Hello. It has been a year.

I am sorry to not have written in so long. A lot has happened in the last year. I left school, met a boy, got a promotion at work, got engaged to the boy, married the boy, went on a honeymoon.

So now you are all caught up.

I am going to attempt to do better, again. For a long time I posted at least once a month. I would like to write more often than that. I enjoy writing, and it does seem to help me deal with stress. I do still journal, and have occasionally posted on my other blog (www.poorerquarters.wordpress.com). But that blog is more...journey-orientated, while this one has always been more of my random thoughts and happenings, and sometimes rants. It seems all right to keep them both.

I hope you are still visiting, dear readers. I hope you have not abandoned and forgotten my lowly little blog, here.

I miss you.

Blessings on your travels,
Emily.

In Defense of My Driving Habits

I am just going to be up front about this and admit it: I drive under the speed limit on the freeway. I promise that I am not a bad driver. In fact, I am quite a good driver, and often had to navigate very full Los Angeles freeways on a time crunch and did so successfully. And so forth. I am capable of driving with traffic, and even of driving more quickly than traffic, doing all the crazy sort of weaving in and out that I dislike so much in other drivers. But when I have the choice (which is most of the time), I drive about five miles per hour under the limit, at least when in town (long-distance (to Seattle, for example) I drive about five miles per hour over the limit). I have various reasons for this, which I will lay out like so:

One. Isabel (my lovely car) gets her best gas mileage at about fifty-five miles per hour. So it saves me money, in theory, to drive that speed (speed limit on the freeway through town is sixty).

Two. It greatly reduces my stress. Several facets under this point being,

A, When driving the speed limit or above, one has to worry about passing frequently, or speeding up and slowing down as necessary to stay with traffic. When you are driving under the speed limit, everything else generally flows around you, and you have to pass much less often. No more stress about openings and timings. Just stay in the right lane and let everyone else worry about their own selves.

B, I have noticed that many, if not most, drivers refuse to get up to speed before merging onto the freeway, even when the on-ramp is long enough to allow it. People tend to merge at about fifty or fifty-five, and then speed up the rest of the way. (This makes no sense to me - I get up to sixty if I can, and then gradually reduce my speed.) I have found that driving at fifty-five makes it so that I rarely have to brake or accelerate to allow someone to merge. It puts enough distance between my car and the car in front of me to let someone in. Occasionally, some genius merges at about forty-five, and then accelerates to seventy posthaste, which baffles and momentarily upsets me. As a general rule, however, much less stress when going by on-ramps.

C, I never have to worry about getting pulled over for speeding. Because I do not speed. That is a pretty simple one, I think.

Three. It does not significantly add to my driving time. One reason I drive more quickly on long trips is that that five miles per hour does add up on a trip across the state (in five hours, the slower car would be twenty-five miles behind the faster car; increase the difference to ten miles per hour and the faster car is fifty miles ahead). But on a fifteen mile drive (which is about the longest one can go in town - from the Maple/Ash exit to the Sullivan exit) it really makes no difference. Multiple times I have seen someone speeding along, weaving in and out of traffic, only to pull up behind them at the stop light when I exit. And if the light does not manage to be an issue for the faster car, it is still a negligible difference, a minute or two at most.

So. There is my defense, take it as you will.

Blessings on your travels,

Emily.

All in.

I moved out of my parents' house, into an apartment.
So life is still a little crazy.
Yeah.

I promise I'll be back when I get things settled.

Blessings on your travels,
Emily.

Best Thing EVER.

Dear JaneGirl (and others, but mostly for Jane).
GUESS what I just held.
...
If you guess that I just held an emu egg, you guessed correctly.

: D
!!!

How did I attain this, you ask?
There is a man who comes to the clinic who RAISES EMUS! He has an EMU FARM! How awesome is that?

You can not comprehend how excited I am right now.
I hope you are doing a happy dance, too.

Blessings you your travels,
Emily.

I am tired

And overwhelmed. So...yeah.
Things should clear up soon. In the process of making some major decisions right now, should have some more time for writing soon.

Blessings on your travels,
Emily.

If I Patronized Companies Based on Their Advertisements

There are some really stupid advertisements on television. But some are good. If I were to choose certain companies or brands based solely on their advertising:

Transportation: I would purchase a Ford truck F-150. Their advertisements are visually appealing, with just enough humor. Good colors, good font, not sappy. I do not like car advertisements that are sappy.

Insurance: AllState. I really like the AllState guy. Are you in good hands? His voice is just so pleasant, and it is a good catchphrase for an insurance company. (Traveler's comes in a close second, but they have not had advertisements here for as long, and at the endings of their commercials, a person reaches out of the frame to pull up an umbrella out of where the text is, and that annoys me. But the rest of it, very visually appealing.)

Soda: Coca-Cola. I love their commercials. There are few that I have not liked over the years. This one is probably my favorite. I also especially like one of their most recent ones, which encourages recycling. The ending is precious. (I can not find it on youtube, though.)

Alcohol: Budweizer. I strongly dislike Bud Light's advertisements, but the ones for Budweizer almost always make me smile. I love the ones with the horses especially. Like Coca-Cola, they tend to put out "feel good" commercials, and those work for me. Or, they would, if I were the sort of person who purchased according to what I liked on the television.

Jewelry: Kay Jewelers. With the exception of their recent "In all the years I've been coming here, I've never seen a storm this bad" advertisement, which is just too rediculous for me, their commercials make me tear up. It is all right to be sappy when you are advertising jewelry - they do so without going over the top. Also, Every Kiss Begins with Kay is a clever slogan, and one that they have had for a long time. I do not like it when companies change their slogan, so this puts them even higher in my opinion.

Blessings on your travels,
Emily.

Keeping Up

I am only posting because the month is nearly over, and all of last year I posted at least once per month, and I would be unnecessarily upset with myself if I broke that off now.

It is not that I do not have anything about which to write: I do! But I do not have time. Ever. I might get to have a full night's sleep again after the summer quarter is over. Perhaps. But right now, the semester is only just begun (we are currently in the middle of the third week, and only the second week of clinic, so the first barely counted, really) and I am running on empty. I do not know if I can keep this up.

I talked about this feeling with one of my clinical supervisors today. Some people do not like her, but she is one of my favorites because she is blunt. If she thinks you have said something stupid, she will let you know, and that is good for me sometimes. I could not handle it if everyone was that way, but having her tends to be beneficial. I was talking about how I did not know if I could make it another year. She told me to stop thinking about it like that.

"Say, 'I can make it through the end of February'," she said to me. I sighed.
"I can make it through the end of next week...I think," I replied.
She gave me a look. "I can make it through tomorrow," I said decisively.

There are lots of things I want to write about, to tell you about. At the top of my list is some half-formed thoughts about life lessons learned from children's literature, specifically Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. But she shall have to wait, because I have already spent more time that I have available on this post.

Blessings on your travels,
Emily.

The Spice of Life

I am a firm believer that basil is the spice of life, despite everyone else insisting that variety has that title.

.

Pandora keeps telling me that I can add variety to a station, wondering if they might be permitted to show me how to do so. I already know the process, and am simply not interested. But it does cause me to wonder what strange combinations might be found by merging some of my stations.

.

Byzantine Chant with Iron Maiden, perhaps? Or Journey with Beethoven? Merging my Coldplay station with my The Killers station would be fairly anticlimactic, I am sure. But some others might prove interesting.

.

Perhaps when I am feeling more bored and adventurous. Possibly when unable to sleep some late night, tired of playing solitaire, I shall add some spice to my apparently drab stations.

.

Blessings on your travels,

Emily.

Winter is Apple Pie Time

I have never associated apple pie with summertime, although many people seem to do so. Summertime is too hot for much cooking - heating up the oven does not make much sense when the air conditioner is trying its hardest to keep the house cool. Winter is when we bake. It has always made sense to me, even when I did not understand about utility bills.

My mother makes the best apple pie crust I have ever had. I make a fairly decent one, following her (incredibly simple) recipe, but she has the touch. Her crust recipe makes a little bit more than needed for the size of pie pans we have, and so part of her making an apple pie was always to also make a cinnamon pie. Cinnamon pie is essentially pie crust rolled out on a cookie sheet, sprinkled with cinnamon sugar, and baked. It is delicious.

It is also very messy. One of the house rules was that cinnamon pie was to be eaten on the front porch. In the winter. I remember standing out front, all bundled up and shivering, eating cinnamon pie with my sister. Because it was worth the cold.

My mother made apple pie last week, and a cinnamon pie to go with it, of course.

I sat carefully at the table, leaning over my plate and biting ever so gently, and then thanked her for not making me stand outside.

Blessings on your travels,
Emily.

Five Things

One: Facebook tells me that today is Josh's birthday. My engagement calendar tells me that Wednesday the ninth is. I am not sure which to believe. My impulse is to believe my engagement calendar, because I have had friends who put down false dates for various reasons. Of course, I do not know why Josh would do that. I also do not know why I would have the wrong date written down. I am more likely to make a mistake about this than Josh is, though. Happy birthday, dear friend.

Two: I have seven school days left until the end of the semester. In that time, I have two days of classes (though only one left of research methods. and the people rejoiced.), two sessions of clinic, one session of APD diagnostics, two final exams, two final projects, and one final presentation. I feel much less overwhelmed than one might expect from that list. I actually feel that that is adequate time for everything and that all will be well at the end of this next week and a half. I certainly am looking forward to break, though.

Three: I am frustrated at my Dad and his constant refusal to try new or unfamiliar things, especially food. "Oh I love Thai food! But I do not like peanut sauce. Or coconut milk. Or curry." "Well, Mexican's all right when your mom makes it," (which means chicken burritos) "but I do not really like Mexican restaurant food." Gah. I love trying new foods and it makes me upset when he will not.

Four: It is freaking cold here, and I miss California. I am all for winter, and snow. But right now it is too cold and too dry to snow, so it is mostly just miserable and windy.

Five: A coworker wants to set me up with another coworker (whom I have met once). I am not sure how I feel about this.

Blessings on your travels,
Emily.

It is good that I love my job.

I had a hellish day yesterday. It seems that every time I think that things are evening out and looking up, everything crashes down again. I do not want to post all the details, but essentially I got pulled out by two professors during lunch and told that I am unteachable, have anger and confrontation issues, and that I will not make it in the professional world. Needless to say, it was a lovely conversation full of fluffy bunnies and rainbows and butterflies. And lots of tears and stuttering, too, but that is usually a given with me. So it destroyed pretty much my entire day.

And then I had to go to work at five thirty.

I was not looking forward to it. After my lunchtime discussion I nearly called in and told them I was sick. But I went.

And, wonder of wonders, it made me feel better. Because I love my job. I love the store itself, I love being surrounded by books, I love the music, I love my coworkers and managers, I love (most of) our customers, I love that I get fifty percent off items in the cafe (hot cocoa for a dollar and thirty cents? yes, please!), I even love straightening up at the end of the night.

I realized again last night how grateful I am not not be at Albertson's anymore. It would have destroyed me to have had to go work in the deli last night. I probably would not have made it through. But being at Barnes and Noble gave me energy and some happiness where I had none.

Praise God for small reliefs such as that.

Blessings on your travels,
Emily.

Only a Year?

Today marks one year of my being back here. I still do not want to be here, although a lot of healing has happened over the past twelve months. I am more hopeful for the future, now. I think I have grown; I hope I have, at least. It is hard to believe that it has only been a year - it seems so much longer than that. But then again, it also astounds me that it has been a year already. Time has always seemed paradoxical to me, I suppose.

Not much more to say about it, really. But it needed remembering.

Blessings on your travels,
Emily.

As Insanity Plateaus

Just a quick update, tonight. Life keeps on going, as it is wont to do. I have settled into what seems to be a good routine. I am finally used to my class/clinic schedule (half-way through the semester), and getting a decent amount of sleep. I love clinic so much, which is encouraging as that is what I plan to be doing for the majority of the rest of my life. I wish I could talk more about clinic, but HIPPA forbids it, so I shall refrain.

I also love my job. It has been a long time since I have been able to say that, and it feels wonderful to be able to do so. For I while I said I loved Albertson's, but that was more of a reaction against ICT than affection for the job itself, and I was really fairly miserable there. But Barnes and Noble! I still get giddy when I think about it. Sometimes I will be there, at night, straightening books on the shelf, and just start giggling, uncontrollable happiness welling up inside of me. It has been a long time since I really enjoyed what I am doing, and it feels nice to have that again.

Acclimating to my schedule also means I now have a tiny bit more free time than I have in the past few weeks. I get to go see Where the Wild Things Are with Glennda tomorrow, and I am incredibly excited about it. It was a defining book of my childhood, and I have only heard good things about it so far. Also, spending time with Glennda is the best part of being in Spokane, so tomorrow evening is doubly lovely for that reason.

I am looking ahead more and more, trying to figure out where my life is headed, where I am going to end up, even just for my hospital internship. I will be applying at hospitals in the Seattle area and the LA area. I think I would be happy in either place - I just do not want to be stuck here. It is still a while out, but planning is a good thing.

I had a good talk with a dear friend last week about healing. It is a difficult thing. I think I will write more on that, later.

Blessings on your travels,
Emily.

Missing Torrey

This week I got an email from a professor:

"Congratulations, you earned one of the top four scores on Exam 1 in Neuropath. Nice work!"

This email was addressed to three people (including myself).

...

I miss Torrey folk, with whom I could have had an amusing, nerdy moment.

Blessings on your travels,
Emily.

Why I Am Absent

School is horribly hectic. I have very long days, and a lot of reading and preparation work. I also started clinic last week, which is fun but very very time-consuming. I also started my new job last week, which is wonderful. However, during my application and interview process, it was established that I was looking for twelve to fifteen hours per week; this week I was scheduled for twenty-three. So. That was fun. I had a chat with the scheduling manager tonight, and he apologized and said that he did not realize he had scheduled me for so many hours, and would be sure to keep it around fifteen in the future. But still, fifteen hours is a lot of time. Occasionally I eat and sleep, though not as often or as much as I should. Somewhere in my insane schedule I need to get the second part of my two-step TB test (sounds much more like a dance than it really is), and find some time to get to the chiropractor (I have not been in two weeks. I am in pain, but have had no time to go. Bad things.) On top of school work I have (a lot of) reading for my catechism class that I need to get done, as well as church services Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday evenings in addition to Sunday mornings. I am taking the bus to school, which means that I have to leave my house an hour and fifteen minutes before my eight o'clock class starts (luckily I can be a morning person if needed, and riding the bus allows me a bit of reading time). It also means that I am on a tight schedule for how long I can hang around the school getting things done after class or clinic is over.

So.

I am sure that you can understand why I have not written to inform you about how my graduate studies are going, or how my clients are, or whether I am enjoying my new job. I am hopeful that things will settle down after another week or so (I have two exams next week for which I have not yet begun to study), and then perhaps I will be able to catch up with people.
Be assured, I miss you, and would love to talk. I am sorry I do not have time to do so, but this too shall pass, however painfully (like a kidney stone).

And all will be well.

On Starting Again

My orientation for my graduate program starts in an hour.
I am excited and nervous and scared to death.

...

I was going to write more, but that about sums it up, and I do not think I can put the rest of my thoughts and emotions into words right now.

Blessings on your travels,
Emily

The Waiting is the Hardest Part

Driving back to Spokane from Seattle is always difficult for me. Interstate Ninety goes across Washington (and all the way to Boston, for that matter), but to get to that freeway I have to drive on the Five South (which stretches from Canada to Mexico) for a few miles. This time was the hardest: a full tank of gas, a good eight hours before I would be missed, enough clothes to get by for a while.

In my head, I know that Seattle is not much closer to LA than Spokane is - only about a hundred and fifty mile difference, since from Spokane one cuts through the middle of Oregon. Pythagorean theorem at work, there. But being on that road, it seems so much closer, so much more possible. Yesterday I cried as, at the last second, I took the exit for I-Ninety. Twice I nearly turned around and went back, ran south.

But I know that I can not go back, not yet. I have school starting soon. I have a job. But two years is so long to wait to be back. So much can happen in that time, and I am so afraid that I will never be able to return. I constantly fear that I am losing my friendships, that I will end up alone.

I am still angry that I was forced to come here. I am still lonely and hurting. I do not know if I will heal from it, because it hurts, awfully. I do not know if I want the pain to lessen, if I want to be comfortable and happy here. I want to go back; I do not want to become complacent here, stuck here forever. I am so scared of that.

Blessings on your travels,
Emily

"The Lazy Bloggers Post Generator"

Goodness Gracious I just had a cup of tea and realized I haven't updated this since Paris Hilton was in jail... You wouldn't believe that my hands were chopped off and I was waiting for bionic ones. I prostrate myself in sorrow and beg thy forgiveness..

I'm flat out with sleeping my way to the top, learning to speak Japanese, just generally being a terrible burden to my local police, my day starts with the dawn patrol from sun-up to dusk. I'm beyond drunk most of the time. I need some perspective.

I hope you're having a good life if one more person emails me to ask why I haven't posted today I'll start posting pictures of toe fungus, or fecal murals. You have my word! Unless of course the pool with the cocktail bar is heated!.

All right, hopefully the absurdity of that, combined with the atrocious grammar and rampant punctuation errors, as well as the flagrant use of contractions, made you realize that I did not actually write that. And...none of it is true, except for the "I just had a cup of tea" part. In fact, I also had two delicious chocolate-chocolate-chip cookies. The bit above was courtesy of The Lazy Bloggers Post Generator, which actually takes longer than some of my posts do to write. But it was amusing, and that is what is important to me. Take a look, be amused.

Working at the deli continues to be better than answering phones for Sprint. I hope that I can get out of there soon, though. I keep checking back at Barnes and Noble - they tell me they are going to have some openings soon. Working in a bookstore is pretty much my dream part-time-while-in-school job. In fact, I was thinking about this earlier, and I think that if I were not on a career path that I am very excited about and know I will love, I would not mind working in a bookstore long-term. I love bookstores. I love books. I love people who love books. So hopefully that will work out.

My parents are going over to Seattle this weekend, for my cousin's wedding on Saturday. It will be nice to have a good stretch of alone time. I was worried that my dad would decide to not go, but everything is moving forward as planned, and they are leaving at six or seven tomorrow morning. I am tired of living with my parents, but it really is the best option for me right now, financially. It is allowing me to save some money, and I hope that that will result in my being able to pay of my student loans more quickly after I am out of school. Of course, that all depends on my not going insane from living with them. My sanity is ever up in the air, so we shall see how that goes. Time alone will be very good.

There is more, but not for tonight.

Blessings on your travels,
Emily

Wait, What?

Another sign I read everyday on my way to work is outside of a bar. It says,
THE M'S ARE HOT
THE BEER IS TOO

...what?

I do not know much about beer, but I am fairly certain it is not supposed to be hot.

Of course, "The M's" is talking about the Mariners, in Seattle. Since they are Washington's only major league baseball team, most people in Spokane futilely cheer for them as well. And if the beer is as hot as the Mariners are, then perhaps it would not be so awful.

Blessings on your travels,
Emily

On My List of Things That frighten Me.

Yes, that is frighten with a little 'f.' The list is not of things that Frighten me, or of things which I Fear, in the style of A.A. Milne, where Important words are capitalized, especially Nouns. Perhaps the list is more Things that Make Me Nervous. Anyway. On this list is Chiropractors. I think I may have been raised to be Nervous about Chiropractors, or even to be frightened of them.

I like my job (this is not as horrid a non-sequitur as it may seem). It is not something that I want to be doing for the rest of my life, but it is steady and active and my shifts go by quickly. And, of course, it gives me money. However, the past two weeks were hellish. I flew back from LA on Monday, June twenty-ninth, and worked the next nine days without a break. And really, my visit to California was not much of a break, because I was seeing people and down late and up early and quite busy overall. So, I worked over the holiday weekend, and most of my shifts were nine or ten hours. My longest, most horrid day/shift was Thursday, July second - that one was twelve hours long; I was called in two hours early for my scheduled eight (and one-half, if you include my lunch break) hour shift, and did not finish closing until an hour and a half after my shift was supposed to end: ten-thirty to ten-thirty. Horrible.

So, sometime in there I strained something in my back. And then not having a break aggravated it. And it was hurting quite badly by the end of my shift on Wednesday, and on Thursday I could barely move at all. I had planned to get a lot done on my day off - mostly cleaning my room and doing laundry - but I ended up spending most of the day curled up in an armchair. In a moment of temporary insanity, perhaps, I called my best friend and asked for the name and number of her chiropractor. I did not know if he was covered in my insurance, but the one thing in the situation that I wanted less than to go to a chiropractor was to go to a chiropractor chosen indiscriminately off of a list from my insurance company's website. (As it turns out, he is a provider for my insurance, so that is going to work out nicely.)

So on Friday I faced my Nerves, and went to see the Chiropractor. The doctor, while working on adjusting me, informed me that he had never seen anyone my size (height, weight) so tight and tense. I am unsure as to whether or not I should be proud of this accomplishment. He was especially impressed/horrified by the knot in my left shoulder which I have had since I can remember - probably at least since junior high. Afterward, I was able to move and straighten up some, so that was a significant improvement, though I was still in pain. I went in again this morning, very, very, very sore from yesterday, for another adjustment, and this evening I am feeling well. That is, I am feeling no worse than I generally would at the end of a work-day. But the doctor says that we are going to get me Well, or All Better, which is fairly Exciting, although the whole thing still makes me fairly Nervous.

I do like having movement, though. And the cracking is simultaneously absolutely terrifying and extremely satisfying.

Blessings on your travels,
Emily

Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign

Whatever happened to "Read a good book this summer!" or "Have fun and be safe!" on school reader-boards? For the month leading up to Independence Day, the reader-board on the middle school I drive by on my way to work read, "Fireworks are Illegal. $513 fine in Spokane." At first I laughed, but in retrospect, it makes me sort of sad. Yes, fireworks are illegal in Spokane County. Yes, we can get them very easily because we are about twenty minutes from Idaho. Yes, middle-schoolers probably should not play with fireworks even if they were not illegal. But is it the responsibility of the school to warn them against that? Is such a warning even effective? I feel like the kids who are likely to acquire and play with fireworks are the ones who are also likely, in general, to do whatever the school says not to do. Signs like this seem to me to, at worst, aggravate the problem, or, at best, have no effect whatsoever. I very much prefer those signs which encourage good behavior, not discourage negative. After all, while the message is essentially the same, "Read Read Read" or "Have fun in the Sun!" are much nicer than "Stop being a couch potato!" or "TV rots your brain!"

Blessings on your travels,
Emily

Priorities

I would like a new cell phone. I say would like rather than need, because I have a cell phone that works. I do not technically need a new phone. I needed a new phone in December, because my faithful old Motorola decided that she had been dropped too many times and was going to start not telling me when I had a voice mail, and other such nuisances in order to indicate that she was tired and wanted to be done. So I went to the AT&T store and got a new phone.

The problem that I have when I shop for a new phone is that my priorities are so very different from what a phone sales-person is used to hearing. Does it have a calculator? Can I set more than one alarm at a time on the alarm clock? How does it feel when I hold it to my head? It seemed to confuse the man that I did not care about things such as the megapixels in (on? of?) the camera or how quickly it could connect to the internet. He kept trying to sell me an i-phone, because store representatives work off of commission. Do you think that someone whose main concern in a cell phone is whether it has a calculator and multiple alarm capabilities needs an i-phone? I do not think so.

I finally told him I wanted the free Nokia, just to make him stop trying to convince me that I would like a touch-screen after I got used to it, because his wife had said that she would not want an i-phone for just that reason but now she is used to the touch-screen and loves it and would never want anything else. Free Nokia, please. Of course, he could not tell me anything about it, really. It is a basic use phone, and representatives do not tend to learn about the specifics of those. For the record, it does not have a calculator. Who makes a cell phone without a calculator in it? Nokia, that is who. Goodness. It also does not have multiple alarm capabilities (eh. oh well. it would not matter if that were the only thing wrong with it) and it is not a flip-phone, so it is a bit small.

I do not like it. I miss my old phone.

I am eligible for a full discount on an upgrade next August. I have found a different AT&T store, about the same distance away from my house, where the sales representatives are not nearly so pushy, where they actually listen to you and to what you want. So when I can get something new, I will go there, explain what is important to me, and be willing to spend a small amount of money in order to get something with which I will actually be happy.

Blessings on your travels,
Emily

I Worry Too Much, Probably

Esmeralda will not eat. I have not fed her since the week before I went to California...May sixteenth? Nearly three weeks. She should be hungry by now. But on Sunday she sat in the bathtub staring at the rat (who was fairly freaked out) for about four hours. Then she finally decided she was bored and started to climb up the faucet. I kept the rat overnight in my small carrying cage that I use when I take her to the vet, and tried again on Monday. Same story, except she started climbing in only about one hour rather than four this time. By that time on Monday, the pet store where I buy rats was already closed, so I kept it overnight again (my goodness, rats smell horrid! it slept outside that night.) and took it to the store in the morning.

I explained what was going on, and asked if I could have an "IOU one rat" or something, since I did not have anything else to do with it, and was fairly ill-equipped to keep it until Esmi was ready to eat. Luckily, the gentleman working knows me by now (since I come in every week or two to buy a rat) and was willing to do just that. So now I have an IOU for a rat, which is amusing to me.

And I have a snake who will not eat. I do not know what is wrong. She is not due to shed for another month or so. She is not having any digestion problems. She is being fairly active, and looks healthy. She has never refused food before. My mom thinks that maybe she is finally full - I moved up to rats from mice about two months ago. Perhaps I will not have to feed her as often now. They are rather large. I will try again in a week. I am not sure what I will do if she continues to not eat at that time. But I likely am too worried, and she is probably fine. We shall see.

Blessings on your travels,
Emily

Why Do I Not Write More?

That is a very good question. I do not know. But I am writing now, and that is what matters, right?

I quit my job at ICT/Sprint on Friday. It was a wonderful day. I had originally planned to work my Friday shift (six to two). Then on Thursday I decided I would leave at ten (lunchtime). Then Thursday evening I decided I just needed to quit. So I went in at six on Friday and did just that. I had given them about a week-and-a-half notice, so it was all right. It would have been all right even if I had not given notice, as it was an at-will position.

I am working for Albertsons now, in the service deli. I am at the south hill location (on thirty-seventh and Grand, if you wanted particulars. or even if you did not.) which is a bit of a commute. Also it does not pay as much, and I will probably not have as many hours, but these things are worth being done with Sprint forever. I had my "training-which-is-really-an-introduction-to-the-company" day on Saturday, and I have my "training-which-is-really-listening-to-a-computer-tell-me-how-to-be-safe-with-meat-cutters" day tomorrow. And then my first shift is on Wednesday. I am optimistic about this job. I will no longer be sitting at a computer for eight hours a day, which will be nice. I will be moving around, with a variety of tasks. And while it is still sales to some degree (though with much more customer service mixed in there), at least it will be a product I believe in. After all - people need food more than they need cell phones. And Albertsons has long been my favorite store; I especially loved it through college.

So yes. Excitement, there. I had hoped that I would be able to take the bus and thus save on travel expenses, but I will be working evenings and it would be too much of a hassle to get back after my shift ends - over an hour and a half (whereas driving takes about thirty minutes), on three different buses, one of which (ninety) is fairly sketchy after dark. Oh well, though.

I hope that I am still happy about the job after this week is over.
I also hope that I get awarded work study so that I can get a job at the campus library through the next two years. (Can you believe I actually miss working in a library? I find it difficult to do so, but perhaps you would have anticipated it.)

Blessings on your travels,
Emily

Spring, here

Two things about spring in the inland northwest.

One thing that I missed very much in California: clouds. We have lovely clouds in the spring. They make the semi-cold often-rainy passive-aggressive weather fairly worth the frustration of never knowing how to dress.

One thing I did not miss at all in California: fish trees. We have these horrid trees. They are pretty, with nice, white flowers. Nice, white flowers that smell like rotting fish. These trees are everywhere, and they bloom for about a month. Wretched.

Blessings on your travels,
Emily