Things I learned on the road

1. The bigger your truck, the bigger your penis. Seriously. Don't believe me? Just ask the guy driving the monster truck with people-sized tires. Giant. Penis.

2. A woman (e.g. ME) in a small car passing a man in any car is a direct challenge to the guy's manhood.

3. Contrary to popular belief, diet coke, swedish fish, and regular flavor Pringles CAN in fact a meal make.

4. Turning on your windshield wipers when someone is unnecessarily tailing you (and thus showering their Escalade/Mustang/Tahoe in buggy, used window juice) IS as satisfying as it sounds.

Single Grad Female seeks new year's play

It's no secret that I usually date sucky men. (Case in point: Ex broke up with me in front of his therapist. Seriously.) So I spent 2007 single but occasionally having fun with a boy or two (erm...not at the same time).

It's been great not having to concern myself with a two-body problem while I look for faculty positions. I get to eat whatever I want (woohoo, shrimp raman! Yay breakfast of swiss miss rolls!) without any chiding (well, not in person anyways). And I always get the remote.

Recently I've been reconsidering the benefits of a boyfriend. LargeUtown gets very cold at night, so it sure would be nice to have someone to warm me up. There's something to be said for having someone to tuck you in when you're sick (which "fun boys" are no good for).

But the real kicker is the impending "holiday" of New Year's Eve.

Let's get real. New Year's Eve is good for two things: making out with your significant other or making out with a random hottie. Not having an SO or any readily available single hotties (pickings are slim in LargeUtown as I require a potential make out partner to be older than me and most boys fitting that high standard are already coupled) means that NYE is NSF. (NSF = not so fun....although I'm sure many of you saw that acronym and thought "crap! upcoming grant deadline!)


What do you think? Is NYE truly just for couples?


Ultimately it probably won't matter: there are bowl games playing until 11 that will likely result in me being too drunk to care about NYE anyways! ;)

Shhhh!

I'm the oldest of a large-ish family. My mom had kids in diapers for 8 years, one year off, and then another 2ish. (I'll blog later about being raised Catholic in the heart of the bible belt...) So obviously, she had very little kids for a number of years (actually, it wasn't until 1995 that we were all in school).

From a very early age, we learned how to sit still for an hour at a time. Church will do that for you. My parents would march us to the front of the church and plop us down in the very front pew. My mom claims now that our front-and-center status was to keep us kids involved in the mass, but I think she actually placed us there to ensure that the 450 eyes on us would peer pressure us into silence. We knew that we had to sit quietly for the duration of mass. (Once we got back into the car...well...that was another story)

So why is it that every time I actually go to church, I always end up getting poked in the back of the head by an overactive four year old, or distracted by a whiny six year old.

Don't think that I'm a psycho child-hating bitter woman. I fully understand that infants cry and toddlers fidgit. But please. There is a cry room for a reason! (For the uninitiated, the cry room is the room at the back of the church with a window to see in and a sound system piping in the priest's words.)

Of course, if any of you can explain to me why it is acceptable for three year olds and older to NOT know how to sit still, please feel free....and I will gladly eat my words (in addition to all the Christmas ham, cookies, and mashed potatoes currently contributing to my holiday gut).

I might get a job after all!

So a little bit ago I had my first phone interview, which was a little ahead of schedule for my discipline. I was surprisingly nervous, so I made sure to read up on the school, the department, and all the resources available to faculty. It paid off because the seven-person committee (7! people! Is this standard??) asked a few very specific questions that I was able to nail because of my preparation (score 1 for semi-neurotic people everywhere!).

The next day they called me back to tell me I made it to the next round, so in January this school will become my first site visit. I'm excited because although it's not a part of the country that I ever, ever thought I'd end up in, I've actually become quite excited about the school. There are a lot of resources available to instructors, and the classrooms have all the latest technology. Did I mention that class sizes, even for introductory ones, are <30?

Hopefully this will be the first of several interviews!

Cutting the cord

Over the years, I have taken far less than my month's worth of vacation time, partly because I'm a slightly neurotic, workaholic and partly because The Boss is reluctant to grant time off.

Over the last six months or so, I've had to go through a cutting of the cord process with The Boss. This entailed working "I'm graduating and leaving in May" into conversation at least once a week. When The Boss acknowledged this statement with rolled eyes or "I think Decemeber 08 will be a better exit date," I had to increase the frequency to nearly daily discussions about my graduation. After about two weeks of this, I finally got through.

The Boss never looked back.

The Boss has cut the cord, but now it's practically like getting kicked to the curb! I'm over-exaggerating (a bit), but let me point you to the latest incident:

I need to travel home on two different occasions this spring for two separate, two-day events. I requested 2.5 days off for each trip. The response from The Boss? "I think you should take more than 3 days." I didn't think anything of it (actually, I thought, "wow, that's nice!") until I looked at the group vacation calendar. There were 5 days and 6 days marked off for the trips! Way to get rid of me.

If The Boss is going to be so lenient about taking time off, perhaps I should just take advantage and plan a real vacation!

It happened.

Today I found out that someone at work, someone I am very close to (called C), has cancer.

It's cliched, but the room literally started spinning when I got the email. Because the information didn't come from C directly, I don't know what to do.

Do I say anything?

What can I do?

Is it better to wait until C tells me directly?


No one in my life has ever been truly sick (with the exception of my great-grandparents, who died when I was really, really little.

I have so many things to do before I leave town, but I can't focus on anything. Even wrapping presents (which I love love love) seems overwhelming right now. And I'm out of beer.

PSA

Attention all graduate students! (and former graduate students and soon-to-be graduate students and you-couldn't-pay-me-to-be-one of those graduate students)

If you haven't already read Psycgirl's awesome 14th Carnival of GRADudal Progress, then click on over!

You can read the old Carnivals here.


So please click on over, tell psycgirl what a great job she did, and maybe discover some new blogs! Enjoy!