Nom nom. Steak n shake. Nom nom.

This past month has been exciting and sometimes exhausting all at the same time. I was offered the job I interviewed for in New York City, but ended up turning it down. I'd never turned down a job before. I learned that turning down a job is not easy. Turning down a job that could open doors for you career-wise is even more difficult. For me, the job was an opportunity to work at a legendary place, but for hardly any money. Plus, uprooting a life (no matter how much I'm looking forward to leaving it for the right opportunity) and moving to the largest city in the country where I really don't know anybody and try to figure out how to make ends meet is a lot to consider. It's a strange balancing act between deciding how much you can sacrifice and for how long you are willing to sacrifice it. For librarians, I think this is a pretty common balance considering our very low pay and the rather nomadic lifestyle that we tend to operate under. I did a lot of research based on cost of living and commuting to and from work, plus the ability to pay off loans from school and if I could save any money each month so I could visit family who would be on the other side of the country... well, the outcome was just not in Manhattan's favor. The people were really nice and it would have been an interesting opportunity, but ultimately wasn't worth the other sacrifices I would make in order to work there for a few years. Still, I feel more confident in my abilities after getting an offer for a job. Especially from an organization who I thought would never consider a girl from Missouri.

 So, I'm still searching for the right opportunity and it will come along, I think. Somehow. In the meantime, I'm trying to just enjoy my time outside of work here. Over the weekend I went back to Jefferson City to take part in a 5k ColorVibe run through downtown. It was a blast, of course! This was just my second 5k, but it was more fun than the one in St. Louis because I ran with a buddy this time around. We went pretty quick for two non-runners whose idea of training was running twice along neighboring streets over the last month (me) and running on a treadmill a few times in the last month (buddy). We finished in 40 minutes and the after party had barely gotten started when we got to the finish area. We were both suitably colored by the time we were done. Steak n Shake was the popular after-run stopping point for lunch and was full of color runners, which was also fun. I love Steak n Shake. So gooood. I wish the one here in town wasn't so far away...and was more clean...and had a more friendly wait-staff...and a more comfy atmosphere... I basically wish the one from JC would move up here near my apartment. That'd be super.

The other night I saw the movie "The Secret of NIMH". I don't think I'd seen that since I was a little kid. I forgot how good it was. Mrs. Brisby! What a mouse! I haven't seen many of the newer animated family movies, but I have to think that the classics will stand up better to the test of time than some of these newer releases. *sticks nose in air*

Big Apple

So, it's officially Spring even if the weather doesn't cooperate. Last week I was in New York City for the first time, ever. I went by myself, rather spur-of-the-moment, but it wasn't nearly as intimidating as I thought it would be! I feel pretty happy about the entire experience and saw lots of stuff and met with people who were not nearly as scary as I thought they would be. All-in-all, I feel like it was a great learning experience. Also, I feel like New Yorkers should be given a bit more credit for their friendliness than their reputation allows.

I managed to do a little sightseeing on the trip and went to WTC memorial and Freedom Tower, which was really something to see. You have to get reservations to see the 9/11 memorial, and since I wasn't actually planning on this trip, I wasn't prepared. However, if you go down to the site and go in St. Paul's Church, which is directly across the street from the site, there's plenty to read and see there as far as memorials go. The church was known as the Miracle Church because it was undamaged, despite being directly across the street from the twin towers. It turned into the sanctuary for the first responders to get some rest and some food during the search for survivors. If you go to NYC, I recommend checking out St. Paul's.

I also saw the Statue of Liberty (from Manhattan, I didn't take a boat out on the water), Central Park, saw the Chrysler Building, the arch in Washington Square Park, went up to the observation deck of the Empire State Building a la Meg Ryan in "Sleepless in Seattle", Times Square, Radio City Music Hall (which is supposed to have a fantastic tour for $20.00 a pop, but I didn't have time to do it. Next time I will...), the first Macy's on 34th Street (a la "Miracle on 34th Street") was totally overwhelming and I wandered in and up a few escalators before just trying to get the hell out, NYPL (the reason I was there, actually was for a job interview with NYPL) with the famous lions out front, 5th Avenue shops, Herald Square, etc. It was a great time, although I'm fairly positive there is no way I would ever actually live in NYC. Bob Dylan was right when he said "New York was a city where you could be frozen to death in the midst of a busy street and nobody would notice." I'm not an overly social person, but I think NYC could be one of the most lonely places on Earth, despite there being so many people in such a small space. Nobody talks to each other, nobody looks at others like they are humans. They basically racewalk down the sidewalks and I actually found myself forgetting there's actually anything outside of these looming buildings and skylines. It's like when you are on the streets of NYC, you're surrounded by robots running from one place to the next. Nobody stopping to chat, nobody smiling at anybody, nobody nodding in recognition... Of the few times I actually talked to people, they were really nice, but it's like you have to break down this wall to get people to talk to one another. It was pretty crazy... I know the midwest is reputed to be overly friendly and welcoming, but I didn't expect the difference to be so extreme. Still, I loved my visit. NYC is a great place to visit and I really look forward to returning sometime, but I need a better sense of humanity in where I live.

A few photos? Of course:

Central Park on the First Day of Spring, still looking very Winter-ish.

Midtown Manhattan

My pigeon buddy at the top of the Empire State Building. He was so into my camera phone it was ridiculous.
Cheese!

Home = gone!

Last week the sale of my house went through and I handed over the keys to the new owners. It felt very bittersweet at the time, but within a few hours of closing the sale, I felt a lot of relief and joy. I've not been this financially free in ages. I already paid off my car, which is another relief. And, I've finally been able to focus on turning my apartment into more of a home. It was never really a 'home', just a place to stay near work. Now, it's much more homey. I enjoy going there after work and spending time in it now. I also just have loads more brainpower to fixate on things other than home ownership, realtor communications, contract negotiations, inspections, etc.

So, I'm catching up on some Olympics (short track speed skating is really the only Winter event I get excited about), I'm reading a fantastic book about the spread of contagious diseases (whoda thunk I'd find this interesting, but it really is fascinating...), and getting fixated on trying to change the layout of my local grocery store to better serve people in wheelchairs. Also, I've always been hooked on logic puzzles, but I'm especially hooked lately. I tend to do at least one before bed now...logic puzzles and reading about Ebola outbreaks is sort of my nightly routine the last few evenings...

I like www.logic-puzzles.org as an online game site.

Without the house stuff, I also have so much free time and since I don't spend my weekends constantly going to Jefferson City to work on the house, I find that I have plenty more time to socialize. It's amazing! There's life outside...

Welcome to the new age.

Hello from 2014! It's been a very chilly start to this year here in Missouri. We've only been officially in Winter for barely a month, but we've had snow, ice, and bitterly cold temperatures so far. Winter is definitely making itself known around here. I saw my heating bill for this month and nearly had a conniption when I saw the amount. Polar vortexes certainly make the furnace work overtime.

2014 isn't terrible, so far. It's begun interestingly enough with a buyer for my house. My house came off the market in early December, but there was a family who really liked it and had seen it in the Fall. They came back after Christmas with an offer and I decided to accept it and so, this month, have unexpectedly been going through the home-selling process. It is slightly less frustrating than the home-buying process, but not too much less, I think. I've definitely had some sleepless nights and frustrating days. But, the house is good and passed its inspection with flying colors, needing only some flashing and a couple of minor repairs to shingles on the roof. For a nearly 110 year old house, I was beaming with pride through its inspection when the 2 inspectors (Yes! Two!) kept showering the house with compliments. Aw, shucks. I know my house is awesome and amazing, but it's always nice to hear strangers compliment it, too. It's not at all what people expect when they hear how old the home is, or even when they walk up to it from the outside. It's a gem. I hope the new owners will take care of it. I can tell that they love the house. It has to go through its appraisal  now, and we're supposed to be closing in February if all goes as planned. It's bittersweet to let my house to go to a new family, but I am coming to terms with it. When it didn't sell in the Fall, I had gotten myself psyched up for spending more time in the house again and enjoying it as my own, with no strangers coming and going through it for a while. So, after doing that for Christmas and then finding myself in the situation of needing to detach from the house again, clean it out, and come to grips with letting it go to a new owner, I'm hoping the sale doesn't fall through. My emotions are exhausted. To try to get over the irrational fears of letting my beloved home go to new ownership, I drove over to the neighborhood outside of Jeff City that I grew up in. The house my dad sold a couple of years ago. I hadn't driven over there since he sold that house. I'm so glad I did. The house looked so happy. The family has put up a big playground in the back yard, the house had Christmas lights strung up on its roof (which my family didn't do at all in at least the last decade, if not two decades). And it still had its cheery yellow mailbox that I painted out front. It looked so good. Everything was so happy and cheery. They also fenced in the back yard. Perhaps they have a dog or something that would make the fence necessary. The fence was the only thing I was sort of sad about because our yard was the neighborhood sledding hill starting spot. You started at the top of our backyard and went down the next door neighbor's yard (dodging trees), and hopefully were able to stop your sled before hitting a tree or sliding into the street. It was great...Maybe the kids have found an alternate hill in the old neighborhood. I hope they have. Still, driving by the house was a really good thing for me to do because I realized that new owners can take care of the houses you loved and spent a good part of your lifetime in. It's not really throwing away those years when you sell a house, it's just moving forward and trusting that the house will go through a rebirth of sorts and the owners will change it to suit their needs and hopefully, the house will bring joy to them, as it did to you and your family.

In light of the developments of possibly having no connection to the town I grew up in after next month, I've started looking around my new town for new things to do/places to visit/restaurants to try. I realized that I haven't really focused much on the neighborhood around the apartment or this town in general, because I focus everything on my "actual" neighborhood of my house in a different city and costs to maintain the house and I still do my laundry at the house, etc. I'm amazed at the options I'm seeing around me that I hadn't ever really seen before. We're getting something called a Pita Pit a few blocks from my apartment, which sounds neat. I love the Greek restaurant right next door to me, although I don't go as often as I could. I've only been once this year so far. There's a well-known restaurant with jazz music in my neighborhood that I've never been to, plus a chinese buffet that people seem to enjoy (I'm usually snobby about my chinese food, though. Chinese food is one thing I have explored in town, with very poor results. There is only one place in town that I go for my Chinese fix... although, I suppose I could try this other place since it's so close to the apartment.) There is plenty of exploring to do.

Assuming that the house sale goes through, and my ties to Jefferson City are cut for good, I thought I'd put up a few pictures:

Willow Creek Drive, the street of the house I grew up in.

Watson resting while lovingly keeping watch over the neighborhood of the house I grew up in.

Pretty snow-covered intersection.

Jefferson City's annual pet parade for National Pet Week.

Fourth of July food trucks in Downtown.

Chez Monet bakery, which is no longer in business, was a staple of downtown Jefferson City for decades. So many good cookies were eaten here.

Iris spent her whole life in Jefferson City and lived in three different living situations with me, always adapting to each one better than any other cat I've had.

Goslings being taken for their first swim at Binder Lake.

Downtown Jefferson City as seen from the top of the dome of the Capitol.

Floods take over the downtown parking lots periodically.

The old St. Joseph Cemetery on West Main Street.

The little front yard of still-mine-until-next-month house and its historical renovation award signage. Woot!

20) Have a kick-ass Halloween costume for this year's Halloween event at work

My work does a really fun halloween event each year for kids. It's free, it's fun, it's the one family-friendly event we do and I've loved it each time I've worked it. So, last year, I couldn't think of a costume so I ended up just wearing lots of clothing and being a gypsy. This year I wanted to put a bit more effort into it and gave a lot of thought to a costume. I really enjoy working a certain part of the event that is a kid's cave, which means my costume has to allow me to crawl through a cave and also not be too terrifying for kids. This year, I decided to be a little scary. I creeped myself out with it a bit, actually. I decided to be a mime (although, a talking one...which took some explaining. I made up the mime rule that mimes can speak on special occasions to really special people, which is why I could speak at the event to each child...because they were really special people.)

I only terrified one child into not wanting to crawl through the cave. But, I still think it was a good costume. I painted my whole face in the whole mime thing, had the black and white striped shirt, the black pants, the red beret...the whole deal. I was proud of myself. Of course, I didn't get a picture of me because I was really busy with setting up the cave and dealing with everything of the event, but I consider it a successful kick-ass costume.

I sort of looked like this, except without the blond hair. My face was very similar to this one.

12) Apply for a job I think I'd enjoy, whether I feel that I'm qualified for it or not.

I don't have a photograph to prove this, but you just have to trust me that I've completed this one!

9) Go 'glamping'

Despite being really un-communicative of late, I've not forgotten about my 27x30 challenge! I've been slowly knocking them out. I'm closing in on the end of a three week vacay in the Southwestern US and have officially gone glamping! (That's 'glamorous camping' for those unaccustomed to outdoorsy hipster jargon.)

I glamped at El Cosmico, in Marfa, Texas and spent one night in a safari tent and the next night in a teepee. Both were great, I really enjoyed my time there. I love these sorts of unique places to stay. I haven't had the chance to stay in too many really unique hotels, but I think I'll try to incorporate them more into my travels because it was really cool.

Safari Tent

Safari tents, bath house, and full moon. Beautiful.

Teepee! The floor was covered in deer skins, which made it nicer to walk around the teepee than if it had just been cement or wood planks. All the beds in the tents and teepees had electric mattress pads, so you were warm and cozy in the desert night.

So long, September.

Last weekend I traveled a few hours south and took part in my good friend Anna's wedding! It was a beautiful ceremony in a really pretty church. Congrats to the newlyweds! Anna is a high school teacher and taking a honeymoon during the school session is sort of rough so the happy couple is going to Tahiti around Christmas. Lovely choice, yes?

Tahiti!

When I returned home from the wedding on Sunday, I was greeted by Beatrix, whose face had swelled up enormously on her left side. There were also small blood spots around some areas of the apartment and I couldn't figure out what in the world she had gotten into or how she could have hurt herself. After cleaning up and trying to get a good look at her, I called the ER veterinary hospital to ask about hours, costs of visits, etc. It was mind-boggling how expensive they were and since Bea wasn't actively bleeding any longer and she seemed to be acting pretty normal at that point, I decided to let us give it a night and I would take her to a vet in the morning. She had a pretty rough evening, though and spent much of it hiding and feeling kind of rough. Her poor face was so swollen and I had decided it was probably an abscessed tooth. But, it turns out she had played and played and played with Watson when he was staying with us, and at some point she caught a claw to her face and neck and the wounds were infected. So, on Monday night when I picked her up from the vet's office, she looked much more like Two-Face, the character from Batman comics? Her left side of her face was completely shaved, her left whiskers were all cut off, and there were open bloody wounds on her cheek and a big one on the left side of her neck. She was feeling much better though, despite how terrible she looked. We've been dealing with that all week, but she's healing pretty nicely and just about back to her full ornery self. I took a picture of her wounds, but it's sort of gross, so I won't share it. She'll go back for her progress check-up later next week and hopefully then she can get her annual vaccines, which she also needs.  Caching, caching. Sometimes, a little lotto win would come in handy, you know? I don't mean a giant powerball, just a nice hundred or two hundred Scratchers win to cover those unexpected (and expected) pet bills?

The Art & Archaeology Museum on campus that I worked for during my grad school days is officially leaving campus on Monday. They are moving to a facility on the north side of town so that decisions can be made about the radiation levels of their current campus building. I think everyone is hoping this will be a very temporary move, but moving an entire museum is hardly something that you take on lightly and my feeling is (sadly) that this might be more permanent than not. I can't really see Mizzou making the clean-up of the building their number one priority, but it is really inconvenient to have them secluded on a far side of town where there is no easy way for students to get there. On the other hand, perhaps this could be a chance for the museum to make themselves better known outside the campus bubble? I'm not sure how it will all play out, but I am hoping to go say goodbye on Monday and see it in its "real" home (however radioactive it may be) one last time. There's a reception planned for it and everything. Aw.

Pickard Hall - Museum of Art & Archaeology @ Mizzou

I can hardly believe October is almost here. I'm struggling with costume ideas for Halloween. I had really wanted to do something fun and different this year. I am working a Halloween event at work and it's a lot more fun to dress up for it than to just stay in my work clothing. We also have a big annual meeting for work in October, which is always somewhat of a stressful time in the office. I've only been to one annual meeting for the society before and it was interesting. I think it will be fine in the end but the organization and prep-work that the staff are doing is starting to take its toll. That's why the universe has Hot Box Cookies, I think. Six of us went to this place on Thursday evening after work, and two of the six are some of the most over-worked and over-stressed for this annual meeting deal. It's amazing how much your stress can dissipate with a warm chocolate chip cookie, followed by a warm snickerdoodle, all accompanied by chocolate milk and laughing with co-workers over non-work related topics. It was nice. We decided it should be something we "do" from now on. I had never been to Hot Box before, but I tell ya: I'm a convert, big time. Every single cookie they have on the menu, I want to gobble up. Red velvet? Yes. Peanut butter w/ reese's pieces? Yes. White chocolate chocolate chip? Yes. Monster cookies? Yes yes yes. Plus, they do those giant cookie cakes that used to be all the rage in the early 1990s. I love those. Nom nom nom!