robglazebrook.com

This weekend was a lot of fun. A little too much fun, probably, considering how ill I felt by about 3am Sunday. I blame two factors. First, what was initially expected to be a very small gathering of three people slowly expanded until there were seven of us gathered around a little table in the corner of Whiskey River. Very few of those people were an artifact of my double vision, either. Every time someone new showed up, we bought a new pitcher, which meant a lot of drinks. Second, I have been drinking very little this semester, what with the creatively componenting and all. My tolerance for things fermented has dropped drastically over the last three months, it seems. No wonder Dana can keep up with me now. :)

The coolest/strangest part of the night happened when Dana sent me out all by my lonesome into the cold, bitter night air to buy her a gyro (this is my story; leave off, demon woman). I was standing in line at the gyro stand behind a nice-looking couple. Suddenly, the guy turned around and announced excitedly, “You’re Rob!”

“You’re right!” exclaims I returnedly. Brain scanning, scanning, not coming up with a name to match the face. Or the girlfriend’s face. Or, I suppose, a name to match any part of either’s anatomy. Hrmm. Give up. “Do I know you?”

“No,” says he, “but I read your website.”

I’ll be damned, thinks I. I have a fan.

We talk for a bit, and he introduces himself. He even recognized my toothpastefordinner t-shirt, so I was impressed. I mentioned a few friends and I were out drinking at Whiskey River, as it was conveniently located a couple of blocks from my apartment.

“I know,” says he. “You live above Skunk River, down the street, right?”

Did I? Suddenly, I couldn’t remember where I lived. I thought about it for a second, and darned if that isn’t exactly where I live! I was pretty glad someone remembered, considering it was so horribly, bitterly cold outside. “Yeah, that’s me,” says I.

I’ll be damned, thinks I. I have a stalker.

“I promise I’m not a stalker,” says he.

Anyway, it was a pretty fun encounter one way or the other. His name was Charles, I remembered (amazingly) the next day, and this is his website. I’m listed on his links shortly after Dooce and a bit before Strongbad. I am in good company.

I heard back from one of my top-choice companies on Thursday and had a half-hour phone interview that went really well. And then they called back on Friday to schedule an in-person interview down in Des Moines for next Friday (the 31st). I’m really super excited. :) However, now that I’ve scheduled my first in-person interview, I have come to the realization that I don’t have what I’m going to consider appropriate interview attire (at least for the types of jobs I’m applying for). Dana and I are going to have to go shopping sometime this week. I’m going to need an entirely new outfit, right down to the shoes. My brown Birkenstocks are showing their age on top and literally falling to pieces on the bottom. My black dress shoes are also falling apart on the bottom (there’s a huge water-attracting hole in the right one), plus they’ve become nastily salt-bleached during our last bout with Mother Nature. I consider it an investment, though. If an outfit can help me get a decent paying job doing what I want to do, it will be entirely worth it. Plus, it’ll eventually work its way into work attire.

My schedule this week is going to be frustratingly busy. I’m going to want to spend at least one or two evenings worrying about the interview (shopping, figuring out how to make an impromptu paper portfolio out of websites, etc). Unfortunately, I need to get a nearly-final draft of my creative component to my major professor by Monday, and then a really-nearly-final draft to the rest of my committee on Friday. Plus I have a big project (design a multiple-week class unit for a technical communication course and defend your decisions in a too-long report) due on Thursday that I haven’t really even begun. I have a good idea as to what I want to do the project on, but I’ve no idea how quickly that will translate into a finished product.

So how am I starting off this week of business? Drunk, probably. Dana and I went out last night and had a few too many whilst playing pool at the place down the street, and Kara is coming up to go out with us tonight. I’m going to try to get a couple of hours of stuff done before she gets here, and then all day tomorrow is going to have to be creative component time. And the second I finish, it becomes homework time. And the second I finish that, it becomes creative component/interview preparation time.

Oh! I almost forgot to mention the real reason I decided to update. It’s pretty much official that I’ll be moving across the hall in early- to mid-May. Dana and I took a look at the apartment Friday morning and decided it met my needs, and then my landlord approved of the proposal via email Friday afternoon. Dana says I’m not allowed to move the bar. Or the shopping cart. Or the giant red flag I found in the street. The giant orange and green fish hanging on my wall will probably take additional negotiation. Obviously, the woman has no design taste. ;)

I’m happy to announce that my creative component work is coming along well. Aside from the buttload of editing work that undoubtedly still needs to get done (but somehow doesn’t count as “work” in my head), I only have to make a few substantial edits to the website and write the conclusion to my creative component. I should be on track to get my final draft to my major professor by Sunday or Monday. It’s turning out to be a big bugger, too: I’m guessing it’ll be over 80 pages long, not counting appendixes, and a bit shy of 100 pages counting ‘em.

That probably sounds horribly long to some people out in AudienceLand not Grad School Inclined, and maybe even a little short to you Audibles out there writing theses right now. To the former, I would say this: Most of my life for the last five or six weeks has revolved around writing this thing. Not researching… that was done earlier. Just writing. It almost feels like it should be twice that length by now. To the latter: hey now, I’m having to build a website to go with this thing, too. Plus it’s a touch frustrating to know I’m writing this much and it’s not even going to be archived by the library. At least yours has a ~chance~ (however small) of being read someday.

I have decided I don’t really like the dead period between sending out a resume and waiting for a response. There’s nothing I can do to accelerate the process. I can’t even really check on the progress of the process for the most part. Sigh. At this moment, I have my resume out to four companies I’d like to work for, and I’ve only heard back from two of them regarding positions I’m not ideally interested in. I figure I’ll be picky for a few more weeks, until I decide to panic and take the first job willing to pay me enough to survive on ramen and day-old bread.

Speaking of living economically (it’s a stretch, I know), I’m considering moving. Now, before you lovely relatives of mine hyperventilate at the thought, I’m only considering moving about ten feet south. Literally. There’s a one bedroom apartment available across the hall, and I’m toying with the idea of taking it. The rent would be less, the location would be the same, and I could quit feeling guilty about having eight rooms to my lonesome.

Anyways, Dana should be here in a few for a goodnight kiss (the extent of our time together on average these days), so I’m going to go make it look like I’ve been sitting on the couch watching TV for the last six hours.

What could I say about my trip to Seattle that hasn’t already been said? What’s that? Everything, you say? Well, yes, obviously, but it was a rhetorical question. Try and keep up.

I was originally planning on giving a gristly blow-by-blow (or at least day-by-day) recounting of my spring break adventures in Seattle, but I quickly realized that:

1. It would be several thousand words long, and
2. It wouldn’t be very interesting.

So, instead, I’ll give you a general rundown of my thoughts on the trip, and save you from (most) of the boring stuff.

Thing one: Flying is a lot of fun. I enjoyed the going up and the being in the air parts immensely. I would have enjoyed the coming down part a lot more if my ears had been more cooperative. I was getting pretty nervous that I was going to blow my right ear drum because it refused to change pressure. Finally I figured out that I had to hold my nose with one hand, plug my left ear with the other, and blow hard. My left eardrum was giving out way before my right (since it’s already been blown), which made equalizing pressure a pretty difficult (and funny looking) maneuver.

After thing one, and the collecting of baggage and the being-picked-up by the Justin, we all headed to his place (which has a gorgeous view of the city), dropped off our baggage, and headed out to a restaurant/bar place which we ended up lovingly calling MenhaMenha’s. There I first learned of a lovely type of beer called IPA, or India Pale Ale. It’s ultra hoppy and very yummy to the Robbypersons. Unfortunately, I’ve never seen it in Iowa. Gonna be a long summer without some IPA.

Saturday we walked throughout the downtown area and through the Pike Place market, which was a whole lot more than fish, but the fish place definitely had the largest crowd. We ate lunch at a seafood restaurant on the pier, which was very pretty.

Sunday, we headed east from the city, played/hiked at a 220-foot waterfall for a couple of hours, then drove into the Cascades so that I could get some up-close looks at mountains. It was the first time I’d seen mountains in the real, so it was a great experience.

The rest of the week was mostly thus: Justin would leave for work around 8:30am. Dana and I would get up anywhere from 8:31am - 10:30am (usually earlier than later). I would grouch around the apartment until I woke up enough to run to the gas station across the street for caffeine. Once caffeinated and showered, I would sit down at Justin’s kitchen table with my laptop and start typing. Brief breaks here and there aside, I’d be at the table until Justin got home from work. Then we’d decide how to spend the evening. Usually, this simply involved picking a new restaurant to try. One late afternoon/early evening was spent touring the University of Washington campus, which was gorgeous and I promise to get pictures up eventually.

Friday came all too soon. We had lunch in Seattle, dinner with Uncle Don and Aunt Mo in Kansas City, and went to bed in Ames. Aren’t we all metropolitan up in herre?

On the way home, I decided to give my Chicago conference this weekend a miss, so that I’d have more time to work on my creative component, which is due all too soon. It was a really tough decision to make, but I think I made the right one. Dana and I are planning on spending some other weekend in Chicago within the next few months to make up for our loss. Really, I think I’ll enjoy the city more, and she’ll enjoy me more, if we wait until I’ve graduated. :)

Well, the day has finally come. In just nine hours, I’ll pop my metaphorical flight cherry (and hopefully not my literal eardrums) on my way to Seattle with Dana to see Justin and his city. I got a bit under four hours sleep, so it should make for an interesting voyage for that reason if nothing else (and I’m guessing that ain’t it). In around two hours, we’ll be leaving Ames on our way to Kansas City for our flight out west. We’ll take off around 4pm, stay in the air (I hope) for around four hours, and land at 6pm. In other words, we will be moving faster than light and engaging in a bit of playful time travel. On the way back, we’ll compensate for only being in the air four hours (again, fingers crossed) but ensuring we arrive at our destination six hours later by moving backwards in time two hours. Which, if you’ve ever watched Star Trek, you know involves flying really close to the sun at as close to warp 10 as you can push your Klingon Bird of Prey while pseudo-classical statues fly through the air and crash into things. Eat it, Einstein.

I’m pretty damn excited about the trip, even if I am a bit sad that my homework has to outweigh everything else (both literally and symbolically).It should be a good time. I don’t know how much I’ll be on the Internet while I’m out there, though, so this might be the last time you hear from me in a while. In other words, it’ll be like any other week.

Now I suppose I should really start packing pretty soon. After another cup of coffee. Yawn.