46 days and counting

Mood: OMG!

Happy thought: Job interviews

Over spring break I had a phone interview for a position I applied for with Alpha Phi Omega, the community service group I'm involved with on campus. It's a nationwide organization headquartered in Independence, Missouri with chapters all over the US (and even some in the Philippines - exciting, right?).

Anyway, I've been anxiously waiting for news from that job and have been glued to my phone and computer since the phone interview.

On Mondays and Wednesdays I only have one class and, naturally, I got the phone call right when my class got started. The gal left a voicemail and I had no idea what to do.

Was I about to sit there for the rest of class, wondering what that message said? I had already waited like two weeks, what was another hour? Then again, I HAD already waited two weeks, so should I put myself through more torture?

But what if the message said they were going to go a different direction? Could I handle that news and be able to compose myself for the rest of class? And what if I got the job? Could I handle THAT news and be able to compose myself for the rest of class? I feel like I would have cried either way.

I decided that two weeks of waiting was more than enough, so I snuck off for a couple of minutes to check my voicemail. The gal sounded chipper right off the bat, so that was encouraging.

I wasn't offered the job. But I didn't NOT get the job, either. Instead, I was offered an in-person, face-to-face interview with the national office staff in Independence, Missouri for a couple of weeks from now.

So, yes, more waiting. BUT - an out-of-town, face-to-face interview? C'mon. That's pretty awesome.

48 days and counting

Mood: happy :)

Happy thought: my roomie

Today was a big day in the household. My roommate, Camie, officially decided to attend Iowa State University in the fall for grad school. She's doing a two-year master's program in English. I'm super excited for her that 1) she's done with the GRE 2) she got in 3) she finally decided what she wanted to do.

So she's moving to Ames sometime soon. I'm considering going with her. If I get the job I'm up for, I'll be able to live anywhere I like, so it makes sense just to stay with her, and if I don't end up with a job, it still makes sense to stay with her. So, either way, it seems I'll be going too.

We're excited. Mostly because we're both itching to get the heck out of this apartment.

50 days and counting

Mood: OMG! HALFWAY!
Happy thought: dancing!

Each spring, my fraternity (Alpha Phi Omega) hosts a formal. So, basically, an APO prom. More or less, anyway. We get dressed up and dance like the crazy white people we are, but we have considerably less drama than most proms I've heard of (... usually, anyway).

Tonight was my last formal since I'll be graduating, so that was kind of sad. I ended up bringing two friends from the Iowa State chapter of APO, Curtis and Derek, as my dates and whenever they're around everybody has fun, so it was pretty awesome. And they're great dancers. So that's even better.

Everything was going really well until a friend of mine, Bananas (no, that's not her born name), fell and dislocated her KNEE CAP! It was so weird. She was dancing one minute and the next she was on the floor with a distorted knee.

Two years ago, I was an RA in the first-year residence halls and had some pretty extensive training with handling a variety of situations. They must have really trained me well because I instantly went into RA-mode and called security. The officers came, determined she needed an ambulance, and off she went with a couple of friends to the ER.

Within an hour she was back in her apartment with a huge knee brace and some pain meds.

Never a dull moment, friends. Never a dull moment.

51 days and counting

Mood: exhausted
Happy thought: walking for a cause

Each year, Drake hosts Relay For Life , an all-night walk/fundraiser for cancer research. I've attended every year but I've never made it all the way through the night. I usually wimped out around 3am and dragged myself home.

But this year I finally did it. I walked almost the entire time and now I kind of want to die, but I'm really proud of myself anyway. Relay is a great thing to be a part of and a really wonderful cause.

Generally, it's a fun event. You know, it's as fun as cancer fundraisers can be. There is always a really heavy portion of the night when survivors or caretakers get up and tell their sad stories. There's never a dry eye in the room after that.

One gal talked about losing her brother to cancer and I just couldn't handle hearing that at all and ended up crying like an idiot for about an hour, but it's ok. I'm not ashamed.

Aside from that, there was some light-hearted entertainment like African acrobats, the Drake improv comedy team, a couple bands and the Treble Makers (Drake women's a capella group).

Was it smart of me to stay all night? Well, considering I'm not at all recovered from the hideous cold I picked up in Vegas, pulled an unnecessary all-nighter two nights ago, and have APO formal this weekend... no, probably not smart.

But you know what? We only live once. I can sleep when I'm dead. Which I realize might be sooner than I expect if I don't take good care of myself. But at the end of the day I think it was worth it, so I suppose that's what matters.

52 days and counting

Mood: happy
Happy thought: Chocolate chip pancakes

You know, I feel tremendously guilty for getting excited when a professor is too sick to have class. I mean, that's terrible. I don't want my professors to be sick (well, most of them, anyway). But sometimes I sure do need a catch-up day.

53 days and counting

Mood: frustrated
Happy thought: goldfish

I went to Vegas and came home horribly sick. I'm about 73% convinced I have a legitimate allergy to cigarette smoke, which caused some horrible cough and congestion situation. That's slowly resolving itself, but the infection is now moving into my ears.

I used to get ear infections all the time, but never quite this badly. If I had to put a percentage on it, I'd say my hearing is at about 20%. My right ear is considerably worse than my left one, but between the two I'm practically deaf.

I can't hear myself type; I can't hear other students talking in class; I can't hear the person on the other end of my phone when someone calls; I can't even hear my signal ticking in my car. It's ridiculous.

And I want it to stop.

54 days and counting

Mood: anxious
Happy thought: gainful employment

Alrighty, so if you read regularly you know that I had a job interview last week while I was in Vegas for a position with Alpha Phi Omega - a national community service fraternity I'm involved with on campus.

Today I received an email saying that the decision is being pushed back another week so I should hear back after next Tuesday.

On one hand, I'm thrilled. Because if they didn't want me, they wouldn't keep me on the edge like this. They'd just push me over, right? Surely I'd know if I was no longer be considered. So that's the good news.

The bad news, of course, is that I have another week to wait. And it's killing me just a little bit. I've sent a couple dozen job applications out into the virtual void and haven't really cared too much about most of them, but THIS is the one I can't get out of my head.

My fingers are tired from being crossed all the time... but if that's what it takes, then that's what it takes.

55 days and counting

Mood: tired
Happy thought: lights at the end of tunnels

Today was the first day back to school from break. I only have one class on Mondays and it's a capstone class so it's only seniors, so the professor definitely pointed out our shortage of weeks left. She might have gotten a bit emotional about it since she's known most of us as writers and students (including me) since we were freshman.

That moment made things incredibly real. Like... I've always been aware of graduation, obviously. But being on the other side of break is insane. It's all going to go so quickly. The last three and a half years have been the "click-click-click" up the roller coaster and now we're plummeting.

But, much like a roller coaster, it's terrifying and fun and, in the end you walk away totally fine even if you convinced yourself you were going to die.

So I'm looking up :)

56 days and counting

Mood: not ready for school
Happy thought: coming home to a clean apartment

In retrospect, it was probably a poor choice to spend my WHOLE break go-go-going without any downtime whatsoever, because now I get to start school again tomorrow six as a dog and completely exhausted.

Whatever. We only live once, right?

57 days and counting

Mood: ready to go home
Happy thought: going home

I don't really know what happened today. It's allllll running together. Something about my roommate's birthday and going back to her house in MN and meeting a large amount of family members...

Something like that...

58 days and counting

Mood - groggy beyond all reason
Happy thought - origami

Last night in Vegas. Suuuuuper tired. My roommate turned 21 at midnight, but two of the three of us are pretty sick, so we didn't do much of anything.

We went out in the hotel after midnight to go to a bar to get her a drink, but most of them were ridiculously expensive. So, after about an hour of walking, we decided to have a cosmo sent up to our room.

Yeah, there was kind of a lot of vodka in that. My roommate had like two sips, I drank maybe 1/3 and her fiance downed the rest. Between being totally exhausted from our trip and the fact that none of us drink and therefore have no tolerance whatsoever, the alcohol pretty much made us pass out immediately.

We didn't even gamble. Although, we hit the arcades all day that day. We probably dropped $50 between the three of us. We just went from hotel to hotel playing in arcades. It was sweet. And, let me tell you, my roommate cleaned up. She hit a couple of jackpots and won several hundred tickets.

The downside, of course, to arcades (as opposed to casinos) is that you win STUFF, not necessarily money. Then you have to carry the stuff around with you all day. And, naturally, all the stuff is super stupid and cheap and you probably could have gone somewhere to buy all of it and spend half as much money as you spent playing the games in the first place.

But we had fun, so that's what's important.

59 days and counting

Mood - tired
Happy thought - home. crappy apartment and all

I will never again take for granted the ban on public smoking in Iowa and Colorado. Vegas needs to get on board pronto. Not that I don't love second-hand smoking eight packs a day.

60 days and counting

Happy thought - waterfalls
Mood - optimistic

This morning I had my phone interview for a job I'm up for. Generally, I find I interview pretty well. I'm able to have conversations with people and present myself in a good like, I think. I'm pretty social, so I can usually carry on a conversation with pretty much anybody.

Phone interviews are a bit harder just because you can't read body language, it's easy to end up talking over one another and harder to hear sometimes.

So.. there's definitely potential to be a bit awkward.

But I think it went well anyway. I did, in fact, talk over the gal a couple of times, but not too bad, I don't think. The official decision is going to be made next week, and I'm beyond excited.

The job is with Alpha Phi Omega, the national community service fraternity I'm involved with on campus. I would be a field representative and travel all over the country visiting chapters helping with leadership training and rechartering dead chapters and that sort of thing.

The more I think about it, the more excited I get. So I think maybe the trick is to put it out of my mind for a while. Otherwise I'm going to drive myself crazy. Good thing I'm in Vegas with lots of distractions.

61 days and counting

It's been a thoroughly exhausting day. This morning, the three of us went to Mandalay Bay to see the shark reef and aquarium which was very, very cool. There were all sorts of cool aquarium-y things there like jellies, rays, SEA TURTLES (OMG!), and some of the most amazing tropical fish in the world.

Then we went to the MGM Grand to have lunch at The Rainforest Cafe. The Rainforest Cafe in Colorado closed some time ago, so I was really excited to go back. I've been talking about it pretty obsessively for a few weeks now. I'm sure my roommate loved that.

If you've never been to a Rainforest Cafe, I'll be sure to post pictures after I get back to DSM so you can see it. Needless to say, I would very much like my house decorated this way.

Then we went to the Bellagio to check out the conservatory. There's this gorgeous indoor garden that's constantly changing based on the season or big holidays and that sort of thing. I've seen it several times and it has always been different, but I've never seen it look more beautiful than it did today. Again, pictures to come. But it was SO spring-like and happy. There were bright colors and massive butterflies hanging off the ceiling and it was just glorious to look at after the bleak grey of winter.

We also milled around The Paris hotel and scoped out the Eiffel Tower. We'll probably go up to the top while we're here. We also cut through Bally's, Harrah's, and The Excalibur. Admittedly, these places MAKE you cut through them. A bunch of them are connected for one thing and you'll have to walk through more than one to get to the street. Or, as is more commonly the case with us on this particular trip, we're riding the monorail to get around and the stations are hidden deep in the back, making us go through all the shops and casinos first.

Don't think that was an accident.

Tonight we went to see the AMAZING Blue Man Group. I've seen them once before and totally loved every minute of it and I felt the same way after seeing them again, despite the fact that their show didn't seem to have changed very much. It's beautiful to look at, amazing to hear, and the energy that radiates from the performance and the audience is incredible. Go see them sometime.

We turned in a bit early because my PHONE INTERVIEW (omg!) is tomorrow morning at 10am Iowa/Missouri time, which is a whopping 8am Veagas time.

In other news - graduation is exactly two months from TODAY!

62 days and couting

Mood: Tired
Happy thought: BALCONIES!

It seems like whenever I travel anywhere it takes all day. I could go from DSM to Denver, a flight that doesn't even take 1.5 hours, and still spend all day traveling. I don't get it.

Today we left my roommate's house in MN at 9:45 to make the 1.5 hour drive to the airport. We stopped for a bite to eat at Cracker Barrel along the way and made it to the airport at 1. Our plane was delayed 10 minutes, so we took off around 3:10 and flew to MILWAUKEE...

For anybody who isn't so sharp with the geography, I'd like to point out that Milwaukee is very much the opposite direction of Vegas. So... that's stupid.

Anyway, it was a tiny flight to Milwaukee and we landed to find out that our connecting flight had been delayed two hours, and was now departing at 6:10. And, I didn't realize this before, but the Milwaukee to Vegas flight is almost 4 hours. Luckily, due to the delay, Frontier let us watch our little personal TVs for free.

So we landed in Vegas at 8:30ish, I think. But that's local Vegas time, so that's really 10:30 Minnesota time. Grand total of 12 hours.

I smell.

But, in other news, the condo we're staying out is INCREDIBLE. It has a gorgeous night view of The Strip off the 39th floor. It'll be amazing if I ever eave the balcony.

63 days and counting

The summer before I left for college my mom got be all involved in re-runs of Little House on the Prairie on the Hallmark Channel.

It's a pretty cheesy show and definitely merits the Halmark name since I can't get through an episode without crying. I'm not complaining, of course. I kind of love that show. It's definitely one of those guilty pleasure sorts of things.

Anyway, I became pretty involved in the show (so if you ever want to talk about anything Laura Ingalls sometime, I'm your girl).

The family lives in a town called Walnut Grove, but from time to time they have to go to Mankato for supplies and stuff and guess what I did today!?

I WENT TO MANKATO! Haha. I was just so tickled that it actually existed. Sadly, there were no horse-drawn buggies and I didn't see Charles Ingalls anywhere.

64 days and counting

Mood: Tiiiiired
Happy thought: Butterfly gardens!

Today we went to the Mall of America, which, as it turns out, is MASSIVE. Go figure.

We walked the entire thing (and I am therefore totally pooped). I didn't buy much - just some awesome turtle socks I found. But, we did get our picture taken with Patrick and Spongebob AND went to the butterfly garden (which was also in the mall) where a butterfly landed on my face.

Most. Amazing. Thing. Ever.

65 days and counting

Mood: Antsy
Happy thought: Glorious weather

Today starts our spring break extravaganza! Tonight my roommate and I are leaving for Minnesota to spend the weekend at her house and hit up the Mall of America, and then on Monday we're off to Vegas!!

I'm super excited just to have some time off from school. This won't be a relaxing break... in fact, I fully expect it to be the opposite and be quite exhausting... but it's ok. Because we all have to have a little fun sometimes.

My roommate has also never been on a plane before and I'm excited to be the one who gets to take her on her first. Actually, she'll have two planes because we have to make a connection on our way to Las Vegas.

I've traveled and flown quite a lot so it's always interesting to me to meet people who have gone their whole lives without flying anywhere.

Should be fun!

66 days and counting

Mood: EXCITED!
Happy thought: Putt-putt golf

I have some really exciting news! I've been offered a JOB INTERVIEW! Last week I applied for a job at the APO national office in Independence, Mo. They're looking for a field representative to travel all around the country helping chapters with leadership development and that sort of thing.

Totally sounded amazing to me!

So I did the application and now I've been offered an interview for Wednesday! I can't wait. I usually do well during interviews, so I'm really excited :)

Keep you fingers crossed for me!

67 days and counting

Mood: happy
Happy thought: colorful thumbtacks

I've been doing all sorts of stress management things lately. What can I say? Stress is kind of everywhere. For the most part I feel about 1,000 times more at ease. I'm calm and collected and even when I feel my brain slipping into freak out mode, I can usually steer myself back into a stable state of mind.

Today I was talking to someone about my stress and I was talking about not knowing what to expect post-Drake and things like that. He told me that just because I'm graduating doesn't mean I have to cut all of my ties to everybody and everything I have now.

In fact, there are loads of alumni who still come around... all the time. It's like they never left.

I know a couple of people like that and, to be honest, I don't want to be like them. Some contact is good, I think... too much is just creepy and leaves me wondering when these guys are going to just move on with things.

Still, it was really very comforting to hear that things don't have to change THAT much. I can still keep Drake and my friends in my life. I can still have everything I want in my life. My slate doesn't have to be wiped totally clean. I'm totally in control of all of that.

Deep down I knew it all along, but it was good to hear it out loud.

68 days and counting

Mood: happy :)
Happy thought: rain drops on my window

Today I was in class, discussing a sci-fi novel we're reading. I was paying attention the best I could, fighting afternoon drowsiness, trying not to be distracted by the dense fog out the window that made campus disappear little by little, struggling to focus on anything but the virus in my stomach...

That's when the professor mentioned Star Trek. I snapped out of my stupor immediately. He didn't just mention Star Trek, he happened to casually mention how awful he found the new movie to be.

That's right - AWFUL!

He went on about how Spock was all emo and could feel stuff and how it was totally unbelievable (THAT'S the unbelievable part of Star Trek?... ok). He couldn't get in much of an argument because several of us (me included) were quick to defend JJ Abram's intergalactic amazingness.

It was all I could do to stop myself from getting up and walking out of class.

Then we circled back to the topic somehow and he was about to make a crack at Data, from The Next Generation, but I stopped him before he was able to say something he'd regret.

... Don't think I won't remember this on evaluation day...

69 days and counting

Mood: eh
Happy thought: finding a song you totally forgot you had on iTunes

Spring Break is approaching quickly (YAY!!!!) and I'll be going to Minnesota and Vegas with my roommates. Well, one is my roommate the other is her fiance. I call him my roommate-in-law.

Anyway, I'm excited. It's her 21st birthday that week so it should be a lot of fun.

But I can't help be a bit bummed out that I'm not going home. I haven't seen my family since January and knowing I won't see them until May just sucks. I've been a bit homesick lately.

I have a giant mural of mountains on my wall and sometimes I'll just sit and stare at it for a couple of hours. Like if I just stared hard enough I could wake up the next morning in Colorado.

The homesickness is probably a result of a variety of things - the long winter with no sunshine, the stress of school, the fact that my parents are prepping the house I lived in for 12 years to sell, and obviously missing my family quite a lot.

They're excited I'm going to Vegas, too. I don't really do things like that and they want me to "cut loose" and have some fun before I have to be a real adult. But, still... I can't help but wish I could have gone home, too.

70 days and counting

Mood: Giggly
Happy thought: Clean laundry

Wow, I've noticed a lot of class-choosing Facebook statuses the past week. Guess the new classes have been posted...

Shame I don't have to worry about that ;)

71 days and counting

Through my involvement with Alpha Phi Omega, the campus service fraternity, I sometimes help out with events for Boy Scouts. This weekend I'm volunteering at Merit Badge University where boy scouts come from all over the state (in this case to University of Iowa in Iowa City) and complete a variety of badges.

Drake hosted one a couple of years ago, but it wasn't nearly as big as this one. Here we have more than 1,500 scouts and 100 APO volunteers. It's insane.

Anyway, I was assigned to teach the Chemistry badge with a girl from the University of Iowa. Now, I'm a journalism and English major. So... the last time I had anything to do with Chemistry was probably six or so years ago.

Naturally, I simply assumed the U of I gal I was with had a science background and I could just be her little helper for the day.

Not so.

As it turns out, she's an English major, too. So there we were, two English majors, attempting to muddle through middle school-level chemistry, being shown up left and right by some high school boys who were actually IN chemistry.

Sadly, I had actually helped with the Chemistry badge at Drake two years ago. But my friend Ryan, a pharmacy student who had been around the chemistry block a time or two, did the teaching part. I got to be the clean-up helper/Vanna White assistant. And I am by no means complaining. Because while he explained the transfer of electrons in a chemical reaction, I wiped down desks.

Unfortunately, I had to actually teach stuff this time and had little to no idea what I was talking about. I tried and tried and tried to remember anything of what Ryan said, but couldn't. Heck, I tried to remember anything of what ANYBODY had ever once told me about chemistry.

I gave up. After we fumbled our way through the badge requirements and several failed experiments, we watched Bill Nye The Science Guy instead.

72 days and counting

Mood: giddy
Happy thought: SUNSHINE!!!

I like to dance. A lot. Like a crazy person. Usually in my kitchen, barefoot, with my iPod in my ears.

My roommate works nights now and after spending an hour or so of veg time on the sofa, I spend the next couple busting a move to some pretty bad music.

Well, to be fair, I don't think it's bad music, but I'm sure I'd be made fun of for it. Not that I care, of course.

Anyway, I found out yesterday that intense physical exertion such as dancing is key to reducing stress and is 100% doctor-recommended.

So HA!

73 days and counting

Mood: annoyed.
Happy thought: finding money in old coats

A friend of mine asked me to go to a concert with her in Chicago on May 25th. The Glee cast is going on a baby tour and the closest they get to DSM is Chicago.

I couldn't commit to going. I think it annoyed her, and I felt badly about it.

It's not that I don't want to go, but my life is totally wide open after May 17th. It's one giant question mark. And, yeah, that kinda sucks, but I can't exactly help that right now.

I just don't think many people understand that I have literally NO idea what's happening after graduation.

74 days and counting

Mood: accomplished
Happy thought: Sudoku puzzles!!!

HAHA! Super challenging sudoku puzzle completed. Time: 2 hours, 21 minutes. Suck it, Will Shortz!

75 days and counting

Mood: Relieved that my internet connection seems stable enough to catch up on my blog...

So, along with my blog every day I think I'm going to start posting happy thoughts. I've been posting a "happy thought of the day" every day (sometimes more than once) via Facebook statuses for a while and people have been responding really positively to those. They will literally come up to me on campus and tell me that my happy thought from whatever day really made them smile. So that's cool.

Without further ado, today's happy thought: Adorable pictures of animals on the internet. I could waste hours online looking at those pictures.

Anyway, now let's get down to today's story.

A few years ago I was grocery shopping with my parents. We were in the produce section and they both became frighteningly excited over a particularly perfect white onion they found. They were positively delighted to have found such an exemplary vegetable. Then they found out that toilet bowl cleaner was on sale that week. Whoa, buddy.

I remember wondering to myself if that's what being an adult boiled down to - amazing finds in a bin of onions and 50 cents off toilet duck.

This memory came to mind as I was looking in my refrigerator today. For the past couple of days, my roommate and I have noticed a particularly heinous smell coming barreling out every time we open the door. It was near vomit-inducing as I actually gagged a couple of times.

I looked and looked and looked for the source, but couldn't find it at all. I took everything out of the fridge and sniffed each thing individually, but didn't find anything the least bit rank.

Today I decided that perhaps the refrigerator just needed a good washing down. Perhaps some yogurt spilled on the bottom and we couldn't see it anymore but it was going sour. Something like that.

So I emptied the fridge again (and smelled everything a second time - just to be sure) and washed the shelves and the sides and the bottom. Then my eyes fell on the vegetable drawer.

My roommate and I don't use the vegetable drawer. Partly because I don't remember the last time we had a vegetable in the place and partly because it blends really well with the rest of the fridge so most of the time we just don't notice it.

Well, I noticed it today.

I opened it, knowing without a doubt the hair-curling stink would be in there. To my surprise there were no forgotten vegetables in there at all. Rather 1/4 inch of water. Sludgy, grey water full of unimaginable, miscellaneous flakes of fridge funk.

I wanted to die when I pulled it out. My roommate was sitting at the kitchen table (eating, of all things... how she could eat with something so revolting in the room, I have no idea) just watching me do this, too, which I was really appreciative of.

I quickly poured the questionable gunk down the sink and washed and dried the drawer. I then reassembled the refrigerator (and freezer) and put everything back inside. My roommate, meanwhile, still didn't offer any help. Maybe I should get my own refrigerator and let her refrigerator rot in its own stink.

Anyway, the point is that finding and eliminating that smell was seriously the best part of my week. I am so thrilled to be rid of it. I would literally not eat sometimes because I knew I'd have to open the door. But that problem is gone now and I'm freakishly excited about it.

And thus I have concluded, I am an adult. In retrospect, I would most certainly have preferred the prize onion, but locating and eradicating sources of malodorous-ness seems to be a crucial adult skill, so maybe I'll just chalk this up to a learning experience .

76 days and couting

I have been able to go for a walk two days in a row now. TWO DAYS IN A ROW! Could it be? Could spring be sneaking in? I refuse to believe it. We're going to do that horrible yo-yo thing for a while where it'll be gorgeous and then crappy and then gorgeous again. But better than crappy 100% of the time so I'll take it!