Sunday, December 8, 2002  12:44 pm  <|>
<168> Wake up and go go: A million things to do today as usual, but as usual, I am starting off doing something that just I like to do (writing here if you couldn't figure that one out). I figure it's been awhile and I've barely had a moment to breathe these last two weeks, so I need to be able to come out of it and feel like I've accomplished something. I guess I did, but there is still work left to be completed. I finished all my papers except my 12 pager for Modern Culture (I'm at page 8)... which was lucky, because we had a SNOW DAY on Thursday, saving me from that class and my studio beta which we were not only prepared for, but I spent Wednesday working on mock ups for it instead of finishing my paper, all for no reason. But that's ok, it made life easier for more than once reason and so I will not complain about it. I spent Friday and Saturday at the studio, the student lounge to be more exact. We transformed it from a lounge into more of an apartment setting - the general reason behind this being to place a comfortable living environment within a corporate setting (such as our school building). I'm pretty happy with the way it's turning out. There is still a little bit to be done before I can call the project finished, but the major parts of it are now taken care of and I feel less stressed about that.

Something that think (and hope) some of you might be interested in knowing is that my book is now published and officially was made available as of 3 days ago. You can view and buy it directly from the publisher at iUniverse.com or from Barnes and Noble. It's called Balance Gained Through Poetry and for those of you who have never been here before or that somehow escaped my rambling about it before, it is a collection of my poetry, the first for me to ever have published, and it came out pretty well so you should check it out. There is more information at the publishers site than Barnes and Noble right now though. Eventually, it'll be listed at amazon.com and all the other online book sellers, it just takes various amounts of time for it to show up fully in the system. Anyway, I'm pretty psyched about it. I'm finally a published writer! I finally have a book... something I've wanted to do forever! I hope it won't be my last, but even if it is, I can say I've done it, I've proven it to myself that it can happen and that's pretty cool. The process went along pretty smoothly and I'd definitely consider putting together another one in the future if people wanted it. We'll see I guess, I'm not going to get ahead of myself. Afterall, it really was done mostly for me, but I'm just kind of interested to know how many of you out there are interested in reading it and/or perhaps buying it? Oh and if you do (or even if you don't but want to comment), would you please drop me a line at meg@digitalreflex.net? Thanks, it would mean a lot to me!

I've been trying to stay a little sane lately with little things. I started a quote book, which is really quotes, bits of conversations, sayings, poems I like written by other people, song lyrics, etc... anything I want to collect and put into it. It's mostly quotes, by both the famous and the not so famous (ie my friends), but it's been fun putting together and already getting filled even though I just bought it last week. You can see where the tiny bit of free time I've managed to find in this last week of craziness went... can you say distraction? But I guess everyone needs a little distraction in such a pool of work. I'm just glad I'm beginning to get out and dry off... though not fully yet. I still have things to finish up for my studio, have to finish that paper I keep talking about, I have a 2 essay take home test for my Shakespeare class, a final exam for social psych, and 2 minor projects for my interface class. Sounds like a lot? Sounds like a little? I can't tell anymore, that's just what remains to be done. Today I'm hoping to knock out the paper, but I've said that for the last two days so I don't know what will actually happen. In about half an hour I'm going out with my mom. I have some shopping to do at home before xmas (and gift giving time for friends quickly approaches because we get done between Dec. 12th and Dec. 17th) and I also have some promo work for a cd company to take care of stickering CDs for the Counting Crows... sounds exciting doesn't it? That shouldn't take long and can happen on the way between the shopping though. At least for the stores at home. I need to take care of a few in Philly also, but I figured it's easier for me to get those a little later in the week.

As for how life is going... well it's a mix, but I want it to turn into something I can call happiness. I guess that might sound a little weird. Basically, things have there ups and downs as usual and I just long to balance out - that's right BALANCE - the word I used to talk about all the time until I go so far off it that seemed pointless to even mention most of the time. So I am trying to gain my life back, little by little, but then things do come up as a part of life and sometimes it's great and sometimes it sucks. Thursday sucked despite the fact that it started out with the early morning relief and phone tag fun that led to us being sure that school was canceled for the entire day. That followed with sleep of course and a day that seemed like it could almost turn out leisurely since we figured the school wasn't even open and it was still snowing outside. We got a lot of snow for around here; we haven't had that much in a long time. But then around 4pm my day took a turn for the worse. My mom called to let me know that Meiko, one of my two dogs at home, passed away that morning... and so the rest of my day was over. I ended up going home shortly after she called because I felt like that was where I needed to be (people with pets vs. people without them will understand in different ways I'm sure). So that became a break from work, but unfortunately not a happy one at all. Meiko was 7 years old and she had Lymphoma, which is a type of cancer that they can't do much about. So it was slightly expected to be coming, which was already upsetting enough, especially because I'm not home too much anymore... but we really thought she'd have a few more months at least. I'm really glad I got to be around those four days last week for Thanksgiving though. Anyway, no "extra" amount of time would have ever been enough... I'll miss her a lot, my whole family will, and I just felt like saying something about it here.

So for now, this is where I'm at. A bit more work to be done before a deserved break, but I'm getting there and I think I can hold out just a bit longer...