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2008 8 November :: 9.40 pm
Anybody here on Twitter? I just joined but I know nobody. =( My username is socksocksock, so you can find me and add me if you are so inclined.
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2008 3 November :: 9.46 pm
I actually ended up getting that job I talked about blowing the interview for last entry. No idea how that happened. Maybe they didn't get a lot of applications.
My first day was today -- they took me into a buzzing, air-conditioned room filled with racks of servers and explained to me what each one was and did. It was explanation after explanation using horribly complex terms like "asynchronus versioner somethingorother" and I went back to my desk feeling properly cowed. I thought as I was sitting there that my life has been a long stumbling from one thing that I want to do but am ill-equipped for to another.
But then I spent the rest of the shift updating programs and operating systems on the organization's laptops, which I could probably do in my sleep, so who knows. Maybe I was what they were looking for, after all. At least the servers had funny names. The main one responsible for hosting all of the user profiles is called Flashy.
The winter rains have begun. It's been wet and gray since last Thursday. Everyone complains but me; I love this weather. Except when my feet get wet. Time to retire the thin canvas shoes full of holes until the spring.
und was sagst du dazu? |
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2008 24 October :: 10.47 am
:: Mood: embarrassed
I just went for a job interview. It's left me feeling rather low -- I don't think I made a very good impression. They were asking a lot of questions about things that I don't really know how to do. (It was a tech-support, computer-related job. I thought it would be like my old job at the library, but it's not really.)
I guess it all comes down to my worrying that they'll feel like I wasted their time. But they didn't tell me yes or no yet, so...I dunno. We'll see what happens, by Wednesday of next week.
und was sagst du dazu? |
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2008 1 October :: 10.15 am
Back at school now, and having more trouble with my schedule than I ever have before. I guess it was courteous of the bad luck to wait until my senior year, when I'm the most familiar with the system and better able to deal with hiccups.
I was taking Japanese for a day before I got kicked out of the class, because I enrolled very late and the teacher said it wasn't fair for me to get the spot before any of the waiting list students. I understand that, but I was still disappointed about it. I went for a long walk in the woods until that mostly dissipated. Part of what bothers me is that now, for the first time since kindergarten I won't be studying a language. At least I can return the books and get my 78 dollars back, which will be helpful.
I'm also trying to find a job which isn't going particularly well. I should be getting a call sometime today from my old supervisor to let me know whether or not there's room in their schedule for me to come back to work. Keeping my fingers crossed, because I really liked that job, but I don't have a whole lot of hope. Nobody else I've sent an application to has yet replied. I may have to start searching off-campus, or quickly learn how to do web design. It seems like everybody wants that these days.
I can hear seals borking from my apartment. Nathan and I went over to the wharf to see them one day, and discovered that it's mostly just one seal that WILL NOT SHUT UP, and occasionally the others that join in when they get irritated at his noise. We named him Larry for no specific reason, and they all have such different toned voices that now when they bork I can tell whether it's him or not.
und was sagst du dazu? |
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2008 20 September :: 7.18 pm
The horse didn't work out. I realized, after thinking about it, that it was too much of a commitment for me to make, in terms both of money and of time.
I'm moving to Santa Cruz tomorrow. Looks like Nathan is going to be living with me for a while because he still hasn't found a place of his own. School starts on Thursday.
Despite being 21, I still have not purchased any alcohol in the United States. I did order alcohol at a restaurant for the first time today, though.
und was sagst du dazu? |
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2008 1 September :: 5.56 pm
:: Music: I've Got a Golden Ticket
Home at last
Today is the anniversary of my arrival in Berlin. I have been home in California for about two weeks now, and I love it more every day. My fair California.
Exciting things are in the works. In September I move back to Santa Cruz for my fourth and final year at the UC. I'll be in a studio apartment right across the street from the beach, which is everything I was hoping for.
I might also be taking a horse, which is my current project. My sister was given a pony for Christmas last year, and she keeps it at a stable that's run by a member of the Bureau of Land Management. He often has wild mustangs at the stable which he then adopts out to people. Last week he got a new one, a two-year-old, which Sadie told him I was interested in as a cover for getting some mustang adoption brochures.
I met that horse today. It's a bay, one white foot, and not at all shy which is rare for those mustangs. It will already let me touch its nose and feed it carrots and alfalfa cubes. And so it turns out that I am interested, just like Sadie said. He's twenty-five dollars total. Can't really go wrong with that.
Of course it will be a sizable project -- he's completely untrained, and hasn't even really gotten used to humans yet. But it's a prospect I find thrilling, raising this baby mustang myself, training it myself, and someday having a well-trained, good-natured horse that I can proudly point to as the result of my hard work.
I'm trying to find a place for him to stay in Santa Cruz, and inquiring after some help with boarding fees from my horse-crazy aunt, and if those things work out then I'm going to do it. What an interesting conclusion to my lifetime of wanting a horse -- buying a mustang fairly spur-of-the-moment for twenty-five dollars.
und was sagst du dazu? |
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2008 20 July :: 10.13 am
:: Music: Music from "Rurouni Kenshin"
Have I really not updated since April? For shame.
Things are better now than they apparently were then. I've almost finished my last semester in Berlin -- classes have stopped meeting but I still have two final papers to write and grades to collect before my academic obligations are taken care of for good. It's starting to dawn on me how little time I really have left in Germany, and it's somewhat bittersweet. On the one hand I'm looking forward to getting home -- I've never been this far or away this long before. On the other hand, my friends are already starting to dissipate and scatter, and while I hope that I'll see them again, given their far-flung origins and the weakness of the US dollar, there's really no guarantee. A couple of them sound interested in someday coming to California, which makes me happy.
Speaking of California, I discovered yesterday that it was on my birthday in 1848 that Mexico sold California (among a few other desert states) to the USA. What an auspicious day of birth I have.
und was sagst du dazu? |
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2008 2 April :: 6.52 pm
Because everyone loves these.
Amelia started it!
Read more..
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2008 2 April :: 5.45 pm
Back in Göttingen with Nathan after an extended tour of Greece with the aforementioned and his parents. Feeling a little melancholy and homesick, though whether for California or Berlin I can't say.
I've just begun to feel unimportant, which is probably in part because I've been the fourth wheel for the past nine days in Nathan's three-person family. Understandably Otho and Bonnie are more focused on Nathan than me or anyone else -- he's their son. I'm not saying that I'm jealous or spiteful or that I think it should be any other way. I do understand. But it's all starting to weigh a little heavily, and I miss being helpful and important to people too.
I'm also a little depressed to be back in Germany, because when I'm away I'm not intimately acquainted with the fact that I'm still woefully unable to speak the official language.
und was sagst du dazu? |
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2008 17 March :: 11.54 am
I just realized that it's St. Patrick's Day and I'm not wearing any green! Oh the horror! I have to go home and change.
und was sagst du dazu? |
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2008 13 March :: 7.17 pm
Shopping trip
Today on our IKEA adventure I scored a couple of lamps, a big blue rug for my floor, and four squre mirrors that I put in a line on my wall to make them full-length. I think I may get a bunch of pillows from the euro store and just throw them on the rug to make a little nestlike hangout on the floor, since I'm lacking chairs or sofa.
Going to try and make pie with Nathan either this evening or the next. Never made pie before. Should prove interesting.
und was sagst du dazu? |
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2008 23 February :: 11.15 pm
So, life. What's to say? Sometimes it's brilliant. Other times, more often, it's less brilliant. I'm trying to live for the moments when the former is the case.
I found Dria's new blog yesterday after stumbling across some pictures of her and getting caught in a fit of nostalgia and self-destructive, self-proclaimedly stupid curiosity. I shouldn't have gone looking and I regretted it. The situation is pretty much unrectifiable, and thinking about it only makes me crazy.
I move out of Schlachtensee this coming Saturday and I still haven't found a new place to live yet. David and I have made steps on finding several places but none of the prospects are even looking likely at this point. May end up homeless for a while, but not roofless, which is the real thing to worry about. If that happens I'll be storing my unessential things my exchange program director's office and living either in a hostel or with Nathan in Göttingen until we find a place.
Berlin has a forest in it, the Grunewald, and a few days ago when Nathan was here we went for a walk there. I had to leave early that morning to go to the university so I left Nathan sleeping. On my way home I bought some food for a picnic, packed it up as a surprise, and then suggested we go for a hike. We ended up eating in a wooden tower we found in the woods with a bench and some open slats in the walls. We hypothesize that it's used for hunting.
We also saw some wild pigs, heavily furry, a brown adult with several black and white spotted babies, which were startled from their hang-out near the trail by our approach. To tell you the truth it scared me nigh shitless. I've heard horror stories about wild pigs. Nathan was rattled as well. He picked up a big rock "just in case" and didn't drop it again until the pigs were far out of sight.
I'm feeling pretty directionless of late. I just don't know if the things I'm doing are the right things, or if the goals I'm working toward are what I actually want. I suppose one's never really sure of these things. It's interesting, though, that when I imagine what (all concerns of reality aside) I'd really like to do for a career, the things I think of are all things I've been doing since I was...well, since before I can remember. I'd like to be a concert musician with an orchestra, for instance. Or a Grand Prix show jumper, or a member of the Olympic equestrian team. Flying planes is euphoric but it's hard and it's alien even after all the time dedicated to it these past three years. It's still something that I don't think I really believe will ever happen. It's just not something that someone like me does. It takes precision and confidence and a kind of intelligence that I can't command. If I force myself to do this, if becoming a commercial pilot is actually something that I force, will it ever pan out? Maybe it requires more dedication than I have. I don't know. I always start to doubt my love for flying once I've been out of a cockpit for a while, though, and at this point it's been nearly six months.
In conclusion, and switching gears completely, a mantra has been running through my head today. "There is no nobility in sadness. There is only an occasional sadness in nobility." I think I would do well to remember this.
und was sagst du dazu? |
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2007 23 November :: 2.08 pm
Today I went to see a doctor for the first time since coming to Germany because I was peeing blood and in quite a lot of pain. The doctor was very friendly and spoke English to me, but trying to speak to the secretaries in German made me feel like ten kinds of a fool.
This story has a happy ending however in the form of antibiotics and my great gratitude for health insurance.
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2007 8 November :: 6.31 pm
I've decided that there's no reason why my journal should remain friends only. Futher entries will be available to the general public.
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