My name is Katie and I love action watching action movies.

I am currently sitting on the couch next to Moose watching my third action movie of the day.

My name is Katie and I love watching action movies.

I won’t say I’m addicted. I mean, I could stop watching action movies if I wanted to. I could. But I like watching them. I like ridiculous gun battles and fist fights and stuff exploding. It’s just so over-the-top and (unless it’s a war movie), it’s not even remotely realistic.

This morning, my parents and I went to an early screening of Cowboys & Aliens. The movie didn’t make you think at all, but that’s not to say that it wasn’t entertaining. Because it was. Entertaining, that is. There were fist fights, gun fights, fights with aliens. It was very enjoyable.

What made it super enjoyable was Daniel Craig and the locations/sets/costumes.

In my post yesterday, I wrote about Guy Pearce and how if you watch his eyes you can tell he’s very in the moment. Same goes for Daniel Craig… maybe even more so. In this film, Craig’s character doesn’t speak much, but he doesn’t need dialogue to get his point across. Craig’s got these blue eyes that would likely cut right through you if they could. He’s intense. And his stares and glares are intense. This only aids his performance and makes you really question who this character is… and why you care so much about him even though you don’t know much about him (nor does he seem to know much about himself).

Besides an intense performance from Craig, the rest of the ensemble turned in decent performances as well. Harrison Ford has the grumpy older guy role down pat. Paul Dano plays a good jerky, entitled young guy. Sam Rockwell provided several memorable moments of comedy relief as Doc. And Olivia Wilde is pretty. (Her character had the biggest WTF? quality about her, but basically it seemed that her character got away with stuff because of her looks. Sorry, I had to say it.)

The locations were gorgeous. Wide plains. Arid desert. Beautiful, beautiful rock formations. Blue skies. Gloomy rains. It just looked like how a Western should.

The costumes were also really great. Dingy clothes in a Western are a necessity. And Daniel Craig’s vest/white shirt/chaps ensemble… day-yum.

🙂

After the movie, we got some Chinese food and went back home where my dad and I proceeded to watch Die Hard With a Vengeance. This is still my favorite of all the Die Hard movies for some reason. I think because I like the buddy-aspect of it with John McClane (Bruce Willis) and Zeus (Samuel L. Jackson). And Jeremy Irons is a great bad guy (Simon). And I like all the riddles and tasks that Simon bestows upon McClane and Zeus.

On a whole, the Die Hard franchise is solid. The second one is my least favorite, but it’s still very watchable. Bruce Willis as John McClane is just so money. John McClane is one of my favorite action movie protagonists of all time because he’s not the best person ever, but ultimately he means well. And he’s super sarcastic. And I just love Bruce Willis. (I’ve seen 37 of his films.)

When that was over, I checked some emails and found that my thesis has been added to an online database. This is yet another step in the whole graduate school process which leads me to believe that this whole experience is almost over. I still won’t believe it until I have my diploma in my hands.

While online, I saw this article on EOnline… We’ll just have to wait and see tomorrow if there is an official announcement about Darren Criss taking over for Daniel Radcliffe in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying in January. I hope it is true. I think it would be really cool if he was on Broadway in one of my favorite musicals of all time. It would be extra cool if I got a chance to see him in the show. We’ll just have to see… The article says the announcement is imminent. I’ll 100% believe it when his representation makes it official. For right now, I’m just super hopeful. (So hopeful that I *may* already be trying to make plans to see the show…)

After some rehearsal and a shower, I came back upstairs and read for a bit before I turned on Point Break. Which brings me to the present time…

Watching Point Break. Just finished the scene where Johnny Utah misses his shot on purpose. You know the one… (AUGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! Shot Shot Shot Shot Shot)

(btw – If you’ve seen Point Break, you need to watch Hot Fuzz. If you’ve seen Hot Fuzz, but not Point Break, then you need to watch Point Break.)

Point Break is not a great movie, but I still like it because A. I like the director (Kathryn Bigelow) and B. I like Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze. I like the dynamic between Bohdi and Johnny Utah… friends and then enemies. What do you do?!?!?!

Plus, then there is a gratuitous skydiving scene… what’s not to love?

Well… I’m gonna finish watching the movie and then likely read for a bit before I turn in. I have work tomorrow and Tuesday, then a couple days off, then work Friday-Sunday. On my days off, there will be more job applications and attempts to figure out my future. So, I probably won’t be sleeping much, since I have all that to still worry about.

Have a good one

 

So, I either got bit by a spider or two or I have poison something on my arm….

Man, my arm is ITCHY.

we can’t figure out if I have huge spider bites on my arm, or if I somehow managed to get poison something (ivy? oak?) on my arm… regardless, it itches like crazy. And I have a few other bites that came out of nowhere that are in horrible, horrible spots. So I am itchy. But I’m trying not to think about it (though typing about it is not helping the cause…).

I had a sort of productive day today, I guess.

I wrote out some thank you cards, but I can’t send them yet. Strike that, I WON’T send them yet because my DARS are still messed up and I’m not sure if my professor submitted my grades or not. I’m giving it a few days, but if stuff doesn’t look right by middle of next week, you best believe some “hey, my stuff is still messed up” emails and calls will be headed to Ohio. I just want to be done with graduate school. Is that so much to ask?

I packed up all my coats today. I figured it’s the middle of June… surely it’s not going to snow again any time soon. (We had snow a month and a half ago… but that was the last time I saw flurries.) I also bagged up a whole bunch of magazines for the recycle truck. (I am a bit of a magazine hoarder… I have boxes of issues of Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Empire and Entertainment Weekly. But, I had a bunch of issues of People I didn’t need to read ever again, so I’m recycling those.)

I didn’t finish my reality show proposal, but I did apply for two jobs. Both are in Chicago. I doubt I’ll hear back from either of them, but it was worth a shot. I still need to figure stuff out, but I thought this was a step in the right direction. Or at least a direction.

I played some more ping pong with my mom… I haven’t won a game in a few days. I’ve gotten close, though, which gives me hope that I may actually beat her soonish. And hopefully more frequently. We’re super competitive, but we laugh an awful lot. And we always listen to Glee music (b/c it’s something neutral we both don’t mind listening to)… it’s funny which songs my mom has actually picked up the lyrics to. Let’s just say, I think I have converted her to a Warblers fan…

This afternoon I sat down to watch Jeopardy b/c my friend Danielle was a contestant! And she totally won!!!!!!!! So, I’ll get to watch her on TV again on Monday – how exciting!!! I’m glad for her little chat w/Alex Trebeck they talked about her book, Tippy Under the Mall. I’ve read part of it – it’s really great 🙂

After Jeopardy, my parents decided we were going to go to Panera, Half Price Books and Michael’s. Awesome! So, we got to Panera, only to find that my dad left his medicine at home. So we drove back home, then back to Panera… I was so tired I ended up taking a nap during this charade. I had some Mac & Cheese, greek salad and a smoothie for dinner. It was delightful. Then, at Half Price Books, I found the deal of the century – the Band of Brothers DVD set for $5! WHAT?!?!?!? So, I snatched that up real quick, along with a handful of books about the movies/television. Nice. We went to Michael’s and looked around while my dad picked up what he needed. Then we went home and my dad and I watched the first episode of Band of Brothers. I’ve seen the series before, but he hadn’t. He seemed to like it, which made me glad. His dad was always telling us we needed to watch it. I only saw it for the first time about a year and a half ago. It’s AMAZING.

While watching the show, the guy who played Martin (Dexter Fletcher) looked oddly familiar because I had a customer the other week who looked exactly like him… but I’m sure it wasn’t him, as why would Dexter Fletcher be in Minnesota?

Alas.

Well, it’s bedtime. I was supposed to work at 7:45 tomorrow morning, but a girl called yesterday and asked if I would switch her shifts. Now I’m not working until 6:45 pm … so I can SLEEP IN 🙂

However, work messed up my schedule for next week. I was going to switch my tuesday for another woman’s thursday shift (b/c she needed thursday off), but they gave me her shift and then didn’t give her my shift. So i’ll have to deal with that tomorrow. Bah.

Oh well… have a good one

 

Uneventful day

This’ll be epically short because basically all I did today was go to work.

Oh, well, I guess I also graduated from graduate school. But I am hesitant to full-out celebrate quite yet because I checked my DARS this morning and they were still messed up, saying that I haven’t fulfilled my Journalism Capstone Component (my thesis) or fulfill the correct amount of thesis hours. And, I have fulfilled both of these things, so I don’t see why my DARS doesn’t reflect that. So, this morning before I left for work, I emailed the dean of the communications school, my advisor/graduate director of the j-school, and another woman in the graduate office to inform them that (1) my DARS is still messed up (even though I informed them of that a few days ago) (2) that I have been having a lot of trouble in general with various entities at the school which handle thesis/graduation-related matters and (3) if there was any way someone could just let me know if I actually graduated today or if because of all of these obstacles I’ve been facing over the past few months, if I somehow got robbed of my graduation day. (I didn’t word it like that, but I was thinking it in my head, for sure)

So, since I don’t want to read bad news or emails from academics right before I go to sleep, I will be dealing with that tomorrow morning (it’s not going to make a difference if I read it now or later anyway… it’s 11:30 pm in Ohio and it’s the weekend… no one would answer an email until Monday morning anyway).

And so I shall read for a bit and go to sleep… and dream about the upcoming Tony Awards on Sunday. I cannot WAIT!! Plus, my sister should be in town for them!!! EXCELLENT! We love Broadway 🙂 We’ve seen 15 or 16 shows together. I’ll post some clips and whatnot from my favorite shows this weekend!

Have a good one

 

“Hot town, summer in the city…”

So, it got up to 103 degrees today here in the Twin Cities. To that I say, “Buh-WHAT?!”

I wasn’t outside for a long period of time today, and luckily it was super windy. I didn’t realize it was over 100 degrees today until I was watching the news during dinner.

It was a semi-productive day, but not really.

I woke up around 8:30 and crawled upstairs for some breakfast. My mom and I decided to see the 10:55 showing of The Hangover Part II (as my mom did not like my other two options – Thor or X-Men: First Class).

After breakfast I went back down to my room to try and get some computer stuff done before we left. A bit into my computer stuff, my mom came to my room and told me there was a baby robin in our water garden. I quickly shut down my computer and ran upstairs to the deck… sure enough, there was the most adorable chubby baby robin sitting in a potted plant in the middle of our water garden.

For the next 10 minutes or so, my mom and I (she with a shovel, me with a trowel), went around various parts of our yard to dig up some worms to feed the baby robin. We collected a fair few and went back to the deck so my mom could feed the little guy (girl?). The baby robin was sooooooooo cute taking the worms out of my mom’s fingers. He was so hungry! We didn’t know if we should try and get him (her?) out of the water garden, so we left him/her there while we went to the movie and hoped that he/she would be there when we got back.

So, The Hangover II was pretty horrible. Which is a total shame because the first one was sooooooooooo good. Sooooooooo good. Sure it was crass, but it was funny as hell.

The sequel – not as such. There were a few funny parts. Most of those parts were the same ones they showed us over and over again in the trailer.

The plot was similar (upcoming wedding, Phil/Stu/Allen have one f**cked-up night and lose someone and have to retrace their steps to (1) figure out what happened and (2) find their missing person before the wedding), but the level of quality comedy was seriously lacking.

I am all for crass humor. But I am also all for a decent plot. And this movie’s plot was just not on par with the first one. I cannot stress enough how disappointing it is when a good movie has a sequel that doesn’t live up said original good movie.

When we got home from the meh movie this afternoon, we checked on our robin friend. He/she was still in the water garden, but his/her mama was on the deck railing. So, we were super glad he/she was still alive, and we were glad that the mama was trying to feed her baby. But, we also knew we had to get the baby robin out of the water garden because he wasn’t able to fly out on his/her own. I grabbed a shoe box and my mom filled it with newspaper. We went out on the deck and she went to get him/her out of the water garden, and the baby robin flipped out, as did the mama robin. My mom got the baby robin out, but instead of getting him/her into the box, he/she squirmed his/her way out of my mom’s hands and onto the deck… then hopped down the deck stairs and scooted into one of our gardens. The mama robin almost attacked my mom. There was lots of angry robin sounds and it got a bit scary there for a bit. My mom and I went back inside and looked out through the living room windows. The mama robin hung out in a tree for awhile, but we weren’t able to see the baby robin again the rest of the day. Hopefully he/she is okay.

Once all the baby robin excitement died down, I put on some Starship while I ate lunch. While it’s not my favorite StarKid production (I think that honor goes to A Very Potter Sequel, closely followed by A Very Potter Musical), I still love it a lot. I listen to the soundtrack all the time. And now that I have the DVD, I can watch it whenever I want 🙂

After lunch, I went back to my room (which is thankfully the coolest room in the house) to try and work on my resume and start a job hunt.

Job hunting is daunting. I don’t know what I want to do or where I want to do it at. All the jobs I was looking at were in New York or California. And a lot of the jobs I saw listed were ones that started immediately. How is this supposed to work? I’ll be applying for jobs likely all over the country, but there is pretty much no way I can start anything immediately because I live in the middle of the country. My eye has been twitching like whoa for a few days, so I’m already way stressed about this job hunt and I only just got started. Should I just move somewhere and *then* find a job? Or should I just apply to a bunch of places and hope that someone will be forgiving in the fact that I am super far away for the time being, and it’s not possible to start a job the very next day because I live so far away from everything. Bah

Also Bah is I checked my DARS (Ohio University’s weird way of keeping track of courses you take and is a way to monitor if you are on track to graduate on time) to see what my GPA was so I could put that on my resume. Well, my GPA is 3.804 (not too shabby, I guess.. my lowest cumulative GPA ever, but I can deal with it), but my DARS indicated that I had not yet completed my Journalism Capstone Component (i.e. my thesis). And, as we all know – I totally completed my thesis last week. I got my email from the Thesis and Dissertation people that said I was done with my TAD process.

So, a little red flag went off in my mind… graduation is this friday. (I’m not physically going, but I’m still supposed to be graduating.) I finished all my classes. I finished all my requirements. I finished my thesis. But, since my DARS doesn’t say that I finished it, will I still be able to graduate on Friday? I’m thinking yes, but I emailed the contact person just in case. I have had so much thesis drama, I really would appreciate if something went my way, thesis-wise, for once.

My resume-fixing and job-hunting will continue on Thursday, as I have to work all day tomorrow. Hopefully by thursday, all the graduation stuff will be sorted out too.

In the meantime, I’m watching The Voice. I like this show a lot… it’s nice to hear real singers, as opposed to people who are digitally enhanced like a lot of artists are these days. I still don’t quite understand the rules to this show, but I do enjoy the judges (Adam Levine!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and I like a bunch of the contestants. Tonight was the first live show, and I loves that the judges opened with a Queen medley. Damn, Adam Levine on guitar is the bees knees…

Well, I’m gonna keep watching the show.

Have a good one!

 

I almost cried at work today, and my job isn’t even worth the effort it takes to shed tears

Good Lord, I can’t wait until I’m working at a place where (1) I don’t feel like every ounce of dignity/my soul is being taken away (2) my colleagues and I get treated with respect/are appreciated for the work we do (3) it pays well and (4) I leave feeling like I have a greater purpose than just making already rich people even more rich.

I had the most frustrating day at work, and I was only there for a few hours! It was that time of the week where the manager takes you aside and goes over all of your numbers for a previous week and the year. And once again, I was 103.9% to my sales goal, but instead of getting 55 out of 55 points, I only got 35 points because even though I was over my goal, I wasn’t over by enough. And I was 100% of my opening accounts goal, but only got 5 out of 15 points, because 100% just isn’t good enough. So, even though I pretty much rocked the shit out of my numbers this year, it looks like I’m doing a crappy job at my crappy job. And that makes me feel horrible because even though I totally should not be caring about stupid numbers, I HATE that I’m at or above 100% of all of my goals and it looks like I’m a total slacker.

My colleagues told me I shouldn’t be wasting any time worrying about this. And it’s not that I’m worried about this, because I’m not. I’m not worried about my job. I’m just epically frustrated that I work my ass off at my crappy job, only to get paid pennies for the thousands and thousands of dollars I know I’m making for the company, and then it looks like I’m a slacker because I’m only doing 100% or better and that’s just not enough.

Now that all of my thesis stuff is done, I am going to be starting an epic job hunt shortly. Like I wrote yesterday, I have absolutely no idea what kind of job I want. But I do know that I will NEVER AGAIN work for the company I am working for right now. And while I am thankful to be employed right now, I am also thankful that I know this job is not my career and that I will hopefully soon find another job.

Bah

But, enough about work and how it feels like my soul is being slowly ripped out from my core.

Today we kinda officially celebrated me being done with grad school. And by kinda celebrated, I mean my dad and I drove to Papa’s to get the four of us (me, dad, mom and brother) some cheesesteaks for dinner.

Papa’s is the closest thing we have to authentic Philly cheesesteaks in the Twin Cities. And they are damn tasty. They are almost as good as those we get when we’re actually in Philly. If you’ve never had a Philly cheesesteak in Philly, well then I just feel super sorry for you. They are heavenly. They are the ultimate comfort food. They remind me of when I was little… they remind me of my grandparents… they are just the taste equivalent of home. This is why I requested them for my celebratory meal… it’s like being hugged the entire time you’re eating dinner. Like my late grandparents were joining in on the celebration of me finishing graduate school. (They both died a few years before I made it into grad school, so they never will know that I got my Masters, or that my sister is in the middle of getting her doctorate, or that my brother almost has his Masters too… 😦 ) I know they would have been really proud of all of us, so as silly as it sounds, getting cheesesteaks today was my way of including them in my post-graduate school celebration.

And that’s really all that happened today… work and cheesesteaks. I’m getting ready to read for a bit before I go to sleep. I don’t have work tomorrow (thank goodness), so I can stay up for awhile and catch up on some reading I meant to do this week.

Oh, and my sister is coming to visit in a couple weeks!!!!! I have to participate in a golf outing with my parents, so she’s going to come up to be my golf partner since my brother can’t make it this year. Woot woot – I can’t wait to see her!!! I’m getting spoiled seeing both of my siblings in a matter of weeks like this. I just saw them both in May, and I just got to spend a week with my brother, and now I’ll get a few days with my sister 🙂 I love spending time with my family!!

Ah well, reading and sleep time

Have a good one

 

Glee Live was AWESOME

So, Glee Live was AMAZING! I’ll post some pictures soon… I didn’t get any really awesome ones of Darren Criss, unfortunately (it’s like my camera KNEW I wanted to get his picture, but then my camera rebelled like whoa), but I did get some pretty great group shots and whatnot.

But, besides Glee Live – on the thesis front, I am (I think) 100% done with my thesis stuff! I got the “Katie Labovitz has completed the TAD process” email this morning… after a few emails to TAD Services and the head of the graduate journalism department. He sent in my paperwork last week, but it physically got stuck in someone else’s pile (damn staples), so it didn’t get turned in until today when he inquired to the person he gave it to whether they turned it in or not. Geez, can’t a girl graduate already?

But, everything should be a-okay now. I think. Fingers crossed, yo.

Well, I’m gonna post some stuff on FB and then read a bit and then sleep… I’ll post Glee pictures on here tomorrow night. I’m supposed to be going to an amusement park tomorrow, so maybe I’ll have some funny pictures/stories from there too.

Have a good one.

 

Just when I thought it was over, it’s not… bah

So, this morning, I checked my email and saw that the Thesis and Dissertation people at OU apologized for not sending the electronically signed PDF they were supposed to send me on Friday. They did send it to me this morning, so I uploaded my thesis onto the proper website.

Done! Right?

Nope…

Later this afternoon I got another email from them saying that the PDF I uploaded to the website (which was the very same PDF they sent me this morning) was not electronically signed and that they would have to upload the signed version onto the website.

Well… hell.

I totally uploaded the same PDF they sent me this morning. Ergo, it *should* have been the right one. Unless the one they sent me was the wrong one… JESUS. Can’t a girl just be done with her thesis already?

On the plus side, though, my friend Ashley is the most amazing friend ever and she printed out my thesis and had it bound today, so the hard copy of my paper is already in the hands of the head of the graduate journalism program. WOOT WOOT. So, the life lesson here is I can count on my friend, but not on the people whose actual job it is is to make sure all the thesis stuff goes off without a hitch. So, THANK YOU Ashley 🙂

So, the high I felt today when I thought I was all done with thesis stuff has been quashed, but I’m still on a bit of a high because tomorrow night is friggin’ GLEE LIVE in Minneapolis. And my brother is letting me borrow a memory card for my camera so I can take over 1,000 10-Megapixel pictures if I wanted too instead of just 30 (b/c the memory card I have sucks). So, here’s hoping I get some friggin’ sweet shots of my favorite Glee people… you best be believing I will be taking a bajillion pictures of Darren Criss, the other Warblers and Chris Colfer. Like whoa. LIKE WHOA. I promise I will post some pictures later this week.

Other than thesis-related stuff, today was mostly uneventful. My mom and I played tennis for an hour, but it was so windy that it was extra challenging to play well. I mean, we don’t play well as it is, but the wind made it a bajillion times worse. We laughed so hard… so it was totally worth it.

I also got the latest issue of Rolling Stone in the mail (Lady Gaga is on the cover – great article about Mother Monster. “Edge of Glory” is my favorite Lady Gaga song of all time. It’s just so 80stastic and wonderful.) I also got my Starship DVD in the mail!!!!!!!!!!!!! I can’t wait to rewatch it in all it’s edited together glory. I listen to songs from that show pretty much everyday, so it’ll be totally awesome to be able to watch the DVD whenever I want!

I didn’t get to watch any Starship today, but we did finish watching The Living Daylights. Not the best Bond movie ever, but j’adore Timothy Dalton (he’s my 3rd favorite Bond), so it was fun to rewatch it. Then, later on we watched The Voice. I didn’t quite agree with who some of the judges kept, but I find that show super fascinating. Plus, Adam Levine makes for great television because he kind of just says whatever it is on his mind, regardless how PC it is. Four for you, Adam Levine. You are f-ing adorable.

Well, I should head to bed. My throat is still epically scratchy and I need to rest before Glee Live tomorrow, as I have a feeling I am going to be audibly freaking out by time the Warblers take the stage. I know my mom is already way embarrassed to be going to this concert with me… and I don’t think she’s fully aware of the potential I have to freak out tomorrow. Or maybe she is… either way, I know she’ll be shaking her head at me for days to come.

Have a good one!

 

Well, it’s been a long day…

“… Well it’s been a long, been a long, been a long, been a long day.”

(One of my FAVORITE musicals ever, btw…)

Holy smokes, what a long day.

I worked for about 8 hours and it felt like forever… probably because they didn’t have the air on and it was hot/uncomfortable the whole day. And I’m still feeling a bit off from yesterday. My colleague asked if I was feeling okay because she said I looked like I was off a bit… I told her I felt weird and she said I was looking pretty peaked.

I was super busy today, which meant that work should have flown by. But it didn’t…

After work I was feeling a little bit better just because I now have 4 whole days off… Glee Live is on Wednesday… I get to spend some time with my family… we sat on the deck and made s’mores… and I laughed so hard that there were tears rolling down the side of my face. All that and several cold sodas totally helped my mood and made me feel less blah.

I’m thankful I don’t have to set any sort of alarm for tomorrow morning… I can just sleep.

Hopefully tomorrow someone will email me the PDF attachment I need to finally finish all of my thesis stuff. If I don’t get an email by lunchtime tomorrow, they will be receiving a phone call. I’m getting this stuff done before Friday, mark my words. I did not just drive to and from Ohio and defend my thesis only to not have it uploaded in time because the thesis people neglected to attach the proper link in an email.

So, that should get done tomorrow. And then I will be oh so happy 🙂

Have a good one!

 

My day unfolded like my little world was setting me up to fail big.

So, this will likely be a quick post, as I’m tired and I should get to bed soon since I have to wake up in 9 1/2 hours to get ready for work. But, I should get back into the habit of posting nightly…

I actually slept last night. Like, a full 8 hours without interruption. Perhaps it was because I was physically exhausted from my time in Ohio and the 15+ hour drive I did yesterday without proper food intake (you don’t even want to know what kept me going yesterday…). Perhaps it was because I was in my bed, with my blankets and whatnot. Perhaps it was because my thesis stuff is almost officially finished.

Anyway, I friggin’ slept like a log. And it was AMAZING.

After breakfast, I went back to my room to see if the thesis people had accepted my final document. They had!! BUT, in their “congratulations on your document acceptance” email, they said to save the attached final document PDF to my computer and then upload it onto the proper website. Well… there was NO PDF ATTACHMENT. The three embedded links in their email were all to the website and instructions of how to upload the PDF. But they didn’t attach any PDF! And since it’s a holiday weekend, no one will see my email about their epic neglect of PDF inclusion until Tuesday. And the deadline is Friday… but still! I was hoping to get my paper uploaded today and send the link to my friend in Ohio who is going to print/bind my paper for me at their Kinkos. WHAT THE HELL, OHIO UNIVERSITY THESIS AND DISSERTATION SERVICES PEOPLE?!?!?!?! Jesus… can’t a girl just graduate already?

I even had my brother look over their email to make sure I hadn’t overlooked an obvious attachment. But he couldn’t find one either. BAH!

So, I vented to my mom for a hot minute, then got a shower and sang Starship songs at the top of my lungs, even though my voice is shot from the drive yesterday (I sang for 15+ hours straight to keep myself awake… I sound horrible today.). I then repainted my nails, while flipping through the latest issue of GQ (yes, I bought it for the Darren Criss photo spread. No regrets. It’s a damn fine spread. Also, GQ is actually a great magazine for girls to read. It’s chock-full of nice pictures of really attractive guys, the articles are actually pretty decent, but mostly it’s chock-full of really attractive guys. Day-yum…).

I then played 5 rounds of ping-pong with my brother… and I won! I beat him 3-2… and all the games I won, I played left-handed. So, that’s obviously working out for me. Woot woot.

Then we sat on the deck for awhile. My mom and I had a soda while my brother played his guitar. He’s one of those people… just kinda strums away playing DMB, John Mayer or America music.

Then I had to get ready for work… since I was gone for over a week, people were excited to see me and hear about my thesis stuff. My colleagues are so sweet – they were super happy for me 🙂

I ended up by myself for most of the night because I was in a non-busy area. (Though of course I had 2 customers buy a bunch of stuff as the store was closing… luckily they did, or I wouldn’t have met my sales goal.)

Speaking of sales goal… I now know why my charts indicate that I’m doing so poorly at work with regard to my sales and whatnot. Meeting 100% of my sale’s goal does NOT earn me full points with regards to my sales score. I’m supposed to be be making 120% or more of my sales goal in order to achieve full points. NO ONE EVER TOLD ME THAT. I’ve been there for over 6 months and NO ONE told me that I’m supposed to be aiming for at least 20% more of my daily goal. So, here I am, thinking I’m doing awesome making 100% of my goal most of the time, but that’s not good enough to earn 100% of my sales points. WHAT THE HELL? Then why don’t you just give us bigger sales goals? No wonder it looks like I’m a huge slacker… because I only f-ing made 104% of my sales goal for the year so far… *This* is why I didn’t get my full raise. *This* is why I keep getting told that I need to be practically forcing people to buy stuff. Because I’ve only made 104% of my f-ing sales goal and not 120%. Well, EXCUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUSE ME.

As my new manager was telling me this tonight, I was just thinking to myself how by the end of the week, I will be a Master of Science. And I will be looking for a job that won’t rely on me trying to force people to open store cards or having to be worried about other people stealing my customers. I will look for a job that will help me grow as a person and challenge me in areas I am passionate about… not a job that frowns upon me for only exceeding my ridiculous sales goals by 4% instead of recognizing that I work my ass off and almost meet my sales goal a majority of the time I work. Same with opening store accounts. I met my account goal, but that wasn’t good enough to earn full points. Nothing I do at my job is good enough for the higher ups because it’s all about the numbers. How have I not been fired yet?

BAH

Between the thesis people and my job, today could have been horrible. But, hopefully my thesis stuff will get sorted out on Tuesday. And I will not be working at this job for too much longer… a couple months tops.

So, here’s what I say to them:

(btw – I’m seeing Glee Live on Wednesday… I’m going to be in the same arena as Darren Criss. Cue me having a shit-eating-grin on my face for the entire night… pictures to come, yo. Pictures to come…)

Have a good one

 

Epically quick post

Well, I made it back to MN after a friggin’ 15+ hour car ride today. Construction and horrible drivers can go screw themselves… I shoulda been home in 14 hours. Bah

But, this is going to be a super short post b/c I am bonkers tired.

I submitted my thesis to the Thesis and Dissertation people for the final approval. Once they approve it, I just have to upload it onto some website (and print out a hard copy for the journalism school library… but my friend, bless her, is going to do that for me b/c she’s still on campus!). Soooooooo… I will be checking on all that tomorrow.

If everything goes as planned, I will be officially done with my Masters in the next few days. And come June 10th/11th (whenever the grad school graduation is… though I’m not going, so whenever I get my diploma), I will be an M.S. – a Master of Science. BUH-WHAT?!?!?!?! Crazy, right? Then I’ll have a B.S.C. (Bachelor of Science in Communication) *and* an M.S. (Master of Science). So, on paper, it looks like I’m some awesome Science person… but I’m totally not (although I was awesome at Chemistry back in the day…). So, I’ll have degrees in Telecommunications and Journalism and a minor in Film. Someone needs to hire me for an awesome job right now, right? 🙂

I’ll post more this weekend about my pretty stellar week in Ohio.

Have a good one