Dreaming things that never were

When I was little, I probably spent most of my time daydreaming. I read a lot, and consequently wrote stories a lot, most of which were set in nonexistent worlds and featured dragons, dinosaurs and wizards with great frequency. Sometimes all three together. My parents didn't seem to mind that my little invented worlds didn't really exist or even make any sense - they just let me keep dreaming.

My best friend Ellen and I would spend hours inventing our own universe full of dragons, unicorns, and other mythical creatures, most of which we invented. We even made a map of our imaginary world, big enough to cover almost an entire wall. My sister, my neigbors and I made hour-long movies with plots that, in retrospect, made absolutely no sense. We were Native Americans, we were Egyptian Princesses, and we were distraught pet owners searching for our cat who had been kidnapped by an invisible man.

the more I grew up, as is inevitable, the less I imagined. I missed being a kid - playing, daydreaming and inventing silliness. After my sophomore year at St. Olaf, I started teaching music at theatre e3, a music-theater program owned by my high school theater director. Spending my summers working with 70 kids, teaching music classes and hanging out with them on breaks, made me feel like a kid again.

There was the seven year old who came to camp every day in knee-high, neon pink rain boots, acted like she hated me and then inexplicably invited me to her birthday party. There were the three girls who found a stick in the grass, drew a face and hair on it, named it Petunia and proceeded to carry it around and talk to it for the next three weeks. My students were ridiculously smart, immensely talented, and they weren't afraid to flounce around onstage while wearing ridiculous costumes, singing in falsetto and holding a harp.

Meanwhile, I was trying to transition out of my own dream - I had gone to St. Olaf convinced I wanted to be an opera singer, but the further I traveled down that path, the less I really wanted it. I'd always envisioned myself having a home and a family - could I really handle a career that forced me to move every few months and plow through rejection after rejection for years before even landing a paying job? Did I really want to spend hours a day alone in a practice room? Not really.

So, while my students were dreaming wildly, I was slowly giving up on mine.

I taught for a couple more years before ending up in marketing in a corporate setting. How'd this happen? Still not entirely sure. I gave up the jeans and t-shirts of my teaching days for heels and dress pants. I gave up "sure, you can whip your shirt off and do a crazy dance, just make sure it's Ok with Eric...", for "do you think 200K units is a reasonable forecast?" Words like "realistic forecast" and "joint development agreement" became part of my everyday vocabulary. I began thinking about things in terms of the limitations of reality instead of limitless possibility - simply because, I was convinced, this was my duty as a Real Grown-Up Adult.

A couple of months ago, I was sitting with Ben in Baker's Square, eating pie and talking about how to fix Major League Baseball - the major problem being, large market teams have too much power and too much money.

"Maybe if we could get all the owners to realize that if they collaborate and don't let salaries get too high, it would be better for the sport?" Ben suggested.
"Yeah," I replied, "but that would never happen. Outright collusion is illegal, and if they tried to do it by tacit agreement that just wouldn't work. People are selfish - nobody would agree to that. Or maybe everyone would except Steinbrenner, who'd keep salaries ridiculously high and then where do you think all the good players would end up?"
"But if he realized what a good thing it was, and if we could convince him to do the right thing - "
"Never gonna happen."
"But WHAT IF, in my own personal imaginary world -?"
"Not possible."
"But what if - "
"Nope."

We paused. We smiled. One or both of us started giggling.

At that moment I thought, what's so wrong with ridiculous possibilities? Sure, realism is fine and it helps make decisions in the real world, but every single great achievement has started out with a dream that everyone thought was impossible.

I thought about how fortunate I was to have someone in my life who reminds me that sometimes, realism and parameters need to go out the window - silliness is OK. Dreaming is OK. Having pie for dinner, or building a fort in your living room and sleeping there when you have a perfectly good bed in the bedroom is more than OK. It makes me feel like I'm nine years old again - more like myself, or at least, the me I like the most.

Found and Lost, and Found again

There's nothing quite as fun as telling your boss, "Yeah... remember that new product powerpoint that you asked me if I had, and I was totally convinced that I had it and promised I would send it to you? ... Um I don't have it. Actually I don't think it exists."

The thing is I SWORE it existed. I would have bet anywhere from $5-$10 (I'm poor) that it was real, and that in fact I had written it, but no. Not so much.

I wondered if I had accidentally deleted it - so I searched through all my old e-mails because had I indeed finished it I DEFINITELY would have sent it to my co-worker Brad.

Nope.

I wondered if perhaps it had gotten lost in the labyrinth of the common hard drive, where things are constantly mis-labeled and stored in the wrong place...it's like if someone took my ex-boyfriend's closet (which is actually the floor of his room btw) and used that same style of organization to structure the shared folder on our network.

Nope.

So today I finally discovered that I was right all along and that the powerpoint does not in fact exist.

I was informed of this by my boss who said: "Oh! I figured it out - you made a powerpoint for the OTHER new product line... "

So add that to my list of things I need to get done before August 14 when I leave my job to return to the world of academia. Score!

Moved!

We did it! After 2 days of hauling furniture up and down stairs and across the river (lugging a giant dresser up 3 flights of stairs - most fun I've ever had in my life) I'm finally moved into my new apartment.

I'll have pictures soon, but my camera is out of batteries so you'll have to wait a couple days.

That being said, I won't post pictures of ALL the rooms, because my bedroom is still a giant pile of unpacked suitcases full of my clothes and unpacked sacks full of my shoes. It's pretty disastrous. I don't let many people in there.

Last night I cooked my first dinner in my new kitchen (and I mean that quite literally - it is BRAND NEW. My landlady installed a new stove and completely re-did the cabinets and counters before I moved in), and I will now take this moment to profess my undying love for the following two things: (ahem)
1) Smitten Kitchen. Seriously...wow. This is awesome and you should make it right now.
Here's a picture of mine:


2) Wusthof. I told myself I'd never spend almost $100 on a knife. I promised and crossed my heart because my rent just went up a LOT and I'm trying to save money, but also I don't own any kitchen knives and maybe I should just buy one nice one...? (this brief foray into my stream of consciousness brought to you by my 30K salary and impending tuition) Oh boy, did I make the right decision. This baby cuts asparagus like butter.

You will notice in my photo (or maybe you didn't notice so I'm telling you now) that my plate is resting not on the kitchen table where one normally eats food, but on the coffee table. This is due to the fact that I do not yet own any dining room chairs - which leads me to another list: the list of things I don't have yet.

(I like lists)

1) Dining room chairs. I actually do have some that my mom found at a used furniture store for $25 each, but I won't actually get them until next Tuesday or Wednesday. Le sigh.
2) Cable. OMG - I haven't had cable in 3 years!!! I'm so excited I can't even tell you. Needless to say I'm mostly excited that I'll finally be able to watch baseball from the comfort of my own home. The sad thing is it's summer and none of my favorite shows are on - LOST, How I met Your Mother, One Tree Hill... or scratch that. Not OTH anymore. Why you ask? Is it because I'm in my mid-20's and watching a show whose primary audience is high schoolers? No - it's because OTH jumped the shark in a major way when the dude dropped Dan's heart on the ground and A DOG ATE IT. HONESTLY.
Can we just have a moment here?
What.
The.
Hell.
I know it was supposed to be this big dramatic moment but it was so ridiculous that all I could do was laugh. And then turn off my computer and never watch OTH again.
....OK that's really all I have to say.
Moving on.
3) Basic cooking supplies. Ben and I were cooking breakfast on Sunday and I was pretty proud of myself because I remembed to get eggs and bacon. The following conversation quickly ensued:
B: Do you have milk, maybe we could make scrambled eggs?
Me: .... nope.
(a couple minutes later)
B: Hey can you get me some butter, the eggs are kind of sticking to the pan.
Me: .....don't have any butter.
B: Salt?
Me: nope
B: Pepper?
Me: nope.

Stocking your pantry is an interesting adventure. There are many things I use all the time (baking soda, salt, baking powder, oatmeal), but they last for so long I rarely have to replace them and therefore forget to buy them, and I usually only buy butter when I'm planning on baking which I haven't done yet.

Pics soon! :)

Blahhhhgggggghhh....

Sorry I haven't posted these last few weeks....like, at all.....
Things have been kind of crazy. We had mandatory vacation in December in lieu of layoffs which is definitely a plus, but which also meant that I had piles of work waiting for me when I got back, as did everyone else.

MBA applications proceeded to devour the rest of my time. I was in DC with Matt from 12/30 - 1/4, so I didn't have much time to do anything and when I got back I had 3 apps due right in a row. I'd almost finished the first one before I left so that was no problem, but the second two needed a lot of work and were only due a week and a half later, one day apart from each other. Obviously I wanted to put a lot of time and effort into all three of them, the result being:
a) I completely stopped going to the gym.
b) I hardly slept
c) I didn't have time to go to the store so I survived mainly off of toast, yogurt and cereal.

On the other side of the madness, 4 out of 5 apps are in! The 5th is almost done I just need to put in 1 more day of solid work on it. I see the light at the end of the tunnel finally :) I also had an interview already with the first school I applied to, and scheduled another with a different program next Wednesday.

Meeting time.......................

Mystery Keys and the Many Uses of Rolly-Chairs

Important things - I turned in my first MBA application last Friday!! 1 down, 4 to go and I'm almost halfway through #2, I should have it mostly done by the middle of next week I think.


In a related story except actually not, I've been wanting a set of drawers for my cubicle since I started. I began to develop a weird jealousy complex towards all my co-workers who have drawers and spent hours daydreaming about what I would use my drawers for were I to magically acquire some (I also don't have a nifty panel to cover my topmost shelf. Everyone else has one, so they can easily hide their shelf-messes, whereas mine is exposed for everyone to see so I have to keep it super tidy).

Anyways, last month one of the guys from our planning department left to take another position. He had two sets of drawers in his cube and ever since he left, I've been secretly coveting them. Since I don't really know what the protocol is for yoinking other people's furniture, though, I just left them there and would gaze at them longingly every time I walked past.

Last night at around 5pm, almost everyone had gone home, and I was reaching desperation mode with marketing samples spread out all over my desk so that I barely have any room left. It was time. I needed some damn drawers. So I marched down the hall past customer service and over to the now-empty cube and pulled the drawers out from under the desk. As I tried to pick them up, I realized they were much heavier than I originally thought. There was no way I could carry them back to my desk - I would have to come up with a better plan.

I remembered then how my friend Ben and I had been joking around about having rolling chair-iot races at work. This would basically involve pushing or pulling another person around in a rolly-chair and having races...dangerous? Yes. Fun? Obviously. Smart? Maybe not so much. Anyways, I thought if you could push a person in a rolly chair, why not drawers?

With a considerable ammount of effort, I managed to use my knee as leverage to get the drawers onto the chair. I felt pretty accomplished at that point, especially since I managed to do all of this while wearing high heels and dress pants. Nobody saw me except customer service...and they're used to seeing me do weird things...so that's probably best. Now my marketing samples have a home and my desk is infinitely more organized. Yay :)

The best part of all this is that the drawers were not entirely empty when I opened them. Inside the top drawer were these trinkets: a pair of scissors, some staples, white-out tape, and two keys. Keys to where??? Whose keys are they? Am I even supposed to have them???? I sort of hope not...I mean, nobody's needed them for a month so nobody could be missing them right??

Actually I'll probably hand them over to head of planning. But it's fun to dream.

So this morning I have a growing bruise on my knee and a set of keys...and most importantly, drawers. Yay.

Pie + Cool Whip = ???

Welp. The holiday weekend is over - it was everything I hoped it would be, except for not being nearly long enough. Among the things I hoped for (and got) were :
1) good times with my family
2) awkward times with my grandmother
3) turkey leftovers
4) pie
5) some small ammount of productivity

1) Good times with my family were abundant. My sister J was nice enough to pick Matt up from the airport when he decided that it would be nice to get an earlier flight, the arrival time of which coincided with the Thanksgiving Eve service I had to sing in.

2) Awkward times with my grandmother lived up to all my expectations and then some. Among my favorite moments were:
- Repeatedly accusing my mom of calling her an abortionist. Number one,
my mom is pro-choice. Number two, my mom would have been nine years
old at the time my grandma was refering to...it's doubtful she would have even
known what the world abortionist meant. The initial accusation was awkward
enough. More awkward was grandma's continued insistence that it happened.
- Talking about how my grandpa was a "terrible father"
- Debating the relative size of Michelle Obama's ...booty...compared with others.
And last but not least my favorite quote, said to my boyfriend while I was out of the room:
" There's certain things you just can't ask family - like, 'when are you going to get married and have babies', or 'why do you use cool-whip in your pie instead of real whipped cream'?"
(for reference, Matt and I brought two pies containing cool whip to my parents house).

3) yum.

4) Also yum.

5) OK so let's get this straight. A 4 credit class at the U is supposed to demand 3 hours of your time per week on average. However, my instructor clearly states on his syllabus "average work leads to average performance, which in turn leads to average grades." By those standards alone, I should be getting an A+++++++++++++++++++++. Seriously. I don't think you could even PASS doing 3 hours of work, let alone get a C. Every week we have to read 1 case, 2 articles (which are usually pretty long), the entire issue of that week's Economist and write 2 short papers that add up to about 1300 words. I spend probably 5 hours reading and at least another 3 outlining and writing my papers. If I'd actually went back and edited them (which I do not) I'd probably take another hour minimum. What grade am I actually getting? NO FREAKING CLUE. It's on a curve, so I know what my scores are but other than that...yeah. I'm hoping for the grade of "Somewhat more competent than Claire on LOST but not quite as good as Joe Mauer". So it's a fun semester...although it's actually a really great class and I'm learing a lot.

So needless to say after the above rant about my class, it's really fun trying to figure out when to fit in my grad school apps. Luckily, I have Matt, my family and friends and choir to keep me sane :)

Happy almost Thanksgiving!

Life is a little hectic right now. Here are a few of the reasons why:

- I work full-time for a tech. company in Arden Hills, saving the world one hearing aid at a time. Or at least saving our german sales office.

- I sing in my church choir, which takes up all of my Wednesday evenings and Sunday mornings.

- I'm applying to grad school - I started out wanting to apply to three and somehow ended up with seven. They are all due sometime between December 17 (U of Maryland) and February 1 (U of MN) and I've barely started any of them.

- I travel a lot.

- For some reason I decided it would be fun to take an upper-level course in International Marketing this semester. It's a crap-ton of reading, and we have a case study and an article review due every week. Super fun.



Anyways I thought about it and I figured, what better time to start another blog??

My old blog reminded me too much of college so I decided to move on and start another one but if you want you can still find it at www.livejournal.com/users/magpie16. Ben and I also started a totally awesome Twins blog (http://heavenlypeanuts.blogspot.com/), which is full of photoshopping and little to no factual information.



So what else to say right now...

I have a lot of work to do on my apps.