Adventures

I leave for Australia in three weeks!

Where I will be "scanned" for swine flu.

Hopefully I am done with this sickness (swine flue, hopefully not) by then :)

I am so happy that I decided to go on vacation after this teaching thing ... I am going to need it!

ho hum

I think I have swine flu.   Great!

To make myself feel better I plan to continue drinking massive amounts of coffee and not sleep for the next two-three days :)

Never realized

I never realized how arbitrary grading was until now.  I hope people in this class don't come and nit pick about points .. because I am really just kinda going with my gut feeling.  Maybe i am more of a Schubert than I thought, hahaha!

Relaxation

When you spend all week working your ass off 12+ hours a day.  You really learn to appreciate "down time".  This weekend I had to drive back up to Fort Collins from Colorado Springs to pick up my car.  I am fairly positive my insurance company is going to drop me from my plan and it is stressing me out, but I am trying not to let it get to me too too much.  Anyway I came up Friday night and I had a nice relaxing dinner with Anna and Chris.  Yummy grilled chicken and veggies.  Then saturday I slept in pretty late (and boy did I need that), picked up my car from the body shop, and spent most of the afternoon reading/grading at cafe ardour.  Grading is definitely one of the most challenging parts of teaching here ... I hope that it gets easier/better with time!  Then I went over to Sarah's house to watch Milk, eat popcorn and gossip.  Milk was pretty good, I have no idea why my dad hated it so much.  Today (sunday) I slept in again, then I walked to a nearby coffee shop did some reading for class and had breakfast.  I hope that this summer I'll walk over to this coffee shop more often, It was really nice!  I have to say that the one of the worst parts of teaching down in CC is that its so incredibly lonely.  In some ways it is nice that I don't really have any distractions, but at the same time I don't really have anyone to talk to :(.  I always feel better about myself when I am working hard and getting a lot done ... but I have a tendency to let work control my life.  Working alone in CC, I am definitely allowing work to control my life :(.

On a completely different note, I am making plans (big plans) to stop driving my car in Fort Collins this summer.  Of course there will be instances when I have to drive my car, but as far as work, softball and drinking go, I am done with Sally (my car's name).  I am going to head over to a local bike shop (not sure which one yet) and get a rack for the back of my bike so that I can strap my backpack to my bike, and then I am done with cars!! Woohoo.

Frustration.

I find the most frustrating part of teaching this class, trying to interpret how my co-teacher/mentor wants me to grade the assignments.  He is quite subjective when it comes to grading and he seems to change his mind a lot.  This means I spend hours grading an assignment that probably should have taken me one hour.  This means that I am not really sleeping and i am fairly grumpy today :( 

Time Management

No matter how hard I try, it always takes me 2-3 times longer to accomplish something than I think it should.  I find this to be very frustrating.

Adventures in Teaching #1

So I am heading down to Colorado Springs tomorrow to start teaching a 3.5 week course in Global Climate Change.  First of all I am extremely nervous and I really have no idea what to expect.  Second of all I feel completely unprepared, I guess I am going to have to learn how to be ok with "winging it".  Third of all (haha, is that even right??) I am trying to relax as much as I can right now, because I am 99% positive I won't have any time to relax while I am down there.

I am also hoping that my car is fixed by Friday and I am trying to decide if I should move in with this girl I met ... 

Ugh stress

1) I got into a car accident this week.  I would rather not talk about it other than this has been one huge hassle/annoyance that I don't have time for AND I want to give up driving all together. 

2) It is going to snow/is snowing today/tonight/tomorrow/Saturday????  I am driving a rental car in the snow, fun!  Also, if tomorrow is a "snow day" I probably won't find out about it until its too late (meaning I'll be here for my 8am class).  Michelle and I made plans to go out Friday night ... probably not going to happen now :(

3) I am heading down to CC to teach a 3.5 week long class about climate change (anna just finished, lucky her :)) ... the person I am teaching with is awesome, but it is very hard to coordinate things from afar and I feel a bit lost/worried about how things are going to work out.

4) I am trying to find a new place to live because I can no longer afford my life (see #1 for one reason why ... insurance sucks) ... finding a new place to live is stressful ...  

i-dating + random things

So it turns out that this whole "internet" dating thing is not as exciting or fun as you might thing it would be.

I spent a whole lot of time stressing/worrying/fretting about how to fill out my profile etc. And week(s) later I finally get things set up ... and well I must have done something wrong ...

Within the first oh 30 seconds of setting up my profile, I got an offer to "play dirty games" ... an offer I refused (BTW).

Then I spent a bit of time looking at my "matches" none of whom really stood out to me as being particularly awesome ... so I finally decided to message a couple of people who seemed OK, but were maybe a bit too old for me and/or lived in Boulder.

These people have yet to respond.

Then I got a couple of messages from people who were not particularly interesting ... but one guy did decided to send me about 12 messages ... none of which I have responded to, so he seems to have gotten a clue.

Maybe I am a bitch ...maybe not, but this internet dating thing is a whole lot less "glamorous" than people make it out to be, thats for sure (then again maybe I just live in Fort Collins, where the boys are freaking lazy and everyone seems to be "happy" being single and lame, or they are married)  From this whole (week long) experience, I waver between feeling utterly lame and utterly apathetic ... I saw this post on "postsecret.com" last week which said "Internet dating made me realize that I would rather be alone" ... anyway random person, i totally understand.

Besides my lame stupid adventures in internet dating ... I've just been working on preparing for the class I am teaching at CC and I've been dreading getting ready to teach the next (oh and last) IDL course.  I think I am going to take a page from Kate's book and just be super brief, do a couple of examples and call it a day.  I don't have time to obsess about this crap anymore!!

also ...

As hard as applying for jobs/gradschool/grants is ... applying for "dating" is 10,000 time worse/scarier/crazier.

I know that I am a good applicant for jobs/career stuff.

Writing about myself and why I would want to date me and who I would want to date is freaking crazy weird/hard/stressful.  It kinda really makes you hate yourself.

I am officially "internet dating"

How freaking scary is that?  So far I feel super super vulnerable and scared of seeing what is out there in this place we call Fort Collins.  My main goals are just to meet some cool people and go on a couple of dates.  I really don't expect to find my "soul mate"  I would maybe like to find dating to be a little less scary and a little more fun ... and I would also like to not get my hopes up every time I go on a date.

Expect more funny weird antics over the next few weeks.

snowy wet springy snow

This is the "wettest" snow I have ever experienced.  Spring in Fort Collins is so freaking crazy ... 60 degrees during the day, lots of snow in the evening/overnight.  Now I just wish that I had a fire place, a bottle of wine and someone special to cuddle with.

On another note ... does anyone know why blogger does not automatically send me a message when someone posts on my blog???