had to turn on my ac more than a handful of days which means I'm comfortable, my electric bill is low, and I'm not sweating through two shirts a day.  Stuff it, you "I wish it would be 90 today" people.  I've got news for ya.  There's a state just a bit south and east of here that would love to accommodate you; it's called Florida.
2. Top Chef Masters on Bravo.
Just when I started pining for the real thing, Bravo comes up with this that is arguable just as exciting and somewhat totally different.  These are enormous names in cooking...all on the same show...sometimes screwing up...big.  What more could I ask for?
3. "Active" for Wii.
Just to parlay the criticism of those nay-sayers who poo-poo'ed my purchase of the Wii a couple years ago, when EA Sports ( in my opinion, far superior game developers for Nintendo systems) came out with their answer to Wii Fit, I thought, "What the hell...if I'm gonna be a Rock Star by night, I gotta get in shape by day."  Despite one little glitch brought to my attention by my downstairs neighbor (oops...no jumping), this is brilliant.  And my triceps are magically defined even as we speak.
4. Not spending 45 seconds out of every minute wanting to move.
This new place looks like home, feels like home...is home.  I'm putting away the boxes and packing tape confident I don't have to keep them too close to the surface.  Yay Team Apartment Transition Because We're Moving to Bloomington.
5. Diet Hansen's Natural Soda.
My new favorite drink of choice when it's too early to go with vino lest I be considered a sot.  The "spicy" flavors are the best: Ginger Ale and Root Beer.  And, according to the label, there's, like, discernably nothing in them.  I have no idea how they taste like anything other than air, but it works.
6. Trader Joe's.
My new grocery store of choice.  Excellent in all ways. Including the friendly cashier who has the voice of god.  I go to his lane like a loyal little puppy.
7. Big Love via Netflix.
This is the Showtime brain-child about fundamentalist polygamists living it up in the great state of Utah.  Surprisingly introspective and appropriately critical while also having a heart.  I've never understood Chloe Sevigny's appeal until now...I get it.  I get it.
8. FarmTown on Facebook.
This is literally a new acquisition yesterday.  Even now, it promises hours, days, weeks of unexplicably nerdy, obsessive-compulsive fun. At my computer.
9. Harry Potter is back on track.
All the books have been out awhile now and the post-poning of the 6th movie took him uncomfortably off the map for over a year.  But he's back now on the big screen which has re-united a need for me to go back and read the last 3 behemoths in the series.  And I still love them enough to plan to read them again. Should I have kids in the future, I'm already planning a bed-time reading extravaganza.  Should I not, can I borrow your children?  Not in a creepy way?
10. Entertainment Weekly.
I've been getting this weekly magazine for years but it deserves a shout out because it always delivers.  I read it every Friday or Saturday afternoon and bask in the fact that it's really close to being as trashy as People but with just a smidge of credibility, thus making it arguably an academic endeavor. Ha-HA.
11. Stretch Slip Covers from Target.
In one move, this fairly inexpensive slip cover turned my old crappy (but still luxuriously comfortable) ugly couch into a socially acceptable, luxuriously comfortable, living room furniture piece.  It transformed the bejesus out of it.  I'm so impressed.

So, there we go.  I'm breathing more freely for all of the reasons listed above and perhaps a couple I'll just keep to myself for now.  I think I wouldn't mind summer so much if they were all like this. Naw.  Jury's still out on that one. 

I've just survived my 4th move in 5 years and I have a couple handy observations for those who want to undertake this kind of quasi-permanent lifestyle:

1. Don't.  It will mess with your head.
2. If you must move, hire movers.  Completely worth the price. 
3. Do not be fooled by the notion that packing is somehow more painful than unpacking.  I know this to be, largely, a personal preference.  But I'm kind of amazed at how arduous unpacking is.  Find a place for all that stuff.  Who needs it? I wonder if this is a marketable service?  I know I, surely, would have paid for the privilege of someone else setting up my apartment.  There are just so many decisions to make.  And I'm not qualified to undertake those. I don't knowI'm barely qualified for a Super Saver card at Dominick's.
where the tupperware should go...
4. Stairs, no matter how they are arranged, are always a nightmare.  Good lord. 
5. Ikea is my new friend.  I've always loved Ikea but only aestetically.  Turns out they're functional too...in that they've given me new places to put said stuff.  Like  yellow dresser that's moving into my bedroom this very afternoon.  It's excited.  I'm excited.  We're one happy little pre-fab family here. Although, said dresser almost killed me on getting it up the aforementioned stairs.  That box weighed roughly 400 pounds.  Before assembly.
6. Moving into an apartment previously occupied by friends is good.  All the colors work. It was clean.  And I don't have to worry about the potential serial killer that may have lived in the space and dirtied its karma.  This has possibly been the most brilliant part.

My list could go on but I'm really just interested in going and enjoying looking at the uncluttered, bare floor boards completely without a majority of the boxes that were here just days ago.  This might be the first time in 10 years that I'm not living out of a box. It's...different.

It's interesting.  I've had a week at my parents' house, slouching around and falling back into that routine briefly.  Before that, I moved.  I'm back in Chicago and the promise of next week (the part that I'm honestly looking forward to) is the return to some kind of regular routine.  I always thought my annoyance with summer was the heat (which is usually is...thankfully this year...no worries there...yet).  But, I'm finding now that I'm much more peeved at the lack of routine...and possibly more so the lack of routine of my friends.

To put it simply: No one is where they're supposed to be.  I recognize I'm a party to this.  While I've found a couple of phone calls this week endearing for going something along the lines of "when are you coming home because this is getting ridiculous," this is how I've felt since mid-May.  And that kind of upheaval can tire a girl out. I'm glad to know that I'm missed by some as much as I miss them but it doesn't stop the fact that summer doesn't pan out the way it used to.

I have to believe that this pesky twelve-month work schedule is mostly to blame.  When the last day of school was June 12 (and it was always June 12), it marked the beginning of a measured amount of time to be away from some acquaintances (school people) in lieu of hanging with other acquaintances (teammates, friends, whatever).  Since my hand has been guided by forces beyond my control to "grow up" and "get a job" which, technically, I've resisted but most of my friends have not...there's nothing to come back to.  The joy of June 12 was always that for a couple weeks, we could relax and then August 27th would roll around sooner than we thought and the normal order would be restored. Now, the normal order is everybody scattering to the four winds somewhat permanently. I find myself getting panicky and wish for October because that's always some kind of stability. (October, don't fail me this year!).

I wish I wasn't such a control freak.  I do wish I could sit back and enjoy the lazy days of summer (whatever those are) with the people who should be there. Instead, it's the middle of July and I'm not sure why we were all just laying in wait for it.  Now that I'm here, I find myself waiting for the leaves to start changing.

Check back in October.  Guaranteed I'll want it to be Christmas.  And so it goes.

One of the hardest things to convince people of is the fact that my life as a graduate student is not care-free.  Regular 9-to-5'ers get a hold of my schedule and immediately say things like, "You don't know how lucky you are," and "How I wouldn't wish to have so much time..."  Yeah, okay people.  Let's back that truck up.  The fact is (and Judy Wittner has said this time and time again), this kind of "care-free" life comes without vacations.  Even though my schedule looks flexible and is flexible, I think about my school work 100% of every day. (Do I do anything about it, almost 99% of the time the answer is "no.")  So, this week I came to Cleveland to get some vacay in and I've learned a couple things, some disturbing.  Walk with me.

• I no longer understand the notion of vacation.  I literally cannot put my work away.  I brought a suitcase full of books with me. (Have I looked at them? No, of course not.  But there here.)
• I have a developed serious anxiety over thinking about going back to work.  I've had to wrestle myself to the ground several times to remind myself that this week I'm supposed to NOT be thinking about school work.  I have bruises.
• I look more human if I've had a little sun.  It's unfortunate that the glare of my computer can't tan me...because I sure do look better after a little sun.  And feel better too.  I'm now convinced (as I wasn't before) that sitting by a window doesn't count as being outside.  Somehow, I'll have to work this in a little bit to the every day.
• Walking always helps.  I'm generally so annoyed by those people who count "working out" as a hobby.  To me, that's a chore.  But if I take a walk, my head clears out and I can relax...even more than when I grunt my way through yoga.  Go figure.
• Kung Fu Panda is an excellent movie.  That has nothing to do with the price of rice but I'm not kidding.  If you haven't seen it, watch it.

Now, how exactly to I work that in to leaving my school books at home for a week?  I'm sure it fits somehow but I don't see it...yet.

What you're witnessing here is the breaking of a bad habit.  Exciting isn't it? Here's what happened...

The other day I started a new blog.  [Insert joke related to the number of blogs I'm currently authoring here].  My thought was that I was sick of looking at this huge long list of archives, this stale design, this old and tired conversation that just kept happening in the same way all the time.  So I wanted a clean start.  I ambled over to Word Press and started me a blog. 

And then I got itchy about it.  I couldn't get it to look right. It didn't feel right.  I labored over the design only to be brutally rebuffed by the fact that you have to pay for the privilege of writing your own code.  Nothing was right.  And I found myself missing my little beach tent here.

But the realization of what I was doing hit me at Ikea, the jumbo house of overstimulating home improvement possibilities.  I took a trusty friend with me (hi Monica who doesn't read blogs) to help me stay focused. And as I stood before a blinding array of dressers, discussing whether I should get the six-drawer brown black or the three-drawer yellow, I said out loud, "Well, I wonder where else I'd be able to use this."  I was buying new furniture for my new place and thinking about how it might fit in the next place.  Monica (and this is the reason she got the Ikea nod...okay, actually she drove me there so that was probably a huge factor as well) just look at me like I was an ass and said, "Yeah, no." And then I saw the light.

For some reason, I am just uber-resistant to settling in anywhere.  I am a chronic re-starter...this may be directly linked to my perfectionistic tendencies...if it's not perfect, then I have to start over. I don't like to dwell on my past messiness or re-live the pain of it.  Somehow, the joy of it always gets lost.  I'm like that dog in Alice in Wonderland whose tail functions as a broom, sweeping up the path he just made.  I keep erasing my footprints.  And then I sit, head in hands, wondering how I have no history to lean back into when the times get tough.

So, the beach tent stays.  I am going to move it to it's own domain name so I can re-design it to be it's most glorious, tent-tastic self.  But the structure will remain.  As will the history that it represents.

It always amazes me that there are times in my life when the muddy path gets more well-marked, that a little light shines through the dimness, and that all that is sometimes fuzzy comes into clearer relief. I've learned to live for those times.  I can't neglect the time that I'm in, but often I find myself hoping for these moments because they're life giving and breathe a new kind of spirit back into everything.

What I'm always surprised by, though, is that these moments aren't always happy.  It seems like they would be.  No.  Sometimes they really surprise me.  Like now.

I'm down today.  I knew it was coming.  I hit a calendar date I was dreading and we all know how that goes.  There's always fallout.  There's always doubt and worry.  There's always speculation.  So much uncertainty.  But I find it remarkable that with these times that cast shades of dimness, there is always something that catches me off guard.  And today it's something in the resiliency of the human spirit.  Maybe it's mine a little bit.  It's definitely a friend of mine who just coincidentally did the exact right thing at the right moment. It's the unfolding of a lot of new beginnings. And it's in the ability to realize that even though today stings, it stings for the right reasons. That all of the uncertainty has an end that's foreseeable.

Maybe some would call these coping mechanisms but that seems dour.  They're living mechanisms through and through.  They allow persistence to happen.  And maybe even a little hope, too. 

Do you have a surf routine?  Because I sure do...

I always thought coasting around on the internet was fun because there were no boundaries.  I could click as fast as I wanted, be totally random...you know...just go with the flow.  Oh how I pine for the days when I could surf YouTube for hours (I'd like to think that whole activity is called "YouTubing"--like Inner Tubing but inside. On the computer. With a bowl of chips and a diet coke.) I was always thrilled by the possibilities.  What could I stumble on that would change the course of my day?  Exciting.

I realized today, as I'm sitting in my little gray half box here in Cubicleland that, just as any long term relationship does, my frenzied, quick-clicking love affair with Mozilla Firefox has become (dum dum dum)...predictable.  My days of surfing are gone, replaced by the rolodex-like efficiency with which I check all of my "stops" on the interwebs.  I have a whole cycle of sites and logins that have to be tended to.  My routine goes something like this:

1. Check e-mail.  14 messages appear every morning like clock work.  None are from a real human person that I know.
2. Check google reader.  Read FML (usually 26-30 quick twitter-like entries), Cake Wrecks, and Chicago Sun-Times first.  Then peruse the other 15-20 blogs I have in there.  If Meghan or Marc post, they get first dibs.  Nun blogs (of which I have a shiny collection) get saved for last.
3. Go to Facebook.  Noodle around there for awhile looking at the most recent newsfeed.  If there's a quiz that looks good, take it (and 12 others just like it.)
4. Check school e-mail.  NOTHING good is ever in there. It's the black hole of interesting things.
5. Write on one or both of my own blogs (I am literally in this step right now...it's the real thing, people.  This is not a drill).
6. Back to Gmail to futz around on Calendar or Documents for a little while (I do keep my school work in Documents, so that's a least a little legitimate).
7. Move on to doing other things (sometimes even not online...(gasp)) but keep Gmail minimized just in case something interesting comes in.

And so it goes every single day. What has happened to me?  How have I become boring in my online life? I'm trying to figure out the change.  I think I might blame Facebook as it's become the clearinghouse for all weird, wacky news that I used to glean from other sources independently.  But even still...I don't surf anymore.  And I miss it.  Frankly, I wouldn't even know where to go to start doing that again.

I'm just sitting here, hanging out on the sandbar gettin' a sunburn.  I gotta head back out and try to catch something interesting...right after I check my inbox...

I have a question.  So I was at Target this afternoon buying an overly-expensive yet completely-worth-it Sonicare toothbrush because my old one just pooped out last night. (Ack...Can't be mad, though, because I've only had it for 11 years.)  Anyhoo, I'm wandering at Target, as I am predisposed to do (because I haven't spent my requisite $100 yet and I'm afraid the universe will open and swallow me whole if I tempt those fates) and I wend my way into the deodorant aisle.  Now for my question:

Since when is it necessary that we use "clinical strength" anti-perspirant? And why does it have to come in 700 scents including "Mango Dream?"  Seriously, are we really so disgustingly sweaty that the masses should have to have smell control that's reserved for those who normally would have to go to the "clinic" to get their hands on it? And did this just start happening?  Because I'm pretty sure that in all of my anti-perspirant wearing days I've never really seen this phenomenon appear at Target before. 

Of course, I understand that there are those who have serious sweating problems and that these aren't new formulas or anything.  I also know that, despite all of my problems, this isn't one of them; I'm actually allergic to the aluminum in the stuff anyway so I gotta go the Tom's Natural direction.  But c'mon.  I can't believe that there are enough people who legitimately have this problem diagnosed to warrant an entire wall of the stuff at Target.  I also question why something clincal also has to have sparkly silver writing on it.  Do our pharmacists hang a disco ball and wear leisure suits? No.  They look like medical professionals.  They are clinical.  Because they deal with serious drugs.  Shouldn't we expect the same from boxes containing clinical strength anything?

I don't even want to think about what makes it clinical...more heavy metals that we're smearing on ourselves just so Stacy and Clinton won't pop up from around the nearest rack of clothes and besmirch our unsightly sweat.  Geez.  It's hot out there.  We sweat.  Shouldn't we be asking more questions about what we're putting on to absolutely stop that process for hours at a time? 

Of course, I basically put bleach directly on my teeth, creating a nauseating pain that lasts for days just so I can have a whiter smile.  I suppose we all pick our poisons, don't we.  But seriously....clinical strength Secret...it's like an oxymoron...