Mid-Terms, Motivation, and Exaggeration

What's this grand feeling of inadequacy? I can read for hours and never see the difference between my writing ability and someone elses, then I can read one article and feel as if I have no right writing at all. I love how there are so many writing styles and how unique certain writers become by making their own of it. There's something vaguely mysterious about the process of putting thoughts down; so much must have shaped the individual to allow them to see the world from all sorts of different angles and rely on their history to model the use of the words that they use. Language intricacies are so interesting, albeit complex I'm sure. Maybe one day I'll be interested enough to make time to study it, but for now I'd prefer just musing about the matter.

This week was amazing, miserable, and wonderful all at the same time. Now the deadlines loom over my head, somewhat reachable but just far away that they seem convoluted by the very fog that gave me this splotchy tan at the beach. Recap:

Saturday -
Ate at Red Pearl with my sister and a friend. It was pretty delicious, but in the end I think I preferred the chicken noodles to the beef pot (will note for future reference.) We got tons of snacks, from taro strips to an Indonesian candy bar. More than half of it was inedible due to holes in the bag. Big disappointment, especially when the taro had to be thrown away. Ben and Jerry's made up for it though. I forget what I had, but it was really good and had coconut in it. We stumbled around in different stores but didn't have enough time before the movie to wander aimlessly. My sister bought us both popcorn and drinks (Tally: 15 bucks) and the tickets (14 bucks.... Movies are less important to the theater than popcorn and drinks? Wild concept.) The Watchmen was an awesome movie; I really enjoyed Rorschach throughout the movie. He was pretty cool. Otherwise the movie was like extremely graphic, so much so that I thought it should not have had R rating anymore. Can't complain though, it was thought provoking, intriguing, and beautifully done.

Sunday -
Went to the Rec center with my family because I wanted them to experience the coolness. Attempted rock climbing and only my little sister agreed to do it. The boys stood back away from us and made fun of most attempts. Played racquetball for a while, or rather taught my siblings to play racquetball, and enjoyed it a lot. I need to play more; It's mildly addictive. Played basketball, which has never been my forte, but it was a lot of fun. I surprisingly hit a lot of baskets as soon as my little brother stopped trying to hog the ball and be the superstar of our half court game. I still missed enough that I could remember my lack of proficiency, and will leave that game to random bursts of curiosity or interest. Then went to the ping pong tables and practiced. My siblings need to get out more so they can compete in these odd little outings.

Monday -
Worked all day and got to follow Jodie around some. Also learned that there was a possibility that I could fall into a similar role as her in the near future if I work hard enough. Very exciting stuff, given it would be my first serious real job that had nothing to do with interning or clerking or something silly. The heightened responsibility is exciting. It would be a stable position too, which is even more cool.

Tuesday -
Same as Monday, except there was strawberry cupcakes gratis my awesome boss, and it was also the other Amy's birthday. We all went to lunch at Salsaritas, which is one of my favorite random restaurants right now, and had a good old time. Pretty awesome! My boss was superiorly sweet and made me strawberry cupcakes. (Very delicious ones at that.) Then I went bowling for the first time in about officially 14 years or so and had a great little party thing and had a big "oh no they're booked" moment and had to resend people to the right destination. I had a really great time even though only a bare minimum amount of people were able to attend because everyone was out of town. Merritt had his chance to make everyone look really badly and did so with enough grace that no one really minded the slaughter. Nothing was lacking besides food, because I couldn't bring myself to eat in front of everyone else when no one else had eaten dinner. I ended up being fairly hypoglycemic by the end of the night due to this but still managed to beat my sister in air hockey.

Wednesday - Overall, sucky day. It was depressing. Ray wasn't on, no special typical birthday treatment, and I even managed being responsible for purchasing my birthday cake and cooking dinner (which I didn't even want). I was definitely feeling a bit diva haha. Funny way to start off 21.

Thursday - Tres adore. My birthday wish was to be at the beach, and to the beach we did go. We ended up waking around 5:15, got ready, and were gone by 5:30. I managed to catch up with the around the year bible reading thing and was proud of myself for doing so (even though I keep managing to get behind and lost in the shuffle of life.) After a slight side track to the Panama City mall for dumb bells (don't ask), we made our way onto the gloriously perfect beach. About 30 minutes into my mini-vacation, fog began drifting in and totally obscured the sun and things relatively close to the beach. Not my picture perfect idea of the beach, but still had an awesome time and even managed to burn myself in several places. On the way home, we stopped in Dothan for food at Santa Fe restaurant. I'd never been there before but I was assured that it was good. Happily, I found out that it was. I had a steak and salad and sweet potato, all cooked quite well. It wasn't anything fancy or seriously memorable, but I definitely haven't had a sweet potato that was that good in a long time. (The practical bucket of butter and brown sugar that came with it probably helped this along splendidly.) It was very remniscient of Logan's steak house, complete with cowboy decor, and peanuts on the floor. I think I definitely prefer Santa Fe, even though the constant country music was relatively annoying.

Friday - My good friend Chandra met me after work to take me to lunch in honor of my birthday. I was given the opportunity to try Indian food for the first time, which I must say, was amazing. I will hopefully get the opportunity to go to Silver Coin very often in the future, but at the price, I will have to settle for on occasion. For now, Red Pearl still trumps all, because I've always loved Chinese food and this is relatively authentic compared to the Americanized version, and way better than. I'll always have a soft spot for Egg Drop soup, but those chicken fried noodles were to die for. I'm sure there are plentiful amounts of other things on the menu that I would just love. Surin's moving down on my 'cool' list because I feel like I'm missing out on real thai food when I eat there. A lot of the food just seems to be thrown together and lacking substance. I suppose that could be why I started to just eat Maki when I was there and avoided the entre's all together. Ah I'm rambling about food, I will do this further in a latter post, back to Friday. After lunch, we ended up perusing some stores, even got a little dolled up. We were going to go to Sephora for a makeover but they were totally booked. Instead, I told her about the Bare Escentials store, and ended up going there. She ended up looking like a full blown movie star or something after they were done with her. I bet she'll forget about it again like last time and not wear anything for a while until I get her set up with yet another one. All in all, a very fun day, complete with a happy birthday present to myself in the form of some very heely, super cute shoes.

Saturday and Sunday - Given the whole responsibility thing, I managed to study and research most of these days. Nothing happened that was terribly exciting. After the awesome week I had, I couldn't imagine wanting to do anything at all though. It was all cloudy and dreadful and uninteresting outside anyway.

Snow (Hey Oh)

It's really amazing what one badly timed snow storm can do to plans. Today may be completely different now due to the musings of the parentals on the safety of going anywhere in particular. I just hope I will still be able to see the show.

I can't particularly blame snow for any deviation in my day. I haven't seen so much snow in years, if not over a decade. It's been falling at a decent clip all morning, and at one point I thought it was dying out in warmth, but then it started to fall faster. I don't know what it is that makes snow so much more magical than rain. It is, after all, the same thing but colder. I like watching rain, but snow just seems mesmerizing as if I were looking out my window and my house sat in a snow globe. I suppose that's due to it being so rare and that makes it special because I never see it. I've been to snow covered places several times, with inches, if not a foot, of snow covering most things up north. I've never been able to see the creation of that snow though, just minimal flurries except during the '93 blizzard, of which I was probably too young to care to stay in one place long enough to really watch. I just did a little research on it, and the storm struck one day after my birthday. Now it's less than 2 weeks away. I guess March is the month of snow to Alabama?

It feels surreal. All in all, it's been a pretty awesome week, even though there's been slight kinks in pretty much everything I've tried to do. I suppose that's just how life goes. I do know on any wise that I need to find out what I'm doing during the summer besides take classes. I want to work full time... The new HR manager for the office will be working with us in a few weeks and there is no telling what he'll want changed or what he wants to stay. I am only on an internship, which technically they don't have to keep me after May.... It would be pretty lame to have to find a new company when I like this one as much as I do. I don't know where else I would want to work. I suppose everything works out for the best, but I still want to move out and all of that and there is no way that I could do so working part time or at least on so few hours. I probably shouldn't work full time and try to go to school anyway, especially taking so many hours in class. This semester I kinda wish I would have taken at least another class because even though I'm taking 18 hours, the majority of the classes are easy. It hasn't been terribly time consuming even though most classes require stuff for every class. I can't scrummage up a ton of interest in a lot of the projects, just the general attention to detail I put into pretty much anything I do.

I really don't feel like working on anything right now, even though I probably should go ahead and get a head start on next week or at least go through the practice GMAT I took last weekend. That's definitely going to take some attention to get it to turn out like I'd like it to but I think I should be able to progress. I'm kinda pulled in all directions. Do I look for companies that I may want to work for; do I look at grad schools; do I dedicate time to the delightfully dreaded GMAT; do I take classes this summer; do I shadow as many people as possible in various jobs I'm interested in (Tomorrow meeting with my mentor with hope to shadow him over Spring Break which just happens to be my birthday week!). I just don't know what to focus on. Right now, I'm trying to focus on everything, and it's slightly overloading my brain.

For now, dedication to relaxation and snow. Later will be everything else.