It's Tough to be a Buck

This week, I guess the best way to summarize it is highs and lows. In the class I used to teach, El Bandito and I used to ask our students to give us their weekly Highs and lows. Because this is my blog, I'm going to give you a bunch, though I'll try to keep it interesting, especially since most readers I have are still in California (with notable exceptions of Spam Boa, Mother Mapster, Micki Granger, and P-Diddy), and so its worth tayloring to my audience :)

So my high for this week: Starting Work. My Low: Missing a Google Hangout

Starting work has been great for me. I'll tell you why but first lemme analyze the concept of homesickness a little. My mom asked me if I was homesick. I don't think I am. Homesickness means you don't want to be where you are but rather where you were. I am definitely happy I'm here, meeting new people, starting up school and all of that. It's a long term adventure, and I love adventures. Instead, I think I have moments where I wish I could be a part of everything. I love all the stuff i've been doing here. But I also want to be at the stuff back home too. It's that same old complaint of I can't be in two places at once. This was a problem in California and it's just a long distance problem here. It's magnified by the fact that there's a lot more things I'm missing at home that I haven't yet replaced here. I just don't have the social and work calendar I had before. And no friggen' internet or video games to fill this newfound free time. (Well I did solve the video game problem)

Things I wished I coulda been at this week that I couldnt AKA my other lows for this week: Talking with Mama G in person rather than on the phone, University training with Red Button, Pokeboss, Captain Peanut and Naysayer P Squirrel (I don't miss training itself but training time and definitely appreciate Pokeboss' updates),

Things I attended here that I'm so glad i did, AKA my other highs for this week: Work training, lunch with my coworkers, happy hour with the other GAAs (Graduate Administrative Assistants), German Village with an old friend, TS Eloquent, my first OSU football game (which they won!), Mass and dinner with another old friend, Little Joyful

Anyway, that's my thoughts there. I have never been one that can sit idly alone for long periods of time. I need people around me. I get my energy from them. I'm truly an extrovert. So that's why work is my high this week. I got to meet some great new people. And new people of course means new Blog characters. For work, I'll introduce you to Dandy Woo. Dandy is a GAA like me. And she's one of those people who you are instantly comfortable around. Like after 5 minutes of talking with her I felt like we'd been friends for years. I named her Woo because in the StrengthsQuest (which is the kind of personality assessment thats popular here, a Woo is someone who thrives off of starting up conversations with complete strangers. This is totally her. She is the kind of person you don't want to sit next to on a plane ride you plan on sleeping through. And that's what she says. And she'd know, her dad's a pilot and she flies all over the place. We are gunna be good buds at work I think, and we have all the same classes too so it's good that we get along.

She along with our two other GAAs and our supervisors, have been my companions during training. I am the only man (there is one undergrad student worker who's a guy too but I'll be lucky to see him more than 5 hours any given week). The first day was spent talking about how one of the girls just got out of a relationship then moved to Dandy talking about her recent wedding engagement, which led to pictures of her wedding dress, which led to conversations about the other girls' weddings. Yes, for those of you keeping school at home, I'm the only man and three of the four women my age are married or about to be married. I feel like this should be significantly different from my previous situation, but I feel about the same. Once again I'm surrounded by great people I can't directly relate to but am amused and interested by their various conversations. It's lucky I'm patient and easily amused :)

Work itselt is going to be about Interviewing techniques, resume writing and ideal cover letters. My job is to prepare business students for getting jobs. Not only does this seem like a good skill in this day an age, but I feel like this will really help me in the future too. And I'm sure this means even MORE people will be asking for help with their apps and what not. It's nice to be needed.

I also went to the German Village, which is a district south of Downtown. My tour guide was TS Eloquent, an old friend from college who was an English major like me and also hung out with our crew on and off for a while. TS Eloquent took me to this nice Jewish Deli for some sandwiches and then this simply AMAZING book store. It was in this quaint brick building with little fountains and a cobblestone walk. Then inside, there were over 30 different rooms of various book and genres. One, you couldn't tell by looking at this cottage-like shop that there COULD be thirty rooms inside. Two, the rooms all connected on a few paths, so it was literally a labyrinth of books and rooms that you wander through. It was the Narnia of bookstores. The Diagon Alley. The Rabbit Hole. Neverland. It was a wonderful place. Each room had its own CD player with its own soundtrack ranging from every like big band to nature sounds to the beach boys, fitting the theme of the room. I'm so glad he showed me this place. It makes me happy just thinking about it. He also took me to the famous Jeni's Ice Cream, which I've heard about almost every day I've been here. I had two schools, one a chocolate with cayenne pepper to give it a good spicy taste and the other the buckeye, which had nuts and spices and a number of other things in it. There were hundreds of flavors to choose from and none that you'd ever seen anywhere else. And all natural, locally grown ingredients too. Very amazing. It was also nice just catching up with an old friend, filling him in on my life in California and hearing about his pursuits for a Master's degree in Creative writing, specifically Poetry for him, a direction my life might have gone at one point. He was amused by all the stories I had from the quirkies in my life :)

I went to my first football game here. And at a town with no students yet cuz school hasn't started, there were 105,000 people in attendance of this game. Packed full, and league play hasn't even started. It was amazing and exciting. With school spirit about, its nice to see how much a school can impact its community.

I also spent the evening with Little Joyful and her boyfriend. Little Joyful, I've known since like kindergarten. We go that far back. We have always been good friends, going to the same schools until college. She grew up in the same neighborhood as Heavy Spy and actually knew him pretty well. Small world. She also majored in English after change her mind about a life as a vet, which of course I approve of haha. And now shes finishing up her teaching credentials to start teaching English, my other dream. I shall live vicariously through her (that makes it sound like I don't like what I'm doing, which is not true, it's more I wish I could do both). After Mass they took me to a place to get a giant hotdog, which I ate but did not take a picture of because last time there was a photo of me with a giant corn dog that people would not stop teasing me about...haha good times.

I should probably talk about the low, at least briefly. I don't like dwelling on the downsides. The reason this was my weeks low was because I think it hit me how much I miss having someone to talk to about my life. I miss the companionship one gets in a relationship, and that will hit me at random times and always leaves me feelin' blue. I miss the daily interactions that come from working in ResLife. And I miss being able to game with my friends (why AT&T why!?!?!?). I guess this could mean I am a bit homesick. But at the very least, I think it means I'm a bit lonely. And while I don't notice it 24/7, it does hit me. Hence why missing a Hangout would be a low. As usual, though I'm stubbornly optimistic and generally pull myself out of it. I know I have to go through these grieving/healing/transitioning moments though, so I let myself sit in them a bit too. Still, every day is exciting and full of new stuff for God to throw my way.

I think that's all I want to talk about. One last thing: Facebook. I've noticed that I try to go on it a lot more than ever before (this past Saturday was the first day I hadn't). I think this is the natural way to reach out to the world we, who are away, have left behind. I noticed that Steakhouse has been on Facebook a lot lately too, sending messages to people and touching base while she's back at home 9 hours from most of her friends. Spotty Sister seems to do so too, while she goes to school in Hawaii. She even had a comment that she's become a "Facebook whore" a testament to my point (and also a testament to how much I've been on facebook to notice that). I wake up in the morning and wait the 5 minutes it takes my phone to load News Feed (I have terrible reception) just to get the update at what happened the night before (cuz I usually sleep just before my old night owl friends get active). That can't be healthy because it means my brain and heart aren't totally here yet. Which is natural but also gunna make my time here much harder if I don't immerse myself. So my goal this week is to make facebook a way I stay in touch with people here too. And that will be much easier considering I finally have school orientation and can meet the rest of my class. At least things will start moving. I give it a few weeks and I'll probably miss this slow paced time.

Ok I'm out. Did I mention I got a car? There's a picture on facebook.

-JTY

Listening to: I'm writing this in my car, stealing internet, so I'm listening to the modern rock station out here, which is playing a Puddle of Mudd cover of a Rolling Stones Song (Gimme Shelter) its interesting.

Reading: I read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by John Haddon (I think) and it was really good. A story told from the PoV of a boy with "special needs". Really fascinating and a little sad but also a murder mystery.

Playing: Arkham Asylum. My bro sent me my PS3 but no games. This was the last straw to not being about to use my TV so I went our and bought Arkham Asylum, which I love and spent the last day and a half playing.