The Name Game

So, as you may or may not have noticed, my life has returned to that insomniac-like workaholic state that I thrived in back in Binghamton, thus me and my computer have little to no private time anymore. Tis a typical day in the life of grad school Kat:

6am-Wake up, get ready.
7:15am-Leave for work.
7:45am-8am--Get to work at PERD
12-12:30--Lunch, aka, I walk like a mad woman up and down the BU campus running errands
1-Back to PERD
2:30-3:30--Somewhere around there, leave PERD for the day.
And here's where it varies:
Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays:
3:30-Grab a snack.
4-6:30 Go to Perspectives on Inquiry, aka the most frustrating class ever because I actually have to work at it, seeing that I have no basis in any of this educational psych/research stuff (Educational Psych at Ithaca three years ago doesn't count because I don't remember anything but watching a 10 minute segment of Kindergarden Cop.)
6:30-7 Wait in line to copy readings for class.
7-8 Get home. Seeing that I need to exercise and have no other time to do so, I usually walk either from Kenmore (where my class is) to St. Mary's Street, where I'll board the C line home, or I will just book it from Kenmore to Cleveland Circle, which is 2.8 miles. I get it done in approximately 45 minutes, sometimes 50 if Coolidge Corner is really annoying (me and that intersection just don't get along.)
8-Eat dinner.
8:30--Call Caitlin and the Other Kat for "Apartment Search 2004" updates.
9:15--Other phone calls.
10:30--Read for class.
1am-Go to sleep.
Tuesdays and Fridays I go to work at the florist from 3-8, then the rest of the schedule is the same. On the weekends, I work at the store, do more homework and hang out with my favourite Bostonians.

Add to this the following:
-In a week, my lunch time is gone temporarily, as I took on a job as a Recreation Assistant for the Greater Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra Camp. I play on the playground with kids for two hours a day for two weeks and get paid handsomely to do so. Gotta love it.
-I interviewed for a grad assistantship on Thursday at the Student Activities Office. I'm crossing my fingers that I'll get it--I'd get paid to be Miss Extracurricular. Wouldn't that be awesome?

So that's where I am. And I'm exhausted as all get out. My mom rarely hears from me anymore, as do the majority of you. I'm sorry. With the fall coming, I'll soon find a routine and be able to balance it all better. I only have to be crazy for one more year. Then I'll get to do normal things, like read, watch TV and breathe.

Here's some random notes of the week:

--Dear Flower Customers of the World;
Thank you for giving me a job. However, just a few notes so that my blood pressure can stay its normal too-low self:
-Yes, that is the price of roses. No, that's not just for Valentine's Day. Yes, that's the everyday price. No, not many places have them cheaper. Roses are expensive. I don't control the prices. If you want them, suck it up and pay up.
-Okay, you're in a hurry. That's fine. However, if you want me to make you a unique bouquet with "nothing cheesy like those stupid carnations," please allow me 5-10 minutes. Even the people I work with who have been doing this for as long as I've been alive take 5-10 minutes. It's not as easy as it looks.
-There is nothing wrong with carnations. Well, I mean, if you want to impress a girl, guys, don't get carnations. But any other time? They're fine. They aren't ugly. They bring back good memories of all of my dance recitals, where I would get bouquets of carnations from my parents and Grandma.
-Don't tell me "don't make a ugly bouquet." Do you think that's my aim? Really now.
Keep these in mind and all of our lives will be 17 times easier. Thank you!
Sincerely,
Kat

-I had to update a database at work this week to cross list the names of the parents who register for our programs with their children's names. I had to shuffle through two-three years of back registration forms to do so. Now, the forms were indexed by child's name. The database is indexed by parent's name. I had to match up each child with their parent, and add that information to the database. Easy enough, right?

Wrong.

Thank you, feminist theory and increasing divorce rates for making this task 10 times harder than it had to be. I love women's rights as much as everyone else , and I regularly exercise the rights that this movement has fought for. However, when I get married, I will take my husband's name, and now not just because of the impossiblness of my own last name. And my children will have my husband's name. And I will try my darnest not to get divorced. Some poor office worker will appreciate it. Trust me. (Hyphenating is fine too. I couldn't hyphenate because I have the longest name ever to begin with. As long as some aspect of the name is shared between child and parent, it's all good.)

Also, I recognize that everyone wants their child to stand out, be unique, express your and the other parent's ideals and personality. However, remember that your child has to live with this name for their whole life. In addition, they might have high aspirations to be something with a lot of prestige. Please consider these factors before naming your child, otherwise in a few years some poor office worker is just going to look at your child's name and say, "That poor kid."

-Steve Beurlein retired on Wednesday as a Carolina Panther. He was one of the original "Steve Quarterbacks." The "Steve Quarterbacks" were a group of QBs in the early-mid 90s that my Dad and I followed simply because he and them shared a first name. This is where my Steve Young fandom came from, seeing that he was the founding QB of the group. The group consisted of Young, Beurlein, Walsh, DeBerg, and later on, McNair. It expanded to include honorary members Christie and Tasker, who were not QBs, but played offense for the Bills, and I'm sure Dad wishes Doug Flutie's name was really Steve Flutie. But alas, some things are not meant to be.

But Beurlein's retirement means that McNair is the only active Steve left. Christie, one of the honoraries, is currently a free agent in his 15th season, meaning he's sitting in limbo, praying that some kicker freakishly tears a tendon. It's a sad day for my father and I. The Steves are gone. My childhood is now completely over.

So here's to you, Mr. Beurlein, the second to last official Steve to retire. You still hold all Panthers' passing records despite the work of Jake Delhomme last season. You were a journeyman, and have the distinction of existing in the NFL for just about as many years as my sister has been alive.

-Peter King has returned from vacation. Bill Simmons graces us with writing nearly everyday. I am a happy girl. And I contend that I have never written Simmons, meaning that non of the letters in the last two week's "Fe-mail Bags" (http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/040730) are from me. But read them over. They sure sound like it, don't they? I'm glad I'm not alone, despite the fact that it negates a bit of my uniqueness.

-I will never get sick of the smell of ice rinks. I walk in Walter Brown Arena every morning and take a deep breath and I swear for that second, all is right in the world. Another childhood dream fulfilled: work in an ice arena. It's downright sad--I still get nervously excited sometimes from that smell, just like I did when my parents would take me to the War Memorial to see a hockey game or skating show. I remember being a child and getting so excited when I'd walk in to an arena that I would tremble. I'm crazy, I know. But that's my almost-Canadian childhood for you.

--I wish I had good stories from the DNC, but the only thing I have is that I walked by Lewis Black from the Daily Show on Wednesday because he was taping a piece outside of the Tsai Center on campus. The Daily Show was taping on campus all week, but because I'm a workaholic, I didn't get to see it. :-( I didn't venture downtown at all this week. I stayed in Brookline, and only was able to catch Kerry's acceptance on TV. Darn no cable in my room.

--Best Baseball Game Ever: Last Saturday's Red Sox-Yankees battle. I was in the car when Varitek scuffled with A-Rod. Of course. The biggest fight of the year and I'm not in front of the TV. My friend Brendon and I were screaming at the radio. "HIT HIM! EJECT A-ROD!!!! GET JETER INVOLVED!! Come on!!!!!" Then there was my, "No, no, DON'T HIT KAPLER AND RUIN HIS GORGEOUS BOD!!!!!!!!!" Then there was the, "Why the HECK are we not in front of the TV?!?!" We ran into his apartment the minute the car was parked and turned on the game, waiting in intense anticipation for the replay. Then there was the whole winning home run in the ninth...AMAZING GAME. I love Boston, because everyone was listening to the game, and everyone was yelling at the radio and screaming at their TVs, and you could hear it all. We may be Democrat, we may be Republican, we may be college students or professionals, we may be born here or transplanted, but we all are united in that one common cause: The Yankees are evil and need to be stopped.

I'm officially a baseball fan. Hardcore.

Just in time for football season.

Hmm......

"You're so 1990/And it's 1994..."

Life is trying to knock me back into 1994, where only my firefighter uncle had a cell phone and where the internet was just Tricia's family computer with Prodigy and it's wacky "Teen Zone" mad libs.

For the past three weeks almost, my cell phone and wireless internet have been waging a battle against me. Neither have been able to consistently pick up a signal for quite a while. I'm convinced I'm back living in Terrace 5 at Ithaca again, where it was not possible to pick up any television or radio stations. And seeing how much I rely on both things to talk to my friends (the majority of my friends living in New York State), it's made me appear to be ignoring you all. I'm really not. I just can't get a hold of you at all. When my internet works, it's spastic and goes out five minutes after I finally get online. My cell is just weird. I'm under the new assumption that the fact that I still have a 607 number and I no longer live in a 607 area is working against me possibly, and that it might be the time to take the plunge and get a 617 number. I keep teetering the fence on that one. One, I'm only guaranteed to be here a year. But two, part of this Boston Dream Life I've dreamt of for years involves me either owning a car with Massachusetts license plates or having a 617 number. We'll see what I end up doing.

So I'm not dead, I'm not ignoring you, and I haven't fallen into some deep black hole of post-graduation depression.

What have I been doing then?

-Tackling the worst and most difficult class I've taken since AP Physics my junior year of high school: Perspectives on Inquiry, aka Research Methods for Educational Research, aka A Class That is for Future Teachers, Not Higher Education Administrators, aka The Complete and Total Bane of my Existence. I read for class, read it again, go to class, take notes, reread again and STILL not understand a word of it. And it's hard to even care to understand, because learning about teaching teachers to better teach mathematics problem solving skills to first graders has nothing to do with anything I'm going to be doing. I think I took more relevant classes to Higher Ed when I was in Art History. That's how bad this is. If I survive, I will be surprised.

-Working my two jobs. Yes, I now have two jobs. I work for Boston U's recreation programs during the day, and then nights I don't have class and weekends I work at Olympia Florist, the 101 year old florist where you can find only the best flowers for your Shabbat. (We cater to Brookline's Jewish population, which made training there so much easier. "So, we do a lot of business for Jewish holidays and Shabbats...do you know anything about those?" Um...more than a Catholic-born girl should know.)

-Hanging out in Boston, making friends and having a good time. I love Boston, and the homesickness has for the most part disappeared. This is an awesome city, and I'm so lucky to be here. I try to make the best out of all my time here, because I know how tough the job market is in higher ed admin here. I probably won't be here after I graduate, but at least I get to live it up now.

-Getting all of my Dream Job hopes crushed. I didn't even make it to be seen by producers--it's a long story. I'm sad. But there was so much awesome talent there--I can't even compare. I am a total wanna-be compared to all of them. I'm really pulling to see some of the guys I waited in line with on TV. In addition, I've had sense knocked into me--guys get too intimidated by girls who legitimately like sports. I didn't realize it fully until a few weeks ago. So I've kind of had to start leaving that part of me behind. I'll never be anything sports related, and I need to stop thinking that guys are going to like me for my sports knowledge. After the Dream Job audition, I had to chaperone the day camp trip to Fenway, and when we sat in the press seats, I looked down and realized that that would be the only time I'll ever sit there, on a tour. I looked out onto the field, having had my hopes dashed that morning, having heard the bitter truth about guys, girls and sports a few days before, and just knew it was time to grow up. It was hard to take. I guess I'll only check ESPN.com twice a day now, instead of 564. I mean, a lot of people never get to fulfill childhood dreams--I'm lucky enough to be able to fulfill one (live in Boston). I would be pressing my luck to ask for more than that. Anyway, the field of Higher Ed needs me and my perkiness!

Despite this all, things are good.  I'm busy, therefore I'm happy. 
 
Time to escape research methods and go to bed...