I'm better now, I think. At least I'm not freaking out quite as much.

I have my immunization appointment, and I went in to the county building and got another state ID (I forgot to mention in the last post that I lost mine whoknowswhere). I've also been contacting the different agencies about the visa issue and there's actually some good news - I get an extra five days because it's only necessary that you have to enter the country before it expires, not leave.

So now the major freak out point is money. Because the future expenses keep adding up and I'm pretty sure I have enough in my checking account to cover it as long as there are no emergencies. But I'll have hardly anything when I'm done. It's actually really frightening.

Though it is making me even more determined to try to do the Korea thing. I'm about 95% certain now that, if they accept me, that's what I want to do next.

Maybe I'll feel a bit better tomorrow. Work (three more days!), then stopping at the mall (where I will not be buying anything, but I do have a B&N exchange and giftcard), a stop at a bank to see if I can finally get all my Euros exchanged, and then getting to see my camp friend and her friends! Not too bad, actually.

Christmas was good. Way too much food and too many presents, but everyone was happy and laughing. :)

Tomorrow I have to start work at 2:00 a.m. and I am not happy about this. I just have to remember that after that shift I'll only have five more days. I can do this, even though it will be painful.

Wait - when did it get to be 10:00?

Anyway... the U of M's Men's Basketball this year is good. Or at least, they are right now. It's still early.

And with everything from yesterday, I forgot my good news: only two more weeks of work! Of course I'm going to miss the money part of it, but January 3rd is the last day I'll have to get up at 3:15! Then I'll have a few weeks to spend in Minneapolis and getting everything together before I leave.

The other stuff from yesterday is still pretty horrible and won't be better for a long time. :(

Work today was kind of horrible today because every Thursday I'm there the "no truck" day becomes "no wait let's just have a truck" day. So we're already a bit understaffed for that, and then today of course we have to have the biggest truck I've ever had to work. Normally we're finished by 5:30 at the latest, but it took us until almost 7 this morning. Not fun.

BUT. I got my journal! Back in college I went on this crazy little art spree my last fall semester, so I went and found my art bag in the garage. I'm actually surprised at all of the stuff I had - acrylic paint, fingerpaint, calligraphy ink and pens, colored pencils, charcoal, pencils, soft pastels, construction paper, plus all sorts of accessories. It's like Christmas. Only now I feel pressure because things are permanent and what if I mess up? It's mostly ridiculous, because I'm the only one who will see the mistakes, but still.

So now I guess I'm just stuck looking for inspiration enough to fill up 100 pages. Help?

I want to talk about some of this in more detail, but I've already crashed for the night so I'll just stick to the bullet points for now.

- Concerts - Some were great (Matt Nathanson), some weren't so much (Mraz, but this is mostly because of the venue).

- Argentina/South America - Is on for sure. I have my first ticket to leave on January 31, arriving early morning of February 2. I'll have a LOT of layover time, but I'll need it with stops in NYC and Panama. We're moving forward with the plans with the parents as well, and even though I'll be going around for five weeks, I'll really only have about a week and a half of that by myself.

- Last weekend was my dad's side of the family's Thanksgiving/Christmas all-in-one. The California family was flown in as a present to my grandma, so we all got to see the triplets and I wish I had taken pictures.

- Work is work. It's really not so bad, considering.

- Last night I was up throwing up in the bathroom until almost midnight. Now I'm really tired, and I think it was just a food poisoning thing, so hopefully one more day and I'll stop feeling the effects.

- Television - I watched the JDrama Hana-Kimi and fell in love with it. I'm now trying to go through the Taiwanese version. It's not quite as good, but still pretty entertaining. There are a lot of shows I want to talk about, but I'll save that for later.

- Korea - Does anyone know anything about Korea? Right now I think I'm leaning towards doing teaching there after summer. It would be totally new and different, but I feel like I still have quite a bit of research to do on it before I commit to even saying it's my next project.

That's all I can do right now. I need to start making better updates a bit more often, I think.

So apparently I won tickets to see Tegan & Sara on Saturday? Has anyone seen them live? How was it?

At least, I think I did. I'm too skeptical to just accept it, but everything seems to check out (I did enter, the email address is from the radio station's site, etc.). I think this is good, but holy crap I have a lot of concerts coming up. (Also, I bought Matt Nathanson and Mraz tickets for November. I so hopelessly addicted.

And other than that, orientation for work starts tonight. I guess it's good that I'm going to start making back some of the money I've been spending on concert tickets.

Watched DW. Cried a lot but kind of loved the last three episodes. The Agatha Christie stuff was genius. I was obsessed with her when I was in Junior High.

Also today I watched American Gladiators. I freaking loved that show when I was little, and I hate to say that I still find it way too amusing (even if no one can beat the old-school gladiators - at least they kept the same games).

One more full day of work, maybe some of Wednesday. Almost there. But I'm actually going to miss most of it.

'Animal study' quotes of the day :

"We learn about pole bera. The bear live in the north pole. They have war to be warm."

"Hamsters are nice but you have to be careful because they might chop your hand off."

"I would like to study a loin what would it eat and how to take care of it an how would yo feed it so I would know how to take care of a loin."

"One thing I want to know about them is that who trains them to be wild!" (Pumas)

"There are many different dogs but i like a chiwawa because a chiwawa listen and are to smart every time you tell them something they listen and they do it carefully."

So Teitur. Good concert. He played a really nice variety of old and new, and his and Helgi's accents and English were absolutely adorable. Jeneane's friend was there, and her comment was that they seemed "green behind the ears," and I think it's true. They didn't seem really rehearsed at all, but I think that made it even more lovely. As it was, there were only about a hundred people there, and we got to sit on this great couch, so I think the spontaneous quality of the show just added to it. I think what most surprised me, though, was that Teitur's voice sounded less soft than it does in "Poetry & Aeroplanes" and more like Colin Meloy. I wasn't expecting that. All in all I had a really good time, and Teitur, Helgi, and the rest of the band are really talented and can each play a ton of instruments.

Tomorrow is the beginning of my last week of work. Thursday morning I leave for Pittsburgh. Because I'm going to miss next weekend and a family celebration with my mother's family, we went to the Landscape Arboretum today so I could see my grandmother before I'm gone for the summer. It was a beautiful day and all the tulips were out, so it was nice.

I finally watched the Office finale, and I don't know what I think yet. I need to watch it again to process it. I also still haven't watched Doctor Who for a few weeks now, and I missed Friday's BSG because of the concert.

I'm trying to do themed mixes, and it's hard. I could always make it easier, but that's cheating. Oh well. It will get done (or not) when it gets done.

Quote of the day :

"My favorite place was Mexico. Because the money is cheap. Five dollars it ten dollars and one hundrend dollars is one thousand. And thats the reason i like Mexico."

Oh guys. Work is still going pretty well. I just realized that in one more week I'm done and I'm off to Pittsburgh. How strange. And in two and a half weeks it already MVO for camp. Weird.

That's all I've really got for today, so I've made up a game. Below you'll find words exactly as they were written in essays. Can you translate them into real words? ( Good luck!Collapse )

Today we started the 11th grade math stuff. It was alternating difficult and frustrating. And it takes us all so long that we'll be spending all tomorrow doing it. Stupid math. (Though really, in the end I really have re-learned a lot of stuff. Too bad I'm going to just lose it again.)

As soon as The Office is done I'm off to bed. I don't care that it's just after sunset, before 9:00. I'm dead tired.

Quote of the day :

"So therefore we should protect the species from danger and other things that might kill them, especially us because we are there number one people killing them." (Still 11th grade.)