The Soap Box
A place for me to dump my brain and you to pick thru it

Totally Unfair
7:37pm

Because my husband totally rocks, he agreed to make dinner on Tuesday nights, since Tuesday I'm in class from basically 9-5 and I come home a wet noodle. Yippee!

So today's the first Tuesday that he's gonna make dinner but last night he got a call asking him to come to Mexico to fix a project gone awry. So he has flown away to bring home the bacon but leaving me to fend for myself tonight. Wahhhh!

Thank goodness for Amy's frozen dinners!

WTF???
6:10pm

I missed my favorite show, The Amazing Race, this past week because I was watching the Olympics. I figure, no biggie, I'll catch it on Saturday night, since they have been repeating the current episode every week up until this point on Saturdays except THIS FUCKING WEEK. Dammit! If anyone knows of a web site that has last week's episode, please let me know. I gotta see it!.

BTW, I'm rooting for Chip and Kim but I also like the bowling moms. How the twins are still in it is beyond me.

Catching Up
5:39pm

So, guess who showed up to every class but one late this week? That's right, me! At first I just thought that everyone was being an over-achiever goodie-goodie but then I realized that they have nothing else to do! They aren't really integrated in their labs yet and don't know anyone except each other so there's nothing to do but go to class early!. Me, I am trying to help my mentor get a grant proposal out by Monday so I'm doing literature searches on certain topics and helping him rewrite stuff as well as trying to keep the other 5 members of the lab busy. I'm in my lab until class starts then I run to class (just down the hall) and I'm always the last one there. The other students will learn soon enough that this is "the Land of Mañana" and will start showing up on time, instead of early. When I moved here from the east coast, it took some time to learn to slow down but I shore have it down now.    ;)

Friday, however, I have a good excuse for being 1/2 hour late to a 9am class. There was a 7 car pileup on I40 and they closed the highway--after I was already on it! So I was stuck. Couldn't do anything. My usual 20 minute ride took an hour and I end up strolling into class looking like an ass.

My niece is going to UNM now and that is very cool...for me. She's a great kid (OK, she's 19, so not exactly a kid) and I'm glad she's going to be around. She wants to be a doctor! She could do it to. She's very smart. So it will be nice to see her occasionally and also, I can kind of spoil her now that she's closer to me.

So now I'm exahusted but it was a good week. I like my classes and the other students are interesting and fun. I gotta keep thinking of it one day at a time or I get a little freaked out but I think it's gonna be ok.

WEEKEND!
7:13am

I made it through the first week of grad school! Woooo!!

More later...

Figures
7:02pm

Day 3: No parking ticket! Woohoo! I decided to park in the parking garage, which I hadn't used yet because it's kinda pricey if used on a daily basis. So when I get my ticket, they tell me, "if you pre-pay, it's half price this week." Dammit! Information I could have used starting on Monday. Thanks a butt-load. Anyway, parking Monday & Tuesday = $31.00. Parking today = $3.50. At least the fees are going in the right direction!

Disturbing Parking Trend
5:58pm

Day 2: got my second parking ticket. I've really gonna figure out this parking thing.

Anyway, what's amazing about this program is that out of the 8 students admitted this year into the clinical psych program, 2 of them are women older than me! And I thought *I* was old to be starting!

It's funny tho, all the twenty-somethings are all so excited and chatty and hanging out together and to them I'm clearly different. Gives me flashbacks to various parts of my teenage years where I didn't fit in with the "cool crowd." I've never been "cool." I'm fine with it tho. No other entering student is the manager of their mentor's lab. None of the twenty-somethings own a house. None of them have the life experience I've had. I'd imagine none of them are already doing assessments on clients. But still, it would be nice to feel like I belong to the cool kids just once.

I Need Help
7:45pm

Day 1: got parking ticket. This is not a good start. Could end up being a very costly semester.

OK, what I need help with is switching my sleep patterns from 3am - noon to 11pm - 8am. Anyone got any tricks? I've always been a night owl which is why I tend not to work in a typical corporate climate if I can help it. So, if someone can to tell me how to switch less painfully, please HELP!

I'm Feeling Better, Thanks
2:30pm

You guys are great. Thanks for all the encouragement re: grad school. I went to orientation on Friday and am excited about starting again. I think I'm going to go for a specialization in Health and Community Psychology. If I do that, it means I could actually also get a Masters in Public Health (just like Suzie wants to do!) with only a few additional courses. So, 6 years from now, I should have 2 masters and a PhD. Greedy, huh?

So tomorrow I start. I'm manager of my mentor's lab so I'll be in charge of 5 people on day one. Should be interesting!

What the Hell Was That?
12:03am

OK, not to be gross or anything but was Carly Patterson sporting camel toe on the beam during the All-Around or what?

My Gas Tank Must Be Empty
12:22am

You know how I know? Because gas prices just jumped 15¢ a gallon. And yes, the tank is empty.    :(

How Not To Wake Me Up
11:14pm

I went to bed last night at 1am, my usual time and woke up inexplicably at 6 am (which actually is kinda common for me too). Instead of going back to sleep I thought I'd see what was going on in the Olympics and ended up watching show jumping until 8am when a very tired Jen went back to sleep. I sorta half-consciously heard the phone ringing later. It integrated itself into my dream but didn't wake me enough for me to actually answer it or anything. Then I heard it ring again. I had no idea how long it had been from one call to the other. I woke up more this time but still didn't answer the phone. Then it rang again just a few minutes or possibly seconds later. So now I'm thinking, "someone is really trying to get a hold of me! I better answer the phone!" I answer it and I don't hear anything...well...rather, you know the silence you hear when one of those auto-dialers calls you from a telemarketer or bill collector before someone gets on the line? It was like that. So I hang up and call to get my messages and there are 3 of them, all from a Utah number. Utah is where hubby is from and he still has many friends and family there. The first message definitely sounds like a cell phone in a car. I can hear some muffled voices. Now I'm really getting a bit worried. Was someone in a car accident? Did someone need help? While I'm getting the messages I hear yet another call via call waiting. OK, time to call this number back and find out what's going on. So I call it and it is my mother-in-law. Joy of joys. (backstory: I have 2 mother-in-laws: one I love dearly, one in which I just don't have anything in common with so talks are awkward.) I ask her why her phone called me 4 times and she tells me that she and her husband are driving cross country and the phone fell down beside her seat and somehow then continued to dial my number. Huh? Is that possible? How does a phone do that? MIL is technically "challenged" shall we say? But damn, can someone teach her how to lock her keys please?

So now she's all chatty. "How are you? What have you been doing? Blah blah blah..." and I'm exhausted, just want to go back to sleep, NOT in the mood for small talk, especially after I'm thinking someone is dead or bleeding, etc. Did NOT make me happy.

Not To Turn The Olympics Into a Beauty Pageant But...
9:44pm

...this girl is HOT! I can't believe she's a softball player. Sorry, I'm just being honest. Makes me consider switching sides ;) Alas, Jennie Finch is married so I guess my hubby doesn't have to worry about me sneaking off with her when his back is turned.

Sticker Shock
7:22pm

So, I'm stressing a little about starting grad school. I'm not worried about the class work really but I'm worried about finding the time to get everything done and still have a life. I have to take 10 credit hours of classes and spend 9 hours a week in my mentor's lab AND spend 20 hours a week working for the department. To figure out the time involved, one credit hour is considered 3 hours of class time. So let's add this up...30 hours of class time, 9 hours in the lab and 20 hours of work is 59 hours a week. No, none of this is negotiable. In return for the 20 hours of working in the department a week, I get free tuition and a stipend. A lot of good it will be if I'm dead of exhaustion.

So I'm having anxiety attacks and I thought I'll go to the bookstore and pick up my books for the semester. That should make me feel better because 1) I LOVE college bookstores and 2) I always feel excited about a class once I get the textbooks. I get there are it turns out one of my "textbooks" is the DSM -- the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders -- it's the psychological equivalent of a doctor's desk reference to all diseases. Oh yeah, that's going to be fun to memorize as it's only 943 pages. Along with that is the DSM case studies book. The textbooks for another class is a 1112 page statistics book which I could alternately use for bicep curls it's so dang heavy and a really BORING looking book on using SPSS -- that's a stats program I gotta learn this semester. The books for my other classes weren't in yet. So I take the books for only 2 classes up to the register and it's a whopping $332.89!!! WTF? That's outrageous! My husband got a round trip ticket from Albuquerque to San Jose, CA at the last minute for the same price! My God! How can people afford to go to graduate school?

I think my plan to go to the bookstore backfired. I'm feeling shell shocked now and hardly relieved. I think it's one of those "be careful what you wish for" things. Luckily my hubby has faith that I can do it and that means a lot to me. he knows my strengths and weaknesses and is a better judge as to what I can do sometimes than I am.

I'm sure once I have a schedule down I'll feel better. Until then, I just hope I can get enough sleep to last me until Christmas break.

Dear Reader:
11:58am

Now that the Olympics have begun, I may not be blogging here as much. Mostly because I will be blogging on my Olympic blog multiple times a day (three posts so far today!). You might want to check it out. I'll be posting on personal observations, daily events, and behind the scenes stories when I can find them -- like the Iranian Judo guy who withdrew from his competition so that he wouldn't have to compete against an Israeli.

Yes I'm an addict and when you can only get a fix once every 2 years, you take advantage of it. Feel free to leave letters of condolence to my husband, the Olympic widower, in the comments of this post.

Gay Marriage
1:41am

It was an interesting day for gay marriage yesterday. We had the Governor of New Jersey, a married man with 2 kids (one with his first wife, one with his current wife) come out live on TV and admit to a homosexual affair. What was pretty amazing was the grace and pride Mr. McGreevey showed while making this announcement. What I thought was sad was that he felt it was necessary to resign as governor. However, I don't think he felt he had to resign because he was gay but because someone in his cabinet is about to bring on a sexual harassment suit against him and it would just be too hard to work through everything while running the state. I mean, he *is* still married and a father and I would imagine that is going to have to be worked out one way or the other. Then a law suit on top of that and then running a state, even if it s New Jersey?

I'm sure everyone knows that the CA Supreme Court ruled all 4000 gay marriages performed in San francisco as void. Man, that sucks. And seems very unfair. I mean, could you imagine waiting for years to get married to the person you love only to be told a few months later that the marriage is not legal? I know I'd be devastated if that happened to me. My heart goes out to those couples.

Yup, He Really Said It, Part 2
12:36pm

The following is from a press conference between the president and a group of minority reporters on August 6, 2004:

Journalist Mark Trahant: Most school kids learn about government in the context of city, county, state and federal, and of course, tribal governments are not part of that at all. Mr. President, you have been a governor and a president, so you have unique experience looking at it from two directions. What do you think tribal sovereignty means in the 21st century and how do we resolve conflicts between tribes and the federal and state governments?

The President: Tribal sovereignty means that, it's sovereign. You're a -- you're a -- you have been given sovereignty and you're viewed as a sovereign entity.

Wow, thanks Einstein.

Quickie
8:40am

Just wanted to place a quick link to this news story. I can't explain it but it wildly amused me.

Blogger Can Bite My Ass
1:01pm

I can NOT find a browser on the Mac that allows me use Blogger without having to fucking hand code half of it. I only use Blogger for my Olympic blog but with the Olympics 5 days away, I'm trying to make that site presentable. (mike, you gonna contribute?) With Camino and Mozilla, I get options to add headlines and stuff but if I click preview, it all goes *POOF!* Then I have to start all over again. If I use IE with Blogger, I don 't have the headline and body options.

Oh! And then today I figured out that when I did use Blogger's headline and body tags, Blogger wasn't closing them properly so the text in each entry was bigger than the last, making me think I was going crazy!

So now, I'm using IE (which is the ONLY thing I use IE for) and putting in the html for headline size and color, etc by hand. Seems REALLY dumb... and time consuming.

Is there anyone out there on a Mac that has found a browser that will play nice with Blogger? And if you say Safari, I'm still gonna stick to hand coding. Safari is an amazing piece of shit.

John Waters Does It Again
12:08am

Check out the names of the characters in the new John Waters movie. Makes you curious, don't it? Oh, BTW, it's rated NC-17, if you couldn't have guessed.

Unbelievable
6:45am

This story makes me so sad. Why is nothing being done about it? And why in the world aren't more people upset about it? We are killing the ocean and no one cares? It's shameful.

Party's Over
12:20am

Apparently my clients caught wind that I've been a slacker and now all 3 want work NOW! Figures. Guess I need to get off my ass and do some stuff. Prolly be working all weekend now but then I have an excuse not to strip wallpaper.

Yup, He Really Said It
6:48pm

Both Bush and Kerry were in the same town in Iowa today campaigning, apparently only a few blocks apart. The media asked Bush about them being so close together:

Reporter: Mr. President, what do you think about you and Senator Kerry being in the same town at the same time?

<pause>

Bush: I like corn.

I am NOT kidding you. I saw the video with my own eyes and heard him say it with my own ears. Yeah, I want him for president for 4 more years.

Crap! I Got Stuff To Do!
11:30pm

School starts in exactly 3 weeks and in that 3 weeks I want to strip the wallpaper off of the walls in the bedroom and paint the room, make something crafty for a friend (and that's all I can say as said friend reads this blog), read a book by this Friday and watch some more movies. Here's my problem, I have two modes of operation - work 24/7 and do jack shit. Guess which mode I'm in right now? Yeah, the jack shit one. Which explains why I haven't even been blogging regularly.

I would like to know who the hell wallpapers textured walls. I mean really! So if I scrape too hard, I'll fuck up the texture and have to redo that. And somehow I don't see that happening...the redoing part, not the messing up the texture part.

I've done well on the watching movies part of my "To Do" list. I've seen Adaptation, Cradle will Rock, One Hour Photo, Real Women Have Curves, Spun, Spellbound, and Devil's Playground on DVD and evn more movies in the theater. In fact, I've turned into the queen of documentaries. I've seen 4 this year and that's 3 more than I saw last year. BTW, if you ever need a reason to NOT do drugs, watch Spun. That is one messed up movie.

OK, back to thinking about doing stuff...and not actually doing anything...

Blog Name: The Soap Box
Email: jenben[at]g-r-c.com
Introduction

Jen's tattoos
Movies
Ways to waste time
Flash
Digital art
Poetry
Olympic pictures
Crafty things
Cats
Officiant

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

November
December

Blogroll Me!