Report card time... I haven't written in a while and a quarter of this year is already behind me. In terms of my New Year's resolutions, I am not doing terribly well. Reading is ok. Exercising failed for most of the first quarter of the year, but I have forced myself to go for a run twice this week. However, my exercise doesn't nearly compete with the huge amounts of indulgent foods I have consumed in the past two weeks. Correspondence with friends? Not terribly good. Learning korean? Also not good. But, I did send an email today inquiring about a beginners class. Travel...I was in Arizona for a conference, that's it. So, the travel category is also not doing terribly well. I will have to give myself a solid C for my performance this quarter.

Hopefully I can do better next quarter!

I do wonder if it just my lifestyle here in NY. It is just not as conducive to my better habits. It is just so much easier for me to fall back into bad habits. I have learned there is a price for convenience in this city. Most of the time it is things like $10 sandwiches and $5 coffee. However, my lifestyle has lent itself to convenience and I am paying with long hours at the office, eating unhealthy food and not exercising. I need to stop this.

My keyboard is set to German.

At first, I did it to be quirky. But, it turned out to be a really convenient quirky setting. I use the German letters such as ä or ü far more often than I thought. There is one drawback though. I can´t seem to figure out where the 'at' symbol is. So everytime I need to use the at symbol, I switch the keyboard language back to English, make the at symbol and then switch the keyboard to German again. I figure it is a small price to pay for quirkiness.

I talked to my boss last week for the first time in months and I think I like us being in contact. Up until last week I enjoyed knowing that I had a boss, but that it never got in my way. Some people see their bosses almost everyday and that was never really necessary for me. But, I do find it really interesting to talk to her once a week now. Unfortunately, she asked me to think about what I want to do (when I grow up). This is the same question that gets thrown around at work functions, mostly because no one else knows what they want to be either. I can´t just answer 'I don't know...uh...ballerina?' A. I have no aptitude for it. B. I don't want to be one. So, Ì am going to try and come up with some tentative ideas before our next meeting and see if they can be grown into a job. Basically the point of doing my job is to put myself out of a job. Funny, right? But, it´s true. The better and quicker I can work on my projects, the faster I put myself out of a job. It has been the point of the job since I started and the reason for me to stay on my toes and shoot for the next assignment because if I set myself up correctly and play my cards right, I can do whatever I want.

On a completely different note, I might try to make bread today.´ We'll see if I make it out of the house, to the grocery store and back to my house again. Oh distraction...it always happens.

I am currently reading Not so funny when it happened. The book is unfortunately not so funny now, after it all happened. It´s a book of random travel stories, but even I have some funnier travel stories. Meh, what can you do?

Ich druck immer meine Daumen darauf.

I have been feeling a real pull to travel, lately. I talked to a friend of mine in Germany a few days ago and I feel like I am a world away from everything there. It´s as if I have been ´away from home´ and I have to work to keep up to date. I do not understand how I can be homesick for a place that I didn´t grow up in, and yet wish I could be there all the time.

I started subscribing to podcasts of the news in DE so I can at least hear German on my train rides to and from work. I feel it is an improvement from not hearing German at all. And, the woman I talked to about German classes on the Upper West Side never sent me the brochure and registeration like she said she would. Work has been a bit crazy, though. So, I don´t know if I would have made it anyway.

In relation to my New Years Resolutions I´ve got this podcast thing going, and I am reading Harry Potter auf Deutsch. I don´t know if I can read it fast enough or if I´ll even finish. But, it made it´s way into the competitors circle so I´ll see how it goes.

Back to work, my co-worker who just left had to do an exit interview before she was officially done. And, she told me I needed to watch it because the HR lady told her that 10 out of the 10 people she interviewed that day all said that they did not have a life-work balance there. I can totally see how that can happen. I live it. But, moreover in NY I´ve noticed I hang out with my co-workers here more than I have anywhere with any job I´ve had. Even as an intern, I was able to get all of the interns together once to go out for drinks and that was it. Once. So at least in NY, we get all up in each others´ personal lives and work invades life and life invades work. At the same time, I really like what I do and I never thought I would ever be able to say that. I am really luck to do what I am doing and I think every once in a while how I really got a lucky break. The timing was right, the job turned out to be fantastic and I get to meet and work with some of the most facinating people around the world. At the same time, when will the luck run out? At any rate, I am going to ride this luck as long as I can and see where it takes me.

I am getting old and I don´t travel enough. That is the quick and dirty. If you don´t have time to read the rest of this post, you more or less know the whole story with my first sentence. If not, keep reading.

I am getting old. For the past few months, I always thought I caught a glimpse of a random white hair when looking in the mirror, but could never find it when I tried to investigate it closer. Well, this weekend I found multiple white hairs. I am old! I made various promises to myself over the past few days- to eat better and organic food when I can...to drink more water...to sleep more...to do yoga regularly. I am hoping this little concotion of life altering methods will help curb or at least postpone my white hair. But moreover, the white hair is simply an indicator of my stressful and work-focused life.

After meeting A. a couple weeks ago, my aspirations in Germany started to creep up on me again. I have started thinking about grad school, timing and locations in Germany as well as what I want to be doing in 10 years. Overall, I have come to no conclusions. That is to say, I want to live in Germany again. I constantly fear my German skills are slipping, but I don´t have any sort of advanced skills in my job which would help propel me in any sort of direction if I went there. So, grad school would definately be a consideration since it would give me a visa to go and stay there as well as a purpose and degree for being there. But again, no real direction as to what I would study. I´ll consider all of this for the next few years.

That all sort of leads into my not traveling much. I do little bits of traveling here and there, but I haven´t been on an adventure in a while. Like a real proper adventure where I hop on a plane or train, end up somewhere and wander. The world is too big for me to stay in one place. I need to move. I thought about going back to Germany for a couple of weeks. Perhaps, I´ll consider that. We´ll see where the year takes me.

Hannover

One of my co-workers, M., had two of her German friends in town last week and I managed to hijack them shortly after finding out about them. Last Monday she mentioned how they where in town, so I met them as she was leaving the office. On Tuesday morning I asked her if we could hang out and her response? ´That would be great! I don´t want to hang out with them!´ Um...what? Turns out she had a cold, was really tired and just didn´t feel much like going out. Plus, she didn´t actually know these guy very well. They happened to be friend of friends of hers. So, I gave her my number to pass onto the boys and we arranged to meet on Wednesday after work.

We meet and I received the standard question of how and why I speak German. For me, I feel as this is the one story I have told more times than any other story about myself. I went through an entire year´s worth of this question while I was in Germany, in addition to starting my job and working with the German team who were also suprised I knew German. So, I explained the story in short and we hit up a bar. It was really funny to talk to them because this was their first time in NY and in the US, so their observations were funny. We met up with some of my other co-workers, so we were speaking in English with them, but every once in a while A. would stumble on a word and I was able to translate it. (It is almost always the other way around! I felt über-proud of myself!) We then hit up another bar down the street, and this being a Wednesday night, we left by 2am. Girl has got to work in the morning, right?

We made plans to meet the following night around 9 or so in Midtown, and we hung out at an Irish pub, again with many of my co-workers. So, by the end of the night, a few of the Mädels here were convinced that German guys are fantastic. But, it was a fun two nights for me because I was able to speak German whenever we weren´t talking to my co-workers...or I was able to translate when we ran into hang-ups.

The whole thing made me completely homesick for Germany, though. Every once in a while I will just feel like I am missing something. Sometimes a bit of schnitzel and german music will cure it. Other times, I just have to wonder when I´ll go back next.

So I am looking for a new book to read since finishing A Long Way Round. I went to the Taschen book sale last night after work and they didn't really have too much that interested me. Either they sold out of the good stuff early, or they didn't have a large selection. Oh well. Email me if you have a suggestion!

A Long Way Round was actually a great book. I was a bit skeptical since it was written in part by Ewan McGreggor- the actor- but it was actually a fantastic experience to read about. Since then, I have become completely obsessed with Mongolia. I really want to go to Mongolia some time and visit a Ger and walk around on the dunes and visit a place which hasn´t been invaded with Starbucks. In essense, I am looking to visit the anti-Manhattan. I get enough of Manhattan Monday through Friday with ocasional weekend visits. Its about time I start thinking about where I might end up next. Alaska? Its not that I want to leave the hustle and bustle of the city, I just need to change things up from time to time to give the city its dicotomy from the rest of the world.

Out of all of my New Years resolutions, the 'exercise more' resolution has been...uh...lacking. I´ll see if I can work on that one a bit this weekend.

So, a couple of nights ago I went out with some of my co-workers. We all started out at the first bar and talked at random about our own office politics, living situations and where we wanted to see ourselves in a few years. A fraction of us ended up at another bar for 'one more drink.' Mary started to chat up this guy but ended up talking with his ugly brother so she walked away. Me and the new girl were talking about random stuff on the other corner of the bar and Mary comes up to us followed by the ugly brother. He starts rambling on about his sales job and at one point turned around to have us check out his ass. Yeah, there is no need for me to be checking out some balding/middle aged dude's ass. I used that moment to glare at Mary for what she had gotten us into. Another gal from our group on the other side of the bar looked at us and I shot her a glare as well and she got us out and away from ugly brother just after he announced he was married. Um, yeah.

More next time.

Don´t Speak! I might laugh!

I was at a party last Saturday night where I met a Latin teacher. A. I didn´t know public schools could afford foreign languages anymore. B. I didn´t know public schools would have anything more than spanish or maybe japanese to offer. C. Who meets Latin teachers? Definately a first for me. To set up how strange it was to meet a Latin teacher at a party was to hear about his extra curricular activities. Namely, being a brass player in a No Doubt tribute band. Not kidding. When my friend caught wind of this character she asked what his ´musical influences´ were and I almost laughed in their faces. The strange nature of this conversation didn´t end with his response of Tribe Called Quest (he couldn´t think of the name of the group, just a name of one of their songs). A little later he talked about the old days when he used to work at a toy store and described a Barbie shoe fountain. Yup. Even thinking of the whole situation now, I am speechless.

I came into work on Monday and smelled something strange. Luckily, I was not going crazy. There was some sort of gas leak going on and our entire building smelled like gas. Not too fun and a little scary because as children one of the mini-lessons you get in school is that when you smell gas, tell someone and leave the area as soon as possible in case something ignites and blows everything up. Well, we couldn't all just leave because the gas leak was coming from outside and filtering into the building. The funny thing is that they sent around an email in the office saying to stay in and not to go outside and smoke. Despite this, a whole load of people were standing outside and smoking before they went in for the day. Go figure.

This weekend I finally went to the Met. I headed out of my apt. on Saturday morning and had to walk immediately back in to change because it was 70 degrees outside! Unbelieveable weather. I met up with Maura who came to her door in a sweater and carrying a coat and I stood there looking at her with a crazy face in my tshirt. She went back in to change.

The Met was cool. And, I'll certainly have to go again since it is a rather large museum. I think my favorite things were just some random pieces- one of them was by John Singer Sargent called The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit. But the exhibit itself was packed since the exhibit is ending soon and because it was a Saturday.

I am on my way with my top ten list of resolutions. I finished A Good Year last night and it was ok. It´s a quick read that feels like a weekend getaway. You read it, glad you read it and wished there was a bit more going on with it. Nonetheless, it took your mind off of things for a while. The book certainly made me want to leave and do something different for a while. Live somewhere where the idea of living was just different than what I am currently used to.

I´ve been in NY for almost a year and the way of life here is definately different than in the Midwest. Here, I feel as if my days run as if I am on a schedule. Even if I don´t plan to do something and randomly decide to get a drink or take a walk, it was just one more activity I fit into the day before the next day began. Fill the days.

The weather in NY right now is crazy. It´s still warm and it´s January. I think I am enjoying it.

My New Years Resolution Progress

I started reading A Good Year last night. But, I bought the book so that went against my financially responsible resolution. But, I did buy the book at a going out of business sale. So, it wasn´t too bad. I have bringing my lunch to work lately, so that goes to my financially responsible resolution. I have been trying to walk around more after work, but it can get a bit hard because I usually want to head straight home. And, I am hoping to visit a museum this weekend. So, I´ll update as soon as I do any of that.

Yesterday I removed a few weeks worth of newspapers from my desk. I usually pick up a paper on my way into the subway and set it down on my desk when I get to work. And, they will pile up for weeks until I decide I have no room for anything else.

It´s New Year´s so I feel as if I should tell everyone what my resolutions are. It will make them more ´real´ or less easy to break, perhaps?

Top Ten List of Resolutions

1. Exercise more
2. Eat better (less junk food and candy and more good quality food)
3. Practice German (self study or a class if I can get into one)
4. Travel to someplace new and out of my comfort zone
5. Learn some basic Korean
6. Stay in better touch with friends and family (send one piece of corresponence per month in addition to phone calls and emails)
7. Read 13 books in 12 months (not overly ambitious, but they´re my resolutions so I can do whatever I want)
8. Be more financially responsible (save, not spend!)
9. Volunteer
10. Visit museums in the city

I haven´t blogged in a very long while and K. gave me some crap about it while I was at home. So, here you go....

While I was at the airport coming back to NY, I decided to get a Mint Condition from Caribou since I hadn´t had one this visit and because I wouldn´t be able to have one for at least another few weeks because there´s no Caribou in NY. (Bou to that!)

So, I´m sipping on the Mint Condition and who do I see? Kevin Sorbo from the Hercules TV series. Except I couldn´t remember his name or his TV character when I saw him...so I just kinda stared at him while he walked by. In my head, all I could think was ´Xena Warrior Princess....no that´s not right...Xena Warrior Princess...shoot...it´s not Xena...´

Other than that, my flight back wasn´t too eventful.

There's nothing I dispise more than all things 'fabulous.' But, I had a strange weekend of fabulous- here and there. My friend Y. came out here for some interviews, so we hung out during the evening with M. We tried to show her all of the things we thought she should see and we sort of succeeded. She saw Times Square at night, Chinatown and Little Italy, the village and well, Queens. But, we totally succeeded in finding places to eat. The first 'fabulous' place we happened upon was this middle eastern restaurant. We randomly went in and got lunch. When we went to pay the guy who worked there asked Y. where she was from. When she answered 'Japan,' he pulled out this Japanese magazine where his restaurant was featured, along with a photo of him and his restaurant. Ok, not too fabulous. But, fabulous enough. Later in the evening we had dinner at Otto, a Mario Batali restaurant. It's really good and reasonably priced. But, nonetheless fabulous. At least, all of the people who eat there tend to think they're fabulous. This morning, as Y. and I were walking to the train, we decided to stop at this cafe we went to a couple of nights ago. The cafe has already become my favorite place. They have fantastic cappuccinos/coffees as well as hundreds of thousands of calories worth of yummy desserts. As we walked out of the cafe I saw that they were the cafe/bakery that made the wedding cake for the wedding in 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding.' Fabulous, or what? Even though this cafe has it's bout with fabulousness, I still feel compelled to go there because my love for pasteries and coffee is far more true and strong than my disposition of fabulousness.

Ah...two weeks and counting until my trip to San Diego. I am more than excited to get out of the cold city and onto the warm beach. I'm going for this conference for work, so I'll only be with work people. A couple thousand work people, to be not so exact. Aparently, they do this every year. My work basically reserves a resort, flies us all out to it to hold a conference. Yeah, we have to learn and network. Understood. But, from what I've heard from everyone about this conference- it's basically MTV Spring Break. You really have to buckle down because everyone goes crazy. The company is very much a 'work hard, play hard' kind of company and this will be my first concrete piece of evidence of it. So, we go to meetings all day, but everyone hits the beach and goes out for the rest of the time only to get up early for meetings the next morning. I'm glad I'm still in that college age range, otherwise I don' t know how I'd handle it.

Ah…finally, a journal entry.

Everyone should come go to San Francisco. I managed to see a great deal of tourist attractions- the common, the kitschy and the interesting ones. My favorite had to have been in the Haight & Ashbury neighbourhood. A guy walked down the street dressed in a white summer dress and running sneakers and carried a ‘protest-esque’ sign that said ‘Lighten up baby I’m a chicken.’ But, the one factor tying his whole deal together was the chicken noises he made as he walked down the street. “Bock…bock…bock…”

The other interesting activity I took part in this whole weekend was listening to people’s conversations. Ok, not everyone’s conversations, just the conversations of German tourists. A. They happened to be everywhere. B. I consider it learning because I am hearing the German language and identifying words I am not familiar with. In general, it wasn’t all that interesting. No one said anything too strange, gossipy or about me. I should have just talked to them…but, at the time I decided against it because you can’t talk to people you’re eavesdropping on. Next time…

Wow. I haven't posted anything in about a million years. Sorry. But, I can't really say I know of any avid readers of this blog, so it doesn't matter anyway.

My trip out to California was not without its flaws. When I got to the airport, I had to move three pounds of luggage from one bag into another becacause of weight limits. Fine. Even though one of my bags weighed drastically less than the other bag, I still complied.

Then, I landed in Denver. The ride was turbulent due to wind coming over the Rockies. It wasn't fun, but I landed ok. After landing, I discover my flight to San Jose was delayed about 2 and a half hours. Great...again.

After landing in San Jose, I went to pick up my rental car. Well, the people there screwed it up a bit and gave my car out to someone else. So, I had to sit around 45 minutes for them to figure out the paperwork to let me go. Great...once again.

But, so far so good here in California. The company is awesome...and I hope I'm able to learn all of the stuff I'm suppose to learn...uh...quickly. It's all just so much info.

I haven't posted anything in a while because I've been über busy with a lot of things. I'm trying to (slowly in a very procrastinated manner) get ready to go and see tons of people who all seem to be in town right now. Oh well. That's how things go.

For this post, I thought I'd dwell a bit on the year 2005. I have no huge complaints. I'm pretty content with the year. Nothing went as smoothly as it could have gone. But, everything has worked itself out in some manner or another. I got to see some spectacular and fun places, see people I'd never thought I'd see (friends I didn't imagine seeing so soon) and I really got to learn. I learned a lot in general. I have this perspective I built from all of the new people I got to meet this year. Through this, my tolerance and patience threshold was totally tested and expanded. Something that will (hopefully) pay off in 2006 is my willingness for adventure. I don't mean traveling to new places and climbing mountains (but, if someone came up to me with an all expenses paid trip to Nepal to climb around on the Himalaya's, I wouldn't say no!). I mean, my willingness to talk to new people, to do things by myself without relying on a 'friend to go with me' and my capacity for learning. They all play into each other. I guess I realized how much I learned from other people.

I remember hearing someone say that they were 'broke in an amazing way' by their experiences. I can't remember who said it, but I feel the same way. Some awful things happened this year and some really great things happened this year, and all I can say is that those experiences and people broke me in an amazing way. I'm different, better and stronger because of it. And, frankly...that's all a girl can ask for.

Good luck to all in the New Year!

I've tried to write a post for the past week and I just can't seem to do it. I have things to write about, I just never seem to get them down. So, yesterday I went wedding dress shopping with L. She's getting married next year and I am one of her bridesmaids, so I thought I'd go with for moral support and as a trusted critic. It was quite a day. I must say that after that experience, I never want to get married. I couldn't believe the fear that seeped into my bones when I stepped into the first bridal shop and saw hundreds of white dresses. I still can't believe the number of white dresses that exist. I cannot also believe that they cost so much. They're just white dresses, you know. So, L. tried on something like 20 of them and I must congratulate her. I don't know what I would do if I was here. I don't like shopping for shoes, pants or anything. Anything I deem necessary in owning tend to be items that are not fun to shop for. I don't like the pressure of deciding which pair of black shoes to buy because there are so many and I know that the day after I wear those new black shoes, I'll see another pair which I like even better. Wedding dresses, however, are a much bigger commitment. This is something you are going to have burned into your memory as well as pictures, which will hang on your wall forever. If you make a bad decision, you will regret that stupid dress forever. Everyone should just elope.

I've also been thinking about this job offer for about a week. It, like a wedding dress, is a big decision. I don't know what to do...but I'll have to make a decision in the next day or two. And, I can only hope it's a good decision. Or, a good decision for me right now. I don't like making bad decisions, I don't like regret and I don't like having to make the best out of my own bad decisions. Ah... Wish me a world of luck and intuition. I'll need it.

I really like the song 'Everything I Own' by Dan Wilson right now. I listened to it and immediately liked it. It sounded like a song I'd heard before, but haven't. I feel like singing along with it, but don't know the words yet.

So, tomorrow I should find out about the job. A few weeks ago I was in California interviewing for this job, and now they want to make me an offer. The problem for me is that I've never negotiated an offer. I'm such a rookie; all I know how to do is fake it and hope for the best. For the most part, I just need to remind myself that I will cross bridges when I come to them. At the same time, it's best to have a plan. So, I asked some of my friends last night about how they negotiated their contracts. I'm glad I asked because they gave me a few things to think about and be ready for. So, we'll see what happens. It could be very interesting and exciting...or awful...perhaps all of that... Worst case scenerio? I end up staying put...right here for a bit longer until I fashion some sort of new plan.

It snowed again yesterday and today it was cold. Really cold. Something like 5 degrees. And, I realize it can and has gotten colder than that, but it doesn't make it any more pleasant to endure. Whenever it gets this cold here I have to wonder why I never moved to a warmer state. It would only be logical, right?

* This is what a pug looks like when it gets dangerously close to the lens.

I went to E.'s for a second Thanksgiving. I had my first Thanksgiving with my parents on Thursday, but it was rather uneventful as it was only my parents and myself. Oh well. Anyway, it was fun to see E. again and it was fun to be around her family because they're just so funny. I can only remember one of the memorable phrases from the evening...her mom said to E.'s sister, 'What? Do my slippers intimidate you?' One of the memorable events of the night was when E's sister and boyfriend ended up head-butting each other when grabing for a spoon in a rousing game of well, Spoons. E.'s boyfriend also cut his finger during that game and refused to put an Elmo band aid on it.

* No purpose for this picture. The bird made me post it. It swears it doesn't have the flu.

So yes. Exciting week. I went to California for about 26 hours and came back. I did some maddening volunteer work, which will go far more efficiently when I begin work on it at home. And, I did a little work at my craptacular job. But, today was my last day, so that's an upside. Next week should be a whole new week of exciting. I start a new temp job, interview (again for the 5th time, this time in German!) for a job, and see some friends. Huzzah! What more could a girl ask for? (Hello!?! A spectacular job offer, five dollars and conversation!)

So yes. California. Imagine me on the 101 in a rental mini-van. Ha. It actually turned out ok. I didn't hit, ding or hurt anyone. I did however exploit that mother-f#cker, but that's what rentals are for, right? I drove around for an hour just because I didn't have to be at the airport for a while. And, the manner in which I drove it...well, lets just say I wouldn't let anyone near my car if I knew they would drive it like that. I just hope the company pays for that hour of mileage...otherwise, I'll just tell them I got lost or something. My excuse is I've never been to California before.

The interview. This time it was in person. And, it was 4 hours long. After 3 phone 'conversations,' an interview and an upcoming/pending phone interview in German, I had better have a good shot at this job...and a kick-ass offer, too. Otherwise, this is the nastiest joke to play on someone. Frankly, after one of the interviewers told me that they have free coffee in the morning at the coffee shop when you walk in (it's like your very own person Caribou, if you will...for free!), I fell in love with the company. We're talking that 'I'll stalk you, look you up on the internet, call you on the phone just to hear you answer' kind of love. Or at least, those of you with caffeine addictions could understand this. So, now that I've talked about the company and the job...I'm sure I've jinxed it. Great. Well, it was nice while it lasted.