It's been busy. It's going to continue being busy.

Le Sigh.

Just thinking about everything going on in my life makes me really fucking exhausted.

I just want to be in Korea already, where the only prescribed schedule to my days will be teaching and crossfit. Everything else will be optional.

So I've got about a month of grad school left. And in that time, I've got 2 10-pg final project/presentations, a midterm (three days from now, which I predict I will bomb solely because it's economics and that's really not my forte), and a monster capstone project report that will end up being around 70 pages total with references and appendixes and diagrams, etc. At some point I should also register for the graduation ceremonies.

I'm also on the board of a choir that I sang in for the past two years, Ancora. I like being the board secretary very much, but I really want to make sure that all the little things I've set up (a new website (which needs updating), dropbox account, pursuing grants for the organization) get continued - and that's going to take some effort on my part to document all those things and find people willing to take them on. I hope I can get to it, but I'm also aware that this is the thing that may get pushed aside given everything else that's going on.

I'm taking Korean classes on Saturdays. The first two weeks were easy, because it was just learning the alphabet, which I already know. However this past week there was a whole list of vocabulary that I should have been memorizing that I haven't even touched.

Also, I'm fucking MOVING TO A FOREIGN COUNTRY in two months. That takes some set-up.  Here's a tiny list just off the top of my head of some of little things to get sorted out:

- Inform landlord that I'm moving out
- Close extra bank accounts, paid subscriptions, monthly donations, etc.
- Sell all my furniture
- Make sure the cat's paperwork is all in order - he'll need a health certificate within 10 days of leaving
- Buy the cat a new airline-friendly pet carrier and pee pads for the trip
- Ask the current teacher in my apartment if he could buy a litter box for me so it's there waiting and not the absolute first thing I have to run out and buy
- Go through countless boxes and bookshelves to figure out what I actually want to save
- Send of Visa application stuff to my school
- Go to the Korean Consulate to get my temporary visa
- Send extra diploma copies to the WA state gov office to get them stamped with an apostille
- Give the post office a forward address for my mail - probably to my parents'?
- Figure out my finances/loan repayments so I can set up a backup account for direct deposits of all my bills that will need to be paid from US accounts
- Consolidate all my student loans
- Buy adaptors/transformers for which ever electronic stuff I decide to take with me
- Buy a new laptop before I go
- Stock up on shit I know is totally difficult to get in Korea
- Buy tiny gifts from home to give new friends/co-workers in Korea (gift-giving is big, and I want to be polite and make a good impression!)
- Figure out when the fuck I can see all of my friends! When should I have a party?
- Call the piano guy to schedule him moving out my piano - see if I've got any friends who can help with that?

Oh, and I desperately need to get a haircut.

This is where I'm going, FYI:

View Larger Map

But more on that later.*



Something struck me the other day in my Executive Leadership class (which is a blast, except our 6-person group gives me a scheduling headache - we've never actually been able to meet all at once) when we were brainstorming a list of emotions people would have to certain situations. When we seemed to be running out of ideas, the professor hinted with, "Stressed?" And while everyone agreed, my immediate reaction was more of, "that's an emotion?" Do people above a certain age actually think of stress as an emotional state?  I remember once when I was in undergrad my dad asking me if I felt stressed out all the time. "Of course," I answered, which apparently kind of shocked him. Stress is just a state of being for me, and I assume many of my generation. It ebbs and flows, but it remains as constant background noise to the rest of my life.

I don't know if this is just because I've always got too much going on, because something in society has taught me that stress is a thing that successful people carry at all times, or something to attribute to the ubiquitous presence of technology in all our lives that requires us to constantly multitask. In any case, I'm pretty sure it's not healthy.


Anyway. I just felt like writing.



That's a lie.

I felt like avoiding the 15 pages of project paper I need to write before Tuesday, mid-term I need to study for that's on Monday, and vocabulary words I need to memorize before tomorrow. Writing a blog post seemed infinitely funner than any of those things.

* I do plan to make a blog post in the next week letting everyone know the details of my job, etc - since I haven't posted anything on facebook that's very extensive or informative yet.

I hope you all have a much more quiet and relaxing weekend than I will have.  XD

filling in the gaps

I didn't write in this blog for about 4 years. Here's the list of things that need to be caught up on, and which it would probably behoove me to write a recap for future-me to enjoy.

1. Grad school
      a. Living on my own. With the cat.
2. Am I gay? (Asexual? Graysexual? A Robot?)
      a. Regardless, I'm never dancing at a straight club again.
3. Let's join a fancy new choir!
      a. And let's be on the board. And be the webmaster. And the secretary.
4. Hey there, active Riley!
      a. How the hell did I get up that early?
      b. A brief foray into Roller Derby.
5. Hey there, Crossfit!
     a. Burpees and lunges and wallballs, oh my!
6. Paleo say whaaaat?
     a. Also, vegetable juices.
7. Hair is better with color in it (a photographic journey).
      a. Apparently everyone hated my perm but never told me.
      b. Why I will never again have long hair.
8. KPOP HOLY SHIT KPOP.
9. K-Dramas
10. No, for real, let's move to Korea.

I'm sure there are other things that I'll remember along the way, but that's a good list to start with. Don't know yet if I'll make them posts, or sections on a separate page.

the blog lives!

Hey yall.  I'm still alive. And I've decided to resurrect this blog. The main reason this blog died was because I started grad school and my life got INSANE.  I should do a grad school recap post at some point, actually.
Anyway, the blog is coming back, even though I'm still crazy busy:

1) Working full-time.
2) Grad school full-time.
3) Graduate capstone project due June 5th.
4) Ancora board secretary.
5) PREPPING FOR KOREA.*
6) Taking Korean language classes 1/week.
7) HCG Diet **

other confounding factors:
- no crossfit = T_T ***
- commuting via bike/bus takes time, yo
- posture/movement therapy 1/week
- chiropractor every 1-2 weeks

* Job searching for ESL teaching positions in Seoul - hopefully starting between July 15 and August 31. (I'll graduate June 15.) Part of the reason I'm resurrecting this blog is because I know I'll want to document the Korean adventure that is my life pretty soon, and I'd rather not start a whole new blog.

**Also, doing the HCG Diet in hopes of being able to buy clothes in Korea (the most purposefully skinny country in the world).

*** HCG Diet prevents me from doing crossfit for 40 days.  Just like jesus in the dessert.  JUST LIKE THAT.  Also because i don't get to eat very much.  But, like, it's super exciting in many respects.
And i started another blog to chronicle my HCG adventure (just like everyone else who does it): CLICK HERE.

I have many blogs these days, check them out if you're curious:
Life Blog. (this one)
Workout Blog. (haven't updated much lately)
Diet Blog.
KPop Blog.

i'm not dead.

I tried to update twice before now, really, i did. Here's proof:

----------------
f p s p i c 2 0 0 9 - seriously. can we come up with a more ridiculous acronym? probably not. but it is kind of keeping in the tradition of fps - ridiculous acronyms. i had a team earlier that mocked it, they had an acronym that was just like 9 letter that didn't spell anything strung together, like CCDPREONF or something. it was worse.-----------------
I'm sorry I'm such a lame blogger. I will try to be better. Until then, i'll just give you lots of updates. 1) Heidi went to AK for the summer. In her stead, i had a roommate from craigslist for a while (a very nice vegan named Justin), and for the past 2 months the lovely Haley has graced me with her presence. She decided to move out of AK - a wise choice, i think - and having a place to stay in Seattle for the summer helped her decide where to go. Its been fun, although pretty stressful for her i think - what with moving and then trying to find a job, and now trying to find an apartment for October. 2)
-----------------

I saved both of those in drafts and never went back to finish them...........

SO LATELY ive been sick. I might even have had Swine Flu. But it was just like a cold, so i don't know. but i didn't go to work for two days, and instead sat around coughing and having sore eyelids and a strange stomach disposition.

- and i started kind of working for Angelo at his consulting tech company, but we're still just kind of testing it out.

- and i have not been watching hardly any movies. which is sad. Last night i watched Monsieur Ibraham, which was awesome and reinstilled my love of Omar Sharif because he's adorable at every age.

- i still have been dancing a lot, but not as much as before, which is sad.

- i'm writing fanfiction again, which is HARD but interesting and challenging and i kind of like it because of that, it feels like a good creative exercise for me or something.

- oh and GLEE. soooooo great.

- finished my first set of FPS packets for the year, which was fun. I'm also lead evaluator for the middle division this year, which is interesting. Mostly it means i just write an article for the newsletter after every topic on how students in my division seem to be doing. My first article went pretty well, but i think it was a bit loooooong (imagine that, me being verbose, gee)

- best thing of late: held the most kick-ass crazy pre-halloween dork party EVER. we read Macbeth entirely by candelight. the activities list:
::: dance party to No Kids / milling ::: MACBETH ::: dance party #1 - beat it ::: MACBETH ::: dance party #2 - "swing" dancing, the madison, spontanious improvisational dance line (a la grease) ::: predator cake ::: MACBETH (with: armor, gay siward, lady macbeth is gender confused, monica nelson voices, redneck & schwarzennegar murderers) ::: dance party ::: glow sticks ::: glow stick ring toss around beer bottle game ::: glow stick dance party in the dark ::: fitting into the bathroom ::: making glow stick shapes and animals and taking pictures ::: weird pictures on the couch ::: weird pictures with our heads ::: weird pictures of leg zippers ::: leg wrestling tournament ::: stick thing tournament ::: 17 again

- fell in love with an amazing gay makeup artist on youtube, spent too much money on makeup, did lots of fun crazy makeup stuff for real halloween.

- and then i got sick. thats been it. yay i updated! aren't you proud?

harry potter musical !!!!!

this is sooooo amazing. its hysterical. seriously. draco and voldemort and the funniest things i've ever seen. so many awesome awesome pop cultural references. and many are pleasingly zefron centric which is hysterical.

ELEVEN TIMES.
there is something wrong with me. but i don't care.

oh man, macaroni and cheese is like 80 times better if you just let the butter and milk coagulate for a few minutes before you eat it...... sooooooooooooooooo good.