IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT'S SNOOOOOOOOOOOWIIIIIIIIIIIING!!!

People! It is JANUARY! The 10th to be exact. And we finally have the puffy white wonderland I've been waiting for since December. I've had off-white Christmases before but there were usually leftover dirty piles of snow to remind me of how pretty it was the week before or a white New Year's to make up for it(Ma nature has really lousy timing). This year we had NOTHING. NADA. NILL. Until now.

It's snowing in my inbox (GMail is superior to all other e-mail providers. Disagree and I. Will. Fight you.) and snowing aggressively outside. We are talking flakes the size of throw pillows. Thankfully there's not driving wind so it just gets to float slowly and plop down where it pleases instead of assaulting my face. Folks there was easily 4 inches perched atop the car just a bit ago when I went to clean it off. And it's STILL COMING DOWN! It's like good ol' Ma Nature just realized she forgot to deliver and is trying to make up a month's quota in a day. Bring it on woman! As soon as my financial aid reimbursement comes through I'm getting me some gloves and I'm'a go play in it!

I will say this, Manhattan, no matter how much I love you, you seem to have a flippant attitude toward snow removal. Em's street was driven down but not scraped by the trucks (What the hell?) twice, and my little street got zero love. Also KSU, just because 90% of the students here are the Asian kids in the dorms, does not mean you should leave the snow sit until mid morning and then just kinda push it around a little. You're more on the ball during the year, so you should probably try to keep up during intersession. Just sayin'. I know it's still coming down but tomorrow it'll be so much worse!

But I digress. I love the snow right now so nothing will get me down. Ha!

Desi food makes you sleepy

***Before I say anything else, my mother pointed out that my last entry implied I flossed my teeth for the first time ever. I would like to point out that I have flossed many times before, it's just...been a little while... nobody tell Melvin!!!***

So day two of school was pretty good. I only have one class on Tuesday Thursday (T and TU as the University calls them) and it looks like it's gonna be easy. John and Matt (a guy in my department and a friend of another guy in my department) are in it with me so if nothing else I'll have study buddies (but I reinforce that I don't think I'll need them that bad). When I finished with that I went and transcribed my notes from paper to OneNote (if you haven't tried it you should-- it' s pretty great!) and then went home for lunch. I spent my afternoon doing a couple errands and then I helped Mahj make some desi food (the main event of my day...maybe my week). I made palak paneer which is literally translated spinach cheese. It sounds sketch, it looks suspect, but it tastes pretty good. We had all kinds of food and I ate enough for at least three normal sized people and possibly enough for a small child as well. It was amazing.

I would have stayed at Em's eating all night but I had to grade a quiz (thankfully... I think that much food could kill a person). I went to bed early so that I could get up EARLY (6 am...which I considered sleeping in this summer...oh how times have changed) to go swimming (I had to try to compensate for all that eating I did...). Since I was up I decided to blog. I know you are riveted by all this recapping...settle down.

Tonight is "old" roommate dinner with my girls Leslie, KVD, and Stacey. Gumby's! I'm excited! I figure since I'm off to such an ambitious start, my day is gonna be pretty good. I'll let you know how it goes.

Retail therapy is always the answer

Today I found out that I won't be getting my grader job back. I was informed Monday by my department head that he let the faculty pick their graders so I should contact the faculty not him. I did this and was informed by the particular faculty that because she's new and doesn't know any students, our department head hired her graders. So I have no job. Suck. That was a kickin' gig and I'll miss it.

Monday begins my hunt for a new job. I'm going to start with the leadership building (it's new and I hear they need lots of help over there), and if that doesn't pan out I'll also have put down feelers in the career and employment services office (both in that office and through that office). If I can't find a campus job (heaven forbid) I'm going to take a stab at a mall job (GAP!) and if I can't swing that... well as Mom said, there's always waitressing.

In light of being unemployed I had to race off to the GAP to do some retail therapy. I had coupons ok?! I got some sweet stuff and it's stuff I kinda needed anyway (it wasn't THAT much on the card... leave me alone!). Emily was there to help me make good fashion choices and to support my choice to get some professional, trouser style jeans for my new job hunt. They're cute-- trust.

Tomorrow we go farmer's market-ing for some tasty, good-for-me things. That will also boost my mood. I need to start eating better and what better way than to buy pretty produce from cute little farmer guys and their wives?

So anyway, that's what's up. Someone get to work on re-naming my blog please...I'm too emotionally irritated to do it myself.

My So Called Life

Anyone remember that show? It had Claire Danes and Jared Leto in it. Anyway this has nothing to do with that show that re-runs on Nick...I just needed a title.

My life simply isn't so exciting as to warrant a blog entry every day. I am back in Manhattan (please Lord let me be done driving for a while) and today was errand day so nothing glamorous. I washed all the thousands of miles worth of bugs off my car, vacuumed out a dozen jobs worth of dirt and gravel and tossed my paper substitutes for GPS along with a bunch of other random car accumulations. I ate lunch in the WESP office with Em so I could reconnect with Manhattan humanity. I also went and bought Microsoft office, priced text books (holy cow I'm going to be poverty stricken this semester), got my tires rotated, grabbed crap at Walgreens, and stopped at Nespor's for wine to enjoy while watching Jersey Shore tonight (don't judge, it's a train wreck and we can't look away). I also stopped to see Scarlett on the way out to my errands because poor kid lost a month's worth of work and she needed a coffee like Lindsey Lohan needed a proper dad growing up. Don't worry, I provided the caffeine and I think she'll pull through.

Now for anyone still awake after the riveting recap of my day, the weekend plans:

Hopefully going to see Vampire's Suck at some point

Pre-School pub crawl with my IE's

Farmer's Market

School Supplies shopping (I have a weird enthusiasm for this don't judge me)

We definitely need to come up with a new name for this thing... these are NOT adventures...

That's a rap!

I am still alive. THE interns kind of own your life when they get together so I have been AWOL and I apologize. Here's the low down on our wrap up:

Monday we all presented our summer experiences and projects. I started the day off right by getting on the wrong shuttle with Chris and Donald and going to the training center instead of the office. Don't worry we got the shuttle driver to come back for us and take us but he didn't know where. Fortunately we had a dream combination of people in this predicament--Donald knew the address, Chris had an iPhone, and I was willing to talk to the driver in broken English. We got there which is the point. Luckily in spite of that start, mine went really well--I was the last of the Conway kids to go and we all had basically the same experience so I was pretty sure that people were going to be clawing their eyes out by the time it was my turn but on the contrary they seemed to enjoy my take on things.

That evening was dinner out on the company tab and this meant free food AND free margaritas. Love this. It was a great knight, hanging out with my new people and eating AMAZING Mexican food. Nirvana I tell you. Afterward we just went back to the Double Tree to hang out and drink some more in various rooms. We just wanted to hang out together... Awwww.

Tuesday we had to get up (in spite of some of us having had epic nights...not me but...well we'll leave them nameless) for exit interviews. Again mine seemed fine. It was over fairly early so us girls went to our free lunch and then decided to go shopping. Cute dresses had by all (well nearly all anyway). After shopping we collected a bit of sun at the pool before dinner at...get ready...The Hobbit Cafe. Yep. It was Hobbit themed. I had blackened fish tacos which were AMAZING and we also all had a seasonal German beer they had... it was dark and serious...like a beer smoothie. Also AMAZING. We wrapped that night by again knocking back a few at the good ol' Double Tree with all our new besties. Good times. Until people started trickling out and we had to say goodbye. It wasn't quite tearful but it was sad for sure. Crazy how much you can get attached to and miss people you only met a couple months ago. Le sigh.

I spent the whole day Wednesday driving to Wichita in convoy with Eric. It was a long day... but we made it to Justin and Kevin's and enjoyed the company in spite of the fact that the air conditioning was on the fritz and we all dearly died of heat stroke. I bandaged the wound by making PW pancakes (obviously) for all of us this morning. I rock.

I made it back to Manhattan today and I promptly went to lunch with Emily, Susan and Bre. The Palace knows how to throw down a pizza. God bless them. This afternoon Emily and I went to the new city pool (aquatic park/wonderland) and worked on our tans. Or freckles. Whatever. We capped off the day by eating La Fiesta... I enjoyed a healthy sized margarita. I seem to have missed enjoying a good bev on this dry summer...

Now I sit here amidst my stuff (I am a little appalled that I have THIS MUCH STUFF!) procrastinating putting it all away by writing this. I thought about continuing this to included the things I learned this summer, the best memories, the this I may miss or not miss... but then I realized that Kyle will be here tomorrow and my room makes me look like a hobo so I need to just suck it up and save all that mushy stuff for another day.

Coming soon: Lessons learned in the oil field, Things I'll miss about Conway, Things I won't miss, and a Greatest hits list of memories. Look alive.