Life Update
Mar. 31st, 2008 11:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
unforthWell, things have finally slowed down enough and I've finally mustered the energy to do a sort of general life update.
Work is the main thing that I've been doing is work. It followed a pretty steep bell curve; I worked more and more until March, when it peaked, and it's been falling off ever since - it looks like it's gonna echo, in that we might have another grant due on the 15th. We ended up writing three grants that were due on March 17th, a city contract application due on the 19th, and participating (though not completely writing) in a grant due on the 25th. The 17th ended up being a disaster of horrible stress due to a mistake that I guess was our fault, but wasn't exactly since we were misinformed. The end result was that one of grants was submitted a day late and might be thrown out, but we're going to fight tooth and nail to not let that happen since the misinformation was a pretty big deal and we did the best that we could.
The grants went really well, over all, and I think we have about as good a chance of winning as we could. Over all, the entire thing was a political fiasco to a nauseating degree.
I made some good contacts, though, and now I have my very own personal shiny business cards to give to clients! I'm very excited about the two grants that we won, too. I've now officially earned the company more per year than I get paid, which is an awesome feeling because I like to feel that I'm carrying my weight. Furthermore, one of the clients for one of those grants really liked me (she's the one I kept staying up til 1 AM Japan time to talk too because I didn't want to tell her that it was inconvenient for me) and I have high hopes that now that she's seen that we can bring in some money, she'll want us to do more work for them. Over all, a lot of the recent work looks like it's going to pan out into more work, which is a real big win.
Uh...there isn't really any social, and I haven't minded. I've been really home oriented recently, and I'm strangely not at all depressed about it, it actually feels really good. The last couple weeks, the only people I've really seen are my mom and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ultimabaka. However, I have high hopes of expanding soon. If I feel like it. :)
The family drama seems to have finally died down. Things have resolved with my grandfather. He sold his house and will be moving to Texas in mid April. I'm going up to his place on the 9th and will be picking up his car, which he's giving to mom and I. It's really nice of him. I'll also be taking care of his (my!) cat, Spot. Mom and I got Spot in 1996 - she was a teeny tiny kitten that was supposedly 8 weeks, but I think was probably younger. We had her until I went to college, and mom didn't feel like having a cat any longer and shipped her off to Poppop's. Now she'll be my responsibility for at least a month or so. We'll have to see how long, though - ultimately, I'm supposed to drive her to Texas. If it works out, though, and Jonie doesn't make Spot's like miserable, I'll probably go adopt a kitty. I've wanted one for a long time, but time will tell. I'll get in trouble if I get caught, but whatever.
The car is gonna come so much in handy, though. Right after I get it, I have distant hopes of getting out to Binghamton to visitmistress_sin and help her with some early wedding stuff. Mom is gonna take the two of us to a lovely, lovely spa somewhere nearby and we'll get pampered for a few days, which'll be nice. Some time in early May, I'm hoping to go out to Bloomington. Finally, then, I'll get to drive to Origins in June and Gencon, too. I'm also thinking about driving across the country in July, though I haven't fully decided yet. Meanwhile, I'll have to drive to Texas, too, of course.
Jonie's continuing to be problematic. At home, she's good as gold and more. She doesn't chew things any more, and last night she curled up in my lap for like an hour, it was the cutest thing ever. But at the dog park, she's still acting rough and getting in to fights. I have the bad feeling that some of the more sensitive owners are starting to dislike me. It's annoying - really, the dogs know what they can handle, and the submissive ones like to get the crap kicked out of them. It's the owners that get worried about it in a really problematic way - some of them understand that that's how dogs play and are cool with whatever, but others - especially some of the ones with the most submissive dogs - don't seem to really get the lines between play and too rough. Now, I'm not saying that I think Jonie's acting appropriately, and I wish she'd lay off and play a little nicer, but I also know that if it was really bothering the other dog, they wouldn't come back to play with her more, and their little doggy tails wouldn't be wagging. So it ends up being a mixed bag. I'm worried about it, and I'm keeping an eye on it. If it gets too out of line, though, I'm gonna have to start taking her when no other dogs are there just so she'll get the exercise. I'm trying to avoid it, though. Sigh.
Exercise has been going damn well the last few weeks. Ever since that jog the other week, I've been jogging pretty regularly (at least 3 days a week) and walking a ton on the other days. I've been really enjoying myself, and I think I look better already. One of the fascinating things is that no matter how much exercise I get, it doesn't seem to cause my appetite to get much larger, which is extra awesome. I've been controlling my eating decently - not perfectly, but decently - and I've lost about a pound of actual weight, and probably more of fat-to-muscle weight, since I think I'm looking better and mom thinks I am to. All in all, I feel better, though I think I'm getting shin splints, a combination of doing too much too fast, not icing it, and the fact that my shoes are really worn out and crappy - I NEED new jogging shoes, ASAP, but I'm too broke. Anyway, I'm feeling pretty good about myself for the first time in a while. Now I just need to keep up my determination and stubbornness.
As for money, I'll know more about that in the next few days. After a few months of furiously saving, I've got an appointment to do my taxes in two days. I'll know then if I've managed to save enough to actually pay. If it's 20% of my income last year, I'll owe $12,000 or so dollars. I can pay that much, almost to the dollar, and hardly a cent more. However, mom has made it clear that I'm owed a bonus of some sort, so I think that I'll be able to get to the right amount if it's more than that. High hopes, though, that I won't have to take the bonus for that - high hopes that I can put the bonus towards the "go to Japan next spring" fund, instead. Cause I miss Japan oh-so-much! I want to go baaaack!
Travel in general seems to be becoming a much greater part of my life. Thanks to frequent flyer miles, I'll be going with Mom and my brother to Cologne and Prague in June and it's hardly going to cost me a cent - okay, a couple a hundred dollars plus fun stuff. Not bad, really, even though those aren't necessarily places I would choose to go. Mom and I had a talk about what places we would most like to go to, and discovered that our list of top destinations really aren't all that different, and as a result we'll probably be going to some of those places in the nearish future. Traveling with her works out great. I'll be paying for my plane tickets, but she's gonna pay to upgrade them to business or first class, cause she's not comfortable in coach and she's willing to pay the difference. Then, she's paying for the hotel room since putting me in there doesn't really cost any extra. So I have to pay for a ticket, some food (but not all the food) and souvenirs. It's a win all the way around. The places I want to go most are Australia, Italy (multiple trips, really, cause I want to go to Florence, Venice, Rome...), Central America (I want to go to Costa Rica, specifically, or maybe the Yucatan) and of course I want to return to Japan. She'd like to also go to Spain and France, China, Greece, but she wants to go to all of those other places, too.
On the local front, I've been having a lot of fun being kind of touristy, too. I went to a bunch of places whenschenker28 was in town, and since then I've gone to the Met and AMNH again, and I went for a lot of long walks in the park to take pictures of the spring flowers. I've REALLY been enjoying taking photos, and a lot of them, as always, are up at Flickr. Favorites include:
1. This incredibly awesome iridescentAmmonite.
2. The infamous Blue Whale. (I've been corrected. ;) )
3. Early Magnolias.
4. Crocuses.
5. This lady who I passed who was walking her pet rabbit.
6. Rami's favorite statue (I heart Rami, how about you other Project Runway fans? ;) ), Aphrodite.
7. A Gustav Courbet painting from an exhibit where photography was prohibited, Regis Courbet, the artist's father.
8. And of course my absolute favorites, daffodils!.
I've taken some more in the last week, too, but I haven't posted them yet. I might do it later today.
Another big day was last Wednesday. Mom and I rented a car so we could go to the NY Botanical Gardens and see an orchid exhibit there (and take zillions of pictures, of course). After that, I dropped mom off, grabbed Jonie, and went out to Bear Mountain (a state park about 45 minutes from NYC) and went hiking. It was awesome. Jonie's gonna need more training before she's a safe hiking buddy, though - she kept pulling on the steep downhills, and the end result was that she caused me to fall 3 times. Course, I feel 2 more times without her help, so I guess I can't get too upset with her since I apparently would have fallen anyway. ;) I had a lot of fun, though, which was great since I've been talking a lot about hiking but it's the first time in a while I've actually done it.
Other than that, I've been watching a lot of TV, playing with my photos, sewing, reading manga, and that's about it. I'm enjoying life, really - being busy does wonders for depression, always does.
Think that's about it for now. Don't forget - sponsor me for AIDS walk, if you can. And the new round of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
novel_in_90 starts tomorrow - I'm gonna try and get going again (though I'm still deciding what I'm going to write) and if any of you all want to write, you should come on over, too!
Work is the main thing that I've been doing is work. It followed a pretty steep bell curve; I worked more and more until March, when it peaked, and it's been falling off ever since - it looks like it's gonna echo, in that we might have another grant due on the 15th. We ended up writing three grants that were due on March 17th, a city contract application due on the 19th, and participating (though not completely writing) in a grant due on the 25th. The 17th ended up being a disaster of horrible stress due to a mistake that I guess was our fault, but wasn't exactly since we were misinformed. The end result was that one of grants was submitted a day late and might be thrown out, but we're going to fight tooth and nail to not let that happen since the misinformation was a pretty big deal and we did the best that we could.
The grants went really well, over all, and I think we have about as good a chance of winning as we could. Over all, the entire thing was a political fiasco to a nauseating degree.
I made some good contacts, though, and now I have my very own personal shiny business cards to give to clients! I'm very excited about the two grants that we won, too. I've now officially earned the company more per year than I get paid, which is an awesome feeling because I like to feel that I'm carrying my weight. Furthermore, one of the clients for one of those grants really liked me (she's the one I kept staying up til 1 AM Japan time to talk too because I didn't want to tell her that it was inconvenient for me) and I have high hopes that now that she's seen that we can bring in some money, she'll want us to do more work for them. Over all, a lot of the recent work looks like it's going to pan out into more work, which is a real big win.
Uh...there isn't really any social, and I haven't minded. I've been really home oriented recently, and I'm strangely not at all depressed about it, it actually feels really good. The last couple weeks, the only people I've really seen are my mom and
ultimabaka. However, I have high hopes of expanding soon. If I feel like it. :)The family drama seems to have finally died down. Things have resolved with my grandfather. He sold his house and will be moving to Texas in mid April. I'm going up to his place on the 9th and will be picking up his car, which he's giving to mom and I. It's really nice of him. I'll also be taking care of his (my!) cat, Spot. Mom and I got Spot in 1996 - she was a teeny tiny kitten that was supposedly 8 weeks, but I think was probably younger. We had her until I went to college, and mom didn't feel like having a cat any longer and shipped her off to Poppop's. Now she'll be my responsibility for at least a month or so. We'll have to see how long, though - ultimately, I'm supposed to drive her to Texas. If it works out, though, and Jonie doesn't make Spot's like miserable, I'll probably go adopt a kitty. I've wanted one for a long time, but time will tell. I'll get in trouble if I get caught, but whatever.
The car is gonna come so much in handy, though. Right after I get it, I have distant hopes of getting out to Binghamton to visit
mistress_sin and help her with some early wedding stuff. Mom is gonna take the two of us to a lovely, lovely spa somewhere nearby and we'll get pampered for a few days, which'll be nice. Some time in early May, I'm hoping to go out to Bloomington. Finally, then, I'll get to drive to Origins in June and Gencon, too. I'm also thinking about driving across the country in July, though I haven't fully decided yet. Meanwhile, I'll have to drive to Texas, too, of course.Jonie's continuing to be problematic. At home, she's good as gold and more. She doesn't chew things any more, and last night she curled up in my lap for like an hour, it was the cutest thing ever. But at the dog park, she's still acting rough and getting in to fights. I have the bad feeling that some of the more sensitive owners are starting to dislike me. It's annoying - really, the dogs know what they can handle, and the submissive ones like to get the crap kicked out of them. It's the owners that get worried about it in a really problematic way - some of them understand that that's how dogs play and are cool with whatever, but others - especially some of the ones with the most submissive dogs - don't seem to really get the lines between play and too rough. Now, I'm not saying that I think Jonie's acting appropriately, and I wish she'd lay off and play a little nicer, but I also know that if it was really bothering the other dog, they wouldn't come back to play with her more, and their little doggy tails wouldn't be wagging. So it ends up being a mixed bag. I'm worried about it, and I'm keeping an eye on it. If it gets too out of line, though, I'm gonna have to start taking her when no other dogs are there just so she'll get the exercise. I'm trying to avoid it, though. Sigh.
Exercise has been going damn well the last few weeks. Ever since that jog the other week, I've been jogging pretty regularly (at least 3 days a week) and walking a ton on the other days. I've been really enjoying myself, and I think I look better already. One of the fascinating things is that no matter how much exercise I get, it doesn't seem to cause my appetite to get much larger, which is extra awesome. I've been controlling my eating decently - not perfectly, but decently - and I've lost about a pound of actual weight, and probably more of fat-to-muscle weight, since I think I'm looking better and mom thinks I am to. All in all, I feel better, though I think I'm getting shin splints, a combination of doing too much too fast, not icing it, and the fact that my shoes are really worn out and crappy - I NEED new jogging shoes, ASAP, but I'm too broke. Anyway, I'm feeling pretty good about myself for the first time in a while. Now I just need to keep up my determination and stubbornness.
As for money, I'll know more about that in the next few days. After a few months of furiously saving, I've got an appointment to do my taxes in two days. I'll know then if I've managed to save enough to actually pay. If it's 20% of my income last year, I'll owe $12,000 or so dollars. I can pay that much, almost to the dollar, and hardly a cent more. However, mom has made it clear that I'm owed a bonus of some sort, so I think that I'll be able to get to the right amount if it's more than that. High hopes, though, that I won't have to take the bonus for that - high hopes that I can put the bonus towards the "go to Japan next spring" fund, instead. Cause I miss Japan oh-so-much! I want to go baaaack!
Travel in general seems to be becoming a much greater part of my life. Thanks to frequent flyer miles, I'll be going with Mom and my brother to Cologne and Prague in June and it's hardly going to cost me a cent - okay, a couple a hundred dollars plus fun stuff. Not bad, really, even though those aren't necessarily places I would choose to go. Mom and I had a talk about what places we would most like to go to, and discovered that our list of top destinations really aren't all that different, and as a result we'll probably be going to some of those places in the nearish future. Traveling with her works out great. I'll be paying for my plane tickets, but she's gonna pay to upgrade them to business or first class, cause she's not comfortable in coach and she's willing to pay the difference. Then, she's paying for the hotel room since putting me in there doesn't really cost any extra. So I have to pay for a ticket, some food (but not all the food) and souvenirs. It's a win all the way around. The places I want to go most are Australia, Italy (multiple trips, really, cause I want to go to Florence, Venice, Rome...), Central America (I want to go to Costa Rica, specifically, or maybe the Yucatan) and of course I want to return to Japan. She'd like to also go to Spain and France, China, Greece, but she wants to go to all of those other places, too.
On the local front, I've been having a lot of fun being kind of touristy, too. I went to a bunch of places when
schenker28 was in town, and since then I've gone to the Met and AMNH again, and I went for a lot of long walks in the park to take pictures of the spring flowers. I've REALLY been enjoying taking photos, and a lot of them, as always, are up at Flickr. Favorites include:1. This incredibly awesome iridescentAmmonite.
2. The infamous Blue Whale. (I've been corrected. ;) )
3. Early Magnolias.
4. Crocuses.
5. This lady who I passed who was walking her pet rabbit.
6. Rami's favorite statue (I heart Rami, how about you other Project Runway fans? ;) ), Aphrodite.
7. A Gustav Courbet painting from an exhibit where photography was prohibited, Regis Courbet, the artist's father.
8. And of course my absolute favorites, daffodils!.
I've taken some more in the last week, too, but I haven't posted them yet. I might do it later today.
Another big day was last Wednesday. Mom and I rented a car so we could go to the NY Botanical Gardens and see an orchid exhibit there (and take zillions of pictures, of course). After that, I dropped mom off, grabbed Jonie, and went out to Bear Mountain (a state park about 45 minutes from NYC) and went hiking. It was awesome. Jonie's gonna need more training before she's a safe hiking buddy, though - she kept pulling on the steep downhills, and the end result was that she caused me to fall 3 times. Course, I feel 2 more times without her help, so I guess I can't get too upset with her since I apparently would have fallen anyway. ;) I had a lot of fun, though, which was great since I've been talking a lot about hiking but it's the first time in a while I've actually done it.
Other than that, I've been watching a lot of TV, playing with my photos, sewing, reading manga, and that's about it. I'm enjoying life, really - being busy does wonders for depression, always does.
Think that's about it for now. Don't forget - sponsor me for AIDS walk, if you can. And the new round of
novel_in_90 starts tomorrow - I'm gonna try and get going again (though I'm still deciding what I'm going to write) and if any of you all want to write, you should come on over, too!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-03-31 05:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-31 05:44 pm (UTC)And I'll definitely be at the B-day party, if we can't get together before then. :)
no subject
Date: 2008-03-31 06:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-31 07:08 pm (UTC)And I have been thinking about running some charity races; I could handle both 5 and 10 km ones, I think. But I'm already doing AIDS walk and don't feel like pestering my friends for more money, so I'm not sure yet. ;)
Good luck with your thesis - I figured that you were way busy with that. Once you're freed up a bit, get in touch, we should grab a meal! :)
no subject
Date: 2008-03-31 09:40 pm (UTC)Taxes were a mess for me this year. Not to make you nervous, but everyone seems to owe this year, even folks who have never owed before. I'm gonna be wiping out my checking and savings accounts, especially since the quarterly taxes for this year are due the same day.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-31 09:48 pm (UTC)Jonie and Spot have met before. They got along okay, but Jonie is VERY persistent and I'm worried that Spot won't have enough places in my apartment to hide - only real choice is under the bed, I think. Here's hopin', though.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-01 02:44 am (UTC)The standing offer still stands, of course - I've already offered to help out one person, and she's accepted, so lemme know que pasa :P.
And remind me at some point to donate moneys to your Aids thingy, lest I totally forget :P. it's so awesome though...if you speed up the little scrolling donation meter on the right all the way to the max, you get dizzy. I had fun for a minute...and then I got dizzy :P
wub *huggle*
-- Gerardo