merylinabarrel

Once again I apologize for the dearth of blog posts last month.
Once again I vow to do better.

I started my internship at the radio station a couple weeks ago and so far it's going really well. Last week we had a woman come in to do an interview with Robert Siegel at All Things Considered. Since ATC is produced in D.C. and this woman lives in Columbus, she just came into our studio and we used our ISDN line to connect to their studio. She was talking about ferrets and this big ferret show happening downtown. Robert Siegel is one of the big NPR names and it was really cool to sit in on the interview and hear how he asked questions and just chit chatting with the interviewee. He seemed like a really nice person. The woman had actually brought one of her ferrets in with her (in a cage, thankfully) and it started rattling around and they had to stop the interview for a few minutes while it calmed down.

The interview is posted on NPR here and I thought it was hilarious that the one commenter commended Siegel for not questioning/laughing at the woman's name (you'll see it). In actuality, there was a five-minute discussion of her name before the interview started and he had several questions about it. She was in the studio for close to half an hour, and the interview was cut down to just three and a half minutes, so there was a lot that was left on the cutting room floor. It's pretty much a novelty/fluff/kicker story, though, so I think that's about right.

Engineering the ISDN interview was a definite high-point of what I've gotten to do at the station so far, but I like everything I'm doing. Everyone who works there is really nice, too, and I haven't had any bad experiences-- except when a HORRIBLE thing happen to me last Thursday. Oh my god.

So, I bring a big travel mug of coffee with me every morning and then I drink a can of Coke (suddenly I'm drinking pop again, much to my stomach lining's dismay) with lunch, so I usually have to pee like crazy around 3 or 4. So on Thursday I went down the hall to the women's restroom and peed and flushed the toilet, and then FOR NO REASON water started GUSHING EVERYWHERE. The toilet bowl overflowed and started pouring onto the floor. I grabbed the trash can and tried to catch as much as I could, but it wasn't happening. Oh my god, I wanted to fucking die.

I jiggled the handle and opened the top of the tank and tried to move the levers, but I don't know how stupid toilet works because I'm a product of the 21st century where if my toilet breaks, I eHow "How to fix a toilet." So at this point I'm freaking out and the water is still pouring out and up over the edges of my flip flops so my feet are getting wet. In my manic state, I realize that even if I got it to stop right then, everything is a mess and I have to get someone to help me. I run down to the newsroom, but no one is there. I find a woman in the hall and I fluster, "I flushed the toilet in the women's restroom and water is going everywhere and I don't know what to do."

"Uh oh," she said and kinda laughed and kept walking. What!? You're supposed to help me! I said I don't know what to do! I went the other way down the hallway and found the night shift guy who is super cool and chill and was like, "Oh man, Meryl, what did you do now?" The toilet was still spewing water (though thankfully it was just water this whole time and not sewage and grossness), so he waded through the little lake and turned off the actual pipe behind the toilet. Then he showed me where the mop and bucket were and he started mopping up all the water. The bathroom is tiny and I couldn't do anything to help, so I just stood there and thanked him and apologized. He said he used to be a janitor so he didn't mind, and he actually cleaned the whole thing up in no time.

People kept walking by and asking what happened and I kept having to explain. Because this was still my seventh or eighth day, I felt like I was making a really bad impression as a klutz or someone who breaks things all the time. I also wanted to tell everyone straight-out that all I'd flushed was pee and a few pieces of toilet paper and not taken a huge shit or something, but I didn't go into detail. The GM came over to see what was going on and he wondered aloud if maybe the pipe was clogged or something, and I assured him, "I didn't put anything weird down there, I promise!" and he thought it was funny and said, "No, no, I know you didn't." But I felt guilty anyway. I seriously felt like such a stupid idiot.

The take-home of this story is that now I'm terrified to use the toilet at work. Today I had to pee SO BADLY, but I held it for the last two hours, weighing the physical discomfort and possible bladder infection versus another possible toilet incident. Because if anything weird happens when I'm in the bathroom, basically for the rest of the time I work here, everyone is going to think I'm a freak.

I know I need to chill out.

Samantha finally moved in all her stuff on Saturday afternoon and the house is looking really good. She had three big wooden shelves that we put up in the dining and living rooms and filled with more books and some of my old cameras. I like it a lot. Now the house is also home to a normal-sized television, new placemats, dining room chairs and Sam's cat Jada.



I spend most of my time talking to her in an obnoxious baby voice.

Amanda's boyfriend's band had a gig in Youngstown on Saturday night, so I left Sam to unpack her stuff and headed up there with Amanda and the band. Oh, Youngstown. It was actually a fun time because it was sort of a last minute roadtrip and everything felt like a novelty. Their band is pretty good, so I didn't mind sitting around listening to them play. The city and the bar were pretty empty and it's not somewhere I'd want to hang out on a regular basis, but it was a fun little distraction. We drove back super late after the show and I slept at Amanda's place in Westerville and just drove home in the morning.

I start at the radio station on Wednesday, and tomorrow I drive around town and apply for as many jobs as I can. A week after my interview, the bank sent me a form e-mail telling me they picked someone else for the teller job, so I'm back to square one. I'm looking at coffee places and bagel places next-- establishments on the lighter side of food service. We'll see how it goes.

OH! I almost forgot. The day before we went to Youngstown, Amanda and her friend Mike and I went to a bar downtown and a band called the Super Desserts was playing. They're an adorable/twee/folksy octet and I loved them like crazy. The band has two violins, a cello, a bass clarinet, a ukulele, a banjo, an acoustic guitar and a xylophone. It sounds like a lot, but they did a great job putting it all together with cute lyrics. Their sound reminds me a little of Arrah and the Ferns if anyone else (besides Abbie) knows who that is. The songs on the album I bought all have normal names, but on the CD packaging they gave them really long (kind of dumb) titles, so I don't know what any of these are actually called. Anyway, here are mp3s of a couple of my favorites.

On the way to the hospital...
Claude and Clara...
Clara is sitting on a sofa...

I had such a good time at the zoo on Tuesday.

Brian and I started out in the "Asia Quest" section where we saw the elephants, sun bears, lions, markhors (big mountain goat type things) and the tigers. The one tiger was great. He clearly loved the attention of the spectators and kept walking right over to the glass and then pacing back and forth right in front of us. There was a toddler standing with his family right next to us and he started shrieking when the tiger came over and just got louder and louder as it paced. I think it was a mix of being frightened and being excited, but it was really obnoxious so we exited the Asia Quest.



I thought it was funny that the food stands in the different areas were themed to match that part of the zoo, like the Asian Cafe in the Asia Quest area or the Congo River Market in the African Forest area. Anyway, we grabbed cheap teryaki chicken bowls at the Asian Cafe and sat at a picnic table eating and watching these hillbilly children chase the geese around. I'd mostly finished eating and was just picking at the broccoli when I saw something fall in it.

"Did a bird just shit in my food?"
"Um, I saw something fall into it."
I looked down.
"Yeah, a bird definitely just shat in my food. I've actually never seen that happen before."

It was super gross. We tossed our bowls and went to the North American section to see the wolves, bison, grizzlies, bald eagles and river otters. Those otters were SO ADORABLE. Whenever I see someone's housecat I think about how nice it would be to be a cat, but these otters made me really wish I could be an otter. I also loved the flamingos because they are so pretty, but so strange at the same time. Their necks are really delicate and beautiful, but then they twist them up to preen their back feathers and it looks freaky and alien, and their legs look like they're about to snap in half.





There was also a sad petting zoo in the North America area. It actually wasn't so bad, as petting zoos go. The animals seemed healthy and well taken care of, but there's something inherently sad about a bunch of goats and sheep lying on piles of hay on the concrete and being poked by giddy children all day. All their horns have been removed so they don't stab the giddy children, which also seemed a little sad. We took some time to pet them and then washed our hands.

We were running out of time before we had to meet Tim and his friend Steve for dinner and beers, so we hurried over to the "Voyage to Australia and the Islands" to see the gibbons, orangutans, kangaroos and koalas. The orangutans were amazing. They don't jump all over the place like the smaller monkeys, but they're still very active and walk around and climb the ropes. You can see a real intelligence in the orangutans and I loved how bright orange their fur was, just like that racist orangutan character in "The Jungle Book."

I also loved the kangaroos because they were set up in a "Kangaroo Walk-about" area where you just walk through an enclosed area and the kangaroos are hopping (actually, most were laying) around without any barriers between you and them. They didn't come up to us, but they didn't run away from us either. And they looked so goofy when they hopped.





On our way back toward the gate, we walked through the aquarium and saw the happy manatees and a bunch of fish. I know I sound like a dummy just saying how much I loved these different animals, but I also really LOVED the manatees. I was like a little kid all day going "OH!! WOW!" at every exhibit. The manatees were so blubbery and peaceful, floating in their big tank. The one came over to where we were standing and looked at us for awhile. It was really beautiful.



It was a great day, and if anyone comes to visit we can definitely go again.
All my zoo pictures are up here on Flickr.

It's my birthday! I got up early to get a gigantic latte at the coffee place down the street and then I baked banana bread because I had four browning bananas in the fridge. It smells so good.

Brian and I are off to the zoo in a little bit and I am SO EXCITED. I used to believe that zoos shouldn't exist because I thought animals should be free, but the "Zoos" episode of Radio Lab softened me a bit on the issue. I'm just excited to spend the day with Brian and take a bunch of pictures of animals. They also have an aquarium, which I've always been a fan of.

Anyway, I just wanted to take this yearly (well, this and Jan. 1) opportunity to reflect for a minute say thanks to everyone for always being here for me. Not "here" like on the Internet specifically, but "here" in my life in general. I struggled a lot in the past year, like when I went abroad last fall, up until just the last few weeks when I've been transitioning to living here. Everyone was there to listen to my complaints and dramatics, and help me feel like it was all going to be all right. The last year also had a million wonderful, sweet, hilarious, touching moments-- things that make me grin so wide just thinking about them. And they're only so amazing because you all were there sharing them with me and making my life so rich and incredible. I feel very loved.

I think about my life a year ago on my 21st birthday and everything that's happened since then, and I wouldn't change a single thing.

Columbus is being a little kinder to me lately. All the utilities are finally hooked up so I can cook and watch TV and get online. A few days ago I applied to be a teller at a bank, but didn't really think anything would come from it because it seems like no one is hiring. But then they called me back the next day for a phone interview, and today I set up an in-person interview with the manager of a branch for Monday.

It's really exciting and reassuring to possibly have a job lined up. Melanie, a girl I worked with waaay back in the day at Subway, was a teller for First Merit and I always thought it was a nice job for a twenty-something, and a step up from foodservice. I told them I have an internship right now as well, so I need to have a few mornings a week for that. I was hoping to start working at the station next week, but my boss (I'm just going to start calling her that) said next week was going to be crazy and she didn't know what was going on, so I should start the week after instead. So now that's the plan work-wise.

I'm feeling better in general. I actually know my way around to the various grocery stores and thrift shops, and the general direction of different parts of town. The house is also filling up with furniture and shaping up to be a nice place to live. My dad and aunt were both down last Saturday to bring me my car, some furniture and housewares, and take me to buy groceries. When I walk around, the rooms look like someone lives here. It's good. I put a set of pictures up on the photoblog.

A cute hipster girl came to the door this morning collecting signatures for a health care reform thing, and while I was signing the paper, she looked behind me into the house and told me she liked my typewriter collection. I glowed at the compliment. This afternoon I baked a blueberry pie once the gas was turned on. I baked one a week and a half ago for my dad and brother, but the crust kept sticking to the pan and it was a little runny. It turned out okay for being my first pie ever and Greg ate the whole thing. Today's pie, however, turned out perfectly. The fruit gelled correctly and the crust is flaky, but holds together. I'm so pleased.





I need to stop watching X-Files before bed. Some of this shit is scary and I'm all alone.

I moved most of my stuff into the apartment last Thursday and spent the next few days unpacking and falling into depression. I don't know what it was, exactly. Part of it was definitely being alone in the house with no TV or Internet, so I felt really cut off from the rest of the world. Actually, I think that was most of it. I just felt very lonely and isolated, so I drank two bottles of wine and watched two seasons of 30 Rock I had saved on my computer. And, surprising as it may seem, that made it a little worse.

I did buy a new bed and it was delivered on Saturday so I finally had something to sit/sleep on. I love my new bed. Hot damn, do I love my new bed! It's the most expensive thing I've ever bought with my own money and it makes me very happy. The guy at the mattress place was really nice and helpful, too. He was like your grandpa if your grandpa really loved mattresses.

Amanda helped me carry my dresser upstairs, so my room is all set up. I'm still having trouble feeling at home there, though. When I moved into the white apartment with Rence, I felt like it was my house the first night I slept there on New Year's Eve, even though it was just me and Lauren squished together on a twin mattress on the floor. Even in the blue house I felt so good in from the beginning. I think part of it is that I don't know what my life is going to be like here, and I have some ideas, but a lot of it is up in the air and it makes me feel like I don't really belong there.



I went down to Athens on Saturday night to get some social contact and to pick up my futon from Rence. Sam, Bethany and I went shopping on Sunday for the immediate needs of the house, like a shower curtain and a trash can. I have this great framed painting of a ship that I hung above the toilet, so we got a world map shower curtain (the same one that Anna has!) to make it a semi-nautical themed bathroom. I am building myself a semi-nautical themed life, it seems.

Cable and Internet will supposedly be installed Monday morning.

I started reading The Time Traveler's Wife today while I was at the mechanic, and I like it so far. So now everyone can get off my back about reading it, and I can go see the movie next month.

With all the abandoned hospital shenanigans going on last weekend, I totally forgot to tell everyone that Sam and I got an apartment! We had appointments at four or five places around Columbus on Friday morning and stopped at this place last because the landlord told us it was just open all day for people to come by and look at it. We walked right in and both really liked it.

The rent is a little more than the place we liked from the morning, but it's in a nicer neighborhood and has more creature comforts like air conditioning, a disposal (YES) and a dishwasher (YES). Sam was really interested in having air conditioning and the more I thought about it, I really didn't want to live without it. I always think that I'll be fine without cable or a/c or extra amenities like that, but when it comes down to it, I actually want all of those things and miss them a lot when they're gone. This apartment also has water included in the rent and there's no extra fee for Sam having her cat, so all around it was a really good deal comparatively.

We signed the lease, put down a deposit and got the keys. We said we wouldn't be moving in until the end of this month, but the landlord said that we could start moving in right then as far as he was concerned. I felt so good this whole day. I remember Sam and I went to get lunch afterward and I just kept giving these big happy sighs and saying, "I feel so much better now. I feel like everything is going to work out fine."

The apartment is carpeted except for the kitchen, bathroom and basement. When you walk in the front door there's a square-shaped living room area, then you pass the stairs and the door for the basement and enter another square-shaped room that we're going to make the dining room. The kitchen is off this room and has a back door that leads to the parking lot where we can park our cars. Upstairs is a long hallway with two bedrooms and the bathroom. I gave Sam the bigger bedroom because I have a martyr complex, and also because she has more stuff.



( some interior pictures under here )

So now we have to fill the apartment with all of our belongings. I'm making a couple trips down with my furniture, etc. and I'm ordering a new bed that will hopefully be delivered by the end of next week. My goal is to be permanently living there in two weeks, around the 22nd or 23rd, and Sam will be moving in about a month later.

I went to Goodwill today to look at other furniture and dishes, but ended up taking home a new addition to my "Creepy Thirftstore Portraits" collection instead. I already have this one that I got a year ago. I tell everyone that it's my mother, but I actually got it for $3 from the Village Discount Outlet. Today, I found this and, oh god, I almost squealed. I need to find a prominent place to display it in the new apartment; I'm going to say it's my brother.

A few weeks I found out about this abandoned hospital up in Cleveland. I saw a few pictures on Flickr and it looked pretty cool, so I did a little research to find out exactly where it is. I drove up last week to scope out the scene and it was still there, huge and beautiful. I roped Abbie into coming with me, and we went exploring on Sunday morning.



It was originally named Cleveland General Hospital when it was founded in 1894, but renamed St. Luke's and switched buildings several times before moving into this Shaker Heights location in 1927. I'm not sure when it became abandoned, but all the doors and windows on the first floor had wooden boards screwed over them and were caulked around the edges. We walked around and around with no success getting in, and even employed the use of a "tool," which was basically a piece of bent metal shaped into a makeshift crowbar. There was one open window that we vetoed as an entry point after realizing it required us to jump from a ledge several feet away onto the windowsill without falling fifteen feet into a ditch of "sick nast," as Abbie called it.

Instead, we found a wooden pallet and carted it to the back of the building to lean against the wall to use as a ladder into another open window. Carrying it around the whole building was such a pain in the ass and anyone who drove by could clearly see what we were doing, but we were fine. Once we got it set up against the wall, it was still about a foot too short to reach, so we took a bunch of bricks from a nearby pile and made a crappy base for the ladder to prop it up. It was comically unstable, but it got us in.



The first floor hallways were pitch black from all the doors and windows on that level being boarded up. We each had crank flashlights and I had my little headstrap flashlight, but it was still pretty scary. Also, the flashlights made this high pitched whining/whirring noise when we cranked them and it made us feel kind of ridiculous. We went up to the higher floors where it was brighter, but just as dilapidated. Almost all of the pipes, fixtures and wires had been cut or dug out of the walls and ceilings by metal scrappers, and a lot of the wings had standing water puddles down the middle of the hallways. The upper levels were the worst for mold and most of the white walls had been completely covered with black mold to the point that it looked like they'd been burned in a fire. It also smelled AWFUL, like sewage and chemicals and rot. Abbie and I had been chewing on gum this whole time and I remarked that it probably wasn't smart because all these particles of disease and "sick nast" floating around in the air were getting embedded in our gum and we were slowly ingesting them. I spit mine out, but she pressed on, unafraid.

There were a few dry sections and areas with more hospital artifacts like signs or medical supplies, but a lot of that stuff was long gone. It's too bad, really. The artifacts are my favorite part because you can figure out what the rooms were used for, what they would have looked like, etc. It's like solving a little mystery and feeling connected to the building because you can picture it in its pristine condition.







I'd seen pictures online of people who'd gotten up into the clocktower area and I really wanted to make it there, too. We went to the seventh floor and found an unfinished area that clearly led up. It wasn't a normal staircase, though, but a series of metal and wooden ladders leading through wooden cutouts onto progressively smaller wooden platforms. Abbie made it up two or three of them to the actual clock level before saying it was all ridiculous bullshit and she was going to hang out right there for awhile.

She was cracking me up so hard with her comments like that. Like she would say it was stupid and awful, but then keep going up the ladder anyway like a trooper. I went one higher onto the gazebo-style level where I could see the Cleveland skyline, and she stayed down below to smoke a cigarette. I asked her to be careful to not catch anything on fire because the last thing we needed was to burn down the abandoned hospital when we were inside the very top of it. There are a lot of last things we needed.



The other place I really wanted to see was this theater/auditorium I'd seen online. I knew which part of the building it was from the outside, but we couldn't quite figure out which hallway or floor would take us there from the inside. We went back down to the dark first floor and over to the side where the theater should connect. It was pitch black in the hallway and for some reason it started to seem really creepy and we were getting freaked out. Abbie did not want to go down the hallway, but I convinced her. I just kept nudging her and saying things like, "Stick right by me, we'll be fine. Don't leave me here in the dark by myself," and she reluctantly came along, making plenty of hilarious, "This is such stupid bullshit nonsense" comments.

The theater was so great! It was big with rows and rows of red seats. Of everywhere in the hospital, this area was most intact, from the upholstery to the carpet to the projection screen. It was also almost completely dark except for outlines of light coming from the boarded up backstage doors. I put my camera on a long exposure setting and we took some fun cloning pictures with our flashlights, and then a couple of the theater itself.







We'd been exploring for three or four hours at this point and had seen pretty much the whole hospital, so we headed out. Every so often on the upper floors, we would pop our heads out the window to make sure our pathetic little ladder was still there so we'd be able to get back OUT of the building. I brought my climbing rope and carabiner, just in case, but our ladder remained undisturbed and we just climbed down rather than propelling. We stopped at a drive-through on the way back to Akron and I was munching on my French fries when I looked down at my hands and realized I was incredibly dirty from this place and was probably eating all sorts of disease and mold particles. We were starving, though, so we tried not to think about it.



The whole day was great and I'm so glad Abbie came with me, because I wouldn't have had the guts to go alone. She really was a trooper and a good sport for all my ridiculousness. It was also nice to get to use my new camera on a big project like this. I was a dummy and kept shooting into the sunlight, resulting in a bunch of huge, white, blown-out squares. I also sucked at taking level shots. Almost everything was tilted right or left and I had to correct it (or try to correct it) in Photoshop to make the horizon straight, but a lot of them are still off. It was a good learning experience, though.

I put a whole batch of pictures up on Flickr!
Make sure you check out the pictures of the ladder. It was a gem.

So I'm moving to Columbus.

I had a very informal interview with WCBE on Monday where they showed me around, introduced me to everyone, explained their basic mission and asked when I wanted to start. I'll be a news intern and start out doing rewrites of AP copy, going out to various city meetings and recording them and cutting out soundbites, and basically assisting the reporters with whatever they want me to do. They have two other interns right now, but one is leaving at the end of the summer, so it'll be me and this other kid. He's been there for a year and was telling me he got to do a few of his own enterprise pieces, like coming up with an idea for a story, getting it approved, doing interviews, voicing the story and producing the whole thing. That's ultimately what I want to do, and what I need to have on a resume CD, so it'll be nice to have that opportunity once I've been there for awhile.

Everyone at the station is really great. In the couple days before the interview, I started to worry it wouldn't be what I was looking for, but I liked it a lot. There are actually two NPR stations in Columbus, this one and WOSU, which is affiliated with Ohio State University. WOSU seems a lot like WOUB (where I used to work down at school) because they have an FM station, an AM station and a PBS television station. CBE is a lot smaller with only the FM station, but they have more listeners and outdo OSU in the rankings by four or five places. That's pretty sweet. CBE also of course has less money because OSU has a huge funding grant from the university rather than relying as much on listener donations, underwriters, etc.

Overall, I think this is a good place for me. A lot of the people I met reminded me of guys I worked with at WOUB, and I kept trying to figure out which person at WCBE is which person at WOUB. You know what I mean? Like how the general manager at WCBE talked and even looked a little like the grants manager at WOUB. And one of the hosts/engineers at CBE is totally one of the music hosts at WOUB if he grew his hair out and put it in a ponytail. The woman who interviewed me reminded me a lot of my geologist aunt, so I don't know how that figures in.

Anyway, I decided I'd take the internship and told them I was planning to move down to Columbus in the next couple weeks, so I'd definitely be ready to start by the beginning of August (IS ANYONE ELSE FREAKED OUT THAT IT IS JULY?). I'd been waffling back and forth on this issue, too, because I didn't know if I wanted to actually sign a year lease and commit to spending a year in Columbus. I have things I've been working toward and planning on for a long time that I was hoping I could start to seriously pursue in the next four to six months, so it's hard to look at all of that and agree to push it back for a year. But then the night before my interview, I sat outside Amanda's apartment and thought about it for a long time and decided I would do it. After I left the interview, I called Samantha and told her I was in and we should start looking for somewhere to live. I'm still not sure about it, but I'm going to do it. Life is incredibly hard sometimes, you guys.

Sam has off work on Friday for the 4th of July weekend, so we made five or six appointments to look at apartments. I'm really concerned about the kitchens and she's really concerned about the bathrooms, but I think we'll find something we both like. It'll also be nice to live somewhere for an entire year. I started thinking about it last week and realized I've moved eight times in the last three years. Beginning in summer 2006, I spent the following: 3 months living at home, 6 months living in the dorms, 7 months living with Andy, 7 months living in the dorms, 3 months living in the blue house, 4 months living in the Netherlands, 6 months living with Rence and now this past 1 month living at home.



In non-major life decision news, Abbie and I are planning (for real this time) a grand adventure to an abandoned hospital this Sunday. I drove by and scoped it out last week to make sure it was still there and was accessible. It's both, but they're doing construction right next to it, which is why we're going on a Sunday morning during a holiday weekend so there won't be anyone working. It looks like this:



I have mace, a new camera and a flashlight that straps to my head.
I am excited as all hell.

Anna and I went out in Highland Square yesterday. We went to Annabelle's first, then to Thursday's where we played the worst game of pool ever. There was no cue ball, but two 3 balls so we used one of them as the cue. Then Anna scratched it and we picked the 10 as the new cue, then we scratched that. I noticed there were also two 9s, so one of those became the cue. It was a mess and we were awful anyway.

We sat outside and finished our beers and people had started getting up on the dance floor. We watched them for a little bit and then "Nothing Better" by The Postal Service came on and Anna convinced me to get up to dance, too. That's a hard song to dance to when you think about it, but we made it work and yelled the best lyrics to each other. Then they played "Paper Planes" and we pretended to shoot each other over and over, and they played some MGMT and Vampire Weekend and a few others in that vein. We were sweaty and gross and took a break for awhile, then got back up for one last song (that incredibly vulgar Peaches song that I'm sure you all know) and headed out. It was really nice to get out of my house and hang out with Anna and be around other people.

I drove her home and we sang "Right Away, Great Captain!" and then I went home and went to bed. I had a dream I was getting married. It was a few days before the wedding and there was a big party at my dad's house. My whole family was there and all these random people like the guys I used to work with at the radio station and our neighbors down the street, and everyone was so happy for my fiancée and me. I remember it so vividly. But the whole party I felt guilty and nervous because I knew we actually weren't going to get married and the whole wedding was going to be cancelled at the last minute because he couldn't marry me. And I didn't know when I should tell people and I had already wasted all this money, and I felt awful about letting everyone down because they were all so excited.

Then I dreamt I was babysitting all the little kids next door and trying to get them to take naps. I started playing "Never have I ever" with them, but saying things like, "Never have I ever ridden on a train," or "Never have I ever eaten asparagus" until they fell asleep.

My grandparents are over today, but Greg was at work, so my dad and I had lunch with them. My brother and I got our dad some books and a giftcard. He reads a lot of spy stuff, WWII and Soviet related books, or true crime non-fiction stuff, so Greg and I got him one spy novel, one crime memoir and Everything is Illuminated, which was Greg's suggestion. I think he'll like them. My grandparents asked me several times about being done with school and I don't have much to say about it. I really love my grandparents. I showed them my new camera and my grandfather was amazed at how clear the images were on the review screen. He said it two or three times: "I can't believe how clear those are!" Then we sat around and read the newspaper.

The littlest of the little kids next door just came over with a hula hoop and I tried to show him how to use it, but he's too little to even spin it on his arm. The hoop is about a foot taller than him, so I held it up and let him jump through it over and over.

Distractions:

-blueberry bagels and caramel lattes at Panera
-applying for two jobs
-new DSLR camera
-several episodes of Lost on the family desktop every night
-treadmill
-taking immaculate care of my fingernails
-new notebook
-peeling the sunburn off my left shoulder
-Crest Whitestrips

It's only been six days.

I semi-abandoned this little blog last month, and I apologize. And the only entry I did make was really depressing, I know, but things have been getting better.

Firstly, I actually WILL BE graduating. I didn't get any of the internships I applied for, even though I was a finalist for Third Coast and felt deep inside like they just had to pick me. I sat around feeling like a total failure for a couple weeks before finally going to talk to my adviser about it. Of course she was really wonderful and helpful. She wanted me to be able to get out of here and start my real life and job, so she said we could bend the rules a little and just count the years I worked at WOUB as my internship. I can't tell you how good I felt when I heard that. My dad was also quite pleased. He and my two aunts are coming down on the 13th for the commencement ceremony and to help me move out the rest of my stuff.

I don't have anything lined up in terms of a job or a post-grad plan, but I'm giving myself the first part of the summer to figure it out. I'm not looking for a full-time jobjob yet, but I've found a couple short term internships and fellowships that seem interesting. There's this 10-week paid newspaper internship out in Montana that I think about every day. I've always had an unexplainable love for Montana and have wanted to visit, and now seems like the best time to do it. In five years, going to Montana for a summer might not be a possibility, and it'll only get less likely after that. And I can't think like, "Oh, the next time around, I'll spend a summer in Montana," because this is the only life I'll ever get. So maybe Wolf Point, Montana, or maybe St. Paul, Minnesota, or maybe living at home forever.

I go back and forth a lot. I feel so incredible and happy and confident sometimes, like maybe things are falling into place and maybe I'm going to get everything I want. My eyes will start to well up just thinking about how wonderful my life could be. And then an hour later or a day later, I feel so lost and alone, like my life is on the verge of crumbling around me. And then I lay down and stare at the wall and my eyes well up because I don't know what to do or what's going to happen.

Horseback riding is going a lot better. Three weeks ago, the horse I normally ride wasn't feeling well, so Carol switched me to a new horse, Doc. Doc is great. He's 20, which is still old for a horse, but a decade younger than Kalanie. Doc loves to go fast and he's really responsive to my commands, so I feel like a good rider. When I tap and signal him to canter, he takes off! The first time we did that, I seriously thought I was going to get thrown off because he was moving so fast and I was bouncing around in the saddle like crazy. Everyone was laughing and it was so fun. After we canter a little and I whoa him into slowing down, he'll walk for a little bit, but then starts going a little faster and a little faster and tries to get up into the canter again-- like I won't notice or something. It's adorable and he's a really great horse.

I've been gone from Pita Pit for about two weeks and I hardly think about it anymore. It's spectacular. In the past couple months, working there had become a ridiculous ordeal, giving me a load of stress and anxiety I didn't need. When I turned in my two weeks' notice, Brad the owner was sort of confused and upset and we had a two-hour discussion about why I had to quit and separate myself from that place. He didn't try to convince me to stay, which I appreciated, and he tried to make it into a little heart-to-heart between the two of us. I went back and forth between being sincere and gracious for all the nice things he had to say, and laughing at him for his armchair psychology and over-the-top sentiments. He's a good guy.

As of today I'm done with Midday, and by the end of the week I'll be done with sign language, horses and 464. I have my Shakespeare final paper due next week and I'm hoping to continue my track record of straight Cs in that class. My media ethics class final is what I'm really excited about. We have to create our own personal ethical codes and present them in a creative manner and I knew IMMEDIATELY what I was going to do. Even though I'm broadcast, I'm going to make a "choose your own adventure" Web site. Each page will have a mini ethical dilemma and then say something like, "If you would report the story, click here!" or "If you would wait for more details, click here!" Each choice will take you a different page and say things like, "You got fired!" or "You missed the scoop!" depending on what you pick and I'll explain what the important ethical guideline was. We get to present them in class next week and I think it's going to be awesome and blow everyone's minds.

Today I have 12 more days.
Tomorrow it's 11.
Let's not waste them.

I'm going to visit my little brother in Chicago in a little over two weeks. I haven't been to Chicago in about three years, and I haven't ever been to see Greg at school since I was abroad when he started in the fall. I'm really excited.

Fri May 15
Depart COLUMBUS OH (CMH) at 12:15 PM
Arrive in CHICAGO MIDWAY (MDW) at 12:20 PM

Mon May 18
Depart CHICAGO MIDWAY (MDW) at 8:50 PM
Arrive in COLUMBUS OH (CMH) at 10:55 PM

I want to spend at least one day doing the sightseeing Chicago stuff like Millennium Park and the Lake Michigan beach because Greg hasn't spent a lot of time downtown and I really love that stuff. I'm sure we'll spend some time hanging around campus, but I'm still thinking of other stuff we can do. There aren't any shows that weekend that I'd be interested in seeing, but I'm sure we'll figure it all out.

I told Greg I'd just take the El from Midway to Northwestern when I get there and when I go back, even though it's a long trip. I just don't want to pay the cab fare. He seems really concerned about that, though, and keeps saying that I won't be able to figure it out. I know I'll be okay, and I reminded him I rode the subways in Belgium and Berlin where everything was in a foreign language and made it just fine. I've also been all over New York on the Subway and never been lost. I don't know why he's acting like I'm some kind of big dummy. Of course this means I'll probably end up in La Grange or something and have to call him for help.

I've been having these reoccurring dreams, or I guess they're nightmares really. I dream I have to go back to the Netherlands, and in the dream I get on the plane and I get there and everything is as bad as before. I have to go to the same school and live in the same awful room in that old woman's house. And I think about all the people I love that I've left behind and regret it all immediately. I wake up terrified and sweaty, and then so relieved. This happens several times a week.

Rence is going home this weekend and I'm going to be a lonely bunny in this apartment.

So the last two days I've been making fun of how crazy everyone's been acting about Swine Flu. Rence and I keep getting into these spirited debates/arguments where I say that it's just a slow news weekend and everyone kept reporting on the same story over and over so it seemed like Swine Flu was this big deal. And how the symptoms are the same as any other flu, and the treatment is the same as any other flu, and that everyone in the United States who has been diagnosed with it is either completely recovered or recovering with no complications. And then Rence pulls up some article online about people dying in Mexico or a map of all the different cases in the U.S. and argues that it is a BIG deal and we should be worried about getting it.

We agree to disagree.

Then I was producing Midday this morning and kept joking with my reporters and anchors that Swine Flu was only the first stage of the disease and that it progresses to Swine Fever and then Hog Cholera and then Pig Plague. All real things I found on the Internet. And we have a good laugh and somebody jokes that the girl who was late to class probably had Swine Flu, and I say I'm going to dress up as Swine Flu for Halloween and on and on. Then our reporter goes and talks to the Athens County Health Department and the guy there says everyone is blowing things waaaaaay out of proportion and you should just wash your hands and cover your mouth when you sneeze and stay away from sick people. This makes me feel satisfied that I am correct in my views on the non-emergency status of Swine Flu.

I finish my classes and go to work. And when I get home, I start feeling SO SICK. My head hurts and I'm achey and weak all over and I feel hot and my stomach is all messed up. I drank a bunch of water, took aspirin and vitamins, ate an orange and I still feel awful.

And all I can think is that I better not ACTUALLY have Swine Flu because I can't let Rence be right.

Hello Internet. I'm doing great.

Horseback riding class is the best therapy. My horse's name is Kelanie (prounounced Ka-la-ney) and he's thirty years old. Carol, our instructor, explained that a horse's life expectancy is only twenty years, but he's a really strong, durable horse and has made it another decade longer. He's small and brown with a big white stripe down the front of his face between his eyes. He's a real sweetheart. Because he's so old, he's very chill and very safe, which is what attracted me to him. We've done walking and trotting the last two classes, and we also do the saddling and bridling beforehand.

Kelanie is a great trotter and Carol had everyone watch us trot as an example and I really love when we can get up to a good speed. The last two weeks when we were done riding and were working on the brushing and grooming before we put the horses away, Carol came up to me and said, "Good job out there today!" which was nice of her. I get nervous around the horses sometimes, and horses can tell things like that and will try to misbehave, so I think she's trying to help me be more confident so I can be a better rider.

Thanksgiving in April was a week ago and I'm still eating leftovers for lunch. We're down to only three tiny tupperwares, though, so it's getting better. Rence, as I mentioned in the toast I gave before dinner, actually hates Thanksgiving, so he's been no help in devouring any of it. The meal itself last week was so great, though. It was a little chaotic in the hours and minutes leading up to dinnertime, but I love having everyone together, especially the people I don't hang out with on a regular basis but are still my close friends. Sam's sister Jaime came down for the weekend and she's the Thanksgiving QUEEN, so she gave me lots of good advice on cooking the turkey, making the gravy from scratch (rather than from a mix like I was going to), and timing everything out so it would be ready at more or less the same time. The best part was how everyone else got so into it, too, and brought food and seemed so excited to be there. Thanksgiving in April might be the best idea I've ever had.









Yesterday was a gorgeous 80 degrees with enough wind to keep it bearable. Amanda and I put on our shorts and tank tops and went out to Stroud's Run to enjoy the sun. "You're going to see the beekeeper outfit," she said, since she's so pale with freckles, red hair, the whole nine. She brought her 60 spf and I brought my 45 and we both tanned, but didn't burn. I've gone my entire life not really caring about being tan and never making an effort to get sun, but now I'm excited about the idea. Just looking at myself in the mirror this morning I could tell that I looked darker and somehow that translated to looking better and healthier. I'm also so glad to be over my fear of wearing shorts, skirts and dresses in public. What a weird kid.

I don't know what it is exactly, maybe the horses or the sunny weather or my shiny bicycle or the short stories I'm writing in my head when I walk to class, but I feel great about everything lately. And I feel like I say this in almost every post, which makes me even happier that it's a continuing feeling. Like even though work sucked hard this weekend, and I have looming deadlines and early classes in school, and my friends have problems and I have problems. A grand sense of calmness and lightness come over me from time to time. I feel happy, and I feel hopeful and I feel like I am so close to something great.

We are one week away from Thanksgiving in April. If you don't remember from last year, I was sitting at my old job one day, feeling bored and kind of sad, and I had this brilliant flash. Thanksgiving is the best holiday of the year because it has the best food. But you only get to have it once a year, and usually the experience is marred by family dysfunction. So let's have another Thanksgiving, but in April where you make all the same delicious food and eat it with your friends and have a great time.

Last year we had it at Nick's house, but I bought almost all of the food and supplies and it ended up costing me at least $150. This year Rence and I are having it at our house (to his mild annoyance), and I'm delegating dishes to everyone, so each person just buys the ingredients for the dish he or she is making. I'm still doing the turkey, sweet potatoes, broccoli casserole, gravy and stuffed mushrooms, but I've given up doing any desserts or any of the other side dishes. I seriously can't tell you how excited I am about this whole big celebration, and it seems like everyone else is excited, too. Usually I have these "great ideas" and everyone else thinks they're kind of lame, but this is one of the few things that my friends have all embraced as much as I hoped they would. It's a lot of work and prep and organization, but I really love it.

In other news, I've become obsessive about my dental hygiene since I got my wisdom teeth out two weeks ago. Like, I always brush my teeth and usually use mouthwash, and floss maybe once a week when the mood strikes me. But right after I had my teeth out, the back of my mouth was really sore and tender, so I wasn't brushing the far back teeth as well as usual because I didn't want to rip my stitches out and bleed all over the place. But that meant those molars in the back weren't getting the brushing they normally get, and one on my left side started to hurt a little like I was getting a cavity. That tooth is still sore and I can feel it pulsing when I drink anything too hot or too cold, so I've been trying to take good care of it. That means I'm brushing, flossing and rinsing with Crest Pro-health three times a day (to the point that it's kind of ridiculous) and watching any sticky/sugary stuff I'm consuming. I think all the cleaning is affecting my taste buds, though, because everything I eat tastes vaguely of rubbing alcohol.

Midday producing at 8:30 tomorrow morning. Ready Freddie.

We're going to live like kings.

That's what I told Rence when I came back from spring break, and we are. On the homefront, I brought down a set of four wooden chairs for our dining room and it makes the apartment look like people actually live here. We also found out where the hot water heater was under the porch and flipped it up a notch. I'm still waiting to have a really wonderful hot shower, but they've definitely been better than the last couple months. I'm very sad to think that we only have another couple months here. I love this little house.

My classes for this final quarter are making me really happy. Shakespeare's comedies on Mondays and Wednesdays is really fun because the professor is so great. Anna and I are in it together, and we agreed she's the kind of teacher who makes you want to work really hard and be awesome so she'll like you and know you're a good student. The only downside is that we had to buy a big volume of the complete works of Shakespeare and lug it back and forth to every class. On Tuesdays through Fridays I have sign language, and it's so amazing; I love it more and more all the time. I sit up front and sometimes I forget a lot of things from last year when I took sign language one, but I love remembering certain signs and learning more about the "grammar" of ASL. I have a mini-epiphany almost every class just thinking about the nature of language and how words are used together.

I have media ethics class with Amanda on Tuesdays and Thursdays, along with almost every other graduating senior journalism student. Mary, my advisor, is our professor and of course she's awesome. We spend almost the entire class in discussions, which gets annoying, to be honest. There are seventy or so people in the class, so the discussions always get off track and everybody ends up saying the same couple things over and over. Mary is trying to make the class high-tech and gave us blogging assignments to write in our class blog about various ethical dilemmas we talk about. She also spent the first class explaining how Twitter works so everyone in the class could get an account and Tweet using our class hashtag to comment on discussions.

The thing is, I totally love Mary after working with her in Midday the last couple quarters and having her as my advisor, and she's trying really hard to be tech savvy and bring in these new media tools. But she's always a step and a half behind on things, and I cringe a little when she explains something incorrectly or just shows a technical ignorance in front of the class. I want everyone in there to love and respect her as much as I do, but I worry people think she's too focused on broadcast (because she always uses examples from when she was in the TV business) and basically un-hip. Whatever. Amanda and I have a lot of fun whispering to each other in the back of the room, and I really like reading all the different ethical case studies in our book.

The first horseback riding class was Thursday afternoon, but we just signed a bunch of papers saying we wouldn't sue the horse farm if our fingers get chomped off or our toes get stomped on. This week we actually go out to the farm and learn about saddling and bridling the horses, and then next week we start actually riding the horses. I'm so excited, horses, horses, etc.

Oh god! And I got this amazing haircut and my stylist showed me what products to use and how to style it so I can let it be curly, but it won't frizz out. I've always kind of hated my hair because it was unmanageable and there's so much of it, but now everything is different. I really think it changed my life. Okay, maybe not quite that extreme, but it's made me feel incredible. I told Rence, "It's like my hair had all this potential and I didn't know it, but now I realize how great my hair really is and how much I love it. And it's like my whole life has all this potential and maybe I didn't realize it, but now I do! And things are going to be different from now on."

And Rence said, "Remember that time you got a haircut and suddenly had a huge ego?"

We are going to live like kings.

I've been thinking a lot about my life these last few days when I've had the time. I feel confident about a lot of things, unsure about a few, but I'm feeling good about the future.

If I could plan it all out for myself, this is what I want to happen. I want to finish my classes in June and move to Chicago. I want to work as the Third Coast intern part time for free and also work at The Gap or something part time for money. I want to spend all summer listening to radio documentaries and learning what makes them good or bad. I want to learn everything there is. I want to make videos about the selection process and embed them in blog posts for their web site and I want to Twitter their Tweets. I want to stay there through December so I can be in the same city as my brother when he goes back to school. I want to move to New York in January and be the TAL intern. I want to work twelve hours a day and sleep five hours a night and kick ass in every way. I want to come in on the weekends to work more and bake blueberry muffins on Sunday nights for Monday mornings. I want to live with Lauren and her roommates and she can make sure my hair looks good. I want to have the greasiest diner food delivered for midnight dinners and I want to dip everything in ketchup, even the eggs and the toast. I want to ride my bike in the middle of the street and pretend I don't hear people honking at me.

I know this is probably not all going to happen, but it's all at least possible. And I like to think about it.

My brother has an idea for a new play and I have an idea for how to make it better. He was thinking of making it about people who work at a newspaper, but now I'm thinking of making it about people who work at a television station. In either event, it's about people who feel like their worlds are crumbling around them and time is running out to do the things they want to do. Also, it's a romance. He and I can write it from our separate cities in our separate states. I'm really excited about this idea, and about the idea of writing something else. I already have an ending in my head, but of course we need to discuss it. We also need some suggestions for character names; it's so much harder than you think to come up with good ones!

I get to start horseback riding in six days.
Today is Lauren's 22nd birthday. I love her.