Various Visitors
Jan. 31st, 2008 12:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
unforthIt's been a really busy week.
After I got back from Bloomington, my cold relapsed big time, and I spent most of the remainder of that week miserably trying to accomplish anything I could term work. I was getting back in to the groove by the weekend, thank god. The RFP for the new 21st Century Community Learning Centers (21st CCLC from now on) grant came out on Friday (three days late) and we've plunged head first in to the work that this entails. We know for sure that we're writing 2 or 3, and despite my optimistic hope that we'd only be writing that number, it actually is starting to look like we might actually be writing the 6 that we were approached about. Considering that each one is 25 pages long, plus lots of supporting documentation, this could get pretty crazy. They are due on March 17th, and I'm already beginning to freak out a little. This, I remind myself, is why I get paid "the big bucks." The down side, of course, is that we don't get paid to write a single one of these because of the potential conflict of interest. The plus side, though, is that each one we win will be worth $72,000 per year for five years to the company. That's a whole lot of money, and it would be awesome to win two or three of them. (the more, the more awesome. ;) )
Over the weekend,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
xaniquen and his fiancee came to visit me. I hadn't seen them since last summer, so it was pretty nice. We went to the Museum of Natural History, chatted about gaming, ate delicious food, and generally had a nifty time of it. I found out that they've set their date, too, for this summer, on the same day as my mom's 64th birthday. It could have been worse, I guess, it could have been over Gencon. ;) I'm excited for them, and we talked a bunch about doing more visiting, which should be fun. They don't live all that far from NYC, which definitely facilitates stuff.
On Monday, I met up withultimabaka and he took me to a yummy, cheap Japanese place that made my evening by serving salmon onigiri. Damn, but I love onigiri. We also went to Veniero's, for the win imo. Somehow, though, even though I've eaten out repeatedly this week, I've somehow managed not to have a single piece of cheesecake. It's bizarre. Tuesday, meanwhile, I saw claireon for the first time since I got back, and we caught up. I spent so much time talking to people over the four days that I started to run out of things to say because I lost track of what I'd already talked about and to who and stuff.
To cap things off, yesterday my dad came in to town with his wife and we brought the last of my delicate stuff (the Christmas ornaments and a bunch of framed pictures) up to my apartment. With the arrival of this stuff, I'm most of the way moved in - though a few things of mine are still scattered in Bloomington, with a concentration atschenker28's and another at moonartemis72 - plus my plants and sewing machine in Chicago, and I don't have a clue when I'll get to go there, which is sad cause I miss buzzermccain. Sigh. I'm hoping for sometime in March, after the grants, cause it's looking like I won't be able to take a weekend to go to the pirate-y game.
Things will remain busy, too. My grandfather is coming in to town today because of a Bat Mitzvah for one of my cousins which is taking place on Saturday. Tomorrow, I'm meetingbakanekotoo and a friend of hers, and we'll be going to see a movie (probably Juno). On Saturday, I've got this Bat Mitzvah in the morning, and then in the evening mom and I are going to see They Might Be Giants (by the way...OMG I'm SOOO EXCITED about this ;) ) at the Beacon.
Today I had my very first business meeting of my life. WE needed to have a long chat with one of our clients for this grant, and so we had a meeting and it was surprisingly productive. It's a really awesome organization, they're doing a ton of good work, so I'm pretty excited to be involved in writing their grant. It's nice to really feel like the people you are working with are good, dedicated people.
In other news, Jonie has been acting a little funny. My charming female dog has gotten in to her head that humping other dogs is appropriate behavior. I don't know how she got the idea, but I'm less than thrilled about it. The other dog owners at the dog park think that it's related to the stress of the move, and I think they are probably right. I find it embarrassing as an owner anyway, though, and if she doesn't figure out not to do it on her own (with appropriate restraint from me) I'll talk to a vet and/or look up specific training methods. She's been acting a little aggressive in general, too. I decided to not take her yesterday, thinking she might just need a day off, and I'll see today if that had any effect on her behavior.
Writing has been going well, though I'm worried about sustaining it during the next 6 week period because we have soooo much work. I decided to go ahead and start a different project last week, and so far I've got about 7k of a romance novel. It's paranormal, and I'm taking a lot of influence from shojo manga - to the extent that I'm attempting, at least in my own mind, to be able to envision each part of it as comic panels and pages. So far, it's been working well, though I'm getting constant, pointed reminders of the fact that a picture is worth a thousand words. I'm struggling with a quirk, too, that I discussed a bit withswan_tower in December, about how to make a place (in this case, New York City) into a character in a story (similar to the way that Tokyo is a "character" in Tokyo Babylon and X/1999, as the main example I've got of this phenomena. And it's funny, too - in the past, when I was working on writing projects, I couldn't have any distractions, but I've been noticing in this instance that I actually work better if I have "Law and Order" playing in the background. I've been in the mood for L&O a lot recently anyway, but it really gets me in a mindset for my romance novel - I have the bad feeling my romance is going to end up as a romance/mystery at the rate I'm going. The problem is, I'm 7k in so far but I don't have a plot yet. Ala manga, I've spent my "intro" getting my main character introduced and dumping far too many attractive, interested men in her path. Now, though, to keep things actually interesting, I suppose something is going to have to happen, and damned if I know what yet. ;)
Dieting and exercising are going relatively well. As to dieting, I'm continuing in the "watch what I eat but don't obsess about it" root, which I love, and which has allowed me two slices of chocolate cake and a giant, delicious cupcake in the last week alone. ;) Exercising has been better, too - I've been walking lots. I've only managed to roller blade once this week, but that's as much been because of the timing of stuff as anything; my blisters are once again mostly healed, and I intend to go again tomorrow. I just feel so much better about myself when I know I've moved around a bit. :)
I haven't really made any moves to meet new people in NYC yet, but at this point I think I might just wait. Work is looking like it's going to be VERY stressful and busy, and I just can't believe that it would make my life any better to add trying to meet people and forging a new group of friends in to the mix of an already stressful time. They're'll be plenty of time for such things later. It might make me a little lonely in the near future, but it's not as if I don't have people to hang out with or things that I want to do.
Well, that ended up more of a life update. Nothin' wrong with that, I guess.
After I got back from Bloomington, my cold relapsed big time, and I spent most of the remainder of that week miserably trying to accomplish anything I could term work. I was getting back in to the groove by the weekend, thank god. The RFP for the new 21st Century Community Learning Centers (21st CCLC from now on) grant came out on Friday (three days late) and we've plunged head first in to the work that this entails. We know for sure that we're writing 2 or 3, and despite my optimistic hope that we'd only be writing that number, it actually is starting to look like we might actually be writing the 6 that we were approached about. Considering that each one is 25 pages long, plus lots of supporting documentation, this could get pretty crazy. They are due on March 17th, and I'm already beginning to freak out a little. This, I remind myself, is why I get paid "the big bucks." The down side, of course, is that we don't get paid to write a single one of these because of the potential conflict of interest. The plus side, though, is that each one we win will be worth $72,000 per year for five years to the company. That's a whole lot of money, and it would be awesome to win two or three of them. (the more, the more awesome. ;) )
Over the weekend,
xaniquen and his fiancee came to visit me. I hadn't seen them since last summer, so it was pretty nice. We went to the Museum of Natural History, chatted about gaming, ate delicious food, and generally had a nifty time of it. I found out that they've set their date, too, for this summer, on the same day as my mom's 64th birthday. It could have been worse, I guess, it could have been over Gencon. ;) I'm excited for them, and we talked a bunch about doing more visiting, which should be fun. They don't live all that far from NYC, which definitely facilitates stuff.On Monday, I met up with
ultimabaka and he took me to a yummy, cheap Japanese place that made my evening by serving salmon onigiri. Damn, but I love onigiri. We also went to Veniero's, for the win imo. Somehow, though, even though I've eaten out repeatedly this week, I've somehow managed not to have a single piece of cheesecake. It's bizarre. Tuesday, meanwhile, I saw claireon for the first time since I got back, and we caught up. I spent so much time talking to people over the four days that I started to run out of things to say because I lost track of what I'd already talked about and to who and stuff. To cap things off, yesterday my dad came in to town with his wife and we brought the last of my delicate stuff (the Christmas ornaments and a bunch of framed pictures) up to my apartment. With the arrival of this stuff, I'm most of the way moved in - though a few things of mine are still scattered in Bloomington, with a concentration at
schenker28's and another at moonartemis72 - plus my plants and sewing machine in Chicago, and I don't have a clue when I'll get to go there, which is sad cause I miss buzzermccain. Sigh. I'm hoping for sometime in March, after the grants, cause it's looking like I won't be able to take a weekend to go to the pirate-y game. Things will remain busy, too. My grandfather is coming in to town today because of a Bat Mitzvah for one of my cousins which is taking place on Saturday. Tomorrow, I'm meeting
bakanekotoo and a friend of hers, and we'll be going to see a movie (probably Juno). On Saturday, I've got this Bat Mitzvah in the morning, and then in the evening mom and I are going to see They Might Be Giants (by the way...OMG I'm SOOO EXCITED about this ;) ) at the Beacon.Today I had my very first business meeting of my life. WE needed to have a long chat with one of our clients for this grant, and so we had a meeting and it was surprisingly productive. It's a really awesome organization, they're doing a ton of good work, so I'm pretty excited to be involved in writing their grant. It's nice to really feel like the people you are working with are good, dedicated people.
In other news, Jonie has been acting a little funny. My charming female dog has gotten in to her head that humping other dogs is appropriate behavior. I don't know how she got the idea, but I'm less than thrilled about it. The other dog owners at the dog park think that it's related to the stress of the move, and I think they are probably right. I find it embarrassing as an owner anyway, though, and if she doesn't figure out not to do it on her own (with appropriate restraint from me) I'll talk to a vet and/or look up specific training methods. She's been acting a little aggressive in general, too. I decided to not take her yesterday, thinking she might just need a day off, and I'll see today if that had any effect on her behavior.
Writing has been going well, though I'm worried about sustaining it during the next 6 week period because we have soooo much work. I decided to go ahead and start a different project last week, and so far I've got about 7k of a romance novel. It's paranormal, and I'm taking a lot of influence from shojo manga - to the extent that I'm attempting, at least in my own mind, to be able to envision each part of it as comic panels and pages. So far, it's been working well, though I'm getting constant, pointed reminders of the fact that a picture is worth a thousand words. I'm struggling with a quirk, too, that I discussed a bit with
swan_tower in December, about how to make a place (in this case, New York City) into a character in a story (similar to the way that Tokyo is a "character" in Tokyo Babylon and X/1999, as the main example I've got of this phenomena. And it's funny, too - in the past, when I was working on writing projects, I couldn't have any distractions, but I've been noticing in this instance that I actually work better if I have "Law and Order" playing in the background. I've been in the mood for L&O a lot recently anyway, but it really gets me in a mindset for my romance novel - I have the bad feeling my romance is going to end up as a romance/mystery at the rate I'm going. The problem is, I'm 7k in so far but I don't have a plot yet. Ala manga, I've spent my "intro" getting my main character introduced and dumping far too many attractive, interested men in her path. Now, though, to keep things actually interesting, I suppose something is going to have to happen, and damned if I know what yet. ;)Dieting and exercising are going relatively well. As to dieting, I'm continuing in the "watch what I eat but don't obsess about it" root, which I love, and which has allowed me two slices of chocolate cake and a giant, delicious cupcake in the last week alone. ;) Exercising has been better, too - I've been walking lots. I've only managed to roller blade once this week, but that's as much been because of the timing of stuff as anything; my blisters are once again mostly healed, and I intend to go again tomorrow. I just feel so much better about myself when I know I've moved around a bit. :)
I haven't really made any moves to meet new people in NYC yet, but at this point I think I might just wait. Work is looking like it's going to be VERY stressful and busy, and I just can't believe that it would make my life any better to add trying to meet people and forging a new group of friends in to the mix of an already stressful time. They're'll be plenty of time for such things later. It might make me a little lonely in the near future, but it's not as if I don't have people to hang out with or things that I want to do.
Well, that ended up more of a life update. Nothin' wrong with that, I guess.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-01-31 06:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-01 05:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-31 10:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-01 05:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-01 02:07 am (UTC)To Jonie, humping other dogs is entirely appropriate behavior...fixed or not, you can't take the fight outta the dog :). Maybe I'm just a dude or whatever, but I thought it awesome when my old puppies used to try and hump the faces of girl dogs. Like master, like dog $
Good luck with all the silliness
*huggle*
-- Gerardo
no subject
Date: 2008-02-01 05:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-02 06:52 am (UTC)