I really wish that I was more motivated to study right now. I think that I'm less motivated because I'm not at ALL used to ten weeks straight of school (who ever thought of putting spring break 2/3 of the way through a semester, instead of halfway?! seriously), let alone going to school and working full-time. It's tough. My heart goes out to people who work full time, go to school for time (which I'm not), AND have kids. I don't think I could handle that! (and don't plan to)
I'm looking forward to spring break next week! And Lisa Rose and Jeff are coming to visit - hooray! :)
30 March, 2007
21 March, 2007
Thin Ice
Last evening, I ran for the first time in several weeks. It took me a long time to decide whether I was going to be "responsible" with my running time by studying Italian vocabulary on a treadmill, or if I was going to to break free from that type of academic discipline and enjoy the almost 50-degree weather by running outside. In the end, the lack of shoe quality at home (my home "running" shoes are worn out, and keep losing foam from the inside of the heel because the cloth covering the foam is worn through) directed me to running inside on a treadmill. I think I learned a lot of vocabulary...! And I still enjoyed my run.
However, the weather these days keeps getting more and more beautiful. The birds are singing, I can often leave the house without five minutes of preparation (coats, hats, gloves, scarf wrapped just right,...), and the world sounds refreshed and newly alive to itself.
Yet as it warms up, the ice fishers who persist in venturing out onto Lake Mendota - where the ice is visibly thin! - boggle my mind in their audacity. Perhaps they know more about the behavior of ice than I do, but they seem to be challenging nature's course by continuing to go out there. And seriously - what is the pull of ice fishing, that people want to sit on the ice with a string through a hole in it?! Someone please explain that to me.
Speaking of fish - as Brandon and I walked in a park on Sunday, we crossed a bridge that was over a rather shallow creek. I've never seen so many dead fish suspended in ice (or on top of it, in some cases) in my life. That will probably be a very smelly area once the ice melts all the way.
Anyway - I hope everyone is enjoying the weather in their area, and that it's at least as beautiful as it is here! How are you experiencing spring?
However, the weather these days keeps getting more and more beautiful. The birds are singing, I can often leave the house without five minutes of preparation (coats, hats, gloves, scarf wrapped just right,...), and the world sounds refreshed and newly alive to itself.
Yet as it warms up, the ice fishers who persist in venturing out onto Lake Mendota - where the ice is visibly thin! - boggle my mind in their audacity. Perhaps they know more about the behavior of ice than I do, but they seem to be challenging nature's course by continuing to go out there. And seriously - what is the pull of ice fishing, that people want to sit on the ice with a string through a hole in it?! Someone please explain that to me.
Speaking of fish - as Brandon and I walked in a park on Sunday, we crossed a bridge that was over a rather shallow creek. I've never seen so many dead fish suspended in ice (or on top of it, in some cases) in my life. That will probably be a very smelly area once the ice melts all the way.
Anyway - I hope everyone is enjoying the weather in their area, and that it's at least as beautiful as it is here! How are you experiencing spring?
16 March, 2007
Brandon and Andrea should switch jobs
(Andrea's musings!)
I'm not one to appreciate a strict adherence to stereotypes or gender definitions, but when it comes to who is the talkative one among us, I have to admit that it is me. Somewhere I read that women tend to talk 25000 words per day, and men closer to 10000. I realize that that is not true across the board (life could be boring and overly predictable if it were so!), but I have to say that I generally like to talk a lot more than Brandon.
I've always loved words. I remember having long conversations with friends and family, not to mention with myself inside my head, about specific words - how they sound, what they mean, why they matter or not, why the bother us or not. And I generally like to find the best word to describe things and situations - which sometimes results in me using a lot of words. (I also can follow complex grammatical structures with specific punctuation in my head, which is another story, and often leads me to use very long sentences!) So now, I jump at the chance to write, no matter what it is I'm writing (I often have to "beg" for writing projects at work, even though my boss knows and appreciates my writing and use of language). I credit a lot of my writing ability to my British English teacher, Mrs. Pearson (3 years in her classroom, hearing at least once each year about American being an "ugly, lazy way of speaking English" !), but also to my parents who willingly (I think?!) read and edited several drafts of high school English papers, no matter how late it got.
So now: I think Brandon and I have the wrong jobs on the basis of words. He is in a lab, where people coordinate and work independently yet very much together and in each other's proximity. I work in a place where each person has their own office. Mine is all the way at the far end of the building, and people don't come down the hall for anything unless they need something specific from me - and then they disappear again. We don't even have a common "break" room, or even a common bathroom. Each pair of offices has its own bathroom. People furnish their offices (and bathrooms) with a microwave, mini-fridge, snacks, mugs, coffee pot - I've even seen a toaster in one person's office! So we isolate ourselves, making it difficult for me to get to know anyone (besides my boss) at any level, because most people I see just at the departmental meetings that happen (I think) every other month (maybe less frequently). When my boss is gone (as she often is), it's not uncommon for me to go through the day without saying more than 500 words, less than 100 together at any one time. (I'm including ALL words in that count!) When I get home, naturally I'm ready to chat (despite the fact that I may not really have anything from my day to talk about, unless I taught lessons). If Brandon didn't have to talk at all in his job, and I got to talk a lot maybe we'd be better balanced for our evenings together. :)
If anyone has job suggestions for me (for after I finish my Master's Degree in voice, of course!), I'm really open.
I'm not one to appreciate a strict adherence to stereotypes or gender definitions, but when it comes to who is the talkative one among us, I have to admit that it is me. Somewhere I read that women tend to talk 25000 words per day, and men closer to 10000. I realize that that is not true across the board (life could be boring and overly predictable if it were so!), but I have to say that I generally like to talk a lot more than Brandon.
I've always loved words. I remember having long conversations with friends and family, not to mention with myself inside my head, about specific words - how they sound, what they mean, why they matter or not, why the bother us or not. And I generally like to find the best word to describe things and situations - which sometimes results in me using a lot of words. (I also can follow complex grammatical structures with specific punctuation in my head, which is another story, and often leads me to use very long sentences!) So now, I jump at the chance to write, no matter what it is I'm writing (I often have to "beg" for writing projects at work, even though my boss knows and appreciates my writing and use of language). I credit a lot of my writing ability to my British English teacher, Mrs. Pearson (3 years in her classroom, hearing at least once each year about American being an "ugly, lazy way of speaking English" !), but also to my parents who willingly (I think?!) read and edited several drafts of high school English papers, no matter how late it got.
So now: I think Brandon and I have the wrong jobs on the basis of words. He is in a lab, where people coordinate and work independently yet very much together and in each other's proximity. I work in a place where each person has their own office. Mine is all the way at the far end of the building, and people don't come down the hall for anything unless they need something specific from me - and then they disappear again. We don't even have a common "break" room, or even a common bathroom. Each pair of offices has its own bathroom. People furnish their offices (and bathrooms) with a microwave, mini-fridge, snacks, mugs, coffee pot - I've even seen a toaster in one person's office! So we isolate ourselves, making it difficult for me to get to know anyone (besides my boss) at any level, because most people I see just at the departmental meetings that happen (I think) every other month (maybe less frequently). When my boss is gone (as she often is), it's not uncommon for me to go through the day without saying more than 500 words, less than 100 together at any one time. (I'm including ALL words in that count!) When I get home, naturally I'm ready to chat (despite the fact that I may not really have anything from my day to talk about, unless I taught lessons). If Brandon didn't have to talk at all in his job, and I got to talk a lot maybe we'd be better balanced for our evenings together. :)
If anyone has job suggestions for me (for after I finish my Master's Degree in voice, of course!), I'm really open.
10 March, 2007
Good news!
Last evening Andrea was greeted (at the Memorial Union, where she'd been working on a group project) by Brandon jumping up and down! Guess what that means!?!
Brandon was accepted to vet school!!! He'll have orientation starting August 20, with classes beginning August 29.
We're so excited, and so glad to finally know the general course of our lives for at least the next 4 years.
Brandon was accepted to vet school!!! He'll have orientation starting August 20, with classes beginning August 29.
We're so excited, and so glad to finally know the general course of our lives for at least the next 4 years.
09 March, 2007
I think there is a conspiracy against our mailbox.
Yesterday, we didn't get any mail at all! Not even the annoying "Shopper Stopper" junk mail (advertising homes for sale around town, and with lots of grocery store inserts for grocery stores that don't make sense for us to go to because they're farther away and more expensive than the one just a mile from our home).
My theory? Brandon's letter for vet school either (a) hasn't been sent from the vet school yet, or (b) got stuck inside someone else's junk magazine, and was tossed away. It's so rare that we get no mail at all...
On the upside, I did dream THREE TIMES during the night (and it was a short night, because I watched an Italian movie for class) that Brandon got an acceptance letter. And my dreams have an odd regularity with concrete things like this of coming true (who's doubting his acceptance anyway? not me!).
So if anyone wants to see a kind of funny Italian movie (I relied on the English subtitles, but I understood more of the stuff I heard than I'd thought I would) that is set in the 80's with a bizarre ending, try to find "Notte Prima Degli Esami" (the last nights before the final exams). It's the story of a bunch of students who are preparing for the huge exams that students take at the end of "high school" and all the teen stuff that goes along with life (drugs, procrastinating, knowing more about sports than literary history, love, family...). The exams are a big deal, and pretty much make or break their life - and include both written and oral components (oral exams agains a panel - maybe like a doctoral dissertation defense style?). They remind me of the stress level of the British GCSEs and A-levels (for Harry Potter fans, that would be the O.W.L.s and the N.E.W.T.s), but having never completed those I can't really compare. Sometimes I wish I would have had to finish at least GCSEs. I think I would've learned to work consistently better that way, rather than leaving stuff till almost the last minute.
Which reminds me - I have a paper due Tuesday. My first paper since I graduated almost 3 years ago. Do I still know how to write a paper?!? I think so. I did a some research about 4 weeks ago, but I really haven't done anything since then - at least nothing that includes a written paragraph, or even a sentence... oh well! I'll work hard on Friday and Saturday.
But for now - I just have to wait and be patient for the end of the day, in hopes of Brandon's letter arriving in the mail.
My theory? Brandon's letter for vet school either (a) hasn't been sent from the vet school yet, or (b) got stuck inside someone else's junk magazine, and was tossed away. It's so rare that we get no mail at all...
On the upside, I did dream THREE TIMES during the night (and it was a short night, because I watched an Italian movie for class) that Brandon got an acceptance letter. And my dreams have an odd regularity with concrete things like this of coming true (who's doubting his acceptance anyway? not me!).
So if anyone wants to see a kind of funny Italian movie (I relied on the English subtitles, but I understood more of the stuff I heard than I'd thought I would) that is set in the 80's with a bizarre ending, try to find "Notte Prima Degli Esami" (the last nights before the final exams). It's the story of a bunch of students who are preparing for the huge exams that students take at the end of "high school" and all the teen stuff that goes along with life (drugs, procrastinating, knowing more about sports than literary history, love, family...). The exams are a big deal, and pretty much make or break their life - and include both written and oral components (oral exams agains a panel - maybe like a doctoral dissertation defense style?). They remind me of the stress level of the British GCSEs and A-levels (for Harry Potter fans, that would be the O.W.L.s and the N.E.W.T.s), but having never completed those I can't really compare. Sometimes I wish I would have had to finish at least GCSEs. I think I would've learned to work consistently better that way, rather than leaving stuff till almost the last minute.
Which reminds me - I have a paper due Tuesday. My first paper since I graduated almost 3 years ago. Do I still know how to write a paper?!? I think so. I did a some research about 4 weeks ago, but I really haven't done anything since then - at least nothing that includes a written paragraph, or even a sentence... oh well! I'll work hard on Friday and Saturday.
But for now - I just have to wait and be patient for the end of the day, in hopes of Brandon's letter arriving in the mail.
08 March, 2007
It's Wednesday, March 7, 2007 and we're still waiting...
"Rumor" has it that vet school acceptance letters were sent on Friday. Brandon heard this from a colleague at work, and this colleague is engaged to a woman who works in the barns of the vet school (who also applied), and her boss affirmed that letters were sent Friday. Neither Brandon nor the other girl received letters as of Monday. Brandon still didn't get his Tuesday. We're trying to be patient... but I (Andrea) can tell he's anxious because he went to bed soon after 8pm last night to just read... that doesn't really happen. Ever.
I'm thankful that I already know that I'm officially in school! Now to just get financial aid figured out....
I don't think this is a typical "first entry" for a blog. Oh well. I thought it would be fun to have something more to distract me and to keep in touch with friends and family.
I'm thankful that I already know that I'm officially in school! Now to just get financial aid figured out....
I don't think this is a typical "first entry" for a blog. Oh well. I thought it would be fun to have something more to distract me and to keep in touch with friends and family.
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