My Alternate Universe

No, they didn't offer me the job on the spot, but they may as well have! I had an interview today with a local public elementary school for a Behavior Therapist position, and I think that it went amazingly well. (So well, in fact, that I promptly put on the Wu-Tang Clan song "C.R.E.A.M." to celebrate. For those who aren't rap aficionados like myself, "C.R.E.A.M." stands for "Cash Rules Everything Around Me." It's a gangsta ode to the dollar bill... several of which I hope to be retrieving soon.) Two women interviewed me as a team, each of whom is in charge of a different position that I am being considered for. Boring play-by-play aside, I knew I slam-dunked when one woman wrote "GREAT!" at the top of my resume. Maybe she should have been sneakier about that little note-to-self, but hey. I'm not complaining. Then, 20 minutes later, one of my old supervisors called to say that they had contacted her for a reference, and she would be giving me a great one. They had back-to-back interviews all day, and they checked my references first! "Dolla dolla bill y'all!"

One of the extremely scary but convenient things about the internet is google maps. I just google my address, and it totally eliminates the need for me to get off my butt and take a picture of the front of my house for this blog post. Convenient, yes; stalker-scary, of course; eliminates the need to run up and down a flight of stairs, how lovely.

I live in Allston. For those of you not familiar with the area, Allston is like a borough of Boston... it's technically in the city of Boston, but is a big enough neighborhood to have a name of its own on the mail. Serviced by Boston Public Schools, the Boston Police and Fire Departments, etc. Weird thing, maybe kind of like Queens or Manhattan is to New York City. It's also where a lot of Harvard is. I live 4 blocks up the road from the Harvard Stadium, literally on the same street. Pretty sweet digs. It's an incredibly central and convenient location, and teeming with youngsters. I made the move to "Lower Allston," which is just a section of Allston that's a little older and a little quieter than Allston Village. Hallelujiah. I'm loving the new place, and the new roommates. There's only three of us here, as opposed to 4 or 5 at the last place (there were always visitors staying for 3+ weeks at the last place) and there's actually a COMMUNAL LIVING SPACE. My last apartment's closest approximation to a living room was the front steps, but here we actually have couches and a TV. It can get a little crowded in there, though, with our friends crashing the couch all of the time:

One of my roomies has two cats. I don't have much to say about that. Except maybe to point out the piece of paper taped to the couch in the above picture says "Do not sit, Cat pee!"
My bedroom in this apartment is literally half the size of the colossal creature cave at my last place, but it's much nicer and now that I'm actually on a lease and I know I'll be here for a while, I'm unpacking and making myself at home. It starts to feel like I really live here once the art goes on the walls, like this particular wall. I'm kind of proud of the way it turned out... it seems very "me." (And it looks much better in real life!)

As you'll notice, the walls are an intense blue/grey color, kind of like a sea-foam blue. At first I was little put-off by the color, and was going to promptly paint it a more respectable color, but the more I live in it, the more I like it. The particular paint choice contrasts the dark wood of the apartment really nicely, and has actually been working really well with my decorations and textiles as well. Much better than I expected. So I think I'll keep it... which will save a lot of man hours anyway.
I'll be stoked when there is no longer this pile of boxes in the corner:

I'm confident that it will be gone by the end of the week.
I'll just have to take care of it in-between starting graduate school and doing the thick pile of reading that I have to do (classes started today... exciting!) filing for unemployment, and applying for jobs. You see, I broke up with my job this last week over a scheduling snafu. Namely, they told me that I could either work there, or go to school, and not have both. I'm not going to go into the pain and trauma that this caused me... instead I'll mention how insane it is. My classes are twice a week at night, meaning that my schedule would have such a minimal change that no one would hardly even notice. But because of arbitrary rules, like only allowing schedule changes in June (?!) I had to choose a Master's degree that will sky-rocket my career or working at place with AWFUL employee relations and a sketchy administration. No offense, previous place of work, but seriously. At least I'm not mentioning the name of the company in this posting... that would just be in bad taste. So now I'm looking for new work, and feeling optimistic about the future. I'll honestly probably get paid significantly better, probably in a position that fits my qualifications better (aka supervisory) with the strong possibility of an administration that's easier to work with. I applied to seven jobs today! Go team Lauren!

My iTunes plays much too much Christmas music for the Christmas-to-normal-music ratio that my library actually maintains. I wouldn't mind this in, say, November and December, but on this Labor Day it's kind of pissing me off. Because I don't happen to be filled with joy, and I don't like being taunted with Christmas joy when it's soooo far away. Bah humbug.

I'M STARTING GRADUATE SCHOOL TOMORROW! The funny thing about it is that I didn't even remember. Tracie* had to remind me. I've spent so much of the day stressing and freaking out about my recent unemployment that I completely forgot that tomorrow I'm starting classes! (Which happens to be the reason for my unemployment, ironically enough.) Thanks, Tracie, for reminding me that I'm starting classes tomorrow! :) I just have one class tomorrow at 5:00pm (real hard to accommodate, thanks ex-job) and then one class at 5:30pm on Wednesday. It'll be very exciting, I'm sure!!



*For those not in the loop, Tracie's my hetero-life-mate in Yuma, AZ who helps me keep track of my brain. Without her, I'd lose it forever.