Wednesday, July 27, 2005

The Cheating Blog

I just wrote a huge long email to a little listserv I'm on, so I'm going to cheat and copy and paste most of it to my blog... in good news, you'll get a very honest view of my life right now. In bad news, it's still cheating!

I feel like this is going to be an epic email... we'll see. :-) To
summarize, the last email I wrote to you all was on February 7th, when
a potential switch to normal hours hadn't worked out, I was hoping to
go to GC next year, I was "psuedo-dating" Vin, my friend Addy was
coming to visit, and I was packing the same lunch every day.

Sooo... lots of big news since then! The hiring manager from the
group I interned with (who had openings in February that I wasn't
interested in) basically created the PERFECT job for me... he knew
what I was interested in doing, and put some things together to get me
what should be a good fit for me. SO, I'm moving to days (normal
hours, normal days, everything!) the second week of September!
Praise! It is a 12% paycut, but I'm looking into getting a roommate
so that will help out financially.

There's still a possibility of me attending Indy GC next year, but I
just saw on the Greek IV website about a WEST COAST GREEK CONFERENCE!
Praise again! It's in LA in November so as soon as more information
comes out about it I'm going to sign up to volunteer. I'm assuming
they'll need tons of volunteers since there aren't a whole lot of West
Coast alumni, so if any of you want to come, please do! How fun would
that be?

I'm definitely not psuedo-dating Vin anymore... I went to Cabo for
"spring break" with some Delta Zeta's and Lambda Chi's in March, and
it was really nice to get away and spend some time with people I've
known for more than 8 months. They helped me unload and refresh, and
Vin and I have been friends since then.

Addy no longer has to come visit me anymore, because she has an
internship in Portland for the summer so she is living
with me! In the house that I bought about a month ago! With my
sister! Yes, it's all true. I found the perfect house early in May,
and closed on it June 29th. It's got 4 bedrooms which is too big for
me, but it's perfect with 3 of us in it now. My sister was hired as a
"summer hire", so she gets to work nights with me! So it's great, we get to work together and hang out, and she got to come to Portland for the summer. What a blessing!

As for lunch, I had reverted back to my old ways of buying lunch in
the cafe, but now that I'm a poor homeowner (I really think homeowners
are poorer than college students!), I'm back to trying to pack again.
I'm doing better all the time.

In April I took a class on the basic skills of mountaineering, so I've
been really into hiking and climbing this summer! The class was
GREAT, challenging mentally and physically, and I got to meet a lot of
cool people. Last weekend I climbed Middle Sister, which is one of
the 16 Major Northwest Peaks (volcanos!), but we only got to 9600 ft
of a 10000 ft mountain. BOO. There was a really steep pitch of snow
that was exposed on both sides to major cliffs, and the snow was too
mushy to put protection in. So we didn't risk it, we turned back and
kept in mind that the mountain will be there another day, but if we're
not around to climb it that won't do us any good. It was still an
AWESOME trip and so much fun to see some of my class friends again!